Good News Quote #15

From Chapter Two, Why You Don't Have to Believe Your Intuitions Are the Holy Spirit: Or, How the Spirit Shapes Our Hearts.

But then -- we might want to ask -- how do we know the Spirit is working within us at all? Like many "how do you know?" questions, this turns out to be a very modern obsession, which often results in our searching our own hearts instead of searching the Scriptures. The biblical answer to questions about how we know God keeps coming back to God's word and especially his promise. There is a promise of the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures (Gal. 3:14; see also Acts 2:38). If we think that's not good enough, then we'll end up having to look to ourselves for an answer. So the more anxious we are, the less we trust God's word, and the more likely we are to try looking into our own hearts to find the Holy Spirit.


But honestly, God's word is good enough. It is hard for us sinners to trust it -- we would much rather see things for ourselves than trust what God has to say, even about himself -- but trusting God's word is what faith does, and faith is how we know who God really is.

Good News Quote #14

From Chapter Two, Why You Don't Have to Believe Your Intuitions Are the Holy Spirit: Or, How the Spirit Shapes Our Hearts.

So the fruit of the Holy Spirit is a sanctified heart. And the intuitions of a sanctified heart are well worth listening to. To listen to the sanctified heart -- which normally means hearing what other Christians have to say -- is to benefit from the fruit of the Spirit in them. It is not to hear the Spirit's voice directly -- for again, the voices belong to human beings, even when what they are saying, teaching, or preaching is the word of God. But it is to hear the fruit of the Spirit's work, growing from the freedom of a heart shaped by Christian virtues.


The connection between the intuitions and the sanctified heart is essential. Intuitions coming from a heart that has not been formed in Christian virtue are not spiritual -- not in the biblical sense, which is always tied to the Holy Spirit and therefore to the holiness of Christian virtues. And that leads us to one of the deepest errors of the new evangelical theology. It teaches people to identify their intuitions as the Spirit speaking, without teaching them the virtues that are the real fruit of the Spirit working within. It tries to find the voice of God in the intuitions of the unsanctified heart.

Good News Quote #13

From Chapter Two, Why You Don't Have to Believe Your Intuitions Are the Holy Spirit: Or, How the Spirit Shapes Our Hearts.

Take kindness, for example. A kind person looks at the world differently than a cruel or indifferent person. A kind person sees people differently -- she will notice when you are hurting, for instance, even when others don't. So kindness is a form of perception in addition to everything else: a form of feeling, a readiness to be moved to compassion, and a willingness to do what needs to be done. It's all part of the same package, the same shape of the heart. Like all virtues, kindness is a habit of perception, feeling, thinking and action, all rolled into one.


And with other intelligent habits, the perceptions of a kind heart may outrun our ability to explain them. A kind-hearted person may see that you're hurting, for example, without knowing why. She'll notice things about you without knowing exactly what it is she's noticing -- she "just knows" there's something wrong, something that's eating at you, even though she doesn't know how she knows it. That's why her kindness can be so surprising -- to both of you! She sees what's going on with you, maybe before you do, and suddenly you're having this heart-to-heart talk that you've needed for a long time, without even knowing you needed it.

Good News Quote #12

From Chapter Two, Why You Don't Have to Believe Your Intuitions Are the Holy Spirit: Or, How the Spirit Shapes Our Hearts.


Explaining things is its own kind of skill -- mainly a skill of putting things into words. [...] That's why the feeling that "I can't explain it" is not a sign that it's God working in our hearts. Most of the time what that feeling really means is: "I don't have the vocabulary I need to say this right" or "I'm not good at talking about this kind of thing." It's not mysterious. It's just the situation of someone who hasn't learned how to be very articulate about his perceptions. That's how it often goes with the habits of the heart. We learn the skills first, then we learn how to talk about them. And even when we do know how to explain them, having the intuition is very different from explaining it. The explanation comes second, if it's needed at all.

Good News Quote #11

From Chapter Two, Why You Don't Have to Believe Your Intuitions Are the Holy Spirit: Or, How the Spirit Shapes Our Hearts.

Everybody has intuitions: you don't have to be a Christian, you don't even have to be a good person. You can intuitively come up with a brilliant plan to cheat somebody -- on the spur of the moment, without thinking it all out, without knowing where the idea came from. And you can "just know" the right thing to say to really hurt someone's feelings. The words come out spontaneously: you don't have to think about it but there they are, tumbling out of your mouth before you know it and aimed straight at the other person's heart. Anyone who's had much experience quarreling with family members has had a few intuitions like that. And they're obviously not God's doing. I think that sort of experience tells us that intuitions, whether for good or for evil, are part of the ordinary equipment of the human heart.