Truth Inspires

The third Restraint we can list is that of Conviction.  Using the Holy Scriptures, the invisible attributes of God (Rom. 1:20), or the proclaimed message of the gospel the Holy Spirit will move upon the heart in His office of restrainer.  It is active restraint, in that it involves how believers act or react in any given circumstance throughout their lives.  The scriptures teach us that the Holy Spirit has a job to convict or convince of sin, righteousness, and judgment: Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you. And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they do not believe in Me; of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged (John 16:7-11). Simply put, Jesus is saying He, the Holy Spirit, will always allow us

In continuing the series on Restraint, today I want to look at the Restraint of Darkness. In John 3:18-21 we read: "He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God." Sin is a pseudo form of well-being. It clouds the mind and entangles a person so tightly in its cords that it literally chokes the life right of him; and oftentimes, the person does not know it is happening. I like to envision the forces of Hell as tentacles that are reaching up through the ground adorned with a candy-coated sweetness