Many are teaching that God speaks to us though His Word but not in the way you might think. For them, we should read the Bible regularly because a verse might come alive and jump off the page at us, and grips us personally.  In this way, the Bible is not God’s revelation, but is the means of granting us fresh revelation. Any one who might consider a series of events to be conincidental would likely be seen as God’s answer to prayer or some direction that He wants us to take. In other words, the Scriptures are not the voice of God but is the potential link to the voice of God. As we read it, the voice of God is not the text but the message you get when a personal message hidden in the text grips you. The Bible becomes the means to an end because through it we are able to hear God’s voice. Some explain that it is not the message but vehickle or tool by which we discern the voice of God and receive His message.  Or it is not the voice of God; it teaches you you to hear the voice of God.
For example, Henry Blackaby, in his book Experiencing God, read John 11:4 that described the sickness of Lazarus. It says, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it. When his daughter was sick, he was given to much prayer and when he read this passage, the words jumped off the page and he claimed that same promise for himself. Strange that that one would claim a promise in the life of a man who died. Lazarus died from the sickness, but Jesus raised him from the dead and was glorified through it. Yet, Blackaby took John 11:4 to be a promise from God that his daughter would not die from her cancer.
In this way, we are being taught that God may give us a fresh new understanding that constitutes our encounter with God and His direction and guidance for us. I’m finding more and more people making similar assessments from a passage of Scripture that has nothing to do with the real meaning of the text. We unwrap the same words in a given context and give it a message that is unrelated to the text itself.
Ironically, this approach produced a simlilar attitude among the gnostics of the first and second centuries. It is a mystical approach that, when properly decoded, can find personalized messages. Many would add that we have to be praying and reading our Bible at all times for this to work. The problem with this view is that there is no biblical precedent or example that is given to us in the Bible that supports this approach. The New Testament cites the Old Testament over 300 times and not one time do we have an author waiting for a personal messge from the Lord to jump off the page at him. God gave plenty of personal messages to them but only because God spoke to them either in directly in person or through dreams, visions or angels. Further, there was no teaching about a personalized message from God to us as individuals from stealing word out of context that jumps out at us.
With such views and terrible distortion of truth, more division and deception results. Read this passage carefully and do not look for any hidden meaning. It is 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12 and it reads: Â
Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,  And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.  And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:  that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
Granted, Paul is talking about a particular person in this text called the “man of sin.” But the principle of truth that is exemplified by Pharoah’s hardened heart and the evil dishonest heart of the Jewish scribes and Pharisees in the Lord’s day is that human beings create their own gods, own sense of truth (their truth), own world, and own religion. If we do not love the truth, implying a continuous desire and craving for it, God will send a strong delusion that we might believe a lie. I am certain that playing such fanciful games with the text of Scripture is a disrespect for God and His Word. You can create it, if you want to do it. You can believe it, if you choose to believe it. You can teach it, if you want to teach it. But, know this: You will not only deceive yourself and all who will hear you; both you and them will be damned.  This is a serious departure that has serious repurcussions. Instead, take God at His word with full assurance that all Scripture is inspired of God and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness that God’s person can be complete, thoroughly furnished unto every good work (2 Tim. 3:16).