Hearing His Voice #278

Do not bring sorrow to God’s Holy Spirit by the way you live. . . . Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior.

Ephesians 4:30-31

The Holy Spirit is our means of hearing God. He opens our hearts and speaks God’s words into them. He resides within those who believe, and makes His will known to us. Our relationship with the Spirit is the essence of our practical, day-by-day experience of God. So it only makes sense that grieving the Holy Spirit can’t be very good for our hearing. If we are out of sorts with Him, we can’t expect communication to be very clear.

In Ephesians, Paul gives a partial list of attitudes and actions that grieve the Spirit, and we could probably add quite a few more from what we know of God’s nature from the rest of Scripture. We are told to get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh and critical words, and anything else that doesn’t align with God’s nature; these are likely to interfere with our hearing as well. If we engage in these things, we have already been unresponsive to the voice that calls us away from them. Continuing in them tends to harden our hearts and make us even less sensitive to God. And if our spiritual sensitivity determines our hearing, we begin to miss a lot.

Nothing can separate us from God’s love, of course, but that isn’t the issue. Our position in Christ doesn’t change according to our behavior or our attitudes. But the depth and closeness of our fellowship with God’s Spirit certainly does. When we are apathetic or unresponsive to what He has already said, we are hardly likely to hear more. But when we forsake whatever grieves Him and turn back with open hearts, His voice becomes much easier to distinguish.

Spirit of God, it grieves me to think I might have grieved You. I release the junk and clutter in my spirit. Please restore anything in our relationship that needs to be restored and sensitize my heart again to Your voice.