Why Wouldn't Everyone Want to be Led by the Spirit? [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. I feel like eating this book up. I mean, I just want to keep my nose in this book. I get mad at all the other things I have to do that keeps me out of this book.

I love this book. But this Bible did not tell me to come to Reynolda. How was I going to know that? How do you know who you're supposed to marry? How do you know which house to buy? How do you know if you're supposed to quit your job?

How do you know if you're supposed to take a job? How are you supposed to know whether you're supposed to pray for somebody? That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in this series filled as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource today. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries.

So as you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on that later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. We are learning about the Holy Spirit in a series that I have called Filled. Because why wouldn't everybody want to be filled with the Holy Spirit? He is the greatest teacher in the world. He is the spirit of Jesus. He is the comforter, the helper.

He is God himself. I just have a sense if we could get some of the obstacles, some of the distractions, some of the misconceptions cleared up that everybody that wants anything of God would want to be filled continually with the Holy Spirit. And today I want to focus this on the leading of the Spirit and how the Holy Spirit leads and why wouldn't everybody want to be led by the Spirit of God.

So Romans chapter 8, I want to pick up reading at verse 9. You however are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who lives in you. Let me just pause here and say, do you see what the Scripture is telling us?

The Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you. This is the inheritance of every Christian. Therefore, verse 12 brothers, we have an obligation but it is not to the sinful nature to live according to it. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die.

But if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. And here's our central verse, 14, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you do not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you receive the spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.

Now, if we're children, then we're heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. Why wouldn't everybody want to be led by the Spirit? He is, this is what this scripture just is telling us. The same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, the third person, the triune God, God himself by the mystery, this is a spiritual mystery that we cannot describe in natural words, but he lives, he resides.

It's not like a physical residing, it's a spiritual residing in us as believers. So every Christian receives the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has all understanding of things past and things to come, and he understands you. He knows what you need, he knows how you learn best, and he knows what is best for you. Like little children, we just don't always know what's best for us, but the Holy Spirit knows. He knows not only what will come to pass, but he knows the calling upon your life about each step that you are to take.

He knows that. So this is part of the inheritance for every Christian. We have the presence of the Holy Spirit, sovereign, providential, all-knowing God residing within us. And when Paul makes his declaration at this great crescendo moment of his theological treatise in the epistle to the Romans, he lays this out almost as if this is a hallmark of what it means to be a child of God. As many as are led by the Spirit, they are the sons of God. That the mark of adoption in one sense, he says, is plainly this, the children of God are Spirit-led.

This is in sharp contrast to an Old Covenant ideology in which the children are led by the law of God. The Spirit does not replace the Word of God because, remember, the Word of God is inspired, Spirit-breathed is what that means. God breathed his Spirit into his Word. The Spirit and the Word are not really ever, there's no possibility of separating Spirit and Word because the Word itself is Spirit-infused. And Spirit, the Holy Spirit, will never violate his own Word. But the mark of adoption, Paul says, is that we are led by the Holy Spirit.

Now, I don't know about you, but for most of my upbringing, most of my Christian life, I didn't have a sense of what would that be like to be led by the Spirit. And as we grow in Christ, we begin to learn about how important it is to let the Bible instruct our lives. And it becomes a lamp unto our feet, God's Word. And we must learn God's Word and be led by God's Word. And some would teach essentially this, that all of the revelation that you need is in the Bible. But as I was sharing last week talking about spiritual gifts, the closing of the canon or at the end of the apostolic age in which God was no longer inspiring authorized writers to write what would be inscripturated as the Bible, that just because that period closed and our Bible is closed doesn't mean that God quit speaking.

That's our belief. But it is not in any way to say that God's doing revelation like a shepherd who leads his sheep is to say that God is doing something that would add to the scripture. And some people need to wrestle with that because rightly so they want to make sure that we're not violating the principle of the Bible is the infallible rule of faith and practice. So the Bible is our infallible rule of faith and practice, but not everything that you need to know is in the Bible.

Everything that you need for salvation and for your growth in the Lord and everything that you would need for assurance and peace in life, you will find in the Bible, but you won't find everything that you would like to know and need to know in the Bible. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Thankfully, God has never expected you to live the Christian life by your own strength. He has sent a helper and every single Christian is invited to live a supernaturally empowered life through the continual infilling of the Holy Spirit in a special bundle alongside the audio teaching. Pastor Alan has also written a booklet. Both the audio and the booklet not only explain the infilling of the Holy Spirit, but will nourish, inspire, and draw you nearer to the God who longs to immerse you in His love and power.

Discover how to be filled with the Spirit and get ready for your life to be filled with fresh love, joy, and power. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues.

Here once again is Alan Wright. The other way that people have tended to think that they're supposed to be led in making decisions in life is the old, you know, we had the WWJD, you know, when that came out some years ago. And let me just say this up front, I'm in favor of anything that promotes people thinking about Jesus. So it was good, and if you have one on right now, just, it's okay. You don't have to pull your sleeve over it, but I'm getting ready to, I'm just getting ready to say that, let's think about whether that really works.

What would Jesus do? Does that really work for making decisions in life? When you come to a decision, is it enough to say, well, either I'll just find what the Bible says about this, or I'll just WWJD it. Well, I got to thinking about that.

Just trying to be honest with myself and honest, does that really work? And I got to thinking about some of the big decisions in my life. One of the big decisions and great, obviously greatest blessings in my life was getting married to my wife. And how do you know who you're supposed to get, how are you supposed to know who you marry?

Do you go on infatuation? Let me just say this up front, get pre-engagement counseling, and then pre-marital counseling, and then get some marriage counseling after you're married. Get pre-dating counsel. But I dated a girl for five and a half years. She was precious, Christian girl, and everybody assumed that we were to get married. I was always assuming we were to get married. And I began to get a sense that we weren't called down the same path of life, we weren't supposed to be married. And the very trying time, that relationship to end, in many ways I couldn't imagine that relationship ending. And now after 25 years, could you imagine me not being married to Ann?

Oh, no, we can't. And I tell you, a minister of Jesus Christ called into the ministry, if he's going to be married, his wife better be just as called as he is. You have got a predicament. Because you already got a predicament just being married in the first place. I'm so thankful for my wife, I'm so thankful God led me to her, I'm so thankful that he guided me and we had a knowing.

It wasn't just because she was pretty, it wasn't just because I felt warm and fuzzy when I was around her, it wasn't just because I was amazed by her, all those things contributed to it, but it's a call. If I had applied the principle of WWJD, it wouldn't have worked. Because what would Jesus do? He didn't get married.

He didn't get married at all. And you know, if I just did what he did, and so I said, well what does the Bible tell me to do? Well, Paul said in one place that it might be better to not get married and just do the ministry, but on the other hand he said it's better to marry than to burn. And the Lord said in Genesis that it's not good for a man to be alone, he made us male and female, so on the one hand, yeah, it seems like it's saying it'd be good to get married, or on the other hand, it says it might be good for you not to get married.

How are you even going to know? You can't WWJD it, and you really can't find it in the Bible, and as much as I search, Ann's name's not in here. We need to be led by the Spirit in accord congruently with God's word. I was thinking about my call to the ministry.

I started enjoying studying church history and theology and Bible when I was in secular university, the winning basketball team, Carolina, and I just checked the last ten minutes, turned it on real quick, if we're down by twenty I cut it back off, but yesterday it was different. I was thinking I would continue on, get a Ph.D. and teach, maybe teach in a college, maybe university or something, and teach New Testament or church history or something like that. I thought I would like that, and clearly that wasn't what God was calling me to. And then I called to the ministry, and I'm graduating from college, I'm twenty-two, I'm thinking about maybe doing a couple years of youth ministry, then going to seminary, and then going into the pastorate, that's what I'm kind of thinking about doing, but you know you're not sure the path you should take about how I start the ministry and all, and so what would happen if I WWJD'd that? Well Jesus didn't start his ministry until age thirty.

I had to do something between age twenty-two and thirty. I remember when we were taking our first church, we had interviewed with so many churches, too many churches, too many churches we interviewed with, I was just so afraid I wouldn't get a job I guess, but, and all these little churches, and little towns, little churches, little towns. Now Ann and I, we don't have to have a real big city, but some of these towns were so little, and Ann said, I don't want to live in a town that's too little, and I said, well how little is too little? And finally she said, they've got to have a video rental store.

She said, I don't have to have a movie theater, but they've got to at least be able to rent a movie of all this, and that ruled out some of the towns. And then after interviewing all these little churches with no budgets, and then we interviewed at a big posh church in a big city, a big church, posh church. It's a pretty church, a big church, big budget, and my office as associate pastor working with young adults would have been a nice office.

They showed us that office, they showed us the salary, it was nice. Ann was feeling led towards that church. But instead we got called to a little church that had 115 on the roll, but only about 50 or 60 I think genuinely active when we got there.

The budget was $55,000, the total budget when we went. I mean, how are you going to know what church if you're a pastor you're supposed to be serving in? WWJD, well he never had an official church, he wandered around.

He just wandered around, never had a pillow for his head, a rock for a pillow, and I didn't think we were supposed to stay somewhere. And I know it's supposed to come to Rinaldo. By that time we finally got the thing going down there. The other church, it was going great. By that time we figured we should stay, and the Lord called us here. I was just saying is that I'm called to be at Rinaldo Church in the Evangelical Presbyterian denomination, and as hard as I have looked, and as surprised as I am, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church is not mentioned in here.

Although some would say that the whole thing's about the Presbyterian Church, but it's not. We need to be led by the Holy Spirit, don't we? Some of you have big decisions right now that you're trying to make. And some of us, we just go through times in which you just feel like you're confused. God is not the author of confusion. He does not tell you everything that you want to know, but He will tell you everything you need to know. And as you search the scriptures to say, well how does God lead us, it's so interesting that what you find is that there is no clear list here of the steps to hearing the voice of God. There's no practical hints on discerning the will of God.

There's nothing like that here. Because everywhere the scripture just basically has this assumption and implication as many as are the sons of God will be led by the Spirit of God, because it is a sonship thing. It's in relationship with God, like any other relationship. This is the way the scripture looks at the leading of the Spirit. So it's about the growth of a relationship with God wherein we learn and discern His voice. Alan Wright, and this is a good series on Phil, and I'm glad you're here today. And we've got the next installment of this teaching, Why Wouldn't Everyone Want to be Led by the Spirit, coming soon.

But in a moment, Alan is back with additional insight on this for your life and today's final word. Someone once said, doing your will by your power is humanism. Doing God's will by your power is religion.

But doing God's will by God's power, that's Christianity. Can anyone love his enemy just by deciding to be nice? Can anyone produce peace that passes understanding by mental discipline?

Can anyone heal depression by just trying harder to be happy? Of course not. In fact, almost everything about New Testament Christianity is impossible by human power alone. Thankfully, God has never expected you to live the Christian life by your own strength. He has sent a helper and every single Christian is invited to live a supernaturally empowered life through the continual infilling of the Holy Spirit. In a special bundle alongside the audio teaching, Pastor Alan has also written a booklet. Both the audio and the booklet not only explain the infilling of the Holy Spirit, but will nourish, inspire and draw you nearer to the God who longs to immerse you in his love and power.

Discover how to be filled with the Spirit and get ready for your life to be filled with fresh love, joy and power. The Gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Alan, as we've talked about so often in this series, a big myth is to be led by the Spirit, to be driven by the Spirit is to maybe be at conflict with your brain and your mind. And when we're talking about being led by the Spirit, do you think oftentimes this is us wanting to control our own destiny? Well, I think that we all have apprehensions about being yielded to anyone's influence or direction or control over our life. And here's what has to happen. If anybody's going to lead you, teach you, direct you, or help guide you, if you're going to follow, it depends on trusting them.

It's interesting, Daniel, in some arenas of life, we just have breathtaking things. You go to the doctor, you don't even know that doctor, and the doctor says, well, I'm going to need you to roll up your sleeve. We're going to give you this injection.

We're going to do this. And you're just like, okay, whatever. You just yield, right? But the only reason you do that is you trust that this physician has your best in mind. So to the extent that we trust that God only has our best in mind, boy, I want him to lead me every step of the way. Alan, if I were to ask the question after hearing this, well, how do I convince my brain to trust? Am I asking the wrong question? Probably.

Probably. Because really following God is not so much about forcing yourself into mental ascent to truths as it is an actual relationship. And I think that's so much of what we're wanting to say about being led by the Spirit is it's not a technique. And it's not something that you convince yourself of. It really is something that grows like any trust relationship. Trust grows.

So you walk with him. You learn. You grow. You pray. You worship. You abide in the community of Christ.

You do the things that Christians do. And through that, we grow. And as we grow, we're growing in the knowledge of God. And I think so much, Daniel, what we're trying to say today especially is as your thought life is healed from old shame-based thinking, you'll be able to more clearly hear what the voice of grace really sounds like. So you grow in your ability to hear God's voice. God's good news message is a listener-supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.