One day, about 25 years ago, I was sitting in a church service listening to the sermon, when I sensed that God was saying to me that He wanted me to be a pastor one day. At the time, I had a very good job with a land development company in which I made a lot of money. I had a family with young kids. I had absolutely no seminary or theological training. So being a pastor was the furthest thing from my mind. And over the next few weeks and months when I really couldn’t see any other evidence that was what God had in store for me, I really began to question whether in fact that was really God speaking to me that morning or whether I was hearing some other voice.
Have you ever had and experience like that? You really sensed that God was speaking to you, but you weren’t really sure if that feeling you had was from God or it was just indigestion from the burrito you had for dinner. So you begin to doubt whether that was really God speaking or if you were merely hearing what you wanted to hear, or if it was Satan trying to distract you or get you off track.
If you’re a follower of Jesus, then I’m sure you would agree that one of the functions of the Holy Spirit in your life is to guide and lead you. But exactly how He does that is often not real clear. I don’t know about you, but I sure wish that discerning the leadership of the Holy Spirit in our lives was much easier. Sometimes I just wish that the Bible provided us with a checklist or a series of steps we could take that would somehow guarantee that His guidance in our lives would be readily evident.
I even wish it was possible for me to preach a sermon this morning that would provide you with that kind of concrete direction in discerning the leading of the Holy Spirit in your life. But if that is what you are looking for this morning, you’re going to be sorely disappointed in the message today, because I am just not capable of doing that.
However, what we can accomplish together this morning is to get a better feel for how the Holy Spirit guides and leads us by looking at some Scriptural examples of how he does that. And we can also develop some guidelines, based on God’s character and His Word, that will help us to recognize God’s voice and to distinguish it from the other voices that are vying for our attention.
HOW THE HOLY SPIRIT GUIDE US
There are two broad aspects to the way that the Holy Spirit guides us – an external element and an internal element.
1. Externally – through God’s Word
Although we have a tendency to ignore this aspect of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives, it is actually His main way of guiding and leading us.
Jesus referred to this work of the Holy Spirit in John 16:
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
(John 16:13-14 ESV)
Since the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is the story of Jesus, it is the Bible that is the primary means that the Holy Spirit uses to declare to us the things of Jesus and to lead us into truth.
As Jesus reminded His disciples when He prayed for them just prior to being arrested in the Garden the night before His crucifixion, God’s Word is the primary way He reveals truth:
Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.
(John 17:17 ESV)
We get some further insight into the Holy Spirit’s work in the development of God’s Word from both Paul and Peter.
Paul, writing to Timothy to remind him of the importance of God’s Word, described how the Holy Spirit breathed out the Scriptures:
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
(2 Timothy 3:16-17 ESV)
The phrase “breathed out by God” is just one word in Greek, probably a word that Paul created to explain the process by which God’s Word comes to us. It is a compound word that consists of the Greek word for “God” and the verb that means “to breathe out”. As we’ve discussed before, in both Hebrew and Greek, the word for “spirit” is the same word which can also be translated “breath” or “wind”. There is little doubt that Paul coined this word to make it clear that the Holy Spirit is the one who both guided the men who wrote the Bible and the one who breathed life into those words.
Peter is even more direct in describing the role of the Holy Spirit in the development of the Scriptures:
And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
(2 Peter 1:19-21 ESV)
The Bible is a collection of writings from approximately 40 different authors who wrote over about a 1,500 year period. As these men wrote under the direction of the Holy Spirit, they still used their own individual writing styles, which is quite evident even in our English translations. But the Holy Spirit guided these authors, ensuring the accuracy of the writing. Although men were involved in the process, the Bible originated with God and the Holy Spirit has overseen the entire process by which we have received God’s Word as we have it today, so that we can be sure it is reliable.
And since the Holy Spirit is the author of God’s Word, He is also the one who enables us to understand the Scriptures. Paul described that role of the Holy Spirit like this:
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.
(1 Corinthians 2:12-13 ESV)
Sometimes when I write an email or a letter to someone, they misunderstand what I have written. That could be because they misinterpret my tone or perhaps because some of the words I use mean something else to them. So sometimes I have to explain what I’ve written to the other person so that they will understand what I’ve written. And I’m the only person capable of doing that because I wrote those words in the first place.
The Holy Spirit works a lot like that in our lives. Because He is the author of God’s Word, He is the only one capable of explaining the meaning of what he has written. That is why the Bible is often so unintelligible to an unbeliever who does not have the Holy Spirit dwelling in his or her life. Until the Holy Spirit comes along and illuminates that person, the Bible just doesn’t make much sense.
Now that we’ve dealt with the easy part, let’s move on to the more difficult part to get a handle on. The Holy Spirit not only works externally through the Bible, he also works:
2. Internally
Although I think we would all agree that the Holy Spirit does this, I’m not sure we would all agree on how He does this. No wonder someone once made this comment about this aspect of the Holy Spirit’s work:
When you talk to God, we call it prayer, but when God talks to you, we call it schizophrenia.
It’s not surprising that the world thinks like that. Just think of all the horrible things that people have done throughout history because they claim that God “told them to do it.”
But we can’t let that thought process paralyze us to the point where we go to the opposite extreme of never being willing to step out in faith in response to the leading of the Holy Spirit.
In the book of Acts, we find a number of times where the Holy Spirit guided people in this kind of an internal manner:
• In Acts 8, we read how the Holy Spirit guided Philip to go over to the chariot of the Ethiopian eunuch as he was returning home from Jerusalem. As Philip explained the Scriptures and how they told the good news of Jesus, that official committed his life to Jesus and was baptized.
• In Acts 10, we read how the Holy Spirit led Peter to go to the house of a centurion named Cornelius.
• In Acts 13, the apostles were directed by the Holy Spirit to set apart Barnabas and Saul for ministry.
• In Acts 16, Paul is prohibited by the Holy Spirit from going to Asia and directed to go to Macedonia
• In Acts 20, Paul is directed by the Spirit to go back to Jerusalem.
What is really interesting to me about these accounts is that we’re not given any detail about how the Holy Spirit guided and led these people. There is no set “formula” that we can use to insure that the Holy Spirit will guide us like He led them. So how can we know if it is the Holy Spirit leading us when He works in this kind of internal way? In order to answer that question, let’s begin with a general principle and then spend some time looking at some criteria that we can help us to recognize the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
General principle:
The Holy Spirit works is a way that is consistent with
God’s character and God’s Word
Since the Holy Spirit is God, He is always going to work in a way that is consistent with the character of God. As He works in our lives, He is going to exhibit love, grace, mercy, justice, righteousness, holiness and other attributes that are consistent with who He is.
And since He is the author of Scripture, everything He does is always going to be consistent with God’s Word. With that general principle in mind, we are now ready to develop some criteria to help us recognize the voice of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Whenever we hear a voice, it can come from one of three places:
o It can come from God as His Holy Spirit communicates with our human spirit.
o It can come from Satan. When Satan speaks to us, he will try to deceive us by counterfeiting God. That’s why Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 11 that he disguises himself as an angel of light. So it’s often hard to distinguish His voice from that of the Holy Spirit.
o It can come from self. We often hear what we want to hear and it’s easy to convince ourselves that God is speaking to us when it’s really just our own voice.
So obviously what we need to be able to do is to distinguish among the three voices. In his book, Listening to the Voice of God, Pastor Roger Barrier shares his checklist of nine criteria that a person can use to determine whether he is hearing from God or if it is Satan or self that is speaking. While I’m not going to just share his checklist verbatim, I’ve used it as a starting point to develop some practical ways to recognize the voice of the Holy Spirit when He speaks to us.
How to recognize the voice of the Holy Spirit
1) The Holy Spirit ALWAYS speaks in a way that is 100% consistent with God’s Word
I know we’ve already touched on this, but this principle is so important that we can’t possible emphasize it enough. Since, as we’ve seen, God’s Word is truth, when the Holy Spirit speaks, He will always speak in a way that100% consistent with His Word – no exceptions.
We know that Satan is the father of lies, so when he speaks, he will speak with lies and half-truths, just like he did with Eve in the garden. And it is also easy to lie to ourselves. But when the Holy Spirit speaks, what He says will never violate Scripture, even a little bit.
So if I want to be sure I know when the Holy Spirit is speaking to me, I must have a good handle on God’s Word. And when something comes to mind, the first thing I need to do is to see if it is consistent with what God had already revealed to me in His Word.
That is exactly what Jesus did when Satan tempted Him in the wilderness. Every time that Satan spoke to Him, Jesus evaluated what was being said to Him with the Word of God. And when Satan tried to twist the Scriptures in order to deceive Jesus, Jesus knew the Bible well enough to resist those lies.
I’ve put this standard first, because it is by far the most objective and the most important of all the criteria that we’ll look at this morning. Although the rest of the tests are certainly Biblical, they can be a little more subjective and difficult to apply. So without first applying this test, the remaining five really won’t do us a lot of good.
2) The Holy Spirit tends to speak when I am seeking God
In each of the instances we looked at earlier in the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit spoke while people were actively seeking God in some way:
• The Holy Spirit spoke to Philip right after he had been proclaiming the gospel in Samaria.
• The Holy Spirit spoke to Peter after he had been on the housetop praying.
• The Holy spirit spoke to the church in Antioch in Acts 13 while the people were worshipping and fasting
• The Holy Spirit consistently spoke to Paul while he was in the process of ministering to others in the name of Jesus.
This really shouldn’t come as a surprise. When the people of Judah had been taken into exile in Babylon, God had Jeremiah the prophet write a letter to the exiles in which God promised to bring the people back to Jerusalem after their 70 year exile was complete. And at that time, God promised that if the people would pray to Him and seek Him that He would be found by them.
Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.
(Jeremiah 29:12-13 ESV)
Although it’s certainly possible for God’s Spirit to speak to us whenever He wants, the evidence of Scripture is that He usually speaks to us when we are actively seeking God through time in His Word and in prayer. This principle leads us directly to the third measure we can use to help determine if it is the Holy Spirit speaking to us.
3) The Holy Spirit tends to speak with gentle leadings
I hate to shop for a car, which is one of the reasons I don’t do it very often. And one of the reasons I hate it most is the inevitable “What can I do to get you in this car today?” That’s just one example of how we live in a world that tries to get us to act on impulse. Another of my favorites are the infomercials that exhort you to call right now because for the first 50 callers they are going to double your order so you can have twice as much of the useless junk they are trying to sell you.
We certainly know that Satan works like that. When he tempted Jesus in the wilderness, he offered to give Jesus dominion over the entire world if He would just worship Satan. But Jesus, knowing that God the Father would give that to Him in the future anyway, refused to take that shortcut.
And the same thing often happens when it is my own voice that is speaking to me. Humans are naturally impatient and it’s pretty easy to convince ourselves to take the easy route so that we can get what we want right now.
The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, tends to lead us gently rather than push, drive and demand like a car salesman. We certainly see this in the account of Elijah’s encounter with God:
And he said, “Go out and stand on the mount before the LORD.” And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
(1 Kings 19:11-13 ESV)
God was not in the strong wind or the earthquake or the fire but instead He spoke to Elijah in a low whisper. While it is true that God does sometimes speak to us with a sense of urgency when the situation requires it, most of the time God gives us plenty of time to think through the issues and make sure we are hearing from Him and not just from ourselves or from Satan.
4) The Holy Spirit tends to speak to me personally
As we look back on those same events in the book of Acts that we referred to earlier, we find that when the Holy Spirit speaks, He almost always speaks personally to the person He is attempting to lead and guide. With perhaps the exception of the prophets, it is rare for the Holy Spirit to speak to one person about another person’s life.
When the Holy Spirit spoke to Philip, Peter, the church in Antioch and Paul, His purpose was to deal with their personal lives and what God wanted them to do. He didn’t give them a message to pass on to someone else about his or her life. Now it is certainly true that what the Holy Spirit called them to do did have an impact in the lives of others, but the primary message was personal for those to whom the Holy Spirit was speaking.
That’s why I’m always very leery when I hear someone say that the Holy Spirit has spoken to them about what someone else is supposed to do. I just can’t find any examples in Scripture that show me that is how the Holy Spirit operates.
In fact, what I’ve found in my own life is that often when I feel that God is speaking to me about someone else’s life, what He is really doing is to call to my attention something in my own life that I need to deal with.
5) The Holy Spirit tends to speak specifically
This aspect of how the Holy Spirit speaks operates in a couple different ways.
First, the Holy Spirit speaks specifically when it comes to convicting me of my sins. We’ve seen throughout this series that one of the important roles of the Holy Spirit is to reveal the sin in my life and rebuke me when I sin.
But when He does that, He is almost always very specific. So my thoughts will be something like this: “Last Sunday morning you were rude to this specific person in this specific way.”
On the other hand both Satan and self tend to accuse with broad generalities that leave me with a feeling of unresolved guilt. I know that I often experience those kinds of feelings in ministry. In fact that happened very recently with our Summer Bible study. When we did our church survey early this year, many of you indicated that you would participate if we had a short, four to six week, Bible study on a weeknight several times a year. And then I had a few people come ask me if I could do some teaching on cults because they were interested in finding out how to be more effective in witnessing to people they know who were caught up in these cults.
So I spent a lot of time preparing for that study, and when only a handful of people showed up for the study, I felt like a failure, especially the night we had more child care workers here than people taking part in the study.
But I’ve learned over the years that when I have those kinds of feelings of failure and guilt, I need to ask God if there are any specific sins I need to confess and repent of. If there are, I take care of that. But once I’ve done that, I know that any remaining feelings of guilt, doubt and failure are not from the Holy Spirit. They are either from self or Satan. And when I applied that process to the summer Bible study, God allowed me to just be thankful for the people who were here rather than focus on the ones who weren’t.
The second way that the Holy Spirit speaks specifically is in the instructions He gives. I’ve learned over the years that if I’m confused or have doubts about something that I believe is from God, then perhaps it’s not from God at all. It is not God’s nature to bring confusion into our lives:
For God is not a God of confusion but of peace…
(1 Corinthians 14:33 ESV)
So when that happens, I continue to read God’s Word and pray and wait until I get some more specific guidance from the Holy Spirit.
6) The guidance of the Holy Spirit produces peace
We just saw in 1 Corinthians 14 that God is a God of peace. So when the Holy Spirit speaks, He is going to produce peace in our lives. Paul confirms the role of the Holy Spirit in producing peace in our lives in another of his letters:
For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
(Romans 14:17 ESV)
When the Holy Spirit speaks, He brings a deep sense of peace to our lives. Self, and Satan, on the other hand, tend to bring chaos, restlessness and disorder to my life.
I’ve found that the best way to determine if it is the Holy Spirit speaking is take and apply all these criteria. While it’s certainly possible that my own voice or that of Satan will meet one or two of these tests, I can be confident that if all six tests are in line with the way the Holy Spirit speaks that He is the one who is speaking.
Let me close by applying these criteria to my personal situation that I shared to begin this message. When I felt like the Holy Spirit was speaking to me about being a pastor, here’s how I used those tests:
1) The Holy Spirit ALWAYS speaks in a way that is 100% consistent with God’s Word
Obviously there is nothing in the Bible that said Pat Damiani is supposed to be a pastor. But the Bible does reveal that all of us are to use our spiritual gifts for the good of the body. And since by that time in my life I knew that God had given me the gift of teaching, becoming a pastor was consistent with God’s Word.
2) The Holy Spirit tends to speak when I am seeking God
Since I was focused on God in worship and focused on His Word as it was being preached, I felt like I was in the midst of seeking God.
3) The Holy Spirit tends to speak with gentle leadings
This was certainly the case for me. God didn’t lead me to immediately quit my job and pick up my family and move somewhere where I could go to seminary – actions which would have violated the Scriptural command to take care of the needs of my family. God gave me time to reflect on these thoughts and verify over time that they were from Him.
4) The Holy Spirit tends to speak to me personally
Obviously the Holy Spirit was speaking to me personally.
5) The Holy Spirit tends to speak specifically
To be real honest, at the time I didn’t have any specific direction at all, but as I continued to seek God’s direction, that specific direction did come.
6) The guidance of the Holy Spirit produces peace
Although this was the first time, I’d ever had a thought like this, there was an amazing amount of peace about what I was hearing from the Holy Spirit. Even though I’d never even considered becoming a pastor before and I certainly lacked many of the qualifications to do that, there was no sense of panic at all.
I’m really thankful for how the Holy Spirit guided me though that process and during so many other times in my life. And I also know that the Holy Spirit delights in guiding all of us. Although I’m not sure we can ever fully understand exactly how He does that I do know this – He wants to lead us more than we often want to be lead by Him. So it seems like the appropriate way for us to respond to God’s Word this morning is to pray and ask Him to do two things:
• Give us a desire to follow Him
• To help us recognize when He is speaking in our lives
