Those who are being “led by the Spirit” into humble holiness will also be “led by the Spirit” in evaluating their impressions, and so they will increasingly be able to distinguish the Spirit’s nudges from impure and improper desire.

J.I. Packer’s essay, “Guidance: How God Loves Us,” in God’s Plans for Us (Wheaton: Crossway, 2001), 89–106, is a really important read.

Halfway through, Packer covers what he has argued thus far:

I have already said that God ordinarily guides his children in their decision-making through Bible-based wisdom.

I have dismissed the idea that guidance is usually or essentially an inner voice telling us facts otherwise unknown and prescribing strange modes of action.

I have criticized the way some Christians wait passively for guidance and “put out a fleece” when perplexed, rather than prayerfully following wisdom’s lead.

He acknowledges that at this point, some readers might be muttering in response.

Some readers may believe that I have played down and thereby dishonored the guiding ministry of the Holy Spirit. One cannot say what I have said in today’s steamy Christian atmosphere without provoking that reaction. So there is need now to discuss the Holy Spirit’s role in guidance in a direct way.

The last thing I want to do is to dishonor, or lead others to dishonor, the Holy Spirit. But the fact must be faced that not all endeavors that seek to honor the Holy Spirit succeed in their purpose. There is such a thing as fanatical delusion, just as there is such a thing as barren intellectualism. Overheated views of life in the Spirit can be as damaging as “flat tire” versions of Christianity that minimize the Spirit’s ministry. This is especially true in relation to guidance.

So, Packer asks, “What does it mean to be ‘led by the Spirit’ in personal decision-making?” The phrase, he points out, is from Romans 8:14 and Galatians 5:18 and speaks not of decision making but of resisting sinful impulses. But, he acknowledges, “the question of what it means to be Spirit-led in choosing courses of action is a proper and important one.”

The Spirit leads by helping us understand the biblical guidelines within which we must keep, the biblical goals at which we must aim, and the biblical models that we should imitate, as well as the bad examples from which we are meant to take warning.

He leads through prayer and others’ advice, giving us wisdom as to how we can best follow biblical teaching.

He leads by giving us the desire for spiritual growth and God’s glory. The result is that spiritual priorities become clearer, and our resources of wisdom and experience for making future decisions increase.

He leads, finally, by making us delight in God’s will so that we find ourselves wanting to do it because we know it is best. Wisdom’s paths will be “ways of pleasantness” (Prov. 3:17). If at first we find we dislike what we see to be God’s will for us, God will change our attitude if we let him. God is not a sadist, directing us to do what we do not want to do so that he can see us suffer. He wants joy for us in every course of action to which he leads us, even those from which we shrink at first and that involve outward unpleasantness.

Packer knows that virtually no Christian would deny what he has written here. But he also knows that some would say this is only “half the story.”

Part of what being Spirit-led means, they would tell us, is that one receives instruction from the Spirit through prophecies and inward revelations such as repeatedly came to godly people in Bible times (see Gen. 22; 2 Chron. 7:12-22; Jer. 32:19; Acts 8:29; 11:28; 13:4; 21:11; 1 Cor. 14:30). They believe this kind of communication to be the fulfillment of God’s promise that “your ears shall hear a word behind you saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left” (Isa. 30:21 RSV). They are sure that some impressions of this kind should be identified as the Spirit-given “word of knowledge” in 1 Corinthians 12:8. They insist that this is divine guidance in its highest and purest form, which Christians should therefore constantly seek. Those who play it down, they would say, thereby show that they have too limited a view of life in the Spirit.

Packer responds:

Here I must come clean. I know that this line of thought is sincerely believed by many people who are, I am sure, better Christians than I am. Yet I think it is wrong and harmful, and I shall now argue against it. I choose my words with care, for some of the arguments made against this view are as bad and damaging as is the view itself. The way of wisdom is like walking a tightrope, from which one can fall by overbalancing either to the left or to the right. As, in Richard Baxter’s sharp-sighted phrase, overdoing is undoing, so overreacting is undermining.

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