Day 29 -We can grieve him

Day 29!

Before we get started today, I’d love for you to head over to the She Seeks site and check out the video blog I had the opportunity to do this week.

Click here to head that way and I’d love for you to leave a comment and answer the question I posed at the end.

And y’all…I was just tickled to death to get a comment yesterday from a girl named Chelsea who actually LIVES in Hawaii! Right now! Isn’t God funny?

Anyway, day 29. Here we go.

A few weeks ago, my egroup (small group from church) and I did a short study on the Trinity. We looked at all the different aspects of the Trinity and I could really write several blog posts going over the things we learned together.

The belief in the Trinity as 3 in 1,  is really what defines us as true follower’s of Christ.

For example:

There are religions that believe in the Trinity but teach that God, the Holy Spirit and Jesus are all separate “beings”.

Other religions  teach that God is one person and Jesus was a creation of God.

And today, I have no intentions of blogging all this debate out but just simply want to start off by saying my personal view of the Trinity looks like this:

One God, who exists as three distinct -yet equally- persons: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. All think, speak and act and are fully equal to God.

I also believe that when we decided to become a follower of Christ, there is a defining moment where we ask the Holy Spirit to live inside of us. Some call this “getting saved” or “day of deliverance” and there are a slue of other churchy terms.

I call it, the day I decided to follow Christ. Simple enough.

Ok, moving along…

Over the past few days I’ve walked through some trying issues. While I’m sure it would make a juicy blog post to write all those issues out…I’m confident our blogs should never be venting sessions.

But let’s just say, trying issues don’t always bring out the best in me. [smile]

And the other night I was having one of those nights where there was a lot of tossing and turning with not a lot of sleeping. There was a lot of crying out to God, “Why?” and “Are you going to do something about this?” and even, “Lord, this is just so messed up!”

Truth be told, I was ticked.

And while I believe it is ok for us to be ticked, its not ok for us to sin in our ticking off mode. [Psalm 4:4]

At one point in the midst of the tossing and turning restless night,  I felt the Holy Spirit move through me so strongly and press on my soul this statement:

Do not grieve me.

See, there’s this verse in Ephesians 4:30 that says, “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

And during the egroup short study of the Trinity, it was this aspect of God that stung me the most.

The fact that we can…grieve…God.

Dictionary.com gives this definition of grieve:

“to feel or cause to feel great sorrow or distress”

To know that in my sin, I have the ability to cause the Holy Spirit to feel this way isn’t something I can just shrug off.

It left me feeling so numb. I just laid there and apologized to God over and over.

But thankfully God is very close to the broken down Jesus girls. In fact, his grace is what causes us to be able to experience that deep down deliverance from our sins.

So for me, learning to not grieve the Holy Spirit looks a lot like this right now:

Keep your mouth shut, your head down and your heart clear.

When tempted to vent my anger, keep my mouth shut.

When tempted to seek justice for situations I see as wrong, keep my head down. Humbled is where God wants me. He is God, he sees it all.

When tempted to toss and turn all night with yuck filling my heart, clear it out. Confess it and rest it.

No matter how life looks day by day, I don’t want to grieve my God. He’s to good, to amazing and has done to much for this once very lost woman. He deserves all the praise, all the glory and all of my redemption story.