The Holy Spirit - Our Guide

“I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.” John 16:12-15

A major function of the Holy Spirit it to guide God’s children. But too often the leadership of the Spirit is ascribed to methods and sources of which the Father has no part.

In his book Knowing God, J.I. Packer helps us to understand the fundamental error and make the proper course correction. “Earnest Christians seeking guidance often go wrong about it. They look for a will-o’-the-wisp; they overlook the guidance that is ready to hand, and lay themselves open to all sorts of delusion. Their basic mistake is to think of guidance as essentially inward prompting by the Holy Spirit, apart from the written Word.

...The true way to honor the Holy Spirit as our guide is to honor the Holy Scriptures through which He guides us. The fundamental guidance which God gives to shape our lives...is not a matter of inward promptings apart from the word but of the pressure on our consciences of the portrayal of God’s character and will in the word...The Spirit leads within the limits which the Word sets, not beyond them.”

“Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction...” 1 Corinthians 10:11