How Do You Get the Faith to Have a Clean Heart?

By Rev. Ernest O'Neill

(Rev. O'Neill is answering questions from the audience.)

Good, how do you get the faith? A lot of people think you pump it up. So a lot of people say "I am dead, I am dead, I am dead, I am dead, I am dead." They try auto-suggestion and it's not that brother, you're right.

The first thing is to go to the Holy Spirit and say, "Holy Spirit I believe that this is possible and I believe you can do this for me. Will you show me if there's any sin in my life that I am not really willing to let go of? Will you show me if there's any way in which I am not ready to be wholly purified in Jesus on the Cross? Will you show me any way in which I am not ready to be completely recreated?" And then brother, the Holy Spirit goes to work and at least with me over a period of months, He showed me, closer, closer: pride, ambition and then it eventually gets to the self. That's what holds all the strings attached. It's the self, and he eventually shows you how wretched and grotesque and monstrous that self is and how it appears in God's eyes, how hateful it is and how it sets itself up as God and then, when you come to a place where you say, "Lord, I am willing, I am willing", there's nothing to do with that but to wipe it out. "I am willing for anything whatever it costs." Then it's amazing. Faith is the gift of God. Faith springs up in your heart, that's the beauty.

Baptism of the Holy Spirit comes easily. Faith springs up in the heart that is fully consecrated. It's not a matter of "I must make myself believe", we have been crucified with Christ. The moment we say, "Lord I accept that", that moment faith comes down from God, the Holy Spirit comes down in answer to faith, that's it, brother. I know it's amazing but it does, faith springs up in a fully consecrated heart.

If you say, "Oh I have real trouble with faith", you don't have trouble with faith, you have trouble with sin. You have trouble with un-confessed sin and that unconfessed sin holds faith down. Faith is the gift of God to any man or woman who is willing to enter into what God has done for us in Jesus.

One last thing, "Dear Jesus thou hast bled and died for me." Think about it, your own nature, your carnal nature, your perverted personality. Do you see if that had been the only perverted personality in the whole world, do you see that the only way God could destroy it was by destroying His Son? There's a real way in which each of us has to say, "Dear Jesus, thou hast bled and died for me and me only". Loved ones, Jesus has taken the dirtiest worst in you and me, taking it into himself and allowed his Father to wipe it out there forever.

What right have any of us to continue to live under it? What right have we? You wouldn't treat a dog like that, would you? You wouldn't kick his bleeding body under the chair and say, "Yes, I am going to live this way anyway whatever you've done for me. I don't know what you did it for. I don't know why you died. I don't know what you bore all that for but I am going to live my own way, anyway."

Well, you wouldn't treat a dog like that. So, there's a deep way in which every one of us here has to say, "Dear Jesus, thou hast bled and died for me and me only, and now what am I going to do with you? Loved ones there's no need for any of us tomorrow to have one unclean thought or feeling in our hearts.

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