As we have learned earlier in this study, all Church-age believers are filled with the Holy Spirit at the moment of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We also noted that this function is the only ministry of the Spirit from which the believer may lose contact. Unfortunately, we all at times become disconnected from our fellowship with God. In this chapter, we are going to look at the two ways this can happen—grieving and quenching the Holy Spirit.

 

 

EPH 4:30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

 

               Believers are said to grieve the Holy Spirit when they succumb to temptation and allow sin to enter their lives. Since Christians are assigned to live every moment of their lives filled with the Holy Spirit, sin destroys this relationship and must be dealt with in order to continue communion with God. The Bible never teaches that the Holy Spirit withdraws from the believer; He is instead “grieved” by the sin. A believer’s manner of life either grieves or does not grieve the Holy Spirit. Spirituality then is an absolute; one is either filled with the Holy Spirit or he is not; there is no partial filling. The believer is either in or he is out; there is no sitting on the fence. This is vital to understand because spirituality (the filling of the Holy Spirit) is the link between salvation and spiritual adulthood. The advance from salvation to spiritual adulthood requires the filling of the Holy Spirit and the daily intake of Bible doctrine. It is for this reason that Satan and his kingdom of darkness have so many counterfeit systems designed to trap born-again believers. Satan’s system includes the following counterfeits: