Believing that God moves in spontaneous ways is not unbiblical or sinful, but I think it has been overemphasized. The Spirit cannot be manipulated or placed under constraints (John 3:8), but a mark of the Spirit is that He works in an orderly fashion through means. He is the third person of the Godhead, meaning that whatever we see of God, we see of His Spirit. And if God is not a God of confusion, then we should expect for Him to most normally work through the orderly means of planning and preparation.

Have you ever heard someone say that? I haven’t. Or what about this one? “That dude was really in the Spirit. Did you see how well-practiced the worship team was?” Normally, when you hear of someone being “led by the Spirit,” it is because that person was being spontaneous or bold or animated or loud. And where there is biblical precedence for the Spirit producing spontaneity (Luke 12:11-12) and boldness (Acts 4:31), I want to try to help balance the scales a bit on what “Spirit-led” preaching and worship can look like.

Spirit-Led Preaching

I often hear of preparation and planning for sermons in this way: “You want to prepare and plan your sermon out, but you need to leave room for the Spirit.” As I’ve already said, there is a place for willingness to be acted upon in the moment, but this type of language produces a false dichotomy between prayerful preparation and the Spirit’s leading. I want to push back here. Why is planning seen as non “Spirit-led”? This seems to be precisely the problem in the church at Corinth. They were really “spiritual” and had all kinds of things to prophesy about, but Paul tells them to stop the spontaneity and wait their turn (1 Cor 14:28). In other words, he wanted them to stop and think about it and carefully prophesy in order to help the church.

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