Holding the Holy Spirit – Spiritual Gifts
The word Sustenance is synonymous with Maintenance. Maintenance is the act of sustaining, conserving to make something continue to exist; to make something continue to exist.
The Cost and Price of keeping a possession is always much greater than the Cost of obtaining it. Maintenance is a lifetime exercise/activity as long as that thing still exists.
Keeping the Holy Spirit in your life as a believer is very important. Why? Because, when you don’t sustain Him with the required ingredients (food), He begins to leave you, you begin to lose Him in your life. There is nothing as miserable as someone who had enjoyed the presence of the Holy Spirit in the past and now lives his life without the presence of the Holy Spirit. The truth is that life will be unbearable for him.
It is very important to know that when you cannot maintain anything that you have acquired, you are not really up to it or ripe for it. Because if he deserves it, he will live up to the Task and the Price associated with it in every way that it demands.
Listed below and explained are some of the things you could do/exercises you could do to keep the Holy Spirit in your life and this would make you always spiritually fit.
1. Righteousness: You need to live a holy life; a sinless life, to operate a righteous lifestyle. The Bible says in Proverbs 14:34 “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin reproaches the people.” If you really want to be exalted (dignified, high-ranking) in life as a person, in everything you do, and want to keep growing spiritually, the need for righteousness and abstinence from sin is imperative. 1 Peter 1:16 says, “For it is written, Be holy, for I am holy”; how it spawns how. You are a Vessel and the Holy Spirit is the Indweller of the Vessel. He knows the condition of the place where he can dwell (live), so he gives him the prescription of how his abode should be. 2 Timothy 2:21 says, “Therefore if anyone cleanses himself from these things, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, fit for the master’s use, and prepared for every good work.”
If the Holy Spirit really dwells within you, you need to be holy/clean/spiritually healthy and sanctified – deliberately set yourself apart for Him (if you are expecting a guest, you prepare your home for his visit, so that he would find his comfortable place for him to stay more time). Before operating the verse of Scripture that says, ‘Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world’, you must cleanse yourselves and Cleanse yourselves of all filth; you must make sure that where the Greatest will dwell is clean and adorned so that when He comes, He will stay permanently and then start reproducing fruit upon fruit in your life because He does not stay where there is filth.
Note that when the temple is not holy, the Holy God will not come and dwell/reside in it. Also keep in mind that when you live a righteous life, you automatically become easily accessible for Master’s use and also for His abode and when you become Master’s abode, you begin to exhibit Master’s deeds and with this, you soon become a teacher in and for your world in both the natural and the supernatural.
Righteousness, as defined by some Bible scholars, is said to be ‘your right standing before God’. Where and how do you stand with God? This is a very critical question that no one can answer for you but yourself. It is important to know that how you stand with God determines how close or far He is/He will be from you and this will literally determine what happens to you and how much of Him you will know, have/possess because when He is with you, He He will tell you things, even things to come (John 16:13).
Always keep in mind that who you live with or who you live with has a great influence and determines your influence in life, both physically and spiritually.
When he lives with you, he will influence your life for maximum success.
2. LOVE: 1 Corinthians 13. Love is from God. God is love and whoever truly loves must have God. Whoever has God must have love and whoever loves must certainly experience God. Love is very vital. Without love, you cannot give and when you do give, it must be without strings attached. It is not the person you give that rewards you but God. Love is the greatest of the Law of God 1 Corinthians 13:13. Without love, you cannot really see God. Ephesians 3:17-19.
3. COMMUNION: Hebrews 10:25. Do not abandon the assembly of God’s brothers. When you embrace fellowship, you’ll enjoy Synergy. Getting together allows you to get things done with ease, plus you put less energy into the things you do. Keep in mind that no man is an island. You need others. God never created you to be alone, nor did he create you for yourself. Even God, the Creator of heaven and earth embraces the principle of uniting (Genesis 1:26 {come, we believe…}). How great is the result when people (believers) come together. In Isaiah 1:18, God painted a picture of synergy through coming together to both ‘learn from others’, ‘reason together’ and ‘do together’.
4. FASTING: Joel 2:12. Fasting breaks/disconnects you from the natural and makes you a spirit-man in tune with the frequency where you can hear God audibly and more clearly. Mark 9:29; 1 Corinthians 7:5.
5. PRAISE: Psalm 100:4. This is the key/access to the Supernatural. Praise also brings down the presence of the Divine/Holy Spirit. Psalm 34:1.
6. PRAYER: 1 Timothy 2:1; Acts 10:4
7. BOLD: Proverbs 28:1. A just man is as bold as a lion. Acts 4:13; Acts 4:31; Ephesians 3:12.
8. SANCTIFICATION: 1 Thessalonians 4:3-4. The spirit world can never be comfortable for those who immerse themselves in the filth of the flesh; nor will the just and holy God ever admit them into his favor and presence, unless they are first washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of our Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God, 1 Corinthians 6:11. 2 Thessalonians 2:13; 1 Peter 1:2
9. THE WORD OF GOD: Acts 6:7. The Word of God Increases your Capacity Physically and Spiritually. Your spiritual health is geared/driven by the Word of God. The Word feeds your spirit-man, feeds your soul and also drives your faith, makes you walk and live in the Spirit always.
food for thought
“Walk in the Spirit, and you will not satisfy the desires of the flesh.”