Ephesians 4:30
"And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption."

Hi, Pastor Bob here. Welcome back to the Men of Valor podcast. The verse for today is Ephesians chapter 4 verse 30, “...Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

I know it's hard for many of you to believe, but I was actually around before cellphones became very popular. When they first came out, the phones were very expensive and if you were calling anyone outside of a small geographical area, you were charged what they called a “roaming charge” in addition to paying for every minute that you were using the phone. The phones were quite large to carry around or you could have them mounted in your car, but quite often, the calls got disconnected as you went from one roaming area into another roaming area.

However, the one feature that really bothered me was called “Call Waiting”. I could be speaking to someone on the phone and someone else calls them, and the person I was speaking to would say to me, “Just a minute! I have someone else calling…” and they would switch to them and leave me hanging, waiting for them to return to speak to me. When they did this, I always felt like they were showing me that the other conversation was more important than my conversation with them. I have to admit, sometimes I would just get frustrated and upset and hang up and let them call me back when they wanted to speak to me again. Sometimes they’d call back and quite honestly, sometimes they didn't.

While doing the bible study the other night, as we were teaching on hearing the Holy Spirit speak to us, I heard the Holy Spirit say, “That is exactly what you have done to me so many times in your life.” He said, “I would come to you to show you something that you needed to repent for or something just to talk to you about, and someone or something else would cut in on our conversation, and you would put me on hold and sometimes take a very long time to get back to me.”

"I was basically saying to the Holy Spirit, ‘I will get back to you when I feel like talking to you again.’ "

And then, I also had to repent for all the times I'd been in prayer and I stopped talking to God when my phone rang or I received a notification I received a text or an email. Once again, I'm in communication with the Creator of everything and I regularly put Him on hold to attend to something or someone else.

“As we start to understand lordship better, we see that when He calls, we answer.”

“Let us always approach our conversations with You with reverence and be in awe that You would speak to us.”