by Terry Wane Benton<\/p>\n
Subjective “Spirit Leading” is when one is moved by imagined nudging and impulses, then attributes that imagination to the “leading of the Spirit.” It often never is in complete harmony with the Spirit’s “revelation” in the Bible. It is sometimes outright contrary to Spirit guidance through “revelation” (Ephesians 3:3-5).<\/p>\n
It is completely subjective whether it is the Holy Spirit instead of a deceiving spirit or just plain human desire and imagination. Yet, you get drawn into the language and thinking that imagines the Lord walking and talking with you, and then you start saying, “The Lord told me this,” or “The Lord showed me this.”<\/p>\n
Francis Chan offers stories from those who have experienced “real encounters” with God. He says each of us has the choice every day: “to depend on yourself, to live safely, and to try to control your life. Or you can live as you were created to live-as a temple of the Holy Spirit of God, as a person dependent on Him, desperate for God the Spirit to show up and make a difference.” Yet, he is basically telling people to imagine the Spirit “showing up” in some emotion-driven and imagination-perceived way, and all such imaginations automatically becomes self-confirmation that the Holy Spirit instead of Satan as an angel of light is doing this “showing up.”<\/p>\n
Beth Moore is another who uses this imagination-driven approach. Her imagination of talks with God becomes conversations with God in which she reports “what God told me.” This kind of thinking is very dangerous, yet some of our brethren are jumping on the bandwagon of these authors and speakers and promoting them as truly guided by God.<\/p>\n
The real Holy Spirit guided the apostles into “all truth.” He revealed and confirmed “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3-4;\u00a0Hebrews 2:1-4). He powerfully leads through that revelation (Hebrews 4:12;\u00a0Ephesians 3:3-5). When we are listening to the Spirit in scriptures used correctly, we are listening to the voice of the real Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n
Imaginations must be cast down (II Corinthians 10:4f) and not exalted to the level of God’s word, which completely furnishes the man of God (II Timothy 3:16-17). When a person does not “abide in the doctrine of Christ” (II John 9-10) but gives greater or equal guiding authority to their imagination of conversations with God, they have quit “holding fast to the Head” (Colossians 2:19) and have “intruded into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind” (Colossians 2:18). This is “empty deceit” because it is imaginary conversations with God told as if it happened in reality, and this is a form of lying since God did not actually tell them anything. It is purely an adult form of make-believe and empty of real revelation. Be careful of those who promote such. The scriptures “completely” furnishes the man of God. It is not enough for deceivers. Is it enough for you?<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Terry Wane Benton Subjective “Spirit Leading” is when one is moved by imagined nudging and impulses, then attributes that imagination to the “leading of the Spirit.” It often never is in complete harmony with the Spirit’s “revelation” in the Bible. It is sometimes outright contrary to Spirit guidance through “revelation” (Ephesians 3:3-5). It is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27],"tags":[546,86],"class_list":["post-41843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-feelings","tag-holy-spirit"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":67752,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/spiritism-versus-spirituality\/","url_meta":{"origin":41843,"position":0},"title":"Spiritism versus Spirituality","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"April 21, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"by Terry Wane Benton Spiritism is occultic, feeling and mood-based, and imagination-based, whereas \"spirituality\" is revelation and scripture-based. Those who are truly \"spiritual\" will acknowledge that the things Paul wrote are the commandments of the Lord (I Corinthians 14:35f). Spiritism is trying to contact the dead, spirit world through imagination\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":40854,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/how-does-the-holy-spirit-lead\/","url_meta":{"origin":41843,"position":1},"title":"How Does the Holy Spirit Lead?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"January 17, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Herschel E. Patton via\u00a0Guardian of Truth\u00a0XXXV: 8, pp. 237, 239, April 14, 1991 Obviously, the Holy Spirit does lead certain ones. \"Sons of God\" are thus led. \"For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God\" (Romans 8:14). Jesus was \"led\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":88520,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/is-the-holy-spirit-not-bound-by-only-the-words-in-the-bible\/","url_meta":{"origin":41843,"position":2},"title":"Is the Holy Spirit not bound by only the words in the Bible?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"July 9, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Hi Jeff, I heard a sermon a while ago, and someone recently shared it on Facebook to say that brethren are too worried about emotionalism, and they don't worship in the Spirit and truth as God intended. \"The Holy Spirit is not bound in the words alone within the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":54601,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/the-spirit-speaks\/","url_meta":{"origin":41843,"position":3},"title":"The Spirit Speaks","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"November 15, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"by Terry W. Benton The Spirit speaks completely through the scriptures. The Spirit gave the Scriptures so that we would know what the apostles knew (Ephesians 3:3-5). We can know all that the Spirit revealed to Paul, read it, and then know all he knew. That is no small matter\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9557,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/do-you-have-pictures-of-the-eight-symbols-of-the-holy-spirit\/","url_meta":{"origin":41843,"position":4},"title":"Do you have pictures of the eight symbols of the Holy Spirit?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"April 24, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Do you have pictures of the eight symbols of the Holy Spirit? Answer: The Bible does symbolically represent the Holy Spirit at times. For example, the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus\u00a0like\u00a0a dove at Jesus' baptism. \"When He had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":28758,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/hearing-the-spirit\/","url_meta":{"origin":41843,"position":5},"title":"Hearing the Spirit","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"November 18, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"by Jeffrey W. Hamilton Text: Proverbs 30:5-6 \u00a0 I.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Many people are convinced that the Holy Spirit directly speaks to them \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Yet, these same people will claim things contrary to the teachings of the Bible \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0B.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And they rarely agree with each other II.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Bible is the product of the Spirit \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Audio"","block_context":{"text":"Audio","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/audio\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41843\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}