I hear this often from professing Christians. "The Lord told me..." or "I received a word from the Lord" or "the Lord said to me _____ [ followed by a statement, supposedly from God as speaker in the first person ]" People saying such things don't realize how confusing this actually can be for others. In a sense it places the person above others ("the Lord spoke to me") and beyond accountability ("how can you question what God said?"). This also causes people to want to have this experience for themselves and thus to minimize what God (by his Spirit) has already and eternally said in Scripture. It makes the present more important than the past. Can God speak to us apart from the Bible, or independently of it? He certainly can. The question is, however, is this what the Lord has promised to be a normal and expected experience for those who follow him? Indeed there may be unusual and remark...