Substituting the Spirit’s Words

by Abraham Smith

There are many false ideas about the work and influence of the Holy Spirit. In my estimation, the vast majority of these false ideas are rooted in the fact that people do not understand the connection between the Holy Spirit and the word of God. Ephesians 6:17 reads, "And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God..." The Spirit does His work in our hearts and in our lives exclusively through the word that He gave! He placed a power in His word that is activated by us hearing it (reading it) and having a fertile heart (an honest, seeking, humble, yielding heart).

One of the great problems with men is that they made devastating and destructive substitutions for the hearing (reading) of God's word. One of those substitutions is to submit to men, who often are not readers of the whole Bible themselves), and thus they are guided by men who often claim, "The Lord told me to tell you thus and thus," but in that they are not readers of the whole Bible, they are incapable of doing what Paul said he did. In Acts 20:27, Paul said, "For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God." These supposed spiritual leaders have taken their thoughts, labeled them as God told me thus and thus, and then substituted those thoughts in place of God's word.

Another substitution we often make is to substitute our will when we read parts of God's word that are difficult for us to accept. When we do this, we are not yielding to the Holy Spirit. In Acts 6:9-11, men heard words of Stephen that were hard for them to accept. So, they disputed with him and spoke against him. The same happens today. We need to be like Jesus, who said, "Nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). If we don't get our will out of the way, we will find ourselves perverting the Scriptures to fit our will!