I Will Not Say God Told Me

She has held the line for twenty-two years and she has never once broken it.

The line is this: she will not say God told me.

Not because she does not believe He speaks. She does, and she would argue it with anybody. She holds the line because she has seen what those three words do in a room. They end the conversation. They cannot be tested. They put the person who says them somewhere the person hearing them cannot reach, and she has watched decent people be steamrollered by somebody who was probably sincere and definitely wrong.

So she says I think. She says it seems to me. She says I could be wrong about this.

And people trust her, precisely because of that, and they should.

Here is what she noticed in the spring, in a car, at a set of lights, and has not been able to unnotice since.

She had a thought about a woman in her group. Nothing large. Ring her.

And she did not, and the reason she did not was not that she doubted it. She traced it back afterwards, honestly, the way she traces everything, and the reason was this: if she rang, and the woman asked why, she would have to answer.

And any true answer would be a version of the claim.

So over twenty-two years the rule has quietly expanded. It started as I will not say God told me. It has become I will not do anything I could not explain without saying it, which is a different rule that she never agreed to and cannot remember adopting.

She has been silent about the claim and she has also, without deciding to, been still.

And that is you at your own set of lights, or you would have closed this by now.

He works in you, and the working does not need announcing

Let me give you the sentence that dissolves this, and it is not about speech at all.

For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.Philippians 2:13

Read what is being described. God working in a person, at the level of the will, producing both the wanting and the doing.

Now notice what is not in that verse.

There is no announcement. There is no moment where the person turns to somebody and identifies the source. Paul is describing something that happens inside a person and comes out as ordinary action, and the whole sentence assumes it will look, from outside, exactly like a woman deciding to ring somebody.

You are able to be worked in without ever making a claim about it, and that is the arrangement Scripture actually describes. It is written that it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13). The Holy Spirit does His work at the level of the will, and what comes out the other side is a person doing something.

Now the expansion of your rule, which is the actual problem, and I want to name it precisely because you are precise.

Your rule was about a speech act. Saying God told me makes an unfalsifiable claim in front of somebody who cannot check it. You were right that this is dangerous and you have been right for twenty-two years.

But ringing somebody is not a speech act about God. It is a phone call.

And if she asks why, you have a completely honest answer available that involves no claim whatsoever: you came to mind and I thought I would ring.

That is true. It is the whole truth. It does not say God told you, because you do not know that, and your integrity about not knowing is exactly what has kept you trustworthy.

You are free to act without explaining, and you are free to explain without claiming. It is written that we are to encourage one another and build one another up (1 Thessalonians 5:11), and no source has to be declared for a phone call to be an encouragement. The Holy Spirit is not asking you to become the sort of person you have spent twenty-two years not being.

And here is the last thing, and I think it is the one that has actually been holding the door.

You have been afraid that acting on it is a way of claiming it quietly. That if you ring, you are secretly asserting the thing you refuse to say out loud, and that would be worse, because it would be the claim without the accountability.

You are not making a hidden claim by doing a kind thing, and there is no version of ringing somebody that asserts anything at all. It is written that whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus (Colossians 3:17), and doing something in His name is the opposite of announcing that He sent you. The Holy Spirit does not require you to be certain in order for you to be moved.