Lam 3:21 -25; I recall this (doctrine) to my mind, and it gives me confidence. Because The Lord's mercy never fails; His grace provisions never cease, they are renewed every morning; Great is Your faithfulness... Therefore I have hope in Him. The Lord is good to those who wait silently on Him.
In our study of the doctrine of the winner believer. Heb 12:2; Rev 2:7; Winner believers are the unknown, unsung heroes of history. 2Cor 6:9; who are the targets of God's grace imputations and the reason that God continues to support the human race.
We are now in a segment where we are discussing the doctrine of church age spirituality that is based on the indwelling and filling ministries of God the Holy Spirit.
When we stopped last time we were noting that just as God's protocol plan for the Church Age supersedes God's ritual plan for previous dispensations enablement supersedes and replaces enduement.
Enduement is the description for the ministry of the Holy Spirit to a few Old Testament saints. In the Old Testament, God the Holy Spirit helped less than one percent of all born-again believers.
He helped the prophets who wrote including Moses and David, and also the judges and kings. But not every believer was indwelt or filled by the Spirit.
Some of the specific cases of God's provision of enduement include Joseph in Gen 41:38, the skilled laborers who worked on the Tabernacle in Exod 28:3;
Enduement was provided as administrative assistance to Moses and the seventy elders in Num 11:25 and to Joshua in Num 27:18;
Enduement was provided to certain judges and kings including Othniel, Judges 3:10; Gideon, Judges 6:34; Jephthah, Judges 11:29; Samson, Judges 14:6, 15:14-15; Saul, 1Sam 10:9-10; David, 1 Sam 16:13 and Daniel, Dan 4:8; Dan 5:11-12;
Enduement was provided to the human authors of the Old Testament books, 1Pet 1:11-12; 2Pet 1:20-21;
Old Testament believers could request the Holy Spirit, as Elisha did in 2 Kings 2:9-10;
While Jesus was with them He told His disciples in Luke 11:13; "If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?"
There is no evidence that they ever asked for enduement. Therefore, our Lord unilaterally gave them enduement for the 50 days between His resurrection and the day of Pentecost. John 20:22;
In the Church Age, we have enablement. We have the indwelling of God the Holy Spirit in our bodies, combined with the filling of the Holy Spirit that controls the thinking of our soul, when we are complying with the protocol for function inside God's spiritual power system.
Enablement is the ministry of the Holy Spirit that God gives to every Church Age believer at the moment of salvation.
Enablement is available to provide God's power to every believer where enduement only provided God's power to a few. Enablement presently provides maximum power to every believer who chooses to learn about it and has the positive volition to deploy it.
Church Age believers have the opportunity to use a power that was never made available to many of the greatest of the Old Testament believers.
To understand the ministry of grace on the part of the Holy Spirit, we must remember that God the Holy Spirit makes all of His divine power available to us now, but we must be in the right place at the right time.
The only right place is inside God's operational spiritual power system.
The ministry of God the Holy Spirit in providing power for the believer to live the Christian way of life is called the enabling power of the Spirit. Jesus Christ established the pattern for this enabling power of the Spirit. Heb 12:1-3;
Just as the unbeliever cannot understand the Gospel or believe in Christ as Savior apart the common and efficacious grace ministries of God the Holy Spirit, so we as believers cannot fulfill the protocol plan of God apart from the enabling and filling power of God the Holy Spirit.
While the indwelling of the Spirit is designed to provide a temple for the indwelling of Christ as the indwelling or "Shekinah" Glory of God, the filling of the Spirit is designed to give you the necessary power to fulfill God's plan for your life.
God's power does not and cannot coexist with human power. Divine power and human power are mutually exclusive so they cannot and do not coexist. Therefore, spirituality is an absolute.
The attempt to use human power instead of divine power to comply with the mandates found in God's Word is classified as legalism. Legalism is a trend of the sin nature that functions in the second stage of Christian degeneracy.
Legalism is moral degeneracy. It is the believer's attempt to be righteous and substitute human good for divine good in the energy of the OSN.
The attempt to mix Divine power with human power results in human power so that cannot fulfill God's plan of grace. Eph 2:8-9;
No believer can fulfill the protocol plan of God outside of God's spiritual power system, because no believer can fulfill the protocol plan of God in human energy, power or ability. Rom 4:5; 2Cor 12:9;