Grieving the Spirit and Intimacy with God


Ephesians 4:30 King James Version (KJV)
30 And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.


Here is a warning I want to share:
My thesis: I endeavour to communicate with people so as not to grieve the Holy Spirit.  The words from my mouth and the actions I do either court the presence of the Spirit in me or grieve the presence of the Spirit away from me.  If I grieve the Holy Spirit that act will effectively shut me out from the presence of God.

  1. The Holy Spirit is a person with whom you can establish intimacy and warmth.  
  2. It is our responsibility to court the presence of the Spirit.  We do this through our spirituality.
  3. The Holy Spirit can be grieved away.  There are two types of people who have grieved the Spirit.
    • People who don’t know they have
    • People who know they have grieved him away.

So here is the warning:
 When you have grieved the presence of the Spirit for a long time… you no longer have knowledge, or experience that you have grieved him away.  You adjust your spirituality and your thinking to suit your experience. You are living away from the Spirit’s presence and do not realize it.  It is my fear that a vast majority of people live in this way.  They have not lost their soul—but they are backslidden.  They do not have the abiding presence of the Spirit in their hearts and lives.

How we grieve the Holy Spirit:

(grieve definition:  to cause severe mental or emotional distress, vex, irritate, offend, insult,)

  1. By sin
  2. By disobedience
  3. By harbouring an offence
  4. By not forgiving others
  5. By voicing our opinions too harshly
  6. By  being rude, aggressive, and a bully to others.
  7. By living by works rather than grace.  We offend the Spirit by trying to get him to love us and care for us.

Sin—-effectively closes off intimacy with the Father.  It’s not that His grace is not affecting our sin—but we live out of sync with God.  We are missing a close, intimate, passionate love relationship with the Lord.  Our priorities go awry. Our prayer life shuts down. Our giving slows down.  Our Bible reading is non-existent.  Worship is boring.  Church is boring. 

God is in our lives, but tucked away in our back pocket.  But the tragedy is we are missing the best thing in our lives!  We are missing that close, intimate, passionate love relationship that is worth giving up everything and everyone for!


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