Last week we talked about the Holy Spirit being a person who grieves. Paul wrote in Ephesians 4:30 “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God . . .” This was not a call to fear but rather a revelation of love. Paul was revealing to us that the Holy Spirit does not live within us by obligation or in frustration; His presence in our lives is not His job or His duty, He loves us. The Holy Spirit is “Another Helper” as Jesus promised that He would be, He is just like Jesus in every manner: same character, same purpose, same message, same power and same love; everything that Jesus was on earth the Holy Spirit is within us. This is why it is so important that we see the Holy Spirit as a person and not as a power, He is a person that desires relationship, that loves tangibly, that joys intimately and that grieves when the relationship is amiss. And so Paul’s command, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God . . .” is again not a fearful warning but rather a call to a solemn vow, to an intimate relationship and a selfless awareness. Paul wants us to understand that the Holy Spirit is not simply the power to speak in tongues or pray for the sick or cast out demons or prophesy the future, the Holy Spirit is a person, He is God, He is love, He is with us and He is within us. Paul is calling us to live in relationship with the Holy Spirit not to live in fear of being rejected by the Holy Spirit. Paul tells us not to grieve the Holy Spirit in the same manner that he told father’s not to exasperate their children, husbands not to disrespect their wives and wives not to distrust their husbands; he is telling us how to live in relationship not warning us of how to break the relationship. We have to learn to live from love rather than from fear. That we would be careful not to grieve the Holy Spirit because we are sure of His love rather than fearful of His rejection. Perfect love casts out all fear, that includes the fear of losing the love that Romans 5:5 says that the Holy Spirit has filled our hearts with. Today I want us to go deeper into the Holy Spirit’s character, to see more of Him and to not just see that He is a person that grieves but to see what it is that actually grieves Him and to see why He is grieved by these things. We have been created in the image of a God, redeemed to be conformed to the image of God’s Son and infilled with God’s very Spirit so that we can live in right relationship to God and also to each other. What I want us to see today is that the grief of the Holy Spirit is found when the Father’s children treat each other unlike the Father has treated them.