Quench not the Holy Spirit

1 Thessalonians 5:19 Do not quench (suppress or subdue) the Holy Spirit;

To quench means, to extinguish or put out (as a fire or light).

To suppress has various explanations;

It means, to put an end to, especially with force, to crush, do away with; to prohibit, subdue, to restrain or repress, such as laughter or an expression, to exclude undesirable thoughts from one’s mind, to prevent publication, to stop a flow or stream, to hold in place, to keep low…

This is the Holy Spirit. This is God. This is the one many of us are ashamed of, to display publicly. This is the one, who when God spoke over the waters when the earth was void, He moved and made sense out of no sense.

Galatians 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.

All of us have been guilty of suppressing or quenching the Holy Spirit at some point; His fruit are the reward of His working in us, or His benefits. Quenching Him, means extinguishing His workings as well. He’d be working love in us, but we refuse to forgive at some point.

He’d be working joy in us, but we quickly put it out! One time I was working myself out going hard on a person who had taken long to deliver. He reminded me that my anger won’t make the person deliver any quicker if he hasn’t made the product he owed me. I let His long suffering and peace have their way.

We’ve quenched Him when we refused to be kind, or good through generosity to people or matters He’s led us to. Maybe it wasn’t about Him showing how little you have, but to prove that He can increase your little, making it return multiplied, pressed down & shaken together!

Talking about finances, we have quenched Him when we refused to be faithful with our tithes. We’ve quenched Him when we were slanderous in tongue against our brothers and sisters, and desire?… We’ve chosen our desires over his agenda, rolling with what we will lasciviously, annoyingly wanting in excess what would destroy us, even when the Holy Spirit Himself attempts to work self control in us.

And how about His gifts?

1 Corinthians 12:8-10… for to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another [different] kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.

One time, the Holy Spirit told me to tell a certain young man that He’d receive the gift of tongues. That was a word of knowledge. A word of knowledge is a divine knowing. More like Daniel discovering the dream that Nebuchadnezzar dreamt without Nebuchadnezzar telling it!

When I heard the Holy Spirit, I refused to tell the man. I thought it was my feelings. I thought I was ‘forcing a conversation’ because I had long wanted this guy to be my friend. I quenched Him! I suppressed Him. I prohibited Him…but I forgot He was God.

He made me feel uncomfortable about it until I’d no longer hold it in! When I texted the young man, tears filled his eyes. He said he had desired that gift for some time now, but he had been on the verge of giving up.

In less than two weeks, he had received it! That was my scenario. How about yours? Maybe God has asked you to walk to a person and lay hands on them. In your obedience would come the miracle to that certain so-and-so, but you brushed it off perhaps, and prevented a miracle from happening!

O how selfish!

Other times we (I) have felt a bubbling in our lips. Prophecy over something was brewing! But maybe it sounded too crazy or somewhat impossible, and so we ‘stopped the flow’! We subdued and suppressed the Holy Spirit—God Himself!

How dare we stop God, the maker of all the earth, and the sky and the heavens!

But we can’t! We can’t stop Him. Jonah tried to flee, but God chased Him down. Saul tried to go slaughter some thousand more christians, but God stopped Him, yet Saul couldn’t stop God!

If a man or a woman is submitted unto God, quenching the Holy Spirit will be hard. God is not only a lover or a sweet father. He is also ‘Lord’; The Lord of Lords! We are the Lords, and what that means is; when a command is issued, when He seeks to complete a work in us, He’ll fulfill it! He works in us both to will and to do.

Personally my experience has been ‘delaying Him’, like the example I gave of the young man. Though I delayed Him, in His mercy and grace, He still allowed me not to suppress Him.

I strongly think, if God knows we will delay Him, He’ll calculate the amount of time we’ll cause in the delay, and place it in the grand scheme of things. Ha-Ha. He’s wise, duh! He’ll see that you might delay for a week to send that prophecy, so He’ll bring it a week early, so that even if you feel you delayed, in essence you never did!

The other antidote I have seen the Holy Spirit use is conviction. He doesn’t only convict us of the wrong we’ve done, but also the right we are to do. I’ve found that in the smallest disobediences or delays done initially, I’ve learnt not to repeat the same in the next instruction.

From the day I delayed that young man’s prophecy, I stopped taking words of knowledge I receive for granted. I quickly text or call the person, because I know the consequences of repressing & holding in the box the Holy Spirit!

Learn today that you can quench Him in other activities as well, in which He helps us. For example; He’s our primary teacher. We quench Him when we are too busy to settle down and learn from Him, yet He has placed a desire in us for hours to just sit down and hear from Him.

He intercedes in us. When we postpone praying, we quench Him. He like me, would be bubbling with utterance, but because we are lazy or something else, we deny Him a chance.

And I’ve found that sometimes we quench Him because of our flesh! Our reasoning, emotions, zero faith, are all works of the flesh! The devil comes through the flesh, when an opportunity allows. No wonder we are told to resist the devil (resist any fleshly moves that are not in sync with the Spirit), submit to God, and the devil (& the fleshly works he easily uses to beget us) will flee.

May He teach & enable you, more and more to be awake to His working, and instructions and desires, quenching Him not!

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Romans 8:14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

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