“How Can We Quench the Spirit?” 1 ,Thessalonians 5:19
“Quench not the Spirit.” At the end of Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, he gave some tidbits of advice to help them in their spiritual journey. Among these tidbits is the text printed above. Another translation of it is, “Do not put out the Spirit’s fire.” Notice that the S is capitalized, which means that Paul was writing about the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who sets us on fire for the Lord, and who enables us to live the Christian life and to witness to people about Jesus. In Acts 2, on the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit appeared as “tongues of fire” as He empowered them to witness. If we aren’t careful we can quench this fire in our lives and in our witness. How can we quench the Spirit and how can we avoid it? The ways that we can quench the Spirit are really quite simple. We can quench the Spirit without realizing it. The first way that we can quench the Spirit is to ignore our Bibles and fail to pray on a daily basis. Bible reading and prayer are two of the most important disciplines in our lives. Both prayer and Bible reading keep us close to the Lord, and make us aware of what He wants to do in our lives. We are told that the main problem in marriages is that husbands and wives do not communicate. The same is true in our relationship with Christ. We need to stay in communication with Him. Prayer and Bible reading are the main ways that we communicate with Him. We can quench the fire of the Spirit by ignoring the Bible that He inspired and by forgetting that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us and encourages us to pray. You need to maintain these disciplines in your life on a daily basis if you do not want to quench the Spirit. The second way that we quench the Spirit is by having bad, sour attitudes. Sourness in our attitudes affects us as well as others. This sourness comes from spiritual problems that we have within ourselves. We can find ourselves in a bad frame of mind without our having previously been aware of it. This is a work of the devil. He wants us to have bad attitudes so that we will be miserable, but beyond this, he wants us to have bad attitudes that will turn other people off as well. He wants us to have bad attitudes at home, at work, at play, and at church. Let’s consider the latter as an example. When we take our bad attitudes to church with us, we take the joy out of our worship experience. It is also true that bad attitudes are contagious. There is nothing that the devil likes better than to get God’s people aggravated with each other and focused on themselves rather than on God’s will. We need to tell ourselves that we need to stay close to the Lord and keep our attitudes in check. Again, prayer and Bible study can help us in this and keep us from quenching the Spirit with our attitudes. The third way that we can quench the Spirit is by ignoring the Leadership of the Spirit in our lives. We call it doing God’s will. God has a purpose, or purposes, for our lives in every aspect of our lives. We need to be aware of the Spirit’s leading in our parenting at home, in our relationships with our spouses and in our relationships at work. If we follow the Spirit’s leading in this way, we will be the “lights” that Jesus called us to be in Matthew 5:14: “You are the light of the world.” Our light will be dim, or extinguished if we are not aware of the leadership of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The Holy Spirit has given us gifts that we are to use in serving Him. These gifts are used in our churches and in our daily lives. If we are following His leadership, we will do what He wants us to do and the work that we do for Him at home, at work and at church will be effective. If we do not follow His leadership we will quench the Holy Spirit’s fire in our lives and we will be ineffective servants as well as being miserable people. There are other ways that we can quench the Spirit, but if we are aware of these things, we will be less likely to quench the fire of the Holy Spirit. Think about your life in reference to these three things. Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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