Article December 4, 1995 Issue

"Quench not the Spirit"

Barbara Huber

"Quench not the Spirit" is a command from the Bible (I Thess. 5:19). As I was studying Bible references on Spirit one day, this verse spoke to me with new urgency. I knew the familiar use of the word quench as in "quench one's thirst" was not what was meant here. One dictionary gave "to suppress or stifle" as a meaning for quench.

I asked myself how one could stifle or suppress Spirit, God, and the thought came, "Anytime you believe you're material, you stifle Spirit. When you believe disease is a real condition, you stifle Spirit. When you think you lack good, you stifle Spirit. If you think you are lonely and unloved, you stifle Spirit." Of course, nothing can actually suppress, stifle, or extinguish God, but anytime you think God knows or expresses in His image and likeness, man, anything unlike Himself, you are stifling or suppressing your receptivity to the activity of divine Spirit in your thought.

When suggestions come that we are merely material, subject to disease or decay, the last thing we want to do is suppress or stifle Spirit! It's the lies about God and man that we want to stifle—and eliminate—so Spirit can fill our thought. How can we do this?

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