2021-03-12
Good Morning Dear Ones,
God knows what is in our hearts. The Holy Spirit pleads for us, in accordance with God’s will. He helps us in our weakness and strengthens our faith [RO 8: 26-27; 1 COR 12: 7-9]. What propels Him to do this? It is the Father’s grace [EPH 2: 8-10]. Being raised in a faith that wasn’t reaching my heart, the Holy Spirit did miss the spiritual starvation I experienced. He knew I would have to wait until I could escape the daily influences of with whom I lived. When it finally happened, I had to go through a journey of growth in both my spiritual life and in my self-esteem first. When I finally found a faith that didn’t destroy much identity as a Jewish person but did reach my heart, it was the first time I had inner peace. The last two sentences generalize a significant period of years in my life but looking back the journey was definitely worth it. The Holy Spirit prays for us in our weakness, not our avoidance of truth. What that means is that some other issues must be considered as part of this journey to spiritual maturity that we take. Learning to be humble and to avoid arrogance is certainly a part of it. Study of the Scriptures in which their golden truths are not only taken in but lived is a part. Improvement of listening skills, skills in analyzing them, and their impact on our lives is necessary. Major improvements in our prayer lives should happen. The same can be said of being thankful and offering praise to God, as He truly deserves it. Sound advice is found in 1 THESS 5: 19-22: “Do not restrain the Holy Spirit; do not despise inspired messages. Put all things to the test. Keep what is good and avoid every kind of evil.” The joy of living with these beliefs and practices is a result of them.
There is a constant as a part of the truth we must learn. It is that we are not in control of our own destiny [JER 10: 23]. I look at this coupled with MT 7: 1-2, “Do not judge others, so that God will not judge you, for God will judge you in the same way you judge others, and He will apply to you the same rules you apply to others.” God alone has the right to determine one’s fate. When we treat others with patience and kindness, He will apply those things to the destiny He has chosen for us. This gets us in to what we should do when being lured into engaging in gossip. Gossip is not productive and often hurts the subject of it. It should be avoided entirely. I say leave to God what is His purview, and deal with our own faults with His help. Our omniscient Deity is always aware of our behavior and any spiritual growth- spurt in maturity we have.
We are told, in EPH 4: 30, “Do not make the Holy Spirit sad, for the Spirit is God’s mark of ownership on you, a guarantee that the day will come when God will set you free.” Surrounding this passage is advice like use: only helpful words, not harmful ones, for the former builds and the latter cuts down people’s self-confidence. The same can be said of this advice: Get rid of all destructive anger, bitterness, and passion. This includes ridding oneself of shouting, insults, and hateful feelings. Instead, be tender-hearted, kind, and forgiving. By the way, God setting you free means you will be redeemed, and He will put an end to evil [JN 3: 16; DN 9: 24-27; REV 20: 10]. Just as we can break another person’s heart, we also can cause the Holy Spirit to grieve, feel sorrow, and have His heart broken. People who engage in serial rejection of Christ or serious and continuous evil are the ones who break the Holy Spirit’s heart. The murder of 6,000,000 Jews and thers who tried to help them at the hands of the 3rd Reich comes to mind. Individuals can sadden the Holy Spirit too. An example could be when a formerly good person reveals that his faith wasn’t real by the choices he makes. When a believer sins, it’s necessary for him to confess his sin before God and ask for forgiveness. That’s a part of our Covenant of Grace promise to our Father. Upsetting the Holy Spirit comes when we can’t face and thus, don’t confess a sin. The telling of lies when I was a child caused both myself and the Holy Spirit plenty of grief. I now know that my tendency to tell lies about my life was a childish effort to hide what disappointed me about my childhood life. I’m sure the years that I spent not believing there was a God disappointed Him.
PRAYER: O Most Holy Father, we think about these weighty and serious topics, so that we will better understand our relationship with You and why it is worth it to live up to the covenant responsibilities we have. It takes emotional and spiritual maturity to live the life You command of us. Our unique life experiences are only unique in when they come to us. What we mean by this is that we only think our experiences and thus, our challenges, are unique. They are the things that normally come to people. In Your exquisite fairness, You judge us all on the same standard. It is a standard that is not borne out of degrees after our names, our material wealth, our marital status, our gender, where we live, how we dress, or what we do for a living. Instead, it is an ethical standard, how close to the ideal life that You mean for us to have through Your teaching. We live closer to that ideal when we recognize we are dependent on You and that You deserve to be at the center of our lives. We are grateful that You make Your will clear, that You supply us with our needs, that You show us the difference between what we want and what we need, and that You always make Yourself available to us. We ask You to never give up on us, as You have promised. Make it possible soon for there to be world peace and widespread better health. We ask these things in the holy/mighty name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
NEXT WEEK: While somewhat painful, it is necessary for us to continue next week discussing the times when the Holy Spirit is sad, also the difference between godly and worldly sadness. Sadness is a fact in this world, and it sometimes happens as a result of poorly conceived and sudden wrongful acts. Other times, it results from long-term wrongful behavior. There is no guarantee that families will live by good communication, parenting, or discipline. Children are not born with self-esteem or the ability to handle such behavior as bullying, handling disappointments and losses, etc. Many times, this is learned behavior, which they simply don’t learn. The events and morays of the era a person lives in impacts his ability to live up to the Lord’s expectations. The impact of his surroundings can greatly affect how well he becomes a faithfully obedient Christian. Most of us need to become “overcomers” in one way or another. One observation that I can make is that our lives have become far and away more complex as time goes on. Part of this is advancing technology, part is the sheer numbers of people on the earth, and part is due to the need to delay living independently as we work to finish our education. Despite all these issues, our God loves us and wants us to succeed in gaining inner peace and satisfaction with yielding our lives to Him. Praise and thanks be to God!
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn
JS 24: 15
© Lynn Johnson 2021. All Rights Reserved.
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