When I Talked to a False Jesus
The danger of listening prayer
I can’t remember exactly when I started talking to him. I looked through my old journals a few months ago and could see a slow change in how I prayed. In the early 2000s most, if not all, of my prayers were petitionary using the Scripture as a guide and focused more on others than myself. As the years progressed, I moved away from those kinds of prayers to more me-centered, mystical prayer. I began to use quotation marks around words and statements that I assumed were “words from the Lord”. As the years progressed further, my focus shifted from others’ needs to questions about what my passion should be or what my personal calling might entail. The questions became increasingly me-centric, seeking experience over wisdom and senses over common sense.
The words and statements in quotes morphed to long paragraphs, and from long paragraphs to conversations that I recorded like a court room stenographer. I had no reason to believe I wasn’t hearing from Jesus. It’s all I had been taught and to believe otherwise was a lack of faith and maturity.
The bulk of my false beliefs started in the world of John Eldredge and were undergirded by the false personality test called the Enneagram. (Each of these will be addressed in the following posts.)
Eldredge and his teachings concerning listening to God, working with a question/answer dialog with Jesus, and going back in memories with Jesus became prominent in my life for about a year. I adopted his language, his ideas, and his practices, building a world of introspection and mysticism. I relied more on my instincts, hunches, thoughts, ideas, and the “voice” than I ever read and studied the Bible. All this while pursuing a Masters degree in theological studies. The deception ran thick and caused spiritual chaos, though I thought it was spiritual growth. It wasn’t until 2021 that I realized that I was tangled in talking to a false Christ. My story is found here.
When I realized what I had been doing, I fell to my knees in repentance. I even felt fear and dread because I had been so easily deceived, had spoken for God where He hadn’t spoken, and used this practice for my own gain. As I read back through my journals, I could see that the “voice” (though dripped in “Jesus-sounding” words) was never satisfied with my efforts. There was always something else I could discover about myself. There was always a place where my faith was frail and I needed to have more of it. I simply was never strong enough, faithful enough, or able to come to a place where my mysticism and maturity met to reveal that word I thought I needed. There was always more to mine out of my psyche, personality, past, and childhood.
I relied on the voice to reveal things about myself when the Scripture was already sufficient to show me. I relied on the voice to give me direction as to how to hear more from God when I had an entire revelation of God written down in front of me. I had put my faith in the subjective experience in my mind, and not on the objective truth of God’s Word. Once this was made plain to me, I abandoned the voice. I simply stopped listening. What is pretty crazy is that even now I can “hear” that voice. I can actually make that voice happen in my head and I roll my eyes at my ignorance and feel anger toward the Deceiver who had me for a season.
Since then, I have experienced freedom beyond words. No longer do I worry about hearing the voice of God, but I am filled with faith that God, by His Holy Spirit, provides wisdom, insight, knowledge, a clear conscience, and remembrance of His Word at all times. I can know His faithfulness, character, purposes, and plans for His people by what He has revealed in His Word. I can be assured He hears my prayers and provides for my needs. My faith in who God is has only been made stronger when I abandoned this false teaching of “hearing from God.”
Do You Hear From God?
I realize that while you read this, you might be someone who believes we can hear personally from God, just as we would “hear” our own thoughts or “hear” this sentence. Millions of us experience “subvocalization” or “internal monologuing” as we think our thoughts. Here is a short article on the subject. This means we can “hear” a reading voice or a voice as we think our thoughts. With this in mind, we must consider the idea that we can have an inner monologue, or that the ability to subvocalize could be the real source of what we think is the voice of God. We must at least consider this.
For example when I write “Mickey Mouse” can you hear his voice in your head? Take a moment and picture the little mouse with red pants. Can you not only hear that distinct high-pitched voice but can you make it say whatever you want? Can you read this sentence in that voice? What about the voice of a lost loved one, an actor, or even just an imaginary friend? Do you ever have imaginary conversations between two people or between you and someone you’re about to talk to? Have you ever gone over a conversation in your mind, thinking about what was said and what you could have said? This shows the powerful strength of the mind to create worlds of imagination and even to “hear” the dialog between voices. It’s a wonderful gift that has provided writers and creators with the ability to come up with characters we love, movies we remember, quotes we quote from books, and so on. Does this not at least make us wonder about a voice we hear in our heads that we claim is God? I argue that it should.
The Main Question
If you’re like me, you’ve asked a question How do I know I’m hearing my voice or the voice of God? The answers have come in various forms. For example, you might have heard that it’s just something you “know” as though it should be almost an instinct. Another answer might be that the voice will always be confirmed in the Word. Fair, but who does the confirming? One other example is that one can know the voice of God by practice, by asking a simple question so the voice can answer clearly, and also by practicing listening prayer. This idea is to make your mind available and ready to hear the voice of God. As I was unable to sustain these answers through practice, I was left with more questions and I propose them here.
Three Questions
First question: For those who “hear” from Jesus, I simply ask, how do you know it’s him? Why do you know it’s him? What makes you certain you’re hearing the voice of God? I knew I was hearing from God and I told people I was hearing from God. I knew, with all my heart, that Jesus was speaking to me, directing me through my faith, instructing me on what to pray and to read, guiding me through my past wounds, and leading me to a bright and full future. However, I had no biblical way to substantiate those beliefs. I simply believed the hear-say theology of others.
Second question: Why do we think we can rightly discern God’s voice if we can manufacture any voice and even dialog with it all within the privacy of our mind? As explained above, we have the magnificent ability to create and imagine. Even more, many of us actually “hear” what we’re reading and have “voices” in our heads all the time. Therefore, what is the biblical standard by which we can measure our thoughts to ensure we’ve heard from God?
I’m sure the counter-argument is because we have the Holy Spirit. Probably could even use a few verses like John 16:13, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.” On the surface, and taught without context, one could certainly make the case. However, using good hermeneutics, one has to determine if this is a descriptive or prescriptive passage. Were these words from Jesus for his apostles or for all followers? Was this about a sort of dialog between us and the Holy Spirit, or was this about the apostles being able to take the Gospel to the nations by the power of the Spirit?
Jesus said in John 14:26, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” We could argue that what we “hear” would only be what Jesus has already said, which consequently, is captured in the written Scripture. We could argue we do not get to receive new words from Him because He told us the Holy Spirit would only remind us of what He has already said. Just a few verses before in 23 Jesus said, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him. And we will come to him and make our home with him.” This seems to suggest that if one loves Jesus they will keep the words already spoken and gives no indication that we are to be actively seeking new words of affirmation, information, or proclamation.
The work of the Holy Spirit is to renew our minds in Christ, to give us wisdom, insight, and knowledge, and to remind us of what God has already said. With a Spirit like that, we should never be in need to hear anything more or anything other.
I would be remiss to suggest that God cannot speak to His people. That would be absurd. I would also be remiss to suggest God would not speak to His people. Again, absurd. I am pushing back on the idea that we should be in a constant dialog with God in our heads, hearing details about life, the future, our emotional state, our faith journey, etc. This is the danger because of my previous argument regarding the power of the creative mind. It is not up to me to say God could not or would not speak if He did not want to. It is up to me to discern from Scripture what is most probable concerning the internal relationship which has been given to us by Him on His terms.
Third question: Why would God choose to reveal His character, purposes, and plans for His people, have it written down and preserved for thousands of years, only to let us worry that we are not hearing Him correctly? In the Bible no one who heard God ever questioned if they had heard God. There are no stories of worry and anxiety about people wondering if the voice they heard was indeed that of God. There was no “confirming” it with the Old Testament or Torah. Anytime God wanted to be heard in the biblical narrative, not one person had a problem hearing Him. It seems out of character that God would leave those who have now been given the preserved revelation of God and who live by the power of the Holy Spirit to struggle and strain to hear from God. It seems unlikely that God would leave us to worry we haven’t heard His voice or confirmed something we think we heard. If this is the case, the Scripture is insufficient to provide all we need for life and godliness.
There are more questions, ones I hope you are asking as well. Not only questions but concerns around how we discern what is a “word from the Lord”? How do we handle when someone claims they’ve heard from God and it’s in direct contradiction to the Scripture? When do we get to decide that what someone heard wasn’t from God even if it sounds spiritual? Why do we simply take someone’s word at face value when they speak for Jesus or claim they know what He has said to the Church? There are far-reaching issues with this belief and are important and challenging. This is why we are going to take a look at some of the most prominent teachings on this idea of “hearing from God.”
What’s Next
Over the next few weeks, I will be providing content concerning these very issues. This kind of spiritualism is found in the contemporary and popular beliefs around contemplative spirituality. It deals with sacred rhythms, spiritual disciplines, listening prayer, contemplative prayer, and more. I will provide content from some of the most popular teachers on the subject and show how this type of spirituality is not found in the Bible.
Upcoming: “What John Eldredge Actually Teaches”
Be on the lookout for upcoming articles on the Enneagram, Dallas Willard, Pricilla Shirer, and John Mark Comer, and more.