Can the Holy Spirit direct a meeting, without the help and control of a human leader?  Yes indeed!  It is an awesome thing to behold if we let it happen.  It is a deeply moving experience.

The early Quakers sought to have Spirit led meetings.  They had no pastors to direct their church services.  They gathered and sat in silence, waiting for the Holy Spirit to prompt different individuals into action. 

At the Spirit’s leading someone would begin a song. Someone else might share an idea that the Spirit put in his or her mind.  Another person would offer a Spirit led prayer.  Someone else might present a short teaching.  Someone else might begin to weep or to rejoice.

The Quakers didn’t invent this form of worship.  They found it in the New Testament.  This is the way Christians are commanded to worship in I Corinthians 14:26 

Christians are also commanded:  “Quench not the Holy Spirit.”  That means we are not to hold back the Holy Spirit or refuse to obey Him.  Unfortunately, however, our modern church structure frequently compels us to quench the Spirit.  (For example, if a person is led by the Spirit to go to the altar and pray during the sermon, they almost always disobey and quench the Spirit so as not to be out of the traditional order of the meeting.)  

Openly Spirit led meetings are difficult to find.  I have been searching for them for years.  An informal group that I was involved with in college had frequent Spirit led meetings and they changed my life.  God often showed up in supernatural power.  He touched me deeply by allowing me to see many of my brothers and sisters obeying the Holy Spirit in meetings. 

It only takes two or there to have a Spirit led meeting.  Sometimes my wife and I will gather with two or three other people and allow the Holy Spirit to lead.  It is awesome how God shows up.  (Sometimes when just my wife and I pray together our prayer can become routine, but when we allow the Spirit to freely lead us, even our prayers together are moving.) 

Our traditional methods of having church are not reaching our society.  Sermons and ritual are not working to influence people to follow and obey God and His principles.  Something else is needed.  Our churches and our world desperately need actual demonstrations of the power and presence of God.  We need Holy Spirit led meetings and Holy Spirit led lives!  

Thirty minutes after writing this post, I picked up a Bible in another room and opened it at random.  It fell open to I Corinthians 14:26.  How’d that happen?