How the Spirit Filled My Life by Bertha Smith

How the Spirit Filled My Life by Bertha Smith

Introduction

            I read the book entitled “How the Spirit Filled My Life” by Bertha Smith. This book talks about the life of the author, Bertha Smith. As I read the life of Missionary Bertha Smith, I have been encouraged and blessed by her life, whether what she did in the Mission Field or in her life herself. Bertha Smith grew up in a family where obedience and respect for their parents, older sisters, and brothers were consistently instilled in them.

            Bertha Smith is also a writer who wrote 3 books entitled Go Home and Tell, Our Lost World, and the book that I read, How the Spirit Filled My Life.

This book was divided into 4 parts: 1^st part was her diary, the next part was about her new assignment, and 3^rd was the messages that the Lord has used in her life, and the last was how she continued in obedience.

Body

Part One

Her Diary

Chapter 1, entitled “A filling of new light,” talks about how Bertha Smith becomes truly saved. She grew up in a Christian Home, specifically a Baptist home, but she became truly saved when she was 14 years old. The Lord has been convicting her about her salvation many times, but she was so afraid to go to the altar because she was thinking that people would think she was just going there for fun.  When she was truly saved, she started to have a burden for her friends and family. Her one younger brother and sister were old enough to be saved, that’s why she prayed at the trunk in her walk-in closet and pleaded with God for her family and friends, and even neighbors. At the very start, she already has a heart for the mission. But her joy wore off because she knew that she was not filled with the holy spirit like the rest of her family, whom she prayed for on that glorious Sunday when she accepted the Lord as her savior. She knew the Lord, and she also knew that she belonged to Him, but she longed for something more of the Lord whom she knew. When the holy spirit began to fill her life, worldly pleasures lost their flavor. She no longer wants to talk like the world or look like worldly people. She signed up for Dr. Knapp’s Bible School. She wanted everybody to be saved; that’s why prayer became communion with God. She always prayed for 20 unsaved young people by name daily, and by the grace of God, 18 of them got saved in that same summer. Chapter 2, entitled “Failure, then Fullness,” talks about how she was grieved over every accidental sin she made. During her 4 years in college, though she was active in all forms of Christian Organizations on campus, she led only one classmate to the Lord. She became a teacher in public school, and while teaching in public school, she did not win them her students. This was the biggest failure she had ever admitted to. After all those failures, she again studied for 2 years at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and after studying for 2 years, she went to China, but still she did not discover how to live victoriously all the time over her old self. During her second summer in China, the speaker of the North China Conference was Dr. R.A Torrey. He speaks twice daily on the spirit-filled life, through which she was encouraged to come back to the filling of former years. In her third summer, Ms. Ruth Paxson talks about the old nature, its pride, loves, and desires for self-expression. Dr. Trumbull’s message was “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” in which she realized that the truth that Christ was living inside of us than just being beside us. After this, a deep desire was created in their hearts for the Chinese Christians to know that Christ was living in them. Because of hunger and a definite burden, they start to pray for revival in the churches, in their private devotions, missionary prayer meetings, and church meetings. At first, their prayers were centered on the Chinese Christians and their danger of being persecuted by the communists. Within a few short years, the membership of the churches multiplied ten times, and most of the churches had a waiting list of young people waiting their turn to get into the seminary to be trained for full-time Christian work. The revival continued for ten years, until the Japanese army invaded North China.

Part Two

Chapter 3, entitled “Change of Fields,” in which Bertha Smith became an old woman, she was in her seventies already, and she had to give up work in China. She was comforted by hearing the word of God that He wanted Bertha to come home and help bring revival to Southern Baptist Churches, in order that the whole world might know of the Savior. For the first two years after retirement, she served on programs and spoke somewhere every Sunday. In 1962, the Woman’s Missionary Union of the Southern Baptist Convention held its first prayer retreat. Churches then began to invite Bertha to speak for a week at a time; she called her week-long meetings “Christian Life Conferences”. The week begins on Sunday morning and goes through Friday evening, with 3 services on Sunday, one of which is training union hour, and 2 daily services each weekday. When the Southern Baptist Convention prepared for the crusade of the Americas, those setting up the crusade started inviting her to lead associations of Pastors in prayer retreats several weeks in advance, in preparation for their parts in the crusade. The first few messages to each group for the last ten years have been the same: “Cause my people to know their sins” from Isaiah 58:1. Her purpose in her message was to help get the hearers filled with the Holy Spirit as equipment for their service. When the crusade of America was being set up, she helped prepare the Pastors in Phoenix, Arizona. 56 pastors, with some from the state of Baptist office, went out to a motel called Wrangler’s Roost to have a prayer meeting. Thursday morning, they started with a message on “The Power of Prayer” followed by “Sin hindering prayer”. In the afternoon, they had more messages on the tragedy of sin in a Christian. The crusade proved to be beyond anything that the planning committee could have ever hoped. It was reported that more than two thousand lost souls, including some Mormons, were saved, and a thousand cold Christians brought back into fellowship with God, and some others were built up in their faith. Some pastors in New Orleans at the Southern Baptist Convention said, “The victory for that crusade was won at Wrangler’s Roost in that prayer retreat.

Part Three

            In Chapter 4 entitled “Self-Dedicated Moses”. She talks about Moses, she said that Moses is a classic example of one dedicating their old self to the Lord to do a job for him. He gave up his old self for God’s call. Chapter 5 is entitled “Gehazi: The high cost of low motives”. She talks about Gehazi’s fall. Gehazi’s fall started with the lust of the eyes he saw all the wealth, and he decided that he was going to have some of it. He sinned first with his eyes, then with his heart, then with his mind and will. After Gehazi’s fall, he stepped down from the highest position of any man in all of Israel. Chapter 6 is entitled “Christ Enthroned”. She talks about God’s provision for holy living in Christ Enthroned. She said that when we permit the old self to rise and express itself, or even want to, we grieve the One who wants to live his holiness out in us and through us. Chapter 7 is entitled “How to let the Holy Spirit fill”. She said that the first essential is to deal with sins committed since we were saved. Only God can put us to death and leave us alive at the same time. God is too holy to associate with anything that comes from the devil. Chapter 8 is entitled “Sin forgiven up to date”. She told a story about a woman named Miss Kiang who told Bertha that she has someone in their church whom she does not love because that person offended her publicly, and from that day, she never had anything to say to her because of that; she doesn’t want to pray. She asked for help from Bertha, and Bertha told her that she must get right with God first, and it’s through confessing her sins to God. Chapter 9 is entitled “Moses' Prayer”. She often used the prayer of Moses in her prayer retreat to plead with God to turn away his fierce wrath. Moses’ prayer accomplished several things, such as God saved their lives, God forgave their terrible sin, God gave peace and dwelt among them, and the glory of the Lord reflected in his countenance.

Part Four

            In Chapter 10 entitled “Beware Of Special Experiences Calling Attention To Self”. This chapter talks about ‘speaking in tongues’. There are a lot who asked Bertha if she ever tried to speak in tongues, but she did not. They told her to try, but Bertha was convinced from the testimony of many that sometimes the devil enables people to speak in tongues to deceive them and get their eyes on gifts and experiences instead of keeping their eyes on the Lord. Through this experience, she realized that the devil also counterfeits joy; that’s why she said that it is better to be informed on the wiles of the devil as well as looking out for his onslaughts. She also shared that one of the devil’s chief strategies for Christian workers is to make them proud of their service. If the Lord has been able to use the person, all the glory should go to him. Chapter 11 is entitled “Resist the Devil”. She said that any unconfessed, unforsaken sin, or doubtful habit is a place for the devil to take hold, that’s why we must keep clean and holy all the time. To resist the devil, according to Bertha, we must store our minds with promises of God and quote them in the face of every temptation, and continually repeat them audibly. We can also conquer it through prayer. Chapter 12 is entitled “Instant Obedience”. According to Bertha in this chapter, the first step to be filled with the Holy Spirit is to obey the Lord. She shared about her sin she had committed but confessed and repented to God. Through obedience of confessing, she has been forgiven. Chapter 13 is entitled “More Suggestions for Walking in the Spirit”. There are 3 essentials in being spirit-filled such as testimony must be given or shared, you, by nature, are no better than when you were saved, and consider our new relationship to God. This chapter also talks about who we are to God; we are His children and also His bride.

Conclusion

            Bertha Smith is a woman of faith who has been a blessing to many people. This book focuses on the one thing that hinders us from being filled with the Holy Spirit of God: sin! She helped a lot of people through conferences and retreats. We can see in this book the truthfulness of Bertha for sharing her testimony, whether good or bad. Through her testimony and dedication in the service of the Lord, many were converted and helped to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Recommendation

            I recommend this book to all women and men who want to be part of God’s laborers in the Lord’s harvest. I testify that this book will be a blessing to all of you as it is to me.