Continued/Refilled/To Be Continued/Fullness

Galatians 3:1-5?

Against Sin

Through His Word

Paul presented this question to the Galatians, and then he answers for them: You first received the Spirit by believing the gospel. "So if you first received the Spirit in that way," Paul says, "isn't that how you will continue to 'receive' him as well" (Galatians 3:1-5, my paraphrase)? Don't miss that', The way we first received the Spirit is also how we grow "more full" in him. p.106-107

The more Scripture you know, the more illumination the Holy Spirit can give regarding his will for various situations. God has never brought to mind Scripture I did not already know. Memorizing scripture is like stocking myself with ammunition for the Spirit to fire as I pray, promises I can claim or warnings I can heed. The Bible contains more than three thousand promises, and I want to know all of them, so the Holy Spirit can flood my mind with them whenever he wants! p.154-155

Nothing repels the Spirit of God faster than willful, unconfessed sin. Sin put Jesus, whom the Holy Spirit cherishes, on the cross, and that Spirit cannot dwell where people treat lightly what destroyed God's son. Sin extinguishes the presence of the Holy Spirit like water does a flame. p.201

Timothy Keller says that when he reconnects with college students who have lost their faith, he usually asks, "So whom are you sleeping with?" Nine out of ten times, he says, he will see a flush of embarrassment cross their face and they'll stutter, Uh... what does that have to do with anything? Everything, he says. Willful sin makes the presence of God imperceptible to us. p.201

John Newton said in heaven, our sense of the presence of God will be constant because there will be no sin, unbelief, or spiritual dullness to obstruct or abate it. But on earth, still trapped in sinful flesh, we experience that presence only sporadically. And when we sin willfully, we destroy our capacity to experience it at all. p.201