Respect is a major part of any
relationship. Without respect, relationships will eventually die no matter how
much love the parties profess for each other. Disrespect destroys relationships
and it is disrespectful to lie against any one. We cannot claim to love and respect
anyone and so easily drag their name “in mud”. The Holy Spirit is the closest
friend we can ever have as believers and our God given Helper; if we must keep
and grow our relationship with Him, we must learn to treat Him as God that He
is. He is given to remain with us, helping in all areas of our lives; it is
wise to take advantage of this God given help. Sadly, we may not get the best
of this relationship if we continue to treat Him in the way we often do. We ignore
Him and when we do acknowledge His presence in our lives, we often just use
Him; claiming to have heard Him when we haven’t, we use His name to
authenticate and/or justify our position. A lie is a lie and we seem to
willfully lie against Him. It is indeed true that learning to hear His voice is
a process in the course of which we may mistake other voices for His but to lie
out rightly against Him is terrible.
Mathew 12: 31 “So I tell you, every sin and blasphemy can be
forgiven-except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which will never be
forgiven. Anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit against the Son of Man can
be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will never be
forgiven, either in this world or in the world to come.”
Even whilst in the process of
getting familiar with His voice, if we think we have heard Him, we must check
what we heard against The Written Word and even going on to get two or three
witnesses as we are counselled to do by the bible. To insist we know His voice when
we really are only on the way to getting familiar with it, may cost us dearly. It
isn’t something we should do for any reason; especially not just to “belong to
the spiritual group” or as a joke as some of us seem to think it is. Indeed, those
will be sure ways to ensure that one never is able to hear Him since that would
grieve Him. It would seem like “familiarity is breeding contempt” in our
relationship with Him. It appears a lot of us believe He is the least person of
the Trinity so we can get away with just saying anything against Him but it is
not so. If there is one person of The Trinity we have to be most careful with,
then it would be Him. He is extremely sensitive and His departure from a life
may or may not be marked by drama but His absence makes as much difference as
His presence does. The absence of the Holy Spirit, is the absence of the Godhead.
When He leaves, The Father and Son do not remain. He is the evidence of the
presence of God in any life.
Ephesians 4: 30ampc “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God (do not
offend or vex or sadden Him,) by whom you were sealed (marked, branded as God’s
own, secured) for the day of redemption (of final deliverance through Christ
from evil and the consequences of sin).”
He carries the fullness of the
power of the God Head. So when God says we should not grieve Him, It is a
warning to be taken seriously. Ananias and Sapphira grieved Him enough to lose
their lives. We forget that He is God and no less God. The mind of man
struggles with understanding the concept of “The Trinity” and if we manage to
accept it, it becomes even tougher to understand that they are all equally God
so we tell ourselves that it is a case of “great, greater, greatest”
appropriating the least position of “great” to the Holy Spirit when He is
indeed God with all the characteristics and power of God. It would appear that
our desire to always feel extremely intelligent and/or intellectual and also
show that we understand and can explain God to the fullest is posing a major
danger to us. This desire is unwittingly causing us to, in our minds, reduce
God to a concept that our minds can understand even when scriptures make it clear
that the mind of man can never fully grasp the extent of God’s greatness. So
all we are doing really is thinking up foolish ideas which is in itself,
dangerous.
Romans 1: 21b “And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God is
like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise,
they became utter fools.”
When we begin to believe that we
have God figured out, we have the tendency to think we can outsmart Him or
somehow successfully go around His instructions which is what happened to
Ananias and Sapphira who for this reason, lost their lives. Undermining God, albeit
with good reasons, never produces good results. Lying against the Holy Spirit,
is undermining Him. To deliberately use His name knowing that He said nothing, is
terrible. We have so trivialized Him that we seem to believe that there are no
consequences to lying against Him. Please be advised, we don’t have to use his
name for our opinion to be correct and respected. The bible says we have the
mind of Christ so that if we have a close relationship with the Godhead, we
will think like them and speak their minds. Our mind will think their thoughts
so that we will often express on earth, heaven's mind when we make decisions
and though it may take a while, those we want so desperately to impress, will
eventually find that our decisions align with God’s mind. As we grow in our
walk with God, we will make mistakes, it is all part of the growth process, but
we do not need to willfully lie against the Holy Spirit.
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