Being Led By the Holy Spirit and “Little Nudges”

For a couple of weeks or so I have once again been pondering what it really means to be led by the Holy Spirit.

As always, I like to write down my thoughts when they come to me. But I mulled over this subject for a little while before I committed anything into writing. This was certainly not the first time I had approached this subject of being Spirit led: this is a subject I have returned to again and again. I intend to publish some of my notes on the subject in due course. The term that has been in my heart recently in relation to these thoughts, has been subtle promptings.

Conviction and Compulsion

I remember in the past, perhaps as early as 2005, when the term conviction and compulsion was running through my mind. For me, conviction and compulsion summed-up what it really meant to be led by the Holy Spirit. In fact, I noticed that virtually everything that I did was the result of having a conviction about it in my heart, followed by or accompanied with, a compulsion to do it. I noticed that without conviction and compulsion I could do nothing. But with conviction and compulsion I could do anything. I suppose for me that this brought to life the Words of Jesus in John 15:5, when He said, “For without Me you can do nothing.”

“Little Nudges” and the Knowable God

I listened to the latest The God Journey podcast entitled The Knowable God, dated 18^th June 2010. For me, I felt that this incredible podcast episode had two main themes running through it: firstly, there was the admission that a person cannot live by simply trying to follow principles; secondly, Wayne Jacobsen recounted how he had learned to live by the little nudges of the Holy Spirit. Wayne explained the fact that ever since the publication of the extremely popular book, The Shack; he has been inundated with manuscripts for consideration for publication by his company Windblown Media. Wayne described how he had more manuscripts on his plate than he could possibly deal with. So what he would do would be to walk past the manuscripts and say something along the lines of, “Lord, if there is anything here that you would like me to deal with now, please let me know.” Then, he would wait for a little nudge in his spirit that would possibly lead him to a potential publication. Wayne continued to relate how he has learned to extend this means of being led by God, into all areas of his life.

It just struck me how close this was to my own observations of conviction and compulsion and the subtle promptings of the Holy Spirit. In fact, I would say that it is impossible to do most things without these subtle promptings. When I wrote about conviction and compulsion from around 2005 to 2008 – there was hardly any teaching available to me that seemed to agree with this concept. Most Christian teaching seemed to constantly put the onus on the believer to “just do something” or to “be obedient”. So you can imagine how refreshing it was to hear Wayne Jacobsen relate how it is futile to try to follow some sort of principle – without having little nudges in your heart to maintain that behaviour.

It must be taken into consideration that Wayne Jacobsen and Brad Cummings, the hosts of The God Journey podcast, has a great deal of experience when it comes to ministry: both of them are ex-pastors who became disillusioned by the traditional church system. I know that Brad is a very well educated man and by his own admission he loves theology. But what Brad was saying in this podcast is that he started wondering to himself, “When do people actually graduate from all of this Christian teaching?”