personality. It is evident that we are dealing with a Person. Dr. G. Campbell Morgan declared, "There is no word in the New Testament that more clearly and beautifully reveals the tenderness of the heart of God than love" (Romans 15:30). In spite of unfaithfulness and in consistent conduct the Holy Spirit continually proves His love to each of us. It is because of the love that the Holy Spirit has for us as believ ers in whom He lives that He per sistently makes our heart restless and dissatisfied with thoughts and conduct which are below His will for our lives. In Galatians 5:22 we read that the fruit of the Spirit is love. It is through His presence in our hearts that this heavenly bloom appears. He who is a stranger to the Holy Spirit knows really nothing at all about the love of God. The picture "grieve not the Holy Spirit" sug gests a mother who is sorrowing over some misconduct of her child. People who hate us care little about what we do. They are unmoved by any kind of conduct. That is not true of the people who love us. They are grieved when some thing happens that is wrong in our lives. The Holy Spirit is anything but indifferent to those of us who are saved. He is very jealous for our spiritual well-being. He is our spir itual mother, giving us by birth His own life and spiritual energy. It was the Holy Spirit who con victed us of sin and gave us the desire to be born again. It was He who communicated His own kind of life to us and caused us to live unto God. What realities are here on which our hearts can meditate. We, who are Christian people, are
cerning the things of Cod. He who inspired the truths will never lead you contrary to them. Test any re ligious movement, what it is like and what it believes, by matching it up with the teaching of the Word of God. Everything we do as believers should be determined as a guide line by the Bible and its truth. We need to be aware of how easily we can attribute to the Spirit all of the ideas and thoughts that pop into the minds of some people. Just because a man happens to be a religious leader does not mean what he is telling his people is ac tually of the Spirit of God. Only the Bible can be the proper stand ard. Will your opinions stand this test? Are the things we claim to get from the Lord in line with the writings that He has given in the Bible? The final analysis should be, "What does the Bible say?" Jesus stood in the thick of battle with the devil and again and again reaffirmed, "It is written." This is the only guideline by which we can live and die. Christ's authority Himself was always backed up by the teachings of Scripture. There was no hesitation in this matter on His part. The same is our only heavenly safeguard. We need to abide within the jurisdiction of the truth! GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT We are not to grieve the Holy Spirit who lives within us. There are three scriptures which con firm this fact (John 3:16; Romans 5:5; Galatians 2:20). "To grieve" means "to cause sorrow to anoth e r." Most defin itely it implies personality. This is something possible only to a self-conscious
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