These aren't evangelicals. I'm long past that. It really is what people say from all over the theological spectrum IME.
I can't say it's been my experience outside of evangelicalism, although I accept that people can use those kind of language in other settings too.
Generally I'd say it's more a figure of speech than anything else.
Rather than say, 'I was reading the Parable of the Sower this morning and it struck me that ...' someone will say, 'God showed me through the Parable of the Sower that ...'
Which implies flashing lights and woo-woo woo-woo.
This might be a matter for another thread but in my neck of the woods the emphasis is on God being 'everywhere and filling all things' rather than stomping down from heaven with a Terry Gilliam style Monty Python foot.
So God is indeed speaking through the scriptures, the liturgy, hymns, sermon, whatever else ... but not in a kind of whizz-bang zap kind of way.
A preacher carefully preparing a sermon doesn't go off into a trance any more than iconography is the pictorial equivalent of 'automatic writing'.
Yet I believe to be 'at work' in and through both.
'In these last days God has spoken to us through his Son.'
Comments
I can't say it's been my experience outside of evangelicalism, although I accept that people can use those kind of language in other settings too.
Generally I'd say it's more a figure of speech than anything else.
Rather than say, 'I was reading the Parable of the Sower this morning and it struck me that ...' someone will say, 'God showed me through the Parable of the Sower that ...'
Which implies flashing lights and woo-woo woo-woo.
This might be a matter for another thread but in my neck of the woods the emphasis is on God being 'everywhere and filling all things' rather than stomping down from heaven with a Terry Gilliam style Monty Python foot.
So God is indeed speaking through the scriptures, the liturgy, hymns, sermon, whatever else ... but not in a kind of whizz-bang zap kind of way.
A preacher carefully preparing a sermon doesn't go off into a trance any more than iconography is the pictorial equivalent of 'automatic writing'.
Yet I believe to be 'at work' in and through both.
'In these last days God has spoken to us through his Son.'
(Apologies for the male pronoun)
God has spoken to us through Christ.
And that's saying something.