Do Not Quench the Spirit

1 Thessalonians 5:19 “Do not quench the Spirit.”

When Paul is exhorting the church in Thessaloniki, he tells them to not quench the Spirit as if to liken the Spirit of God to a fire in our lives that we ought not to extinguish. How would someone go about quenching the Spirit? We could do this in a number of ways, but some more subtle things could be refusing to follow His lead, refusing to repent when we feel conviction, refusing to make time with the Lord, or allowing the garden of our minds to become overrun with ungodly thoughts. More overt ways of quenching the Spirit would be choosing to indulge in the passions of the flesh instead of working to bear the fruits of the Spirit.

I feel that I must personally reflect each day on the words I said, the thoughts I allowed to stay in my mind, or the decisions I enacted. Were they honorable to the Lord? Did I resist God’s leading? Did I choose to do it my way or did I strive to do it His way?

At the end of every day, would the Lord say that I had followed His lead? Or would He say that I suppressed the Spirit? What would He say of you?