God told me

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said,.

But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Why Christians Want God to Speak and Why That Desire Is Misguided

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and I just had to take the gum out of my mouth. What adult 53-year-old man actually chews gum, number one? Number two, why would you chew gum during the show?

So, I had to take that out. Looking outside, I'm glad to be back in America after the Poland and Czech excursion. Looking outside now, it's weird weather in New England. It is beginning of November, and it is high 50s, low 60s rain, so it's a hot rain, and next week it's supposed to snow.

Well, YouGov, What the World Thinks, is a website, and it says, Hot Topics Today, Chris Christie, Tom Cruise, Benjamin Netanyahu, okay, so far so good. And then there's an article written by Peter Moore, M-O-O-R-E.

It's in Front Page and Life, Friday, October 25, 2013. God told me to, comma, say 38 of Americans. And then it shows a lady with her eyes closed, head bowed, with a rosary wrapped around her hand. 38 of Americans say that they have done something because God told them to, while more than half of people who believe in God say that the deity sometimes controls weather and disasters.

New research from YouGov suggests that many Americans believe God plays an active role in their lives, that he's more than a theist. Out of the 76 of Americans who say that they personally believe in the existence of a God, capital G there, half say that they have at least once before done something because God told them to, including non-believers.

Hmm, this makes up 38 of the entire country. The group most likely to have acted on God's command are born-again or evangelical Christians who make up about a third of Americans. See, I didn't know that either.

Almost two-thirds, 65 of born-again Christians, say God has told them to do something at least once before. Only a quarter, 25%, so in case you didn't know what a quarter was, of the remaining population have ever had the same experience.

So it goes on, it gets some stats there on YouGov. And I like it on the second page, it says, how often have you done something? Because God told you to do it. And then it gives the percentage of people.

In the Northeast here, only 30 of the people. Independents, politically, 35%, male, 36, Democrats, 40, Republicans, 42, and people in the South, 44. Okay, females, 41. God told me. Well, has God ever spoken to your heart?

Has God ever given you direct revelation, a personal word from the Lord? And if so, it's going to be pretty hard to argue with a person like you, because thus saith the Lord, and what are we going to do?

My other question is, not only have you ever been told by God to do something directly, have you desired that God would speak to you? So let's just think about this for a minute. Is there something in your life where you say, you know, it's a difficult decision, I just wish God would tell me?

Now see, I understand the motives. I understand the heart. Many times in my life, I'm 53 now, my father died when I was 29. And I would love to call my father up and say, hey, Dad, I've got a decision to make, this is going on.

What do you think of X, Y, and Z? I'd love to talk to my father, because he would give me the no-nonsense, the original no-compromise father would tell me, you know what, this is what I think you should do.

Now he might not always be right, but at least he would tell me, and he would have my best interest in view. So if I would want my father to tell me, my earthly father, who wasn't even a Christian as far as I know, I hope to see him in heaven, hope that there was a cataclysmic regeneration in the last days of his life.

I wasn't a Christian when he died, so I wouldn't know how to analyze some of these things. But whatever the Lord does is right and good, and I'll worship him for it. But anyway, I could then see how people want God, the Father, to guide them.

It's built in. We want guidance, and we're children. We're adopted in the family of God based on Christ's work, and I can see how people want to have God tell them things. God, could you tell me the answer to something on a test?

God, could you tell me whether to continue to date this person? God, do I marry Jill or Jane? God, do I stay married to Jill after I should have married Jane? I mean, the list goes on and on and on. Christians want to hear from God.

I get it. Christians who want to hear from God outside the Word, I don't get at all. I don't understand it at all. So when Johnson says, let's see here, Bethel Church, Redding, California, Bill Johnson, God loves to visit us in the night and give us instruction that we would have a hard time receiving during the day.

See Job 33 .15. Now, you know, this is so crazy that I have to actually now look it up. So I'm going to have to look up Job 33 .15 and 16 because God has to kind of do a little sneak attack, a little covert deal here, because there are times when we won't listen, and there are times we will.

Job 33 .15 and 16 say, In a dream, a vision of the night, when sound sleep falls on men while they slumber in their beds, then he opens the ears of men and seals their instruction. He should go on to say verse 17, because there's a comment at the end of verse 16, that he may turn man aside from his conduct and keep man from pride.

The desire, Bill Johnson goes on to say, to give God our night season flows naturally from the child's heart that knows revelation cannot be earned. Ask him specifically to minister to you in the night through visions and dreams.

Once you have had a dream or vision, write it out and ask him for understanding. Yow! All right, Kim Walker-Smith, lead singer of the popular Jesus Culture. I actually got these two quotes from my friend Aaron Do Not Be Surprised blog.

Well, let's see. No, I'm not going to do that one. Let's do Bethmore. This is fun. It's always fun to talk about Bethmore, because it's, I don't know. I think the Jesus Culture is one thing, Bill Johnson's another.

Some people have enough sense to reject that nonsense. But fewer Christians have enough sense to reject where Bethmore is now mystically and where her trajectory will probably take her. In the old days, most of the stuff she wrote was pretty good, solid, biblical.

I think she kind of ran out of things to say and needed to keep the machine going. And then we've got some weird things. And so we have here direct revelation from God. Or is it? Beloved, I'm convinced of one of our severest needs is pure rest.

Not only sleep, but refreshment and recreation. Recently, God spoke to me. Now, see, here's the thing, revelation, inspiration, and illumination are three words that have meaning, have definitions, have a precise meaning.

And so charismatics tend to say, well, you know, there's prophecy in the New Testament, but this is a different kind of prophecy. This is errant prophecy. There are tongues in the New Testament. It's a gift of healing that people got when God the Spirit sovereignly gave them gifts at regeneration.

But our modern-day tongues, some kind of prayer language, a private prayer language, I'm tired. I have to go do two hours of wretched radio in about two hours, too. And so we redefine these things. So revelation, instead of from God, inspiration, you know, through these men, apostles, prophets, Moses, et cetera, Jean, and illumination, the Spirit of God illuminating our minds so that we can understand what has been written, then we just give it a different definition.

See, I don't like that. So when you say, when God spoke to me, how does God speak? And by the way, when you think of God speaking, everybody wants to have God speak to them today, but it was rare for God to speak.

If you look at all the history of the world, how often did God speak to people? And to whom did He speak? And you're going to find quickly that it's not as often as you want it to be if you're in the Beth Moore camp.

Beth said, God spoke to me about capturing what he and I are calling Sabbath moments. I'm so glad that it's he and Beth Moore, Sabbath moments. Yeah, forget that you're not Israel, but that's another story.

Like many of yours, my schedule right now is particularly tough, and I see no time in the near future for a number of days off. God spoke to my heart. How do you know it's not your own heart, Beth? And see, we don't want to go to the inside because we believe in depravity.

We believe in the fall. We believe in every faculty of our person and being, and body and soul and will and mind and emotions have been affected by the fall. We don't go on the inside because we're not mystics, because that's not how things operate in the Christian realm.

God spoke to my heart one Saturday morning when I was preparing for Sunday school. My child, in between more intense rests, I want to teach you to take Sabbath moments. See we've got the grammar of God right there, Sabbath moments.

Beth said I wasn't certain what he meant. What does that mean? So now God talks to you, we don't know what he means. Just that morning, God confirmed his desire for me to drive all the way to the other side of Houston to the medical center to visit a patient with brain cancer.

I was very thankful for the privilege of visiting this patient, but I knew in advance it would be tough emotionally and far from restful. I fought the traffic across Houston, then visited with my new friend and her husband while choking back the tears.

Okay, I'm glad she visited, but it's just laced here with this emotionalism. They have two young sons, and unless God performs a miracle, their mother will go home to be with the Lord before they're grown.

I got in my car and prayed, I pulled out of the parking garage fighting the tears. A few blocks later, as if on autopilot, I turned my steering wheel straight into the parking lot of the Houston Zoo, crashed through the cages and the monkeys escaped.

Sorry, it doesn't say that. Christ seemed to say, let's go play. And we did. I hadn't been in the zoo for years. I heard about all the improvements, but I never expected the ultimate, Starbucks coffee.

Okay, so I don't have all my health issues down pat. I guess God was guiding her to go have some bad things, but I thought caffeine was good for you. Can you imagine watching a baby koala take a nap in a tree on a rare cold day in Houston with a Starbucks grand cappuccino in your hand?

Grandi. Now that's a Sabbath moment. God and I had a blast. Well, you know what? As MacArthur said many times, we have what we have here, it's a failure to communicate. No, John doesn't say that. We have the haves and the have-nots that are people out there that have direct revelation from God, allegedly, and we have people that don't, and I'm a don't.

So now I want the don'ts who want, and the wants who don't. See what this does? Some people get this special leading, well, if I was just as holy as Beth, if I was just as set apart as Beth, am I lacking something?

Did God give me everything I need when He saved me? What am I missing? Now, don't we all have the Word of God? Isn't the Word of God alive? Isn't it active? Doesn't it pierce things that are really undividable like soul and spirit?

Isn't the Scripture enduring forever? Isn't all Scripture breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, for comprehensive righteousness? Paul writes to Timothy and says, I want you, the man of God, the preacher, the elder, to be equipped for every good work.

I want you to be adequate. I want you to be thoroughly rigged out in this ship of life, in this ship of ministry, and you have the truth. Sanctify them in truth. You have a Bible that is sufficient, but if you have to have God speak to you, you are functionally denying sola scriptura.

I've said many times before, we, rightly as Protestants, wig out when Catholics want to say it's the Bible plus tradition, it's the Bible plus magisterium, the Pope can on occasion sit ex cathedra and give these proclamations, it's the Bible plus.

And most of the time they put the traditions above the Bible. I understand that. They're functionally denying sola scriptura. But now we have the Roman Catholics who do that, and they probably just admit it, and now we have the Roman Catholics, excuse me, the Charismatics, Roman Catholic Charismatics, they probably do the same thing.

Charismatics functionally deny sola scriptura as well, but I don't think they see it. I don't think they recognize it. I was in Poland not long ago, and I was asked why people think they hear from God and why they want to hear from God.

Well, sometimes it's unbelief. I really don't think the canon's closed and I need more. I mean, they wouldn't say it that way. Sometimes it's laziness. I think that was my answer through the translator, that it's laziness.

People don't want to study their Bibles, and so they want to hear from God. And frankly, why is it that most people—again, it's a general statement—but most people who say they hear from God know their Bibles the least?

I think there's a direct correlation. They don't understand justification by faith alone and imputation and eschatology and ecclesiology. They don't understand pastoral ministry. They wouldn't know what reconciliation, redemption, propitiation, forgiveness, justification would be, but they hear from God.

Why is that? And don't you really think—I mean, again, this is all anecdotal—but if God were going to talk today, you mean to tell me He'd talk to somebody that doesn't even know if there's a Sabbath for a day or not?

Go into the zoo and have the Starbucks moment? Here's what Beth should have said. I was reading the Bible, and I was reading about how we should love our neighbor. And love is agape love, self-sacrificial love.

And I begin to pray, Lord, is there anyone who I need to go love and serve? And as I was thinking, I thought about this person in the zoo. I thought about the person in the hospital. And so I thought I better go.

And so I just felt it was the right thing. God didn't say it, but I thought it was the right thing. So I went and did it. And looking back, I see God's faithfulness as He providentially guided me to that and got to serve.

And I just—coming home, I thought, you know, I just need to take a break. And I see the zoo, and might as well have a cappuccino and walk around. You know, the goodness of God. I saw this koala bear sleeping, I'm drinking a cappuccino, and just thinking, this is Ecclesiastes 3.

This is in joy life. This is Ecclesiastes. I commend joy. I mean, I—that's the right way to go. I was in Africa, and I saw a lion. I mean, I saw a giraffe, and I saw hippos and rhinos, and so I was trying to see the big five, of course, like everybody does, and wanted to see a lion.

And we're out in the middle of nowhere. I mean, this is a huge park, and we're talking hundreds and thousands of square miles. I think it's Palandsburg. I could be wrong. And we—laying down by the waterhole, there was this tawny male lion laying there, half asleep, half rolling around, and I just thought, you know what, thank you, Lord, that I could see one.

I don't see that there's any problem with that. That's not a charismatic movement. That's not a weird mystic thing. You know, God didn't tell me, take a ride at the street and drive down there, and you'll go ahead and find it.

Sometimes people say, you know, God told me, because they're manipulating others. They, you know, thus saith the Lord. How are you going to argue with that? And so, let's say it's an elders' meeting. No, you think this, you think that.

The Bible says this. Not too clear about that, but God told me. God told me. And so, there are lots of different reasons why people say God told me, but it's a big thing, and I think it is a functional denial of sola scriptura.

And I was reading a Gospel Coalition blog the other day, Andrew Wilson, How Do We Hear From God? And he talked about the nonsense that was up there, and then he said, but we serve a speaking God who talks to his people throughout the Bible.

We are sons and daughters of a loving father who wants a relationship with his children. These are his reasons why God continues to reveal himself verbally, or through thoughts, I guess, through something.

We're the bride of Christ, and husbands and wives talk to each other. It's true. I talk to God, that's called prayer. God talks to me, that's through Scripture. Hebrews 1, verses 1, 2, and 3 are true, aren't they?

We aren't employed as slaves or servants, but welcomed as friends, and friends talk to each other. Yeah, yeah, we're never called a slave of Christ, are we? We are sheep of our great shepherd, and sheep know their master's voice.

Yes, it's true. And when I read it in Scripture, I hear my master's voice. And when I read the Quran, and when I read the Book of Mormon, when I read Doctrines of Covenants, when I read the Apographa, I don't hear his voice.

This is on the Gospel Coalition. What are we thinking? We are a body in which people prophesy, speak words of wisdom and knowledge, and use other spiritual gifts to edify each other. How do we know it's from the voice of God?

He says we start with Jesus. In other words, we primarily hear the voice of God by encountering the person of Jesus. Now, see, you can't quantify it. It's just this mumbo-jumbo. Check what we're hearing against the Holy Spirit to reveal what the Holy Spirit revealed Himself to be in Scripture.

Sorry, what the Holy Spirit has revealed in Scripture. Check it against what we know about Jesus. Is it arrogant, lustful, greedy? Talk to leaders about it. Be having your prophecy weighed or judged by the church.

Scripture is sufficient. That position denies the sufficiency of Scripture. We have all the revelation we need, true or false? True. The Holy Spirit should have given us more information in this age, but we don't have it.

True or false? False. The canon is closed, true or false? True. The Scriptures are complete. The Scriptures are sufficient. I don't need to hear from God. I don't need to sense God. I don't need to be led by God through my inner gizzard.

It's that time of year again for Thanksgiving, right? You get that little sack of gizzards and livers, liver quivers. So, everywhere we go, we seem to be running into this problem. Does God speak? Does God speak today?

And I think we've got to push folks back to the Bible. That's what I'm trying to do on No Compromise Radio. Back to the Bible, and let's study that. And if you have a decision you need to make, then here's what you do.

Scripture says, study Scripture. And even if it doesn't tell you in Scripture, you're getting your mind right. I tell people, read 1 and 2 Kings if you have a big decision to make. Why? Because you begin to see the world through God's eyes, through the prism of God and His sovereign control over people, and His loving, sovereign control over people.

And then what does wisdom say? I get wisdom from God, James 1, verse 5. I get wisdom from a multitude of counselors, Proverbs. And then what is my desire, right? Delight yourself in the Lord, Psalm 37, He'll give you the desires of your heart.

And then make a decision. You don't need a sign. That's not trusting in the Lord with all your heart. That is leaning on your own understanding. That is not acknowledging your ways before the Lord. So just make a decision, and then look back in time, and you can see how God led you.

But you can't see that looking forward. God doesn't want you to have little idols along the way to hold on to. You just trust in the Lord and make some decisions. Why is the Scripture silent about so many of these issues?

Because you're just supposed to make a decision. Scripture in your mind, prayer for wisdom, asking other people for wisdom, and then make some decisions. I think Kevin DeYoung wrote the book, Just Do Something.

And I think that's true. So if you are hearing from God, I want you to know that it has to be through the Scripture. You're not hearing from God if it's outside the Scripture. It's influenced by your own person, and it is a fool who trusts in his own heart.

True or false? True. Well, my name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio. You can go to NOCO90 for some YouTubes. If you've got an idea for those, send them in. This is nocompromiseradio .com.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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