A movement of the Holy Spirit is not the same thing as a formal commission from God.
The ancient Hebrews would have understood our concept of memes. They had plenty of them. Do you recall, “Is Saul also among the prophets?” Saul had gone out in search of his father’s livestock, and stopped off to inquire of the Lord through the Prophet Samuel. While there, Saul was caught up in the Spirit and prophesied.
Samuel had established his Academy of the Prophets. He taught that rituals by which God revealed His will, but they also absorbed the background of prophetic literature. They needed to grasp the ways God spoke — the themes, protocols, terminology, etc. Samuel could not make them prophets; only God did that. But he could teach them the ways of God and how prophecy worked. Saul was not a prophet, but he did have a good lesson on prophecy at the academy.
Those who studied at Samuel’s school were called “Sons of the Prophets” — disciples of the prophets. Let me clarify something: This is my calling. I’m a disciple of the prophets. I have shared words of prophecy by the power of the Holy Spirit, and I am acquainted in the ways of prophetic messaging, but I have not been called into the Presence of God’s Council the way the biblical prophets were. I cannot say, “Thus saith the Lord.” Instead, I have a prophetic discipleship ministry because I know the territory on this side of the Eternity. I have received that gift.
Recall the types of Spiritual Gifts: The Holy Spirit gives offices, ministries, specific manifestations, and specific individuals. I’m not in the office, but I have the ministry and have experienced the manifestation.
I suppose this is a good time to point out that the difficulty with manifestation gifts is that they can be faked by humans and by the Devil. I’ve observed people who would, say, speak in tongues but the effect of their ministry was overall negative in the community of faith. The gift of tongues does not provoke you to an inflated ego unless it comes from someone other than the Holy Spirit. Nor does He move people to envy any such gift. He provokes awe and humility.
That’s not the same thing as a division that comes as a result of humble expressions of the gifts. Ineffective structures will fracture in the Presence of the Spirit. It demands a lot of us to discern for ourselves (and those we cover) how we must respond to anything like that.
The greatest challenge is that none of this can be objectified. You cannot write or describe a set of guidelines that work for everyone. That’s the whole point. A political division in an existing human organization is not evil in itself. Paul and Silas parted ways with Barnabas and John Mark. Sometimes that’s the right answer. They still loved each other, but should not have been working directly together. In other places, Paul withdrew fellowship entirely. That’s how the Spirit works. It was never a question of who was right, but what the Spirit required of Paul. So it is with us.
In general, discernment is a challenge because you cannot use your intellect except as a mere tool, a helper. It can serve, but is not fit to rule. Your conscience is part of your fleshly nature; it requires training and discipline to hear correctly from the convictions. A false conscience sounds the same as conviction until the conscience has been schooled, rather like the Academy of the Prophets.
Your convictions are a lore of truth coming out of your spirit. Your conscious mind does not start out with a solid connection. It takes time and experience. And frankly, it requires copious amounts of failure. In the past, I’ve been so sure something in my soul was the Word of God, but it failed the test of what God actually did. Satan took advantage of my defiled upbringing that gave me a false conscience.
This is by far a much bigger problem for westerners that it would be for the ancient Hebrews. It’s one of those things that peeks out at us from between the lines of things like Boman’s book on the difference between Greek and Hebrew thinking. The Hebrews had far less baggage to manage in that area of life (though they had their own baggage of other kinds of problems). Their equipment for the convictions-conscience interface was better.
This is the reason the New Testament makes such a big deal out of spending time in the company of Covenant people. They should be forgiving about things that require more work to gain useful experience. They should help critique the likely outcomes of those cues coming from your conscience. They’ll help you gain spiritual consistency. In the New Testament, we don’t have a commission from God to stone false prophets; we have a family that helps us learn from our mistakes.
Go forth and make mistakes.
