Common Misconceptions About the Holy Spirit Moving in a Church
See if you have been fooled by any of these!
Misconception #1: The Holy Spirit Will Move If We Ask Him to Move
The Holy Spirit does not move where He is ASKED to move. The Holy Spirit moves where He is ALLOWED to move. There is a big difference!
I know people who really want to see a move of the Holy Spirit, but their church policy is “No tongues!” (in blatant violation of 1 Corinthians 14:39). It’s going to be hard to get people Spirit-filled if tongues aren’t allowed, given that they will speak in tongues after they are baptized with the Spirit! You won’t see the Spirit move on your terms. Let Him move His way or forget it.
Other churches feature choreographed light shows with a worship “set list” that is like a Broadway production. But if the Holy Spirit isn’t allowed to interrupt your “set list,” it does no good to keep begging Him to move. I’ve seen some of the best moves of the Spirit when we obeyed Him and interrupted “our” plans for the service. It’s not wrong to have plans, but if you are inflexible about executing your carefully-planned event, you can forget about seeing anything significant happen.
Too many churches have excellent theology from the pulpit but provide no chance for the Spirit to move. This is a drawback of being tied to a printed order of worship or reading your sermons verbatim from paper. I used to write out my sermons word for word in my younger years, but the Holy Spirit kept interrupting my carefully-scripted messages and I just can’t do that anymore. At this writing, I’m at the other extreme and I can’t remember when the last time was that I used written sermon notes.
The Holy Spirit wants to move in your service even more than you want Him to move! It takes no begging or cajoling, but it does require yielding.
Misconception #2: We Will See Miracles if We Pray for Miracles
Prayer is good, but it in church, you don’t have what you PRAY FOR. You have what you PREACH. It does no good to pray for healings to occur if you aren’t going to teach healing from the pulpit. You results will be sporadic at best.
If you preach the new birth, people will get saved.
If you preach baptism with the Holy Spirit, people will get baptized with the Holy Spirit.
If you preach healing, people will get healed.
If you preach the believer’s authority, people will walk in their authority.
If you preach being led by the Spirit, people will follow the Spirit.
If you preach gifts of the Spirit, you will have manifestations of the gifts of the Spirit.
If you preach biblical prosperity, people will prosper.
If you preach our identity in Christ, people will rise up and walk as true children of God.
And so on.
This misconception is worst when applied to a church that doesn’t preach these things from the pulpit because the pastor doesn’t know them himself. But “spiritual” people who go there want to see the Holy Spirit move in power despite the Word not being taught, and that won’t work. Of course, if those people are really so spiritual, one must wonder why they sit there and listen to weak preaching week after week and support it with their tithes and offerings. Some people just seem to like being big fish in a small pond and enjoying the smug feeling of going somewhere where they know a lot more than the pastor. Of course, they won’t grow in faith in an environment where the preaching hinders faith.
Misconception #3: If We Just Get the Pastor Baptized with the Holy Spirit, Revival Can Break Out at His Church
God loves that pastor too much to set him up to fail by placing him in a position that he would be totally unequipped to handle – pastoring a “Holy Ghost revival” kind of church that experiences a blowout move of God – when he has no experience being around anything like that.
People praying for such a pastor often make the mistake of thinking that he just needs to get Spirit-baptized and then the Holy Spirit will just tell him what to do as a massive move of God breaks out.
If that is true, let’s close down every Bible college and Bible training center in the world immediately! Who needs two years of training and some practical experience being where God is moving? Just get Spirit-filled and you’re all set! Perhaps the first song on the set list could be the one that says, “We don’t need no education!”
What if someone in the church wants to introduce special Deliverance Tongues that aren’t in the Bible? The pastor won’t know better, as he will have no experience knowing which end is up in spiritual matters. In an effort to make sure he’s not quenching the Spirit (or losing this person), he might say, “That’s great, why don’t you teach a class on Deliverance Tongues for us?”
Now, someone is probably deceived into thinking, “That’s why God led me to this dead church that doesn’t preach the Word – so that when revival breaks out, I can help the pastor!” So the pastor in this model becomes a mere figurehead as people behind him pull the marionette strings and run the church from the shadows. But how much respect will that pastor get when he is busy following the followers who are leading the leaders? If you have to pastor your pastor, how can he pastor YOU when you need it? Will you tell him what counsel he should give you? None of this makes sense.
Misconception #4: We Can Pray the Holy Spirit into a Dead Church
Say that the local Free Will Baptist pastor doesn’t want tongues in his church, but you are sentimentally attached to that church because your family has gone there for years and Grandpaw’s name is on a plaque at the end of a pew. So you and some “enlightened” friends decide that you’re going to “pray the Holy Ghost into that church.”
Your faith cannot violate the free will of the Free Will Baptist pastor. If he doesn’t want tongues, there will be no tongues in that church. You cannot pray revival in over his wishes. Stop wasting your time.
Even if he changes his mind someday, you’ll still be faced with the problem in Misconception #3 above.
Misconception #5: We Can Sneak Revival in Through the Back Door When the Pastor Isn’t Looking
The Holy Spirit is not interested in sneaking revival in through the back door. He wants it to come through the front door, which is the pulpit. If you know that the pastor does not currently want real revival, you are out of order and engaged in subversion if you try to sneak better teachings into the church when the pastor isn’t looking. God does things decently and in order. Introducing teaching that conflicts with what the pastor is teaching from the pulpit without his permission is wrong, even if the teaching you’re sneaking in is doctrinally correct.
I know of a case where a Sunday school teacher ran some material by the pastor who wasn’t teaching that way, and the pastor actually decided that he agreed with it and blessed it for use in Sunday school. That was the right way to go about it. It was also a rare exception. I’ve seen plenty of cases of Spirit-filled people operating in the shadows in a non-Spirit-filled church, trying to introduce people to the Holy Spirit on the sly. That’s ungodly because it disrespects that pastor’s authority.
If the pastor would have a problem with anything you’re doing if he found out about it, you ought not to do it. God won’t honor it.
Misconception #6: Everything Has to Be Just Perfect Before the Holy Spirit Can Move
The Holy Spirit is not so touchy that He will leave if the slightest thing is wrong. Certainly, we don’t want to grieve or quench Him, but I’ve seen Him move in services where horrific doctrine was preached. He moved despite – not because of – the preaching. This should encourage you because even if you don’t get everything perfect in a service, the Holy Spirit will still move if you allow Him to do so.
I’ve seen a case where the preacher got upset because a baby cried. He put the mother on the spot claiming that the baby was grieving the Holy Spirit. Actually, it was the preacher who was grieved, and maybe he didn’t flow as well because his flesh got stirred. But something like that, or someone muffing notes or words on a song, is not going to make the Holy Spirit leave in a huff. After all, He IS called the “Spirit of grace” in Hebrews 10:29!
Misconception #7: I Can Disobey Church Policies and the Pastor If the Holy Spirit Tells Me to Do So
The real Holy Spirit will never tell you to operate outside of authority in a local church, even if the “house rules” are antibiblical. If the house rule is “no tongues,” you don’t speak or sing in tongues. End of discussion. You could protest that 1 Corinthians 14:39 forbids banning tongues, but if the church chooses to operate contrary to the Bible, you must honor the rules anyway.
I had a man visit my church who was considered a prophet in some circles. After handing out his ministry business cards to people in our prayer line without my permission, he proceeded to prophesy to someone. I ordered him to stop. He retorted that GOD had told him to do it and he couldn’t disobey God. I reminded him of this Scripture while showing him the door:
1 Corinthians 14:32:
And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.
On this way out, he proceeded to prophesy to someone else without my permission while I wasn’t nearby. Someone else heard it and reminded him that I had told him not to prophesy. The “prophet” said defiantly, “I’ll do whatever GOD tells me to do!” That man was persona non grata at my church from that day forward.
If you hold the pastor in low regard, at least respect his office and do the right thing before God by following his instructions.
Misconception #8: “Sin in the Camp” Can’t Hinder the Moving of the Spirit in a New Testament Church
The Holy Spirit can still move amid sin, which is a good thing given that we all still sin. However, if sin is openly tolerated or even celebrated, you can grieve the Spirit to the point where He won’t do anything. If it were impossible to grieve Him, there wouldn’t be this instruction:
Ephesians 4:30:
And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.
I was in an area where lamentably, having unbelievers on worship teams was common. The pastors compromised to get good musicians. I think some of the pastors thought they were saved, but their openly sinful lifestyles said otherwise. I NEVER saw a proper move of the Holy Spirit in those churches. The Holy Spirit certainly wasn’t going to use Bobby Badmorals or Sally Shackup even though they were good musicians.
It's one thing for the Holy Spirit to use people who sin, which everyone does, but another to expect Him to use people who openly flaunt ungodly lifestyles and thus bring reproach upon the church.
Misconception #9: A Corporate Fast Will Bring a Move of God
Fasting is a good thing if you do it for the right reason – to keep your flesh under. However, the New Testament nowhere says that we should go on corporate fasts to cause the power of God to operate in our churches. You MIGHT get some benefit because God moves better among people who aren’t flesh-bound, but the act of fasting in and of itself does not produce a move of God. We do not see that as a requirement in the New Testament.
I know of churches that did 21-day fasts at the beginning of the year. If that’s what you want to do, fine, God doesn’t forbid it. It sounded very impressive until I found out that the “fasting” was generally not what the Bible calls fasting – total abstention from food. “Daniel Fasting” (not eating some things while continuing to eat others) is not fasting. “Fasting television” is not fasting.
Isaiah 58:6-11 has been misinterpreted in many churches to mean that fasts break bondage. That is not true. The point of that passage is that God wanted the religious leaders to stop oppressing people, and that was more important to God than denying themselves food.
Misconception #10: The Holy Spirit Moves Sovereignly Where He Chooses
We are the ones who choose where He moves and doesn’t move by allowing Him to move or crowding Him out of our tightly-scheduled services. He is not just picking out random churches or cities and saying, “I think I’ll move there!”
Consider the irony of praying for a sovereign move of God in your church. If He does it in answer to your prayer, it’s not a sovereign move of God, is it? (In the New Testament, we see people working WITH God, not imploring God to move supernaturally without using people.)
There is an attitude in some circles that the Holy Spirit wants to pick certain cities or churches to be “portals” in His sovereign will and that we need to pray “portal-opening” prayers to have Him do it where we are. No such prayer is found in the New Testament. Jesus already opened heaven anyway!