Have you personally experienced this or do you know people who have?
Yes. Small ways, but ways that demonstrated that "being led by the Spirit" is a real thing. If I were strong enough in my faith, maybe it would result in things much larger.
For instance, thirty years ago, when I was assigned to Washington DC by the Air Force, my wife and I committed to allow the Spirit to lead us to a local church rather than go by our own druthers and pre-conceived notions. Each Sunday we would visit a church, then we'd pray about it through the week, praying for a clear, decisive, unambiguous word from the Holy Spirit. We were going out on some limbs, because we were opening ourselves up to congregations unlike those we had been raised in...perhaps even with <shudder> white pastors.
But for a long time we got no such Spiritual confirmation, even though we visited some quite nice churches that appealed to us greatly.
Then one Sunday we attended National Church of God in Maryland just outside the Beltway. We prayed about it as usual. Finally, on the succeeding Friday night, during my evening prayer of praise, I got the words clear as crystal: "Tell them tomorrow that you want to join."
I told my wife, and then next morning at 9 a.m., figured the church office would be open, so I called them. The receptionist was polite, somewhat confused, and told me to come back Sunday and see one of the associate pastors who would be at the front after service.
Okay, so having done as I was instructed, I hung up the phone.
About an hour later, there was a knock at the door. It was one of the associate pastors from National. He said that it was his job to go through the visitor cards each Sunday and pay visits to the visitors as soon as possible afterward. He apologized profusely for it having taken until Saturday to get to us, but so many things had happened to him during the week that delayed him.
I told him I'd called the office earlier and asked if they'd gotten in touch with him (this was before cell phones). He said, no...he'd been on the road since early morning.
I then realized he was the one I was supposed to tell that we would join the church. This had been a preordained appointment.
And, indeed, our time in National (first time for us to have a white pastor...which we couldn't easily confess to our families) turned out to be fruitful and auspicious in many, many ways. Eventually, we heeded a request from that pastor to move to another tiny Church of God further out into rural Maryland, where we were the only black family in a congregation of rural white retired farmers. And that turned out to be fruitful and auspicious as well.
Our time in Washington DC was unique (sometimes cool, sometimes extremely scary) because DC is awash in evil spiritual influences. You can feel it as you cross the Beltway into the city, like going under a cloud.
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