“Not long ago one of my staff gave me a script to be used for an imagined “evangelical psychiatric hotline,” the kind of recorded message one might hear when he or she calls a participating church for psychiatric help. It went like this:
If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly.
If you are codependent, please ask someone else to press 2.
If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5, and 6.
If you are paranoid, we know who you are and what you want.
Just stay on the line so we can trace the call.
If you are evangelical, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press.
Is that how we are to find guidance from God for our lives? A little voice? Not at all. That is a kind of mysticism. “I prayed about it, and God told me to do the following.” In former days, a statement like that would be followed by a more mature believer asking for “chapter and verse,” meaning, where do you find that in Scripture? We need to get rid of that way of talking and of such false claims.
God has given us all the guidance we need in the Bible. So if there is something we want or think we need that is not in the Bible – What job shall I take? Where shall I live? Whom shall I marry? – after having prayed for God’s providential guidance, we are free to do whatever seems right to us, knowing that God who cares for us always will certainly keep us in His way. In areas about which the Bible does not speak explicitly, we are free to act as we think best, as long as we are obeying God and trying to live a godly life.”
- James Montgomery Boice, Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace?, Scripture Alone: Sufficient for Guidance
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