I realize that not every single person that’s living a life where the Spirit isn’t grieved is always going to experience the love of Christ to the max degree. But I’ll tell you this: You will NOT experience it to that degree if the Spirit of God is grieved, nor will you experience it in lesser degrees! You will go dry! You will go cold, and you know it. Brethren, you know it. And if you see this kind of thing in your life, you need to repent, there’s something in your life. You need to be done with it, you need to get rid of it.
Brethren, I’ll just end with this: Knowing the love of Christ is what makes us mighty as Christians! That’s what feeds the joy! This is the heart! This is the soul! You do not want Christianity without this! Brethren, Howell Harris, Welsh preacher in the first Great Awakening:
“Love fell in showers on my soul, I could scarcely contain myself. I had no fear or any doubt of my salvation.” Oh brethren, when this rolls over us, full assurance is ours. Sometimes lack of assurance and struggles with assurance, they go right back to this: Holy Spirit’s grieved. George Whitefield…
Well, more, Howell Harris says, “I felt I was all love, so full of it that I could not ask for more.” George Whitefield said, “I myself was so overpowered with a sense of God’s love that it almost took away my life.”
And I’ll end with this. See somebody’s going to say, “You’ve been talking about famous preachers…” Yeah, but famous preachers are the ones that wrote. That’s why we have their words. It wasn’t just famous preachers, it was Jonathan Edwards’ wife. You say, “Yeah, but she was the wife of somebody famous.” Well, yeah, that’s why we heard about it.
But here’s one, we don’t even know her name. An unknown Christian woman. Christ knows her. She says, “I was deeply penetrated with His presence, and stood, as if unable to move, and was insensible to all around me. While thus lost in communion with my Saviour, He spoke these words to my heart.”
Now brethren, if you will just realize and grasp, this is the same love He has for you, if you’ve come to Him in faith. It’s no different. She, with the Spirit delighted, not grieved, was empowered to hear His voice. But it’s nevertheless true of you if you’re redeemed, whether you hear his voice or not. But listen to this:
While she was thus lost in communion with her Savior, “He spoke these words to my heart: ‘All that I have is thine. I am Jesus in Whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. I am thine. My Spirit is thine. My Father is thine. And they love thee as I love thee; the whole Deity is thine. All God is and all God has is thine. He even now overshadows thee. He now covers thee with a cloud of His presence.’ All this was so realized to my soul in a manner I cannot explain, that I sank down motionless, being unable to sustain the weight of His glorious presence, and fullness of love.” There it is again, just bringing a person to the very threshold of incapacity. “I believe, indeed, if this had continued as I felt it before, but for even one hour, mortality must have been dissolved, and the soul dislodged from it’s tenement of clay. Oh, love unsearchable to such a worm; I loathe myself, when God I see, and into nothing I fall.”
Brethren, lest you should doubt this is for you, Paul was praying for the Ephesians, that they might have strength to comprehend, with ALL the saints, the breadth, and length, and height, and depth of the love of God. With all the saints! This is for all of you! This isn’t for select saints. But God help us, brethren. Don’t grieve the Spirit by which this comes! Repent now! Immediately! This very afternoon be done with it brethren! Anything in your life that is grieving the Spirit! Repent now! Thoroughly! And press on to know the Lord. Like this! Oh, may God help us.
