Does God speak to Christians in dreams or in our hearts? If we have never had this experience, then are we missing something and should expect it? Is there a danger of relying on a personal word from God instead of looking to the definite word of God given as the Bible?

Disclaimers and qualifiers: I agree that the “God told me” ploy is sometimes abused to claim authority for subjective impressions, and some self-generated ideas. Many young Christians hear of these experiences and then expect to hear God speak to them. Hearing nothing, these novices become discouraged or bitter. I think that any reporting of individual encounter with God should be done very carefully, and is better left to face-to-face conversation than blogs, books, conferences, or sermons.

Against the deniers that God speaks to Christians directly, apart from the Scripture, I disagree that this aspect of living in relationship with God contradicts the sufficiency of Scripture as some assert. We must take seriously the statement in Romans 8:14 that Christians are led by the Spirit of God, but what does this mean experientially?

I think that since Jesus’ experience is the pattern for us, then we should take his experience of having been taught by and having heard from his Father as the model for our experience (e.g., John 7:16-17). In the book of Acts, Luke continues this picture of Jesus’ life in the Spirit as normative for the church led by the Spirit, both for the gathered church (Acts 13:2; 15:28) and individually (Acts 8:29; 10:19; 11:12; 16:6-7; 20:23).

If we look across Scripture, we find dozens of cases in which God “stirred up” or “opened” human hearts, and spoke to people directly or through dreams and visions. These are direct and subjective encounters with God, and they are much more prevalent in the New Covenant because of the cross and the indwelling Spirit. Clearly some of these cases are exceptional, but the New Covenant experience of life in the Spirit is a new situation of receptivity to verbal communication with God. John 10:26-30 “My sheep hear my voice, and they follow me” seems especially clear that God desires to engage us in direct and personal communication, as a shepherd with sheep.

Scripture is given to us as the public revelation and ground for all religious experience (Sola Scriptura), but I think the passages cited above are clear that God does not limit himself to speaking through Scripture.

Some of the difficulty is semantics, since Christians on the Pentecostal side will make larger claims for experience of the Spirit’s leading, while non-Pentecostals can have the same experiences and speak of them much more modestly. Pentecostals that I know will say revelat