Barriers to the Spirit | Holy Spirit

Hey, grab your Bibles if you would. Let's go to Ephesians chapter four, Ephesians four. We're continuing a series called Holy Spirit, walking through, getting to know the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and His work in our life. And this morning, we're gonna talk about barriers that hinder the Holy Spirit's work in our life, barriers that hinder the Holy Spirit's work in our life. There was a little event in Upshur County this weekend called a Yamboree. Anybody go to Yamboree, raise your hand if you went to Yamboree, yeah, so raise your hand if you ate some health food there. Nobody ate health food there. I ate lots of junk food, so I've made three trips to the Yamboree, and the only reason I went was for the food, and I will be just the first to confess, three rounds of deep-fried Oreos. They're amazing, all right? And so I will be paying for that until next Yamboree when I do it all over again. But anyway, so Yamboree is really something I avoid, Gilmer, in the days of Yamboree, other than when I'm going to get food. But the reason I avoid it is because when you go through downtown Gilmer, because of all the traffic, because of all of the busyness and all of the activity, but most importantly, because of all of the barriers and the roadblocks along the way, the natural flow of traffic is interrupted,

and it takes you forever to get anywhere in Gilmer during those days. And so unless we're going there, parking a few blocks away, walking in, grabbing our food, and getting out, we avoid it at all costs because of all the barriers. And I say that to say this. When it comes to our relationship with the Holy Spirit, as we become active and as we face some of the things that we face in everyday life, oftentimes, if our guard is not up and we're not sensitive to obedience to Him, we will allow sin in our life that creates barriers and roadblocks to the flow of the Holy Spirit in our life. It impedes and interrupts the activity that He wants to do inside of us. The Bible calls that grieving the Holy Spirit and quenching the Holy Spirit. Two different things, they both work together, but grieving the Holy Spirit and quenching the Holy Spirit. So this is what I wanna talk about this morning, both of those. We're gonna be in two different passages today. We're gonna start in Ephesians chapter four. If you're there, say the Bible is true. Paul says this in verse 29. He says, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as good for the building up as it fits the occasion. That it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God

by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice. Let me start by asking this question. How many of you have ever had someone that you love say something or do something that hurt you deeply? Has anybody ever had that happen in you? Somebody said something or they did something, and they just wounded you and hurt you in a very real way. How many of you would confess that you have said something or done something to someone you love that has hurt them deeply? Anybody confess to that? The truth is, in most relationships, that's gonna happen. There are gonna be moments where we say something, we do something, and that's gonna offend or it's gonna wound or it's gonna hurt them and cause deep sorrow in their heart in some ways. This happens in marriage. I remember the one time that it happened in my marriage. Some of you know me way too well. So at times, this will happen in my marriage. Like Adrian and I, we'll do something or say something to one another that hurts the person we love the most, that causes a wound and pain in their life. And I've done it to her, she's done it to me. And the truth is, in the marriage relationship, whenever that happens, it doesn't end the marriage.

It is not like when the wound comes that the marriage is gone, but what we do discover is that the joy of the marriage is gone. That the freedom of enjoying intimacy and fellowship and enjoying the gift that marriage is supposed to be in our life is hindered and it's interrupted. And until you deal with the wound that's been caused, that will continue to interrupt the relationship because until you address what has grieved them or has hurt them or has wounded them, the joy of the marriage, the joy of the relationship, the freedom of fellowship, the intimacy will be broken down. And the same is true in regards to your relationship with Jesus. When it comes to the Holy Spirit, there are certain times where we do things and we say things or we behave in a way that wounds or hurts the Holy Spirit. In fact, go back to verse 30, you'll see this. Verse 30, it says, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit. The word grieve there literally means to cause deep emotional distress, to hurt or to cause deep pain. And because we learned the first week that the Holy Spirit is a person who. was wanting to be a friend and companion who lives inside of us to lead and guide and we could share life with as he guides us

as the one who controls our life, that he is a person that has feelings and emotions and will and desire and whenever we do something that offends him, it causes hurt and pain and sorrow in the Holy Spirit. I love what Bill Eliff says about this. He says, grieve is a love word. You cannot grieve someone who doesn't love you. Because the Holy Spirit loves us, it grieves him when we treat him poorly. It grieves him when we walk in disobedience to God's design because he loves us, he knows God's plan is best for us and whenever he sees someone he loves running off the rails, it grieves him, literally it breaks the heart of the Holy Spirit when we walk in sin. Think about it as a parent. If you see your kids just kind of going off the rail or if you have a close friend that you love deeply and all of a sudden, they're making bad mistakes and they're just living a crazy life that you know is gonna bring them harm, what does it do for you? It grieves you, it wounds you, it causes pain because of the way that you love them and this is what happens with the Holy Spirit. You say, what's the byproduct of this? Well, when we grieve the Holy Spirit, it causes us to miss out on his manifest presence. Say, what is his manifest presence? It is the felt presence of the Holy Spirit.

It's the intimacy, it's the fact that the Holy Spirit, though he is at all places at all times, amen? There are other times where he is manifested, he is palpable, like he is in the room. He's not just everywhere, he's here and whenever we grieve the Holy Spirit, we are forfeiting the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit. Now, it doesn't mean that we lose him because he says the Holy Spirit, in this passage, the Holy Spirit has been given as a seal. He is sealing our salvation. He doesn't leave us when we grieve him but what does happen when we grieve him, the byproduct of grieving him is not his departure but the departure of his activity. You see, when we grieve the Holy Spirit, listen to this, it hinders intimacy and fellowship with him. When we grieve the Holy Spirit, it silences his voice in our life. When we grieve the Holy Spirit, it limits his power. When we grieve the Holy Spirit, the fruit ceases to be produced that he wants to produce in and through us. When we grieve the Holy Spirit, we lose the sense of nearness and the peace of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our life. And the truth is, as I'm talking about this, if we would be honest in the room and just had some time of confession, there would be many of you in this room,

if you were to be honest, you would have to say this, the voice of the Holy Spirit has gone quiet in my life. Like my affections for the Holy Spirit has kind of dwindled, like I don't, I'm not passionate about his word or spending time with him, my prayer life is nonexistent, I don't even have a desire to pray like I used to and make worship, it's not something as I'm drawn, as drawn to as I once was and if you were to be honest, you would say his activity, the joy of my salvation or the fellowship and intimacy with the Holy Spirit is nonexistent in my life and here's what I would say to you in love, it could be that you have grieved the Holy Spirit. That you've silenced his voice and disobedience, that you've limited his power, that the joy of the Lord is not your strength, you are living a frustrated life that is half cocked and you're living out of fellowship with him, it could be that you have grieved the Holy Spirit. This has happened in my life. Some of you know the story, for two and a half years I've been telling the story of six months of darkness, six months of battling depression, six months of the voice of the Lord being completely silent in my life, of doing ministry without his power, of not having the fruit of the Spirit being displayed in and through me

and what happened in my life is the Lord showed me the way out of that was for me to understand that the reason I was there is because I had grieved the Holy Spirit. So how do we grieve the Holy Spirit? Well in this context, let me give you a general way that we grieve the Holy Spirit. In this context, in Ephesians, Paul is describing the Christian life, he's calling us to live a life worthy of the gospel, he's calling us to several areas of life of obedience in a variety of ways, things that we do, things that we say, how we think, all of that is describing the Christian life and so what does it mean to grieve the Holy Spirit? Here's just a general application. We grieve the Holy Spirit when we act, speak or think in a way that is inconsistent with his nature. We grieve the Holy Spirit when we act, speak, or think in a way that is inconsistent with His nature. So immorality, if you allow immoral things into your life, immoral relationships, impure things, if you're looking at things that are impure, when it comes to your speech, if you're lying and you're not telling the truth, even if it's just stretching the truth, we're grieving the Holy Spirit. It's the way that we speak to people. We're gonna talk more about that in a moment. If we're not being honest with our work,

if we're cheating someone, or we're lying in how we do our business, if we're defrauding someone in the way we conduct ourself in the business world, if we're holding grudges toward people, if we have outbursts of anger, listen, those type of things grieve the work of the Holy Spirit. It causes sorrow and pain, and it limits His activity in our life. So generally speaking, any way that we act or we think, sometimes it's even thinking, it's not doing the deed, it's pondering the deed, it's letting uncontrolled lust take place in our heart, it's materialism, where we're longing for things of this world, and then we're consumed with those things, and we don't tell anybody that, but in our mind, we're not consumed with the things of the Lord. When that is happening, listen, you're grieving the Holy Spirit. So when it comes to these issues, when it comes to lying or immorality, like looking at pornography or having sex outside of marriage or some other sinful behavior, we kind of say, okay, yeah, I can see where that grieves the Holy Spirit, but here's what I'm gonna suggest to you. I believe the way that we grieve the Holy Spirit and overlook it the most is in regards to relationships. In fact, in this context,

I'm gonna give you a couple of examples. In fact, in this context, the direct context, Paul is gonna spend more time talking about how relationally we grieve the Holy Spirit than any of the other sins that I've listed, although they are all included. So what do you mean? So let me give you three specific ways relationally we grieve the Holy Spirit that Paul talks about here. Number one, the Holy Spirit is grieved when we speak harshly to or about others. The Holy Spirit is grieved when we speak harshly to or about others. Look what he says here in verse 30, or verse 29, rather. He says, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as good for building up as it fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear. When we talk about corrupting talk, oftentimes we wanna limit that to foul language or vulgarity, and although I think it is implied here that the direct context of this idea of talking corruptly is when we talk harshly. When we have outbursts of anger and we speak to people with malice and hatred in our voices and we are speaking harshly either to someone or about someone to somebody else.

Whenever we do this, we grieve the Holy Spirit. Now, we can justify it with a thousand different reasons. We can point the finger at the other person, talk about their behavior, but notice what he says here. Go back to verse 29. Something hit me earlier, even after the first service. When he says, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth, but only such as good for the building as fits the occasion, here's the idea, is that what he's saying is, is that this is what seems to be the case is that what he's saying is, is that this is what spirit-led speaking does. It builds people up as fits the occasion. In other words, it's a timely, it's the Holy Spirit speaking through us in relationships, and he says what happens is it gives grace to the hearer, but whenever we speak to people harshly, what does it do? It tears down, it doesn't build up. It's not gracious. It pushes them further away from us and Christ. And whenever this happens, listen to this, we grieve the Holy Spirit. And husbands, I want you to hear me say this. The Scriptures give a direct words to us in regards of how we speak to our wives. First Peter chapter three, Peter's speaking to husbands. Here's what he says. He says, husbands, some of you, your prayers aren't reached in heaven, and here's why.

It's because of the way you speak to your wife. It's because of the harsh tone and the impatience and the constant frustration and the demand for perfection. And whenever you're annoyed or you're put off or you're discouraged or you're bothered by something, your wife or your children get the brunt of your frustration. And men, listen, as a man who has struggled with this, I wanna tell you, it's not a matter of, ungodly, and when we behave like that, we are grieving the Holy Spirit. And you can pray 1,000 prayers for your family, but if you're grieving the Holy Spirit in the way that you treat your spouse and your children, don't think that God is hearing your prayers. It grieves the Holy Spirit of God. We want God to do great things in our families, men. Start loving your wives and speaking to your wife the way Jesus would have you speak to her. Listen, and I'm saying this with a little bit of fire because I've done it before. I mean, there have been times where on Saturday night, Adrian and I will be in a spat, and I will get mad, and I'll say something, I'll be unkind, or I'll ignore her, or I'll act harshly toward her, and I'm telling you, I know it as soon as it happens that the Holy Spirit has been grieved in my life. There have been times where I've come up getting ready for church on Sunday, and I'm looking over my notes,

and I'm getting ready for the day, and it's like the Holy Spirit is nowhere to be found. I gotta pick up the phone and call my wife, or text her, say, come by the office when you get to church. I gotta have, we can finish the conversation later, but I cannot step into this place without making this right because I've grieved the Holy Spirit, and I've hurt you. And brothers, that's a hard conversation. But wives, can I help you this morning? That doesn't just apply to the husbands. In that context, it does. Wives, you grieve the Holy Spirit when you demean your husband, when you talk to him like he's dumb, when you talk about him in a negative way to your friends, when you criticize the way that he does things. You grieve the Holy Spirit when you have your outburst of anger, when he doesn't meet your expectation. Parents, this happens when you deal with your kids in this way. And again, none of us are perfect, but there have been times as a parent where I've grieved the Holy Spirit, not in the way that I spoke to my wife, but in the way that I've spoken to my children. Listen, we grieve him. And by the way, I'm talking about family, but listen, let's just broaden that out.

Anyone. When you speak about someone made in the image of God as if they have no value in the moment, you grieve the Holy Spirit. Here's number two, number two. We grieve the Holy Spirit when we act toward others in an unloving way. So one is speech, now we're talking about conduct, the way that I treat them. The Holy Spirit is grieved when we act toward others in an unloving or an ungodly way. Look what he says in verse 31. He says, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice. So notice what he's talking about here. The wrath is this outburst of anger, slander and clamor, speaking negatively about someone or to someone that may or may not be true. If it's being spoken with the intention of hurting or tearing them down, if it's malicious, then it's ungodly and it's unloving and it grieves the Holy Spirit. So the way that you treat your employees, employer, matters. The way that you talk about your employee matters. The way that you treat your neighbor, the way that you treat friends that maybe disappoints you, listen, it matters.

The way you conduct your business in the business world, it matters. When you are unfair and you fudge the numbers to your advantage, you're grieving the Holy Spirit because you're treating someone in a way that's unloving and ungodly. And listen, I realize this is a quiet Sunday. But either we want the work of the Holy Spirit to be full effect in our life or we don't. And if our conduct and the way that we treat others is grieving His work, listen to this, you gotta deal with it. You gotta reconcile it. So in both of these, if you're speaking negatively or harshly, the goal is not I wanna get better and God, I'm sorry. Listen, this is about repentance. Repentance means that you deal with it with God and with them. On those days where I know I've said something, listen, the Holy Spirit will not alleviate the burden of that action even if I confess it to Him. The burden's not lifted. till I go to her. Because that's where the offense is made. And we've gotta understand this demands repentance, it demands a change of action and behavior. And listen, I've seen this in my life. And when we speak harshly to someone, it grieves the Holy Spirit.

I'll never forget as God, two and a half years ago, almost three years ago, God began to do this work in my life of showing me where I've grieved Him. And there were so many different relationships where I had acted harshly towards someone or spoken to someone or dismissed someone in an unkind way. And it was like the first several months, it was like every day the Holy Spirit was bringing something else to my mind. There would be days where it would be so overwhelming, I'd literally get down on my knees almost under my desk and just say, God, like, is this it? Like, is there more? I'll never forget if even a few months ago, even after being on this journey for the last couple years, a few months ago, I'm writing a sermon and it was like, it was an easy passage, should have been an easy sermon, one of the most simple passages I've ever preached. And I just could not write the sermon. It was like the Holy Spirit was silent and I didn't know what was going on all week. I was just trying to fight it and I was praying, God, what are you doing? Like, give me a word and ask Him to show up in my life. And I'll never forget Friday, finally, the sermon was supposed to be done Thursday. I get to the office and I get quiet, everything's shut down. And I just said, God, what is going on? Why can't you let me write this sermon?

Why won't you give me the words to say? And very clearly, a name came to my mind of someone that I had mistreated, that I dismissed, that I was not kind to. And the Holy Spirit said very clearly, until you're willing to deal with that, I'm not giving you another message. But as soon as I was willing to deal with that, it was like the floodgates opened up and God just made the sermon wrote itself in 45 minutes. We grieve the Holy Spirit when we act this way. Here's number three. We grieve the Holy Spirit when we harbor bitterness and unforgiveness. We grieve the Holy Spirit when we harbor bitterness and unforgiveness. Look what he says in verse 31. He says, let all bitterness, how much bitterness? Say it like you mean it. All bitterness, all right, not just a little. All bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with malice. Look at verse 32. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another. How? As God in Christ forgave you. Here's what Paul is saying. He's saying, listen, when you harbor bitterness

and unforgiveness in your life, it grieves the Holy Spirit. When you are unwilling to let offenses go, when you are unwilling to look at the wounds as legitimate wounds and then be willing to walk in the acknowledgement of that and offer forgiveness to that person, that the Holy Spirit will remain interrupted in your life until you do. Now, notice what he says here. Go back to verse 32. He says, remove all bitterness. And what do we do with bitterness? He says, we forgive one another. The antidote of unforgiveness is forgiveness. The only way you can remove bitterness is to deal with it with forgiveness. And the good news is he showed us how this is supposed to look because if it was left to us, we would forgive like we forgive, which is partial forgiveness, right? We bury the hatchet, the anvil sticking out. We're like, oh yeah, I'm over it until something even smells like it. Then we're like, oh, here we go again, right? This is what we do. Here's what he says. You forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you. In other words, in the same way

that God has removed the debt that you owe him, that is what you do with people that have hurt you and wounded you. You remove the debt that they owe. Eyes right here for a second. There are some of you in this room, you have been deeply wounded. I mean, legitimately wounded in your life. Parents, children, siblings, friends, go through the list and you have legitimate wounds, things that have been done to you or said to you or the way you've been neglected. And I want you to know that what I'm communicating is not diminishing or dismissing the legitimate pain that you have. But how long are you gonna let those wounds go unhealed? You see, here's what the enemy has convinced us of. The enemy has lied to us and he has convinced us that the only way that we can forgive is to condone what was done to us or to pretend like it doesn't hurt anymore. anymore. And we withhold forgiveness because we think if we forgive, then what we're saying, it's okay what you did. Listen, forgiveness is not your stamp of approval of the actions that were done in your life. Forgiveness is the acknowledgement of it. You hurt me, and you wounded me, and those pain was real, and I've held onto it

way too long, but I, just like I have been released of the debt that I owe God, I am releasing the debt that you owe me, and I'm no longer gonna hold you responsible for it. You know what happens? They get free, and you get free all at the same time. But when you are unwilling to withhold giving what you have freely received from Christ, you grieve the Holy Spirit. There are some of you been praying for your marriages to be restored for years, but you're not willing to forgive the wound that they created in your life. Some of you, your marriage and your life right now, it's, you're a grown up, and you're still walking in the wounds that your mom and dad created, and because of your unwillingness to forgive them, it's still burning your life down. And it's hindering the power of the Holy Spirit in your life. There are some of you had classmates mistreat you. Listen, I'm not telling you to get over it. Here's what I'm telling you. You gotta release it. You gotta forgive. Because what that does is that, see, go back to this verse 32. Being kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. This is a work only the Holy Spirit can do. So if the Holy Spirit's bringing you to this point,

just cooperate with him and let him do his thing, because at the end of that, he's gonna work freely in your life. But when you quench or you grieve the work of the Holy Spirit by saying, no, I'm not gonna do this, then we limit what he can and will do in our life. Now, it doesn't mean that we have to reconcile. Sometimes reconciliation is not possible. Maybe they passed away, or maybe because of the unhealthy nature of the relationship, their lack of repentance. You can't reconcile the relationship. But your forgiveness of them is not dependent upon the ability to reconcile. God can give you freedom. Number three, I'm sorry, that's number three. Number three is we grieve the Holy Spirit and we harbor bitterness and unforgiveness. What I wanna do now is I wanna move now to talking about quenching the Holy Spirit. Now, if you thought the sermon would get easier in part two, it's not. It's gonna get heavier, but then there's gonna be relief at the very end. So if you would, grab your Bibles, go to 1 Thessalonians now, 519. 1 Thessalonians 519, quenching the Holy Spirit. I'm gonna go ahead and start reading as you get there. We're gonna start reading in verse 16, rather. He says, rejoice always, pray without ceasing,

give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything. Hold fast to what is good. Abstain from every form of evil. The idea of quenching the Holy Spirit is different from grieving the Holy Spirit. Grieving the Holy Spirit is when you wound him or hurt him and it limits his work in our life. Quenching the Holy Spirit is a word, the quench is a word that literally means to put out a flame, to put out a fire, to extinguish or to douse something that's on fire. So throughout the Bible, the Bible does something when it comes to the manifest presence of God. Oftentimes, we see the manifest presence of God revealed through fire. So in the Old Testament, whenever the fire, the pillar of fire was leading God's people, that was the manifest presence of God among the people. When we would see fire fall from heaven and consume the altar, it's the manifest presence of God falling. In Acts chapter two, when the Holy Spirit is given, it's like tongues of flame resting on each one of them. So the idea is this, is that the Holy Spirit is personified, or the manifest presence of God is personified as a flame, as a fire, because the idea is is that God is an all-consuming God.

That fire has power and it consumes everything in its path and it's warm and it's bright. And so the Holy Spirit, when he is manifested, listen to this, he wants to consume and permeate everything he comes in contact with for the glory of God. But whenever we walk in willful sin and disobedience, we extinguish the flame of the Holy Spirit in our life. We douse it and we lessen his work and its effect in our life. We see this all the time in our life, in particular in the Bible. In particular, in the context here, listen to what Paul is saying. Go back to what he says, he says this, he goes, do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophecies. What's happening in this immediate context is this. He is warning them to not reject the prophetic words that God was giving supernaturally to the church. So there are times when God will supernaturally, through the gift of prophecy, give a definitive word, and most of the time this is done through preaching, but there are times where God will give a definitive word to his people, and the purpose of that is to show immediate direction, what God is up to in the moment, and he demands action for this. And what Paul is warning them of is that when God speaks to his people, we cannot despise it, we should not reject it.

The word despise there is the idea of to dismiss it, to make it something light, or to say it doesn't apply to me, to just kind of go, okay, yeah, okay, yeah, that's great, and just move on from it. That's the idea of despising. So it's hearing a definitive word from God and just dismissing it. Now, in the New Testament, we understand the gift of prophecy isn't foretelling like we see in the Old Testament. It's not predictive of future. It's foretelling, it's God speaking at a moment into situations or seasons, giving direction to his people. And what Paul says here is that whenever God speaks like this, you need to discern it, you need to test it, you need to see, does it, is it consistent with God's word? Is it consistent with God's nature? Is it a direct command from God's word? Or is it something that you can see, yes, God would say that because we've seen him do that before. And whenever we test it and we see that it's true, he says, hold to what is good. In other words, walk in obedience. But listen to me, church. Whenever we ignore the voice of God, we quench the Holy Spirit. We quench the Holy Spirit.

We douse him, we extinguish his work in our life. You say, well, what does this look like practically? Let me give you three ways that we quench the Holy Spirit. Three ways from this text that we quench the Holy Spirit. Here's the first way. We quench the Holy Spirit by neglecting his presence. We quench the Holy Spirit by neglecting his presence. In the context, Paul starts out in verse 16 and 17 by saying, pray without ceasing. He is calling them to pursue the presence of the Holy Spirit as a habit of their life. Pray continuously. What is that about? Prayer, listen to this, prayer is not primarily about you taking your wish list to God. Prayer primarily is about you pursuing God. Prayer is about presence. So when he says, listen to this, pray without ceasing, he's saying, listen, make the pursuit of intimacy with God and the pursuit of the Holy Spirit, make it the rhythm of your life. Make it the ongoing practice of your life. Don't stop pursuing the presence of the Holy Spirit. And watch this, whenever we pursue the Holy Spirit, whenever we pursue God in prayer, here's what happens. It fans the flame of the Holy Spirit's fire in our life. Couple weeks ago, we had a fire pit going for some of the students that came to the house and had a hard time getting the fire going and it needed more oxygen.

And so being the redneck that I am, I went and got our leaf blower and there was a little crack in our fire pit where we get air flow through it and I just held that thing there and it was like the oxygen that hit those flames, it was like, boom, it was like throwing gasoline on it. Whenever you spend time in prayer, it's giving oxygen to the flame of the Holy Spirit in your life. But when you neglect prayer, when you neglect pursuing the presence of the Holy Spirit, watch this, the flame of the Holy Spirit begins to die in your life. You know why? Prayerlessness is the ultimate form of pride. A prayerless Christian is a prideful Christian. You know why? Because when we're prayerless, you know what we're saying? We don't need you, we got it. I'll call you when I need you. And we miss the point of our relationship with God. It is not about calling upon God when we need him, it is about recognizing I need you all the time, you are my life. And when we live this way, it fuels our heart with vibrancy and his movement in our life, the movement in our life, the flame of the Holy Spirit grows.

But when we walk in pride of prayerlessness, it kills the flame of the Holy Spirit in us. So let me ask this question, just think about what God has done here. How do you explain what God has done the last two and a half years? We were not a praying church, I was not a praying pastor. And we were not seeing the presence of God show up on Sundays, we were not seeing the fruit of God's presence, which is the loss being saved and marriages being restored and predictions being broken. I mean, like that stuff had stopped. The only habit we changed was this, we began to deal with the stuff that grieved the Holy Spirit and we began to pursue him. is the primary focus of our life. And because of that, we have seen over 1,000 people baptized in the last two and a half years, and the only explanation is this, is that we started praying. The reason some of you are not seeing God do in your life what He wants to do is because you're prayerless. You're quenching the Holy Spirit. Here's number two. We quench the Holy Spirit by rejecting His activity. That's the immediate context.

When He says, do not despise prophecy, in other words, what He's saying is this, is that when God, when the Holy Spirit is supernaturally working and He is doing something, don't dismiss it. Don't dismiss the activity of God. When God has spoken, and I'm telling you, God has given New Beginnings Baptist Church a definitive word for the season we are in, and that is to seek and to pursue the face of God with all of who we are. And if we, let's watch this, but if we reject the activity of the Holy Spirit, we quench His work in our life and in the church. I've seen this in my life so many times, where God is wanting to do something, but because of my stubbornness or skepticism or just unwillingness to change, I quench the work that God wants to do in my life. And listen, this has happened in our church. When we were having the revival back in February, God was just, I mean, when I say the revival, I'm not talking about a planned revival. If you weren't here for that, we started a prayer meeting on Wednesday night, and it went for eight days. We'd go home at night, come back the next night, and it was like the Holy Spirit was just in the room, and lives were being changed, and people being saved, and people being healed, miracles.

I mean, God giving testimonies and confession of sin. It was unbelievable, and I'll never forget something that happened at the 9.30 service. On Sunday morning, in the middle of that revival, we didn't know what to do, so we just said, we're gonna open the services at eight o'clock, and we're just gonna just meet until God says he's done. And so we met from eight o'clock in the morning till about 1.40, and all the services just ran together. But something happened at the 9.30 service. We were in the room, and the climate changed in the house. And I mean that, the spiritual climate. God was moving, and then all of a sudden, I've never felt this before in my life, but there was such a heaviness of spiritual resistance that was happening in the room. I got nauseated, and I'll never forget, I felt so overwhelmed to the point of which I didn't know what to, it was almost as if like God was speaking, and all of a sudden, it just went silent, and it scared me to death. And as I observed the room, I started noticing that there was some sections in our worship center where the people were just sitting like this, and it was visible frustration, like we came for church, and this is what we're doing? This is so stupid, this is silly. There was such a skepticism, and cynicism, and complete rejection of what God was doing in the room. I'm talking about, there was an all out

like brokenness happening in the room, and there was a spirit of defiance to the point of which I was so overwhelmed, like I just, I felt like I was sick, and I walked over, and I grabbed our elders. You can ask them this. I grabbed them, and I said, guys, I don't know what's happening right now, but there is a spiritual resistance I've never felt, and I can't lead right now. I had to get on my face, and they had to lay hands on me, and we prayed, asking the Holy Spirit not to withdraw, because I felt like at any moment, he was just gonna leave the room. What was happening in that moment was when we reject the activity of the Holy Spirit with what he's doing, we quench his work. And can I lovingly say to some of you in this room, God has been doing something unbelievable for two and a half years, and you have watched it from a distance, but not experienced it. And for some of you in the room, it's because of your skepticism, because of your cynicism, because of your love for tradition and religion. You are quenching the Holy Spirit in your life, and quite possibly keeping the Holy Spirit from bringing all that revival to this congregation. And in love, I'm asking you to repent. Here's the third way we quench the Holy Spirit.

We quench the Holy Spirit by disobeying his prompting. It's when he speaks, this is what was going on. They were receiving a definitive word from the Lord, and they were despising it. You see, when God speaks, we should listen, amen? How many of you want to hear the voice of God more in your life than you do right now? Raise your hand. All right, so let me give you the best way of hearing the voice of God more in your life. Obey whatever you already have been told. The more the promptings of the Holy Spirit, things revealed in his word, he places something in your heart that's consistent with his word. Listen, the more you respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, the clearer his voice gets, and the more frequently he will talk. Why would God continue to speak to a person? and who continues to ignore him. Like this happened to me last week, 11 o'clock service. If you were in here, we gave an invitation before the sermon. That was the only service I did that in. And I'm listening to the baptisms and the stories were absolutely amazing. I mean, miracles that had happened and we got reconciled and restored. I'm literally over here in tears, listening to how God is working

and this friend was being discipled and this friend showed up on the scene and now all of a sudden this person gave their life and I'm going, this is unbelievable. And I sensed as clearly as can be the Holy Spirit say, offer an invitation before you preach. Ask people if they wanna respond to give their life to Christ. And I'm sitting back there, there's like two baptisms to go and I'm like arguing. I'm like, no, this is no. No, if nobody responds, I'm gonna look dumb. There's a lot of guests here. Like I don't, like I don't, and I'm back there in my mind and then I'm like, well, it's probably not the Holy Spirit then. It's probably not the Holy Spirit then. Anybody ever done that? And so I'm just kind of dismissing it and the more I just felt it more and more and more that you need to do this. And I'm like, that's just, I'm gonna look so stupid. I'm not gonna do it. Cause I don't think anybody's gonna respond. And literally I'm walking and I get to about right here and I'm thinking, I'm gonna look stupid. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do this.

I'm just gonna, and about that time, the Holy Spirit, this phrase came to my mind. Are you not willing to be made a full love for me? And so I just said, okay, I give up. And very simply, I just said, hey, if you're here and you don't know Christ and these testimonies have stirred your heart and you need to trust Christ. And like five people gave their life to Christ. Now here's the question. Four people and there was a fifth for baptism. The Holy Spirit was at work in the room. There was activity. He spoke. If I was to quench the Holy Spirit and not obey his prompting, not only am I quenching the Holy Spirit's voice in my life, I'm quenching the Holy Spirit's work in theirs. You see, the idea is this, guys, just get your eyes right here for a second. We, we want to see more than anything. We need more than anything. We need to see the fire of the Holy Spirit consume us individually and then spread corporately through our body so that this work that Christ has started would not be limited to the walls of this congregation, but what God would do here might be spread everywhere. They tell us, they tell us with wildfires,

wildfires, watch this, they can burn if the conditions are just right. A wildfire can move at the pace of 15 miles per hour. That's pretty fast. If the conditions are just right and it can sweep through an area and burn everything down in its way if the conditions are right, because the fire gets hot enough and the conditions are right and all of a sudden the wind blows and that fire goes and wherever it goes, it consumes. Listen to this. That is what revival is. It is the fire of God falling on a group of people and the conditions being just right for that fire to burn and become hotter and hotter and hotter and to spread beyond the church, beyond the walls, beyond the community, beyond the state, beyond the nation, all over the world. And listen, God has done it before. In 1858, there was a man by the name of Jeremiah Lamphere who was in New York and they were broken over the sinfulness of the community in the city. The economy was falling apart. Suicide rate was off the charts. And he was broken and began to ask God to move in power and he put flyers up all over New York and said, I rented a room

and I'm gonna call the city to come pray. And when he got up there, no one showed up but him. So he just began to pray and about 30 minutes into the prayer, two more people showed up and they got together and they prayed for an entire hour. The next Wednesday they came back and this time the three turned into six. The next week they came back and the six had turned into a dozen. Within six months, there were a million people praying for revival. And God swept through our nation. There are newspaper, you can go back and do research, there are newspapers that tell the story of how revival spread and a million people gave their life to Christ. All because the prompting of the Holy Spirit wasn't grieved or quenched. God began to do a work of repentance, confession of sin. It changed the landscape of America. In 1904, the same thing happened in Wales, the Welsh Revival. In six months, 100,000 people came to faith in Christ in an area smaller than Rhode Island. Robert, Evan Roberts was the evangelist that God used to be a catalyst for this revival. And they would tell stories that God so caught him on fire that wherever he would go in the congregations, everywhere there was a stirring that this need,

we need to see the fire of the Holy Spirit come. And as he would go to those places, the Holy Spirit would just move and as the people would be obedient to the Holy Spirit and not grieve the Holy Spirit, not quench the Holy Spirit, the whole community would be transformed. The entire community would be transformed. Prostitution put to an end, bars would close. And every community that they went until it was spread everywhere, they said there were some towns that every lost person was saved, every lost person. They said it so revolutionized the culture that farmers had to retrain their animals to plow the fields because the only direction they could follow was that of vulgarity. And because God changed the heart of the farmer and their language, they had to retrain their animals. Here's the question, could God do that again? I'm gonna give a moment to respond here and here's my charge to you just for a moment. If the Holy Spirit has spoken to you about ways that you've grieved him, do not quench the Holy Spirit. The Lord showed me two and a half years ago that I was the roadblock of revival at new beginnings. And until the Lord changed me, he couldn't change us. I wanna challenge you with this, do not be the roadblock to revival.

Do not be what quenches the work that God is doing here. So I'm gonna open up this altar. Four pillars of revival is this, here they are. Confess every known sin. Number two, put away every questionable thing. Things that trip you up may not be sinful. They occupy your time and your mind and take you off track of what God has for you. Number three, obey the Holy Spirit immediately. Do whatever he says. Number three, testify to Christ. Those are the four pillars of revival. Evan Roberts preached that everywhere he went and everywhere the people obeyed and did that, revival would break out. What would that look like here? We're gonna leave this up and leave the screen out. I'm gonna ask you to stand to your feet. I'm gonna pray over us. When I say amen, this altar is open. You do what God tells you to do. I'm gonna get out of the way. Holy Spirit, we deliver ourself to you. We ask that you would do what only you can do in this moment. Lord, I pray for any resistance to your spirit to not quench you, to not grieve you. Let us respond to you in surrender and obedience. God, there are relationships and behaviors that have to change.

Repentance has to come. But thanks be to God that when we confess our sin, he's faithful and just. Help us walk in that this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.