I believe many so-called Bible teachers have much to answer for! People are being told that the voices in their head are actually God telling them what to do. And if it’s God it must be obeyed --

      In recent years I have started asking people about their theological orientation simply because of teachings like this. If someone believes God is speaking to them, it won’t matter what counsel I deliver, they will always fall back on what God ‘told them.’ The last person who claimed to have heard a ‘voice’ giving her direction stormed out of the counseling session after only 10 minutes. She asked, ‘Are all you NANC guys the same?’ I took it as a compliment. You see, if God is giving individual direction through inner voices, you don’t need counseling. You simply need to wait for God to tell you what to do.

       If people have come to believe that problems are the result of some sort of bondage to sin or by demons, in their mind the need becomes that of ‘deliverance’ not counsel. I’ve had people tell me that what they need is a ‘touch from the man of God’ not merely instruction from God’s Word, the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and the Grace of God applied it to their life. They are rejecting God’s revealed will in favor of some subjective understanding of God’s will for their individual life. One man said he expressed compassion toward his wife once. I asked him why he did not express compassion at all times? He answered, ‘because God hasn’t told me to do it.’ Of course, the Bible teaches that husbands are to love their wives the way they love their own bodies and to dwell with their wives according to wisdom. But, in this system, until / unless God tells me specifically when and how, I don’t have to do it.

      Question: How do you know when God is speaking to you? The Bible says that ‘God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, 2 Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son,...’ [Heb. 1:1,2] The Bible says we have ‘...all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:...’ [II Pet. 1:4] The Bible says that God shall add unto the man the plagues of this book of prophecy, ‘...If any man shall add unto these things,....19 And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. [Rev. 22:18,19]

      But, if God is giving people an ‘individual word’ then it is Scripture: the Word of God. It is inspired revelation, inerrant, infallible, and authoritative. It must work every time and it must be obeyed.