Avoid spiritual identity theft. The Bible says: “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.” (Romans 8:14.) Go God’s route. Be Spirit-led!

To be led by the Spirit as a child of God is to walk away from self-sufficiency and to rely on and obey God’s inner promptings instead of leaning on human understanding and ego. It’s easy to self-identify as a child of God, but it takes much grace and humility to be led by God’s Spirit.

If you’re led by the Spirit your identity is as a child of God. If you’re led by your own understanding and desires, your identity is conflicted. When you ignore the leading of the Spirit, your identity as a child of God experiences identity theft and you feel alone and alienated.

When we are led by God’s Spirit we begin to behave like Jesus as He works inside us to train and empower us to live a lifestyle that daily demonstrates the fruit and gifts of the Spirit. Being led by the Spirit requires that we hear and do what the Spirit is saying by humbly abandoning our desires and our self-reliance.

Anything that hinders you from being Spirit-led damages your relationship with Jesus. Christians need spiritual trainers and coaches, not religious lecturers and manipulators. Are you being trained and released to hear and obey God’s Spirit?

When a human being takes control of a Christian gathering, the liberty of the Spirit is quickly shut down and participants are turned into spectators. When churches shut down people who are being led by the Spirit, they silence the children of God. Churches are too often programmed lecture rooms instead of Spirit-led training camps.

“Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.” Churches too often operate by human control instead of by setting people free to be led by God’s Spirit.

You don’t learn to do God’s word by sermon-hearing. You learn to do it by doing it. “Be doers of the word, not hearers only.” If you haven’t learned to do what you’ve learned, you haven’t really learned it.

I long to see church become a gathering of Spirit-led participants instead of an audience of platform-controlled spectators. When a church service requires people to be spectators it does them a disservice by training them to be hearers of the word but not doers. It’s time for church services to empower and release people to be Spirit-led participants, not passive spectators.