Just because we have an emotional experience, goose bumps, warm fuzzies, or a dream doesn’t mean it came from the Holy Spirit of God. A man once told me, “The Holy Spirit gets a lot of credit for saying things the Holy Spirit never said.” He was spot-on. I’ve had people say to me: “God-told-me-to-tell-you . . .”.  If it truly was God, we should reduce it to writing and staple it to the back of our Bible. “Why?” they ask. Because if God said it, it constitutes divine revelation. 

Maybe it’s just me, but I seem to attract people who’ve had the strangest spiritual experiences imaginable. A man in Ft. Worth, Texas once told me a wild tale about how he’d died and gone to hell. He looked up and saw a bright light. Jesus told him he could return to the living if he would tell everyone of his experience. When he opened his eyes, he was on a gurney, in a morgue, with a sheet over his head! He even claimed he had a tag on his big toe! He got up, walked out of the morgue, and ran home . . . completely naked! You may think I’m joking, but this conversation truly happened. I met him in the Ft. Worth Stockyards.
Did this this man meet Jesus? I can neither prove nor disprove his experience. Yet, these stories seem so appealing to people, even Christians. Surely, you’ve heard similar stories (without the nudity, we hope!). Perhaps this example is extreme, but how can we verify when people claim God spoke to them?
Scripture is Sufficient
D.A. Carson’s book, The Gagging of God, deals with the key issue at-hand:
“Many [Christians] now rely far more on inward promptings than on their Bible knowledge to decide what they are going to do in a situation.”1
Donald Whitney, in The Compromised Church, states:
“The evangelistic method of Jesus and the apostles was not to urge people to seek direct experiences with God; instead they went about preaching and teaching the Scriptures (see, for instance, Mark 1:14-15). And Jesus did not say that once we have spiritual life we live by direct mystical experience with God; rather, we ‘live . . . on every word that comes from the mouth of God’ (Matthew 4:4). . . .
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Puritan minister did not spare his pulpit efforts. He preached for an hour or two once or twice and sometimes three times a week—that is, always once or twice on Sundays, often at a week-day lecture, and occasionally on days of fasting, of thanksgiving, and election. His sermon content was based directly on the Bible, for Scripture was the final and infallible authority by which every man was to govern his life. The doctrine for each and every sermon was taken directly from the Bible, and all proof rested in the Bible. No opinion on any matter—theological, moral, political, pragmatic—had any value unless it could be supported by definite Biblical references.

The Puritan preacher saw the role of preaching much differently than we do today because he saw the role of the preacher so much differently than we do today. Rather than seeing the preacher as just “one of the boys” with a bit more knowledge of religious things, the Puritan preacher saw his office as one of dignity and importance, character and content. Alexander Grosart, speaking of Thomas Brooks, said,“In all likelihood he proceeded from degree to degree, although in common with other of the Puritans, he places none (of those degrees) on his title pages, preferring the nobler designation, ‘Preacher of the Gospel,’ or ‘Preacher of the Word.’ ”
The difference in how we view the pulpit is pointed out by Dr. Bruce Bickel in his excellent book, Light and Heat: the Puritan View of the Pulpit:
The fading picture of the pulpit is a clear picture of how many Protestant ministers see their task and function. Their time is dictated by the vision they have of the pulpit. Many ‘share’ rather than preach, pray rather than pronounce blessings, and perform under a clouded vision of their ministry because they have no clear conviction about the nature of preaching. They do not see clearly the unique and supernatural nature of preaching because they do not see clearly the unique and supernatural nature of the divine Scriptures.
Many ministers allocate their time accordingly. More time is spent in motivational discussions, program planning, and church administration than in sermon study and preparation. Both pastors and congregations alike organize the minister’s schedule based on his or their view of the pulpit. Demands or expectations are placed upon the minister based upon a job description that reflects a weak view of the pulpit.
Throughout history God has raised up men and movements whose great work was to preach and apply the Word of God to their own generation. Of course, by implication, these men have affected all generations thereafter. Such men were the Puritans.
Because the Puritans held that the pure Word of God was the criterion to which doctrine, worship, and church government must conform, proclamation of the Scriptures occupied the central position in their worship. Horton Davies writes: “The importance of [Puritan] preaching consisted in the fact that it was the declaration by the preacher of the revelation of God, confirmed in the hearts of believers by the interior testimony of the Holy Spirit.”
Richard Sibbes spoke for all Puritan preachers when he said, “Christ, when He ascended on high and led captivity captive (He would give no mean gift then, when He was to ascend triumphantly to heaven) the greatest He could give was ‘some to be prophets, some apostles, some teachers (and preachers) for the building up of the body of Christ till we all meet, a perfect man in Christ.’ ‘I will send them pastors according to My own heart,’ saith God (Jer.3:15). It is the gift of all gifts, the ordinance of preaching. God esteems it so, Christ esteems it so, and so should we esteem it.”
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If realizing how short we have fallen moves our hearts to repentance, then we are headed in the right direction. Let that contrition burn within us and move us to heartfelt prayer and worship while trusting in the blood of Jesus to wash us clean. Possessing the cleansing we need, let us worship our Savior with gratitude.

Merely going through the motions is unacceptable in the Christian life. This truth is a key part of what Paul tells Titus when he says, “To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure (Titus 1:15).” This statement presents such a severe dichotomy that it should leave our cold hearts speechless because a ritualistic heart is an impure heart.
We are performative by nature. We like formulas and tend to think that if we do the right things, no matter how insincerely, all is well. For many of us, going to church has become a ritual. We stay in step with the liturgy, but our hearts are elsewhere as we “worship.” What Paul is saying here is that, even if we do all the right actions, if our hearts are far from God, it is all defiled.
In Crete, the church had a problem with false teachers teaching Jewish myths (Titus 1:14). These false teachers were from the circumcision party; they taught all kinds of rituals, saying, “Do not handle. Do not taste. Do not touch.” They were Judaizers at heart, believing these rituals made someone right with God.
Because of cleanliness rituals, they were willing to destroy the work of God for the sake of food (Romans 14:20). This means that the kinds of food you ate or did not eat were more significant to them than Christ’s work on the cross.
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