Warning: Not All Spiritual Vibes Are God’s Voice 

Warning: Not All Spiritual Vibes Are God’s Voice: 

For decades, we’ve been comfortable equating a stirring emotional experience in church with the verifiable presence of the Holy Spirit. We feel a profound tug, maybe shed a tear, or feel a surge of energy during a worship set, and we immediately conclude: “God is moving!”

But what if I told you that not everything that feels “spiritual” (or even IS spiritual) actually originates from God?

The Gateway of Emotion

The truth is, your emotions are a powerful gateway to your spirit—your inmost being. This is why the worship culture from the 80s, 90s, and continuing to today often employs production elements (repetitive musical phrases, dynamic changes, lighting, and atmospheric smoke) that are masterful at eliciting an emotional response.

This isn’t inherently evil, but here’s the danger: When our emotions are intensely stirred—even by a song with ostensibly Christian lyrics—we can mistakenly conclude that this feeling is the Holy Spirit moving upon us. In reality, it may be an outside influence (human charisma, musical manipulation, or even demonic influence) seeking to gain access or influence over our spirit.

As one person observed about many modern services: “God could die, and they would just bang the tambourine a little louder or turn up the smoke machines and dim the lighting to compensate for the absence of God’s engagement.”

The Prize is Your Spirit

We are often told, “the battlefield is the mind.” That’s true, but it’s a means to an end. The ultimate prize is your spirit, your inmost being.

Why? Because Jesus said: “Guard your heart [spirit] above all else, for it determines the course of your life” (Proverbs 4:23, paraphrased). What originates, gestates, and is permitted to take root in your spirit will inevitably manifest in your natural life in the near future—for good or ill.

Seemingly innocuous, cathartic emotional experiences, even in a religious context, can open the door to the spirit behind them.

Words Are Spirit

Jesus declared, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63). But the spiritual reality is this: ALL words are spirit, of one origination or another. This is true in music, instrumentation, social media, movies, and political rhetoric. Bear this in mind as a tool of discernment: the dominant narrative you expose yourself to will drive the experiences of your life and hold you either in captivity or in terms of the authentic, bringing deliverance and freedom. The narrative drives the experience!

We must become discerning about the source of what we consume. Are the words and the spirit behind them truly sourced from a pure vessel rooted in the Word of God, or are they masking a different agenda?

The Political Distraction

This spiritual blindness is perhaps most evident today in the realm of politics. Many believers are seeking political solutions to address fundamental spiritual problems.

When political leaders pander to this confusion, leveraging human charisma and personality, they become a form of anti-Christ influence—a false shepherd (like Herod the Great, who posed as a deliverer in antiquity) — that distracts God’s people from the true source of power and change: the Kingdom of God.

A Call to Discernment

We really need to learn this crucial lesson: Discernment trumps emotion.

• Stop asking, “How does this make me feel?”
• Start asking, “What is the source of this feeling? What is the spirit behind this activity, this program, this post, this musical presentation? Is it truly the conviction and peace of the Holy Spirit, or is it a manufactured emotional high?”

Let us seek the presence of the Holy Spirit, which is revealed by truth and life, not by volume or a captivating light show. Guard your heart, for everything flows from it!