You have felt it before. The pen is in your hand, the papers are on the table, everyone in the room is smiling, and something deep inside you sinks. You can’t explain it. On paper, everything makes sense. So you push the feeling down and you sign.
Six months later, you know exactly what that feeling was.
Most of us carry a story like that. The business partner we should never have trusted. The move we made a season too early. The door we backed away from out of fear, only to watch someone else walk through it. And the most painful part is not the mistake itself. It is the quiet memory that we were warned. Not by a dream, not by a prophet, not by a thundering voice from heaven, but by something inside us we simply didn’t know how to read. God was not silent in those moments; he was speaking through the inner witness of your spirit, and you can learn to read it.
Here is what I have discovered after years of living this way: the Holy Spirit has placed a dashboard of five lights inside every child of God. Two are red, one is orange and two are green. Each one feels different, and each one says something different. Once you can tell them apart, you will realise God has already spoken to you more times than you can count. In How to Hear the Voice of God, I dealt with whether you can hear him. In this blog, I am going to show you what you are hearing, light by light, so you never again have to wonder whether it was God or just nerves.
1. Your Spirit Has a Dashboard
Think of the lights on a car’s dashboard. If you can’t read them, the oil runs dry and the brakes fail and you never saw it coming. God has given your spirit a dashboard, and it starts with one promise:
“The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.” — Romans 8:16
The Greek word is summartureō, “to testify together with.” The Holy Spirit testifies alongside your spirit. The first thing he witnesses is your sonship, and nothing can undo that. But a Spirit who can witness who you are can also witness where you should go.
Israel had a picture of this. Behind the high priest’s breastplate lay the Urim and the Thummim (Exodus 28:30), names traditionally understood as “lights” and “perfections.” When David stood in the ashes of Ziklag, he called for the ephod, inquired of the Lord, and heard, “Pursue: for thou shalt surely overtake them, and without fail recover all” (1 Samuel 30:8). What hung on the priest’s chest now lives in your spirit.
Visions and dreams are real, but they are God’s urgent voice. A parent speaks gently to a child about the busy street; only when the child runs for the road does the parent shout. Most of God’s leading is quiet, and it comes through the inner witness. Even a vision or a prophetic word must bear witness with what you sense on the inside.
2. The Two Red Lights: Not Yet and Not Ever
Red light one: stenazō, “not right now.” Stenazō means to sigh or groan. Mark uses an intensified form, anastenazō, a sigh drawn up from deep within:
“And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and saith, Why doth this generation seek after a sign?” — Mark 8:12
It feels like a heaviness in the chest, a sigh that rises with no cause you can name, a reluctance that doesn’t lift when you talk yourself through it. This is the softer red, a hand on your sleeve. It usually concerns timing, not the thing itself. Many times I have been offered a great invitation and felt that sigh rise in me; the Lord was not saying no, he was saying not now. The car may be right, but not at that price and not this month. The calling may be right, but not this season. Romans 12:2 speaks of a good, acceptable and perfect will; this light keeps you from settling for a good life that was never your life.
Red light two: embrimaomai, “not ever.” This word originally described a horse snorting; in Scripture it means to be moved with indignation or to charge sternly (Matthew 9:30; John 11:33). It is a sharp no that arrives uninvited and doesn’t argue. A wall goes up, and pressing through it feels like dying. Clever reasoning won’t move it.
“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Proverbs 14:12). When this light flashes, obey it in the first sixty seconds. You don’t need to understand it. Understanding often comes later.
3. The Orange Light: Go, but Go Awake
The orange light is tarassō, to stir up or trouble, the word used of water agitated in a pool. It means proceed, but proceed with your eyes open.
“Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour.” — John 12:27
Jesus was troubled, and he went. Paul received a sobering prophecy from Agabus about chains in Jerusalem (Acts 21:10–13), and he went. The word was a forecast, not a prohibition.
When the orange light comes, pray more, speak less, listen more and move deliberately. Stay alert until you are through. The danger is reading orange as red, because then you stop exactly where God is sending you.
4. The Two Green Lights: Go Gently, Go With Everything
Green light one: paroxynō, “go normally.” The word literally means to sharpen or stir. In Athens, Paul’s “spirit was stirred in him” (Acts 17:16), and it moved him into the synagogue and the marketplace. Its noun appears in Hebrews 10:24: “to provoke unto love and to good works.” When I feel this light, it is a warmth that rises on the inside, a velvet sense of rightness, a quiet fullness. It says: this is the road, keep walking. It is the light you will see most often, so honour it even when it is gentle.
Green light two: sunechō, “go with everything.” Sunechō means to hold together, to press on every side; Luke uses it for a city hemmed in by siege (Luke 19:43).
“For the love of Christ constraineth us.” — 2 Corinthians 5:14
The first green light is a stirring within; this one is the Spirit coming upon you. It is loud, it fills your whole being, and to disobey it you would have to suppress it, as Jeremiah said, like “a burning fire shut up in my bones” (Jeremiah 20:9). Decisions start to feel almost automatic. Looking back, it barely feels like it was you.
5. How to Train Your Inner Senses
“But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.” — Hebrews 5:14
“Senses” is aisthētērion, a faculty of perception. “Exercised” is gymnazō, the root of our word gymnasium. Discernment is trained by use. These are the five mistakes I see most often:
- Reading orange as red.
- Treating stenazō, which is about timing, as a permanent no.
- Waiting for sunechō before obeying paroxynō.
- Calling every anxiety orange.
- Overriding the wall in the first sixty seconds.
For the next seven days, keep a note on your phone. Notice: catch every sigh, wall, troubling, warmth or grip. Name: at night, ask which of the five it was. Check: a few days later, look back and see how God guided you.
Feed yourself on the word of righteousness, the good news of grace, because Hebrews ties trained senses to it. And keep this inside the safety of a local church and its leadership; the inner witness is for walking in God’s will, not for walking away from the people God planted you among.
Conclusion: The Inner Witness Is Already Speaking
You are not waiting for God to start talking. The Spirit who witnesses that you are his child has been signalling all along: not yet, not ever, go carefully, go on, go with everything. You are led by the Spirit of God, not by dreams or by someone else’s prophecy. Learn the lights, and the inner witness becomes the most reliable voice in your life.
If you sense a calling stirring as you read this, What If I Miss My Calling? will help, and How to Know God’s Will for Your Life shows how small obediences shape your future. To be trained in hearing God’s voice and moving in the prophetic, join me at the School of the Prophet.
Holy Spirit, thank you that you bear witness with my spirit that I am a child of God. Make me sensitive to your voice. Open the eyes of my spirit to the five lights you have placed inside me. Teach me to stop when you say stop, to wait when you say wait, and to run when you say go. I trust your leading over my reasoning, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
This post is adapted from Prophet Leon du Preez’s message “The 5 Lights Inside Of Your Spirit.”
