The Bible is a spiritual book. It is written to you Spirit, not your head. You will never be able to understand or fulfill the commands and calls of God with your nature mind. People have gone crazy and fallen into terrible deceptions through trying to understand the Bible with their head alone. This is what happened with the Jews and many other people through history, and is still happening today. I am not talking about a brainless, thoughtless gospel. There is a place for us to use our minds, but we are to renew them to think like Jesus thought.
A major part of that renewal is learning to hear and listen to the Holy Spirit. If you are not daily led by the Spirit of God and cannot discern his specific voice, it only takes one misguided sermon, one misunderstood scripture, or one well meaning friend with bad advice, to turn you from fighting for God, to fighting for the enemy. What was the difference between Saul, and Paul? Saul had the word of God, but not the Spirit to lead him. He tried to guess what God wanted from him based off his carnal knowledge of the Word, and ended up bring great harm to the Church. Paul on the other hand still had the Word, but also had the Spirit, and the Spirit led his actions daily.
God spoke clearly to me that this is the reason the body of Christ is so torn apart. The best military strategy in the world can be broken if the communication between the commanders is stopped, or if the enemy broadcasts false messages posing to be allies. Without communication and leadership, the allies are likely to destroy each other with friendly fire and lose the battle even though they were the stronger force. The worst part is, they will do it under the belief that they are fighting against the enemy.
God didn’t leave us to figure out his battle plans with our carnal intellect. He gave us the Holy Spirit as our helper and field commander. It is imperative that we get tuned into his frequency and hear his voice clearly so that we know what he is doing, and so we don’t end up fighting him the way the Jews often did. Though the disciples were fully trained by Jesus, he told them not to leave the city until they had received the Spirit. The knowledge they had learned from Jesus was not enough! They need the Spirit to help them to live as Jesus had asked them to, and we do also.
“And now I will send the Holy Spirit, just as my Father promised. But stay here in the city until the Holy Spirit comes and fills you with power from heaven.” Luke 24:49 NLT
The Holy Spirit is the one who tells us what the Father is doing so that we will work with the Father and not against him.
“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. John 16:12-14 NKJV
How can we over look the importance of this scripture? If we really believe that Jesus was telling the truth when he said this, shouldn’t hearing his voice be our top priority in life? Let me ask you, if the body of Christ was really hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit daily, do you really think the Church would be so divided? Do you really think that pastors would be suffering so much attack from their own congregations? Paul said in Ephesians 4:3 that there is unity in the Spirit. The Spirit is never divided.
Right now in the Church, we have many self appointed generals who are giving it their best guess as to what is right and bombing anyone they disagree with. I don’t doubt that they have zeal for Lord, but they have the wrong orders. Like Saul (who became Paul), they are doing their best to destroy anything in that conflicts with them. This is what Paul said of the Jews.
For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. Romans 10:2-3 NKJV
Jesus said God is Spirit, and he must be worshipped in Spirit and in truth (John 4:24). The Jews had the truth in the Word, but they didn’t have the Spirit, so the truth they had did not profit them. Jesus said it is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing (John 6:63). Without the Spirit opening our minds to true meaning of scripture, and revealing the deep things of God, we are just carnal minded.
The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. Romans 8:7-8 NIV
The carnal mind is, and always will be an enemy of God and those who truly follow him. It is a rogue soldier that answers to no authority, and will seek to destroy everything it doesn’t understand. It is impossible to follow God with properly when your mind is carnal. Jesus said,
The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” John 3:8 NKJV
The Holy Spirit is predictable in that he is always good, he always acts in love and brings glory to God, and he is always true to the Word (although not always our understanding of the Word). But he is very unpredictable in his methods of doing things. All through the Bible, it seems that God always acted in unexpected ways to see if his people’s hearts were in the right place. He sent shepherd boys, slaves, and those who were least in their family to be kings and leaders. He sent his Son to be born in a stable. He sent uneducated fishermen to the educate Jews, and he sent the educated Jew to the uneducated gentiles. Jesus rarely did a miracle the same way twice, and new forms of miracles popped up throughout the New Testament.
Why the madness? It is because God never wanted us to fall into the pit of tradition. No one will ever be able to stand before God, and say, “I would have known you if you had came the way I expected.” There is no excuse, and no one will put God in a box. I have found through the Bible, and through personal experience, that God will often speak through what you despise or look down on the most. If you look down on people with tattoos, or people that are old fashion, or even your enemies, guess who might be carrying God’s Word for you? If you are proud in your knowledge, God might send someone who just got saved with a word for you. This is why the proud will always have trouble hearing from him. He doesn’t want us to follow our expectations, he wants us to follow the presence the way Israel did in the desert. Only those who follow the Spirit and hear his voice will be able to keep up with what he is doing. The Jews could not understand Jesus because he spoke the words of the Spirit, so they killed in the name of the God they thought they served.
To avoid making the same mistake, we need to be slow to judge and make sure we are not speaking against God own. Especially those who are anointed for ministry. We also need to evaluate ourselves to see if we are acting in the Spirit or in the flesh. There are many ways to do this but one easy way is to compare yourself to the attitudes of Jesus, the disciples of Acts, and other examples of scripture such as this one.
Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom… But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. James 3:13, 17-18 NKJV
I have made this passage a mirror for my actions. When I want to do something, I check myself with this scripture. I ask myself, “is this thought I have of, ‘the wisdom that is from above, ‘ or is it something I came up with to nail someone?” This is how scripture helps us discern the voice of the Lord.
Hebrews 4:12 says the Word of God is a sword that pierces even to the division of soul and Spirit. In other words, it helps you divide the things that come from you from the things that come from the Spirit of God. We need to be able to hear the Spirit, but we need the Bibles help. We need both the Spirit and the truth to be complete.
There are many great teachings out there on how to be led by the Spirit and I encourage you to search them out. I have heard it wisely said that as long as you can live without hearing the voice of God, you will. Until you hunger for the voice of God to the point that you can’t live without it, you will live without it. The purpose of this post was to show with scripture that hearing God’s voice and being led by his Spirit was not meant to be optional. I hope this has stirred some hunger in you!
Heaven Come Now 