Monday, August 13, 2018

Shalom,

Today's "My Utmost For His Highest" by Oswald Chambers is one that is VITAL for our continued spiritual growth, so that we can be useful to HIM in this world! 


Quench Not The Spirit

Quench not the Spirit. — 1 Thessalonians 5:19

The voice of the Spirit is as gentle as a zephyr, so gentle that unless you are living in perfect communion with God, you never hear it. The checks of the Spirit come in the most extraordinarily gentle ways, and if you are not sensitive enough to detect His voice you will quench it, and your personal spiritual life will be impaired. His checks always come as a still small voice, so small that no one but the saint notices them.

Beware if in personal testimony you have to hark back and say — “Once, so many years ago, I was saved.” If you are walking in the light, there is no harking back, the past is transfused into the present wonder of communion with God. If you get out of the light you become a sentimental Christian and live on memories, your testimony has a hard, metallic note. Beware of trying to patch up a present refusal to walk in the light by recalling past experiences when you did walk in the light. Whenever the Spirit checks, call a halt and get the thing right, or you will go on grieving Him without knowing it.

Suppose God has brought you up to a crisis and you nearly go through but not quite, He will engineer the crisis again, but it will not be so keen as it was before. There will be less discernment of God and more humiliation at not having obeyed; and if you go on grieving the Spirit, there will come a time when that crisis cannot be repeated, you have grieved Him away. But if you go through the crisis, there will be the psalm of praise to God. Never sympathize with the thing that is stabbing God all the time. God has to hurt the thing that must go.

Notice that I struck through the word 'perfect' in the first paragraph. I believe that a better word for the day in which we live would be 'continual'! None of us are perfect, so our communion with Him will never be 'perfect' this side of Heaven! But, we can practice continual communion with Him by keeping ourselves aware of His presence within us! Remember, He will NEVER leave us or forsake us! That means that He is ALWAYS, at ALL times, living IN us! When we are aware of HIM, and when we are not! The problem is that if we do not stay in a state of awareness, we will not have the confidence that He is there and ever ready to be exactly what we need at any given time! Take whatever time is needful for YOU to stay continually aware of HIM in YOU and you will never lack the confidence that HE is WHO HE says that HE is, and YOU are who HE says that YOU are, too! AMEN! Here is Hillsong with the song by that name! Just for you! 



Shalom in Him!