What's God Done in Your Life Lately?

Quench not the Spirit. (1 Thess. 5:19)

We can quench the Spirit over a period of years, not just in one or two acts. One of the most prevalent ways is to ignore God personally while adhering to Him externally. Specifically, many older Christians (in the Lord) when testifying of God's goodness, go back to an earlier time when God really had done a work in their lives. It would seem as though that was the last time (in their memories) that He had done anything for them! Good habits are commendable, but not if they smother the purpose for having established them. So, attending church regularly and reading one's Bible, as necessary as these are, were not meant to prevent our having present day mercies and current blessings to report. Oswald Chambers hits this point hard:

Beware if in personal testimony you have to hark back and say—‘Once, so many years ago, I was saved.’ If you are walking in the light, there is no harking back, the past is transfused into the present wonder of communion with God. If you get out of the light you become a sentimental Christian and live on memories, your testimony has a hard, metallic note. Beware of trying to patch up a present refusal to walk in the light by recalling past experiences when you did walk in the light. Whenever the Spirit checks, call a halt and get the thing right, or you will go on grieving Him without knowing it.

Suppose God has brought you up to a crisis and you nearly go through but not quite, He will engineer the crisis again, but it will not be so keen as it was before. There will be less discernment of God and more humiliation at not having obeyed; and if you go on grieving the Spirit, there will come a time when that crisis cannot be repeated, you have grieved Him away. But if you go through the crisis, there will be the psalm of praise to God. Never sympathize with the thing that is stabbing God all the time. God has to hurt the thing that must go. [Chambers, O. (1993). My Utmost for His Highest. Westwood, NJ: Barbour and Co.]

Do you any current acts of God in your life that demonstrate He is with you today? Samuel the prophet urged upon Israel, “Only fear the Lord and serve him faithfully with all your heart. For consider what great things he has done for you. ” (1 Samuel 12:24). Do you see WHY Samuel urged the people to "fear the LORD?" It is based upon the fact of "what great things he has done for you." God has worked in your lives, and is still working. That should change how we view the present day.

Is your experience of God only historical? Or is it present day? What has God done in your life . . . Today?

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