Any ground given by the believers to evil spirits induces the work of evil spirits. Of all these grounds, the most important one is passivity because passivity expresses the attitude of the will, and the will represents the whole person. Passivity can cause evil spirits to work freely. Of course, such work is always camouflaged on the outside so that believers do not realize that evil spirits are working. Believers sink into passivity through their ignorance. When they misunderstand the place of the mind in the spiritual life, by either considering it more important or less important, they allow their own minds to sink into passivity. Then they follow the thoughts of the passive mind. Hence, it is indispensable to clearly see the way of God's leading.
Passivity of the mind is caused by misunderstanding the meaning of consecration to God and obeying the Holy Spirit. Many believers think that their thoughts are hindrances to their spiritual lives. Little do they know that the real hindrance is when their head stops working or when it works in disarray. They do not realize that the proper functioning of the head is profitable and necessary because only by functioning in this way will one be able to co-labor with God. We have said emphatically before that the right way to follow God's leading is to depend on the intuition and not on the mind. This is very crucial, and we should not forget it. A believer should follow the revelation in the intuition and not the thoughts in the mind. Those who walk according to the mind are walking according to the flesh. This leads to the wrong way. However, this does not mean that the mind is useless in secondary things. If we regard the mind as an organ for direct fellowship with God and for receiving revelation, we are greatly wrong. But this does not mean that the mind should not fulfill its part of the work or help the intuition. The intuition is the organ that knows God's will. But we still need the mind to examine and see if our feeling proceeds from the intuition or if it is a counterfeit of our own emotions. We have to know if the inner feeling is God's will and according to the Bible. We know with our intuition, but we confirm with our mind. How easily we are prone to make mistakes! If we do not have the assistance of the mind, it is hard for us to decide what is of God.
The proper track of guidance requires the mind. The guidance of the intuition on many occasions is contrary to reason, and we should not use our mind to argue against our intuition; rather, we should use our mind to study if something is of God. It is a very quick thing for the intuition to know God's will, but we need time to consider and ponder with our mind and see if what we know is of the intuition and the Holy Spirit. If it comes from God, while we are considering and pondering it, the intuition will give us a more definite feeling and cause us to have a deeper faith to believe that it is from God. This kind of work—and only this kind of examining—by the mind is profitable and proper. If this exercise is from fleshly thoughts and feelings, repeated examination will only cause the conscience to protest. Therefore, a rational investigation for the purpose of understanding whether or not something is from God is not an impediment, but an opportunity for the intuition to prove itself. If a matter is truly from the intuition, it will not be afraid of any investigation by the reason in the mind. On the contrary, many of the leadings that fear investigation probably originate from the self! The mind should not take the lead, but the mind is definitely needed in examining every kind of leading to see if it is from God.