How to Be Led by the Spirit of God, Part 1 — Born Again by the Holy Spirit’s Leading

To be led by the Spirit of God is not a rare experience reserved for a few. In this message, Dr. William P. Hohman teaches that every believer who has been born again has already been led by the Holy Spirit, because no one comes to Christ in their own strength. Recognizing how He led you then, he says, gives you faith and confidence to let Him keep leading you now.

This is the first message in his series on how to be led by the Spirit of God, preached as the church gathered again in Merrill, Wisconsin. 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 posted on May 18, 2020, from New Testament Church in Merrill, Wisconsin, as the congregation came together again after a season of not being able to meet. The service includes worship, communion, a blessing over a couple who put their lives on hold for a year to serve the church and its school, and prayer for families in need. Dr. Hohman then begins a new teaching that grows out of his previous series on crazy faith.

He says he is laying a foundation. Most people in the room, he explains, have already been led by the Holy Spirit without realizing it. When we recognize how God has led us before, our faith grows, and we stop second-guessing His voice. The message ends with an invitation to receive Christ and prayer for healing.

Trust in the Lord and Acknowledge Him

Dr. Hohman reminds the church that the crazy faith series ended on this point: part of crazy faith is allowing the Holy Spirit to lead you. The foundation for that was Proverbs 3:5–6, which he reads aloud with the congregation: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.”

He applies the verse broadly. God gives us currency, a job, a spouse, a family and an intellect, and then tells us not to lean on any of them. We are not to depend only on money, the government, a job or anything in this world. In all our ways we acknowledge the One who gives these good gifts, and He directs our path.

The opposite, he warns, is living in worry. “If we’re just looking to money,” he says, we fear losing what we have or not having enough, and then “you’re gonna have a hard time being led by God.” He points to Matthew 6:33: seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

He illustrates this with the season when he and his wife Pam gave away their house and nearly everything they owned. He is clear that he is not telling anyone else to do that. The Lord spoke to him first, but he did not force it. Pam prayed about it for two months before agreeing, and then they took it to their pastor, who also prayed before confirming it. After that obedience, he says, both of them became far more sensitive to the voice of God.

Participants, Not Spectators

Dr. Hohman says that religion without a relationship is a spectator sport. People come to watch, as if they were going to a circus or an entertainment special, and ask God or the pastor to impress them. Being led by the Spirit is more than dancing a little in church. It is working with others to build the kingdom so that God is glorified, because He leads us in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake (Psalm 23:3).

He calls the hall where the church meets a basilica, a hall of kings, pointing to the name King of kings and Lord of lords (Revelation 19:16). Believers are trained there and then go out to build. “He wants us to be participants not spectators,” he says.

God worked six days and rested on the seventh, he notes, but many Christians want to rest first. The kingdom has work in it, like the busy beehive recently donated to the school.

Being busy with what the Lord asks also protects you from fear. “The more I do for the Lord the less it seems like there’s fear in my life,” he says. Perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18), and Jesus said that if we love Him we will keep His commandments (John 14:15). When we are not doing what He asks, fear binds us like a rabbit that freezes at a coyote’s howl.

The Breath of God and the Fall

Dr. Hohman goes back to the beginning. Genesis 2:7 says the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. Without that breath, he says, man would have been only a piece of handcrafted art from the Master Artist.

He explains that the Hebrew word for breathed means to blow with force, and that the word for the breath of life, as he teaches it, refers to the life of a soul or an intellect. It was not yet eternal life but sustaining life, a divine inspiration placed inside the clay. That is why Proverbs 3 matters so much: God gave us our intellect, yet He tells us not to lean on it, but on the One who breathed it into us.

When Adam committed high treason and handed everything over to Satan, everything became corrupted, including his intellect. Dr. Hohman knows this, he says, because Adam ran and hid from God. Yet God went looking for him. Adam and Eve hid among the trees of the garden, and the Lord called out, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:8–9).

“God was the first missionary,” Dr. Hohman says, looking for a lost tribe in a bush. That call was the Holy Spirit leading. God did not want Adam in fear and condemnation, and he says God is calling people out of addiction and bondage the same way today.

From the very beginning, he concludes, God has pursued us; we have not pursued Him. Every person who has come to Christ was first sought out by Him.

Creation Waits for the Sons of God

Next, Dr. Hohman reads Romans 8:19–21. The creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God, because it was subjected to futility, not willingly, but in hope. The creation itself will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

Adam, he points out, was a creation of God but not a son born from God. Now corrupted creation waits for those born from above, and as believers yield to the Holy Spirit, creation is summoned into that liberty.

“The world outside isn’t waiting for a new definition of Christianity, they’re waiting for a new demonstration of Christianity,” he says. People may curse you or lie about you, but they are watching to see whether what you believe is real.

He tells of a meeting he attended while in Bible college, where the minister leading the prayer line told him to cast the demons out of a woman who was manifesting. He brought a pastor and two women to pray with him. For about fifteen minutes nothing seemed to change.

Then it dawned on him to tell the devil that he would stay all day and all night, for years if needed, and he was not budging. The woman’s eyes cleared, she began praising Jesus, and she was free. That, he says, is what the world wants to see: believers who are steadfast, always abounding in the work of the Lord (1 Corinthians 15:58). It is only by the leading and power of the Holy Spirit that a corrupted human being can find a new birth.

Born Again: The First Time You Were Led by the Spirit of God

The heart of the message is John 3:3–8. Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, and Jesus told him that unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter it. “The wind blows where it wishes,” Jesus said, and so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.

Dr. Hohman draws a direct line from the new birth to being led by the Spirit of God. Being born of the Spirit is the Holy Spirit leading you. That is why the Spirit is like the wind: He will say, this is what I need you to do, and it will not always be described for you ahead of time.

He adds an important safeguard. God will never contradict His Word. When he first began following the Lord closely, he spent years asking, “Show me in the scriptures.” When he could not find it, he went to his pastor and they searched the Bible together. Sometimes he learned he had not been hearing the Holy Spirit; sometimes he learned that he had. People who say “God said” while caring nothing for the Word, he warns, are in rebellion. We worship in spirit and in truth, not in spirit alone.

So if you have been born again, he says, you have been led by the Holy Spirit. You did not simply decide one day to give your life to God. Your hesitation about raising your hand or standing up was your flesh warring against the Spirit who was drawing you, and your will said yes.

He reads Titus 3:3–6. We were once foolish, disobedient and deceived, but when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, He saved us not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit. He even recalls his own resistance: he gave his life to the Lord at 11 but held back from following, because like Moses he doubted he could do what God was calling him to do. God’s answer to Moses was a question about who made man’s mouth (Exodus 4:11).

He also reads from the 18th-century minister William Law, who wrote that just as the Pharisees rejected Christ while professing faith in the messianic Scriptures, church leaders reject the power of the Holy Spirit in the name of sound doctrine.

The key verse follows: “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (Romans 8:14). Those who were first led into God’s family are now to keep showing that sonship. Galatians 5:25 adds, “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.”

It should get easier, he says. God is speaking all the time. “It’s your ear that’s the problem not his voice.” After nearly forty years in ministry, he says, he is still being trained.

Three Souls in Escanaba

Dr. Hohman closes the teaching with what he calls his favorite story about the leading of the Holy Spirit. Early in his ministry, the Lord told him to hold a gospel crusade in Escanaba, Michigan, on a Friday night about three weeks away. He rented the meeting room at the back of a steakhouse, placed a notice in the local newspaper, and began a three-day fast with nothing but water.

On the third day, while praying in the woods by a lake, he was interceding for souls when sharp pain struck his abdomen, three separate times. The Lord then told him that those three times of pain were for three souls who would be saved in the meeting.

The night before, his mother called. She had heard about the meeting and asked to come. She was not born again, and he hoped she would be one of the three. Fourteen people came. After worship and teaching, the Lord gave him words of knowledge: a mother whose teenage son was facing prison would see him come home, and a woman with cancer would be healed. He reports that the son was released with time served and that the woman was healed. Then he said three people would be born again, and three others came forward. His mother did not.

On the drive home she asked how he knew all that about people he had never met. The Holy Spirit told him, he said. A week later she asked again at his house, and that night she received Jesus Christ on his couch with many tears.

His point is that this is not special fivefold ministry activity. “That’s a normal son of God stuff,” he says. Every believer is meant to be doing it. He points to T.L. Osborn, who watched F.F. Bosworth’s meetings and decided he wanted to do the same.

Following the Holy Spirit This Week

Dr. Hohman ends with an invitation. If you are wondering whether God is leading you to give your life to Him, he says, it is like fishing: you do not see or hear the fish, but you feel a gentle tug on the line. That tug in your heart is the Holy Spirit, and you respond to it. Here are practical steps from the message:

• Recognize how He has already led you. If you are born again, the Holy Spirit led you there. Let that memory build your confidence for the next step.
• Test what you hear against the Word. God will never contradict Scripture. Ask, “Where is that, Lord?” and study it with mature believers.
• Stop leaning on what God gave you. Thank Him for your job, income and abilities, but acknowledge Him in every decision, following Proverbs 3:5–6.
• Seek agreement, not force. In big decisions, give your spouse and your pastor time to pray and confirm, as he and Pam did.
• Get busy with the kingdom. Do what He has already asked; obedience leaves less room for fear and makes your ear more acute.
• Start passing it on. Gather a few people for Bible study and share what you are learning, and watch for the open doors he says the Lord gives.

Timestamped Outline

• 0:00 Opening worship: magnify the Lord together
• 27:46 Communion
• 35:29 Honoring the couple who served in the school
• 51:11 The message begins: how to be led by the Holy Spirit
• 52:12 Proverbs 3:5–6 and crazy faith
• 54:28 The hall of kings: participants, not spectators
• 56:35 Busy for the Lord and free from fear
• 58:30 Genesis 2:7: the breath of life
• 1:00:43 Do not lean on your own understanding
• 1:01:51 Giving away the house
• 1:03:39 God, the first missionary, and Romans 8:19–21
• 1:07:13 A new demonstration of Christianity
• 1:10:29 Nicodemus and John 3:3–8
• 1:12:33 God never contradicts His Word
• 1:14:32 William Law on rejecting the Holy Spirit
• 1:20:57 God calls us out of fear and bondage
• 1:23:09 Titus 3:3–6
• 1:25:08 Romans 8:14 and Galatians 5:25
• 1:26:12 The Escanaba crusade story
• 1:31:46 His mother receives Christ
• 1:34:31 Invitation to receive Christ
• 1:36:46 Prayer for healing and blessing

How to Be Led by the Spirit of God Series

This is the first message in a six-part teaching from Dr. Hohman. Continue with the next part of the series:

• You are here: How to Be Led by the Spirit of God, Part 1 — Born Again by the Holy Spirit’s Leading
• Next: How to Be Led by the Spirit of God, Part 2 — The Spirit of Man Is the Lamp of the Lord

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do some people hold back from following Christ?

Dr. Hohman says many people do not accept Christ because they do not want to be hypocrites. They do not believe they can live up to a standard of do’s and don’ts. Often the resistance is not that they do not want God, but that they doubt they can give up what they need to give up. His answer is that none of us came to Jesus in our own strength. God not only calls us; He gives us the faith to believe.

Is the Holy Spirit leading people who are not yet saved?

Yes. He tells listeners that the Spirit of God is leading everyone who hears the message. From then on, he says, the Spirit will keep leading them toward confessing Christ as Lord and Savior and toward a good church where they will be taught how to follow God, build the kingdom and receive the promises of the gospel. He even says he hopes the Lord wears them down until they say yes.

Why does the church keep an open microphone in the service?

Dr. Hohman calls the hall a practicing ground and a learning ground. Rather than a fixed form of service, he wants room for the Holy Spirit to lead, so a microphone is available for people to come up and share what the Lord is saying, for those listening on the air and for everyone in the hall to hear. The goal is for believers to learn there so they can follow the Holy Spirit without hesitation in the world.

Scripture References

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

• Proverbs 3:5–6 — trust in the Lord and He will direct your paths
• Romans 8:14 — those led by the Spirit are sons of God
• John 3:3–8 — you must be born again
• Genesis 2:7 — the breath of life
• Genesis 3:8–9 — “Where are you?”
• Romans 8:19–21 — creation waits for the sons of God
• Titus 3:3–6 — the washing of regeneration
• Galatians 5:25 — walk in the Spirit

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

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