Host The Holy Ghost

“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another even as God in Christ has forgiven you.

Ephesians 4:30-32

The word grieve in this text means to cause grief, to grieve, to be in heaviness, to throw somebody into sorrow, and to affect somebody with sadness. This is where we get the phrase ‘getting our feelings hurt’. In other words, do not hurt the Holy Spirit’s feelings. That tells us that the Holy Spirit is not a ghost, force, power, wind, oil, or dove without a personality. The Holy Spirit is a person you can grieve. If you can grieve a person, you can also make a person happy.

The Holy Spirit is a divine person who lives within us and we as Christians have the ability to have a relationship with Him. We also have the ability to cause Him deep heartbreak.

“Don’t hurt the precious Holy Spirit; He is all I have. That is one thing I am so afraid of: I am afraid lest I grieve the Holy Spirit. For when the Holy Spirit is lifted from me, I am the most ordinary person that has ever lived.”

Evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman

Grieving The Holy Spirit

When we grieve the Holy Spirit, we actually break His heart. When we grieve the Holy Spirit, we don’t lose the Holy Spirit. The Bible does not say that if you grieve the Holy Spirit, you lose being sealed by the Spirit. To give a practical example in relationships, if you break your partner’s heart, it does not mean you lose the relationship. The relationship is still there but the intimacy and closeness is broken.

When you grieve the Holy Spirit, you don’t lose your salvation but you lose the joy of your salvation. What does happen when we grieve the Holy Spirit is we lose the sense that we are pleasing to God. We lose peace, direction, and become quickly irritable. We are fast to blame things around us or our partners but the reality is often that we are no longer in the sweetness of fellowship with the Holy Spirit. The third thing that happens when you grieve the Holy Spirit is that it will expose you to the demonic.

Don’t Give Place To The Devil

Three verses earlier, Apostle Paul also warns us not to give place to the devil. If you grieve the Holy Spirit and are not quick to fix your connection, you are opening the door to the demonic to come and take advantage of your broken fellowship with God. Demons are attracted to people who grieve the Holy Spirit. I am not saying you get a demon but you are vulnerable when you live in a state of the Holy Spirit being grieved by you.

Living our lives without grieving the Holy Spirit is the greatest guarantee that we will not be demonically harrassed because they will not have access to you. They may bark, they may scream but they will not be able to bite because the Holy Spirit is the best defender. When the Holy Spirit is not grieved, what we experience is clarity of thought, stillness and peace even in the midst of the most chaotic and challenging situations in our lives.

When the Holy Spirit is not grieved, we have access to divine wisdom strength and guidance. It is like being somebody who not only has a big bank account but you also have the pin and debit card to use it. My friend David Diga uses this example. When we grieve the Holy Spirit, it is like having $1 million in our bank account but losing the pin and debit card. You are still rich, you still have $1 million but you cannot use or access it. Now, you need to go through the process to get the card and pin back.

The heart gets worse over time without repentance. The anger gets deeper brings wounds which remain and start to fester.

Living With The Holy Spirit

Would you know when you grieve Him? Would you know if He is pleased? To grieve the Holy Spirit, you have to have some kind of closeness with Him. Similarly, you have to have some kind of nearness to even know if the Holy Spirit is grieved.

This does not belong to people who do not have any connection to the Holy Spirit. Some of us live our lives out without even knowing whether the Holy Spirit is pleased or not. It is my desire that everyone who is impacted by our church will be able to live and know if the Holy Spirit is pleased or not. When He is not pleased, we do everthing in our strength to repent, restore, and reconnect that relationship and fellowship as if our lives depended on it.

What Grieves The Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is not easily offended but He is hyper-sensitive. To know Him personally, we have to be aware that He has feelings and desires. He will quietly lift, not that He leaves us but He can be hurt by us. What is wonderful is that the Holy Spirit is not such a mystery that we do not know what hurts Him. The Bible doesn’t hide what grieves Him.

In Ephesians 4:30-32, we are shown three things that grieve the Holy Spirit. To summarize it all: the way we live grieves Him. It is not about not reading enough of the Bible as it is not obeying any of it. The mphasis is placed on how we live than what we do. If we do not read the Bible, preach the Gospel and use our spiritual gifts enough, that can quench the Spirit but that is not what grieves the Spirit. What grieves the Spirit is not how you minister but how you live.

Toxic Emotions

We grieve the Holy Spirit when we hold on to toxic emotions. Bitterness, wrath, clamour all describe toxic emotions. I’ll expand on them. The toxic emotions which grieve the Holy Spirit are bearing a grudge, having an offence, and holding on to bitterness. Sometimes, the closer you get to the Lord, you often become prone to petty sins of toxic emotions.

Grudges

A grudge is something that doesn’t get better when you nurse it; it gets worse. Reasons many of us love to hold on to a grudge include because it takes time and energy to build and we are unsure of who we are without it. We have replayed our betrayal and personal hurt movie so many times in our mind that we know it by heart. The idea of moving on is so terrifying but remaining miserable is familiar. The offender has done nothing to deserve forgiveness. Harboring resentment stops me from getting hurt again. These things all make sense to our hurt mind but the Bible here warns against such choices.

What happens when we get more sensitive to the Holy Spirit, is we also get more sensitive to people. We start to take ourselves too seriously and become overly sensitive to people and get hurt or offended very quickly. This happens a lot to people who recently got saved in their churches.

You cannot host the Holy Ghost and harbor a grudge. You can have the Holy Spirit and harbor a grudge but you cannot host Him. It is possible to have the Holy Spirit and hold on to an offence but you cannot host the Holy Spirit and hold on to an offence. When you host somebody in your home, they get your attention and respect. We cannot host the Holy Ghost properly if we harbor things in our hearts.

Offence

One of the most common words to describe offence is scandalon. Scandalon is a Greek word that describes the trigger of a trap on which bait is placed. When an animal touches the trigger to eat the bait, the trap is sprung and the animal is caught. Offence indicates inticement to conduct which ruins the person in question. Offence is like an automatic weapon – once you pull the trigger, it keeps firing. It is always tied to pride and control. These are the deadly trio that cause the dove to depart. Your offence might give you a very good, logical reason why you should feel or act that way but as you yield to it, the sweet grace of the Holy Spirit is withdrawing.

Jesus said we will be offended in this world (Luke 17:1). We will get offended and hurt. But what hurts the Holy Spirit’s feelings is when we hold on to our hurt feelings and develop theories, gossip, switch churches, and become people who hold on to toxic emotions. When we allow these toxic emotions and keep them in our hearts, they become deep seated bitterness.

Bitterness

Bitterness is different from offence. Betrayal is what people do to you. Bitterness is what you do to yourself. Bitterness is internal, betrayal is external. Anybody can be betrayed but bitterness is optional. When you are not a believer in Christ, it is so easy to fall into that choice. A Spirit filled believer needs to understand that it breaks the Holy Spirit’s heart when we hold on to bitterness.

Learning To Forgive

When you release forgiveness to someone who wronged you, you are not setting them free, you are setting your future free. When you stay in that state of bitterness and unforgiveness, the person hurt is actually you. Holding unforgiveness is like drinking rat poison and hoping a rat dies from it.

Whoever chooses to live by unforgiveness should always dig two graves – one for your enemies and one for yourself. We all encounter these feelings but when we permit them to stay and grow, they push away intimacy with the Holy Spirit. You may still read the Bible and go to church but if you are holding onto the past, the Holy Spirit cannot be released to flow freely in your life. I encourage you today to let go and let God. The Holy Spirit wants to possess you so powerfully but He cannot possess a vessel that is filled with toxic emotions. You need to keep your heart pure for the Holy Spirit.

Put Away Evil Speaking

The Holy Spirit is grieved when our speech is morally rotten.

“Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.”

Ephesians 4:29

We live in a generation where we have influencers and Christians who are teaching that it is cool to swear and curse. They allow all kinds of gutter language come out of their mouths because they advocate for the extreme of Christian liberty. I call this greasy grace. It is not scriptural. What is the first thing the Holy Spirit does when He fills us – we speak in other tongues. If your tongue is not cleansed, the Holy Spirit is grieved. When Isaiah came into the presence of God, the first thing he noticed was that his tongue was unclean. This falls into three categories.

Cursing

The Bible says when Peter denied Jesus, he cursed and swore. That was the state of somebody who denied Jesus. Anybody who allows cursing to come out of their mouths already has something broken in their relationship with God. Those who use profane language lack the vocabulary to express themselves without resorting to gutter language. No Christian should be guilty of such unbecoming talk. The Holy Spirit gives us self-control and when I am angry, Christ’s name should not be blasphemed. Abort those thoughts quickly in your head and don’t give birth to them by speaking them out of your mouth.

If you are struggling with cursing, I want to invite you to surrender your tongue to the Holy Spirit. If you excuse it and say you are just expressing yourself, the Bible says this grieves the Holy Spirit.

Lying And Exaggerating

Lying is like a snowball effect. The longer it is rolled on the ground, the larger it becomes, (Martin Luther). Lying is deceit. Deceit often requires sufficient truth to make something seem realistic, valid, or appear true while in reality, it is not. Partial truth is not truth but a little lie. Exaggeration is not a mistake; it is a lie. This happens among Christians and in churches – we flat out exaggerate and lie.

“I have asked the Lord to let me never tell a story except the way it happened. I have realised that God will never bless exaggeration.

Smith Wigglesworth

When you exaggerate, or present a half-truth, you align yourself with the father of lies. Sometimes, it is easier to just add something to the story to make it or yourself feel better. Remember, the Holy Spirit’s name is the Spirit of Truth. He honors and loves the truth. It is better to be small in man’s eyes and big in the eyes of the Holy Spirit than to exaggerate and hurt the Holy Spirit. Let us purpose in our hearts and ask the Holy Spirit for the grace to always speak the truth, wherever we go.

Harsh Speech

“Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one.”

Colossians 4:6

Unseasoned words that hurt people also hurt the Holy Spirit. Click To Tweet

Saying things the way they are and ‘being real’ in our culture is popular and sells. The Bible doesn’t give us the permission to say things the way they are. Some of us don’t like food that doesn’t have the proper seasoning in it. The Lord gives us a strong instruction here that we are not to present things the way they are; we cannot sugar-coat it – we have to salt it.

The world says it how it is and also sugar – coats things. But Christians should speak with a sense of the grace of God in our words. The way it is often hurts – we should give more grace than that. Even if we are correcting or reproving somebody, we cannot do it raw; it must be correctly seasoned with grace. The person might have messed up but they are not a mess. That is grace. The Holy Spirit is honored when I tell somebody something that is seasoned with salt, which is grace.

Rudeness To People Offends God

We grieve the Holy Spirit when we are rude to people (Ephesians 4:32). A dove is a characteristic of the Holy Spirit, it is not a description. Being gentle as a lamb is a characteristic of Jesus, not a description of Jesus. I heard a statement which stuck with me about this. If you want to have the presence of the dove, you need to have the nature of the lamb. The reason why the Holy Spirit not only descended but also remained on Jesus was His nature was not rude. Jesus is not rude, snappy, impulsive, impatient or harsh.

The scriptures say Jesus did not break a bruised reed. That is talking about people, not plants. You encounter people who are ‘bruised’ as the Scripture describes them. They vent on you. They act out of their brokenness and can be harsh to you unfairly. Instead of replying harshly and breaking them down, you can come with understanding that they are hurting. The dove of the Holy Spirit is not going to descend and remain on a bull, a goat, or a wild animal. For the Holy Spirit to remain upon us, there has to be a pursuit of kindness, humility, goodness, and forgiveness.

Being meek is not being weak; it is being strong under control. Click To Tweet

The holy Spirit is deeply affected by how we treat people. He loves people so much. When He sees injustice or that somebody becomes harsh and loses tenderness in their heart, He is greived. They could even say all the right things just with the wrong attitude. and that will break His heart.

Rethink Your Attitude Towards What Hurts The Holy Spirit

It is not always just the things we think it is. Do you harbor offence, bitterness, grudges or unforgiveness towards somebody and justify it because they never apologized? Is your mouth glorifying Christ? Do you have a tendency to lie or exaggerate or be harsh? Do you lack tenderness, kindness, and a giving spirit towards other human beings? When you find the way of the cross, taking the highway instead of the shortcut, you begin to experience peace. Who gives this rest? The Holy Spirit. When He rests inside us, we rest. When He doesn’t find rest in us because of how we live, speak, and respond, He withdraws and His rest and peace withdraw with Him. Many people blame demons for what their own nasty character is responsible for causing. We have a role to play.

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