But if you come to Romans 8 with anything you have picked up, you can never enter into it. You must be unloaded. If you want to enter into Romans 8 and touch its depths, you must be so pure, so clean, and so simple.
The components of the leading of the Spirit are the law, the Spirit, and life. We need to understand these components of the leading of the Spirit in a pure way with nothing added. It shouldn’t be the law plus some definition. And it should not be the Spirit with some means or channels or organs to touch the Spirit. It should be just life itself. Although you may consider that you are clear concerning the components of the leading of the Spirit, I would ask whether you have walked and lived according to these three things. The leading of the Spirit is just the composition of these three things: the divine life plus the spontaneous function of this life, plus the divine Person who is this law and who is also this life.
These three things all are within us simultaneously. Whether you are a new believer or an aged, experienced believer, they are within you. Whether you feel you have these three, or you don’t feel you have these three things, they are in you. The divine life is in you, and its function, the law, is in you, and the divine Person is also in you. These three can never be separated. They remain all the time together, and they remain in you. These three things remaining in you are the leading. You don’t need to seek after a leading, and you don’t need to create or build up a leading. Such a leading is in you all the time.
If you are willing all the time to put to death the practices of your mortal body, not only is the leading in you, but also you are led. You don’t need to seek after the leading, and you don’t need to take the leading. As long as you put the practices of your mortal body to death, you are led. It is somewhat like the air. Wherever you go, the air is here. It is with you, and it is in you. You don’t need to seek after the air. What many Christians call the leading of the Lord actually is not the genuine leading. It is a kind of leading built up by themselves.
The genuine leading is nothing less or nothing more than the divine life plus its function, the law, and the divine Person, the Spirit. These three things which remain in you all the time wherever you go and whatever you do are the leading. You don’t need to seek to be led. It is in you already. As long as you put to death all the practices, all the deeds, all the doings, of your mortal body, you are led. You are in the genuine leading.
Let me say something very soberly and very carefully. If you consider a little concerning your past, you would realize that many of the so-called leadings were not so genuine; they were made up by you. The genuine leading was there, yet you wouldn’t take it. You left the genuine leading, and you were seeking some other kind of leading. Sometimes you even came to the Word in your seeking the Lord’s leading. If you needed some leading concerning your marriage perhaps you read Ephesians 5. So that kind of leading was made up by your choosing of the verses you preferred.
After the leading you found in the verses, you added your prayer, also out of your preference. You read the verses and you prayed, and then it seemed that the Lord’s leading was confirmed by your prayer. Surely you got some confirmation because your prayer built up the kind of leading you preferred to have. So the genuine leading was there, but you wouldn’t care for it. Sometimes you may have been careful because you heard that God wouldn’t do anything in haste. So after reading the verses and after praying you felt you should wait a few days. The waiting and waiting eventually strengthened and confirmed the leading you got.