Hi all,

I am aware there are various other threads on this but hopefully this is slightly differnt. I've had a bit of opposition about a decision me and hubby made recently, which is fine, I expected that but what is getting to me is their reason for why they think we have made a wrong decision.

Numerous christians have told us we should only be making a decision when we have a bible verse "jump out" at us. One lady in particular told us we were wrong because of this (even though she knew nothing about the situation) and it was a very uncomfortable conversation. I tried to explain we had made the decision based on studying the word and prayer. She was not happy because we could not give her an exact bible verse that had jumped out and therefore basically told us were wrong. We have had numerous other people say the same thing.

People have assured us that if this was a decision from God we would have known exactly what to do next.

Just wondering what peoples thoughts were on this.

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Michelle
Kent, UK
Reformed Baptist

Michelle, I know some people from my chequered past who think this way. "You have to have a verse." My basic problem with the idea is that it insists that God will use His own word out of context to speak to you. The command to Jeremiah not to take a wife, for instance, may help someone who is questioning whether to get married or not, but by showing that it isn't necessary to be married, not because that word comes to him - even if his name is Jeremiah Smith.
It seems to me that involved in the view that a verse has to "grab" you and then it's "yours" and it's God's word to you, are a couple of unfortunate implications. I think the people who hold this view would not want to accept these implications, but I don't see how to split them out.
1. God's word isn't enough. God has to add a special emphasis to it in order to lead you in the right way. While the Reformed acknowledge that God's illumination is necessary for the saving belief of Scripture, what these people are talking about isn't illumination: it's an adaptation of the Scriptures to address a particular instance which not everyone needs to know about. That strikes me as being something superadded to the word, rather than an enabling of the right apprehension of the word.
2. God's word "becomes" God's word to you, not in virtue of what it is, but of what God does with it.
Now again, the people I know want to follow God in all things, and have a high view of His word; but I believe that this particular piece of superstition militates against consistently holding to a high view of Scripture, because it opens a loophole for distorting the text as long as the distortion comes to you vividly.

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Ruben
Moderator
F.P.C.I.
Indiana

Vanities and disguises have covered us, and thereby we are naked; licenciousness hath inflam'd us, and thereby we are frozen; voluptuousness hath fed us, and thereby we are sterved, the fancies and traditions of men have taught and instructed us, and thereby we are ignorant.
John Donne

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Calvinistas Conversando
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Jim
1689 LBCF
Independent Bible Church
North Texas, USA

I was thinking along these lines but I was so shocked at what I was hearing, it made me think. Some of the decisions people are making in this way are worrying, in some case even justifying actions that contradict God's word.

Thank you for your encouragement

Sheer mysticism.

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Brad
Member- Eagle Heights PCA
Winchester, VA

Pro 16:33 The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD.

Isa 8:20 To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.