Mark Batterson in his book Whisper, acknowledges the subjective nature of reading signs. He writes, “there is a fine line between reading them and reading into them” (Whisper, 97). Below is his five tests to discern God’s voice (pgs. 100-102).
- Do the signs give you “goosebumps”?  Are you serious? In other words, to avoid subjective feelings, see if you have goosebumps. The Spirit should make our hearts skip a beat.
- Do you have a peace about it? If you have a peace about a certain course of action, then it’s safe to do it because it is an indication of God’s leading. Oh, so to avoid subjective interpretations, if we have a good feeling about it, then we can be assured that we are not being led by subjective feelings.  Is this not the craziest line of thought you have ever heard?
- Do open doors of opportunity align with wise counsel? This one has some justification in Scripture. However, the “wise counsel” is often the product of our own imagination and cultural protocol.
- Is it crazy enough to qualify as a God-sized dream? Well, my dreams are God-sized. I don’t know about yours.
- Make sure God has released you from previous obligations.
These tests themselves, are subjective. This attempt to answer the problem of subjective interpretations is most illogical. If we want to avoid using our feelings as a reliable method of divine revelation, test them by our own feelings.