In circles of people with extremely charismatic language, I often hear people say things things like, “The Lord is telling me…” or “I feel like the Lord is saying…”. Whether I agree with that or not is not so much in discussion right now. But what is actually said is.

Before Jesus’ death, he told his disciples that his death was necessary that the Holy Spirit would come. He explained the Spirit’s function in John 16:14:

“When the Spirit of truth comes…[v14] He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

When the Spirit of God speaks to us, it is about Jesus; of Jesus. It is about God’s Word. The Spirit will not speak to us about things that aren’t taught to us from God’s word. This is why the Puritans understood that the modern gift of prophecy is when a person, usually a teacher, is given insight and understanding of God’s word.

You might not agree with that last paragraph, and that’s alright.

What bothers me is when people use the concept of the Spirit’s speaking to a believer as a means to make a point, or convince hearers of their opinions or personal beliefs.

For example, If you’ve dated within the Church, you’ve probably heard something like, “God is telling me I need to be single.” Or maybe you’ve just heard of people saying that kind of thing. In charismatic worship settings (which I tend to enjoy, by the way), you might’ve heard someone say something like, “The Spirit is telling us we need to lift our hands,” or “The Spirit wants us repent of [fill in the blank].”

I strongly believe this language is an abuse of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Well, at least about 90% of the time anyway.

When the Spirit speaks, it is to glorify Jesus—namely in the Word of God. It is more sound to say, “God’s Word says [fill in the blank]—I believe we are guilty of this, and should repent.” If this message is truly from the Spirit, this language will still cut people’s conscience and lead to repentance. And if it doesn’t, either people’s hearts are hard or else the Spirit wasn’t highlighting that issue in specific.

Or, perhaps, “I have been reading the word of God and praying and I feel that I need to be single for some time.”

When the Spirit speaks, it is from God’s word, which is about Jesus, of Jesus. And the language chosen is important. There are at least two major dangers in speaking with this kind of hyper-spiritual language.

1. Human beings are a complicated mess of flesh and emotion and ideas. Unless the the word being spoken can be thoroughly confirmed by God’s written word, it can only truly be spoken with some marginal level of confidence. Anything more than that is probably a confidence conjured from elsewhere inside us. Speaking with such presumption is clearly dangerous. Prophets of the old testament who prophesy falsely were to be put to death. That’s not the case today, but the principal stands. Speaking for God when God may not be speaking is big deal.

2. Human beings are also rational, intellectual creatures. These are gifts given to us by God. And, we have a thorough and complete written Word from God. When language such as “God is saying…” is used, it effectively closes the door to disagreement and rational discussion. It makes it impossible for “iron to sharpen iron”.

It is wisdom that we would use our language carefully when talking about the Spirit’s speaking to us and to our congregation. When the Spirit speaks, he is teaching what he has already said in God’s Word to the church.

We should be so hasty as to assume the Spirit is saying what we might think he’s saying but be confident that if he is speaking, it will be heard even if we don’t use such confident language.