God told me to tell you..

Whenever someone approaches me and says this, my natural inclination is to run!
Now please understand that I'm not saying that God doesn't use other people in our lives to send us a message, but I am saying that it has been my experience that when someone says to me that God told me to tell you, it usually means, "here's what I think you should do, but I doubt you're going to listen to me so I'll make it sound more official."

Let me give you one such example. When we were doing a capital campaign to raise funds to build our first building and I had a woman approach me and say, "Pastor Greg, I was praying last night about the building campaign and the Lord told me to tell you that you need to sell your house and give all the money to the building fund." I responded by saying, "well that's interesting because I have been praying about how much I should give and that's not what God told me!" Then I said, "what did God tell you that you should give?" She said that God told her that since she didn't have too much, she didn't need to give anything!

Here are my parameters when it comes to whether I listen to someone when they say this type thing. Do I know them and do I respect their Christian walk? Are they a nut? Could they have ulterior motives? Is this something that I have been seeking an answer about?