We have to be led by the inner witness. Paul was led by the Spirit to preach in certain places and not in others. If you have ever preaching in a place you weren’t led to, you may understand why!
The inner witness is an inner traffic light inside you that God placed inside you. It’s like an inner knowing, go this way, accept this invite, pray for this person, don’t pray for this people.
I am all for having a soul. Our soul is our mind, will and emotions. In our soul we can reason and feel, and I am all for that. We should be reasonable and we should be emotional. But as a pastor you need to be at the place where you know that your mind is not yet fully renewed, it’s not yet perfect, so your ability to reason is not yet fully operational. You can reason something and it is totally wrong. You can say “logically, this was the best thing to do, the best place to minister, the best way to handle this” but your logic could be faulty, and you might not even know. Logic can be infected because we live in a fallen universe and our minds are still a work in progress. Some people only live on the level of logic, but as pastors we have to be far more careful than that. There are people who have committed great sins, and when I have asked them how they ended up there, it seems logical to them. Reason is good but it must bow to the Word, and you must continually renew your mind.
Emotions are great too, but they are also less than perfect. You can feel things that aren’t real only too easily. We must never be emotion led! Now, when people are led by the Spirit, we often use the language of emotion, we say “I feel God is saying”, “I feel led to do this or that”, and that’s fine to say that, but again – we are leaders – we have to consider when I say “I feel good about doing this”, do I mean on an emotional or a spiritual level? Am I being sensual, carnal – this needs you to consider and think and pray. If the feeling comes from the spirit and not your flesh, all is well, but make sure it is.
Let me give you an example. You could wake up in the morning and feel really out of sorts. Your body feels sick and tells your emotions to feel sick as well. At that point, as a born-again Christian, your spirit should led the way and say “listen carefully, I am not moved by what I feel, I know I am healed by the stripes of Jesus”. Then your logic kicks in “well, if I was healed, then I would be healed, so that cannot be true”, so then you need to transcend logic and live by faith – “the Word says I am healed so I am healed” and live from your spirit. That is what I mean when I say “I feel led”, I feel led to follow the Word, to live by faith and listen to the Holy Spirit.
I hope this helps you! Grace and peace!
Inspiring and Challenging Dreamers 