That's a scary thought Tom. For me anyways. Many times the voice I hear is probably just mine. Or fear. Or anger. But I will concede to the fact that I don't pray or even talk to God as often as I should, or like to. Many times I'm playing out scenarios in my head.
Who says it isn't God prompting you to actually realize and acknowledge your own thoughts and feelings? What is prayer, other than taking those thoughts and feelings and expressing them to God the best way you know how? And at some point God sharing his thoughts and feelings with you in return, in a way that you can receive and understand and appreciate? It may be a novel concept to some that Jesus has thoughts and feelings too, but He very much does. And, He doesn't mind sharing them with people who can treat them with the same respect and consideration that we all hope and expect for Him to give to our own. Jesus was/is a man (which is great news for us), and so realizing that human element of Him helps me personally to connect with Him in a more meaningful way than struggling to connect with the God element of Him which is Other and Foreign to me. I'm learning to approach that Man Jesus, and letting Him bridge the gap to God, the Other, instead of trying to do it myself (without much success). The reason we can't come to the Father except by Jesus, is because He perfectly bridges the gap between Man and God, being both Himself, and allowing us to share in His sonship by way of spiritual, mental and emotional connection with a God who would otherwise elude us utterly because we lack the capacity to fully connect without a Mediator. Worshipping God is one thing. Praying to God is one thing. Emotionally and mentally connecting to your Father is another thing entirely. Where you go from the Creator/creation to the Father/child dimension, which is where you will find the satisfaction and contentment and fulfillment that has been eluding you up until that moment. Jesus is here to connect us to Father God. Intimately and personally and entirely, and deliberately and thoroughly and expertly. He's really, really good at it. Door's wide open to those who dare enter. This, and only this, is Christianity. The personal, intimate and complete connection of man through Christ to Father God.
No need to apologize, IMO. This is a message board/forum. When a someone starts a thread, it can touch someone other than the OP, and promote great discussion. This is one such thread.
Tom, how do you know for sure? There was a time (decades back) I believed and practised that (waiting for the Lord to speak in prayer) wholehearted and with commitment. Then on one bad day (or maybe it was a good day after all) a promise of the (supposed) Holy Spirit did not came true and that realization became a devastating eye opener with big consequences for my faith. In the end I had to admit that the thoughts (voice) in my head was nothing more than something I desired and that God had nothing to do with it, or (I must be careful) the promise did not fulfill itself in the way I thought it would be fulfilled. Anyway, I fooled myself and didn't even realize it, reality was a shock lasting for years ending up in a deep depression. I am with Seeking on this. I am not saying the Holy Spirit doesn't speak in private but looking back on that period of intense commitment to Jesus in daily life on a 24/7 base and the things the Holy Spirit supposedly told me the statistics don't look good. For me it became a dangerous path. I am happy for you if you experience otherwise.
I know myself fairly well. I know how I think, how I react. I know my inner voice, and a better way of describing it would be, I know what I sound like. The "voice" is not my own, so to speak. It is a conversation within, that's unique from talking to yourself. Trying to explain what is really unexplainable. This would be close, but not complete.
Don't sweat it. You raise questions I am too chicken to because when I ask them I probably look stupid or like a weak and pathetic Christian. You, on the other hand, can manage to ask and simply look like you're just wanting help.
I know that when I hear from God, the voice is always "other" and tells me things I a) couldn't possibly come up on my own and b) often really don't want to hear even though I know they're true (and that require action on my part, that I'm not necessarily keen on taking -- usually having to do with repenting of one thing or another). If "God" is always telling you what you want to hear ... yea, no, that's not ever going to happen (and by "you" I mean "anyone", not you specifically ProDeo). I've seen too many people (and some close to me) claim "God said" and only use it to validate their own poor life choices (and the only thing the fruit later on proves is their own faulty hearing, or downright lying/self-delusion). I've heard of people getting together to journal everything "God" supposedly told them, and then having to turn around and burn their journals because it was all bunk. We've all seen the quagmire of "God said" on other sites, and how messy that can get when it's not scrutinized and tested. Those of us who were admins, remember the day we deleted dozens upon dozens of "prophecies" over on BF that were all garbage? I do. Happens all the time. It's perfectly fine and biblical to test what you hear, or think you hear. I've learned to test very early on. Not from a place of rebellion but from a place of "okay God if this is you, then you can bring about what you said, and I want to be sure I'm following the right path, so let's see it". I also often run what I hear by others for good measure and confirmation (and it takes humility to let "God said" be scrutinized by other people -- not many have the guts to put themselves out there and let their hearing get judged, sadly -- but that too is biblical). If it's of God, it'll stand and come about without your help. If it's of you, then it's on you obviously. It's a lot easier for me to hear on behalf of other people, really. Because I'm not emotionally attached, and so I'm free to listen to whatever God has to say, and respond to anything He tells me. It's a lot more difficult to get yourself out of the way, when it comes to hearing for yourself, I think. Our ego can make us very thick and hard of hearing. Even so, I've heard incorrectly, and that's a hard pill to swallow, but nothing you can't come back from. Live and learn.
I've often figured that if "God is speaking to me" and telling me just what I want to hear then the chances are it isn't God. Usually if it is God speaking then it's going to make me uncomfortable in some way. That said the fact something makes me uncomfortable doesn't mean it's God speaking. Sometimes it could be an awareness that I could, in theory, solve a particular problem but just don't particularly want to. I remember some years ago I was sitting in church - my wife and I were sitting separately because I was working the techno magic. We had a visiting preacher who talked of a situation in a developing nation that needed some money. It was a specific amount, needed by a specific family for a specific situation. Being a developing nation it was a sum that, to them, was so large it would take them years to save it. Being in a developed nation, to my wife and I it was a sum that was noticeable but well within our normal giving budget for the year. But it would have been a single lump sum rather than spread out month by month. But I had that nagging sense that maybe this was God calling me to divert some of my regular giving and give a lump sum to this particular cause. I'd almost managed to ignore it but when I got home my wife delivered the fish-slap when she said something like "I was thinking about (that situation) and figured maybe we could give them what they need". Sometimes I need to get fish-slapped by God to get me to pay attention. If I feel God is speaking about something that's harder to come back from (and in the example above had we both been misguided the worst case is that money we would have given to one cause would have been wasted on another cause), I figure apply an appropriate amount of testing. If it's something that I think is for someone else much humility is required - the people who pronounce "Thus saith the Lord:" should really change their ways and use a phrase more akin to "I think God might be saying that..." instead. As Paul said on prophecy, two or three should speak and the others should judge. He told the Thessalonians to test all things. If God is truly speaking he'll confirm what he is saying. If he is not and something fails testing then it's better to chuck it out now than act on it no matter how much that might bruise a would-be prophet's ego. And ultimately the question comes down to taking responsibility. If I truly believe that God is telling me to become a missionary to Pakistan, all the local schools that might teach me the appropriate language skills reject my application, all the local missions reject my application, my church declines to offer any assistance because they don't accept the calling but I decide to go anyway "trusting in God" then if it all goes wrong it was ultimately my decision to press ahead. If everything falls into place it's still my decision whether to go or not. And if the brutal reality is that we don't, as yet, have enough faith to follow God along that particular path then it's better to admit it and work with it rather than claiming something that isn't true.
Meaning, you can't know for sure, yes? Exactly, which in my case meant the learning part was not to make the same mistake and not baptize some revealing thoughts (eureka moments) as revelations from God. When I entered BF 7 years ago many of those so called revelations moments from God melted as snow for the sun as they were in contradiction with Scripture. I will probably (after judgement) listen to an audible voice, not to thoughts any longer. Not that an audible voice ever happened.
Yes, you can know. Being hoodwinked by fool's gold doesn't negate the existence of actual gold. The stuff God usually tells me: 1. How to love people better. 2. How to have more compassion for others. 3. How to overcome ego by sacrificial love. 4. How to get over myself (that's been the main theme over the past 2 decades, really). 5. How to be practical about meeting people's needs. 6. How to pray, fight and intercede for others in a way that actually overcomes enemy resistance. 7. When to back off praying for someone because they insist on doing things their own way, which is why they're in the boat they're in. 8. How to quit angsting and trust Him better. If your focus is love, you will hear from God because that's who He is. If your focus is self, you won't hear squat from the Lord except "repent", and you'll mostly hear from your own head and heart. However, having said that, it's good to know yourself and do some digging to see where your thoughts and feelings are actually coming from, to validate and examine them. Who says they're all bad? You're in a partnership with Christ, and you matter, too. God is not out to trip us up, and He does not create garbage. We usually have either a way too high, or way too low opinion of ourselves. Pride and false humility are both rooted in the ego, and they're both unscriptural. If you were really that unnecessary and unimportant, God would not have bothered creating you, and Jesus would not have bothered dying for you. I wouldn't necessarily take BF as a yardstick to measure anything by, because Scripture is mostly used as a weapon against others, and as an ego boost over there. However, of course you want to set what you're hearing against Scripture in order to test it, because God would not contradict His word, and He never changes and is always consistent. Mormons are famous for "listening to the Spirit" while totally ignoring the Bible. Which means they're mostly being guided by their feelings, and that's where things get wonky. You do want to have the wisdom of Scripture as your guard rails so you don't get over into a ditch someplace.
Exactly. If God tells me something that involves and affects my spouse, then He's going to tell my husband the same thing, because God would not create strife and disagreement in a marriage. How can two walk together unless they are in agreement? It doesn't matter how much I "feel" that "God told me" or "God laid this on my heart" --- if my husband is not on the same page and in support of it, out the window it goes. Because, covenant.
I don't know if that reasoning always should apply. What if the reason your spouse is not "in support of" something you believe God wants done is because he or she is actually in secret sin or rebellion to God's will?
Then you have bigger issues than you imagined. I don't think God is inclined to call people to do something that would break a pre-existing covenant. Or that would drive a wedge between two people in a marriage. I'm pretty sure that God works just the opposite, in fact.
Pretty much this. If God really was calling on my wife and I to give the money that was needed, one of us was listening and the other was in secret sin (secret enough that it was hidden even within the marriage) then it's hard to see God expecting us to come to blows over it. It's not as if there was anything special about the cash we handed over, had we not been in a place where we could agree God could easily enough have found someone else to call. Of course in that situation had my wife been in a sinful place so she was refusing to hear God all that would have happened from my perspective is that I'd have thought I heard God calling, circumstances would have convinced me that maybe I was mistaken, so I wouldn't have acted. But God would have known what was going on and would either not have called on me in the first place, or given me some pointer of what was going on.
Well, actually, it's taken awhile but I'm slowly coming to the conclusion, as painful as it is, that my daughter is writing us off forever and she will likely eventually end up in hell after she dies. Not what I want, of course, but I have no reason to believe things will end up better than that. Nothing's changed, several years later, and I don't believe it ever will. But, my conscience is clear. I tried to raise her the best I could. She's the one who won't return our calls or texts. We didn't write her off. She wrote us off. Not sure what I'm supposed to "trust God" with in regards to my daughter. Elaborate on that.
Are you willing to let God do whatever He has to do to try to reach your daughter, even if it means destroying her fleshly life in an effort for her to turn to Him?
An answer I recently gave to a question: Children aren't Christian simply because their parents are, and it's not my job as a (potential) parent to do anything and everything in my power to 'make sure' that my children are saved. They have to make their own decisions about what to believe - just as everyone does -, including what they believe about Jesus. My responsibility is to raise them as best as I can, to love them unconditionally, to (try to) teach them to be wise in the decisions that they make, to be comfortable with themselves (even through all that uncomfortable 'experimentation' they wll probably do), and confident enough that if we didn't agree on something they wouldn't be afraid to talk about it (e.g. for fear of rejection). I have a responsibility to my children, but I don't own them. They are individuals before God just as I am, and I need to respect that they have to make their own decisions and are ultimately responsible for those they make. I'm not in control, God is. At the end of the day I trust that God will work in the life of my children just as God worked in my life, and it would be my prayer that my children would respond positively to Christ as I did. But they aren't me, and as difficult and uncomfortable as it might be I have to let them find their own way to God. That might very well mean rejection, heated disagreement, worry, anxiety, discomfort, sinful behavior (on their part), being truly tolerant (on my part), and so whatever else. But again I'm not in control, God is. I have to trust God.
I guess it doesn't matter much what I want or don't want. God is going to do, or not do, whatever He wants to in regards to my daughter. I have to humbly accept that.