"The Lord told me....."

This is a fascinating post over at Dan Phillips' blog. He's also one of the contributors to the highly regarded Pyromaniacs .This posting, which is worth a complete read addresses the Pastor of a well recognized church and his decision to leave his church based on a "leading" he supposedly had from God that gave him no more information other than to leave. Here's an excerpt:

The target quotation

...Lisa and I believe God is calling us to take a step of faith. We believe we are supposed to move into a major city such as LA, San Francisco, or New York. ...I’m still not completely sure of everything, but it feels great to be living by faith.

"God is calling us... we are supposed to move"

The whole picture summons to mind the call of Abram, which I think is probably either deliberate or semi-deliberate. Is that a fair allusion? This is what a Biblically-minded interviewer would ask Chan. "Are you likening this move to Abram's move from Ur?", I would ask. To anything like an affirmative response, I would follow up with this: "So are you saying that you received an inerrant, verbal, prophetic, morally-binding revelation directly from God, apart from Scripture, telling you that you needed to walk away from your pastoral commitment abruptly and go off doing other unspecified things?"

You can read the whole post here. It's even worth clicking through to his response to some of his critics.

This has been a pet peeve of mine for quite some time. I've made this same error myself in the past and try as hard as I can to avoid it since I've realized its implications. The bottom line is this: When we say God has spoken to us regarding any subject, the statement itself implies an infallible, inerrant and perfect word spoken by the author of Scripture itself. If God has truly spoken to us, then that message must bear the same authority Scripture bears. It should be written down, passed along and held to the same depth of examination and meditation Scripture is subject to.

This is difficult, if not impossible, to do when we "hear" from God that we are to....say.....quit our job and go to Africa to be a missionary. Fortunately in that scenario, only the speaker and/or their family will be impacted if there is any error or miscommunication.

Things get significantly more complicated when these "words" impact other people. For one thing, one who hears a directive preceded by "The Lord is telling me that you should....." is placed in an impossible position. If they don't agree, or if they feel the Lord is telling them something different, there's no way to resolve the conflict without looking like they're disobeying God. It gets even worse when the one who bears the "word" is a person who has spiritual authority or influence over others.

We have to be careful with the words we choose when we are trying to advise or counsel another brother or sister. As soon as the idea that "God said!" enters the picture, everything changes. That "word" is then attributed to a perfect, holy and sovereign God. It had better exhibit those godly attributes in all aspects of its fulfillment and application. Every one of these types of statements must be subjected to the test of Scripture. If Scripture is ambiguous about it...or worse yet, if Scripture contradicts it, then it should be regarded with tremendous caution and apprehension.

Things would be so much easier if those who have a tendency to do this sort of thing would preface their statements with, "I think you (or I) should" instead of "God wants you (or I) to...."