- How to Recognize The Spirit.
This is How to Know Preaching is from the Spirit – when you hear conviction ringing out from the words of the preacher, and when you are riveted to the edge of your seat by the RELEVANCE and FRESHNESS of what you are hearing you know you are hearing from God.
- God is Never Boring
The eternal, one true God who created the universe and everything in it, is capable of infinite variety. Consider the magnificent sky-scapes, freshly painted minute by minute while you gaze in awe! With every resource of creation at His fingertips, He doesn’t need to repeat himself. So it follows, that if a preacher is led by the Spirit of God he will be given suitably fresh material to use. A spirit led preacher will be talking about things that have happened to him, or are happening in the NOW; not using anecdotes from the life of some other missionary to the middle of darkest Africa last century.
- The Kingdom of Heaven is HERE AND NOW.
When you are ‘born again’ you are birthed as a brand new spiritual being into the the Kingdom of Heaven – therefore you must be living in that place RIGHT NOW. It follows therefore, that a spirit led preacher MUST be preaching from conviction gained from his present and past experience, and must be sharing from that. So, such a preacher has to be basing his testimony on what he believes right now – testimony gained from living the Christian life and interacting with God and his fellows. A rule of thumb – any preacher who starts off like this; “A funny [or interesting, or significant,] thing happened to me this week…….”; is most likely to be led by The Holy Spirit, simply because the Spirit of God will have purposefully put such an experience into that preachers week, just for this purpose; and if he goes on to share a ‘Kingdom’ experience, you may then be quite sure. Any preacher who builds his narrative around someone Else’s experience is selling you second hand goods!
- This is How You Recognize The Spirit
John said, in his [1 John 4:2-3]2 This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.. first epistle, “Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God;” so it follows that a spirit led preacher must be preaching about the ‘crucified’, ‘resurrected’, ‘ascended’ Christ.
- God Knew You Were Going to Go to Church
- and for that reason, some part of the address will speak to you! There will be parts of the message that will minister directly to you. We are each in a different ‘place’ and various words will react differently on each of us, but a spirit led message will contain something especially for you. This is part of the ‘daily bread’ that God provides and it is part of the assurance we have that He loves us and provides for ALL our needs.
- The Compelling Word of God
God is totally consistent, so any Holy Spirit led preaching must accord with what He has already said in His recorded Word – the Bible - Ergo, preaching must be based on and agree with the Bible – so the authority for what a preacher is testifying must rest in God’s Word; and because it is Bible based it is both authoritative and credible – and that is how to know preaching is from the Spirit!
