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Wednesday, May 6, 2015

He Is A Person

"Quench not the Spirit" (1 Thessalonians 5:19)

I think you will agree with me when I say that many people are confused about the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit, for instance, is not enthusiasm. Some people get enthusiasm, and they imagine it is the Holy Spirit.

Spell this out in capital letters: THE HOLY SPIRIT IS A PERSON. He is NOT enthusiasm. He is NOT courage. He is NOT energy. He is NOT personification of all good qualities, like Jack Frost is the personification of cold weather. Actually, the Holy Spirit is not the personification of anything. He is a Person, the same as you are a person, but not material substance. He has individuality. He is one being and not another. He has will and intelligence. He has hearing. He has knowledge and sympathy and ability to love and see and think. He can hear, speak, desire, grieve and rejoice. He is a PERSON!

The Holy Spirit can communicate with you and can love you. He can be grieved when you resist and ignore Him. He can be quenched as any friend can be shut up if you turn on Him when He is in your home as a guest. Of course, He will be hushed into hurt silence if you wound Him, and we can wound the Holy Spirit.

Oh, Lord, may I not quench the power of the Holy Spirit by neglect or by wounding. Instead, help me to know His intimate fellowship. Amen

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The Never-Failing Presence

"It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you." (John 16:7)

Our insensibility to the presence of the Holy Spirit is one of the greatest losses that our unbelief and preoccupation have cost us. We have made Him a tenet of our creed, we have enclosed Him in a religious word, but we have known Him little in personal experience. satan has hindered us all he could by raising conflicting opinions about the Spirit, by making Him a topic for hot and uncharitable debate between Christians. In the meanwhile our hearts crave Him, and we hardly know what the craving means.

It would help us if we could remember that the  Spirit is Himself God, the very nature of the Godhead subsisting in a form that can impart itself to our consciousness.

The Spirit is sent to be our Friend, to guide us over the long way home. He is Christ's own Self come to live with us, allowing Him to fulfill His word, "Lo, I am with you alway," (Matthew 28:20) even while He sits at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens.

It will be a new day for us when we put away false notions and foolish fears and allow the Holy Spirit to fellowship with us as intimately as He wants to do. After that there can be no more loneliness, only the glory of the never-failing Presence.

Holy Spirit, help me to see You anew, as an extension of God in the world. Thank You for Your presence, power and fellowship. Amen

~A. W. Tozer~

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