Is God speaking to me on this edition of Truth and Love?

I'm Heath Lambert and you're listening to Truth and Love, a podcast of the Association

of Certified Biblical Counselors, where we seek to provide biblical solutions to the problems

that people face.

Our guest this week is Dr. Keith Palmer, a fellow with the Association of Certified

Biblical Counselors and the Associate Pastor at Grace Bible Church in Granbury, Texas.

We're here talking about the issue really of mysticism. I asked the question at the beginning,

is God speaking to me? And that is

because so many times Christians will say things like God told me or I think God is saying to me.

And when we talk about those kinds of statements, we put that under the category of Christian

mysticism. Keith, what is mysticism?

Well, in Christian circles, mysticism is the practice of seeking communication from God in ways apart from or in addition to the Bible.

In popular forms, mysticism might mean seeking to listen in silence for God's an audible voice or equating

certain emotions, feelings, or impressions as God's direct personal communication, or perhaps

looking for circumstantial signs that supposedly represent God's direction or counsel.

So it's revelation. We're looking for signs, words, outside of the Bible. That's what mysticism is.

Why is that something that Christians should be concerned about or should they be concerned about it?

Yeah, Christians should be greatly concerned about this movement because mysticism really attacks or it erodes

and then eventually undermines four essential doctrines of historic biblical Christianity.

First, mysticism challenges the sufficiency of the Bible.

Really, mysticism is a direct attack on the sufficiency of God's word.

Mysticism assumes the Bible's insufficiency and hence

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