Author: Billy Conrad

June 25

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find;
knock, and it will be opened to you. —Matthew 7:7

Scripture reading: Hebrews 11:1–40

Many people do not receive the Holy Spirit because they
are continually asking and never believing. “Everyone who asks receives” (Matthew 7:8). He who is asking is receiving; he who is seeking is finding. The door is being opened right
now; that is God‘s present Word. The Bible does not say, “Ask and you will not receive.” Believe that asking is receiving, seeking is finding, and to him who is knocking, the door is being opened.

When will we see people filled with the Holy Spirit and things done as they were in the Acts of the Apostles? It will be when people say, “Lord, You are God.” I want you to come into a place of such relationship with God that you will know your prayers are answered because He has promised.

Faith has its request. Faith claims it because it has it. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for” (Hebrews 11:1). As sure as you have faith, God will give you the overflowing, and when He comes in, you will speak as the Spirit gives utterance (Acts 2:4).

You must come to a place of ashes, a place of helplessness, a place of wholehearted surrender where you do not refer to yourself. You have no justification of your own in regard to anything. You are prepared to be slandered, to be despised by everybody. But because of His personality in you, He reserves you for Himself because you are godly, and He sets you on high because you have known His name (Psalms 91:14). He causes you to be the fruit of His loins and to bring forth His glory so that you will no longer rest in yourself. Your confidence will be in God. Ah, it is lovely. “The Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Corinthians 3:17).

Thought for today: If you would believe half as much as you ask, you would receive.

June 24

That the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus. — Galatians 3:14

Scripture reading: John 16:7–22

W hen we have the right attitude, faith becomes remarkably active. But it can never be remarkably active in a dead life. When sin is out, when the body is clean, and when the life is made right, then the Holy Spirit comes, and faith brings the evidence.

Why should we tarry, or wait, for the Holy Spirit? Why should we wrestle and pray with a living faith to be made ready? Because we need the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment—that is why the Holy Spirit is to come into your body. First of all, your sin is gone, and you can see clearly to speak to others. But Jesus does not want you to point out the speck in somebody else‘s eye while the plank is in your own. (See Matthew 7:3–5.)

The place of being filled with the Holy Spirit is the only place of operation where the believer binds the power of Satan. Satan thinks that he has a right, and he will have a short time to exhibit that right as the Prince of the World; but he can‘t be Prince as long as there is one person filled with the Holy Spirit. That is why the church will go before the Tribulation.

Now, how dare you resist coming into the place of being filled with the life and power of the Holy Spirit? What is the attitude of your life? Are you thirsty? Are you longing? Are you willing to pay the price? Are you willing to forfeit in order to have? Are you willing to allow yourself to die so that He may live? Are you willing for Him to have the right-of-way in your heart, your conscience, and all you are? Are you ready to have God‘s deluge of blessing upon your soul? Are you ready to be changed forever, to receive the Holy Spirit, to be filled with divine power forever?

Thought for today: There are two sides to the baptism of the Holy Spirit: the first condition is that you possess the baptism; the second is that the baptism possesses you.

June 23

I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him. —Philippians 3:8–9

Scripture reading: 2 Peter 3:9–18

There is a place of seclusion, a place of rest and faith in Jesus. Nothing else is like it. Jesus came to His disciples on the water, and they were terrified. But He said, “It is I; do not be afraid” (Matthew 14:27). My friend, He is always there. He is there in the storm as well as in the peace; He is there in adversity. When will we know He is there? When we are “found in Him,” not having our own work, our own plan, but resting in the omnipotent plan of God. Oh, is it possible for the child of God to fail? It is not possible, for “He who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep” (Psalms 121:4). He will watch over us continually, but we must be “found in Him.”

I know there is a secret place in Jesus that is available to us
today. My brother, my sister, you have been nearly weighed down with troubles. They have almost crushed you. Sometimes you thought you would never get out of this place of difficulty, but you have no idea that behind the whole thing, God has been working a plan greater than all.

Today is a resurrection day. We must know the resurrection of His power in brokenness of spirit: “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection” (Philippians 3:10). Jesus said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). Oh, to know the resurrection power, to know the rest of faith. Any one of us, without exception, can reach this happiness in the Spirit. There is something different between saying you have faith and then being pressed into a tight corner and proving that you have faith. If you dare to
believe, it will be done according to your faith: “Whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them” (Mark 11:24). Jesus is “the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). With God‘s help, we must gain this life. We can reach it with the knowledge that He will make us as white as snow, as pure and holy as He, that we may go with boldness to His “throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16). Boldness is in His holiness. Boldness is in His righteousness. Boldness is in His truth. You cannot have the boldness of faith if you are not pure. What blessed words follow: “the fellowship of His sufferings” (Philippians 3:10). Remember, unless that fellowship touches us, we will never have much power.

Jesus came forth in the glory of the Father, filled with all the fullness of God. It was God‘s plan before “the foundation of the world” (Matt. 25:34). God loved the fearful, helpless human race, with all its blackness and hideousness of sin, and He provided the way for redemption. May God give us such “fellowship of His sufferings” (Philippians 3:10) that when we see a person afflicted with cancer, we will pray right through until the disease is struck dead. When we see a bent and helpless woman or a man who is weak and sick, may God give us compassion and a fellowship with them that will lighten their heavy burdens and set them free. How often we
have missed the victory because we did not have compassion at the needed moment. We failed to pray with a broken heart.

Is there anything more? Oh, yes, we must see the next thing. We must be “conformed to His death” (Philippians 3:10). “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain” (John 12:24). God wants you to see that unless you are dead indeed, unless you come to a perfect crucifixion, unless you die with Him, you are not in the “fellowship of His sufferings” (Philippians 3:10). May God move upon us in this life to bring us into an absolute death, not merely to talk about it. In this way, Christ‘s life may be made manifest.

The Lord wants us to understand that we must come to a
place where our natural life ceases, and by the power of God, we rise into a life where God rules and reigns. Do you long to know Him? Do you long to be “found in Him”? Your longing will be satisfied today. I ask you to fall in the presence of God. If you want to know God, yield to His mighty power, and obey the Spirit.

Thought for today: When the Spirit of the Lord moves within you, you will be broken down and then built up.

June 22

But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.
— Philippians 3:7–8

Scripture reading: 2 Corinthians 5

Daily, there must be a revival touch in our hearts. God must
change us after His fashion. We are to be made new all the
time. There is no such thing as having all grace and know
ledge. God wants us to begin with these words of power found in Philippians 3 and never stop, but go on to perfection. I am positive that no man can attain like-mindedness except by the illumination of the Spirit.

God has been speaking to me over and over that I must urge people to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. In the baptism of the Holy Spirit, there is unlimited grace and endurance as the Spirit reveals Himself to us. The excellency of Christ can never be understood apart from illumination. I must witness about Christ. Jesus said to Thomas, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).

There is a revelation that brings us into touch with Him where we get all and see right into the fullness of Christ. As Paul saw the depths and heights of the grandeur, he longed that he might gain Him. Before his conversion, in his passion and zeal, Paul would do anything to bring Christians to death. His passion raged like a mighty lion. As he was going to Damascus, he heard the voice of Jesus saying, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” (Acts 9:4). What touched him was the tenderness of God.

Friends, it is always God‘s tenderness that reaches us. He
comes to us in spite of our weakness and depravity. If somebody came to oppose us, we would stand our ground, but when He comes to forgive us, we do not know what to do. Oh, to gain Christ! A thousand things in the nucleus of a human heart need softening a thousand times a day. There are things in us that unless God shows us “the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus,” we will never be broken and brought to ashes. But God will do it. We will not merely be saved, but we will be saved a thousand times over!
Oh, this transforming regeneration by the power of the Spirit of the living God makes me see there is a place to “gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8), so that I may stand complete there. As He was, so am I to be.

We cannot depend upon our works, but upon the faithfulness of God, being able under all circumstances to be hidden in Him, covered by the almighty presence of God. The Scriptures tell us that we are in Christ and Christ is in God (1 Corinthians 3:23). What is able to move you from this place of omnipotent power? “Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” (Romans 8:35). Oh, no! Will life, or death, or principalities, or powers? (v. 38). No, “we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (v. 37).

Thought for today: The Holy Spirit is the great Illuminator who makes me understand all the depths of Him.

June 21

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” — Matthew 16:24

Scripture reading: Matthew 10:16–42

We must acknowledge our helplessness and nothingness.
Although laboring in the Spirit is painful, God can lift the
burden from us. I have had those days when I feel burdened. I have had it this morning, but now God is lifting the heaviness. And I say, brother and sister, unless God brings us into a place of brokenness of spirit, unless God remolds us in the great plan of His will for us, the best of us will utterly fail. But when we are absolutely taken in hand by the almighty God, God turns even our weakness into strength. He makes even that barren, helpless, groaning cry come forth, so that men and women are reborn in the travail. There is a place where our helplessness is touched by the power of God and where we come out shining as “gold refined in the fire” (Revelation 3:18).

It was on the cross that our Lord died with a broken heart.
Pentecost came out of jeering and sneering. It included being mocked and beaten and an offer of sour wine. Jesus received an unfair judgment and a cross that He had to bear. But, glory to God, Pentecost rings out today for you through the words, “It is finished!” (John 19:30). And now because it is finished, we can take the same place that He took and rise out of that death in majestic glory with the resurrection touch of heaven. People will know that God has done something for us.

Thought for today: There is no hope for Pentecost unless we come to God in our brokenness.

June 20

Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world. — 1 John 4:17

Scripture reading: Hebrews 2

You ask, “Can we see the Master?” Here, look at Him. His
Word is Spirit and life-giving. This is the breath, the Word of
Jesus. Through the Holy Spirit, men have written and spoken. Here is the life. Here is the witness. Here is the truth. Here is the Son of God “revealed from faith to faith” (Romans 1:17), from heart to heart, from vision to vision, until we all come into perfect unity of fellowship into the fullness of Christ.

There it is, beloved. Look! “Now we are children of God” (1
John 3:2). If you are there, we can take a step further. But if you are not there, you may hear but not cross over. There is something about the Word of God that benefits the hearer who has faith, but if the hearer does not have faith, it will not profit him.

The future is what you are today, not what you are going to be tomorrow. This is the day when God makes the future possible. When God reveals something to you today, tomorrow is filled with a further illumination of God‘s possibility for you.

Do you dare to come into the place of omnipotence, of wonderment? Do you dare to say to God, “I am ready for all that You have for me”? It will mean living a pure and holy life. It will mean living a sanctified, separate life. It will mean your heart is so perfect and your prospects are so divinely separated that you say to the world, “Goodbye.”

The second chapter of Hebrews describes the mighty, glorified position for the children of God. God wants me to announce it to every heart, like a great trumpet call. The plan is to bring you to glory as a child clothed with the power of the gifts, graces, ministries, and operations. You are to be clothed with the majesty of heaven. This is like heaven to me. My very body is filled with thoughts of heaven.

Seeing that these things are so, what kind of people should we be (2 Peter 3:11)? We should be keeping our eyes upon Him so that we may be ready for the Rapture. Oh, brothers and sisters, what immense pleasure God has for us! There is no limit to the sobermindedness God is bringing us to so that we may be able to understand all that God has planned for us. Oh, that we may look not on the things that are, but with eyes of purity see only the invisible Son. Having our whole bodies illuminated by the power of the Holy Spirit, we grow in grace, in faith, and in Christlikeness until there is no difference between us and Him.

Are you prepared to go all the way? Are you willing for your
heart to have only one attraction? Are you willing to have only one Love? Are you willing for Him to become your perfect Bridegroom?

The more bridelike we are, the more we love to hear the Bridegroom‘s voice; the less bridelike we are, the less we long for His Word. If you cannot rest without it, if it becomes your food day and night, if you eat and drink of it, His life will be in you, and when He appears, you will go with Him. Help us, Jesus!

How many of you are prepared to reveal yourselves before the King? Are you prepared to yield to His call, yield to His will, yield to His desires? How many are going to say, “At all costs I will go through!” Who says so? Who means it? Are you determined? Is your soul on the wing? Make a full consecration to God right now. It is between you and God. You are going now to enter the presence of God.

Thought for today: Come clean with everything in the presence of God!

June 19

If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. — Revelation 3:20

Scripture reading: Colossians 1:9–23

Look at the tremendous power of God behind our inheritance. First, we are adopted; then we receive an inheritance; then we are made coheirs with Jesus. God touches our souls, making our whole bodies cry out for the living God.

Do you want God? Do you want fellowship in the Spirit? Do
you want to walk with Him? Do you desire communion with Him? Everything else is no good. You want the association with God, and God says, “I will come in to [you] and dine with [you], and [you] with Me.” Hallelujah! We can attain spiritual maturity, fullness of Christ, a place where God becomes the perfect Father and the Holy Spirit has a rightful place now as never before.

The Holy Spirit breathes through us, enabling us to say, “You are my Father.” Because you have been adopted, “God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!’” (Galatians 4:6). May God the Holy Spirit grant to us that richness of His pleasure, that unfolding of His will, that consciousness of His smile upon us. There is “no condemnation” (Romans 8:1). We find that “the law of the Spirit of life” makes us “free from the law of sin and death” (v. 2). Glory!

If we see the truth as clearly as God intends for us to see it, we will all be made so much richer, looking forward to the Blessed One who is coming again. Here we are, face-to-face with the facts. God has shown us different aspects of the Spirit. He has shown us the pavilion of splendor. He has revealed to us the power of the relationship of sonship. He has shown us that those who are God‘s children bear His image. They actively claim the rights of their adoption. They speak, and it is done. They bind the things that are loose, and loose the things that are bound (Matthew 16:19). And the perfection of sonship is so evident that more and more people are becoming children of God.

Do you believe it? Let us see you act it. Beloved, God the Holy Spirit has a perfect plan to make us a movement. There is a difference between a movement and a monument. A movement is something that is always active. A monument is something that is erected on a corner and neither speaks nor moves, but there is a tremendous lot of humbug and nonsense to get it in place. It is silent and does nothing. A movement is where God comes into the very being of a person, making him active for God. He is God‘s property, God‘s mouthpiece, God‘s eyes, and God‘s hands. God will “sanctify you completely” (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

The sanctification of the eyes, the hands, the mouth, the ears—to be so controlled by the Spirit who lives within us—is a wonderful place for God to bring us to. “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be” (1 John 3:1–2). What a great thought: to be heirs, “joint heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17); to receive revelations and kindnesses from God; to have God dwell within man. The believer is filled, moved, and intensified until he takes wing. It would not take a trumpet to rouse him, for he is already on the wing, and he will land very soon. He would hear God‘s voice no matter how much noise surrounded him.

Everything that is going to help you, you have to make yours. He has stored it up already. You don‘t need a stepladder to get to it. It is ready to be handed to you when you become joined with Him. Beloved, it is impossible in our finite condition to estimate the lovingkindness or the measureless mind of God. When we come into like-mindedness with the Word, instead of looking at the Word, we begin to see what God has for us in the Word. Our prayer will be,

Me with a quenchless thirst inspire,
A longing, infinite desire
Fill my craving heart.
Less than Thyself You do not give,
Thy might within me now to live.
Come, all Thou hast.

God, please come and make it impossible for me to ever be satisfied but to always have an unquenchable desire for You, the living God. Then I will not be overtaken. Then I will be ready. Then I will have shining eyes, filled with delight as they look at the Master.

Thought for today: Will you shiver like someone hesitating on the edge of a pool? Or will you take a plunge into omnipotence and find the waters are not as cold as people told you?

June 18

For with the heart one believes unto righteousness.
—Romans 10:10

Scripture reading: Psalm 57

May God show us that the only thing that is ever going to
help us is the heart. It is the heart where we believe in
faith. It is the heart that is inhabited by the Spirit. It is
the heart that is moved by God. The mind is always secondary.

The heart conceives, the mind reflects, and the mouth is operated. But you must not try to reverse the order. Some people are all tongue, neither head nor heart. But when He comes, there is perfect order. It is as right as rain. Look how it comes! The heart believes and then like a ventilator, it flows through and quickens the mind. Then the tongue speaks of the glory of the Lord.

The Scriptures are perfect, the sacrifice is perfect, the revelation is perfect. Everything is so divinely adjusted by God Almighty that every person who comes into infinite revelation touched by God sees that the whole canon of Scripture is perfect from the beginning to the end. Not a single thing in the Scriptures clashes with or contradicts the Spirit and makes trouble.

When the power of God surges through the whole life, the
Word becomes the personality of the subject. We become the subjects of the Spirit of the living God, and we are moved by the power of God until “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) within this flow of God‘s integrity. What a wonderful adjustment for weaknesses! God is able to shake us thoroughly, to send a wind and blow the chaff away until it will never be seen anymore. God is able to refine us in a way that everyone would desire to proclaim His praises:

It is better to shout than to doubt,
It is better to rise than to fail,
It is better to let the glory out,
Than to have no glory at all.

I am the last man to say anything about fasting, praying, or
anything that has been a source of blessing to others. But I have learned by personal experience that I can get more out of one moment‘s faith than I can get out of a month‘s yelling. I can get more by believing God in a moment than I can get by screaming for a month. Also, I am positive that blessing comes out of fasting when the fasting is done in the right way. But I find so many people who make up their minds to fast, and they finish with a thick head, troubled bones, and sleepy conditions. I am satisfied that that is no way to fast. A way to fast is described in many Scriptures.

Praying and fasting go together. The Spirit leads you to pray. The Spirit holds on to you until you forget even the hour or the day, and you are so caught up by the power of the Spirit that you want nothing, not even food or drink. Then God gets His plan through because He has you through and through. So the Lord of Hosts, I trust, will “surround [us] with songs of deliverance” (Psalms 32:7) and give us inward revelations until our whole beings will be uplifted.

Who dares to believe God? Who dares to claim his rights? What are your rights? “Now we are children of God” (1 John 3:2). This is a position of absolute rest, a position of faith. It is a place of perfect trust and perfect habitation where there are no disturbances. You experience peace like a river. Look at the face of God. Hallelujah! The very Word that comes to judge comes to help.

The law came as a judgment, but when the Spirit comes and breathes through the law, He comes to lift us higher and higher. Hallelujah! We must go a little further. God comes to us and says, “I will make it all right if you dare believe.”

All the great things of God come to us as we realize our sinfulness before Him. Instead of hiding as Adam and Eve did when they realized they were naked (Genesis 3:7–10), we should come to God to be clothed. We cannot associate with the evil of this world. If you can be attracted by anything earthly, you have missed the greatest association that God has for you. If your property, your money, your friends, or any human thing can attract you from God, you are not His child in this respect. Come into line with God‘s Word. Let us encounter the Word; let us face God and see if this thing re
ally is so.

Thought for today: Many people have lost out because their minds prevent them from letting God reach their hearts.

June 17

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! — 1 John 3:1

Scripture reading: John 1:1–13

God has done something marvelous for the believer. He has taken him out of the world. It is a remarkable word that Jesus said: “I do not pray that You should take them out of the world…They are not of the world” (John 17:15–16). It is a great truth for us to understand. In this glorious position of God‘s own, we come to a place where we know with confidence, we say it without fear of contradiction from our own hearts or even outside voices, “Beloved, now we are children of God” (1 John 3:2).

I want us to examine ourselves in the light of the Word. God
has definitely purposed that we should inherit all of the Scriptures, but we must meet the requirements necessary to claim them. Remember this, there are any number of things you may quote without possessing the essential reality of them. I want us to have something more than the literal word. Words are of no importance unless the believer has the assurance of the abiding of those words. You can quote the words of Scripture without being in the place of victory.

Any person who has come to the place of this word, “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4), is mightier than all the powers of darkness, mightier than the power of disease, mightier than his own self. There is something reigning supremely great in him more than in the world when he is in that place. But we must come to the place of knowledge. It is not sufficient for you to quote the Word of God. You never come to a place of righteousness and truth until you are in possession of the promises contained in the Word.

Beloved, God wants us to be something more than ordinary
people. Remember this: if you are ordinary, you have not reached the ideal principles of God. The only thing that God has for a man is to be extraordinary. God has no room for an ordinary man. There are millions of ordinary people in the world. But when God takes hold of a man, He makes him extraordinary in personality, power, thought, and activity.

“Beloved, now we are children of God” (1 John 3:2). It is a divine plan fashioned by His divine will. God has not given anything that He does not mean for us to attain. God means for us to possess all these things. “Beloved, now we are children of God.” God has such purposes to perform in us that He has a great desire to utter these words in our hearts so that we may rise, that we may claim, that we may be ambitious, that we may be covetous for these purposes, that there may be something in us that nothing can satisfy unless we not only tow the line but also live in the line and claim the whole thing as ours.

You will never reach ideal purposes in any way unless you become the living epistle of the Word by the power of the Holy Spirit. You become the living force of the revelation of God, the incarnation of the personality of His presence in the human soul. Then you know that you are His children. Look at Christ. He is the most beautiful of all. He is utterly glorious, passionate for God, filled with all the fullness of God. He came to earth in the glory of the majesty of His Father, and He stood in the earth in human form.

I like to think about the manifestation of the power of God.
God came and resided in flesh, in weakness, under the law—for you. He came in human form, worshiped in it, lived in it, and moved in it. Some even recognized Him as the Son of God.

Beloved, there is the principle. The remarkable position of
every soul is to be so inhabited by Jesus as to become a living personality of God‘s ideal Son. It is very remarkable and beautiful. God has these divine plans for us. So many people believe that because they are in the flesh, they are always to be in the place of weakness. Friends, your weaknesses have to be swallowed up with the ideal of Him who never failed.

Every time He was tried, He came out victorious. He “was in
all points tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). The purpose for His temptations was so that He might be able to help all who are tempted and tried and oppressed in any way. He was the great embodiment of God to human life. He came to expose our weaknesses so that we might behold His mightiness. Through Him, we can be strong in the Lord. Praise the Lord!

Thought for today: It is always all right when He is Almighty.