Whenever we pray, and hear what we think is God’s voice, we gotta properly confirm it is. Every single time.
And no, not because the devil’s always trying to trick us. I know fearful Christians who most definitely think that way, and I’ll talk about them another time. But it’s not always the devil. More often it’s people tripping ourselves up—talking to our own inner voice, confusing it with God, and claiming our own bright ideas are really God-ideas when they’re not. And no, I don’t mean “bright ideas” sarcastically; some of them are very good ideas. Like when David thought it’d be a great idea to build the LORD a temple. Sounded great to the prophet Nathan, but it wasn’t a God-idea! 2Sa 7.3-7 God’s idea is actually for us to be his temple.
But sometimes the issue is we actually did hear God—but our own hangups or ego garbled his message. Sorta like what happened with Simon Peter at the end of John.
- John 21.20-23 NTFE
- 20Peter turned and saw, following them, the disciple that Jesus loved. This was the disciple who had leaned back against Jesus’ chest at the supper, and had asked, “Master, who is it that’s going to betray you?”
- 21“Master,” said Peter to Jesus, seeing him there, “what about him?”
- 22“If it’s my intention,” replied Jesus, “that he should remain here until I come, what’s that got to do with you? You must follow me!”
- 23So the rumor went around the Christian family that this disciple wouldn’t die. But Jesus didn’t say he wouldn’t die. What he said, rather, was this: “If it’s my intention that he should remain here until I come, what’s that got to do with you?”
Jesus didn’t answer “What about him?”; he said, “What’s that got to do with you?” But notice the other Christians got it in their heads Jesus did answer—and said the disciple he loved (i.e. John bar Zebedee) would live till his second coming. And John did outlive the rest of the Twelve—if he’s the same John who wrote Jesus’s Revelation. John the Revelator certainly had visions of the second coming. But Jesus never said what they imagined he did. The Christians wanted an answer to Simon Peter’s question so much, they actually invented one and put it in Jesus’s mouth.
And sometimes we’re gonna do that. We’ll ask God a question, and he’ll respond, “It’s not your business to know about times and dates,” Ac 1.7 NTFE or whatever other thing which isn’t our business. But we’ll ignore that, take what little he’s told us, and try to extrapolate the data we want out of it. And it won’t be God. It’ll be our creative—but fallible and depraved—little minds, filling in blanks which God deliberately wants blank. It’ll be us trying to make an end-run round the LORD. Not smart! But Christians do this all the time. Without even thinking.
And this is why a Christian accountability partner who likewise hears God, comes in extremely handy. We’ll bounce our misbegotten ideas off on them—“I think the LORD told me this”—and they’ll respond, “Well he told me no such thing.” Or even “No he didn’t; he warned me you’d come up with that, and he wants you to stop putting words in his mouth.”
Yep, sometimes confirmation protects us from ourselves.
Getting through our thick proud skulls.
The pagan neo-Babylonian king Nabû-kudurri-uṣur 2 (KJV “Nebuchadnezzar,” VeggieTales “Nebby K. Nezzer,” which I bring up ’cause I’m gonna call him Nebby) is often treated as one of the bible’s bad guys, partly ’cause he burnt down the temple and dragged the Jews off to captivity, and partly ’cause he’s an authoritarian maniac in the book of Daniel. But put that aside for a second and realize God spoke to him in dreams. Seriously. More than once!
In Daniel 2, Nebby has a prophetic dream of a metal statue. He totally forgets it when he wakes up, but he knows it’s important, and threatens all his wise men he’ll kill them and bury their houses under dung unless any of them can explain it. Da 2.1-13 They can’t, but Daniel knows the LORD can, and he and his fellow Jews beg God for an answer. God gives Daniel the same dream, Da 2.19 then has him interpret it: The golden head is Nebby himself; the silver, bronze, iron, and terracotta parts of the statue each represent a future
ܡַܠְܟܘּ/malkú,
“kingdom, king, reign.” A stone which destroys the statue is a new malkú that’ll last forever. Da 2.31-45 Christians presume this stone is God’s kingdom, and have interpreted the other parts of the statue in many interesting and foolish ways.
Problem is, Nebby is so thrilled about recalling his dream, he ignores the interpretation altogether. Then builds a statue—debatably one of himself; or it’s the statue of his dream, but instead of multiple metals, entirely of gold, in defiance of the idea there’ll be other rulers. Then he orders all his subordinate rulers to worship it, or he’ll burn them alive in a furnace. Da 3.1-6 So much for the LORD who gives and interprets dreams.
What’s my point? Not that Nebby was really fond of creative death threats, but that the LORD actually spoke to him—and Nebby constantly missed the point. The LORD did it again in chapter 4, warning Nebby he was gonna lose his mind for seven years and think he was an ox. Da 4.20-25 God’s point—and it was always the point!—was to get Nebby to repent and acknowledge the LORD. And both times Nebby ignored all that, and instead did something needlessly narcissistic.
Too many of us are the very same way. The Holy Spirit’s trying to steer us the right way, but we twist it into, “Oh, I should build a gold statue of myself!” We don’t even think of repentance. We wrongly presume we’re doing everything right, God’s totally on our side, prophecy is only encouragement and nothing else, and we can casually dismiss anything we’d consider negative as “not of God.” So of course we’re gonna misinterpret any correctives we hear from God. We’ll think they’re for other people. Even prophesy they’re for other people—and they’re not, and we’re telling on ourselves.
All the more reason we need an accountability partner to confirm what we did, and especially didn’t, hear.
