God Revealed In Our Midst
Some years ago, I started attending an ecumenical prayer gathering of pastors and church leaders in the small town where I was serving as a pastor. After a couple of meetings, I began to notice some patterns in the ways some of my colleagues spoke about their decisions and the ways they planned their own lives. They would say things like, "The Lord spoke to me the other day..." or "I knew the Lord wanted us to do this..." or "I knew I was being led by God to say this..." All-too-conveniently, the things my fellow pastors were claiming God was telling them to do seemed to be the very things that they were already sold on as good ideas. Unfortunately, uncritically claiming ones own ideas and desires as a flash of divine revelation is something that Christian-y people do all the time. I've seen it taken to the extreme ( "God led me to leave my wife "--an actual statement a guy shared with me once), and I'...