Mine...Mine...Mine....Mine....

Ever have one of those bad days?  You know; one of those days from start to finish is all bad.  I had one of those recently.  From start to finish I was having a bad day.  The day was going so bad that I ended up taking my break and calling a fellow minister and unloading to him about my problems.  I told him I had been praying to not go upside somebodies head.  Now I know that is not holy nor Christian thinking, but it is real and I was upset.  I cannot stand blatant disrespect and it irks me to no end.  Something the Lord apparently decided to have me face.  I literally wanted to just throw a fit and complain to no end.  But my Spirit wouldn't let me completely do so.

Fortunately I made it through the day and went home and prayed.  The thing is I couldn't even pray right.  My heart was hardened with anger and therefore I had quenched the spirit and grieved the spirit.    I didn't really realize what it was at the time but something kept nagging at my spirit.  Finally the Holy Ghost revealed to me that I was quenching the Spirit and I had also grieved the Spirit with my anger to my coworkers and my situation.

Well this immediately got me to looking up scripture and studying what is the difference between the two.  I came across the scripture 1 Thessalonians 5:19.  When it comes to quenching the Spirit; most of the definitions refer to the Holy Spirit as a fire burning and raging and then putting that fire out with water.  The image that came to mind  for me when it comes to quenching the Spirit is this.  Think of yourself extra thirsty and dehydrated and then you drink a bottle of Gatorade....Ahhhhhh!!! yep now think of that quenching in reverse.  The quenching is not for your good but for your demise.   

This quenching is not relief but suppression.  To quench the Spirit means to stifle the Spirit.  Not allow the Spirit to work and do His job.  Scripture says that the Spirit is an advocate and speaks on our behalf to Christ.  He translates our prayers (Romans 8:26) for us.  But He can't do his work if the prayers do not reach Him because of our quenching the Spirit.  I mean how would you feel?  Here you are a manager of a company and you are trying to get certain things done that are within your power, but you can't do it, because you got this one employee one their cell phone not working.  Wouldn't that tick you off?

Well that is quenching your ability to get the job done.  But there is a second part that accompanies quenching the Spirit and that is grieving the Spirit.  The two practically go hand in hand.  Ephesians 4:30 talks about grieving the Spirit.  This scripture alone should confim that the Holy Spirit is a he and not an it.  For an it cannot grieve anything because well......it's an it.  How do we grieve the Spirit?  The entire chapter of Ephesians 4 explains it in full.  By living like pagans (4:17-19), lying (4:25), by being angry (4:26-27), by stealing (4:28) by cursing (4:29), by being bitter (4:31), by being unforgiving (4:32), and by being sexually immoral (5:3-5).  To grieve the Spirit is to act out in a sinful manner.  

Act out like a spoiled child.  Check it out; you have a child in a grocery store throwing a tantrum and acting a complete and utter fool and you (the parent) standing there looking and waiting for this child, whom you love, to finish acting out.  This is exactly how the Holy Spirit is with us.  Waiting patiently for us to stop throwing our tantrum and trust him even in the middle of our hardest times.  yes i want to act out and I basically did that day at work.  Even though I didn't show it physically, my spirit was definitely throwing an unholy fit on the inside.  

It took this revelation from the Spirit for me to realize the error of my ways and repent.  It is not easy to live and walk a holy spirit filled life, but you are not doing so alone.  We have the most patient parent/ guardian in our corner.  We have Christ's Holy Spirit living within us working on our behalf and under the command of the Father.  Trust we are in good hands even when it looks like our world wants to cave in.