God the Holy Spirit is experiential, not theoretical. He resides inside me objectively and guides me away from my subjective thoughts, feelings, and desires by His inner prompting. He draws my focus away from myself by keeping my heart ablaze with love and adoration for Jesus.
The Holy Spirit flows from deep within me like rivers of living water. He delights me with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
The more I surrender to and obey the Holy Spirit, the more He gives me amazing gifts. At various times, He has given me a word of knowledge, a word of wisdom, faith, healing, miracles, prophetic words, the ability to recognize spirits, and the ability to pray in unknown languages and even to interpret them.
I have often been in Christ-focused meetings where the Spirit of God releases various gifts through different people as they minister to one another. When that happens, awe fills the room.
The Bible tells me not to quench the Holy Spirit. If I’m not careful, it’s very easy for me to ignore the God the Spirit and do what I want instead of what He is prompting me to do.
It’s easy to shut down the Spirit’s inner flow. Avoiding that requires me to make ongoing conscious decisions to deny myself, take up my cross daily, and be Spirit-led rather than being led by my own subjectivity.
I believe a Spirit-led lifestyle is gracefully available to anyone willing to begin faithfully listening to, following, and obeying God’s still small inner voice. Will you?
Self-focus is
A ball and chain.
It is a loss
And not a gain.
It keeps us from
God’s inner reign
And makes our brain
And our feelings,
Our ruling kings,
Trapping our heart
Inside great pain.
