happy BIRTHDAY!

To Enoch!!!

Welcome to the two-oh-ish club! =P
Hehehe!

May the year ahead be filled with joy and blessings
And may God bring you to greater heights as you walk closely with Him :)

Happy birthday once again, OLD man! ;)

some biblical donts

Hey all!
Just wanna post this up so we know the Holy Spirit better! :)
The few paragraphs below are taken from a book, 'Step into the water' authored by Peg Rankin. I know it's long... but it's worth the read!!

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Don't Quench the Spirit

Oswald Chambers notes, "The checks of the Spirit come in the most extraordinarily gentle way, and if you are not sensitive enough to detect His voice, you will quench it, and your personal spiritual life will be impaired."

What does it mean to "quench" the Spirit? Greek scholars tell us it means "to stifle, to suppress, to restrain," and, simply, "to put out the Spirit's fire." We do this, the Bible indicates, in the following ways:

By not responding when we feel the Spirit's nudges - nudges to share our faith, to read the Bible, to pray, to go to church, to make public our commitment to Christ or to follow our Saviour in baptism.

We also quench the Spirit in several other ways:

1. By not using the gifts the Spirit has given us or by keeping others from using theirs
2. Not respecting our spiritual leaders
3. Sowing seeds of discord among our brothers and sisters in the faith
4. Witholding encouragement from those who need it
5. Retaliating when we have been wronged
6. Wallowing in depression
7. Neglecting our prayer life
8. Forgetting to thank God when He has blessed us
9. Stifling the preaching of God's Word
10. Rushing ahead in our decisions without consulting God's Word
11. Dabbling in evil
12. Taking credit for what the Holy Spirit is doing in us and through us
13. Acting contrary to the lifestyle that is expected to accompany the royal title "Christian"

Don't Grieve the Spirit

Charles Haddon Spurgeon gives a reason for this admonition. "Anything we do that grieves the Spirit of God must take away from us some part of our power for good," he says. How frightening! To grieve can also be translated "to pain, to distress, to offend," even "to vex". Now, what are some of the specific actions that grieve the Holy Spirit? The Bible mentions quite a list:

1. Indulging in impurity
2. Harboring resentment
3. Being greedy
4. Verbally tearing apart those we love
5. Giving in to bitterness
6. Rage
7. Anger
8. Brawling
9. Slander
10. Malice
11. Sensuality
12. Deceit
13. Lying
14. Stealing
15. Gutter talk
16. Drunkenness

Any of these things make it uncomfortable for the Spirit to be our "Houseguest" so He retreats to a corner and weeps. He is not only sad, but He is also "vexed". He asks, "Why? Why are offending Me? Why are you mocking My standards? Don't you want Me here? When you gave your life to Christ, you agreed you needed a new beginning. You were given that. Past sins were washed away. All things were made new. What happened? Why did you revert to your old ways? Why are you living like a pagan? Don't you realize the Christian life is a changed life? The apostle Peter says, 'But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do,'"

How do you think the Spirit feels when He tells us to stop participating in a particular practice and we pay Him no heed? Or when we are inattentive, even disrespectful, during a formal worship service? Or when we profane our bodies, His personal temple, by giving various parts of those bodies (minds, eyes, ears, mouths, hearts, hands, feet or reproductive parts) over to evil? Or when we desecrate His Word by adding to it, detracting from it, changing its meaning, saying it contains errors, swearing on it in court, then testifying falsely, throwing it across the room in a fit of anger, or just plain neglecting it? Don't you imagine He is grieved?