Greetings again my Brethren. Can you believe the year is more than half over? And what a last three months the world has seen. With each passing month I just shake my head and think the world cannot get any crazier, but the world ever amazes me to the foolishness and folly it goes toward to reject God and His word. At the heart of all of this rioting and looting that is going on in America has nothing to do with civil rights, oh no my friend it is all about open and direct rebellion to God and what God has established. And make no mistake my friend God ALWAYS judges rebellion, because at stake is the truthfulness of God’s word. If God said it then it must happen. Man shakes his fist in God’s face and says he knows better and moves away from what God wants. We see this all throughout the Bible, will man ever learn?
For the last four months we have been looking at the diverse ways God knocks on our heart door. So we will continue this month looking at probably the most important knock on our hearts door and this is the knock of the Holy Spirit in conviction. Without a doubt the knock of the Holy Spirit in our lives is the most critical approach God makes toward man. The absence of the knock of the Holy Spirit through conviction will mean you have forfeited the opportunity to be saved. For it is the drawing of the Holy Spirit in our lives that opens our eyes, that touches our heart, that brings us down in ourselves before God where we will see we need a Saviour and His name is Jesus Christ. Conviction my friend is a very wonderful and blessed work of God in our lives. There are a number of verses in the Scriptures that talk about the critical requirement of conviction so let us look at one. From the transition Book (the Book of Acts) of the Bible Stephen tells the Jewish mob, “Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so doye.” (Acts 7:51) Just like the Jewish mob then today there are many people who hear the message of the Gospel (the good news, good tidings) of Jesus’ death on the cross, His burial, and His resurrection back to life (the Gospel of Jesus) and because of their stiffnecked heart attitudes they too reject Christ as the Jewish mob did. It was Stephen’s word anointed by God as a goad that pricked the hearts of the Jewish mob to rush Stephen and stone him to death. Make no mistake my friend people under conviction can be wild as animals and will do anything to flee from the internal pressures applied to their heart. The mob’s reaction: “When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth. ” (Acts 7:54) Strangely and oddly enough this is the very similar reaction I see every night from the riots and looters in the streets now in America. Conviction is conviction a strong and powerful tool God uses to draw us unto Himself. Again if we reject conviction time after time then at some point (thank God for His longsuffering) there will be a lessening and a lessening of His draw to the point there will be NO draw and we are given over to a reprobate mind. Where we know not the difference between good and evil where we call evil good and good evil. Paul in Romans writes, “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.” (Romans 1:26-32) So now tell me how important is the conviction of the Holy Spirit? Oh the number of people that reject the truth of the word of God. The choice is clear my friend. Submit to the working of the Holy Spirit as He convicts us of our waywardness and sin or resist His work and be lost for all eternity. A most serious decision we must make.
Next month we will look at God’s knocking as we look at the last knock His supernatural phenomena. Do you hear Him calling? Please know God is calling. Walter Beuttler said if you build God a temple He will inhabit it. Have you built God a temple? If you do He will abide and wait for you.
Written by David Stahl
