Quench Not the Spirit

The only right spiritual environment for God’s people to worship and have fellowship in is one where everything is led by the holy Ghost all of the time. Unfortunately that environment basically doesn’t exist in the body of Christ today. I’ve been a recipient of this malady more times than I could hope to count, and it isn’t a satisfying experience. God’s dear children have been conditioned by the environments to which that they have been subjected, to think that it is a normal thing to quench the move of God’s Spirit. Reason being that the Spirit of God has only been allowed traditionally to move in spots in the worship and service of God throughout the body of Christ. The remainder of the time it is only man ‘trying’ to worship God and have 'fellowship,’ according to his own agenda which he supposes to be of God. God’s people simply do not understand HOW to be subject to his Spirit in all things at all times, and subsequently do not know God. That is why people can’t rightly distinguish between what the Spirit is actually doing, and what is merely they themselves 'trying’ to do for God. Then what happens is if they DO happen into an environment that is being led totally by the Spirit, they go about to try to quench the Spirit in that environment as well. Why? Because man is a creature of habit and he rarely changes his established patterns of how he does things. Sadly this dilemma among God’s people is nothing new, as the prophet Hosea showed us: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hos. 4:6). And to be certain just what 'knowledge’ he was speaking of here, he took it a little further in another chapter: “For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the KNOWLEDGE OF GOD more than burnt offerings” (Hos. 6:6). The people under the old testament had the law, which they did not heed; and those under the new testament have the Spirit, which is the same law written in our hearts and fulfilled IN us by MEANS OF the Spirit (Heb. 10:14-16; Rom. 8:4).

The law is all that they DID have under the old covenant, because it is the only thing that God provided for them to be guided by; and in fact it was all they needed. But they added their own religious inventions to that equation, and in doing so they disesteemed and forgot the law by and large. And Hosea again told us what the tragic result of that agenda was: “I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing” (Hos. 8:12). It is not good my friend when we count what God has provided us with, as “a strange thing.” By the same token the holy Ghost is all that God has provided for us to be led and guided by under this new covenant, and in fact it is all we need, as the apostle Paul showed us clearly: “And ye are COMPLETE IN HIM, which is the head of all principality and power” (Col. 2:10). Complete in WHO? The Lord Jesus Christ of course. That would be the same Jesus Christ of whom the scripture says, “Now the Lord IS that Spirit” (II Cor. 3:17). So we are ‘complete,’ meaning we have all we need, IN and through the Spirit. That does make sense, seeing that the scripture also tells us, “For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy IN the Holy Ghost” (Rom. 14:17). What has happened in the new covenant dispensation is exactly what happened during the old covenant, and that is that the children of God have added their own religious inventions to the Gospel, and thereby the Spirit has been disesteemed. One of the chief inventions that has caused much damage is the modern Christian tradition of “getting saved.” Getting saved is the modern new birth, and thereby is counted as the remission of sins for those who “get saved.” Getting saved is not found anywhere in the Bible, and it has greatly undermined the true new birth experience of the baptism of the Spirit, which Jesus died and rose to provide for us (Mk. 1:7,8; Acts 1:4,5; I Cor. 12:13; I Pet. 3:21). Putting the non-scriptural and erroneous “getting saved” IN FRONT OF the Spirit baptism is precisely what Israel did to the law when “the sin of Jereboam” was instituted: “Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt” (I Kin. 12:28). Actually those calves did NOT deliver Israel from Egypt, and the born again experience that delivers us from sin is not ‘getting saved.’

The result of this universally embraced error has been massive division, spiritual weakness, rampant sin, and confusion in the body of Christ. We simply cannot put God’s Spirit on a second tier and expect to understand, love, or worship purely by means of the same holy Ghost that we have unwittingly been taught to disesteem. It cannot happen, is not happening, and WILL NOT happen until the ‘grove’ of 'getting saved’ is taken away from the minds, spirits, and belief of God’s people. As long as 'getting saved’ is around, the children of God will have an inborn inclination to disesteem God’s Spirit by their own tradition; and that disesteem will ALWAYS negatively effect the lives, worship and fellowship of the body of Christ. It is only natural that if we have as much [actually more] esteem for our own man-made tradition as we do for the Spirit of God, we will have also have more inclination for doing our own thing in our worship and fellowship than we do for being led by God’s Spirit. Not only so, but the disesteem that God’s people have been taught to have for the holy Ghost in doctrine and tradition, also weakens their spiritual strength and leaves them far more susceptible to being under dominion to sin in their lives. This is why doctrines of sin, headed up by the notorious “sinners saved by grace” teaching, are widely accepted as being Gospel truth. As long as the Spirit is being stifled and quenched in people’s lives, it will also be quenched in fellowship and worship. And on all counts that is exactly where we are today, and that is why God is calling for his people to come out of all ‘Christian’ affiliations, and to come to him to be led solely by him (Rev. 18:4; Jn. 16:13; Rom. 8:14). We cannot be led by God in all things as long as we are ‘confederate’ with Christianity, because modern Christianity is not confederate with Jesus Christ, or with the one thing that he died and rose to give us (Isa. 8:11,2). Amen.