The voice of the Spirit of God is as gentle as a summer breeze— so gentle that unless you are living in complete fellowship and oneness with God, you will never hear it. The sense of warning and restraint that the Spirit gives comes to us in the most amazingly gentle ways. And if you are not sensitive enough to detect His voice, you will quench it, and your spiritual life will be impaired. This sense of restraint will always come as a “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12), so faint that no one except a saint of God will notice it.Beware if in sharing your personal testimony you continually have to look back, saying, “Once, a number of years ago, I was saved.” If you have put your “hand to the plow” and are walking in the light, there is no “looking back”— the past is instilled into the present wonder of fellowship and oneness with God (Luke 9:62 ; also see 1 John 1:6-7). If you get out of the light, you become a sentimental Christian, and live only on your memories, and your testimony will have a hard metallic ring to it. Beware of trying to cover up your present refusal to “walk in the light” by recalling your past experiences when you did “walk in the light” (1 John 1:7). When-ever the Spirit gives you that sense of restraint, call a halt and make things right, or else you will go on quenching and grieving Him without even knowing it.Suppose God brings you to a crisis and you almost endure it, but not completely. He will engineer the crisis again, but this time some of the intensity will be lost. You will have less discernment and more humiliation at having disobeyed. If you continue to grieve His Spirit, there will come a time when that crisis cannot be repeated, because you have totally quenched Him. But if you will go on through the crisis, your life will become a hymn of praise to God. Never become attached to anything that continues to hurt God. For you to be free of it, God must be allowed to hurt whatever it may be.______________________________________________________________

 

August 13, 2014

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Lord the implication I am reading here from Chambers is that if, because of my inattention and focus, I do not hear Your voice, You will stop talking to me; I will quench Your Spirit. Is that right? If so, this feels like one more “quid pro quo” from religious leaders: I must do this or that in order to receive from You.  I must walk in the light. Not look backward, beware of this or that.  Sometimes it feels like a tightrope I must walk in order to get it “just right” or I will miss your voice.  

And God says…”I will never leave you or desert you. Once you come to me, you cannot remove yourself from My voice or the Spirit.  However, if you get out of the habit of hearing My voice, you can miss Me speaking to you. If you seek Me you will find Me. When you knock I will answer, and do not worry about what others say you must do or do not do in order to hear my voice. Whenever you call upon my name you will hear Me.  Sometimes you get caught up in following your own paths and you will not find Me in your ways and means.  When you walk with your life firmly in your control it will be very difficult to hear Me. But when you acknowledge Me as your Lord and seek Jesus in your daily living, you will hear Me. And you will hear Me in your pain and crisis. As C.S. Lewis said…“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”  Seek first the kingdom of God, which is Jesus, and I will provide everything else you require for daily living. Acknowledge Me in all your ways and I will make your paths straight.  You need not worry about quenching the Spirit when you are connected to Jesus, curious about how He will deal with your circumstances, as you expect Him to act on your behalf.  Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own ways and means, and He will make your paths straight.”