How to Be Led by the Spirit of God, Part 4 — The Spirit Leads and the Word Renews the Soul

How to be led by the Spirit of God comes down to growth from the inside out. In this fourth message of the series, Dr. William P. Hohman teaches that the Holy Spirit leads you through your spirit, the real you, while your soul (your mind, will and emotions) must be renewed by the Word so that it stops fighting that leading. A soul fed on the Word prospers; a soul left to fear and feelings drifts into bondage and bad decisions.

This message follows How to Be Led by the Spirit of God, Part 3 — Your Spirit Is New, Your Soul Must Be Renewed, part three of the series. Below you will find the full video, a structured summary, the Scriptures he uses (linked to the New King James Version on Bible Gateway), a timestamped outline, and practical steps for following the Holy Spirit this week.

Sermon at a Glance

This message was preached at NTC Ministries in Merrill, Wisconsin, and posted on June 9, 2020. The recording runs about 1 hour 41 minutes; the worship set comes first, and Dr. Hohman begins teaching at about the 26-minute mark. The service closes with an invitation to receive Christ and with communion.

He returns to the foundation text of the whole series and spends this week on the soul: why it wars against the things of God, how it is saved by the Word, and how a renewed soul stops blocking the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Led From the Inside Out

The foundation text for the series is Proverbs 3:5–6: trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding, acknowledge Him in all your ways, and He shall direct your paths. Dr. Hohman points out that it is hard for God to direct our path while we are in an emotional mess. Even the business world says not to decide in the middle of chaos.

He reminds believers that they have already been led by the Holy Spirit. Nobody woke up one day and invented the idea of following Jesus; the Spirit was working and drew them. If that is how we were born into the kingdom of heaven, that is how we are meant to live in it. Everything in the kingdom works from the inside out, and whatever works from the outside in is corruption.

That is why sowing to the flesh reaps corruption while living after the Spirit brings life everlasting (Galatians 6:8). He also cites Hosea 4:6: God’s people perish for lack of knowledge.

The soul, Dr. Hohman explains, actually wars against the things of God. Only by the leading of the Holy Spirit can a human being born in corruption be reborn into righteousness and the family of God. That is why we must keep renewing our minds.

The Law of the Mind: What You Dwell On Grows

To show how strong the soul is, Dr. Hohman describes levels of communication: gesture, then words, then what your soul senses when you walk into a room where people have been speaking against you. Higher than all of these, he teaches, is the Spirit of God communicating with your spirit.

He grounds this in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, which prays that the God of peace would sanctify us completely and preserve our whole spirit, soul and body blameless. Sanctify means to be set apart to be used by God, led by Him, instructed by Him and directed by Him. Paul knew there were laws God had put in place, which is how he could press toward the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:14).

Spiritual laws work like gravity, whether we recognize them or not. One is what he calls the law of the mind. Tell people not to think about strawberries, with their seeds on the outside, sundaes and pies, and strawberries are all they can think about. The more you focus on something, the stronger it grows in you.

That is how worry works. Dwell on a fear that may never happen, and it becomes a hideous monster that eats you from the inside out, producing bitterness and phobias. He recalls remodeling a house whose former owners had bricked over the windows and painted every room red: what was inside them showed on the outside.

The same law works for good. When the Spirit of God grows within you, it translates outward as liberty, because where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2 Corinthians 3:17), and God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power, love and a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7).

Your Spirit Is the Lamp of the Lord

Dr. Hohman has the church declare: I am a spirit, I have a soul, and I live in a body. Eternal life is not just endless existence; it is the quality of life God has, the zoe life. When you are born again your spirit receives that life, and God wants it to flow out and change your soul, your body and everything you do.

When that life comes out, fear goes. Instead of panicking over having only four dollars, you know God supplies all your needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:19) and has given you everything that pertains to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3).

The key verse here is Proverbs 20:27: “The spirit of a man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all the inner depths of his heart.” The body is like an astronaut’s spacesuit, the suit you needed to live on this earth. That is why bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things (1 Timothy 4:8). The Bible never calls the body, the mind or the emotions the lamp of the Lord. It is the spirit, because that is the real you.

God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth (John 4:24). Jesus said His words are spirit and life (John 6:63). So, Dr. Hohman asks, how many would still be alive if they ate physical food as often as they read their Bible? Feed your spirit daily. As you do, a verse suddenly lights up and you see what it means. That is revelation knowledge, and it is one of the main ways He leads.

The table below summarizes how he describes the three parts of a person in this message.

The Implanted Word Saves Your Soul

Dr. Hohman turns to James 1:18–21. Of His own will God brought us forth by the word of truth. That new birth was no accident: the Word, an incorruptible seed that lives and abides forever (1 Peter 1:23), got inside you, the Holy Spirit watered it, and it broke forth.

He holds up an egg to illustrate. Break an egg from the outside in and it is ruined; it can never produce what it was made to produce. But when life starts inside and the egg breaks from within, new life comes out. God put the real you inside a package and plants His Word within. Keep getting the Word in, he says, and understanding will rise up from inside like a light bulb going on.

He shares how he and his wife Pam once gave away everything they owned, including land, houses and a construction company. He did not act alone. Pam prayed for a couple of months until she was sure, and then they went to their pastor, because every word is established by two or three witnesses (2 Corinthians 13:1). After two weeks the pastor agreed. They did it in faith, not fear, and have never lacked.

What God wants is willingness, like Abraham, who was willing to give up Isaac. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the good of the land (Isaiah 1:19). James then tells believers to be swift to hear, slow to speak and slow to wrath, to lay aside all filthiness, and to receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

James is writing to born-again believers, Dr. Hohman notes. Your spirit was saved, but your soul still needs saving. The word for saved, as he teaches it, means healed, delivered, set free, prospered and blessed. That is why 3 John 2 prays that we prosper and be in health just as our souls prosper. Salvation is not a license to keep living in sin; that lets the world’s corruption grow inside you.

Growth takes patience. Jesus compared the kingdom to a farmer who scatters seed, sleeps and rises, and watches the blade, then the head, then the full grain appear (Mark 4:26–29). The word prosper, he explains, means to have a successful journey and reach a destination. Age does not matter; whoever feeds on the Word reaches the destiny God has for them.

Prosper also means success in the business of your life, your marriage and your family. Like roots growing below the winter frost, the Word grows in you even when nothing shows. David said He restores my soul and leads me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake (Psalm 23:3).

Testing What You Hear by the Word

Finances are where many people struggle, Dr. Hohman says, but God tells us to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33). Hold things back, and what He wants for your life will not take place.

Then he tells a cautionary story from the church’s early years, when it met in a small building in Merrill that it later gave to a Baptist congregation needing a place to meet. A faithful attender named Charlie announced one Sunday that God had told his family to move to Florida. They sold everything, went south in a camper, and came back a year later with nothing, having lost their house. When asked why God sent them, he did not know.

The problem, Dr. Hohman says, is thinking that every thought a born-again person has is God. That is far from true. We judge by the Word of God. Some things the Lord asks are not spelled out in Scripture, but the test is whether we have been walking in what the Word already says, so we can trust what we sense.

He warns that if you know what the Word says and refuse to do it, you build distrust of God into your soul. Fear comes in, and you become your own protector and provider. But when you obey, there is no fear when He asks you to do something new, and you grow in faith and in strength.

Transformed by Renewing Your Mind

The final section rests on Romans 12:1–2. Paul begs believers, by the mercies of God, to present their bodies as a living sacrifice. The word for body, Dr. Hohman explains, is the Greek soma, everything that makes us up: spirit, soul and body. Real worship is more than raising your hands in a song; it is giving yourself to do what God asks, as Abraham did with Isaac.

Do not be conformed to this world, Paul says. Conformed is like Pam’s Christmas cookie cutters: every cookie comes out looking the same. Instead, be transformed, a word he connects to metamorphosis. A caterpillar crawls on the ground where any child could step on it, but after the cocoon it flies above the issues of the earth. That, he says, is what God wants for us.

The renewed mind proves the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. He stresses that this is not three different wills. God’s will is always good, always acceptable and always perfect. When you were born again you became a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), but that happened in your spirit. Now it is up to you to work with Him in His Word to transform the rest of you.

God will never contradict His Word. Peter, who saw Jesus glowing on the Mount of Transfiguration and heard the Father’s voice (Matthew 17:1–5), still said we have a more sure word of prophecy (2 Peter 1:16–19). Experiences touch our emotions and psyche; the written Word reaches us purely through our spirit.

He recalls a visiting minister who prophesied from the pulpit what turned out to be a 12-year-old boy’s vision, presented as God’s word above the Bible. Dr. Hohman required him to ask the congregation’s forgiveness or not return, calling it spiritism. Even Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14).

The Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit bear record in heaven, and these three are one (1 John 5:7), so no dream, vision or glowing angel that varies from Scripture is God. Jesus taught with authority, and people were astonished at His doctrine (Matthew 7:28–29). Authority, he says, is not a show of force; it is “thus says the Lord.”

How to Be Led by the Spirit of God This Week

Dr. Hohman closes by inviting anyone feeling the Spirit’s tug to receive Christ. He compares it to fishing: you do not see or hear the fish, you just feel a tug on the line, and you had better set the hook. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear its sound, and so is everyone born of the Spirit (John 3:8). Here are practical steps from this message:

• Wait for calm before deciding. Do not make major decisions in the middle of emotional chaos; acknowledge Him and let Him direct your path.
• Feed your spirit daily. Read the Word as regularly as you eat, and expect revelation to rise up from the inside.
• Watch what you dwell on. The law of the mind makes whatever you focus on grow, so starve fear and feed faith.
• Test every leading by Scripture. God never contradicts His Word, so measure dreams, visions and impressions against it.
• Seek confirmation. On big steps, pray with your spouse and seek godly counsel, as Dr. Hohman and Pam did with their pastor.
• Do what you already know. Obeying the Word builds trust in God into your soul; ignoring it builds fear.

The service ended with communion from 1 Corinthians 11:23–26, remembering Jesus rather than our problems.

Timestamped Outline

• 25:52 Dr. Hohman is welcomed to the pulpit
• 32:49 Proverbs 3:5–6 and decisions under duress
• 33:53 Born of the Spirit, living by the Spirit
• 40:54 Spirit, soul and body: 1 Thessalonians 5:23
• 43:14 The law of the mind: strawberries and worry
• 46:10 I am a spirit: eternal life as God’s life
• 48:41 The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord
• 53:46 Revelation knowledge and James 1:18–21
• 57:10 Giving everything away, with confirmation
• 1:00:10 The implanted word saves your soul
• 1:02:28 Prosper as your soul prospers: 3 John 2
• 1:11:25 Charlie’s move to Florida
• 1:14:18 Romans 12:1–2: a living sacrifice
• 1:21:38 A more sure word of prophecy
• 1:25:01 The prophecy that was not God
• 1:31:03 The Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit agree
• 1:33:23 Feeling the tug: an invitation to salvation
• 1:36:41 Communion and prayer for healing

How to Be Led by the Spirit of God Series

This message is part four of a six-part teaching series at NTC Ministries. Go back to the start or continue with the next message:

• First message: How to Be Led by the Spirit of God, Part 1 — Born Again by the Holy Spirit’s Leading
• Previous: How to Be Led by the Spirit of God, Part 3 — Your Spirit Is New, Your Soul Must Be Renewed
• You are here: How to Be Led by the Spirit of God, Part 4 — The Spirit Leads and the Word Renews the Soul
• Next: How to Be Led by the Spirit of God, Part 5 — The Inner Witness and the Still Small Voice

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I know whether a prompting is God or just me?

Dr. Hohman’s first test is Scripture. God never contradicts His Word, so any thought, dream or vision that varies from it is not Him. His second test is your track record: if you are already doing what the Word plainly says, you can trust what you sense more. For major steps, he also looks for confirmation, praying with his wife and seeking his pastor’s counsel before acting.

Does being led by the Spirit mean I should give everything away?

No. Dr. Hohman shares that he and Pam gave away their land, houses and business, but he says plainly that he is not telling anyone else to do it. Jesus asks for willingness, the way Abraham was willing to offer Isaac though God did not require it. When we are willing and obedient, he teaches, we eat the good of the land.

Why does he call the Bible a “more sure word” than experiences?

Peter saw Jesus transfigured and heard the Father’s voice, yet he said the written prophetic word is more sure. Dr. Hohman explains that experiences pass through our emotions and psyche, which can be mistaken or even counterfeited, since Satan can appear as an angel of light. The Word reaches us through our spirit and does not change, so it is the standard for everything else.

Scripture References

All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:

• Proverbs 3:5–6 — trust in the Lord; He shall direct your paths
• Proverbs 20:27 — the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord
• 1 Thessalonians 5:23 — spirit, soul and body
• James 1:18–21 — the implanted word saves the soul
• 3 John 2 — prosper as your soul prospers
• Romans 12:1–2 — a living sacrifice and a renewed mind
• 2 Peter 1:16–19 — a more sure word of prophecy
• 2 Corinthians 11:14 — Satan disguised as an angel of light
• 1 John 5:7 — the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit agree

How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the sermon’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.

Watch More Messages

If this message helped you follow the Holy Spirit with more confidence, there are hundreds more teachings from NTC Ministries waiting for you. Browse the full sermon archive and keep feeding your spirit on the Word.