The Biggest Enemy of Holy Spirit Manifestations
What is the single biggest enemy of Holy Spirit manifestations today?
Is it carnality? Carnality certainly doesn’t help, but the church in Corinth “came behind in no gift” while acting extremely carnal! They tolerated gross sin and divided themselves into cliques. So that won’t completely stop the Holy Spirit from moving. So the problem can’t just be that we’re not “good” enough or “holy” enough.
Is it lack of knowledge? Some congregations just aren’t taught about the gifts of the Spirit. If people don’t know about them, they won’t flow in them. Paul made it clear that God does NOT want us to be ignorant of the gifts of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:1). So that is a factor, but I don’t think it’s the biggest one. In denominational circles, this would be a big issue, but it shouldn’t be an issue in Spirit-filled churches. After all, a Spirit-filled church that doesn’t see the Holy Spirit move isn’t really very Spirit-filled, is it?
Is it principalities and powers in the heavenlies throwing a wet blanket on everything? No, they’re all defeated. Not a single one of them can stop the gifts from moving where they’re welcomed.
Is it opposition from those who claim that modern-day manifestations of the Spirit are “of the devil?” My wife and I have been told that we were “of the devil” when we saw miracles at our church. Supposedly the devil is now good because he will heal you, but God is no longer good all the time and He won’t heal you. No, opposition should be a non-issue to anyone with any courage at all. We’ve never backed down one iota just because some people though we were hell-bound heretics. That certainly didn’t stop the Holy Spirit from moving!
Is it fear of men? Often it is. The whole basis for the Ashamed of the Holy Spirit Movement (also known as the Seeker-Friendly Movement) is that some newcomers won’t like seeing the Holy Spirit move, so they’ll bolt out the door and we’ll never assimilate them into our church. It should be obvious that the Holy Spirit is not the author of the Ashamed of the Holy Spirit Movement! He won’t move in pathetic churches where the leaders care more about what PEOPLE think than what the HOLY SPIRIT thinks.
Something that is probably a bigger problem, though, is lack of evangelism. If unbelievers are not present, why should the Holy Spirit move through tongues, which are a sign for the unbeliever (1 Corinthians 14:22)? How can signs and wonders follow people who aren’t GOING anywhere to proclaim the good news to anyone?
But something in our day and age exerts more power over our services than any of these other things! This thing, in my opinion and observation, stops more Holy Spirit manifestations than carnality, lack of knowledge, fear of man or even lack of evangelism. It prevents services from being lively even though it isn’t even alive itself!
It’s called a clock.
We think that we have to rush through our carefully pre-planned services because:
1. There are multiple services on Sunday morning, so we have to end all but the last one at a preset time.
2. We have a TV contract stating that the service MUST BE exactly a certain length every week.
3. People don’t like long services. We have an “unwritten contract” with them that we will always get them out the door at the same time every week.
4. We have paid security and our contract with them mandates being out of the building at a certain time.
5. The midweek service must be especially brief because kids have school the next day.
6. In general, people like predictability. Having “unpredictable” services scares them.
7. The Children’s Ministry has a set routine that needs to be coordinated with the adult service, so everything is timed out to match the foreknown closing time of the adult service.
8. The “media people” who have to control the images in back of the platform will be very unhappy if we deviate at all from our “order of worship” to say nothing of the order of the Scriptures they are supposed to display during the message.
9. The worship leaders will be quite upset if we make substitutions, additions or deletions from their carefully-planned “set lists” that match the abilities and vocal ranges of the particular people who are scheduled to be up there during a particular service. The songs are set to a certain exact time, which is inevitable because they must be done exactly the same way every time to avoid annoying the above-mentioned media people who have to display the lyrics.
10. The message is carefully prepared so that everyone in multiple services hears the same message with no deviations.
So what happens? The Almighty Clock dictates that we leave the Holy Spirit completely out of the schedule! No room is allowed for Him to move in our clock-bound services even if He wants to move – and rest assured that He DOES want to move!
In MANY modern-day “faith churches,” services are every bit as predictable as they were back at the denominational churches that many people came from where they handed out a printed Order of Worship at the door and they had the “Ten Commandments Stones”-style wall displays down front with the order of the hymns by hymn number along with the attendance and offering last week and last year and maybe other such “vital” statistics.
Here’s a test. Could YOUR CHURCH hand out a printed “Order of Worship” (complete with starting and stopping times of different service segments) with every assurance that it would be adhered to? If so, what is the plan to allow the Holy Spirit to move? If we’d be honest, we’d admit, “There isn’t one.” And that’s a BIG problem!
Having identified the “enemy” (the problem), what can we do to fix it, given that we still may have multiple services, TV contracts, paid security on a schedule, and so on? If we don’t fix this, my other observation will continue to be true that you can see the Holy Spirit move more in small churches that lack the “megachurch” trappings and constraints.
Let’s start with an easy one – the worship set. Today, you need people who are Sky-High Tenors to sing certain songs that vocally untrained mortals in the congregations have a 0% chance of being able to sing along with. If the Sky-High Tenors aren’t scheduled today, you’ll have to do other songs. Why not sing songs in lower keys that the average person in the congregation can sing comfortably? Then it wouldn’t matter WHO was up there; the song could be done any time that the Holy Spirit wanted it done. (The songs may be arranged around the vocal range of the worship leader(s), but what good is it if the worship leader can hit notes that no one else can belt out? This isn’t a TV show where we try to see how much we can showcase a singer’s huge vocal range.) This would add to the number of songs that could be done spontaneously.
While we’re on that subject, why not leave room for spiritual songs to come forth at the moment? The Holy Spirit may have some things to be sung that aren’t on the set list. If you always rush from one song to the next, you won’t have such manifestations of prophecy in song – and they can be real blessings. I can still sing to this day songs by the Spirit that I only heard anyone sing once (even when if I wasn’t the singer) – back in the 1980’s! Such songs can be a tremendous encouragement to the people.
One hindrance to spiritual songs is having “sheet-music-only” musicians. If they can only play what they’ve rehearsed, it will be tough or impossible to have accompanied “songs by the Spirit.” If you get some musicians who can “play by ear” it will allow more room for people who come up with a song that doesn’t match the rhythm and chord progression of the song that you just finished. If at least one lead instrumentalist has perfect pitch, that’s even better. Such a musician can just start playing in any key because he knows what key something is in without having to fumble around on his instrument to find the right key. I am an ear-playing musician with perfect pitch and I used to be part of a worship team that could almost instantly “pick up” just about anything someone started singing. Our team was noted for flowing in “spiritual songs.” Sometimes we’d just agree on a chord progression at the end of the song set and we found that people who came up with songs could fit in with that progression fairly easily. But you don’t HAVE to do things that way to make things work. Someone COULD have a song by the Spirit and just sing it unaccompanied because no musicians can latch onto it quickly enough, and it would STILL be a blessing. Plenty of people sing national anthems unaccompanied and no one complains about that.
In Maine, we had something we called Worship Night once a month on the first Sunday night. The way it worked was that everyone showed up just to minister to the Lord. It wasn’t time to take prayer requests, preach, exhort each other, or even sing existing songs unless we felt explicitly led to do so. The general model was that the whole evening would be nothing but spontaneous songs by the Holy Spirit that ministered to the Lord as well as non-musical praise, thanksgiving and worship while music was played in the background. We’d come out of some of those nights with over a dozen new songs – many of which were good enough to use during congregational worship in the regular services that followed. Songs also came forth that were really prophecy to the church set to music as the Holy Spirit gave us utterance. While Worship Night was never well attended, those nights are some of my most cherished memories. People talk today about “giving back” – so why not set aside some time just to “give back” to the Lord after all He’s done for us? Most people won’t get involved in such services because they are “too busy,” though it’s interesting what they are “too busy” doing, for example, watching Sunday Night Football.
Because there was no set schedule, the Holy Spirit would move in those services in unusual ways. People would see or hear angels. People would be healed in their seats. Sometimes it felt like you could cut the atmosphere with a knife because God’s manifested presence was so strong. We weren’t there looking for such manifestations, but when we ministered to the Lord, He would move in powerful and tangible ways. It was reminiscent of Acts 13:1-3 where they ministered to the Lord FIRST and THEN the Holy Spirit spoke. We had no set ending time. We just waited until we felt that we had done what we needed to do, which varied from month to month. We took the clock out of the equation. What a difference it made!
We’ve seen a LOT of miracles in our regular church services. I think that the MAIN reason for that was that we just stayed open to the Holy Spirit throughout the services. Sometimes we’d be doing the first song and we suddenly sensed the need to flow in the gifts of healings. So we’d postpone or scrap the rest of the set list and just start laying hands on the sick immediately. The sensation of the Holy Spirit’s power at such times was unforgettable. Please understand that we would have every right to lay hands on the sick BY FAITH at the end of the service. But it would have only been by faith and not by the gifts, which only flowed because we allowed the Holy Spirit to have His way immediately. Many of the more notable miracles we’ve seen were the direct result of allowing the Holy Spirit to interrupt our pre-planned schedule.
But what about the armed security people and the multi-service schedule and other “clock” constraints? You can still have the Holy Spirit move. He does understand if the insurance company said that you need paid armed security because you’re a certain size and they left you no choice. If the Holy Spirit interrupts your song set, you just don’t finish your song set!
Then again, we had services where ALL we felt led to do was worship or even just “bask” in God’s presence the entire time. That was NOT the norm. The sheep needed to be fed the Word and God knew that. But when we allowed the Holy Spirit to have His way even when that meant that we were all quiet before the Lord for half an hour, people heard from God during that time! In many cases, I’m sure it was things He had been trying to say to them for a while, but they were so “busy” that they just didn’t hear what the Holy Spirit was trying to tell them. They’d leave with a supernatural assurance that things were going to be OK despite their trials. Sometimes that manifested presence of God would stay on me for the whole next day! I loved it. There’s no substitute for those “almost be able to cut the presence of God with a knife” services, but I don’t see how it’s possible to have them if you adhere to a strict schedule. Sometimes I’d know in advance that a service was going to be different and I’d go in there with no prepared message (none was needed), but still not knowing exactly what was going to happen even when the service was underway. I just had to trust the Holy Spirit. At other times, I was fully ready to preach a prepared message, but either I’d suddenly feel led to talk about something completely different or feel led not to preach at all but do other things as the Holy Spirit directed. He doesn’t always tell you what He’s going to do in advance no matter how spiritual you are or how much you pray!
One hint for aspiring preachers – if you get so full of the Word that you could preach on many topics at the drop of a hat, it will help you in cases like that. If all you can preach is what you have in your notes for that single service, it will be harder to flow. In my early preaching years, I literally did what many preachers of old did – I wrote out my messages word for word in advance. But then the Holy Spirit would sometimes lead me to deviate from my notes and I had to be sensitive to that. Today I almost always preach with no written notes whatsoever – I just let the Word that I’ve stored up in my heart all these years come out, even when I know in general the direction in which the teaching is supposed to go. I don’t know if things ever go 100% according to plan, but the success of my message is determined by how people’s lives are changed, not in how well I execute a prepared plan.
What if the Holy Spirit moves a certain way during Service 1 on a Sunday morning? He’ll probably move the same way in Service 2, though that isn’t a certainty. Part of it depends on how receptive the people are. If the people in the first service are the “get in and out of church and get it over with” crowd and the people in the second service are the “I’m hungry” crowd, you’ll see more Holy Spirit manifestations in the second service. You’ll just have to follow His leading in EVERY service. Those leadings may not be the same in both services because different people will be in those services. You’ll just have to trust Him for wisdom to know what to do. He won’t make a mess of His Church!
You CAN allow the Holy Spirit to have His way in your services even if you have fixed-length services where you really can’t go beyond a certain time. However, you’ll need “buy-in” for this goal from your support team. You don’t want the tech support staff or the worship team to have a conniption because you changed the planned order of a service. I’m convinced that when your helps team sees the huge improvement it makes when the Holy Spirit has His way, it won’t be a problem for them to continue to buy into the idea.
Here is a sobering thought: Some churches look down at “seeker-friendly” churches when their services are no different. There is no functional difference between a “We don’t want the Holy Spirit” church and a “We want the Holy Spirit but we’re too schedule-bound to let Him move” church. You don’t see any Holy Spirit manifestations in either place!
I don’t claim to have an answer for everything, but I want to impress upon you as much as I can the need for the people running services to DESIRE and EXPECT a move of the Holy Spirit – and to make room for Him. You can’t MAKE the Holy Spirit do anything, but you can certainly STOP Him from doing anything by being clock-bound and schedule-bound!