Admit it. You’ve told someone “God told me” when in fact, you know darn well He didn’t.
We’ve all done it. We’re all guilty.
Now, I’m not saying God doesn’t speak to His followers, but, I often times raise an eyebrow at how readily I hear people use the “God card” to justify actions of theirs. Not necessarily stupid decisions, but seemingly good ones too.
“God told me to wear mismatching socks to work today.”
Well aren’t you just the spiritual little individual.
I remember in Bible school a friend’s sister told me that during her first year, four different guys told her God approached them that she was to be their future wife. I looked at her incredulously and told her “well, at least three of them are wrong or lying.”
The wife (or husband) thing is a typical example. I’ve backed off of throwing that term around because I simply cringe looking back in hindsight when I recollect how off I’ve been on things and did not in fact “hear from God” about them. I just didn’t want you to think I didn’t hear from Him. So I over compensated by insisting that I in fact did.
As I’ve grown and matured, I’ve also come to a place where if someone tells me God told them something, and it’s clear that it’s a decision they would have made anyway with or without prayer, I just don’t take them very seriously. Godly people just do what God tells them. They don’t need to announce that they were told to do it. I could be wrong. I have been before, after all.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”‘Godly people just do what God tells them. They don’t need to announce that they were told to do it.'” quote=”‘Godly people just do what God tells them. They don’t need to announce that they were told to do it.'” theme=”style5″]
God’s Voice or Our Own Self-Doubt?
Often times, I think there’s some wiggle room since there’s no chapter and verse in the Bible about some things, we are left to ourselves along with the Holy Spirit’s guidance about specifics. Like who we will marry, what job to have, where to live, if this ministry is a good idea or the other one is instead. We should definitely get to know God’s will in important big decisions.
But I want to call baloney on some of the over spiritualizing we tend to do as Christians.
I often wonder how often we twist our own self-doubt or uneasiness into God “telling” us not to do something that He may in fact be encouraging us to do? There is little question in my mind that the subjective voice of the Holy Spirit is badly abused and misheard. The world also blames God for a lot of things that we know He really did not say because some of His loopy followers do stupid things claiming God told them to do it. Like some misguided soul who allegedly heard God tell them to wear macaroni in their hair or sell everything and move to Siberia to await the Apocalypse.
Many Christians — but not all, just the ones I’m painting with this broad brush — are risk averse, and don’t like to step out of their comfort zone. Conveniently enough, these same individuals seem to hear God say or not say exactly what they want Him to. Many look at their own misgivings about something and then say “God told me not to…” rather than just being honest about their decision they made with or without praying about it.
God Doesn’t Have Multiple Personality Disorder!
I remember a roommate of mine in Bible school who abruptly quit his job for another one and burned his bridges with his boss. When we asked him if he was certain he was going about it in the right way, he dropped the big ‘God card’ on us.
“GOOOODDDD (!) told me to quit my job!“.
Didn’t God also tell you how to properly give two weeks’ notice?
Or how to do it in an honorable way?
Sorry, don’t want to question the ways of the Almighty! Just curious, that’s all!
One week later, he quit that new job and, if I remember correctly, was going back to his previous employer with his tail between his legs. He spent a few minutes telling me how much he hated this new job and the bosses were jerks to him and he decided made a mistake.
This next part is not fuzzy in my memory like the first few details are, but I recall asking him how did he know he was supposed to quit this new job instead of honorably continuing with it since had told us God told him to quit the previous one for this one.
He gave me the same response as the week before: God told him to quit this job and go back to the other job God allegedly told him to quit previously.
Uh huh.
So I asked him if this was really so, and if he wasn’t quitting because he hated the job and God had spoken zilch to him. He insisted this was solely a spiritual decision and not about what he wanted.
Uh huh.
He must have forgotten that he had told me that because a few months later on another occasion in an unrelated situation, he admitted to me that he was well aware he tended to use the ‘God card’ to get people to leave him alone when he didn’t want to be accountable to anybody about decisions he made.
Let’s face it, we’ve all had roommates or friends like that, but most importantly, we’ve all been the friend or roommate that other people tolerated as we insisted God was telling us to do something that in all reality was rooted in our own decision making process and had nothing to do with God speaking anything to us.
“A compulsive need to know “God’s will” perfectly in every situation is a neuroses, not a spiritual virtue.”
~Stephen Crosby— Northwest Prophetic (@NWProphetic) August 14, 2016
Further Thought
What is the silliest thing you’ve ever heard someone insist God told them?
What is the most foolish thing you ever thought God was telling you, but you now cringe in hindsight for having thought?
Check out this humorous video on ‘Playing The God Card’
January 17th/2013 Edit:
Check out this related article by Kurt Williams “The Will of God is an Excuse to Not Follow Jesus” which he wrote in response to another excellent article “The Will Of God: More Abstractions So We Can Avoid Following Jesus” by Drew Hart that I also enjoyed reading.
