We have to stop lying!

Eph 4:30  And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.

How do we grieve the Holy Spirit?  We grieve the Holy Spirit when we choose to ignore His presence in our lives!

The conscience in each of us cries out often, sometimes very loudly, other times in a whisper. That conscience is a guiding force utilized by the Holy Spirit. When we choose to ignore the voice of the Holy Spirit leading us, we grieve the Holy Spirit.

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Let's read the verse above in context-

Eph 4:17  This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,

Eph 4:18  Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:

Eph 4:19  Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.

Eph 4:20  But ye have not so learned Christ;

Eph 4:21  If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus:

Eph 4:22  That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;

Eph 4:23  And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;

Eph 4:24  And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

Eph 4:25  Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.

Eph 4:26  Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:

Eph 4:27  Neither give place to the devil.

Eph 4:28  Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.

Eph 4:29  Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.

Eph 4:30  And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.

Eph 4:31  Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:

Eph 4:32  And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.

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Truly we grieve the Holy Spirit when we purposefully walk contrary to how we KNOW God would have us walk. 

BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF! YOU KNOW! WE KNOW! I KNOW! We can lie all we want to ourselves, we can pretend we don't know how God would have us live. We can hold onto our cherish little quirks of imperfection, we can cling to our personality defects as if they are a special exempt part of us that excuses us from behaving as our God would have us behave. We can do all that at the peril to our ETERNAL LIFE.

We have to stop the LYING! We do ourselves the gravest of injustices when we choose to lie to ourselves, lying to the point of believing the lies, doubly worse.  We say such things as - 'That's just who I am.'  and, "I can't help it, I was born(raised) this way."  We make excuses for our tendencies shrouded in evil… YES, EVIL! You don't get much more evil than being willing to lie to yourself by using the excuse you just can't help it so you don't NEED to fix anything, it's beyond your power.  OF COURSE YOU CAN'T HELP IT, but darn it, stop lying about it! You do NEED to fix it! And you fix it by letting the HOLY SPIRIT fix it, by YIELDING to the Holy Spirit, by seeking the forgiveness of Jesus Christ our Lord for each and every defect we are conscious of!  We don't make excuses, we seek forgiveness!

Do we ever stop and think that maybe, just maybe if we seek forgiveness for every known sin in our lives that we'd perhaps recognize the sin in our selves more readily and maybe,  that could be the catalyst that would allow us to  yield that sin to Christ? What good is fixing ourselves if we allow no room to be fixed? What good is taking any glory to ourselves for overcoming through ourselves? WE need to overcome through Christ, recognizing it's all through HIS POWER and not through any power of our own beyond yielding, beyond accepting Him, beyond choosing to believe.

Satan would have us despair. Satan wants us to lose hope by realizing our inability to overcome. Satan will tell us we'll never be good enough, that we'll never walk the walk God would have us walk.  He's not lying fully here either, we can do NOTHING on our own to fix ourselves. Any power we have that allows us to overcome is Christ's power, His glory! Satan would have us focus on our sins as entrapments, while Christ would have us focus on our sins as a way to find forgiveness, repentance all through Him.

Having to truly recognize the sins in our lives on a constant basis, the sins that have become what we think are an integral part of us, is to recognize our need. The shame, the guilt, the depression we feel when we admit to our sins are good things, not things to be shunned as Satan wants us to do. Satan WANTS us to call our sins good! Satan wants us to become buddy buddy with our sins, feeling lost without them. Satan is the greatest of deceivers and he will do all he can to keep us from yielding our entire self to Christ.

When you sin, you generally know you've sinned. You feel that twinge of guilt, that recognition that perhaps you didn't quite handle a situation the way you should have. You feel the anger in yourself and feel completely at a loss as how to get rid of it and you recognize the sin as it's taking place and part of you doesn't care because you are so caught up in the power of the sin, the heat of the moment. You add sin to sin and still you can't stop! You cry out for forgiveness, you throw yourself on the mercy of God, you keep seeking forgiveness, never trying to excuse away the sin you are in the throes of committing.  We have to stop covering it all up. 

Paul was a wretched man! We are ALL wretched human beings! Even the ones we believe are closest to God in following His will, they are wretched human beings in need of a SAVIOR, Jesus Christ our LORD!  

How do we grieve the Holy Spirit? In many, many ways and we are told not to grieve the Holy Spirit and the only way we are not going to grieve the Holy Spirit is by living in a constant state of surrender to Christ. As we surrender He uplifts us. 

So whenever we are doing anything we know or even suspect might grieve the Holy Spirit we have to seek forgiveness, we have to yield to our Savior, our Forgiver. We only ignore the Spirit convictions at a great risk of hardening our hearts to the point of no longer being able to feel, to recognize any Spirit convictions at all.

Please Father, please bless us in YOU. Help us to yield to You, to the Son, to the Holy Spirit! We don't want to grieve the Holy Spirit! Help us! Keep us! Forgive us!

All through the amazing love of Jesus Christ our Lord!

Amen.