PLEASE EXPLAIN "QUENCH NOT THE SPIRIT"

Dear Mary:
Thanks for your question about I Thess. 5:19 where Paul admonishes his readers to "quench not the Spirit."  Every one who becomes a Christian receives the gift of the Holy Spirit when he is immersed into Christ (Acts 2:38). In Ephesians 1:13 Paul describes that gift of the Spirit as the earnest of our redemption in heaven.  His implied imagery here in I Thessalonians is that the Spirit dwelling within us is like a perpetual flame of light.  The word "quench" is commonly used in the sense of extinguishing a fire (Mark 9:48).  Just as a flame can be extinguished by water, dirt or other things, so the influence of God's Holy Spirit can be smothered in our lives by things such as laziness, indifference, worldliness, materialism, evil companions and false teaching.  It is interesting that we humans have the will or volition to allow the Spirit to be quenched or to not allow such to happen. Hence we are taught to resist the devil (Jas. 4:7); to be faithful unto death (Rev.2:10) and to be not weary in well-doing (Gal. 6:9). Those who are inclined to Pentecostalism cite this verse to prove that a person should be free to express his spiritual gift of speaking in tongues, or healing or whatever the expression may be. While this might have been said to a person in the apostolic age who actually had a supernatural spiritual gift, no one today has such.  All such miraculous gifted ceased when "that" (neuter gender) perfect thing came (I Cor. 13:9). That perfect thing was the completed New Covenant of Christ.