YIELD HERE!

Ephesians 5:17

Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.

What is Paul referring to when he mentions the will of God? Here in Ephesians, he goes on in the next verse to tell us what God’s will is for all believers.

Ephesians 5:18-20

And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The will of God for New Testament believers is that they be continually filled with the Holy Ghost through speaking divinely inspired utterances in praise and worship to God. In other words, His plan involves what we do with our tongue.

The School of the Spirit

God has provided a means for us as New Testament believers to be continually refreshed in the Spirit, even in times of trial--through yielding our tongue to the Spirit and speaking supernaturally under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.

As we practice being a doer of the Word, according to these verses, the Spirit will come and bless our actions of faith with what we need for whatever we may be going through in life.

But to enter into this, God has put some responsibility on us—especially on our tongue—that too often believers have not properly recognized. Our tongue must be brought under the influence of the Holy Spirit within us.

If believers will yield to the Spirit within them, He will school their tongue until it is accustomed to this new lifestyle of speaking praises to God by inspiration of the Holy Ghost. This verse calls upon us to practice the will of God for our lives in this area until it becomes a habit with us.

Who’s Waiting on Who?

To properly understand what Paul is referring to when he instructs us to continue speaking in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, we must understand that these utterances are given by inspiration of the Spirit in a known tongue through prophecy. They didn’t have hymnals back in that day because they didn’t have the printing press. These are songs given by the inspiration of the Spirit, which come up out of your spirit in a moment of time, and you speak them out.

To further understand this, we must recognize that first of all, this is to be a part of our private prayer life; an element of true New Testament praise and worship in our prayer time that enables our spirits to unite with the Holy Spirit and have greater fellowship with God. As I said, this is God's plan for every believer.

Second, we must also understand that we are being told in these verses in Ephesians that it is not necessary for us to wait on the Holy Ghost to come on us and initiate this. These verses are instructing us that we are to initiate this inspired utterance in praise and worship to God--by stirring it up within our own spirit according to our faith (II Timothy 1:6).

Not everything that the Holy Spirit does in our lives is “as the Spirit wills.” We don’t have to wait on the Holy Ghost to initiate this flow of speaking praise to God by utterances under inspiration of the Spirit.

When Paul said in I Corinthians 12:1 that we are not to be ignorant of things that pertain to the Holy Ghost, part of what that means is we need to understand--spiritual things must be stirred for them to come into manifestation.

Because this is the will of God for us as believers, we should train our tongue in the discipline of continually speaking to God in this supernatural way. These things are in us, but we must draw them out by acting in faith on these verses.

According to Ephesians 5:18-20, every believer has the right to manifest the simple gift of prophecy in their private prayer life for their own spiritual edification. In this flow of the Spirit, it’s not a matter of the Holy Ghost being willing, it’s a matter of you and I yielding.

The public operation of this gift is a diversity and operates as the Spirit wills. Ephesians 5:18-20, which is for your private prayer life, is a diversity from I Corinthians 12:10-11 and Romans 12:6, which are operations of the Spirit for public ministry. That’s obvious.

He’s Holding Up a Yield Sign!

This flow of speaking in divine utterances in praise and worship to God under the anointing of the Spirit is an unexplored area that the Holy Ghost is waiting for us to respond to, so He can take us on into the deeper things of the Spirit. Or, we could say the Holy Ghost is waiting for us to yield to this in order to take us on into the other things the Spirit does.

Speaking these divinely inspired utterances is the door into the supernatural--an entrance ramp, so to speak, into the flow of God’s power. In every test or hardship of your life, the Spirit is standing beside Ephesians 5:18-20 holding up a sign that says, “Yield Here!” In other words, this is the place for you to exercise your faith as a means of entering into the power of God that will bust you out of that situation and enable you to exit the trial.

Acts 16:22-26

Paul and Silas were thrown into jail with their backs bleeding and their feet fast in stocks. When they finished praying and wiped the blood and sweat from their eyes, they looked up and right there on that jailhouse wall was a sign. It read “Ephesians 5:18-20—Yield Here!”

As they yielded and got into the flow of the Spirit, singing praises to God under inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they tapped into a flow of the power of God that busted that ol’ jail wide open and got them out of there!

The good news for you and I today is the Spirit is still standing by these verses with that same yield sign--showing us where to get into the yoke-busting power of God for whatever OUR greatest need is! In the yielding is the filling, and in the filling is the fullness of the flow of the Spirit along with everything He does.

By Every Verse Is a Yield Sign

A yield sign by a busy highway points you to where to get into the flow of traffic, doesn’t it? Ephesians 5:18 is a sign by the road of your life saying, “Yield here.” John 7:37-38 is a yield sign by the road of your life saying, “Yield here.”

John 7:37-38

In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, AND DRINK. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

By every hardship or trial in life there is a Bible verse with a yield sign by it. There is a flashing arrow pointing to a specific truth in the Word saying, “Yield here.” In other words, here is how you get into the flow of God in this situation and exit that hardship.

The Word is both an entrance ramp and an exit ramp for us. It’s our entrance into the flow of the power of God, but it’s our exit from the hardship we have been in.

In every circumstance of life, God's got you covered. He already has a verse and a yield sign for you where you can yield to the power that busts the trial. Whether you yield or not determines if you ever get out of the trial.

The blessing of His manifested power to deliver us in our time of need has already been freely given to us by God. He is not the one determining the degree His power manifests in our lives. We determine the degree of power manifested by how accustomed we are to the lifestyle that receives it into manifestation.

This Flow is the Entrance into Other Flows

Someone once asked Smith Wigglesworth how there got to be such a flow of God’s power in his life. He said, “I kept yielding and yielding and yielding.” Wigglesworth was telling us that he practiced using his faith to draw up this flow of speaking praise and worship to God in divinely inspired utterances.

The reason entering into this flow requires faith is because you have to trust the Holy Spirit within you to give you the next thing you’re going to say. We know this is true regarding speaking with other tongues--but drawing up this flow in a known tongue will cause us to enter into an even higher flow of the Spirit.

However, these utterances in a known tongue are only one flow of the Spirit. As we yield to this flow, we will learn to trust the Holy Ghost in other flows of the Spirit for power, revelation, refreshing, etc. But this flow of inspired utterances is the doorway into all the other flows of the Spirit that we need. That’s what Smith Wigglesworth was talking about. These rivers are always flowing, we just have to get into them. And God is showing us the doorway, the entrance ramp, so to speak, by which we can do just that.

Because this is the will of God for us as believers, we should train our tongue in the discipline of continually speaking to God in divinely inspired praise and worship.

What will the result be?

Exactly the same thing we see happened for people in the Bible who practiced it. Yoke-destroying power will be manifested that meets our every need.