Hearing from God and seeing Pastor Jones pt.1

As a lot of you know Pastor Jones is a pastor of a church in Gainesville, FL who over the last few weeks has dominated headlines with his plans to perform a Koran book burning on September 11th.

His reasoning is that this will communicate to the world the evils of Islam and that he believes God told him to do it.

This story has bothered me so much that I changed gears yesterday and preached on hearing from God and the examples of burning and fire in the Bible. Here is my take on Pastor Jones.

(Just to clarify...I do not know Pastor Jones personally and have never met him so what little I know about him has come from the media.)

Through out several interviews Pastor Jones stated that God told him to have a "Koran book burning."

Then he stated that they would cancel the burning if the Islamic leaders in New York would cancel and/or move the building of a mosque further away from ground zero. After what seemed like plans to meet with these leaders in NY the pastor said the burning had been suspended until further notice. The last news story I saw reported that no meeting ever came about but yet now Pastor Jones is saying that God does not want the burning to happen "now or ever".

So here's my questions.

If God tells you to do something and then you change plans based on striking a deal with a religion that you are convinced is evil then what does that say about what you think of God's word?

Is God's word just a bargaining chip? Is it a negotiable word?

If you truly believe you are hearing from God then is God just wishy washy and changes His plans on a whim?

OR in light of all of this, are you really hearing from God or are you coming up with some ideas and tagging God's name on it?

So how do we know if we are hearing from God? I'm going to offer some suggestions over the next couple of post. Stay tuned.