I’m sure many people reading this question resonate with its painful honesty. I know I do. Many “what-if’s” absorb my thoughts when I wake in the night or even when I sit at my desk during the day. I often feel queasy in spirit over friends’ problems, family worries, and even the state of the world. Worry is tangible some days, a mist in the air about me. I find myself listening to sermons in the night or my favorite old hymns, needing the comfort they give me. And these things do help, as does committing to memory the Lord’s reassuring and realistic words. Still, sometimes, I am afraid.

I have come to understand that no one is ever quite whole here on earth. Peter Marshall, whose life was recounted in the famous biography A Man Called Peter, was a Scottish immigrant who pastored one of the largest churches in Washington, D.C., and became chaplain of the U.S. Senate. He once asserted that God has “not promised to surround us with immunity from all the ills to which flesh is heir.” As human beings born into a fallen world, we may inherit injuries from our familial backgrounds, and we will be dealt wounds that leave scars that ache in certain kinds of emotional weather. The point is not that we are completely delivered from our fears and anxieties; the point is that we remember who walks by our side in the midst of them. Our fears can actually make us more dependent on God. In the beautiful words of a hymn by Katharina A. von Schlegel, “Be still, my soul: thy God doth undertake / To guide the future, as He has the past. / Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake; / All now mysterious shall be bright at last.” Or in the psalmist’s familiar words, “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4). He is with us. That is no small truth.

The short answer is that while a paraphrase, carefully chosen, can be a useful supplement, it should not be used exclusively as the primary source for your Bible reading. To explain further, a paraphrase is based on a translation of the Scripture but it is put into the vernacular of the day, making it easier to read, giving the sense or gist of the passage. Sometimes the purpose of the user-friendly version is to reach new Christians and younger people. This may involve leaving out elements or adding others with the goal of clarity. But, of course, such an approach is more susceptible to taking on the perspective of the paraphraser, and in some cases, may even have a particular agenda that proves unfaithful to biblical teaching. Through the years there have been many, many paraphrases, some now outdated because of dated expressions. A translation, on the other hand, tries to stay as close as possible to the original text and is usually a phrase-for-phrase rendering of the text from one language to another. The result is truer to the original and more reliable for in-depth Bible study. Reading a reputable translation of the Bible must always be a top priority for a Christian.

You are right to be uneasy about your friend’s approach. It is not a good practice for anyone to say the Lord has spoken to him or her about another person’s life. Such an approach can be presumptuous, and often lacks the foundation of a relationship context necessary for someone to receive such advice. Obviously, there are times when we should be corrected by good friends, especially if our lives are not in order. But even that should be done carefully and compassionately on the basis of scriptural truth, not on the claim to a personal message from God.

This kind of approach—to declare that the Lord has given specific advice for someone else—has the danger of spiritual abuse and manipulation. Furthermore, to liberally say the Lord is directing too many specific details of life is to treat Him like a GPS, when we already have and know the map that provides foundational biblical principles for conducting our lives. And these biblical principles also give us good common sense.