I’ve been around the move of the Holy Spirit for nearly thirty years. I’ve seen rooms shift in a moment. I’ve watched people get saved, healed, delivered and called. I’ve also watched something else.
I’ve watched people walk away from the move of the Spirit — not because God didn’t show up, but because the leader did.
Not the leader’s gift. The leader’s soul.
Here’s the pattern. The Spirit is moving. Real things are happening. And right alongside the real, something toxic is growing in the culture: control, manipulation, jealousy, harshness, a need to be the center. People feel it. And because it’s all happening under the banner of “revival,” they can’t separate the two. They leave and conclude that the Holy Spirit was the problem.
He wasn’t. The soul was.
Spirit and soul are not the same thing
Paul prays that “your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless” (1 Thessalonians 5:23, NKJV). Three parts. Not one. Hebrews 4:12 says the Word of God divides “soul and spirit” — which means they can be confused, and often are.
Your spirit is where God meets you. It’s the part of you that is born again, that the Holy Spirit fills and flows through.
Your soul is your mind, your will and your emotions. It’s where your wounds live. Your insecurities. Your appetites. Your history.
Here’s the definition I want you to hold onto: The anointing flows through your spirit, but it is expressed through your soul.
That’s why a leader can be powerfully anointed and deeply unhealthy at the same time. Saul prophesied among the prophets (1 Samuel 10:10). The Spirit came upon him — and he was still jealous, insecure and paranoid. The Spirit of God moved on a man whose soul was coming apart. Both things were true.
Moses struck the rock in anger. The water still came. The miracle still happened. And Moses still lost Canaan (Numbers 20:11–12).
The move of the Spirit does not validate the health of the leader. It never has.
Renewal is an amplifier
This is what I’ve discovered: unhealthy traits don’t shrink in revival. They grow.
The anointing is an amplifier, not a filter. It makes everything louder — including you.
Your insecurity gets louder, because now there’s a crowd to lose. Your control gets louder, because now there’s something to protect. Your need for affirmation gets louder, because now there’s a stage.
And the damage is worse, not better, because the Spirit is moving. The more real the presence of God is in a room, the more people trust what happens there. That trust becomes the very thing that gets wounded. A harsh word from an ordinary leader hurts. A harsh word from a leader people believe is carrying God’s presence can shipwreck faith.
That’s the tragedy. The Spirit draws people in. The soul drives them out.
Revival reveals. It reveals God, yes. But it also reveals the leader. Whatever is in your soul will be seen in the fire.
I know, because it revealed me
I’m not writing this from the outside.
There have been seasons when I was not well emotionally. Seasons when I was running on empty, carrying things I hadn’t dealt with, and still standing in front of people while the Spirit was moving. And it bled into how I led. It came out as intensity that was really anxiety. As urgency that was really fear. As a hard edge that I would have called “prophetic” at the time but was really just a tired man who hadn’t let God near the wound.
The Spirit was still moving. People were still being touched. That’s what made it hard to see. When the fruit is visible, you stop inspecting the root.
And here’s the trap I fell into. I assumed that to lead revival, you had to act a certain way. Intense. Unrelenting. Always on. Always certain. I had watched leaders carry the move of God like that, so I carried it like that too. I put the move of the Spirit and my own emotional dysfunction in the same box and called the whole box “anointing.”
The two should never be put together. Ever.
The Holy Spirit did not ask me to be exhausted. He didn’t ask me to be harsh. He didn’t require me to perform intensity to prove I was carrying something. That was the soul talking, not the Spirit.
We copy the wrong thing
Someone once told me that when we look up to people, we tend to pick up their idiosyncrasies long before we pick up the key to what actually made them successful.
I believe that’s true of revival movements.
We watch an anointed leader and we pick up the quirks. The volume. The mannerisms. The way they handle a room. The edge in their voice. The unrelenting pace. And we think that’s the move of the Spirit — when it may just be the leader’s personality, or worse, the leader’s wound.
What made them fruitful was almost never the idiosyncrasy. It was the hunger. The hours in prayer nobody saw. The willingness to yield. The humility to say yes when it cost them. That’s the key.
But the key is invisible and the idiosyncrasy is loud. So we copy what we can see.
A whole generation can inherit a leader’s dysfunction and call it revival culture. Then, when the dysfunction produces what dysfunction always produces, they conclude the Spirit failed them. He didn’t. They just picked up the wrong thing.
Don’t copy the mannerism. Copy the hunger. Don’t copy the intensity. Copy the yieldedness. Don’t copy the edge. Copy the surrender.
Your soul sets the ceiling
John writes, “I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John 2, NKJV).
Just as your soul prospers. Not beyond it.
Your gifting can grow faster than your soul. It often does. But a culture cannot rise above the soul health of the person leading it. Not for long. What is in you will leak into what is around you. If your soul is anxious, the culture becomes anxious. If your soul is controlling, the culture becomes fearful. If your soul is healthy, the culture can breathe.
Revival raises the ceiling on what God can do. Your soul sets the ceiling on what will last.
How to keep a healthy soul in the middle of the move
So what does a leader do when the Spirit is moving and the pressure is on? Here’s the framework I keep coming back to — learned the hard way.
Separate the anointing from your identity. The gift is on you. The fruit is in you. When the two get fused, every crowd becomes a verdict on your worth, and every criticism becomes a threat to survive. You are a son or daughter before you are a vessel. Settle that daily, or the move will settle it for you.
Keep someone at the table who can say no. Renewal creates momentum, and momentum resists correction. The healthiest leaders I know in revival seasons keep people close who are not impressed by them. Not critics. Not fans. Friends with permission. Proverbs 27:6 says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.” If no one can wound you, no one can protect you.
Don’t confuse adrenaline with anointing. They feel similar in the moment. They end very differently. Adrenaline demands more meetings, more intensity, more of you. Anointing rests. Jesus withdrew to lonely places in the middle of His most fruitful seasons (Luke 5:15–16). The crowds grew. He still withdrew. If the pace of the move is costing you your soul, it’s not the Spirit setting the pace.
Deal with the wound before it becomes the culture. Every leader carries something — rejection, a father wound, fear of failure, a hunger to be seen. Revival doesn’t heal it automatically. It exposes it. Get it healed. Get prayer. Get counsel. Do the work. Because what you won’t deal with will deal with you, and it will deal with everyone under you too.
Measure fruit, not just fire. The fire is a sign. The fruit is the proof. Galatians 5:22–23 lists love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Not one of them is a miracle. All of them are a soul under the Spirit’s rule. If the miracles are up and the gentleness is gone, something is wrong — and it isn’t the Spirit.
Fire and fruit, together
I’m not writing this to make anyone afraid of revival. I want more of it. I’ve given my life to it.
I’m writing this because I’ve watched too many good outcomes die from a bad soul — and I’ve been the bad soul more than once.
The Holy Spirit is healthy. Everything He does is healthy. The question is never whether He can move. The question is whether the vessel He moves through will help people or hurt them.
Let the fire fall. Let the gifts flow. And let the soul be whole enough to carry it.
Lord, I don’t just want Your power on me. I want Your health in me. Heal what the fire will expose. Make my soul as prosperous as my calling, and let what flows through me bless — not wound — the people You love. Amen.
