A genuine child of God who wants to please his heavenly Father will find this world a hostile place.

Daily, you are bombarded with opinions, choices, lifestyles, thought patterns and messages that urge you to go against God’s established ways. What Satan really is after, is your faith.

The Scriptures tell you that the just shall live by faith. This means that your experiences should spring from your faith. When this is happening in your life, you enjoy divine realities different from the rest of the world around you.

An example is the word God gave the Blissfuls for this season: God will provide. This word has produced faith in your heart. However, I bet you that you will find circumstances, opinions, lifestyles, and choices of the world around you trying to get you to doubt that God will provide. Ignore them.

I will show you one powerful way to do so, and thereby resist this constant pressure by the world to doubt God and not live by faith.

You find this in Apostle Paul’s charge to Timothy:

2 Timothy 1:5-7 | NIV “I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.

For this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.

For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.”

Paul tells Timothy to flourish in His faith by fanning into flame the gift of God — the indwelling Holy Spirit. (People received the Holy Spirit when Paul placed his hands on them as shown in Acts 19:6.)

In verse 7, Paul tells Timothy the nature of the Spirit he received: He is the Spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline! He produces within and around you a conducive atmosphere for your faith to flourish and produce for you. By his work in and through you, He creates a bubble around you where your experiences begin to look quite different from those of folks around you who do not live by the same faith.

Hence the reason for today’s instruction: Quench not the Spirit.

1 Thessalonians 5:19 | KJV “Quench not the Spirit. “

1 Thessalonians 5:19 | NIV “Do not put out the Spirit’s fire.”

To live a life of faith that pleases God in this hostile world, you have to stir up, fan into flame the Holy Spirit within you. Do not put out the Spirit’s fire. His active presence is so vital to your faith and dominion in life.

My prayer for you today, is that you will receive grace to quench not the Spirit.