“God Told Me…” NOT!
How many times during your Christian walk have you heard a teacher, a preacher or some individual say, “God told me…”
I know that in my own earlier years as a Christian, before I started to really understand that the Bible is God’s complete Word to mankind, I heard this many, many times.
Often those words would come from individuals trying desperately to paint a picture of themselves as being more favoured by God than the average Christian. They longed to be seen as people that had an “extra special” relationship with God that resulted in God personally conversing with them, telling them things He would not tell the “ordinary” common person.
God had personally chosen them to say something, which, I have to say, seldom matched anything biblical.
It was often used by self-appointed “prophets” telling others what God had revealed to them about that other person’s private circumstances. “I have a word for you from the Lord” was often the way it was presented.
Often the so-called “word” would confuse and mislead a person into situations that were downright opposite to what they needed.
The best advice for someone hearing the words “God told me…” is to make yourself scarce because nothing Biblical is about to follow that “God told me…” unless it is a verse of Scripture rightly divided.
Saying, “God told me…” is telling you that what follows is not merely a person’s opinion, or a person’s guesswork, or even human insight. What follows has the authority of God behind it. After all, God said it, not the speaker, and so who can doubt what is said? No one can because they’d be doubting God.
Now, the speaker may try to legitimise their “God told me..” by saying they can compare what’s being said to the authoritative words of God in the Bible.
However, saying, “God told me…” is telling you that God revealed something not found in the book that God inspired to make you perfect (2 Tim 3:16). In other words, the Bible you hold is incomplete.
No matter how “holy” and “awesome” that person may seem, beware.
Presumably, what this person says is from God’s mouth; God told the speaker because the printed words were insufficient, and you need to hear this anointed speaker as a messenger of God without question.
No! No! No! Get away.
This person has not got your interests at heart.
What they usually want is your recognition that they are more special than you in God’s eyes. This is pure bunkum!
Allowing pastors in front of the church to say “God told me” is dangerous because it means either they are delusional or deceptive. Either one is enough to disqualify them from teaching or leading the church.
Truly, there is nothing to add to the perfect and inspired revelation of God found in the pages of the Bible you hold in your hands except your understanding.
The job of the man behind the pulpit is to help you understand the words of God, not to be your source of new words from God, nor to assume authority over what God has already inspired.
The Bible is complete, and you are complete in Christ.
You can learn to understand the Bible, but you never will from someone who resorts to saying, “God told me…”.
The worst-case scenario is that you’ll spend your whole life drifting from one “God told me…” to the next, always relying on these people to tell you what God wants you to do and never knowing or understanding what God actually did say in His precious Word, the Bible.
We have that Bible freely available today, the Bible that many people throughout history willingly gave their lives for so that we wouldn’t need to rely on fallible men presuming to be God’s mouthpiece.
“And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words.” – Colossians 2:4
God wrote a book. That’s a huge statement to make, but it’s entirely true.
However, there are those (even in the church) who think that the Bible was a creation of men and not God.
It’s quite common to hear people say something like, “Nowhere in the Bible do you find GOD ever instructing anyone to write down and make a book…”
This couldn’t be any more wrong.
God told Moses, “And the LORD said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book…” (Exo 17:14).
Every king in Israel was required to follow the command to “write him a copy of this law in a book…” (Deu 17:18).
God said to Jeremiah, “ Thus speaketh the LORD God of Israel, saying, Write thee all the words that I have spoken unto thee in a book” (Jer 30:2).
God wrote in a book with a man’s pen, “Moreover the LORD said unto me, Take thee a great roll, and write in it with a man’s pen concerning Maher-shalal-hash-baz” (Isa 8:1).
God’s purpose in writing a book was for future generations and to make the man of God perfect: “Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever:” (Isaiah 30:8; 2 Tim 3:16-17).
Jesus told John directly that he was God and to write this in a book. “ I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book,” (Rev 1:11).
There are many more passages that refer to Scripture as the inspired and preserved words of God.
God really did write a book. He instructed men to write it. He gave the words. They supplied the pen. Every word is a result of the movement of God and contains His purity and power (2 Pet 1:21; 1 Pet 1:25; Luke 4:4).
When you and I hold the Bible, we hold the book that God wrote. When that book is widely known as the most influential book in history, it becomes the praise and glory of God.
“In God will I praise his word: in the LORD will I praise his word.” – Psalm 56:10
We should trust only in His written word, rightly divided, not in self-proclaimed prophets who represent themselves as “special” and selected by God to speak outside of what He has written to mankind over many long centuries.
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