Transcription
All right. So, we need to talk about something that I think is important to address. We got to talk about God's voice. I was actually looking at putting out a different video on something else and I I feel a sense I need to talk about this. We need to talk about how we're using the subject of God's voice. And I'm talking about this from two standpoints.
One is I've been in the trenches for decades helping people in one-on-one in group settings and whether it's emails, meetings, conversations, interacting with believers. I'm just trying to help Christians to be mentally, emotionally, and relationally healthy. I believe it's biblical. I believe it's important. I believe it's something that skips past all our busyiness and the things that we're doing. And I like to get to the heart of some of the things we do and why do we do them and some of the unhealthy ways we go about it. So I'm in the trenches with people and I'm seeing this thing of God's voice over and over and over and over again being looked at in a way that is defeating Christians. It's getting them confused. It's getting them in very very concerning patterns. And there's a lot that we're doing in the body of Christ that's encouraging that kind of pattern.
Uh, and secondly, I'm also seeing people online that are presenting God's voice teachers and preachers in a way that we need to step back and re-evaluate how we're talking about it. And so, I wanted to share a couple concerns with you that I think are are are important cuz number one, this God stamp thing that Christians are notorious for doing. I want to encourage us as believers to kind of step back a little bit with how much we are using this stamp a lot. The Holy Spirit said, "The Lord told me, the Lord told me, God told me." Whether it's something somebody gave you a word as God told me, or it's something that you sense God is saying.
Now, I want you to understand that in all my years, and all my decades, I give room for this. I give room for people being led by what they sense God is saying or even the idea I feel God spoke to my heart about something. I give room for that. But the overwhelming majority and how I see it used is often very very twisted and it often matches more like the person's personality. And I think that there's something about Christianity where we can't say here's what I think like no no that's that's too low that's not important I God told me and this gets really unhealthy because the God told me let's just take it at face value if God told you then I have to agree with it and I give every Christian permission that you do not have to just come into agreement just because somebody said the Lord told me God told me the Holy Spir showed me etc etc etc. This shuts down healthy dialogue because over and over again I find myself um helping people with a mental health battleground. It's very very clear but they're hanging so much of what they're going through on no God told me and this is what he told me. Not only this is what he told me but this is how I'm interpreting it. And I see so much of this going into dangerous territory where then it makes people have to kind of just align with this and it makes counseling very difficult. It makes general counsel just bringing count counsel of which the Bible says there's wisdom in that. There's great wisdom. And I don't believe God designed New Testament Christianity to be where you hear from God in a silo and you walk in that in this silo kind of thing and there's no other input. There's no other sharpening. There's no other hey maybe that's not God or maybe this part is can we look at that again because you get anger back. How dare you tell me that I wasn't hearing from God. And this is breaking my heart because I'm watching people right in front of my face erode because of this premise, the God said stamp.
Meanwhile, there's a setup that we are often teaching people in Christianity, which is this um the best way I can say it is the listening for the voice setup, right? Which I understand you get quiet. I believe in getting quiet. Get still and listen, right? I get that. But there's there can be a lot of problems in this that we're not talking about because many people you say, "Okay, I'm just going to sit and I'm going to listen for that voice." And now we're assuming the next thing they hear is God. That could be extremely dangerous. Um many many people say to me, "Mark, when I do that, nothing happens. I hear nothing." So they believe something is wrong. They then go into their spiritual life and go, "I must not be saved. I must not be saved enough. I must not have a strong walk with God. I don't hear the way other people are saying because other people are talking as though God is talking to them all day long and telling them everything what to do including what clothes to buy and where to turn on the street and uh every little detail. Yes, that kind of stuff does happen. I'm not making this stuff up. And so we're doing a disservice to then go the next thought or prompting you get has the God label on it. and then I'm supposed to just accept it and not go, hey, let's look at this a little bit. We've created a culture that doesn't allow room for it. And this isn't just for Pentecostals or charismatics cuz I see this in many different avenues of Christianity. There's no filtration, no testing, no commun community input. And and a lot of times I'm like, this is this is a thought you had. And it's okay. It's okay that you have a thought, but we we we feel and a lot in a lot of our brokenness, we feel like we need something over the top. We need something grandiose to make us feel special because God's word, his love for us, Jesus dying on the cross for us, he's him saying he'll never leave us or forsaking us and every promise in the scriptures, it's like it's not good enough. I need a special real highlevel word that sets me apart. And so it creates this what I find to be a dysfunctional spiritual authority and even abuse kind of thing where where I heard this thing and now everyone needs to listen to me. I just watched a clip this morning from a pastor who's growing in in in fame and influence and he was telling a story where he was talking to himself and he was saying something and he's like and the Holy Spirit immediately said to me and so now he's created a premise that he hears from God so clearly and that the Holy Spirit just jumps into every conversation he has. There's no challenge to this. There's no sense of wait is that is what just what you were thinking and that's kind of a conviction you're developing which is fine which is fine but see what happens is if I say I thought it then it welcomes challenge it welcomes hey let's sharpen this let's look at the word of God let's look at just simple grounded thinking patterns it removes us from that because it rem pushes it into a higher plane why am I bringing this up because many people get abused under this kind of premise. And so if a preacher says, "The Lord told me," it bypasses community assessment. Even in the Bible, when it says that people prophesy, it's in there in Corinthians. Let the prophets prophesy and then let everyone judge. That gets skipped over all the time. I have actually never in the in the decades of my work have ever seen judgment being applied in that setting and pondering. It's like, "U this is God. up. This is God. And so the congregation, the people are just expected to simply comply. And if you don't, you're touching God's anointed. You're speaking against the ways of God. And so that and that's a whole path in itself of of dysfunction that gets utilized. And so now we're it's like we're creating a dependency on this human mediator. Even though Jesus broke that, we're able to go before the throne of grace. I'm able to as a priest, I'm able to go before God through Christ myself and you help me in that and I help you in that. I don't hear God in just an isolated silo. And that isolation is leading many people into ditches of mental health battlegrounds, but it often gets cloaked with the Lord told me. And this is breaking my heart because I'm watching this for decades. And so we many people are floundering because they they um they they see this special hotline problem. The idea that some people hear God in a unique and special and superior way and so you are inferior to that. You have to sit under them because they hear God from a special way. And now we're following gurus. It's like we're treating them like gurus or like wizards or like people that have this special thing on them that you don't have. And so you have a couple choices. You either fall under that and now you live a defeated Christian life because you don't hear from God and he's he doesn't see you. He doesn't love you. He doesn't have anything special for you. Or you chase that person to go tell me the secret keys that I need to do because I don't know what I'm doing. and you have a special sauce of the inside scoop of the inside thing that no, we're all the body of Christ. And yes, there's overseers, there's leaders, there's people who are seasoned and they're actually meant to shepherd over our hearts and and help us and guide us into sanity to look out for grandiosity, to look out for uh patterns that that get into to places where we're following things and and that safety, that's actually love.
Then there's this aspect of the mental and emotional fallout that I'm seeing. Like I said, the people who feel like they hear nothing. I get emails all the time. I'm trying to ask God and I hear nothing. So then they spiritually misdiagnose themselves as not being saved, not having something right enough or you know what it is. It's maybe because of a sin I haven't found out. So then they're excavating themselves to try to find something. or many in my community work cuz I deal a lot with perfectionists, obsessivecompulsives and scrupulosity and those kind of things. They have they sit there in the silence and they they ask questions and the contrarian voice comes in and simple things as God I thank you that I um that I'm able to uh I'm able to mow my lawn and be outdoors and they hear a thought you need to give that up. Oh, that's God speaking to me. I went through years and years and I still get it of people thinking what they like is idolatry because they're like, "Oh, I really enjoy playing golf. It's an idol. Would you give that up for me? Oh, that's God." And so then they say that's God. They give it up. And then they testify, "I gave this up because I'm I'm giving myself allin for God." And no one can say, "Hey, wait a second. What's this God?" Or do you just have that contrarian kind of thing? And that's what intrusive thoughts are in a lot of ways is the contrarian thought. And so like, well, I don't want to do this on my own. This is this is I want to follow God. There's all these distortions that come in.
Overall, I have I've spent decades walking with people who a word from God that they felt or someone said to them didn't come to pass. And they are spiraling in depression. They are spiraling in despair. They are spiraling into a place of abandonment. That God is gone. That their faith has been shipwrecked. Not because of anything in the word of God that they've that they've that they've harnessed in a healthy way. Not in anything that has truly been brought to them in helpful insight, but just out of the sense of I'm not hearing from God or I heard something and it didn't happen. What's wrong with me? What did I do wrong? There's shame. There's confusion. This sense of I miss God starts to just weigh on them.
My deepest concern has come about when I've watched people who've they said God told me to do this and they go into this narrative and it is a twisting of scripture. It's a twisting. I've seen people I've seen people move. I've seen people leave marriages. I've seen people make very very unwise decisions all based on but God told me no mark God told me to do this. And when you push back to someone with, "No, God said this," it now makes somebody unable to help you. One thing I've tried to help believers do is go, "Can we just loosen that up a little bit?" Because we all see through a glass dimly. Even the um the heavyweight champion, the Apostle Paul says, "We see through a glass dimly." So, can we join him? the guy who went to the third heavens. The guy who's saw things he can't even describe in human words and yet he's like we see through a glass dimly. It's like if if I receive this counsel then it means God's wrong. So we go into the shame. It's like a protective mechanism of shame. Means I heard wrong and something's wrong with me. And I would encourage us to walk through that shame and not let it win and go, "No, no, we're all learning." Because this this God told me doesn't give you room for learning. There's things I put the God stamp on decades ago, years ago. Heavy, heavy stamp. And I had to loosen that because I not only put all these expectations on it. I had outcomes attached to it. I had decisions based on that. And I had to go through the grieving process of realizing I put a heavy God stamp on it and expected him to do it in this way and it didn't happen. You know what? Thank God for his grace because I'm still learning in this day and I'm willing to embrace that. And I'll tell you what, folks, it helped me on my mental health so much even though I'm still on my journey and still on my processing of how I was taught. And again, I make room for this. I make room for it. But the way I see it processed is not healthy.
So then what we're doing is we're skipping the simple fundamentals. This God's voice thing is like this thing is like this super deep thing that we got to travel into to get this like super sear divine insight. And it dismisses the simplicity of just reading God's word and letting it speak to us and the Holy Spirit bearing witness to the word which is what the Holy Spirit is really wanting to do to remind us of who we are as we read God's word that his love would show forth and that we would gain insight in reading it. the simplicity of every day just loving our neighbor as oursel. Instead, God's voice is something that like has to command us to do certain things. We sit there and go, "God, tell me what to do." And the first thing that comes to our mind or the loudest voice because a lot of people attribute the loudest voice is God. And that's not that's not a healthy pattern either because fear is really loud, guilt is really loud, shame is really loud, confusion is very very loud. And other people go, "Well, it's not loud. who was very very still. Still, whatever is getting your attention, you just put a a God stamp label to it. And so then we're in this obedience trap, you know, and and and so many people write to me, I'm like Jonah and I'm resisting God. And they they use all of these analogies where New Testament obedience is not so much about where you go, where you travel to, and uh which church you attend to, what this this kind of place or what job you you go to. You get to make decisions. There's liberty in Christ to make decisions. Obedience is actually more about the character of God being formed within us. Obedience is actually what does it look like to love my neighbor as myself? What does it look like to love my wife today? To love my children today, to live in truth, to grow in integrity, to grow in the fruit of the spirit. What does that look like today? And I learn to practice that and I grow in that. We've made obedience as to you got to go start this thing, you got to go travel to this place, you got to do this. It's more assignment driven than identity development because this that's how we're we're tributing God's voice. We can't just say, you know what, here's what I'm sensing. And I found myself moving more to a place of saying that when I talked to my wife, of saying, here's what I'm sensing. What do you think? Because you know what that does? It humbles us because the God told me is pushing us into a non-humble place. It's pushing us into a a posture and if anyone challenges it, how dare you? I heard from God. I think there's a call to humble ourselves because humility is very powerful in the kingdom of God. Go, hey, here's what I'm sensing. And I think this like there's a simple fundamental in Christianity. The the um James talked about the perfect law of liberty. The ability liberty is so amazing. You have the ability to decide, God, who should I marry? Who should I marry? Give me confirmation. Who should I marry? Make good relationship decisions of people you hang out with and people. This isn't just about marriage. It's just make good relationship decisions. Hang out with people that that sharpen you and good. And then meet somebody that you you love and have affection for and get married and make that commitment. And in marriage, you're going to grow because you're going to be challenged and you're going to grow and develop in it. Instead, it's like I got to sense this God thing because we're afraid of failure. Because in Christianity, we believe that if God tells you, it's guaranteed it's going to work out. We don't make room for you actually following and God's with you and it didn't work out and God was in it. We don't know how to make room for that because in that there's learning. I started a church and pastored a church for six years and then ended up leaving it and had to close it. And you could look at that one of two ways. You could look at that as failure or you could look at that as my learning journey that led me to where I am today because I needed to be able to take another step towards something. And it was out of that ability that I have the ability to decide. I can take steps. But most of all, I'm concerned because the the sense of God's leading and what he's saying, it needs community discernment. It requires it. We have the mind of Christ, not p some person in a silo. And there are many, many speakers and influencers out there that have put themselves on a pedestal because they portray as though they hear God with incredible clarity. And you're supposed to take everything they say as like solos scrtor as though that's that's it. And you got to follow it. And if you don't, something's wrong with you. This is a very emotionally, mentally, relationally unhealthy pattern that is eroding people's mental and emotional health. It's just and it's it's bothering me. Mental and spiritual health is developed in community feedback. Other believers help bear witness. Hey, I think you're on to something here. Like even in my journey, believers will write to me and say, "Hey, um this thing that you're doing um and and this thing that you're teaching on, this is really needed. This is really good. Thank you for that." That's part of it. It's like, "Okay, thank you." That it's bearing witness to you what I'm saying and what what I'm doing because I'm trying to use the word of God. I'm growing and I'm learning and I get sharpened by that input and sharpened with especially with those who know my heart and know me. But that requires vulnerability. It requires openness. It requires that hey I'm not a special guru. I'm a brother from another mother. But the culture of God said the Holy Spirit said makes this kind of thing impossible. So my encouragement here because some of you are are are healing from this. You're detoxing from this because it eroded your mental health, this sense of God said and God told me and and and and many of you maybe there's this rigidity still. No, no, no, no. He said it in this way and I know it and you can't tell me otherwise. Okay. Okay. I can't I can't do that. But now I can't be a help to you because we've now created a do not disturb, do not go there. You can talk about all these other areas, but this area over here and I'm seeing this on a daily basis to the point where I'm like, I I need to talk about this today cuz if God's saying something, I think we should handle it with a sense of like, okay, there's there's something here. But there needs humility. It needs community. It needs testing. And I don't see that modeled. And we need to stop how we're doing this. And many are not realizing what they're doing to the body of Christ. I'm not speaking ill against any leader because I think a lot of leaders do it unintentionally and they do it because that's how they were taught. I did the same thing too a lot of times in preaching and the Lord said this and I felt God saying this and I could look back and say I see some God prompings there. But I hold it loosely. I hold it loosely in the stamp I put on it cuz I give room for it. It's helped my OCD. It's helped perfectionism. It's helped this just right kind of thing. It's freed me. It's actually freed me to learn and grow in how I'm growing in the ways of God. To appreciate God's word. To appreciate community discussion over things. To appreciate that I'm on a learning journey and I don't have to get every thought of what I'm trying to do just right. I'm stepping in it and there's grace there. But I feel like this needs to be said. I feel like people need to be encouraged by it. And if it's a blessing to you, do me a favor. Click like. You could subscribe because I talk a lot about mental, emotional, relationship health. Or maybe you need to share with a friend and go, "Hey, this helped me a whole lot and it was a blessing to you." You can also go to my website, markdasus.com. Check out more about my materials, resources. Listen, all I'm trying to do is be a brother from another mother, and I pray that this is an encouragement to you, an encouragement to your journey. But I find that there's some meat in here that needs to be recognized. Lord willing, the creek don't rise. This is your brother from another mother saying, "I'll be back with some more teachings." and insights for your healing and freedom journey. But in the meantime, I'm out.