When Yesterday Demands Too Much#
Yesterdays can hold far more peace than todays and draw the eyes of the heart backwards, especially when tomorrows wave fingers and threaten.
Oswald Chambers explained when a Christian's yesterday is no longer helpful.
The voice of the Spirit of God is as gentle as a summer breeze— so gentle that unless you are living in complete fellowship and oneness with God, you will never hear it. The sense of warning and restraint that the Spirit gives comes to us in the most amazingly gentle ways. And if you are not sensitive enough to detect His voice, you will quench it, and your spiritual life will be impaired. This sense of restraint will always come as a “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12), so faint that no one except a saint of God will notice it.
Beware if in sharing your personal testimony you continually have to look back, saying, “Once, a number of years ago, I was saved.” If you have put your “hand to the plow” and are walking in the light, there is no “looking back”— the past is instilled into the present wonder of fellowship and oneness with God (Luke 9:62 ; also see 1 John 1:6-7). If you get out of the light, you become a sentimental Christian, and live only on your memories, and your testimony will have a hard metallic ring to it. Beware of trying to cover up your present refusal to “walk in the light” by recalling your past experiences when you did “walk in the light” (1 John 1:7). When-ever the Spirit gives you that sense of restraint, call a halt and make things right, or else you will go on quenching and grieving Him without even knowing it.#
Do not quench the Spirit. (1 Thessalonians 5:19)
There is no spiritual advance when trading upon yesterday's spiritual journey.
Today's Soul Snippet:
'Until a man has got into trouble with his heart, he is unlikely to get out of trouble with God.' ~ A.W. Tozer
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#Reproduced with SoulSupply edits from Do Not Quench the Spirit - Oswald Chambers