Our aim today is to answer the question; why do people do that in the first place? Believe it or not, everything man does always has a motive; good or bad. Although no one can truly know or judge other people’s motives except the Almighty Himself, still, I believe, anyone who has diligently studied his Bible – which is able to discern thoughts and secret intents of the heart (Heb 4:12) – can surely know the hidden truth about human nature.
Influence from leaders
When it comes to this famous “God said to me” claim, the first class is them who do it because they have been influenced by their highly esteemed faith heroes. For example, if my mentor loves to detail stories of his private dealings with Jesus, it won’t be long before I also come out and say that I heard the voice of Jesus whispering my name. That is why.
Attention seeking
Second on the list of the “God appeared to me” story are those who desire people’s attention. They know that human nature is always fascinated by anything supernatural, which means it’s always willing and hungry to listen to you when you say, “Yesterday Jesus came to my room and said this and that.” Nothing is as sad as a minister who is prepared to do anything, even lie in God’s Name, so as to get a crowd following him. Please don’t be like that, oh, my dear Christian friend!
Spiritual pride
The third motive that I have observed is a sense of super spirituality, as opposed to simple humility. Many of God’s children feel like people will respect and highly regard them if they seem to have those private dealings with the Holy Spirit that make them special enough to get direct and “fresh” revelations from Him, unlike us lesser believers who get to live by the “boring dead letter” Bible.
Empty vessels
Another reason why people come up with the “the Lord spoke to me” thing is because they don’t have anything else to say when they stand before people. If you are lazy to study the scriptures (as many ministers are), if your private prayer life is bad, then what will you say when people gaze at you ready to hear your preaching? Is it not better then to quickly cook something in your mind and say, “Aha, the other day as I was walking from work God said to me…”?
Self-justification in the wrong
Finally, there are those clever folks who always find ways to justify themselves no matter how wrong they are. They begin by presenting false teachings or sometimes even sinful behaviour, then to prevent being challenged and exposed, they have no choice but to default into, “Don’t worry if you can’t find that in the Bible, Jesus appeared to me directly and revealed it to me.” They don’t realize (or perhaps they do) that they accuse Jesus of having double standards; publicly revealing His truth in Scripture for everyone to submit under and then turning around to give contrary messages to individuals through private “revelations.” This is exactly what is happening in the churches today. It’s ridiculous in the end.
The sure way of hearing God speak
Now, please listen. When it comes to hearing the Lord speak. You cannot trust your mind, you don’t rely on your emotional status and definitely, you must not trust the sincerity of your heart. But, how then does the Lord speak to us today? Read a little bit of Hebrews 1:1-2 and you will learn that indeed the Lord spoke in various ways, but has in the last days spoken to us by only one way, that is, Jesus Himself. How then does God speak through Jesus to us? The answer is that we have the words of Jesus, and those of His servants written down, it’s called Scripture. Now, I am serious when I tell you that you will never go wrong with your Bible. Just fall in love with that book and study it; you will hear God speak to every area of your life, as clear as possible. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:15-17)
It simply means that the Bible contains everything you need for godly living – everything! Is the word “everything” not enough for you?
What about the Holy Spirit, how then does He speak to us?
“Sanctify them by your truth. Your Word is truth” (Joh 17:17). Many people actually believe that the Holy Spirit carries a different word from God and perhaps even fresher than that “expired message” from the Bible. Oh, how wrong! The Spirit of God and the Word of God must never be separated as if they are different voices giving us different directions. Just by studying the Bible, the Spirit will illuminate your mind to understand what God is saying. Is that too hard to understand? What if I want to hear God speak so audible to me? Answer: just read your Bible out loud you will hear Him. Mark my words, the Church has always been at its weakest and most confused point when it has relied on those who regularly made false claims about the Lord speaking privately to them, while a strong church is that which stands firmly and unwaveringly on nothing but the written Word.
Beware, therefore, lest you look down upon that fresh, powerful, authoritative, Spirit-inspired Word called the Bible. It’s not a dead letter but it’s the living Word that the Spirit uses to build and direct believers’ lives.
The heart impression?
On the other hand, we have in Scripture God impressing ideas and thoughts in the hearts of the people. For example, “Then my God put it into my heart to gather the nobles, the rulers, and the people, that they might be registered by genealogy…” (Neh 7:5). This, therefore, is where we get the humble utterance, “I believe in my heart that the Lord may be saying …” This proves that you may not be sure if it was indeed God who spoke or just an imagination of your human mind. Therefore, you are not so foolish to presume upon the Name of God, nor do you dismiss the possibility of Him doing that. This makes it easy for you to then examine your “inner impression” and feelings with the clear teaching of the Bible. What disturbs me is that people are never humble enough to do something like that, instead, they come out bold-faced and say, “God spoke to me.” That is a recipe for disaster.
Conclusion
Friends, I understand that many souls are craving for that “experience and encounter” with the Holy Spirit. In fact, I applaud that. It’s a good thing to have a hunger for the supernatural. Nonetheless, it is outright foolish to then take anything that pops from your imagination and pronounce it to others as the word from God. That is not only careless, but it’s also dangerous, not to your soul only but also to the souls of others. Stop it.
Sinothi Ncube
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