May 21 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading

Devotional

We can insult a stranger, but we can only grieve someone who is close to us. To grieve means to cause pain or sorrow. This is the grave responsibility of a love relationship: a son can bring more joy to his mother than any stranger can, but he can also hurt her more than any other boy. Due to their unique and intimate relationship, a husband and his wife can bring more happiness to each other than anybody else this side of heaven—but they can also cause each other more pain than anything or anybody this side of hell.

Closer than a son to his mother and closer than a wife to her husband is the Holy Spirit to the children of God. That's why Paul tells us not to grieve the Spirit.

How do we grieve the Spirit?

We grieve the Holy Spirit whenever we go against his purpose: to devote our lives to the glory of God. He wants to write the glorious name of Jesus throughout our days. And when we do not want that, when we suppress the Spirit and insist on writing our own name and doing our own will, we grieve the Spirit of God.

We grieve the Holy Spirit if we do not want to read the Bible, for it is his book. We hurt the Spirit of God if we do not care about the church and its mission, for the church is his temple and its mission his work. We cause pain to God's Spirit if we do not want to pray, for he came to teach us how to say, "Abba, Father."

Here we sense what sin is for a Christian. It is not merely breaking a rule in the book. It means grieving the Holy Spirit, hurting the heavenly Father.

We, who are so sensitive—perhaps overly sensitive—to the hurt caused by those we love, must be more sensitive to the hurting love of God's Spirit. And we must praise the superhuman patience of God, who has not divorced us from his Spirit.

REFLECTIONS

If you grieved the Spirit in some way that's now obvious to you, bring it to your forgiving Father in prayer. And praise God for being so patient with all of us sinners.

Andrew Kuyvenhoven's Daylight, a modern devotional classic, was originally published by Paideia Press in 1977. This updated edition is copyright 2009 by Faith Alive Christian Resources. You can order a copy of this revised version of the book directly from the publisher.

A man of many accomplishments, Andrew Kuyvenhoven is probably best known for his contributions to Today (formerly The Family Altar), a widely-used monthly devotional booklet associated with the Back to God Hour. Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations for this updated edition of Daylight are from the Holy Bible: Today's New International Version copyright 2001, 2005 by the International Bible Society.