God told me . . .

I learned a hard but important lesson this week that I wanted to pass on.

I have always been bugged by the phrase, “God told me . . .” Some Christians use this phrase quite often, and I have found myself wondering what makes them so sure that they are hearing from God. The vast majority of the time, when people say that God told them something, they do not mean that God spoke audibly to them. Neither do they mean that God’s written Word communicated some important truth or message. Rather, they are usually referring to an impression or feeling, a thought or idea; some sense that a message has come to them from God by way of their sentiments or their intellect, often providing specific guidance relating to some decision or problem or life experience.

Although I do believe that impressions like these are one of the many ways that God may communicate with His children, the fact that they are entirely subjective makes me cautious about placing much weight upon them if they are not confirmed and reinforced through other more solid sources of wisdom (God’s Word, godly counselors, etc.). In other words, I don’t think that an idea or feeling that may have come from the Lord should ever be the primary basis for decisions that I make or for advice that I give.

With that being said, I must confess that I recently made the mistake of placing too much weight on an impression that I believed had come from the Lord. Here’s what happened:

For several weeks I had been praying about what next steps to take with a friend that I am discipling. Spiritually, he has been stuck in a rut for a very long time, unable to make much progress or experience much victory. One particular morning, I had spent an extended period of time praying over him and his family. During this prayer time, I felt that the Lord gave me a clear idea of what I should do next with this friend. The plan included several very concrete elements that seemed to have been simply laid out before me as I prayed. This doesn’t happen very often for me, and I was really excited at what seemed to be the Lord’s obvious leading in response to my prayers.

Several days later, I met with my friend and his wife to tell them about what had happened. With a great deal of enthusiasm, I described how I had been praying for them, and how I sensed that the Lord had given me insight regarding our next steps. I clearly expressed the fact that this could simply be my own active imagination, and I asked them to pray about the project that I had presented in order to determine whether or not they felt it was from the Lord. At the same time, in describing the project, I talked about my own “conviction” that this was from God and that He had responded to my prayers.

Within two days, I received a phone call from my friend confirming that he wanted to move forward with the plan. Over the next few weeks, as we followed through on what we had decided to do, I could sense an increasing unease in my friend regarding one particular aspect of the project: a fast that we had committed to do once a week for three months. When he started to express uncertainty about whether the fast was a good idea, I confidently referred back to the “clear” guidance that “we” had received at the outset, and encouraged him to persevere in “obedience” to the Lord’s “leading.”

He started to seek out counsel from several leaders in the church to see what they thought about the fast we were doing. All of them expressed some hesitations about it, given my friend’s instability and his psychological condition (he is bipolar). My initial response to this was a rather prideful frustration over the fact that these men were clearly not being sensitive to the Spirit and were simply basing their responses on worldly logic.

It wasn’t until several mornings ago, when I met with my friend for a time of prayer, that I started to realize what I had actually been doing. As we talked through our perspectives on what was happening, he took me back to the initial meeting when I presented the “vision” that I felt I had received. He reminded me of certain words that I used, and of the enthusiasm with which I spoke. It was convincing. It was hard to disagree with. He didn’t have any better ideas, so, why not?

Without realizing it at the time, what I had communicated to my friend in that initial presentation was: God told me! What choice did he have but to go along with it? How do you disagree with someone who has heard from God?

And there, I think, is the major danger with that phrase . . . with that concept, whether overtly stated or merely implied. The only rock solid source of divine inspiration that we have today is God’s written Word. The words of the Bible are the only words that I can communicate to someone else with absolute certainty of their divine origin. Outside of God’s written Word, all other messages, impressions, sentiments, feelings, ideas, revelations, visions and dreams must be treated with a healthy skepticism given the reality of our sinful nature, the subtle influence of worldly thinking, and the interference of spiritual enemies.

When we do feel convinced that we have “heard from God” in a way that does not flow directly from His written Word, I think it is important to avoid communicating that which we have received to others in a way that suggests it carries some exceptional spiritual weight or authority. Rather, I think it should be submitted with great humility and caution to godly brothers and sisters who may either help confirm or reject the validity of the message in accordance with the clear teaching of God’s Word.

Unfortunately today, the excesses of certain branches of the charismatic and pentecostal movement with regard to the role of the Spirit and the use of what some refer to as “prophetic words” has caused more conservative branches of the Church to completely reject the idea that God’s Spirit might speak to His children in any way other than directly through the written Word. Although, as I mentioned above, I do believe that the Spirit of God does speak to and guide us in a wide variety of ways that are always consistent with His written Word, it is because of such excesses that I think we need to be particularly vigilant and cautious in our handling of any source of guidance that does not directly flow from the inspired Word of God.