" For all who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God.For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry Abba! Father! The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, and if children then heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him in order that we may be glorified with Him."( Rom. 8:14-17) #1. This leading of the Spirit is not immediate communication. It’s not God audibly speaking, or even silently speaking, to you. This idea, which is a very common use of the word, “God has led me,” really means “God has spoken to me,” not in any way other than by a direct communication from God himself to me. God has spoken to me, and that is what is intended when they use the phrase, “God has led me,” or “the Spirit has led me,” and our eyes open up. “God spoke to you?” You know, you read your Bible. There are occasions where God spoke to Abraham, for example, but when God does things like that, my eyes open up wide. I want to know what he said, God directly communicating his mind to men. “God has spoken to you? This is what you intend by being led of the Spirit?” I think that is not what the Word of God intends at this point. One Puritan says about the abuse of this idea, “It is a wide and specious pretense of immediate and enthusiastical direction.” When you read the Puritans and they use the word “enthusiasm,” they are talking about what we today would call religious mania. They called it enthusiasm over and above the way we use the word enthusiasm. All right? Today, to be enthusiastic is a good thing. For the Puritans, when they used it in this way, it was a bad thing. Enthusiasm is this rarified atmosphere that some people call religion, where they’re barking and dancing and hearing all kinds of words of knowledge from God and are being led by the Spirit, and are having immediate and direct communication. The Puritans called this enthusiasm, “a wide and specious pretense.” Now, why do people like this idea? “God has spoken to me,” #1, and primarily, you can’t question it. “God has told me this is what I need to do.” You say, “Now wait a minute, this is contrary to biblical principle. This is contrary to good common sense. It is contrary to good, godly and solid counsel,” and the person says, “It doesn’t make any difference, because God has spoken to me, and this is his leading at this point, and you can’t question me, because he didn’t speak to you. He spoke to me. If you had been there, and he had spoken to you too, we could have talked about what it is, but you weren’t there. He spoke to me.” And that’s why people like this. “God has led me to do this.” It makes them basically sovereign, doesn’t it? Because this communication is proprietary and it’s ineffable. It cannot be disciplined. It cannot be gainsayed. This is not what is the hallmark of the sons of God, and it’s not what Paul is talking about. Tom Lyons
Posted on: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 16:19:49 +0000
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