I find all too often that people excuse their need for serious, sober, and prayerful study with the claim that the “power of the Holy Spirit” has revealed such and such to me.
In reality, if one is truly seeking the power of the Holy Spirit, he will recognize that the same Spirit made both the Scriptures, and the ministry of teachers and preachers normative in our discernment of the mind of the Holy Spirit (2 Tim. 4:1-2)…The Scripture being the ultimate authority (Isa. 8:20).
To dismiss sound teachers, whether in the pulpit or in books, as one of the primary means of discerning the mind of the Holy Spirit from the Scriptures…is to fall to pride, self-will, laziness or all of the above.
Great point and I agree. Some folks take 1 John 2:27 and use it as an excuse for intellectual laziness.
I’ve seen an extreme case of someone who claimed to be a pastor doing exactly this. It’s lazy and irresponsible. He would pray, open his Bible, and preach on whatever chapter he opened up to. And he said he had been doing this for years.