When my dad died in 1982 I was devastated not least because our relationship had never been easy but more because I never had the chance to tell him that it was alright, that I’d forgiven him for all that happened when I was a child and that I loved him. I was sitting in my bedroom at home praying the day before the funeral and I picked up the Good News Bible and there in front of me were the words from Paul’s letter to the Romans; ‘For to those who love God, who are called in his plan everything works out for good.’ It was like a bolt of lightening in the darkness. It transformed the pain that I felt. Somehow I knew that it really was alright and that my dad knew it was alright.

Hearing God through the Bible I was once at a prayer meeting and watched as a very prayerful man that I knew well ministered to people. As he walked from one to another he opened the Bible and each time there was a very pertinent word for the person he was praying with. I know of a woman who is very gifted in being led to specific passages for particular situations. Time and time again I have seen people hear God speak to them through simply opening the Bible and receiving a word of Scripture and I thank God for that. I have however seen lives shattered by people doing the same thing. I remember many years ago a woman leaving the Church with half of her two hundred strong prayer community because in prayer she opened the Bible at the book of Genesis and read this: ‘Leave your country, your family and your father’s house, for the land I will show you.’ The painful repercussions of the actions taken by that woman are still felt today. A few years ago I was watching a programme on television with Louis Theroux who was spending time in a church in the Bible Belt of America. The people who were leading that church believed that God wanted to destroy those people who weren’t fulfilling God’s will.

Using the Bible to back up your own views

As a church they rejoiced when people who they discerned as being outside the will of God got cancer or had car crashes or were badly injured or killed in the Iraqi war. They saw that as the direct intervention of God in the lives of God’s people chastising them because they had wandered away. They had been given, they said specific quotations from the Bible by God to prove that they were right. Sometimes to simply open the Bible and receive a word and act on it can be very dangerous and can actually make us very hard and self righteous, the very opposite to what we want to be.

So what should you do if you think you have received a word from the Scriptures?

I think there are some very clear guidelines that should be used. 1. Recognise that you might be wrong 2. Pray about it and ponder the Word 3. Take a good commentary and see what the author was trying to say to the people of his or her time. 4. Take the Word to a spiritual director if you have one or to one or two trusted and wise advisors 5. Never act immediately. Always ask God to open the next door and then the next and then the next The Bible is essentially given to open us up to an encounter with the living God. It tells the faith story of people who encountered God and who allowed that encounter to change and transform them. If you were to ask me what the Scriptures are for I would say that they are to enable us to encounter God so that we might be transformed, personally, socially, politically, economically, in fact transformed in every way possible. It is usually the message of the whole that leads us to transformation and not always the specific.

So where does all that leave us? I would encourage you to read the Scriptures. They are the means to finding life in its fullness. Devour the Word and be open to God speaking in whatever way God chooses to speak but always be careful about what you do with what you read. Take advice if you feel the Scriptures are pointing you in a particular direction. If you have what you feel is a specific word let God lead you and if the doors open in front of you trust that God knows what He is doing.

Fr Chris Thomas heads up the Irenaeus Project. He is a member of the Emmaus Family of Prayer and a priest of the Liverpool Diocese.