"I know I didn't really need another car, nor can we really afford it, so yeah we went into a good bit of debt, but when I prayed about it I just felt peaceful so I felt like God was okaying it. I mean, it's bigger so now I can take my kid's friends with us to Church so I'm sure that's why God okayed it."
"We were fighting all the time and I just felt really verbally abused and he even yelled at the kids alot. God gave me a peace about getting divorced. I deserve to be loved and my kids deserve a stable father figure!"
"I really felt like God called us to homeschool, but this child and I just really don't get along at all. It was stressing my marriage and my relationship with my child. I felt a peace about sending him to public/private school so I believe that it's totally okay for me to do now. I mean, homeschooling doesn't work for everybody. Maybe I was only supposed to homeschool for the time I did."
While it SOUNDS good, this is a modern pop-religion thing and is actually not biblical.
The Bible says the heart is 'deceitful and wicked above all things' but modern religion tells us to follow it and that if there's peace in our (deceitfully wicked, remember? In other words, we can't trust them! Peaceful or not!) hearts, that this means the decision is what God wants. I've heard the if-you-have-peace argument applied by professing Christians to even abortion and participation in pagan rituals!
Don't go to your own heart to find peace or answers, go to the Bible. If you pray for answers and read the Word regularly, God WILL show you passages that apply to your situation. Actual words not a warm fuzzy feeling in our "deceitful and wicked" hearts.
Another passage says 'trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not on your own understanding.' IOW, turn your tricky heart over to God and don't rely on human feelings and understandings. 'In all thy ways, acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths.' To acknowledge is the opposite of ignoring. When people say they have peace about something but didn't actually ask God to show them and then diligently and regularly read the Bible to find out what it is God wants to answer them with, that's not acknowledging Him.
So I disagree with the "if you have peace about it, it's fine to (insert whatever thing you are about to do because of peace-feelings)" concept for the above stated reasons. I believe God requires more active participation from us regarding our relationships with Him than us attributing our own feelings to God's leading. Like you can't lead your child when they refuse to interact with you, God can't lead us (Okay He CAN lead us against our will, He's GOD after all, but must we wait to be swallowed by a whale before we are willing to listen?) if we're basically waiting for a sign from heaven to fall into our laps (hearts?) but not coming to Him in prayer and supplication to ASK for it, NOR opening His actual reply to us (Bible) to SEE what His answer is.
