Pursue The Holy Spirit

It is a constant necessity to ask God to keep you from presumptuous sins. (Psalm 19:13) None should presume upon God’s grace. Your decision for Christ and your emotional experience may not mean anything. Al Baker explains to us the need of keeping the Holy Spirit close to our hearts:

Watch over your own heart with diligence, for from it flows the springs of life. (Proverbs 4:23)

[Y]ou must daily pursue a personal visitation of the Holy Spirit. Paul tells us to not quench the Spirit (1 Thess. 5:19), to not grieve the Spirit (Eph. 4:30), and to be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18). Just as a man who offends his wife with unkind speech finds a wall of separation between them, so our sin breaks fellowship with God Isa. 59:1-2, Psa. 66:18). You are still married and you still love your wife when there is tension, but you nonetheless know things ‘just aren’t right.’ And so it is with God and our sin. Your sin brings a degree of separation from him which can lead to a lack of power over sin, a decrease in passion for Christ and his kingdom, and a downgrade of purity in thought, word, and deed. So each day, when you detect that God is far away from you, when you sense dryness or coldness to the things of God, then be very quick to repent, to ask for the Spirit’s filling.

[Y]ou must [also] regularly pursue personal holiness for without this you will not see God (Heb. 12:14). It is wonderfully and gloriously true that no one can snatch the believer from God’s hand (John 10:28-29), that nothing will separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 8:38-39), and that we are born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, that we will receive an inheritance that will not fade away (1 Pet. 1:3-4). (“Pursuing a Personal Inquisition of the Heart”)