Guided By The Spirit (The Secret to Always Getting It Right)

Sometime ago, I remember hearing a story about a man who was a traveling evangelist. He spent most of his time out in the field, preaching from church to church, town to town. His ministry was very fruitful and he was extremely blessed in the work that he did. However, at some point in his life, he eventually became tired of the travel and started to think about the possibility of pastoring a church. 

As the young man thought about this, a door opened up to receive a pastoral call at a church he had been aware of. He entered his name for their consideration, and soon, the church called him to do an opening interview. After the interview had finally concluded, the young man firmly decided in his heart that he deeply desired to pastor that church. He therefore asked God to cause the congregational vote to be completely unanimous in his favor, as a miraculous sign to guide his decision making.  

In the process of time, the church contacted him and told him that after some deliberation, the congregation was able to come to a vote. Remarkably, they were able to report to the young evangelist that 100% of the congregation had voted for him to be their new pastor! With some joy and optimism, the young man decided to head to the church to start his next phase of ministry. However, within a short time, things began to go wrong.

When the young man stood up to preach his first sermon, he found that the anointing of the Holy Spirit didn’t seem to be functioning through him. This was a strange experience for the young man because he had always spent most of his ministry out in the evangelistic field. Whenever he had previously guest preached in a church, the Holy Spirit would reign down upon his listeners in power. Now, that power was all but gone, and he was completely ineffective in his new ministry.

The man was committed and so he didn’t give up easily. Instead, he purposed to continue to persevere in his work.

However, after two long years of enduring the circumstance, the young man eventually became convinced that he had made a mistake. He decided that God had not called him to that church and that he had presumptuously stepped out, rather than obeying in faith. He therefore asked God to deliver him from his calling to that church. The elders, seeing that the young man wasn’t happy, graciously released him from his call to their community. 

The young man, now overjoyed that he had gotten such a powerful answer to his prayers, returned to the evangelistic field with renewed zeal and fire. He began once again preaching from state to state, church to church, town to town. As he did, he found that the anointing of God which had previously accompanied him now rested upon his life once again. This was a relief and he felt blessed to be walking in the will of the Lord.

Sometime later, the church where he had previously pastored called him up and asked for him to come back and preach a series of revival meetings for them. He joyfully agreed to the date, and delivered his sermon with such power and conviction during his first visit back that the people were shocked and perplexed. 

With great amazement, his elders approached him after the service and asked him where on earth he had learned to preach with such power! With a sense of both humility, and joy, he told them that when he had accepted the call to their church, he had stepped out of the Lord’s will for his life. He told them that God had clearly called him to be an evangelist, and not a pastor. For this reason, when he returned to the field, the heavens opened up once again. The name of that young man was Reverend Kenneth E. Hagan! 

Now let me ask you a question: 

• Have you ever felt that God answered a prayer of direction for you, even confirming it with miraculous signs, only to discover as you stepped out in faith that God was never really leading you to begin with? 

Many friends of mine in ministry whom I have spoken to over the years have experienced precisely this sort of perplexing scenario. They prayerfully and earnestly asked God for a sign to lead them in a certain direction only to discover as they stepped out in faith that God was never really leading them to begin with! 

Almost no other circumstance is so soul-draining or confidence stealing as these kinds of events. Many of God’s people can relate to spiritual failures of this kind to varying degrees. So how exactly can we be certain that God is actually leading us in a certain direction? How can we be sure we are not simply being fooled by mere coincidences which are not intended by God to be interpreted by us as directional signs? 

This is one of the greatest perils of the Spirit-directed life. The hard truth is that Just because circumstances line up in a certain way, does not necessarily imply that God is the one who is leading us. Muslim chat sites on the internet are filled with all sorts of stories that sound for all the world to be examples of God miraculously intervening to provide parking spaces at just the right time, as well as specific directions which would all seem to validate the Muslim faith! So how can we tell the difference between a mere coincidence and a genuine confirmatory sign from God? 

In this article, I want to give you some tools that you can use to practically answer that question. I want to help you to gain the skill you need to discern God’s genuine leading over your life. In this way, you can learn to spot disaster before you have to suffer through it. This could be life-changing for you! 

Let’s begin.  

Understanding Divine Guidance

The first thing that we need to understand about guidance is that genuine and miraculous leading from the Lord is both rare as well as necessary. I say it is rare because most of the insight we need to guide us can be found in God’s word. Yet I also claim that it is necessary because not every circumstance can be navigated on the basis of scripture alone. 

Though this sounds scandalous at first, we should consider what scripture teaches us on this issue. Recall that David wrote: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” (Psa 119:105) Here we see that most of what David needed to make decisions in his kingdom could be found in the self-same scriptures that we read today! Yet it was also true that David sometimes had to “close his Bible” as it were and get his next instruction directly from the Holy Spirit. Stories like David’s narrow escape from the city of Kielah prove that this phenomenon is true. (See 1 Samuel 24) So assuming that this is right, what are the necessary ear-marks of genuine, Spirit-guided direction? 

I would argue, borrowing from the founder of the Alpha Course, Nicky Gumble, that there are 5 signs in total which we can use to gauge true Spirit-guided direction. It’s a very simple set of ideas. But it’s very important. Check it out!  

1. Spiritual  direction needs to be Commanded in Scripture.

2. Spiritual  direction needs to have the Counsel of the Saints.

3. Spiritual  direction needs to be congruent with Common Sense.

4. A Spiritual direction needs to have Confirming Signs.

5. Finally, we ourselves need to be Compelled in our Spirits before concluding that God is truly speaking to us and leading us! 

At first, this list might seem to be pretty simplistic. Why should we think that this is truly insightful or revelatory? However, as someone who has tested this approach to divine guidance in my ministry, I have found it to be extremely effective. So don’t be fooled! Despite being simple, this is actually a very rigorous test for discerning God’s guidance. For this reason, I have often warned folks I’ve discipled that using this approach to vetting Spirit-directed guidance will cause you to conclude that God is leading us to make life-altering decisions far less often than we think he is ! Let’s have a closer look. 

First, we can see from the above list that any spiritual guidance we walk out should be clearly commanded in scripture. Another way to say this is that the Bible needs to approve of what we are feeling led to do. Of course, this is probably pretty obvious to most of us. Naturally, our decisions should be guided by scripture. However, this does raise the question: How can we be sure that we are reading scripture correctly, which leads us to our second confirming point! 

Thus the second point on our fivefold list says that any guidance we receive should include the wisdom of the saints. What does this mean? It means that God’s “cloud of witnesses'' should be able to agree with our reading of scripture. This is actually massively helpful because it provides us with a needed check against our proneness to sometimes wrongly misapply scripture to our lives. For this reason, having the counsel of the saints is an effective way to ensure that we are reading the Bible correctly. 

However, just as before, this still raises questions. Is discerning God’s guidance simply a matter of human consensus? What about church groups that erroneously hold wrong ideas about the Bible? Don’t religious traditions sometimes bring us to wrong conclusions? Isn’t it therefore wrong to rely solely on “scripture-plus-groupthink” to make our toughest choices? That is precisely why we need the third point in our fivefold test! 

Thus our third point on our list underscores the absolute necessity of common sense. Here, we are urged that common sense (or logic) can be used to carefully assess our overall grasp of the Bible. The sad truth is without using reason, our theology is completely unguarded from the error of mere human consensus. The same can be true of our spiritual direction, and so common sense is actually a really valuable tool. 

Nevertheless, even with these checks and balances in place, we can still make numerous mistakes in our walks. I have therefore come to recognize the need for the fourth point on our list as well. 

Thus the fourth point on our check list is the needed element of miraculous confirming signs. In other words, miraculous confirming signs can help to ensure us that we are not simply vetting Spirit-led guidance solely on the basis of things like scripture, human consensus, and reason. If we have some sort of external sign from God, we can clearly see that God is the one who is leading us! By balancing this point against the other three points on our list, we can avoid many of the mistakes associated with being led by false signs. 

However, admittedly, even with what appears to be a genuine sign from God which is backed up by the counsel of the saints, reason, and the Bible, we can still sometimes get our wires crossed! (Remember Kenneth Haggin?) The sad reality is that I have often met believers who have mistakenly followed guidance that was scriptural, guarded by wise counsel, and confirmed with providential signs, and which nevertheless turned out to be something other than God! (I know—shocking right?) In fact, some of these signs have even been nothing more than freakish coincidences, much like Kenneth Haggin’s fleece with the congregational vote. So the reality is that even with these four points, we are still susceptible to making huge mistakes. What should we do? 

This brings us to our fifth and final point. 

Thus the final point on our check list is the needed element of being led by the Spirit’s inner witness. Without this, even if we have the previous four elements in place, we are merely guilty of following what I call “externals.” In other words, we are basing our sense of spiritual direction solely on objective evidence. 

Of course, this can sound very counter-intuitive! As Christians, we are normally attracted to the idea of basing our faith on objective evidence.  Nevertheless, objective signs are not enough to lead us when it comes to individual, Spirit-led guidance. Instead, we also need subjective evidence on our side as well. Simply put: We need the inward witness of the Spirit! Without this, making choices can be as risky as black jack. So the weight of this final point should never be diminished. 

In conclusion, in cases where the Spirit is genuinely leading us from within, provided we have the other four proofs in place, we can rest assured that we have definitely heard from God on the matter. For this reason, if we experience any resistance as we move forward, we should be inwardly biased to view such resistances as the work of the evil one to stop us from advancing in the will of God. Why? Because the evil one will often try to stop us from obeying God’s voice. But we don’t accept such resistance as the hand of God. We have already obtained God’s will on the matter. We know that he has spoken. Therefore, we remain in a position of trust. 

So, I hope this has been a helpful article to you personally. I have been using this system myself for a good number of years. As I urged often, I have used it to train leaders in how to follow God’s direction for their lives. I could report many testimonies of how following the Holy Spirit’s guidance led to profound blessing and peace. May the blessing of the Lord therefore rest upon you as you follow him!