How do you know if it's God?

Q. I know someone who says God spoke to her in a dream. How do I know whether it was really God?

This is a question about discernment. In knowing what is or isn't "of God," there are at least three good sources of authority you can utilize.

1. The witness of Scripture. People love, of course, to pull out specific verses that they can use to "prove" or "disprove" things, but the best way to use it is as a whole, with an emphasis on the life and ministry of Jesus. In this case, Scripture shows us that God does in fact show up repeatedly in people's dreams, visions, musings, writings, and even in person.

2. The witness of God's people. The Bible and God's continuing interaction with creation is best interpreted in the context of a community of faith. The first thing young Samuel did when God called him in a dream was to go to Eli, his mentor in the church (1 Samuel 3). A great verse that tells about discernment in the New Testament church is Acts 15:28, in which the apostles say, "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and us…" There's the community of faith working to know God's will in the specifics.

3. The witness of the fruit that is borne (Matthew 7:16). The great evangelist, biblical scholar and teacher John Wesley was calm in the midst of the howling going on over women preaching in his day. In the end, he simply said that women's preaching bore great fruit, and people's lives were transformed as a result of his willingness to enable women to continue their service. With regard to dreams, the question to ask is how it played out. Did the results build the Kingdom? Were lives changed for the better?

Should women lead in church?

Recently I had another person ask by what authority a woman could lead a church. You would think I'd have my answer down pat after 15 years of doing this. But I still don't, and as a result I started a conversation about it with friends. Here's what came out of it.

No agreement necessary
Churches don't agree on this issue any more than they agree on divorce, the virgin birth, homosexuality, the Pope, or drums and projectors in church. And honestly, most of the issues we argue and fuss about in the church are field mice, not tigers, and the forces that oppose God get a lot of mileage out of our being embroiled in them. The question of whether women should lead churches is a field mouse. You can feel one way or the other (and go to a church that agrees with you) but it is not a question which will lead to your salvation. In fact, you can get so tangled up with it that you never get on the road with Jesus.

Scripture
You know, I had the classes in seminary on the "texts of terror" so often used to keep women from leadership in the church. Paul takes both sides of the issue, depending on where you look. Jesus doesn't say anything about it, but women fund his ministry, travel and minister with him, and are consistently accepted (healed, touched, fed, loved) by him. There are powerful women of scripture who prophesy, lead, judge, and serve God's people in a multitude of ways.

Experience
I didn't grow up in a church with a model of women in leadership. My experience of being called into ministry started the first time I ever saw a woman lead a worship service; I was about 25 years old, and utterly astonished by the power of that service. A year or so later Jesus came to me in a dream (very Biblical), and invited me to enter the life he led; guiding, being in relationship with, and teaching his people. My pastor and community affirmed this call, and here I am. Were all of us wrong? Could be. And I'm okay with that. I feel ready to face God and tell how I spent my life.

Err on the side of grace
My girlfriend Alicia had this wonderful thing to say: "If I’m going to err, I’d rather err on the side of freedom to serve Christ. I think the radical freedom God offers us in Christ — some have called it scandalous — has to be more than just freedom from… Yes, we have freedom from sin, freedom from rules, freedom from fear. But, we also have freedom to… We are free to serve, free to worship without fear of God’s rejection, free to love God and other people in wild and extravagant ways. For me, that’s the heart of pastoral ministry." You can read the rest of her thoughts here.

You shall know them by their fruits
The best response I heard to my inquiry came from my friend Mary Jo, who posed (and answered) the question this way: Does God have the power to call women into ministry if God chooses? If God has the power, how do we know if God has used that power to call women into ministry? As John Wesley said (and he got it from Jesus): by their fruits.

I'm good with that.

Matt Answers Monster Questions: How do I know when to wait for God to lead or to figure things out for myself?

I think a lot of people talk about waiting to hear from God to either do what they want to do or to not do the things that they know they should do.

We are not automatons (mindless robots) waiting for the next instruction from God. We should be in a relationship with God. People who are in a relationship are in communication and will know what actions:

1. Enrich the relationship
2. Erode the relationship
3. Have no effect on the relationship

Often WE want what WE want and will pretend that God wants that too or that God may not have an opinion on it.

The best way to get on the same page with God is to:

1. Serve others: in your home and at your job.
2. Give your honors to God: your titles, your accomplishments, your status.
3. Let go of material things: Identify the thing that you value the most and ask yourself if you could give it away.
4. Meet with others who want to know God.
5. Study God’s word.
6. Pray.

Lance: How to Know if it's "of God" or "of Me"

I think the struggle to know what things are "of God" and what things are just "of me" is an ongoing one for everyone. We all have our ideas about what we'd like to see happen or what we think would be great, and some ideas are less God than others.

While there's no magic or easy way to guarantee that everything you do will always be of God, I've always thought the best way to increase the chances is to make sure other people are involved in it, especially other people in your "community." If you're the only one thinking about it or involved in it, you only have your perspective, and therefore your blind spots, guiding the process. But if other people have some input, it's a lot more likely that somebody will see something you don't and be able to say, "Wait a minute, what about this" or "Yeah, I did that once and here's what happened."

It's like if one (genderless) spouse wants a new Ibanez SR900 bass with Bartolini pickups and a thru-body neck and goes out and buys one without discussing it with the other (genderless) spouse, and then Spouse #2 says, "Have you lost your mind? If we don't pay the light bill this month they're going to cut off our electricity!"

And FWIW, I've always been a fan of allowing/encouraging people to "bloom where God has planted them," which for me just means working out of the gifts that God has given to them. If people aren't working out of their gifts, they're not going to be particularly effective or happy (or aligned with God) and their efforts are going to be unsustainable and, ultimately, less God than they could be.