When the Holy Spirit takes over in worship

We were having a mini-retreat last weekend at New Earth Refuge. The topic for the afternoon was to be "what does it mean to be led by the Spirit in worship?"

One of the sayings we have picked up along the way is "plan by principle but be led by the Presence." So, in principle I had planned. But as we spent some time listening to worship music I found myself responding / feeling differently than I have in the past listening to this music. I sensed that the Holy Spirit wanted to show us what it looked like to be led by the Spirit, rather than for us to talk about it. I don't want to talk about You like You're not in the room - I want to look right at You, I want to sing right to You.

I sensed the Presence of God in a stronger way in the room and began to worship more as we responded to His Presence. I began to pray for people and saw that God was touching each person significantly. We stayed in that place for a while. Things I had planned to do after the teaching time, I felt the Spirit say, "You don't need to teach what I am doing right now. Go ahead and do those things." So I invited people to surrender more to Jesus and to receive more from Him. It was so beautiful to be a part of.

Then we shifted to a time of debriefing and discerning. 1 John 4:1 tells us to "test every spirit." We talked about what the Spirit had been doing, what each person's experience and understanding of it was - how important it is to have that time to discern, since there is a lot going on in us and it isn't all from God.