Imagine the horror, after one day: their Son, which they’ve been entrusted with, is gone! Any parent that has lost a child knows the freak-out feelings you get around that.
It's easy to leave kids behind. I know that - we've had enough of that in our own life. Then when the moment of realisation comes to you, you've got this panic!
It took them three days to find Him again! There's the lesson: it's easy to become so familiar with God (and the things of God), that He draws back from you - and you didn't know it.
It can take some time to re-establish yourself in that place of connection again. It took them three days; but the worst part is: they didn't know it.
Imagine: you're selected, above everyone, to bring in the saviour of the world in - then you lost Him! Imagine the prayers on that day...
Father: we lost Him! We don't know where He's gone! That's horrendous isn't it? That's a real lesson to us; and of course: Jesus and the Holy Spirit are one; so it's easy to lose the presence of God. So they lost Him because of familiarity. They just supposed He was there.
4) Luke 19:41. “Jesus drew near to Jerusalem, and as He came near the city, He wept over it, saying: if you had known even this day the things that make for your peace! But now they're hidden from your eyes”.
Then it says: “these days will come, when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, level you to the ground, your children within you on the ground; and they'll not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation”.
Israel grieved the Holy Spirit, because when God was moving, they were so stuck in tradition, that they held on to the old, and did not welcome the new.
That's historical, that happened - and if you have a look at movements of churches, when God's started to do something different - tradition, and holding on to what they valued from their past - they didn't move with God into the new things.
That can happen to any church, any group of churches. History is full of movements, that started with a move of God; and ended up where God isn't there - but no one really knows it. No one's even speaking about it. There's just routines and tradition left.
These are all warnings for us: that we can, for a variety of reasons, lose the active moving flowing of the Holy Spirit - if we don't guard our relationship with Him.
So the key thing then, is: our relationship with Him.
Rest comes from the presence of God. The Holy Spirit is given to us, to bring that presence. He is the one who's present with us. I need to learn how to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit, and how to welcome His presence, how to draw in, engage with Him.
Ephesians 5:10 (from Amplified): “Try to learn, in your experience, what is pleasing to the Lord.”
Make an effort to discover what pleases God. If you are in love with someone, you normally want to find out what they like, and what they don't like. When you first start going out with someone, it seems like everything's going okay; but then after a little while: they like some things; they don't like other things.
They go quiet, when they don't like other things.
Have you ever thought that God might go quiet on you, because He doesn't like some things?
Have you ever thought: if God has given you His spirit, to help you in life - to be an over-comer; how important it must be to find out what He likes, and what He doesn't like - and to do the things He likes, and don't do the things He doesn't like (or put it right quickly if you do).