Then there was a _Jordan Baptism of Power_ in our Lord's life. This stood
at the beginning of His leadership, His life-work, His service among men.
As He came up out of the Jordan waters He stood waiting in prayer. He was
expecting something. His whole being was absorbed in the expectancy of
what had been promised.[55] And that expectancy was not disappointed. None
that wait on God shall be put to confusion by any disappointment.[56] The
blue above was rift through, the Holy Spirit as a gentle dove came, and
remained upon Him, and the Father's voice of pleased approval spoke to His
grateful, obedient heart. From that time the whole control of His life was
absolutely in the hands of the Holy Spirit.

This does not mean an inert passivity on Jesus' part; it meant a strong,
intelligent yielding to the Holy Spirit. It does not mean that His natural
faculties of mind and will and heart were held down, not to be used. It
means that they were actively, studiously used in discerning the Holy
Spirit's leading, and in doing as He directed. And it means that so there
came a fulness of life, an increasing life, into His faculties, mind and
will and heart. Our Lord Jesus used all His powers in yielding to the
inspiration and direction and control of the Holy Spirit, keeping ever
open to His suggestion, and making that suggestion the law of His own
action.

And the Spirit of Omnipotence, working with the gentleness of a dove,
breathed upon those yielded powers, and breathed through them, even as had
been planned with the first breathing of this sort, in Eden. So from the
Wilderness clear up to the last Olivet command to the disciples,
everything was done at the bidding, the direction of this Spirit. And so
the almighty power was breathed into every word and action and bit of
suffering. The one key-note of the Master's action was obedience; the
result was the flooding of the Spirit's omnipotence through His obedient