How Does God's Law Apply to Me? (Crucial Questions)

by R.C. Sproul

A final way in which this prohibition is violated is in attributing to the name of God impulses and direction that don’t come from Him at all. People say, “The Lord led me to do this,” or, “The Lord spoke to me and told me to do this.” This has become acceptable spiritual behavior in the Christian community to the point that it would be considered impolite for someone to respond, “How do you know that God has spoken to you?” If by saying this people meant that they were reading the Scripture, and as they read they came under conviction from a certain text, that would be fine. But if they mean to say that while driving their cars down the street they had an intuition, and now they have a plan that supposedly came from God, that’s another story. That’s exactly what the false prophets of Israel did in the Old Testament, preaching their own dreams instead of the words of God. If we ever say to another person that God told us to do or say something, we had better have sound reason for doing so. Otherwise, we’re violating the third commandment.