Ignoring the Holy Spirit

Have you ever been ignored? It is painful isn’t it? If you are still young, you might go to a party or a weekend, and you are the only person there from your congregation. Nobody speaks to you. And if you are that age of course, you are very self‑conscious; you sit there and you feel awkward and uncomfortable. It is not that people are nasty to you; they just act as if you are not there. It is hurtful. People take us for granted. They overlook us. They leave us out of things. They do not let us contribute. It is quite devastating to people. So, we can grieve the Holy Spirit, not only by sinning, but by ignoring him and leaving him out of our thinking. I want to suggest two ways in connection with the gifts in which we can grieve the Spirit.

The first is this: by forgetting that we need him, or if you want a psychological term: a superiority complex. That is one of the dangers about the gifts: to imagine that the use of the gift is sufficient in itself.

Let me use myself as an illustration—not because I have got a big head, I hope—but because I know myself. The mistake for me would be to think that all God is interested in is the quality of the product that I deliver on a Sabbath morning; that if I could preach a well‑structured, exegetically sound, applied sermon, I have done my job. And if God is completely satisfied, I have used my gift. It would be a mistake to believe that God is only interested in what I do, in my performance; and that as long as I do what I am gifted to do, all is well. But dear readers, that could not be further from the truth. God is far more interested in who you are than in what you do. He is far more interested in what he is doing in you than in what you or I are doing for him.

So, to use myself again, he would be far more interested in how I get up in the morning, how I prepare my heart, how I was walking with him in the past week, how much prayer has gone behind the sermon, what my motive is in preaching the sermon—is it so that the congregation will all clap and say, We have a wonderful preacher, or is it so that the congregation will be blessed and helped, and good will be done to you and Christ will be glorified? What is my character? What is my goal? I could use my gift brilliantly, and it would be worthless in God’s sight; worse than that, it would be an abomination in God’s sight. Jesus just told about people who did miracles, and prophesied in his name, and at the day of judgment he says, I do not know you. You are not even a Christian. That was gifts of some kind. Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.

And conversely, somebody could come to the pulpit and preach in many respects an inadequate sermon, not very profound, not very well put together, a bit stodgy, and yet that man might be on fire for God. That man might have wet his carpet with prayers for the sermon and the people, and that is going to be far more pleasing in God’s sight than any display of our praise.

Do you see the danger of forgetting that we need the Holy Spirit? There are things you and I can do; and the danger is that if we do them well for God, we think that that is all it matters. But that does not begin to mean what matters for God. Man looks at the outward appearance; God looks at the heart. You may have a gift of teaching, of helping, of administering, and it is important to do it as well as you can, but we need the Holy Spirit.

We also need the help of the Holy Spirit in making the use of our gifts effective. And this is so important. To go back to the illustration of the preacher again: once the sermon reaches past this pulpit—unless God works—nothing will be achieved. I can work all week, I can write the best sermon that is in me to write, unless the Lord builds the house, they labour in vain that built it. So, in all of our gifts we have got to say, I cannot do it Lord. I can even use this gift, but it will not help people, it will not bless people unless you are working. If you go to encourage someone, you need the help of the Holy Spirit; you need God there with you to convey your encouragement and bring it home to the person’s heart. In everything that we do, how vital it is, do not grieve the Holy Spirit by forgetting that we need him, by feeling so superior that we say, I can manage without God. That grieves him.¹

Edward Donnelly