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"When we are at our wits’ end for an answer, then the Holy Spirit can give us an answer. But how can He give us an answer when we are still well supplied with all sorts of answers of our own?"
Karl Barth
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"I want to repent of my sins and be baptized and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” …
… Is that your response to the Word? Is it clear to you that you’re supposed to repent, be baptized, and receive the Holy Spirit? If so, have you done it? If not, what keeps you from doing it today?
Why do we sometimes feel that we need to debate this endlessly, running through every possible hypothetical situation and answering every theological question first? When will we simply respond to the truth we have heard and then work through our questions from there?"Francis Chan, in Forgotten God
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"… So I was against all of it. I was disturbed by any claim of prophetic speech. Looking back, I believe my concerns were valid, but my actions were not. The biblical response would have been to “test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil” (1 Thess. 5:21-22 NIV). Rather than rejecting the possibility of God supernaturally speaking through people, I should have tested what I was hearing in the context of faithful community."
Francis Chan, in Forgotten God.
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"The Lord challenges us to suffer persecutions and to confess him. He wants those who belong to him to be brave and fearless. He himself shows how weakness of the flesh is overcome by courage of the Spirit. This is the testimony of the apostles and in particular of the representative, administering Spirit. A Christian is fearless."
Tertullian
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"We may as well face it: the whole level of spirituality among us is low. We have measured ourselves by ourselves until the incentive to seek higher plateaus in the things of the Spirit is all but gone… {We} have imitated the world, sought popular favor, manufactured delights to substitute for the joy of the Lord and produce a cheap and synthetic power to substitute for the power of the Holy Ghost."
A. W. Tozer
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Spirit, I want something more…
Perhaps the reason we feel such great sorrow from rejection is so that we may be able to understand how much the Holy Spirit grieves when we ignore Him.
In fact, perhaps the reason for why we feel such strong emotions at all are so we can understand just how personal the Spirit can be.
Let me quote Benny Hinn’s Good Morning, Holy Spirit to share some very solid wisdom— a little insight so we can understand the basics of this Holy Ghost:
“God the Father is the one who gives the command…
…it is God the Son who performs the commands of the Father. When God the Father said, “Let there be light,” God the Son came and performed it. Then, God the Holy Spirit brought the light…… The Holy Spirit is the power of God. He is the power of the Father and of the Son. He is the one who brings into action the performance of the Son. Yet He is a person. He has emotions which are expressed in a way unique among the Trinity.
I’ve been asked, “Benny, aren’t you forgetting the importance of Christ in all of this?” Never! How could I forget the One who loved and died for me? But some people are so focused on the Son that they forget the Father—the one who loved them and sent His Son. I cannot forget the Father nor the Son. But I cannot be in touch with the Father and the Son without the Holy Spirit (see Eph. 2:18).”
There, you see? The Spirit wants to have communion with us; He longs to be with us at all times, to guide us toward a life that glorifies our King!
When we choose to live our lives according to our own plans, we ignore Him; when we ignore the Spirit, we grieve Him. I am so guilty of this terrible, terrible sin… and I know that most of us are as well: we unknowingly grieve and pain the Holy Spirit every. Single. Day.Maybe it’s even because we do not understand the Holy Spirit. Maybe we find it bothersome to try and understand an unseen entity— after all, life has enough of its own tangible mysteries, right? …But don’t we want something to change in our lives by now? Shouldn’t our Christian lives be something else besides the usual “fellowship time”, the zoning-out during sermons, the daily routine?
I don’t want it anymore. I CRAVE GENUINE FAITH. I CRAVE A REAL AND GROWING RELATIONSHIP WITH CHRIST, MY SAVIOR. How else to have that relationship but to ask the Spirit to help me?I get so fired up when I read the book of Acts because I think to myself, “shouldn’t our church today look like this?” The gospels, Acts; they’re not just some make-believe storybook. The Spirit was literally leading these apostles into the thick of the battle, and they were unafraid— in fact, they were filled with joy at the event of persecution: they KNEW that the power of God was within them and all around them at all times.
Please, let’s not mistake our Christian lives to be in some kind of safe zone… Brothers, sisters: we have been asleep for far too long. Wake up and open your eyes to an entire WORLD of miracles, signs, and wonders—a world waiting for us when we become intimate with the Spirit.
