Earning the Spirit

From C. Stanley's The Spirit Filled Life.

I was convinced I had to do something to receive the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. For the past could of years I had done everything...

We all think this--probably more in the lines of salvation, but we all do this. We set up "quiet times", and check them off the to do list. We go to church. We volunteer at church. We have one, two, three Bible studies...we go go go to prove to ourselves that we deserve salvation. 
We would never deserve salvation. 
It is only by the loving grace of God that we can have salvation and look towards spending so much time with Him in eternity. 
Now. I am not saying that the list I made at the opening is wrong. It is only wrong if your spirit is wrong. Why are you doing the things you are doing? Are you honestly doing them to get to know God better and better, to the point of such joy at the mere mention of your Lord and Savior? Or....are you doing all those things to prove to everyone else what an amazing Follower you are? You might fool people. You won't fool God. 
To go further with this topic, there are times that you are doing all this out of sheer desperation to see God, to feel His presence. And it may work for you. It seems to me that the best way to see and hear God is to look and listen. To read His Word, pen in hand to underline or write verses that strike you as powerful, to be someplace beautiful to you (or wherever you are) and close you eyes and listen, being still with God. These actions of service and study are great, wonderful things...but not when we are doing them for the wrong reasons. God wants to have a relationship with us. That is why He sent His Son to die for us, that we might have the Spirit and have a relationship of such depth with Him. We have to look for Him, though, amongst all the other things shouting at us day and night. Once you find Him, through study of His Word, being still with Him, or other ways you find to know Him....He will overpower those shouts, and they become the whispers in the background. Those things are totally lost in the shadow of our God. What a wonderful thing He has done, and does, for us.