Thursday, May 06, 2010

Orthograph #82 - The Lord spoke to my heart...

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

s-p, you've got Bertrand Russell rotating at about 3500 RPM. Good on ya.

Orthodox Christian Resources said...

Brilliant! I'm stealing this.

Steve Robinson said...

Hi readers, This one is about a subculture of Protestantism and a phenomenom I noticed back in the days. It seems whenever someone wants to manipulate, control, confront, push an agenda, etc. the opening line is usually "The Lord spoke to my heart and told me to tell you...." or a variation of it. It always struck me funny that the "Lord" seldom had a message for the person to whom He was speaking. The "Orthodox variation" on it is "the desert Fathers say...", or "if you had an Orthodox phromena, you'd..." As many times as the desert Fathers tell us to "look to yourself" we usually are looking elsewhere, even in Orthodoxy.

el cuerpo negro said...

another good variation is, "I've been praying about it, and I think it's the Lord's will I (fill in blank)." what i can't figure out is why "the Lord's will" so seldomly looks anything at all like a person dying to the self :)

margaret said...

Once ‘the Lord’ told me to stop drinking wine in the backyard when my evangelical neighbour’s grandchildren were out and another time He told me to grow my hair and put a ribbon in it. Since I have become Orthodox though no-one has passed on any interesting messages. I expect they think I won’t know what ‘phromena’ means and, to be fair, I didn’t till Andrea Elizabeth typed it in my combox and I had to look it up.

Sean+ said...

This reminds me of a story my mother told me long ago. She was most definitely not the sort to whom "the Lord" spoke for other's benefit. He may have spoken to her for her own, I'm not sure, but nobody else ever heard about it if he did.

Anyway, she was visiting a church and walking past the Sunday school class rooms when she overheard this conversation,
"Teacher, I have to go potty."
"Did Jesus tell you to go potty?"
"Yes, ma'am, he did."

Smart kid.

bob said...

I notice you're just a small step from the truly cruel version of things which is "A song the Lord gave me.." which is wielded like a waterboard session on unsuspecting friends.

Steve Robinson said...

bob, LOL! Soooo true. I never knew the Lord was such a bad musician and lyricist. :)