The Illuminator

John 16:13 CSB

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own, but he will speak whatever he hears. He will also declare to you what is to come.

The Spirit is the illuminator. The Spirit is the person of the God head that most closely interacts with us. . He illuminates us to God’s will for our lives.

Now as we mentioned a few weeks ago. The primary will of God for our lives is the Holy Spirits work of conforming us to the image of Christ.

How do we know when we are hearing from the Holy Spirit? I think this is a question that has perplexed many.

Some people are inclined to look for the Spirits voice only in the mystical. Meaning they are looking for some mystical experience, vision, prophecy, or dream.

Others are inclined to seek out the Holy Spirit’s voice through signs or random circumstances.

Others rely on their ministry leaders to tell them what they thing the Sprit is saying.

Maybe some would just say, I really don’t know.

Today my goal is to help you be confident in hearing from the Holy Spirit by showing you how the bible describes it.

I. The Spirit Speaks through The Word.

The primary way the Spirit speaks to us his through the Word. But how does He do this?

Let’s first look as some types of misuse.

When I was a child, I remember roaming the aisle of the toy department at our local department store. They always had in the bargain section of toys, these things called magic 8 balls. You were supposed to ask it a question, shake it and this floating dice type thing in the middle would settle in and give you an answer.

I have seen this approach used to determine the will of God.

The Magic 8 Ball approach to God’s word.

One commentator tells of an experience he had with a college student using this type of method.

Who Is the Holy Spirit? Chapter Six: The Illuminator

In the first year of my academic career, I was teaching at a college in western Pennsylvania. In the spring semester, a coed made an appointment with me to discuss a personal problem. She was quite distressed because she was experiencing what is sometimes called “senioritis.” She was in her last semester of her senior year, but she was not married, she was not dating, and she had no prospects for a relationship with a man at the time. She was a devout and earnest Christian, so she wanted to know whether it would be wrong for her to pray to find a mate. I told her that there was nothing at all wrong with praying that God would provide her with a husband, and I urged her to do so.

About two weeks later, she came to see me again, and this time she was filled with joy and elation. She said, “I’ve been praying for two weeks that God would give me a husband, and He’s answered my prayers.” I said, “You have met someone?” She said: “No, I haven’t met him yet. But I know I will very shortly. You see, last night I lucky dipped.” Now, I had never heard of such a thing as “lucky dipping,” so I asked her what she meant. She said: “Well, I was praying, and I had my Bible in front of me, and I asked God whether He was going to provide me with a husband. Then I closed my eyes, opened my Bible at random, and dropped my finger on the page. When I opened my eyes, my finger was pointing to Zechariah 9:9, which says: ‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’ That was God’s answer to my prayer. The Spirit revealed to me that I am going to be married.”

This was an example of “pneumatic exegesis,” which is just a fancy term for lucky dipping. It has to do with interpreting the Bible through some kind of spiritual machination. It does not simply border on magic and superstition, it crosses that border. This dear college student of mine had engaged in a way of interpreting Scripture that really is an offense against God the Holy Spirit. Turning the Bible into a magic talisman is certainly not according to the intent of the Spirit in His work of inspiring the Bible.

She took a verse in scripture prophesying the coming Messiah and used it as a verse to prophesy that a husband was coming soon. Now instead of seeing the rescue of the world from sin, she sees a verse that prophesies her recuse from loneliness.

In my years of ministry I to have regularly come across this type of practice or misuse of scripture.

Instead what does scripture say about using The Word.

Now compare this situation to this account of St. Augustine.

Who Is the Holy Spirit? How the Spirit Uses the Word

Augustine earned a reputation for living a wild, unbridled, and licentious lifestyle. His godly mother, Monica, prayed earnestly for a long time that her son would come to Christ. One day, as Augustine recounts in his memoir, Confessions, he was meditating in a garden, trying to understand the truth amid his confusion over the various philosophical systems of his day. Some children were playing a game nearby, and Augustine could hear them chanting an odd refrain: “Tolle lege, tolle lege,” which means, “Take up and read, take up and read.” Augustine found a copy of the Christian Scriptures and began to read where the pages fell open. They fell open to the book of Romans, where Paul said: “Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Rom. 13:13–14). When Augustine’s eyes fell on that text, he was stricken with guilt and awakened to the things of God. At that moment, he was born again by the Holy Spirit.

In one persons life the Holy Spirit used circumstances to draw Him to The Word. The Word in it’s context illuminated his heart.

In the first, circumstance this young lady was drawn to The Word, not to learn what it actually said and be transformed by it but rather to divine information she wanted to hear.

If you want to hear the Holy Spirit you must study the word.

Why for so many, is studying the word dull or boring?

Because we have been trained by academics to absorb information only instead of looking for God one every page.

If you want to recognize the voice of God there are no shortcuts.

You must see the God of the Bible by looking for God in your bible.

When I was dating my wife, we had a campus mail system. Each night the mail was delivered. When I wrote her, or she wrote me. We would spend unhurried time reading each others notes. It was not a chore it was a delight. Why? because we wanted to know each other. So we would look at each letter as a window into the heart of each other.

In the same way, we are to approach the Word of God. We are looking for every detail that would reveal to us who he is. It is only when you begin to know God can you recognize his voice.

How many of us simply search the scriptures for information that helps us but in that fail to seek the heart of God in it?

Jeremiah 29:13 CSB

You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart.

Another reason why we struggle to identify the voice of God is that we are not really looking for Him, were only looking for solutions to our problems.