Rekindle the Fire — Bill McLeod

Well, it's been a great four years, almost five now, since October the 13th, 1971, when the Lord began to work in a new way in our land, back in Saskatoon, unknown to us in India for three years. A group of Indian Christian men had been praying for revival in Saskatoon, Canada.

They'd never been there, they didn't know anything about it, but somehow God laid that name on their hearts. And so for three years they had been praying for revival in Saskatoon, Canada, and we didn't know a thing about it.

And when they heard later on from a Gideon representative from Canada as to a revival in Saskatoon, they were so excited they could hardly believe it, and of course they were praising God for what he had done.

Should we say for what he is yet doing. I'd often wondered if I'd live long enough to see a revival. Evangelistic meetings, yes. I was a missionary with the Chanteyman's Christian Association for four and a half years in Manitoba and Western Ontario, and had been very active in Bible camp work some summers.

We used to run between three and five camps every summer, and we'd seen many people come to Christ, and I had been involved in evangelistic work from time to time, had been a pastor, missionary pastor, executive secretary for a group of churches, and all this kind of experience, but I had never really seen revival.

Longing to See Revival

I read about it in the Book of Acts, I had a lot of books in my library on the subject of revival, but I had never really seen it. And I used to wonder, well, is it possible today? Can God work today as he worked in years past?

And I confess that at times there was a little question mark because I'd never seen it. Never talked with anybody else who had seen it until Duncan Campbell came from the Hebrides in Scotland and shared something with us, a month in Western Canada, a week in Saskatoon, two years prior to the revival, and my heart was thrilled again to read of a great working of the Holy Spirit in his area.

And then we saw revival, and one night I said to the Lord, I said, Lord, now I can die happy. I have seen it, I've read about it before, and now I've seen it. What happens when a revival comes? Well, first of all, let me say this.

We have been subnormal for so long that when the normal comes along, we think it's abnormal. Do you know what revival is? Revival is my experience catching up to my theology. We have always believed that Christians should be and could be filled with God's Spirit.

No earnest Christian would deny that, but we've never really experienced this. So revival is my experience catching up to my beliefs, my theology. And revival, more personally, is the finger of God pointed right at my heart.

So that you can't slough it off onto somebody else. Like we often sit in church and the wife is saying, I hope my husband's listening. Well, that's for him. And he's sitting there saying, well, I hope she's listening, she's such an old nag.

And the kids are hoping that the parents are listening, and the parents are hoping that the kids are listening, and God is hoping that everybody will listen. And nobody is. But when revival comes, someone put it this way, in normal times, God speaks.

In revival times, God shouts. And people hear. And let me share just a few things we've seen happen. We had a kid in our church, a great big husky kid, played football, 18 years old, and he had a pal in our church, and neither of them were converted.

And they knew the revival, well, the revival means it started, actually. They started just as ordinary, evangelistic meetings. We planned to go for a week and a half, and we had to go for seven solid weeks, meetings every night of the week, including Saturday, and afterglows, which sometimes went till six o 'clock the following morning.

I don't know how some of those people did it, night after night, hardly missing a meeting in seven weeks. And I remember talking to a fellow one morning, he says, Pastor, what time is it? I said, six o 'clock.

He said, I'd better get out of here, I've got to be to work at seven. Well this was unusual. We didn't have long meetings for the sake of having long meetings, but there were so many people wanting to be counseled and prayed with and helped, we just couldn't go home.

Anyway, these two boys, they were on the telephone one day talking, and one of the mothers did something a mother shouldn't do, she listened in on the extension telephone, and they were psyching each other up.

Now, you know, this is just straight emotionalism, you and I know that, just a bunch of garbage, see, all this emotion stuff, we don't go for that at all. But we're going to probably have to go, you know, every now and then to keep our parents off our backs.

And this is how they're talking on the telephone, you see. But remember, we're never going forward. A couple of days later they both went forward and got converted, but the one kid, I was counseling people before the service was ended, I was off the platform in a back room counseling, and the door burst open, the people I'd been counseling had just left out a side door, and in came this kid with his father and his uncle and a couple of others, and they were just overjoyed, Phil wants to be saved!

Well, I said, let's all kneel down, so we knelt down around my desk, and Phil wouldn't kneel, he sat in a chair. He seemed to be totally oblivious to what I was saying, or what anybody else was saying, we're all kneeling there looking at him, and he kept shaking his head sideways like this, he just kept saying, no way, no way, no way!

I said, well, Phil, why did you come forward, don't you want to receive Jesus Christ as your Savior? And just like he never heard me, he kept shaking his head and saying, no way, no way. It was an unfinished sentence, and finally he finished the sentence, and this is what he said, no way can I ever doubt the reality of God again, no way can I ever doubt the reality of Jesus Christ.

And he told us then how he got through the sermon, got through the special numbers, and that we were standing, singing, I was not in there at the moment, but we were standing singing Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior, and he said, and I'll tell you just what he told us there in that room, he said, the Holy Spirit came, and he touched my heart, he tore my heart wide open, and he revealed Jesus Christ to my soul, as the living Son of the living God.

There is no way I could ever doubt the reality of Jesus Christ again. His friend came forward on the other side of the church and found the Lord, and the last I heard from him is down in California now, he feels God is calling him to be a professor in a Bible college, so much for their decision to not go forward in the meetings.

But God was working by his Spirit. A firefighter from our church came and stood there before me, before one of the meetings one night, and he was just trembling from head to foot. His name was Fred Long, and he said, Pastor, can you pray with me right now, he said.

I can't wait until the service. And so we went into a side room, and before we could even talk, he burst into tears and fell at a chair, and he just poured his heart out to God. Now he'd been a faithful member of the church for years, he was a Christian, but oh, God was showing him sin in his life, things that were grieving the blessed Holy Spirit.

Revival Bringing Confession and Reconciliation

Then, we had a very unusual situation in our church. The chairman of the music committee and a brother of his, who was the choir director, had not spoken for two years. Now I didn't know that, I knew they didn't get along.

They used to operate through third parties by hand signals, you know. I never even knew that ten years prior to that, they used to sing together a lot, they sang duets, and they were both beautiful singers, they were both Bible school graduates and all that kind of thing, both gone to Carromport in Western Canada.

But they didn't get along. And finally, one night, the older of the two brothers, they were both around 40, the older of the two brothers came forward in the meetings and got his life all straightened out, and so the next night, I said to him, Sam, don't you think it's time that you and Arnie got your differences straightened out?

He said, yes, God's been telling me the same thing, so I got a hold of Arnie. And Arnie said, well, maybe it was a good thing, so we went down in the lower auditorium and the church remained upstairs praying.

And the vice chairman of the church was with me, a man named Ken Merritt, school teacher, high school teacher, and so we talked to Arnie. And finally, Sam went to Arnie and put out his hand and he says, my brother, can you forgive me?

And Arnie sat in his chair like this, well, he says, it's about time you came. And Sam said to me, I knew he wouldn't forgive me, and he turned and walked for the door and I prayed and said, Lord, don't let him go through that door, and God didn't.

He stopped with his back to us, he must have stood there with his back to us for 15 minutes. And Ken and I turned on Arnie and we just unloaded a truckload of Bible verses on him and it didn't do a thing.

He just sat there, totally hard, and I said to Ken, Ken, let's pray. And so we called on God, and while we were praying, God touched Arnie. And a storm started like you never believe. He got to his seat, he ran to the wall, and he was beating on the wall with his fists.

He was pleading with God to have mercy on his soul. Oh, how he cried to God. And then he poured out a fountain of unconfessed sin that had been building up over the years. He'd been disciplined by another church years before and had never done anything about this.

The Alliance Church, they had disciplined him. And our church, before I was pastor, took him in, which they should never have done, without finding out why this other evangelical church had disciplined the man.

He poured out all this garbage, it took him 10 or 15 minutes. And all of a sudden the storm was over and I looked at him and he had perfect peace. And I motioned to his brother Sam, who was still standing with his back to us, and Arnie went over to Sam and gave him the biggest bear hug in the world and they stood there crying together.

And then we all went upstairs. When we walked in the door at the back, the church all got their feet and turned and faced them. The two of them came down in the front here and told the congregation what had happened.

And down the aisle, well, Arnie's wife, Gladys, she had gone from over here down to the back and over. I was standing back here and she came and stood beside me with her arm around me and she was just trembling from head to foot because she knew what this meant.

She and the other fellow's wife, they'd been fighting and the kids had been fighting. And all of a sudden when the two brothers finished their testimony and said to Gladys, Go, Gladys. And she ran down the aisle and down came Irma and down came all the kids.

And they all got in a big huddle at the front there and they got all of this straightened out. Now, admittedly, this doesn't happen in normal times, but things like this happen when God is working. We had to move three or four times to a larger church.

Our church would seat 350. We could pack 400 in. We started with 150 on a Wednesday night. By Saturday we were packed out. We stayed there for that first week and a half. Then we moved to an Anglican church seating 500 and packed 700 in there two nights in a row and we had to get out of there.

But I think it was the first or maybe it was the second meeting in the Anglican church. Very unusual things were happening, but nobody was trying to stop them because it was obviously the work of the Spirit of God.

A nine or ten year old boy suddenly dogged up on the platform in front of that large crowd. The place was packed. We had a large platform on it and we had all the young people on the platform. There wasn't an inch to move.

And this kid came running up on the platform, wheeled him behind the pulpit and we just moved back for him and he gave an invitation, an altar call, all by himself. He poured out his heart to the people.

He begged those who were not Christians to receive Jesus as their Savior. He begged Christians who were living a sinful life to give their all to Jesus Christ. And finally he was totally overcome and he just stood there crying.

And his father came up on the platform, put his arm around him and took him back to see the game. Nobody thought it was out of place. And then we had meetings where after singing one hymn we had to give an invitation and people would come streaming forward.

There were meetings where there were five altar calls in one meeting and every time people were responding. We had a ladies' meeting where there were about 800 ladies in this one meeting. After it was all over, Dr. Virgil Brock, the famous songwriter who was a song leader for that crusade, 85 years old and going strong, 90 now, and he said, Brother, we have seen strange things today.

And oh we had. But the Lord had been wonderfully working. Well each night we want to share some revival happenings with you because like Finney once said, Charles Finney, the great American revivalist, that the fame of a revival is often an efficient instrument in the hand of the Spirit of God to promote the flame of revival.

Rekindling the Fire in 2 Timothy

All of a sudden God comes near and he talks to my heart about my sin and about my need and that deep problem called self. And we want to do something about it and we can by the grace and the power of God.

Second Timothy chapter one, if you have a Bible with you, second Timothy chapter one and beginning to read at the sixth verse, wherefore I put thee in remembrance, or may I just say that Paul is writing to another preacher called Timothy, wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up.

Some translation says that you stir into flame, one uses the thought of rekindling the fire and that's the basic meaning here, is to rekindle a fire that's burned low. I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God which is in thee by the putting on of my hands, for God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind, and that phrase there means a disciplined mind.

Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.

Just that far. Our dear Heavenly Father we would ask thee in Jesus' name to bless this precious living word to every heart tonight, and right now Lord prepare us, Lord that our hearts might be open to what you may want to say.

We might receive it personally and not think in terms of it being for somebody else. Thank you Lord for drawing near, and thank you for a blessing in Jesus' name, amen. This has been called, that is the sixth verse has been called the only, the only revival text in the New Testament.

It isn't. But it's the clearest perhaps. And it's a preacher, exhorting a preacher to be revived. Does that seem strange? This by the way emphasizes the human side of revival. People, most of us have made this mistake, and I know I have to some extent at least in years past, made the mistake of putting all the emphasis on the divine side of revival and overlooking the fact that the Bible teaches along with this what we would rightly call the human side of revival.

For example, in Proverbs chapter 1, verse 23 says, God says, now this is the human side of revival. He says, you turn at my reproof, when I reprove you, then you turn and I'll pour out my spirit unto you, and I'll make known my words unto you.

Now there's personal revival. Revival that comes when I turn to God. Draw near to God and he'll draw near to you. What is revival but God drawing near? When does God draw near? God draws near to me when I draw near to him.

So in Hebrews chapter 10, the word of God says, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

That's the pure water of the word of God that Paul speaks about in Ephesians chapter 5, that Christ loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with a washing of water by the word, by the word of God.

In 1 Timothy chapter 1, verse 5, we have this text, and I may preach on it some night if God should so lead. It says, now the end of the commandment is. Another translation says, now the goal of our instruction is.

And that's the basic meaning there. To put it a little differently, the reason for which God Almighty gave us the scriptures is love out of a pure heart and a good conscience and a genuine faith. That's 1 Timothy 1 .5.

2 Timothy 1 .5, he says, when I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith, that is the genuine faith. So Paul doesn't doubt that Timothy has a genuine faith. That's not the problem. He is genuinely born again.

He's a Christian believer. There's no doubt about it, but he's cold, apparently, in some respects. I don't know. Had Paul heard this from somebody else or had he sensed it in his heart or was it a revelation that God made to him?

We don't really know, but he says, Timothy, be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord nor of me, his prisoner, but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God.

Somehow Timothy had become ashamed and fear had taken over in his heart and life to some extent, and now there was need for a revival. You can only revive a Christian. You can't revive a sinner. He has to be born again.

He has to be saved. But a Christian needs reviving at times, all right? Stir in the flame. Rekindle the fire. God puts the responsibility on you and I. We so often pray, O God, stir me. O God, stir up the church.

And God says, you stir in the flame. You do it. It's just like one time when a certain father brought a demon-possessed child to Jesus and said, I brought him to your disciples and they couldn't do anything, but if you can do anything, well, help us.

What did Jesus say? He said, if you can believe, it's up to you. If thou can't believe, all things are possible to him that believes. You see, that father was putting the blame on God and he was saying, Jesus, if you can do something, why don't you do something?

And Jesus said, if you can believe, it's up to you. I've got the power. I've got the grace. I've got the love. I'm ready and I'm willing and I'm just waiting for your faith response to me. And the father of the child saw it and he cried out with tears, Lord, I believe.

Help thou mine unbelief. And Jesus healed the child. So God says, stir in the flame the gift of God, which is in you. We sing in one of our songs, we'll be singing it here, I'm sure, some night, O Holy Ghost, revival comes from thee.

And so it does. And what Paul is saying is, Timothy, the agent of revival lives in your heart. The Holy Spirit lives in your heart. He's the agent of revival, stir that up into flame, stir into flame the gift of God, which is in you, by the putting on of my hand.

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. So Paul is saying, Timothy, you need a personal revival and what you need to do is to rekindle the fire of the Holy Spirit in your heart once again.

It is as simple as that. May I say this? First of all, I believe, and you may not, you don't have to agree with everything I say, but if you don't agree at some time, it might be good if you were to show me on what scriptural basis you do not, and I'm quite willing to change my mind.

God's people are stubborn, you know. But we do change. All right, first of all, I believe very strongly that every born-again believer has the Holy Spirit living within him. I believe that. And I realize that in some circles it's being taught that you receive the Holy Spirit later on.

And I have books in my library written by people who will tell you, you know, three years after they became a Christian, they received the Holy Spirit, and this was some great experience. Well, I'm not going to question any experience they're having, but I'm going to say this, that if you don't have the Holy Spirit, you're not even born again.

If any man has not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And the context there in Romans 8, from which I just quoted, makes it very clear the Spirit of God is what he's talking about. Seven times in Romans 8, Paul says Christian believers have the Holy Spirit.

You already have that Spirit, or you're not a Christian at all. And when does it happen? Well, in John chapter 1 it says,. But as many as received him, that is, Christ, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.

Now, join that, John 1 .12, with Galatians 4 .6. And Galatians 4 .6 says,. And because you were sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your heart. So when I received Christ, God sent his Spirit into my heart.

Seven times in Romans 8. If the Spirit of him that raised up Christ from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken or give life to your mortal bodies, the references to the resurrection of Jesus Christ by his Spirit that dwells in you.

All right. Then everywhere you go in the New Testament, Ephesians chapter 1, he talks about Christians being sealed with the Holy Spirit. Ephesians chapter 4, he talks about Christians being sealed with the Holy Spirit until the day of redemption.

In 2 Corinthians chapter 1, he says that we are anointed with the Spirit of God. And you'll notice something very significant in all these texts about the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. Never once, never once does Paul or any other writer say, some of you Christians have the Holy Spirit and some of you don't, and you people that don't have the Holy Spirit, you better seek and get him.

That's never said. What he says, don't you know that you are the temple of God? Don't you know that? And if the Spirit of God dwells in you, he said that to the church at Corinth, which remember was a carnal church in many respects, but he doesn't say, now you carnal Christians don't have the Holy Spirit and the rest of you do have.

He simply says, well, are you people ignorant of the fact that you have the Holy Spirit living in your heart? 1 Corinthians 3 .16 or 1 Corinthians 6 .19, what he says, know you not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, which is in you, which you have of God and you're not your own, wherefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.

Nowhere are Christians ever urged to seek to receive the Spirit of God, because Christians have already received him on the day of their conversion. God sent his Spirit into your heart. Not long ago, I was reading Galatians chapter 4, and again it just hit me with such sweet and wonderful force.

Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your heart. Do you know something? Knowing is better than feeling. People say, I feel it. I'm so glad to be able to say, I know it. My feelings may fluctuate and change, but the word of God never.

Sealed by God's Spirit, we have received the earnest of the Spirit through faith, the word of God says, and that's the pledge, or the down payment, God's pledge concerning the resurrection. Now, you may not agree with this, but listen carefully.

I believe that at the moment of conversion, every born-again believer is initially filled with the Holy Spirit. Now let me support that from the scripture. When God sent Ananias to Paul, Saul of Tarsus, he had just met Christ, he was blinded by this appearance of Jesus to him, couldn't see, and for three days and nights he hadn't been eating, he'd been fasting, eating or drinking, and God sent this man Ananias, a Christian believer, to Paul.

And this is what he told him. I want you to listen very carefully. God said to Ananias, now Ananias, Saul of Tarsus has seen a man called Ananias coming into him and putting his hands on him that he might receive his sight.

I want you to go. Ananias didn't want to go because he said, Lord, I've heard by many of these men how much evil he's done to your saints in Jerusalem, and here also he's got authority from the chief priests to bind all that call on your name.

And the Lord said, go your way because you've been chosen best unto me. So Ananias went, and the strange thing is that Ananias did more than God asked him to do. Read the story in Acts chapter 9. He went in and said, brother, Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto you in the way as you came, has sent me that you might receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Why did he add that? I mean, God never mentioned anything about being filled with the Holy Spirit. Oh, but Ananias knew that was a practice. I mean, in those days, if you were a Christian believer, you should be filled with the Spirit of God.

Now Bible scholars are not agreed as to when Saul of Tarsus was actually converted. At what point? Was it when he met Christ? Was it when he started to pray? Because when God sent Ananias, he said, behold, he prays.

Paul, he's praying now. Was it the point when he started to pray? Because whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. We don't really know, but we do know this, that if he was converted on the first day, within three days, he was filled with the Holy Spirit of God.

Does God play favorites? What about Acts chapter 10? Here's a house filled with a man called Cornelius and a house filled with unbelieving Gentiles. And God sends Peter the Apostle, and Peter begins to preach.

He just opens his sermon when it all got ended, because the whole congregation got converted where they sat. There was no altar call. But right where they were sitting, they all believed the message and they were all born again.

And I want you to notice this, that the moment they were born again, they were also at that moment filled with the Spirit of God again. Does God play favorites? Does God fill some people with His Holy Spirit when they're converted and others make them wait 15 or 25 years?

I believe that in some measure we are filled with the Spirit, and of course this will depend. I mean, the measure of my fullness will depend upon my knowledge and how I've understood this matter of coming to Christ and possibly some other factors besides.

But you know, I'll tell you, I look at Acts chapter 10, Peter said, As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them as in us at the beginning. What was he talking about when the Holy Spirit came? You ever notice that?

Acts chapter 10, this is what he was saying to him, to Christ, to him, give all the prophets witness that through his name, whosoever believes in him shall receive remission, forgiveness of sins. And that's as far as he got.

They just every last person that room believed it. And because they became sons of God by faith in Jesus Christ, God sent the Spirit of his Son into their hearts. Now the miraculous phenomena that attended the giving of the Holy Spirit are not necessary to the Holy Spirit's work at all.

God may or may not give some of these miraculous attending phenomena. That's not important. The important thing is that the Spirit of God came into their hearts. And all of them were born again, and all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.

Being Filled With the Spirit

So I say in some measure, in my opinion, Christians, when we are born again, at that moment we are initially filled with the Spirit of God, but due to a lot of factors, we don't stay filled. And that's why we have the command in Ephesians 5 .18, and we do have this command, and I want you to notice, my friend, it's not an option.

It's a command from God, and the command is, be filled with the Spirit. And a more literal translation would say, be getting filled with the Spirit. Why should God say this to Christian believers who already had the Holy Spirit living within them?

Chapter 1 of Ephesians, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 5 now he says, be filled with the Spirit. We don't stay filled, because a lot of things can happen, through ignorance perhaps, or other things we allow to creep into our hearts, and then we become in need of a personal revival or renewal, or whatever you want to call it.

The Holy Spirit's the fire in your life. May I just say this, 1 Corinthians 12 .13, I believe that when we receive Jesus Christ as our personal Savior, at that moment we are baptized by the Spirit into the body of Jesus Christ, and again, there are no exceptions.

If you are a born-again believer, you have already been baptized into the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. There's no exception here. And may I point this out? There is not one New Testament scripture that urges or exhorts a Christian to seek to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, not one.

Ever notice that? But we are urged to be filled. We are urged to be filled. We have been baptized by the Spirit into the body of Christ. But we may not be filled with God's Spirit, and we need to be filled.

The Holy Spirit of God is the fire in your life. In Isaiah chapter 4, he's called the Spirit of Judgment and the Spirit of Burning. That is the Spirit of Judgment, the Spirit of Conviction. He comes to me and He shows me my sin.

The Spirit of Burning, that's the Spirit of Purging. He wants to purge that sin away. God said in Isaiah chapter 1, I will turn my hand upon you and purely purge away your dross and take away all your tin, that which is cheap and worthless, the things that prevent God from blessing my life in full measure.

These things God wants to purge away. And the Holy Spirit who lives in your heart is the Spirit of Conviction. He constantly convicts us of sin. You can't sin with impunity while the Spirit of God will come to you, and often before you even sin.

When you're contemplating, thinking about it in your mind, the Holy Spirit is there checking you, trying to stop you. And when you've committed a sin, He's there to convict you, and that conviction will not leave you for years until you confess it and make it right.

And He wants to purge away the Spirit of Judgment and the Spirit of Burning, Isaiah 4. You get over to Isaiah chapter 6, verses 5 and on, and you have a beautiful illustration of the Spirit of Judgment and the Spirit of Conviction.

The Spirit of Judgment? Why, Isaiah cried, Woe is me, because I'm a man, he said, of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.

John chapter 12 tells us that he saw the glory of Jesus Christ and spoke of Him. And then what happened? A cherubim, a heavenly angel, flew to him with a live coal in his hands and purged his sin away.

First he convicted him of it, and then he purged it away. And that's what revival is, the Holy Spirit convicting you and I of our sin and then purging it away, that He may fill our life with His own sweet and wonderful love and power, alright?

Sin That Grieves the Holy Spirit

But sometimes that fire burns very, very low. So we have our text, rekindle a fire, stir up the gift of God which is in you. You see, the Bible talks about us grieving God's Spirit. How do we grieve Him?

Well, look at the context in Ephesians chapter 4. This is why Christians don't stay filled with God's Spirit. In the context it talks about lying. Now remember, Paul is writing to Christian believers, and he recognizes the possibility of many kinds of sins being found in Christians' hearts.

So he talks about lying, do not lie one to another, remember one of another, he cries. Says the same thing in Colossians chapter 3. He talks about laziness, let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labor, working with his hands a thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needs.