"Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit," says the Lord. Zechariah 4:6

William Law wrote some helpful thoughts down for pastors. I think he knew the universal temptation we all have to minister in the "strength" of our natural abilities. And his warning is just as useful today as at any stage in church history.

The necessity of a continual inspiration of the Spirit of God, both to begin the first, and continue every step of a divine life in man, is a truth to which every life in nature, as well as all scripture, bears full witness.

A natural life, a bestial life, a diabolical life, can subsist no longer, than whilst they are immediately and continually under the working power of that root or source, from which they sprung. Thus it is with the divine life in man, it can never be in him, but as a growth of life in and from God.

Hence it is, that resisting the Spirit, quenching the Spirit, grieving the Spirit, is that alone which gives birth and growth to every evil that reigns in the world, and leaves men, and churches, not only an easy, but a necessary prey to the devil, the world, and the flesh.

And nothing but obedience to the Spirit, trusting to the Spirit, walking in the Spirit, praying with and for its continual inspiration, can possibly keep either men, or churches, from being sinners,or idolators, in all that they do. For everything in the life, or religion of man, that has not the Spirit of God for its mover, director, and end, be it what it will, is but earthly, sensual, or devilish.

The truth and perfection of the gospel state could not show itself, till it became solely a ministration of the Spirit, or a kingdom in which the Holy Spirit of God had the doing of all that was done in it.

"I can do it myself." Face it, those words represent our human default setting. Self-dependency is natural, optomistic, and deceptive. It always promises more than it can deliver.

God's solution is the Holy Spirit, who lives in us, and empowers us to live in a fashion after God himself. And when we fit in with the Spirit and walk in step with him, wonders happen, and God is glorified.

F. B. Meyer in a book on Isaiah has a chapter on prayer titled ASKING AND COMMANDING. He concludes:

All the resources of God dwell bodily in the risen and glorified Lord. They are imparted to us through the communion of the Holy Spirit, who goes between the unsearachable riches of Christ and our poverty; bringing the one to the other, as the ocean brings the wealth of the world up to the wharves (a pulley or flywheel) of London or New York.

We have then to deal with the Holy Spirit, to study the methods of his operation - what hinders or helps, what accelerates or retards.

Obey Him, and He pours such mighty energy into and through the spirit, that men are amazed at the pridigality (extravagant wastefulness) of its supply.

Resist or thwart Him, and He retires from the spirit, leaving it to struggle as best it may with its difficulties and trials.

Meyer concludes by pointing out that in the proportion by which we are able to be under the authority of the Commander-In-Chief, to that degree we will have the earthly authority to "say to this and the other resources, "Go," or "Come," or "Do this!"

God will be able to trust us, and answer our prayers, as we lay before him our concerns regarding his sons and the work of his hands, and what we long to see Him do.