Prophecy

Do you think pain could be behind some of the “God told me” talk?

I believe God shares various thoughts with his kids, whether they be his thoughts on something or someone, or his thoughts for you. Navigating which thoughts are from him and which thoughts we come up with on our own involves a good bit of mystery, and in my experience only on rare occasion do we possess genuine certainty.

I’ve noticed some folks share a tendency toward language that says God gave them the thought, idea, perspective they are sharing. Again, I believe God does this.

But when something that might be referred to as a download from heaven or something God gave the idea for or a God told me turns out to be inconsequential, a mess of a reality, or just flat out wrong, the natural question is “was it really from God?”

It happened often in the circles I spent my life in, and frankly I’m not an enormous fan of it. But here’s my question today: how many people use what some call “God cards” when sharing ideas and thoughts because they don’t feel valuable enough to be heard and seen simply as themselves within their community?

I wonder how many have been treated as a mild inconvenience when sharing something that might be important to them? How many were cut short sharing their ideas, or cut themselves short because they observe the deep disinterest in the listener(s) they’re opening up to.

What if many of these “God cards” are subconsciously driven by the desire to be heard, valued and loved in community?

And consequentially, has the struggle to value individuals within our communities been a significant contributor to the broken state of the prophetic in the Western church? Could it have been one of the forces driving the prophetic into unattached, unaccountable isolation?

I’ll be honest and say that it bothers me how much we use God’s name to convey thoughts and ideas that were simply our own, but the possibility that we got there because we don’t have emotionally healthy communities that love well might bother me even more.