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I have always been wary of the phrase “God told me.”
Not because I doubt that God can guide us, or because I think prayer is simply a matter of talking into the silence and hoping for the best. My faith would make very little sense if I did. But those three words can carry an enormous amount of certainty.
God told me to take this job. God told me to move. God told me this relationship was right. God told me what I need to do next.
Once we put it like that, there is not much room left for discussion. After all, if God has spoken, who are we to argue?
Yet my own experience of trying to discern God’s presence and direction has usually been considerably less straightforward. I have never heard an audible voice from heaven giving me instructions. More often, there has been prayer, Scripture, conversations with people I trust, circumstances that seem to point in a particular direction, thoughts that keep returning, and sometimes a growing sense that one path might be more faithful than another.
Even then, I think the most honest language is usually not “God told me.” It is something closer to, “I think this may be where God is leading.”
The difference may seem small, but I increasingly think it matters. One closes the conversation. The other leaves room for discernment, uncertainty and the possibility that I may have misunderstood. Recently, I found myself thinking about all of this while reading one of the most famous conversations with God in the Bible.
It takes place in Genesis 15 and eventually leads Abram beneath a sky full of stars. Yet the more I read the chapter, the more I wonder whether the stars are not actually the most interesting part.
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The encounter takes place when Abraham is still known as Abram.
God has already made him an extraordinary promise. He will become the father of a great nation, his descendants will inherit the land, and through him, others will somehow be blessed. The problem is that reality does not seem to be cooperating. Abram is getting older, and Sarai remains unable to have children. Years have passed, and the promise that once sounded remarkable must increasingly have sounded impossible.
Genesis 15 begins with the words, “The word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision.”
That is an important detail because Abram’s experience is not necessarily a model for how most of us experience God. The biblical writer presents this as a particular revelatory encounter. We should probably be cautious, therefore, about reading the story and imagining that hearing God normally means waiting until clearly identifiable sentences arrive in our minds.
Whatever exactly Abram experienced, the narrator wants us to understand that God initiates the encounter and begins with reassurance: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.”
If we were writing the tidier religious version of the story, we might expect Abram to respond with gratitude. Perhaps something about trusting God’s timing. Maybe even a suitably inspirational sentence that could eventually find its way onto a Christian bookmark. Instead, Abram effectively says, What good is that when I still don’t have a child? But his actual words are much more direct: “Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless?” Then he reminds God of the obvious problem. No heir has appeared. If Abram dies as things stand, somebody from his household will inherit everything.
I love the honesty of that response because Abram does not pretend that the promise and his circumstances fit neatly together. He brings the contradiction straight into the conversation.
In effect, he places both things before God at once: the promise he has received and the life he is actually living, asking how the two can possibly belong together. And God responds. He tells Abram that his heir will be his own son, then takes him outside and tells him to look up at the sky and count the stars if he can. “So shall your offspring be.”
It is one of the great images of Scripture: an old man standing beneath an enormous night sky, confronted by more stars than he could ever hope to count. Then Genesis gives us the line that would echo through Christian theology for centuries:
“Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”
It would be easy to assume that the conversation has now reached its conclusion. After all, Abram now believes, faith has won, and surely the questions are over.
Except the chapter keeps going.
