Going about it

I think that religious people today far too often claim that God has told them something or speak on His behalf.

I wonder sometimes how God feels about this. Certainly He does indeed speak to His children often and about many things, but I wonder if people use God to further their own purposes or justify their decisions.

An example: a few years ago the father of a young man I know packed up his family and they all moved to a nearby town because "God" had told him to. But the family was unhappy about the move, the children did not do well in the new school, and eventually the family moved back.

Did God really instruct the father to do this? Or did he make himself believe that God had? Obviously, one cannot simply dictate what God did say and what He doesn't. I cite the above story not to discredit the father, but to use it as a fairly standard example of the kind of situation I am talking about.

God is no longer in the business of loudly announcing His plans from the clouds or sending prophets to proclaim it in His stead. The coming of the Holy Spirit largely made that kind of dramatic grandstanding obsolete. But now that we live with the Spirit indwelling us, I think it is difficult for people to distinguish between the Spirit, their own thoughts, and subconscious renderings of external circumstances.

For the Christian, one of the biggest challenges in leading a God-centered life is learning to hear the Spirit, and (more importantly) to be able to discern the difference between the voice of God and all else. Prayer is a rather delicate business, because not only are you trying to communicate with the Lord, you are trying to listen to Him also. It is an easy thing to substitute the Spirit with our own thoughts; we can do this so seamlessly that we do not notice, and then go on to act on what we perceive is the will of God.

To the outsider or the atheist, I am sure that all these churches full of people talking about what God told them might as well be insane asylums. Which brings us to a good point: it is a crazy, dangerous proposition to claim a direct message from God. It is a precious, rare thing. Something to be protected and respected. In my life, the entire idea of a special message from God has slowly been drained of its meaning from extreme and negligent overuse.

My bottom line today: claiming a special word from the Lord is not something that people of faith should be flippant or dismissive about. It should be seldom invoked, and never without careful consideration.

"Let the prophet who has a dream tell his dream, but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully. For what has straw to do with grain?" declares the Lord. "Is not my word like fire and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?" Jeremiah 23:28, 29

Good stuff.