Being lead by the spirit is not some mystical prompting that you feel, and then decide to go along with. It is how God in His sovereign will causes you to do something that wouldn’t have naturally occurred to you. He moves you to do, think, feel, say, something so that you do it. When you see that you have done something good, and others have seen it, you give credit, and glory to God. So by saying that I was lead by His Spirit to do this, you should be giving Him the credit, not extolling your own pseudo-virtuous volition agreeing with His because you are just that special. Come on? Give me a break. I’ve had quite enough of these shenanigans.
If you say, “I was lead in the Spirit.” Make sure it is because you actually were. Any good that we do is God doing it through us. It is not from us, or our own volition independent of God. Many Charismatics say, “I was lead by the Spirit to come pray for you. Is there something you need healing from?” Now, this is the opposite of how this works, and it robs God of His glory. You come off, at best, as some self-righteous, fake faith-healer who probably means well, but is misguided. At worst, you look like a kooky religious nut, or charlatan. The Apostles, who actually did have the supernatural ability to heal people didn’t walk around, and say to themselves, “Oh look! A person I can heal. I think I’ll go heal them.” independent of God’s will, or void of His Spirit. They were given gifts to build the Church. These gifts were from God. He made them want to heal the people they healed. He did this in their subordinate minds/spirit with His Superior Spirit. Their spirit is subordinate to His sovereign one. Any good they did, was God doing it through them. They would never take any shade, or degree of credit for doing the will of God, and neither should we. Since the Apostolic era of the Church’s history has been over for around 2000 years, and there are no more Apostles, we should not be saying, “I was lead by the Spirit” unless we know that we truly were.
How do you know? In general, if you are a Christian, you are to be lead by the Spirit. That doesn’t mean what many Charismatics claim it does. Like I just explained. What does it look like when a Christian is lead by the Spirit? He is obedient to God. It is that simple. It is when you are walking in obedience to God, and not in the rebellious, unredeemed flesh. It also means we will recognize the difference between God’s truth, and the lies of the enemy. We won’t be blind, in the dark, stumbling about in sin. That is being lead by the Spirit. We definitely won’t be making the claims that the Charismatics are making, because we know that the Apostolic gifts have been over for a very long time.
As Christians we also know what the fruit of the Spirit is. This can be explained as the results of the Holy Spirit sovereignly reigning in your life, and you living out that eternal reality in this temporary world, that is fading away, being used up. To remind you, this is what it looks like, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23 LSB Want to know if you are being lead by the Spirit? Here is another way you can know, “The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God,” Romans 8:16 LSB. So, be lead by the Spirit, but understand it Biblically for what it is. Don’t make the same obvious errors that the Charismatics are making. They are demonstrably false because we still get sick, and die, and the children’s cancer ward is still full at Shriner’s. Get a grip on reality, what is true, and toss out the lies you’ve been told.
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