Blogging and discussions herein recently about emotions and stifling the Spirit has got me thinking. What are the things that quench the Spirit?
If God warns us against this practice, then we should know more about it so we don't do it- at least by accident. And if he has to warn us about it, then it must be something that we can easily fall into.
I would think the Pharisees were good (bad?) at this. Jesus often agonized over their lack of understanding God and how they could be so "religious" and yet miss God's Spirit over and over again.
So help me out. What things do we do/not do that quench the Spirit?
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- Seeker of The Light
- God has called me to equip and empower His people for their ministries. "But I would bring everything to the test of the Word and the Spirit. Not the Word only, but the Word and the Spirit. 'God is spirit,' said our Lord, 'and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth.' While it is never possible to have the Spirit without at least some measure of truth, it is, unfortunately, possible to have a shell of truth without the Spirit. Our hope is that we may have both the Spirit and the truth in fuller measure." - A. W. Tozer
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7 comments:
When we hold fast to the letter of the law (what we already hold to know as true, right, LOGICAL, etc) higher than the Spirit, we end up casting aside things that could possibly be from God. (Gifts of tongues, healings, supernatural occurances, etc--we get freaked out, so we dismiss them automatically, instead of testing them to see whether they were truly of the Spirit of God or not)
For me, the thing I get more freaked out over is emotions, because they are so hard to control....hmmm....maybe that's the other thing about squashing the Spirit...when we try to control Him....yup. There's another one.
Often when we are testifying we get teary and work hard to hold back to tears.
But if that is Holy Spirit witnessing in us then maybe we should just let the tears flow. It's certainly more authentic and probably more impacting as well.
When people are no longer hurt by the things that hurt the heart of God.
i think we quench the spirit of God when we don't practice our spiritual disciplines.
We can also do little mini quenches all the time, that we may even brush off as nothing. . . like not calling someone who's come to your mind, putting it off and then never doing it. . not apologizing right away when you know you've done wrong. . just letting the wrongness hang there, unrighted, not listening to God, maybe even putting words in God's mouth,talking and talking and not letting the spirit of God get a word in, watching hours of tv or movies instead of spending some time with him. Placing value on stuff with no value. . which shifts our focus away from the Spirit, breaking promises, wasting the time he's given, loving our loved ones too much and giving God short shrift, scraps. . loving all the things he gives us too much, food, things. When i think of the ways in which i can quench his Spirit i'm so ashamed of myself.
holding too tightly to tradition and protecting THEM at the expense of allowing God to move a and do a new thing among the people.
[ok, i'm not saying to chuck traditions out the window, by any meanss -- so no lynching! I'm just think that we have to be really really careful in what we work so hard to protect]
Kathryn, I like how you said "just letting the wrongness stay there, unrighted". On the button. Right there. Good word
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