Romania has been amazing but also spiritually exhausting. It is especially hard to do ministry when you don’t feel “close” to God. I often find I am not motivated to share the gospel when I don’t feel it myself. That’s when I realized that the gospel is a fact, not a feeling, and if my relationship with God is based on proximity then it is more of a religion than a relationship. I am sinful and human so the proximity I feel to His presence is always dependent on my own humanity, not God’s desire to be near me. This is especially dangerous because we often view our proximity to Him as how often we think He is speaking to us or we are noticing evidence of His grace. This realization led me to study more about what the Bible says about how He communicates with us, and to investigate whether that little voice in the back of our head is just divine common sense, the voice of God, or our thoughts in the form of prayers rising to the throne of God.
Imagine a boyfriend and girlfriend meeting up for a date after years of a relationship and the boy says “God told me to marry you”, and the girl says “God told me to break up with you”. This humorously unfortunate situation shows the danger of giving your thoughts and leadings the same authority of God’s words and will. Many times the Israelites were commanded to listen to the voice of God, “And if you obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I commanded you…” (Deuteronomy 28:1). Throughout the New Testament, you find God appointing ones to lead Israel, his people. He spoke to them through Moses. After Moses came Joshua, “the Lord commanded Joshua to tell the people” (Joshua 4:11). Then God sent the greatest voice of all: Jesus. To listen to God’s voice means to listen to Jesus’s words through the Scriptures. If we always expect God to speak to us individually in addition to His Word we are limiting God and putting ourselves on the throne instead.
“Do not add to his words” -Proverbs 30: 5-6
What is He deliberately saying to me and you when I read this verse? Stop speaking for Him.
These words are not to dismiss the power of being led by the Spirit. These words are to show you that walking in the Spirit does not mean blurring the line between the voice of God with your own. Paul makes it clear that anything not of the Spirit is of the flesh. Walking in the Spirit is when the divine desires of a Christian overpowers the fleshly desires. Whether we realize it or not, by proclaiming that God has spoken to us about a relationship, a job, or even a trivial matter aside from what He says in the Scriptures, we are saying that His will is limited by our desires. In reality, a Christian may be led a certain way, and may even go directly against where they feel the Spirit calling him, yet God’s will happen no matter what.
To assert that God individually speaks to you regularly apart from His word assumes that to do anything other than that would go against His will. We do not have the power to stand in the way of God’s providence taking place.
the way you conveyed this message was honestly amazing. listening to that small still voice is hard enough, but even having the confidence to speak what He’s whispering is a whole other level.
speaking on His accord and power is so important, and I’m so thankful you shared.