"And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption" (Ephesians 4:30).
There is something very touching in this admonition: "Do not rejoice the Holy Spirit of God." He doesn't say, "Don't make him angry." A more tender and tender term is used: "Do not make him sad." There are some men of such strong character that it does not cause them much pain to anger another; and in truth there are many of us who are hardly moved by the news that another is angry with us; but where is the heart so hard that it is not moved when we know that we have caused suffering to others? – because pain is a sweet combination of anger and love. It is anger, but all insolence is removed from it. Love sweetens anger and turns the edge not on the person but on the insult. We all know how to use the two terms in opposition to each other. If I commit any crime, a friend who has little patience will suddenly run out of patience and get angry with me. The same offense is witnessed by a loving father, and he is saddened. There is anger in his bosom, but he is angry and does not sin, because he is angry for my sin; and yet there is love to neutralize and modify anger towards me. Instead of wishing me evil as punishment for my sin, he sees my sin itself as evil. It hurts him to think that I am already hurt because I have sinned. I say it is a heavenly concoction, more precious than any merchant's ointment. There may be the bitterness of myrrh, but there is all the sweetness of frankincense in that sweet expression "cry." My listeners, I'm sure I'm not flattering you when I say that I'm sure most of you would be embarrassed if you thought you were embarrassing someone else. You may not care if you made someone angry for no reason; but to grieve it, even if without reason and without purpose, would still distress you, and you would not rest until that sorrow had subsided, until you had given an explanation or apology, and done all you could to placate the wise, and take the grief. When we see anger in another person, we immediately start to feel hostility. anger begets anger; but pain breeds pity, and pity is the closest thing to love; and we love those we have offended. Now, isn't that a very sweet expression, "Grieve not the Holy Ghost?" Of course, the language must be understood as speaking in human form. The Holy Spirit of God knows neither passion nor suffering, but the emotion of it is described here in human language as pain. And is it not, I say, a tender and touching thing that the Holy Spirit instructs his servant Paul to tell us: "Grieve not the Holy Spirit," arouse his loving wrath, do not anger him, do not provoke him? he cry? He is a dove; do not let him be sad, because you have treated him harshly and ingratitude. Well, the purpose of my sermon this morning will be to exhort you not to grieve the spirit; but I will share it like this: - first I will talkin the love of the spirit;In second place,in the seal of the Spirit;and then, thirdly,to the sadness of the spirit.
I. The few words that I have to say ABOUT THE LOVE OF THE SPIRIT will impel you to my great objective and will cause you not to grieve the Spirit; because when we are convinced that another loves us, we immediately find a very strong reason why we should not make him sad. The love of the spirit! – How should I pronounce it? It certainly needs a singer to sing it, because love can only be spoken with song lyrics. The love of the spirit! – Let me tell you about his early love for us. He loved us without beginning. In the everlasting covenant of grace, as I told you last Saturday, he was one of the high contracting parties in the divine contract by which we are saved. Everything that can be said of the love of the Father, of the love of the Son, can also be said of the love of the Spirit: it is eternal, it is infinite, it is sovereign, it is eternal, it is a love that cannot dissolve what cannot be diminish, a love that cannot be taken away from those who are its objects. However, let me draw your attention to his actions rather than his qualities. Let me tell you about the love of the Spirit for you and me. Oh, how early was that love that He revealed to us, even in our childhood! My brethren, we may well remember how the Spirit used to work with us. We have gone astray from the womb speaking lies, but how soon the Spirit of God stirred our consciences and solemnly rebuked us for our youthful sins. How many times has the spirit courted us since then! How many times in the ministry has he melted our hearts and made tears run down our cheeks and whispered sweetly in our ears: “My son, give me your heart; go to your closet, close the door behind you, confess your sins and seek the love and blood of a Savior.” Ah, but let us be ashamed to say it, how many times have we hurt him! How we resisted him when we were in a state of irretrievability! We have extinguished the spirit; he fought with us, but we fought against him. But blessed be his beloved name, and may he have everlasting songs for him, he would not let us go! We would not be saved, but he would save us. We tried to throw ourselves into the fire, but he tried to pull us out of the fire. We would throw ourselves out of the abyss, but he fought with us and sustained us; he would not allow us to destroy our souls. Oh, how we have mistreated him, how we have undone his advice! How we have despised and mocked him! How we have despised the order that would lead us to Christ! How we have broken that sacred cord that gently drew us to Jesus and his Cross! I am sure, my brothers, by remembering the continuous struggles of the Spirit with you, you must be awakened to love it. How many times has he prevented you from sinning when you were about to plunge headlong into the race of vice! How many times has he forced you to do good where you would have neglected it! Perhaps you would not have been on the road at all, and the Lord would not have found you, if it had not been for that sweet spirit that did not make you a blasphemer, that did not turn you from the faith of the house of God. , and he did not allow you to be assiduous to become servants in the dens of vice, but he held you tight and held you down with bit and bit, as it were. Although you were like an ox that was not used to the yoke, he did not let you pass. Although you fought against him, he would not put the reins around your neck, but he said: “I will have it, I will have it against his will; I will change his heart, I will not let him go until I have turned him into a trophy of my great power to save him." And then, my brothers, think of the love of the Spirit:
"Take care of time, the piece of land,
Where did Jesus meet you?
Where he first held your hand
The love of your boyfriend, how sweet!
Ah, then in that blessed hour, dear memory, was it not the Holy Spirit who led you to Jesus? Do you remember the love of the Spirit when, after quickening you, he took you aside and showed you Jesus on the tree? Who was it that opened our blind eye to see a dying Savior? Who was it that opened your deaf ear to hear the voice of forgiving love? Who opened your bent and paralyzed hand to receive the signs of the grace of a Redeemer? Who was it that broke your hard heart and prepared the way for the Redeemer to enter and dwell in it? Oh! He was that precious spirit, that same spirit to which you had done so much despite what you had resisted in the days of your flesh! What a mercy it was that he did not say: "I will swear in my anger that they will not enter my rest, for they have tormented me, and I will take my everlasting flight from them." or like this: "Ephraim is associated with idols, I'll leave him alone!" And since then, my brothers, how the Spirit has shown his love for you and me. It is not only in his first efforts and then in his divine animations; but after all, how much we owe to his instruction. We were tedious scholars with the Word before us, plain and simple, so that the one who reads, reads, and the one who reads, understands, but how little part of his Word has our memory retained, how little progress has been made in it, the school of God. Grace! We are still learners, unstable, weak and prone to slipping, but what a blessed teacher we had! Has He not led us into many truths and taken from the things of Christ and applied them to us? Oh! When I think about how stupid I've been, I'm surprised he didn't give up on me. When I think about how foolish I would have been when he had taught me the things of the kingdom of God, I marvel that he was so patient with me. Is it a miracle that Jesus became a baby? Is it not just as wonderful that the Spirit of the living God becomes a teacher of children? It is a miracle that Jesus lays down in a manger; Is it not an equally great wonder that the Holy Spirit should become an usher in the holy school, to teach fools and make them wise? It was condescension that brought the Savior to the cross, but is it not the same condescension that brings down the mighty Spirit of grace to dwell with the rebellious and wayward wild donkeys, to teach them the mystery of the kingdom, and they know how to do it? ? leave wonders of a Redeemer's love?
Also, my brothers, do not forget how much we owe to the consolation of the Spirit, how much he has shown you his love, taking care of you in all your illnesses and assisting you in all your struggles; and he comforts you in all your tribulations. He was a blessed comforter to me, I can testify; When all other comforts have failed, when the promise itself has seemed empty, when the ministry has been powerless, then the Holy Spirit has proved a rich comfort to my soul, and has filled my poor heart with peace and joy in Faith. How many times would your heart have broken if the spirit had not bandaged it! How many times has the one who is your teacher also become your doctor, closing the wounds of your poor bleeding spirit and bandaging those wounds with the patio plaster of promise, stopping the bleeding and restoring your poor sanity once again. It seems miraculous that the Holy Spirit becomes a Comforter, for comforting is in many minds a shoddy job in the Church, when in reality it is not. Teaching, preaching, commanding with authority, how many are willing to do this, because this is an honorable work; but to sit and bear the weaknesses of creatures, to give in to all the tricks of unbelief, to find the path of peace of soul amid the seas of tribulation, that is compassion like a god, may the Holy Spirit come down from heaven to Become a comforter to bereaved spirits. What! Does he have to bring the liquor himself? Do you have to serve his sick son and be at his bedside? Should she make his bed in his anguish? Should he carry it in his fragility? Do you have to constantly breathe into it? Will the Holy Spirit become a servant of the waiting church? Will he become an illuminating lamp? and becomes a cane to lean on? This, I say, should move us to love the Holy Spirit, because we have ample evidence of his love for us in all of this.
Do not stop here beloved, there are greater fields beyond now that we speak of the love of the spirit. Remember how much he loves us when he helps us in our weaknesses. No, He not only helps us in our weaknesses, but when we do not know what to pray for, how we should pray, He teaches us to pray, and when we "groan within ourselves", then the Spirit himself intercedes for us one with sighs. . which cannot be uttered, sighs as we must sigh, but more audibly, so that our prayer, which otherwise would have been silent, may reach Christ's ears, and then be presented before the face of his Father. aAidour diseases are a powerful example of love. When God overcomes or completely removes diseases, there is truly something very noble, great and sublime; when he allows weakness to remain and yet works with weakness, that is tender compassion indeed. When the Redeemer heals the paralytic, you see his divinity, but when he walks with the paralytic, his step still falters; when he sits with the beggar, when he talks to the tax collector, when he carries the child at his breast, then this help in case of illness is an incomparable declaration of love. Other than Christ bearing our sicknesses on the tree and our sins in his own body, I know of no greater or more loving example of divine love than when it is written: "So also the Spirit cares for our sicknesses." How much you owe to the Spirit when you were on your knees in prayer! You know, my brothers, what it is to be dull and lifeless there; moan for a word and not find it; desire a word and yet the true desire is slow; longing to have wishes, and yet all the wishes you have are wishes you can wish for. Oh, have you not sometimes longed, when your desires are on, to long to take hold of the promise by the hand of faith? "Oh," said you, "if only I could appeal to the promise, all my needs would be removed, and all my sorrows would be assuaged;" but unfortunately the promise was out of reach. If you touched it with the tip of your finger, you couldn't grab it the way you wanted, you couldn't affirm it, and so you walked away without the blessing. But if the Spirit helped in our weaknesses, how we pray! Now, there have been times when you and I have gripped the mercy door knocker so tightly and dropped it with such force that it seemed as if the door itself trembled and shuddered; There have been times when we have grabbed the angel, walked across the sky through prayer, and declared that we would not let Jehovah himself go unless he blesses us. We have, and we say it without blasphemy, moved the arm that moves the world. We have made the eyes that contemplate the universe descend upon us. All this we have not done by our own strength, but by the strength and power of the Spirit, and as we saw that He trained us with so much love, although so many times we have forgotten to thank Him; When we see that he has helped us so generously, even though we have often taken all the glory for ourselves instead of showing it to him, we need not admire his love, and it really does not have to be a terrible sin to grieve the Holy Spirit, by which we are sealed. ?
There remains another sign of the Spirit's love, namely, his dwelling in the saints. We sing in one of our hymns:
"Don't you dwell in all the saints?"
We ask a question that can only have one answer. He dwells in the hearts of all who are redeemed and washed with the blood of God. And what condescension it is that he, whom heaven cannot contain, dwells in your chest, my brother. This chest, often covered with rags, may be a chest often agitated with worry and anxious thoughts, a chest too often stained with sin, and yet it dwells there. The Holy Spirit has made the small and narrow heart of man his palace. Although it is only a tabernacle, a tabernacle and all that is profane and impure, the Holy Spirit deigns to make the heart of his people his permanent abode. Oh my friends, when I think of how many times you and I have let the devil in, I marvel that the spirit has not withdrawn from us. The final perseverance of the saints is one of the greatest miracles on record; In fact, it is the sum of all miracles. The resistance of a saint for a single day is a multitude of miracles of mercy. When you consider that the spirit has eyes purer than iniquity sees, and yet dwells in the heart where sin often intrudes, a heart from which proceed slander and murder and all manner of evil thoughts and lusts, what if sometimes he is sad and withdraws? leaving ourselves for a season? It is a miracle that he is there, for he must daily grieve over these wicked guests, these false traitors, these vile interlopers who crowd into that little temple he has graced with his presence, the temple of the Man of the Heart. I am afraid, dear friends, that we are too used to talking about the love of Jesus without thinking about the love of the Holy Spirit. Now, I don't want to elevate one person of the Trinity above another, but I feel this because Jesus Christ was man, bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh, and therefore there was something tangible in him that can be seen with the eye. eyes seen and hands touched, we think of him and direct our love to him more than to the Spirit. But why should it be? Let us love Jesus with all our hearts and also love the Holy Spirit. Let's have songs for him, gratitude for him. Let us not forget the cross of Christ, let us not forget the work of the Spirit. Let us not forget what Jesus did for us, let us always remember what the Spirit is doing in us. Why do you speak of the love and grace and tenderness and fidelity of Christ, why don't you say the same of the Spirit? Was there ever a love like yours for you to visit us? Has a mercy like yours ever endured our bad ways, even if constantly repeated by us? Was it ever a fidelity like yours that a multitude of sins cannot drive away? Was there ever a power like his that could overcome all our sins and still guide us safely, even though hosts of enemies within and without would rob us of our Christian life?
"Oh, the love of the spirit that I sing
Who requests the refund?
And his name be glory forever and ever.
II This brings me to the second point. Here's another reason whywe must not sadden the spirit.BY THE HOLY SPIRIT WE ARE SEALED. "From which we are sealed until the day of redemption." I will be very brief here. The spirit itself is expressed as a seal, even though it is directly referred to as the pledge of our inheritance. The sealing has, in my opinion, a triple meaning. is a seal ofCertificateor confirmation. I want to know if I really am a child of God. The spirit itself also bears witness with my spirit that I am born of God. I have the Deeds, the title deeds of the future inheritance, I want to know if these are valid, if they are true, or if they are mere forgeries written by that ancient scribe from Hell, Master Presumption and Carnal Security. How should I know that? I'm looking for the seal. After we believe in the Son of God, the Father seals us as his children by the gift of the Holy Spirit. "Who has now anointed us is God, who also sealed us and put the garment of the Spirit on our hearse." No faith is genuine unless it bears the seal of the Spirit. No love, no hope can save us unless it is sealed with the Spirit of God, because everything that is not sealed is false. Open faith can be poison, it can be presumptuous; but faith sealed by the Spirit is true, real, real faith. Never be satisfied, my dear readers, unless you are sealed, unless you are assured by inner testimony and the testimony of the Holy Spirit that you have been born again to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It is possible for a man to know infallibly that Heaven is his guarantee. He not only can he expect it, but he can know it without a doubt, and thus he can know it, seeing with the eye of faith the seal, the broad imprint of the Holy Spirit upon his own character and Experience. It is an authentication seal.
Below is a stampAppropriation.When men put their mark on an item, it is to show that it is their property. The farmer marks his tools so they cannot be stolen. you are his The shepherd marks his sheep so they can be recognized as belonging to his flock. The king himself aims his broad arrow at all that is his property. Thus the Holy Spirit extends the wide arm of God over the hearts of all his people. He seals us. "Ye shall be mine," says the Lord, "on the day I paint my jewels." And then the Spirit of God puts seals on us to indicate that we are God's reserved inheritance, his special people, the portion in which his soul delights.
But here it is also understood by sealingConservation.People stamp what they want to keep, and once a document is stamped, it becomes valid from then on. Now, by the Spirit of God the Christian is sealed, is preserved, is preserved, sealed until the day of redemption, sealed until Christ comes fully to redeem the bodies of his saints by raising them from the dead, and redeem the world. completely, cleansing it from sin and making it a kingdom unto itself in righteousness. We will continue on our way, we will be saved. The chosen seed cannot be lost, it must finally be brought home, but how? Through the sealing of the mind. Apart from that, they perish, they fall apart. When the last general fire burns, everything that does not have the seal of the Spirit will be burned. But the men on whose forehead is the seal will be preserved. They are said to be safe "amidst the fall of matter and the collapse of worlds." Their spirits, rising above the flames, will abide with Christ forever, and with the same seal on their foreheads on Mount Zion, they will sing the everlasting song of thanksgiving and praise. I say that this is the second reason why we must love the spirit and not grieve it.
third I come now to the third part of my talk, namely, THE MOURNING OF THE SPIRIT. How can we afflict him? What will be the sad result of mourning him? If we have afflicted him, how can we bring him back?How can we sadden the spirit?I am speaking now, eye, of those who love the Lord Jesus Christ. The Spirit of God is in your heart and it is very, very easy to become sad, sin is as easy as evil. You can make him sad with impure thoughts. He cannot bear sin. If you indulge in lustful expressions, or even allow your imagination to dominate any lustful act, or if your heart yearns for covetousness, if you set your heart on evil, the Spirit of God will grieve, for I hear it said so. about him. "I love this man, I want his heart, and yet he harbors these filthy desires. His mind, instead of running after Me and Christ and the Father, runs after the temptations that are in the world because of concupiscence. And then his spirit grieves. He grieves in his soul, knowing the pain these things bring upon our souls. We grieve him more when we give ourselves over to external sins, then sometimes he grieves so much that he takes flight for a season, for the dove will not abide in our hearts if we take disgusting carrion there the pure being is the dove, and we must Do not throw dirt or filth in the place where the dove frequents, or it will fly elsewhere, when we sin, when we openly shame our religion, when we offend others with our wickedness, tempted by example to fall into iniquity, it is not long before the Holy Spirit begins to grieve.Again, when we neglect prayer, when the door of our If the closet is full of cobwebs, when we forget to read the scriptures, when the pages of our Bibles almost stick together through negligence, when we never seek to do any good in the world, when we live only for ourselves and not for Christ, then the Holy Spirit will be saddened, because thus he says: "They have forsaken me, they have forsaken the well of water, broken cisterns have been opened." I think now I see the Spirit of God afflicted when you sit down to read a read novel, and you The Bible is there unread. Perhaps you put down a travel book and forget that you have a more valuable travel book in Acts and in the history of your blessed Lord and Master. You don't have time for prayer, but the Spirit sees that you are very active in worldly affairs and you have many hours to relax and enjoy yourself. And then he gets sad because he sees that you love worldly things more than him. His spirit is troubled in him; make sure he doesn't walk away from you because you will regret it if he leaves you alone. Once again, ingratitude tends to make him sad. Nothing cuts a man's heart more than when he's gone above and beyond for someone else and he turns around and responds with ingratitude or insults. If we don't want to be thanked, at least we love to know that there is gratitude in the heart we have blessed, and when the Holy Spirit looks into our soul and sees little love for Christ, there is no gratitude for all he has done for us. we are sad.
Again the Holy Spirit is very saddened by our unbelief. When we distrust the promise that He made and applied, when we doubt the power or the affection of our blessed Lord, the Spirit speaks in Himself: "They doubt my fidelity, they distrust my power, they say that Jesus cannot save to the fullest, then the spirit is sad again oh I wish the spirit had a lawyer here this morning who could outspeak me I have a problem that overwhelms me it seems like I'm grieving but I can't make you cry or express the pain that I feel. In my own soul I keep saying, "Oh, that's exactly what you did: you made him sad. Let me make a full and frank confession even to you. I know too many times that I have made the Holy Spirit sad as you have. It's too much on us." that this holy dove has made us cry, and I marvel that it has not fled from us and left us all to ourselves.
Assuming the Holy Spirit is offended, what is the effect it is having on us? When the Spirit is sad at first, it takes with us. He grieves over and over again, and still bears it all. But eventually his pain grows so much that he says, “I'll stop having the operation; I will leave. I will leave life behind, but I will take my own real presence with me. And when the Spirit of God departs from the soul and ceases all its operations, what a miserable condition we are in. We ask them to teach us, but we get no answer, we learn nothing, their consolation is suspended, we have danced like David in front of the ark, and now we sit like Job in the ash pit and scratch our boils with a piece of pottery... There was a time when her candle shone around us, but now she is gone, she has us on her left. back in the darkness of darkness now it takes all our spiritual strength once we could do anything now we can do nothing we could kill the philistines and make them pile upon pile but now Delilah can fool us and our eyes are blotted out and we are taken to the mill to grind. We go out to preach and it's not fun to preach and nothing good comes of it. We're going to our tract distribution and Sunday school, we might as well be home. There is the machinery, but there is no love. There is an intention to do good, or maybe not even that, but alas! there is no power to achieve the goal. The Lord has withdrawn, his light, his joy, his comfort, his spiritual strength, all gone. And then Banner of All Our Graces. Our graces are like the flower that calls themhydrangea,if it has a lot of water, it will flourish, but as soon as moisture is lacking, the leaves will immediately drop. And so faith closes its flowers when the spirit leaves; no perfume is exhaled. Then the fruit of our love begins to rot and falls from the tree; then the sweet blossoms of our hope will freeze and die. Oh, what a sad thing it is to lose your mind. My brethren, have you never been on your knees and aware that the Spirit of God was not with you, and what a terrible work it was to groan and weep and sigh and yet walk away again and without light? shine on the promises, not so much as a ray of light through the crack of the dungeon. Completely abandoned, forgotten and forsaken, you are almost in despair. You sing with Cowper: —
"What quiet hours I once enjoyed,
How sweet is his memory!
But they left a painful void
The world can never be filled.
Come back, holy dove, come back,
sweet omen,
I hate the sins that made you cry
And it took you off my chest.
The most beloved idol I know
what is the idol
help me tear him off his throne,
And adore only you."
Oh! it is quite sad that the spirit is taken from us. But, my brethren, I am about to say, with the greatest love, what may seem severe, but I must say it nonetheless. The churches of the present are very much in the position of those who have offended the Spirit of God; for the Spirit deals both with churches and with individuals. How little God acted in the midst of his churches in these last years. Throughout England, at least four or five years ago, an almost universal torpor had descended on the visible body of Christ. There was some action, but it was jerky; there was no real vitality. Oh! how few sinners were brought to Christ, how empty our houses of worship had become; our prayer meetings came to nothing, and our church meetings were mere farces. You know very well that this is still the case in many London churches to this day; and there are some who do not grieve for it. They go up to their usual place, and the preacher prays, and people sleep with their eyes or with their hearts, and they go out and never a soul is saved. The baptismal pool is rarely stirred; but the saddest thing of all is that the churches are willing to do so. They are not serious about bringing about a revival of religion. We did something, the church as a whole did something. I'm not going to put my finger on what sin is, but something happened that drove the Spirit of God out of us. He's sad and gone. He is here with us, I appreciate his name, he is still visible in our midst. He has not left us. Though we were as unworthy as the rest, he has given us a long outpouring of his presence. In those five or more years we have had a revival that cannot be surpassed by any revival on earth. No yelling or screaming, no falling or fainting, God is constantly adding number after number to this church so that your servant's heart is ready to break with joy at the thought of how evident the Spirit of God is with us. But brothers, we must not settle for that, we want the Spirit to be poured out on all the churches. Look at the great meetings that were held at St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey and Exeter Hall and other places, how was it that no good was done, or so little? I have watched with eager eyes, and since that day I have only heard of one conversion, and that was at St. James' Hall, of all those services. It seems strange. The blessing may have come in greater proportions than we know, but not in as great a proportion as we would have expected if the Spirit of God had been present in all the servants. Oh, would we live to see bigger things than we've ever seen? Go to your homes, humble yourselves before God, members of the church of Christ, and cry that he will attend his church and that he will open the windows of heaven and pour out his grace on his thirsty mount Zion on these nations that will be born in one day , that sinners be saved by the thousands, that Zion may suffer work and have children. Oh! there are signs and signs of a coming revival. We have recently heard of some good work among the boys at St Giles' Ragged School, and our souls have rejoiced; and the news from Ireland comes to us as good news, not from a distant land, but from a sister province of the realm. Let us cry aloud to the Holy Spirit who is surely offended by his church and purify our churches of everything contrary to his word and sound teaching, then the spirit will return and his power will manifest.
And now, finally, perhaps there are some of you here who have lost the visible presence of Christ with you; who actually saddened the spirit so much that he left. It is a grace for you to know that the Spirit of God never leaves his people forever; he leaves them for punishment, but not for condemnation. He sometimes leaves them to heal, acknowledging his own weakness, but he doesn't let them perish forever. Are you in a state of relapse, decline and coldness? Listen to me for a moment and God bless the words. Brother, do not stay for a moment in such a dangerous state; It will not be easy for a second in the absence of the Holy Spirit. I ask that you use any means by which this spirit is returned to you. Again, let me tell you clearly what the means are. Seek out the sin that has afflicted the spirit, leave it, kill that sin now; repent with tears and sighs; Keep praying and never be content until the Holy Spirit returns to you. Engage in earnest ministry often, receive much from earnest saints, but above all, pray much to God, and let your daily call be: "Come back, come back, O Holy Spirit, come back and dwell in my soul." I beg you, do not be content until this prayer is answered, for you have become weak as water and languid and empty while the spirit was gone from you. Oh! maybe there are some here this morning that the mind has been struggling with for the last week. Oh, surrender to him, don't resist him; do not grieve him, but surrender to him. Does he say to you now: "Turn to Christ?" Listen to him, obey him, he moves you. Oh, I beg you, don't despise him. If you have resisted it many times, be careful not to do it again, because there may come one last time when the spirit says: "I will go to my rest, I will not return to it, the earth is cursed, they will be delivered to sterility" Oh, I hear the word of the gospel before they separate, because the Spirit speaks to them effectively now in that short sentence: "Repent and convert all of you, so that your sins may be erased, when the times of refreshment come in the presence of the Lord." , and listen to this solemn phrase: "Whoever believes in the Lord Jesus and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned." the Holy Spirit, amen.