#STRask - What Are the Benefits of Not Expecting to Hear Special Messages from God?

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

Questions about the benefits of holding Greg’s view on not expecting to hear special messages from God, and how the ideas of God putting something on someone’s heart and prompting someone to pray a certain thing fit with Greg’s theology.   What are the positive benefits of holding Greg’s view on not expecting to hear the voice of God and using more appropriate language for describing how the Holy Spirit interacts with us? In light of your view on hearing the voice of God, what did Greg mean when he talked about God putting something on someone’s heart, and what did Amy mean when she said God might prompt someone to pray a certain thing? How do these ideas fit with your theology?

This is Stanter Reason's hashtag STR Ask podcast. And we depend on your questions here. So if you have one, please send it in. I actually had someone say, she sent in a bunch of questions. And I said, oh, thank you for your question. I see you have a lot of questions here. She says, oh, I'm so sorry. And I said, no, no.

We love getting the questions. The more questions, the better. It just makes our life so much easier. and you all have great questions. So don't be afraid to send as many in as you want. There's no limit. We love to hear from you. All right.

So, Greg, this first question comes from Andrew. What are the positive reasons, benefits, for holding Greg's understanding of it not being common to hear the audible voice of God and using more appropriate language for describing how the Holy Spirit interacts with us? Okay, so Claire, My concern isn't with audible voices because I actually don't care about what might be called the phenomenology, okay, whether it's handwriting on the wall or whether it's a vision or whether it's a prophetic word being given or whether we hear the voice of God and audible in the sense that if someone else is in the room, they'd hear it, or whether it's just kind of private, first person private in our own mind,

None of that is relevant to my concern. The concern is whether, and I will say also this, that on my view, God can do anything he wants. You know, he can, how do they, I've said, he can speak to you through a leprechaun underneath your bed, speaking in Greek, whatever, backwards or something. God can do whatever. And in fact, we go to the text, we see all kinds of strange things. So, yes, see donkeys teaching with Balaam. We've got, you know, axe heads that are rising in the water and floating. We have Saul prophesying, you know, and all kinds of crazy stuff.

So God can do it every once. That's not in question. The question is whether Christians should expect to have what many have called a conversational relationship with God, that we speak and then he speaks. That might be in the form of listening prayer. we ask God, and then we wait until God, we talk to him, and then he talks back to us, and that's what we count as a vital part of what's called a relationship with God. Never mind that scripture is the word of God that is, you know, ought to, it seems to be,

as a legitimate candidate for fulfilling that part of being in relationship, but some people apparently don't think so. One person on the error many years ago said to me, so what you're saying is all I have is the book, you know, kind of like that. I get the booby prize. But anyway, I, just to be clear, when we start out, that this is what I'm speaking of. Okay. Now, the liability is my first case, my main point is this is not taught in the scriptures. It isn't taught that this is what we can expect. It isn't modeled in the scriptures, and it isn't what the early church experienced, even the apostles. Now, certainly the apostles experienced special revelation under fairly unique circumstances.

And I talk about this in a piece that was written, did it go out last year? I think it was last year when God speaks. When God speaks. So you go to sDR.org, and then you can see some detail about that. So God could do whatever he wants, but he doesn't do this very often. And it is certainly not the birthright of the Christian the way many people characterize it. And sometimes it's manifest in the area of making decisions. And the presumption is that God has decided in advance all the particulars of our life that we need to discover.

And that's the phrase that's really the operative part. I'm not denying the sovereignty of God. But the presumption of this approach that I'm concerned about is that we need to discover what he's decided so that we could decide what he decided, and we call that finding God's will. Okay. None of that is in the scripture, and none of the little techniques that people have been taught by others to follow. Some books say this, sometimes they just absorb it, are biblically. support that, whether it's being led by the Spirit, which doesn't mean that when Paul uses it in Romans 8 and Galatians 5, whether having a piece about it, Colossians 2, whether having

confirmations, the end of 1st Corinthians, beginning of 2nd Corinthians, or putting out a fleece, all these different things that people do. These are all little techniques to find something that's not there, the will of God they have to discover before they make decisions. Okay, so now what I've offered is a little bit of a spectrum of ways that this is done and how people approach this kind of thing. The liability is that people who follow this method think that God is giving them a message. If God gives a message, there are two things that follow automatically from it. If God gives a message, it is inerrant. if it's God giving the message, he cannot be mistaken.

This is the whole line of thinking that secures the authority of the Scripture. It's God's word. God can't err, therefore scripture can't err. When this is happening, our claim is that this is God's word to us, and God can't err, therefore this word can't err. Okay. And so the first thing is inherent in this kind of approach is that we are receiving inerrant revelation from God. And I don't know how you could get beyond that. Oh, well, God,

you know, God is inerrant, but, you know, he always tells the truth, but we can get it wrong. Well, if that's what you're going to say, and if that's what you're going to say, then you've just destroyed the doctrine of inerrancy. Because this is exactly what critics say to us. Well, God may have inspired it, but man wrote it and men make mistakes. So you don't want to go that way. So that's the first thing. It's a claim that God has given you inerrant revelation. The second thing is whatever he tells you or you think he's telling you, you got to do.

You can't say no. And no one else can say no to you either because then they're saying no to God on this view. And I think now you realize the inherent dangers of this. and there are two dangers. One is to the one who do hear or think they hear, and one is to the ones who aren't hearing. The dangers to the one who think they're hearing is that they are now taking what may very likely be their own thoughts

and giving them divine authority. Now, God does speak on different occasions, but they follow a very particular pattern in the New Testament, And I talk about this in that piece we just referred to, and that is when God speaks. It's a very particular pattern, which is nothing like what we see people claiming to be God speaking to them now. So the first danger is that those who get this information, you cannot disabuse them of it. this is what God told me. I know what he said.

I'm sure they said it. I got to do it. And most of the time, it bears none of the marks of what the scripture demonstrates as characteristic of God speaking individuals. The second danger, that's the first danger is if you think you're getting messages from God. The second danger is if you don't think you're getting messages from God. And those who hear everybody talking like this and read books about the necessity and an example, I think a particularly egregious example of this, is the assignments from God

Guy, Blackaby. What's that book? Experiencing God. Experiencing God is that Blackaby makes it pretty clear, if you are not getting these messages, you may not be a Christian. And he leverages that idea off of a misunderstanding of John Chapter 10. My sheep, hear my voice. Well, if you're not hearing it, you're not his sheep, which is exactly what Jesus meant in the context, but he didn't mean it the way Blackaby meant it. He didn't mean hearing in the same way Blackamy meant it. And so you've got a lot of Christians now that feel second-rate Christians or maybe not even Christians at all

because it's not happening to them. And this is really dismal. So the first thing we have to determine is, is this a sound doctrine? I'm not saying it's unsound because people take their thoughts as being from God and make a mess of things, and other people don't think they're hearing from God, and therefore they get discouraged. That isn't why the doctrine's mistaken. The doctrine is mistaken because it's not biblically sound. And these are the consequences of following an unsound doctrine. That I love you. I was writing down your summary here, Greg, that the two problems are they think they're getting something from God, or they don't think they're getting something from God. There are a lot of ways that plays out, too. So one way would be if you are waiting

and you don't think God is giving, you think you have to get specific directions, you're not getting them. That's completely paralyzing. You can't make any decisions. I remember one time I was talking to someone who was trying to hear from God so that she could make the decision about something. And when I talked to her about this, she gave me this giant hug, and she was so relieved that she could go ahead with what she wanted to do to serve God. A common response. Really great. So another thing, it does. By the way, redeem the time because the dates are evil. That's Ephesians 5.

We're not supposed to sit around waiting. We're supposed to be acting on what has already been revealed. And that doesn't mean you don't pray for wisdom. I think we should pray for wisdom, but we're just not looking for a special message. Secondly, as you're trying to be wise and you're praying that God would bring things your way, reveal information to you that would come up so you'd be able to make a good decision, give you wisdom, all those things. That matures you. Right. Just taking an instruction and carrying it out does not mature you in the way that having to learn how to put all these things together and learning from your mistakes matures you.

And that's what God is trying to do here. Any idiot can take orders. That's kind of way I put it. Maybe that's not a very nice way to put it. But what it shows is it's exactly your point. You don't have to show any maturity at all to do what you're told. This is what happens with kids, you know, you tell them because they don't know better. But what you want them to do is learn how to make decisions for themselves using the right tools.

Because that's God's greatest goal right here is to make us like Christ. So even if we're making bad decisions, he's still working through those decisions to make us like Christ. His goal isn't to make everything work out perfectly. His goal is to mature us. And by the way, by working out perfectly, I put that in quotes, the way we think would be working out perfectly. It's working out the way God wants us to, even when we make wrong decisions because it's maturing us and that is his goal. But here are some dangers. when you think God has told you to do something that he hasn't told you to do and you do it

and it's not a wise decision and things go wrong, now you blame God. Now you think either he doesn't exist because he would never have told you to do something that would go wrong, so he must not exist, or you think he has let you down. So now you get angry at God. And we should not ever go there. That should never be where we end. up. If something we're doing leads to that, and I've seen that happen in people, that's a bad thing. Well, by the way, some people get married this way. And I remember someone telling me this after

a talk I gave it Biola many years ago where at the Q&A, I got into this a little bit. And I make this comment. Some people get married this way. And he met me afterwards or walking to the car. He says, I got married this way. And I said, how's it going? And he said, I'm on my knees every day. I have heard the exact same thing from someone, the exact same thing. But then I said, now here's the deal. Now you know what God's will is regarding this marriage. You stay in it, you know. Mary in haste, repentant leisure, you know, the saying goes.

And then another danger of people claiming that they're getting these special messages from God all the time is that it opens the door to manipulation. You mentioned not being able to disabuse people of a notion if they think God has told them to do it, even if it's unwise, you can't counsel them out of it. But imagine if they were telling other people and they think they can't question it. So there's also the danger of manipulating others in this. That's right. And causing a lot of harm. And for the flesh to rear its ugly head, because sometimes it just seems obvious that it,

it's impure motives when you talk to somebody that has conjured this idea that God is telling them to do something. Now, not always. And I think most of the time, frankly, people are very genuine in their desire to do what God wants them to do. But they just have mistaken understandings of what that amounts to. Let's go to a question from Jenny. I know you've spoken about the topic of hearing God a lot. In a recent SDR ask episode about prayer, both Greg and Amy said at least one phrase that made me wonder if they could parse out what they mean. I'll give the short versions and hope you can recall. Greg, quote, put it on someone's heart to buy the groceries.

Amy, quote, prompt someone to pray a certain thing. Both these examples seem to have a sense of God speaking to people personally, if not in words. Does this fit with your theology and how so? Genuinely curious, not trying to be tricky. I would make a distinction. This is really fair a question and put it on someone's heart was actually a particular detail that I dealt with in the article that we mentioned. And so I refer people back to that. It's called When God Speaks because there is a whole section there where I am addressing putting it on the heart because Ezra, was it Ezra or Nehemiah, maybe it was Ezra or maybe both of them, that language would be. used of their, to help us understand their intentions to do things about rebuilding the wall and rebuilding the temple, whatever. And it's also used of Cyrus.

God puts it on Cyrus's heart to give permission. And ironically, and you found this, it's also used somewhere in the book of Revelation. Yeah, that, yeah. And it's a discreditable reference. In other words, what goes on, it's not. it's kind of ugly. So the point, so I do refer to all of those things. And the way I would respond to this, put it on someone's heart, what was the phrase

that she used that you had mentioned? Prompt someone to pray a certain thing. What I would say is, and I never put it this way before, but it's good. I would not say that's God speaking to me because it doesn't require for me to understand what he wants me to do in order to do it, to choose to do it. That's a great way of describing it. Okay. This is an example of God influencing people to accomplish what he wants to have done. This is in his sovereign way, in a certain sense, behind the curtain of his sovereignty,

where he is influencing. And I think in some cases like Ezra, ex post facto, after it's all over, he can look back and he can give credit to God for being the prime mover in the enterprise, even though God wasn't talking to Ezra in this case. And I could say, I wouldn't say it like casually because it would be misunderstood, but I could genuinely say that in 1993, 33 years ago now almost, God put it on my heart to start standard reason. But for those who know about the decision-making process

of starting standard reason and developing, there was nothing like hearing from God, feeling led, getting a piece about it. I didn't have a piece about it, actually. I kept wanting to quit. And nevertheless, God had his purposes worked out as he worked through me, and he worked through Melinda Penner, and he worked through that first group of people that counseled me, you know, in the early part of

1993, and that May 1, 93, that whole group that met at Hope Chapel in the Ocean View, Roman gave me their counsel as I fleshed out in a much more thorough way this idea. God was working through all of that. There was no question in my mind that that was the case, but it required no ability from me to discern what God was, the voice of God, or what God. what God was telling me to do. It was a non-issue because I was using a biblical means of assessment that I see now in reverse in hindsight that God used and was involved with and sovereignly purposing stand

of reason. Yeah, that's what I jotted down here that I was talking about behind the scenes. It wasn't that I had to figure out what God was saying and then, oh, God is prompting me to pray this. I don't know that I've ever thought that. I don't know if that's ever occurred to me, although there are times when I feel strongly that I want to pray for something. And since I do think God's sovereign, I think he is moving us in various ways. But I don't have to figure out, oh, this is God, therefore I will pray for this. That's not how I think about it. I've heard, it seems countless, over half a century, countless testimonies of people who say they've been awakened in the middle of the night, and they just had this overwhelming sense that they had to pray for this person at this moment, and they prayed.

But they were responding to their overwhelming, in a sense, urge or sense of it. Now, they would probably characterize that as some might that God was telling me. And in my mind, especially the consequence, we'll see in a moment, that God was sovereignly working in that circumstance. So we're not disallowing that kind of thing or denying that kind of thing. And in many of these cases, you have specified, not specified complexity. Yeah, specified complexity. So they felt the need to pray for this friend of there's, there's a missionary in Baghdad or something like that. And sure enough, they get later the exact same time something was going on that was resolved by God during the time that they were praying for them.

So no one would dispute that, but that doesn't create a model for us of how we operate in terms of God. And it certainly doesn't require that we learn to hear the voice of God or learn to recognize the voice of God or anything like that. And they don't have to say, is this from God or is this from me? Well, it's from God, so I guess I'll, so I have to do it. That's not how it works. No, of course. When you want to pray for them, so you pray for them. Of course.

The question of where the impulse to do that came from, that we leave to God. It's behind the scenes. You don't assess the source of the impulse. You assess the quality of the impulse or the idea or what it is. You assess that. Is this a good thing? and move ahead. It's a lot easier than many people make it seem.

Well, thank you, Andrew and Jenny. Please send us your question on X with hashtag STRask, or go to our website at STR.org. Just go to our hashtag STRSk podcast page. It's easy to find with the menu at the top of the page, and then you'll see a link there. Just click on that and send us your question, and we will consider it for the show.

Thank you so much for listening. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stan to Reason.