The Holy Spirit is also the Spirit of love.
If there is coldness towards the Lord, a lack of true devotion to Him, then this is like a heavy stone which makes the life more like a quagmire than a fresh spring.
Any reserve which we have, not in the knowing of God's will but in the willingness to do it, will inevitably stem the flow of the Spirit's power.
It is always the work of God's enemy to clog up our lives by introducing love of self or love of the world...
And it needs ruthless determination to remove the accumulated rubbish and re-dig the well in purity of devotion to Christ.
It may well be, though, that the hindrances arise from lack of love to our fellow believers.
We must remember that the Holy Spirit can never have free course in us and through us if we harbor unloving thoughts concerning other of God's children, let alone put those thoughts into actions.
He is the Spirit of fellowship, so that if we fail in that realm then we fail in the matter of love.
It is so easy to allow unworthy considerations to quench brotherly love...
To be clogged up with resentment...
Or to be wrongly influenced by our susceptibilities or hurt feelings.
What is more, we find it the easiest thing in the world to say or hear unkind things about others, things which put them in a bad light and somehow make us feel self-righteous.
We must not dismiss such matters as unimportant, for although they may seem small in themselves, they become the deposits which unite to clog up the well of the Spirit.
This matter of personal relationships is one in which we have to set ourselves definitely to digging out the earthiness which stops up the wells of the Spirit.
We must refuse to speak and refuse to listen to those critical accounts of other believers which would grieve them if they heard and do grieve the Spirit who is always present and who always hears.
More than that, we have to be active in positive cultivation of fellowship.
To some it is quite natural to be independent.
For them deference to others represents a major difficulty.
Sometimes they may deliberately ignore or despise others...
But sometimes they just prefer to do it alone and never seriously think of inter-relatedness and inter-dependence.
The Word of God, however, is most explicit in ordering us to esteem one another...
To submit to one another and to live and work together.
The Holy Spirit demands that the people of God live according to a team order of things, that they should be governed by a family spirit.
Anything which is of an isolated or detached nature, which fails to recognize and fully accept the family thought of God, is a check on Him.
By failing to observe fellowship we quench the Spirit.
It is not only a matter of avoiding giving offense but of active pursuit of fellowship.
Some may be wondering why there is so little up-springing from the inner well, when they are sitting back in a wrong kind of modesty, failing to bring in their own personal contribution to fellowship life and ministry.
Unkindness is not the only obstacle in this realm.
Shyness and diffidence can equally rest like a stone on the flow of life.
The only thing to do is to dig it up and move it away.
Get in, get right in, and let yourself go!
Do not always choose the back seat because you like to be left alone, but come forward in the Lord's name and give the Holy Spirit a free course in your lives.
He is well able to check you if you become too self-assertive...
But there is little He can do if your well is all stopped up with fears and inhibitions.
~T. Austin Sparks
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