God Told Me

You have probably heard it in a church. Maybe before a vote, when the discussion had run long and someone wanted it finished. Maybe after a decision, offered as the reason for it. Maybe over coffee, about a job, or a move, or a marriage. Three words, said quietly and with complete sincerity: God told me. Sometimes it may be exactly right. Sometimes the person saying it could not tell you how he knows.

I want to say one thing plainly before going any further. I believe God can speak to His people however He chooses. This article is not about whether He does. It is about how we talk when we believe He has.

That second question gets far less attention than the first. Scripture has more to say about it than most of us realize, and a good deal of what it says is in one chapter of Jeremiah.

A City Full of Voices

Jeremiah lived in a city that had no shortage of men speaking in God’s name. He was nearly alone in saying something hard. Many others were saying what the people wanted to hear, and saying it with God’s name on it.

God’s verdict on them is direct. “They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD” (Jeremiah 23:16 ESV).

Notice where the problem is located. Not in their tone, and not in their sincerity. In the source. What they said came from their own minds, and they presented it as coming from His mouth.

A few verses later: “I did not send the prophets, yet they ran; I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied” (Jeremiah 23:21 ESV). They ran. That is a picture of hurry and certainty: men eager to say what they had not been given to say.

I do not know whether those men believed themselves. Some of them probably did. The text spends very little time on what they felt. It cares about where the word came from.

And I want to be careful about the people who listened. They had been taught to heed God’s prophets, and they had every reason to. When a man stood up and spoke in the name of the Lord, taking him seriously was not foolishness. It was what faithful people were supposed to do. The fault God names in this chapter belongs to the ones speaking.

Straw and Wheat

Then comes the verse at the center of the chapter.

“Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let him who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 23:28 ESV).

It is easy to read that as a rebuke of the dream. Read it again. That is not the language of forbidding. God lets the man with a dream tell his dream. He does not silence him. What He asks is something else: that the one who has His word speak it faithfully, and that no one confuse the two. Straw is a real thing. It just is not wheat, and no amount of presenting it as wheat will feed anyone.

Then the chapter tells us what God sets Himself against. It does it three times, and each time it begins the same way.

“Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, declares the LORD, who steal my words from one another” (Jeremiah 23:30 ESV).

“Behold, I am against the prophets, declares the LORD, who use their tongues and declare, ‘declares the LORD’” (Jeremiah 23:31 ESV).

“Behold, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams, declares the LORD, and who tell them and lead my people astray” (Jeremiah 23:32 ESV).

Read the middle one slowly. These men used their own tongues and said their own words, and then they set God’s own phrase at the end. Declares the LORD. The words that belonged to Him alone, fastened to what He had not said.

That is the habit this article is about, very nearly word for word. We do not say “declares the LORD” anymore. We say “God told me,” or “the Lord has made it clear,” or “I have a peace from God about this.” The formula has changed. The move has not.

I want to be honest about the limits here. These were false prophets, and the passage is about them. I am not saying that every Christian who says “God told me” is telling a lying dream. Many of them have prayed hard and are trying to be faithful. But the line Jeremiah draws is not between good men and bad men. It is between the dream and the word, between telling a thing as what it is and labeling it as something more. Anyone can cross that line.

Most of what we mean by God told me is closer to the dream than we like to admit. An impression in prayer. A conviction that grew over weeks. A sense of direction that will not go away. It may very well be from Him. Jeremiah’s God does not ask us to bury it. He asks us to tell it as what it is, and to keep His name off it unless He put it there.

It Has Seemed Good

So what does honest speech about God’s leading sound like? The early church left us an example.

When the apostles and elders in Jerusalem settled a question that was dividing the churches, they wrote a letter. And in that letter they said this: “it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28 ESV).

Look at what they did not say. They did not say God told us. They believed the Spirit was in their decision, and they named Him first. But they said it in a way worth noticing.

They said it together. And to us. Not one man announcing what he had received, but a body of leaders owning a conclusion they had reached as a body.

They said it modestly. It has seemed good is a remarkably humble verb for men who believed the Holy Spirit was with them. It leaves room.

They said it after the argument, not instead of it. Acts 15 records long debate, testimony, and the Scriptures read aloud. The sentence about the Spirit came at the end of the work, not as a way of skipping it.

And they said it in a letter, sent to the churches. It was put where people could read it, not handed down where no one could ask.

Here is the line I want to leave with you. A man may honestly say, “I believe the Lord led me.” He may not use it to end a conversation.

Picture two elders at the same table, each convinced the church should take the same step. The first says, “I have been praying about this for a long time, and I believe it is right. Here is why. Tell me where I am wrong.” The second says, “I have prayed about it, and the Lord has made it clear.” They may hold the same conviction with the same sincerity. One has told his dream as a dream. The other has put declares the LORD at the end of it. The first elder has not said less about God. He has said exactly as much as he knows.

If You Were the One Listening

If someone has told you that God told them, and you went along, you were not being foolish. You were taking God seriously. That is to your credit.

You may take God seriously and still hear “God told me” as “I believe God told me.” That is not doubting Him. It is letting a man’s words be what they are until they are shown to be more. Nothing in Jeremiah asks you to treat a brother’s dream as God’s word because he has called it that. Jeremiah’s own listeners were in that place, and God did not fault them for listening. He faulted the men who made listening dangerous.

Keep His Name for What He Has Said

There is no shame in straw. Every harvest has it. The shame is in calling it wheat, and in setting God’s own name on it to make the sale. Wheat is what feeds a church over the long years. Straw has its uses, but nobody lives on it.

So tell what you have sensed as what it is. Pray about it out loud, with others. Say it seems good when that is what you know. And leave declares the LORD for what He has declared.