Latest / The OneCry Podcast / #177 The Spirit of Revival (3 - What it Means to Quench the Holy Spirit)

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#177 The Spirit of Revival (3 - What it Means to Quench the Holy Spirit) · The OneCry Podcast

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  He says, look, when God speaks to you, don't despise that. If you study that
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  little word, it means to treat lightly, jokingly, just blow it off.
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  So the context of this is God is speaking.
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  And if you just treat that lightly and don't respond to it, you're going to
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  quench the spirit. Yeah.
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  Welcome to the One Cry Podcast, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening.
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  The goal, accelerating the movement of God through sharing revival truth, stories, and reports.
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  Well, welcome everybody to the One Cry Podcast. I am Jordan Bowen,
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  and this is one of my greatest friends, Bill Eliff.
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  And we're excited to continue with you in this series on the Holy Spirit.
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  And if you're jumping in with us, I just want to go ahead and recap a little bit.
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  Go back and listen to these because they're really good. And slow it down and
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  take some notes because I really do believe, Bill, these are some life-changing
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  principles that are always and already there in our lives.
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  Just perhaps we're not recognizing the role of the Holy Spirit.
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  So we've covered, we've talked about who is the Holy Spirit.
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  And we've talked about that He fully indwells us at the moment of salvation.
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  So if you're a believer today, you have the Holy Spirit.
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  But then we began to talk about that we need to keep on being filled,
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  as the scripture puts it in Ephesians.
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  When we begin to understand that we have to surrender to allowing Him to rule and reign in our lives.
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  That is that being filled. It's saying, okay, Lord, now you lead, you take control.
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  It's a keep on being filled. And the reason we find ourselves in moments and
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  days and of every day, to some degree.
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  Not filled is because we probably are quenching or grieving the Holy Spirit.
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  The Bible uses those two terms that it's possible to quench.
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  It's possible to grieve the Holy Spirit.
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  And we wanted to spend some time today just looking at that a little bit,
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  what that means and how we deal with that.
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  So, you know, the word quench, Jordan, is an interesting word.
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  Quench implies that something has already started.
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  But we think about a fire that's burning brightly and we say,
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  hey, quench that fire. I mean, put it out. Stop it.
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  So the passage that God gives us on that is 1 Thessalonians 5,
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  19, and he's given these rapid fire commands to us like rejoice always,
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  pray without ceasing, and everything give thanks.
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  And then he says this, 1 Thessalonians 5, 19, do not quench the spirit. Don't do it.
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  And then he says, do not despise prophetic utterances, but examine everything
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  carefully, hold fast to that which is good, and abstain from every form of evil. Wow.
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  So what he's saying right there, he's not addressing being filled with the Holy Spirit.
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  We've talked about that in Ephesians 5, and that term is used many, many other places.
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  Right. He's saying, look, as the Spirit of God is moving, don't stop it.
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  Don't resist him. Don't quench it.
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  Now, it's fascinating, though, what follows that.
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  He says, do not quench the Holy Spirit and don't despise prophetic utterances.
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  Now, I've said a lot of times, there's this, in Christendom,
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  there's this broad range of understanding about what a prophetic utterance is.
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  Some people think it's nothing. Some people think it's all kinds of wild things.
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  You know, whatever I think or feel or whatever I ate for breakfast this morning
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  leads to a prophetic utterance.
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  Well, that's not true. Neither of those extremes are true. Right.
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  At its very least and greatest, it's when God speaks. Yeah.
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  When God speaks. So he speaks through his word. He speaks by his spirit.
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  And he's never going to violate his word, of course.
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  So he says, look, when God speaks to you, don't despise that.
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  If you study that little word, it means to treat lightly, jokingly, just blow it off.
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  So the context of this is God is speaking.
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  And if you just treat that lightly and don't respond to it, you're going to
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  quench the spirit. Yeah.
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  Now, he gives us some instruction. He says, when God speaks to you,
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  examine it carefully. Yeah.
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  Because not everything is God speaking to you. Not everybody that says what
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  I'm telling you is of God is of God. Right.
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  Right. So be like the Berean Christians who studied the scriptures to see if
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  these things are so. Right. Examine everything carefully.
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  Throw out the bad, he says. And then hold fast, hold tightly what is true and
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  what's good and what God is really saying to you.
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  And don't treat it lightly. Now, let me give you an illustration of this.
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  It's like if you, Jordan,
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  were preparing to preach next Sunday, and on Monday you're doing your grunt
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  work, you know, that we do as pastors,
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  and you're reading the passage, and you're listening in different translations,
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  you're studying the words,
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  you're at some point maybe looking at some commentaries and doing all the things
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  that we preachers do, and God really gets into your heart about this passage.
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  And it's just, boy, it's just stirring you, and this message begins to form,
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  and you realize the Lord really wants to say something to our people.
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  Yeah. You tell your leaders, hey, pray.
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  You tell Sarah, your wife, hey, pray. I really think God wants to say something to our people.
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  And then on Sunday, you get up to preach, and you are just so full of that message and so full of God.
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  And as you're preaching, and every preacher worth his salt has had this experience,
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  the Lord just moves into that room. Yeah.
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  And it gets quiet, and you all recognize, hey, God is here.
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  And he's saying something to us.
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  And as the service ends, there's a sobriety.
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  The people walk out the door and they say, Pastor, boy, the Lord really spoke
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  to me about this and so, what you were preaching on.
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  And then they go get in their car and they go home and they don't make one single
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  adjustment to do what God has told them to do.
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  Now, what happened? God was speaking to his church because he wanted something
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  to happen. It's his bride.
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  He has a right to do that, but we just despised it.
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  We just treated it lightly, and it quenched the movement. The spirit was moving.
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  The fire was beginning to burn, and we just stopped it. Wow.
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  Now, you just think about how many things have been quenched like that.
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  What would happen if everybody in your church instantly obeyed what God said
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  to them? You'd have revival. Yeah.
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  And God would do what God wants to do all the time.
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  So this quenching of the Holy Spirit is a very important thing.
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  We need to examine things.
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  We need to ask, is this biblical? Is it consistent with God?
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  Is it consistent with my spirit and other trusted godly leaders?
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  But then if God has spoken, I need to hold tightly to that.
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  And I need to do what God is telling me to do.
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  So I can quench the spirit when I don't instantly follow his word and prompting.
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  I can quench the spirit when I fail to recognize and cooperate with his activity.
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  When I treat lightly what he treats deeply, or when I hate what he loves or love what he hates.
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  He says, abstain from every even appearance of evil. Tell you a little story.
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  Years ago, and I've told this story on the podcast in 1970.
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  It was after the Asbury revival had happened in the 70s.
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  And it was during the Jesus, the beginning days of the Jesus movement.
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  And the Lord one day showed up in a noonday student-led chapel.
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  It was a 15-minute chapel.
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  And God just walked into that room and it just exploded with the presence of God.
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  Students started to come in. It went past the noon hour, one o'clock,
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  two o'clock, three o'clock.
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  All the classes on the campus got canceled.
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  It was a movement. And I was right. I was standing right in the middle of it.
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  It was the first time I'd ever really seen the manifest presence of God move
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  like that. And it changed me forever.
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  I've been forever been changed. Well, a man had come from a revival,
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  a real movement down in San Antonio, and he had shared in our regular chapel
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  and then came over to that noonday chapel and shared.
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  And so several of our students went to the president of the university and said,
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  could we ask this man to stay over another day?
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  And I will never forget this, Jordan. That president, a good man,
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  I love him, I highly regarded him at that time, but he just said,
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  no, he said he can't stay any longer.
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  And he said, and by the way, tomorrow we're back to business as usual. Oh, wow.
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  Well, I was there. Yeah. We could have had another Asbury, and it was breaking
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  out on many college campuses.
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  And yet, in my opinion, I watched that just be quenched. Yeah. It was just quenched.
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  We treated lightly something that God was doing that was really,
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  really significant. Yeah.
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  Now, we can do that in many different ways. Right. I can do that just as an
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  individual. I can do that as a pastor.
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  I can God's moving in a church and I'm afraid of where it's going or I can't control it or whatever.
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  And so I just shut it down, you know, and you just think about how much God
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  has wanted to do that hasn't been accomplished because we've quenched the Holy Spirit.
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  How much he's wanted to do in our lives. Yeah.
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  You know, just maybe it's a way he wants to give through us.
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  He prompts our heart to – and have you ever had that moment when just the Spirit
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  of God just prompted you to say, go give that guy 20 bucks? Right, right.
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  And you think, well, that's my 20 bucks. Right.
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  I was going to – and you just quench that. Right.
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  And you don't know what's on the other end of that situation and how the God may have been working.
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  And then when you don't quench the Spirit and you obey the promptings of the
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  Spirit, so many times you'll hear this unbelievable story.
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  Well, you can't believe I've been praying for $20 and here it came.
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  And it's this great story that glorifies God and meets a genuine need,
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  maybe leading to salvation of somebody.
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  But we miss that because we quench the Spirit. Yeah.
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  How powerful. And even just your illustration of coming to church,
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  hearing a message from heaven and walking out with no change in our life.
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  And it makes me think how often that can be true in my life and in the people I love to serve, too.
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  And you're right. That grieves God. You know, I've often told this story, but...
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  In 2011, I was preaching on this text, and I got halfway through,
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  and the Lord said, stop, you said all you needed to say.
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  And I stopped, and I just said, I think that's all I'm supposed to say.
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  And a missionary popped up and said, we've got to obey the Lord.
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  And the altars flooded, and that service went to 3.30 in the afternoon.
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  We came back the next night. That service went three or four hours.
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  Came back the next night that went three
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  or four hours and that went on for five solid
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  weeks every night except saturday yeah
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  and and but the watchword was don't quench the
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  spirit yeah and it wasn't crazy we weren't jumping
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  pews it wasn't anywhere it was just if i could tell you all that god did how
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  many people got saved and baptized and literally tens of thousands of dollars
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  only We came to a moment in those five weeks where I stood up and I said,
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  you know, I've wanted to say this all my life.
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  I think we're at a point, like Acts 4 says, where there's no more need,
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  where every need that we know about has been taken care of.
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  And if it's not, it will be taken care of tonight. Yeah. I just know it will
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  because nobody was quenching the spirit.
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  Generosity was flowing. The gospel was flowing. You know, truth was flowing
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  because we weren't quenching the Holy Spirit.
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  So this is where we need to live. Amen. Yeah, we do. And it's possible.
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  It's possible because he says that to do that in our lives.
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  And I want that in my life. And I want that in each listener's life.
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  And maybe even right now, as you're listening to this and you're thinking,
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  okay, I think an appropriate question would be, okay, Lord, what in my life
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  right now, Holy Spirit, is grieving you.
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  And I now listen to them.
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  What is it? And then say, okay, I,
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  I let you do the work of dealing with that in my life.
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  I confess it. I repent of it. I turn from it now.
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  I no longer want that to grieve you nor quench you. Could you take that vertical for us right now?
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  Yeah. So let's just exercise that in prayer.
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  And we invite those who are listening to pray with us about the grieving and
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  the quenching of the Spirit in their own life. So just walk us through that in prayer. Yeah.
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  So just in this moment now let's just
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  uh recognize that we are having a conversation with our lord and savior.
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  And holy spirit we know that there are things in our lives that often grieve
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  or quench you and so we want you to tell us would you lead this conversation right now,
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  and each one of us, Lord, we want to say, what in my life is grieving you?
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  And just in a moment of silence here, would you just listen to the Lord,
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  listen to the Holy Spirit and allow him to tell you what in your life is grieving him?
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  And as we hear from you, Holy Spirit, what in our lives is grieving you or quenching you?
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  What are we making light of that you've told us to do?
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  What are you speaking into us? And as you reveal that to us right now,
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  Lord, we give ourselves in deep repentance and confession of that.
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  And we welcome you, Holy Spirit, to do the sanctifying work of that.
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  In many ways, I always have to say, it's not in me to die to that.
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  It's not in me to, I need you to do that in me and through me.
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  I need you to do this work of not grieving or quenching you in that.
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  And so right now, would you just tell the Lord, Lord, I give you permission,
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  and state to him what it is that he showed you is grieving him.
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  To remove and change and readjust my life, that I may walk in the spirit-filled
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  life, not the self-filled life.
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  And we give this all to you, Jesus. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Yeah.
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  Well, powerful truth. Yeah. Powerful truth.
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  I mean, just, you know, I think so many times about the scripture and the truth
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  of God, if we would just make one adjustment.
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  That's good. Yeah. So here's one adjustment. Don't quench the spirit.
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  When he says something, just instantly obey it.
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  And don't quench the spirit and just see what God will do. See what a week of
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  that will do in your life.
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  So we're so glad you've joined us today. And we pray that you would apply this,
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  that we would all apply this and just see what the Lord will do in these coming days.
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  And I hope you'll join us as we continue next time to talk more about the Holy Spirit, his place,
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  his role in our lives, and we give him the attention and the honor and the place that he deserves.
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  Music.