Claim: "The Lord Told Me"

It is a trap for a man to say rashly, "It is holy!" And after the vows to make inquiry. -Proverbs 20:25

Be careful with the "Thus saith the Lord" syndrome. We are often quick to claim that God is leading us in a direction that were really captained by our emotions.

Even worse, we use presupposed hermeneutics to guide the coarse of Scripture in our life, determining ourselves what we THINK it ought to mean. This is a subjective reading of the Bible as opposed to an objective one.

Three rules (though far from an exhaustive list) may help us from falling into deception:

1. Private interpretation does not mean that we should rely solely on our own judgments, ignoring the insights and research of others;
2. Private interpretation does not mean that we have the right to "distort" the Bible in accordance with our own conceptions;
3. Private interpretation does not mean that we can ignore the history of interpretation in the church. Dr. Sam Storms

On the other hand, we DO sometimes feel as though the Lord is prompting or directing us through a particular passage or text, do we not? Can the Lord speak prophetically to us through a specific text, or even a subjective impression we got from the Bible? While I do strongly suggest treading lightly in this area (because our subjective impressions can often be faulty; Jer. 17:9), I also believe that it's by using the objective standard of the Word of God, that we are able to steer our less sturdy, subjective leanings along a straight path. A guideline that probably makes the best prescription, was made by Edmund Clowney in a conversation with Wayne Grudem:

The degree of certainty we have with regard to God's will in a situation is directly proportional to the degree of clarity we have as to how the Word of God applies to the situation (Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology. 128.)

With that being said, be careful of deceptive teachings, for they are often malefactors of these simple guidelines, and as Jeremiah testifies concerning the heart of God in such matters:

"I did not send these prophets, But they ran. I did not speak to them, But they prophesied." -Jeremiah 23:21