You don’t have to be around Christians very long to hear them talk about “God speaking”. Most, fairly uncontroversially, believe God speaks through his Word in scripture. Most accept he may speak in other ways too. The Bible speaks, for example, about how God speaks through creation, what is sometimes called his General Revelation, in that he has generally revealed things about himself simply by the existence and subsistence of the natural world. Some, a little more controversially, think he speaks through other things too, like dreams and modern day prophets and a variety of other such things.
Without getting into the whys and wherefores, I am one who is not necessarily against God speaking through dreams. I mean, why on earth not? If he is sovereign over all things, I see no reason to assume he is any less sovereign over everybody’s dreams. If God can speak through a donkey during the time of the judges, why shouldn’t he be able to speak through dreams? I have no problem, in principle, believing he might do that.
Nor, I should add, do I have any problem with believing God speaks through the mouths of men today either. I am in the wrong job if I don’t think he can do that! I don’t know what other pastors think they’re doing Sunday by Sunday, but I like to think at least some of the time God might be making his appeal through me. Indeed, there are some people who seem to have a particular habit of speaking God’s truth into our lives, at particular times and in particular ways with such searing accuracy, wisdom and clarity that it is hard to call it anything less than prophetic. We might want to have a discussion about that term and exactly what I mean by it – as opposed to what some headbangers out there may mean by it – but suffice to say, if God is sovereign over the natural world and can speak through it, and no less sovereign over the dreams of people in it, why should he not also be counted sovereign over the words that emanate from the mouths of people too?
The question is, how do we actually know when it is God speaking? It is all very well saying God can speak in all these ways. It is fine to argue that he does speak in all these ways. The question is, how do we actually know when he is speaking in any of these ways?
In Tim Keller’s book Prayer he offers this story that I think is particularly helpful:
If we leave the Bible out, we may plumb our impressions and feelings and imagine God saying various things to us, but how can we be sure we are not self-deceived? The eighteenth-century Anglican clergyman George Whitefield was one of the spearheads of the Great Awakening, a period of massive renewal of interest in Christianity across Western societies and a time of significant church growth. Whitefield was a riveting orator and is considered one of the greatest preachers in church history.
In late 1743 his first child, a son, was born to he and his wife, Elizabeth. Whitefield had a strong impression that God was telling him the child would grow up to also be a “preacher of the everlasting Gospel.” In view of this divine assurance, he gave his son the name John, after John the Baptist, whose mother was also named Elizabeth. When John Whitefield was born, George baptized his son before a large crowd and preached a sermon on the great works that God would do through his son. He knew that cynics were sneering at his prophecies, but he ignored them. Then, at just four months old, his son died suddenly of a seizure. The Whitefields were of course grief-stricken, but George was particularly convicted about how wrong he had been to count his inward impulses and intuitions as being essentially equal to God’s Word. He realized he had led his congregation into the same disillusioning mistake.
Whitefield had interpreted his own feelings—his understandable and powerful fatherly pride and joy in his son, and his hopes for him—as God speaking to his heart. Not long afterward, he wrote a wrenching prayer for himself, that God would “render this mistaken parent more cautious, more sober-minded, more experienced in Satan’s devices, and consequently more useful in his future labors to the church of God.”
What lesson are we supposed to take from that? It seems to me we would be wrong to leap from that to saying God can’t or won’t ever speak outside of scripture. Even scripture affirms that God speaks apart from scripture. No, the lesson here is not that God never speaks apart from scripture nor guides our thoughts or prompts us to choose wise courses of action. The lesson is that we cannot be sure God is speaking to us unless we read it in the Scripture.
What then are we to do with all these other ways that God might speak to us? The same as we do with anything else. We weigh it by scripture. Might God be speaking to us through a dream, for example? Well, if it contradicts scripture or pushes us to do something unscriptural then we can safely say no. If it prompts us to do something that scripture would call us to do, then there is no reason to believe God isn’t using it as part of prompting us to do what scripture calls us to do. But what if it is prompting us to something that scripture doesn’t say is wrong and sinful, but equally it doesn’t demand we do either? Well, if all we have is our dream and nothing more, it seems unwise to assume that must be God speaking to us. If God is truly prompting us to something he won’t fail to make his will known clearly. A dream prompting us to do something that isn’t biblically mandated strikes me as sketchy grounds to insist God is speaking.
If the Lord is leading us to particular courses of action, and it truly is of the Lord, there is likely to be a coming together of things. Not only will his will be made clear, but the opportunities to do what is being prompted will emerge and our will and desire will also align. But even then, the golden rule holds – unless we read it in scripture, we cannot be certain it is God actually speaking.
After the fact, matters are much clearer. If we believe in a sovereign God, who is genuinely sovereign, if it came to pass then it is ultimately what God wills. Even if what we do ends up going against God’s dispositional and preceptive wills, if it happens it is within his decretive will. And is it possible God might use things like dreams and people’s words to bring about his decretive will using ordinary providence? I don’t see why not. But we will only know God has spoken if we read it in scripture and we will only know what God’s decretive will is after whatever happens comes to pass.
What that means in practice is we can end up working ourselves up unnecessarily in “seeking God’s will”. Rather than waiting for God to speak to us in some special way – which he hasn’t promised to do – we do better to look into his Word where he has promised to speak clearly to us. Rather than worrying whether we are “walking in his will”, and seeking lots of clarification, we should weigh up the options before us, ensure we aren’t going to do anything sinful and then just do whatever we most want to do in light of the biblical principles at play, the options that are actually open to us and what we most want to do.
Might God prompt our disposition by any number of means? Yes, he might well do. I have never been one to look to my dreams, but you might be. God knows that and may use it to prompt your personal will. You might look to affirmation from other friends and family. God knows that and may use it too. But all those things are ultimately just means of impacting your personal disposition. If God’s Word doesn’t say it is sinful, and it may even be a legitimate application of some things his Word does encourage you to do, it is perfectly godly, reasonable and wise to then just do whatever you want. How will we know if God was prompting us? If it comes to pass then it is part of his decretive will. If our will was prompted to do the thing, and it isn’t sinful, then we are walking in his will. Does it matter whether God was specifically speaking to us through dreams or the mouths of people to get us wherever he wants us? Not really. Unless we read it in the Bible we cannot be sure that he was. But we need only know that God will get us where he wants us and he will prompt us so that we do what we most want to do and, in the process, do what he wants us to do too.