As long as I can remember, men and women have spoken of their personal relationship with God and the closeness of their relationship while living in open sin. We all have a tendency to justify ourselves in whatever we like or that is within our own comfort zone. I would have a good little retirement if paid for all the times I’ve heard someone tell me that God wants me to be happy. Today, we have added to that, “God wants me to be healthy” or “God wants me to be wealthy.” And, whatever meandering thoughts that support our personal agendas and goals will be used to justify our methods. For example, our goal may be wealth and if we sell something for more than its worth, instead of regretting that decision and making it right, we may brag about how well we did; after all, “its business. You win some and you lose some.” But, to soothe one’s conscience, if a person can use God and think He is supportive in whatever one does, almost any action can be justified. This is what is so dangerous. People are known to do this in marriage. I may have had a sad and difficult marriage that eventually ends in divorce, but find some wonderful person who talks about God and His will and their personal relationship with Him. If I choose to marry that individual because I’m so happy without any consideration for what the Bible says, I am a perfect candidate for self-delusion and subjectivism.
God has spoken and thus, has spoken through His word. Any personal thought about God’s will in your life cannot ignore the voice of God through the written word. Happiness is the result of a good conscience and conscience is the result of our own training of it. We can train the conscience by filling our mind with God’s word (objective approach) or we can rationalize most anything on the basis of our “personal relationship” with God and how much He loves me (subjective approach).
Added to this problem is the abuse of Scripture that allows us to pick personal messages out of certain biblical words that fit whatever concern or circumstance we are presently living. Now, people are given support and license for their subjective feelings. Some term strikes a chord that one chooses to believe that it is God’s personal message to us. The words jump off the page and give us direction and answers to our questions. My friends, this is not the voice of God. It is the voice in your head. The same “voices” can occur when reading road signs or billboard ads or anything else. Some call it the “frequency illusion” or the Baader-Meinhof Effect. This is when something encountered appears with improbable frequency (thus “the frequency illusion). We notice this after buying a car. You might think before buying it that no one is town has a car in a town like this one. After you buy it, you see ten in one day. All of a sudden, they are everywhere. Here’s an example of not being aware until you are personally involved. The signs or the words on the page were there all along, but we become aware of them when we become personally involved. This is not the voice of God trying to give you guidance. We are more aware of certain words and phrases when we are experiencing a new pain, thought, etc. The words that jump off the page fit something that’s happening in our lives and jump out to us because we are living out what the words are telling us. When people do this with the Bible, they assume that God is speaking to them, even when the thoughts captured from those words have nothing to do with the meaning of the passage. They are isolated words robbed from a text of Scripture and applied to one’s personal life as a sign of God’s direction. Unfortunately, we not only have people using this approach, we have a multitude of teachers, preachers, and authors instructing us on how to use the technique. We are always going to notice things in the Bible connected to recent conversations or a decision that we need to make. These are not God trying to get your attention. Please, quit claiming that everything that catches your attention is a message from God. The Bible is not a crossword puzzle, Magic 8-ball, or fortune cookie!