In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. —Proverbs 3:6, KJV

This is a wonderful proverb and a wonderful promise. “All your ways” refers to anything pertaining to us. Some people worry that they should not bother God with small things. But as Pastor Jim Cymbala puts it, “Don’t worry about bringing small things to God, for with God everything is small!” It is much easier to bring the more difficult requests to God when we are in a daily habit of bringing everything to Him already.

One of the saddest moments in the life of Joshua came when the Gibeonites lied to and deceived Joshua and the Israelites. (See Joshua 9.) Before he died, Moses had warned the Israelites: “Make no treaty” with any of the inhabitants of Canaan (Deut. 7:1-2). But the Gibeonites ingeniously manipulated their way into Joshua’s good graces, and before he realized what was happening, “Joshua made a treaty of peace with them to let them live, and the leaders of the assembly ratified it by oath” (Josh. 9:15). Soon afterward they realized they had been tricked. “But all the leaders answered, ‘We have given them our oath by the Lord, the God of Israel, and we cannot touch them now'” (v. 19). Israel had the problem of the Gibeonites on their hands for years and years.

These difficulties happened because the Israelites “did not inquire of the Lord” (v. 14). Although they had the faithful means of knowing God’s will at their fingertips, they bypassed this process and moved on without Him.

We do the same thing when we do not talk to God about everything. Everything. I have done things like accepting invitations and engagements I should have declined—all because I said yes too rashly. Often, when the time came to fulfill these obligations, I had to say, “Why did I agree to this?” I now pray more carefully over every little opportunity that comes my way.

It does not follow that every single time I fail to know God’s will clearly, He lets me do something stupid. He has graciously overruled my haste thousands of times and bailed me out—or mercifully led me along. But I have now lived long enough to take seriously the matter of seeking the Lord earnestly and constantly in the big things and the small things.

Excerpted from The Sensitivity of the Spirit (Charisma House, 2002).

As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. —Proverbs 27:17

It is sobering to realize that you may be a thorn in the flesh to someone else. Has it dawned on you that you are another person’s problem because of your particular personality? The problem is, of course, yours, but you unfortunately make it somebody else’s as well. It may be the person who has to live with you, work with you, or deal with you from time to time. You force that person to have to walk on eggshells around you. He or she loses sleep because of you. How does that make you feel? Well, it sobers me to my fingertips, knowing that I may very well be another person’s thorn in the flesh.

Perhaps you are aware of your problem, but you say, “I can’t help it. This is who I am.” You have prayed about it often. But have you really tried to get help? You are never too old to learn as long as you want your problems solved.

So when you don’t have a balanced personality, you have difficulty in getting along with people. You keep sticking your foot in your mouth. You keep rubbing people the wrong way. Only Jesus had the perfect personality. He also has the perfect combination of self-confidence and care for others. That is the ideal person: having the balance of self-confidence, concern, and care for others.

If your personality is your thorn in the flesh, then you should admit it. Be thankful if you can see that you have a problem.

A personality problem is not necessarily sin. It is because you are a sinner that you have it, yes, for nobody is perfect. And yet there is a point at which a personality problem becomes sin: when you excuse it and justify it. If you say, “Well, that’s just me,” that’s when it becomes sin. It is sinful when you excuse yourself and do nothing about it.

Excerpted from The Thorn in the Flesh (Charisma House, 2004).

Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. —2 Timothy 4:2

If we collapse the moment the Lord withdraws His special presence, it suggests we haven’t learned much. Whereas we dare not proceed without Him, sometimes we have no choice but to get on with our calling and make the most of the situation.

I try to spend a certain amount of time every day in quiet before the Lord. In the perfect world I will feel His presence, read His Word with full assurance of understanding, and go out to do my job with great confidence. But it isn’t always like that. In fact, it is not very often that I feel a great sense of God in my quiet time.

It is “in season” when God’s special presence is felt; “out of season” is when He chooses to stay behind—to see if we will put into the practice the things we learned in His presence.

It takes greater faith and devotion to pray, trust, and obey when God is absent than when He is present. I suspect we please God more by being faithful “out of season” than by being faithful “in season.” More faith is required “out of season.”

There is a sense in which we can get emotionally tied to the Lord in an unhealthy manner. Jesus sent out the Twelve (Matt. 10:5-15). Later He sent out seventy-two others, during which He was not personally at hand for those who went out (Luke 10:1-12). They needed to be on their own, as it were, to put into practice what they had learned from Jesus.

The special anointing of the Spirit is much the same. I am required to carry on whether or not I feel Him present. If I didn’t carry on, I would never go out much at all. I would also be demonstrating that I had not learned much from His presence and His Word at all.

Excerpted from The Sensitivity of the Spirit (Charisma House, 2002).

Welcome him as you would welcome me. If he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge it to me. —Philemon 17-18

The ministry of emancipation is what Jesus and the Holy Spirit are all about. The problem is, we want to control things. I doubt there is a much greater sin than deliberately leaving a person in the bondage of guilt when it lies within our power to emancipate that person.

Emancipating another person requires several steps. We must:

* Forgive that person totally by refusing to tell what we know.

* Keep the person from feeling intimidated.

* Enable the person to forgive himself or herself.

* Let the person save face.

If you want to make a friend forever, let that person save face. Allow another a sense of self-esteem, a sense of dignity and self-worth. When Prime Minister Joseph of Egypt looked at his eleven scared brothers and said, “It was not you who sent me here, but God,” he was letting each of them save face (Gen. 45:8). They had tried to destroy him twenty-two years before, and their guilt was unthinkably deep. Joseph knew that. He set them free. “God intended it for good,” he told them (Gen. 50:20). How that must have felt!

We can control people not only by guilt, but also by keeping them under our thumb in order to manipulate them. The Holy Spirit does not manipulate us—He sets us free. Many strong leaders (owing largely to their own insecurity) keep their followers under control by making them feel disloyal if they do not dot every i and cross every t as they would do. Such leaders, I believe, are in danger of quenching the Holy Spirit and robbing people of freedom. The Holy Spirit is in the business of emancipating, and when we enjoy His ungrieved and unquenched presence, we will keep it by giving up personal control of people.

We have the high privilege of being Jesus to others—setting them free.

Excerpted from The Sensitivity of the Spirit (Charisma House, 2002).

For to be sure, he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God’s power. Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God’s power we will live with him to serve you. —2 Corinthians 13:4

Being vulnerable is not cowardice or being a “wimp.” In fact, it is the opposite—it is being a tower of strength. It is what Paul means by becoming a man (1 Cor. 13:11). It is when you are so strong inside that you do not take yourself so seriously. Vulnerability means the ability to be hurt, being unprotected. Our friend Alan Bell says that love is “moving forward without protecting yourself.” Becoming vulnerable is therefore the opposite of the sin of self-protection.

Jesus was the strongest man who ever lived. He had the power to stop the entire crucifixion proceedings. He proved that by manifesting only a degree of His power when the chief priests and soldiers came to arrest Him. The Word tells us that when the soldiers surrounded Him in the garden, suddenly dozens (some scholars think it was hundreds) all “fell to the ground” (John 18:6). But Jesus chose to be vulnerable.

Many marriages on the rocks could be healed overnight if both husband and wife would become vulnerable, stop protecting himself or herself, and stop pointing the finger.

Taking myself too seriously grieves the Spirit and robs me of anointing. The issue of “who gets the credit” paralyzes many ministers today—so many want to be noticed and given due recognition.

Many a person forfeits greater usefulness because he or she can’t bear the thought of not getting deserved credit for something. Neither can many people tolerate someone else’s getting credit for something they did themselves. I can understand this. But it is a wonderful inner release—and glorifying to God—to be utterly self-effacing and to abandon the praise of people. God can trust such a person with a wider ministry.

Excerpted from The Sensitivity of the Spirit (Charisma House, 2002).

But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. —Titus 3:4-5

Gratitude may be defined simply as showing that one values the kindness of God. It is a feeling, but it is more than a feeling. Gratitude is also demonstrated by what we do; it may be a sacrifice in that we don’t have an overwhelming feeling. Sometimes we feel grateful; sometimes we do not. But we must always be grateful, whether or not we feel like it. We must do it, that is, demonstrate gratitude not only by words but also by deeds.

Gratitude shows that we set a value on God’s kindness. “In order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:7).

Sanctification is thus the process by which we are made holy. It is both a process and an experience. It is used in the New Testament, however, in more than one way. Sanctification is something that happens to every Christian.

Sanctification is progressive and is never completed until we are glorified. As Paul said, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Rom. 12:1-2).

Moreover, sanctification is a never-ending commitment. If we “got it” completely along the way, we could forget about it from then on! But only glorification will mark the end of this life commitment. In the meantime, we demonstrate our gratitude to God for His sheer grace by holy living, self-denial, and walking in the light. Not in order to make it to heaven, but in thankfulness because heaven is assured.

Excerpted from Just Say Thanks! (Charisma House, 2005).

The Lord is near. —Philippians 4:5

There are several ways in which He may test our willingness to welcome Him. He may gently suggest that your attitude toward someone is not right. If you push this thought to one side, the chances are that the Spirit may well unobtrusively slip away. You cannot be selective in the manner He may choose to come. When the Spirit departs like this, as I have been saying, you usually feel nothing at first. And yet you do feel something—righteousness in yourself that your attitude is justified.

I’ve been in that position a thousand times. I know what it is to feel so upset that they could do such a thing! Often I have conversations with myself, imagining what I will say to the other person. I rehearse what the other person did. “That can’t be right,” I keep saying. I even imagine that I hear God saying, “Of course that’s not right.” I start feeling good, as if God is on my side—not theirs. I tell myself that I sense the presence of the heavenly Dove. Wrong! If anything, it’s a pigeon.

When I welcome the Holy Spirit I must take Him as He wants to come. He may flood my soul with joy and peace. He may highlight a verse as I read the Bible, showing me something I hadn’t seen before. I love it when He applies the Word to a current situation in such a manner that I know what to do that day. I don’t like it, however, when that Word instructs me to apologize to my wife—or a deacon, friend, or fellow minister—before I can feel great peace again.

Of one thing we can be sure, however. The end result of the Holy Spirit’s manifestation provides considerable inner peace. Peace.

Excerpted from The Sensitivity of the Spirit (Charisma House, 2002).

Let your gentleness be evident to all. —Philippians 4:5

Adjusting to the Dove is not easy. It is inconvenient. It requires making major changes in some of the habits that have never bothered us before. The question is, how far are you and I prepared to go in developing an acute sensitivity to the Holy Spirit’s ways? I pray it will not be said of us, “They have not known my ways,” as God said of ancient Israel (Ps. 95:10). By not knowing His ways, Israel forfeited her inheritance.

Adjusting to the Dove is welcoming His presence. It is also giving Him no cause to leave.

How do we welcome Him? For one thing, tell Him! Have you often addressed the Holy Spirit with these words, “Holy Spirit, I welcome You”? Do this. Tell Him He is most welcome. Doing this is, in my opinion, virtually the first thing we must utter to God—together with the prayer for the sprinkling of Christ’s blood on us—every single morning of our lives.

You may say, “He already knows He is welcome.” Really? Do you not think He would love to hear you tell Him this? When you visit someone, and that person says to you, “You are most welcome here,” doesn’t it make you feel good?

Is the Holy Spirit so sensitive that He needs to be told He is welcome? Perhaps. Most people, sadly, want little or nothing to do with Him. You can prove you are different by welcoming Him! You can develop a deeper intimacy with the Lord by talking to Him about the most obvious and simple things—just as you would do with a friend.

But welcome Him to come in the manner He chooses.

Excerpted from The Sensitivity of the Spirit (Charisma House, 2002).

Brothers and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham. —Acts 7:2

If we want to see the glory of God, we should know something of the God of glory. I fear that an unhappy difference with so many of us, compared to Stephen, is that we are experts in speaking of the glory of God but not in seeing it.

What do you suppose was the first thing that crossed Stephen’s mind when it came to describing God? Jesus said that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. If you had to fill in the blank and come up with the one word, above all, that best describes the God of the Bible, what word would you use? The best single word to describe the God of the Bible is glory, and that is what Stephen said.

There is so much that we could say about this word. But the glory of God is the sum total of all His attributes, and I think after all is said and done, it comes down to two things:

* His mind: that is His will, what He wants, what He is up to—you could say the glory of God is the dignity of His will.

* It’s the very way He manifests Himself, the way He chooses to reveal Himself.

When we get to know God, we discover that the greatest thing about Him is His glory, and we want to see that glory. What a sight it was that this man who could begin talking about the God of glory would in the end see the glory of God. He fell asleep. He lost his life over it. He lost the battle, but he won the war.

Excerpted from The God of the Bible (Authentic Media, 2002).

The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him. —Isaiah 11:2

If I am to be today’s man or tomorrow’s man—should I not want to ensure my anointing by focusing not only on the winds and fire, but also upon the sensitivity of the Spirit? Yes, we long to experience the fire as well as a mighty rushing wind in our church. But I believe that the way to power and more anointing is by being more sensitive to the Holy Spirit. I suspect that the Dove is the link to the fire.

The word sensitivity has two meanings. In essence, one meaning is “the capacity of being easily hurt.” The other meaning is “the capacity for being aware of the needs and emotions of others.”

The second meaning, being sensitive to another’s feelings, is a strength. We all need to develop in this area.

But when we speak of the sensitivity of the Holy Spirit, we must refer to both of these meanings. We may or may not think these qualities are very attractive in the Holy Spirit’s personality, but like it or not, the Holy Spirit is like a turtledove—and flutters away where peace does not prevail. However, the Holy Spirit is equally sensitive to our feelings. The Holy Spirit is a gentleman.

There are two main truths I want to make clear. The first relates to the sensitivity of the Holy Spirit. This refers to how sensitive He is when He is grieved. If we can tune in to the sensitivity of the Spirit, we learn what grieves Him, how to avoid grieving Him, and how we must adjust to Him if we want His intimate company.

The second truth is the importance of developing a sensitivity to the Spirit. We must be tuned in to His active will, or voice. If we develop a sensitivity to the Spirit, we will hear Him when He speaks and thus avoid quenching the Spirit. In that way we can see the glory of God manifested in our lives and, hopefully, in the church.

Excerpted from The Sensitivity of the Spirit (Charisma House, 2002).