What Everyone Wants To Know About Hearing From God

“We think we can’t hear God, but He’s already speaking.”

For two decades, Tania Harris has travelled across the world, listening to people wrestle with deeply personal questions about God.

Despite the different countries, churches and cultures, one thing has stayed the same for the speaker, author and familiar voice on Hope 1032.

“I’ve been to lots and lots of different types of churches around the world,” Tania told Hope Mornings.

“I find the questions are all the same.

“People are all wanting to know the same thing: ‘I know that God speaks, I know that God is relational, but what does God sound like and what difference does it make?’”

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This search for understanding sits at the heart of her ministry, God Conversations – a movement helping people recognise and respond to God’s voice.

“People will come to me and they’ll say, ‘I can’t hear God’s voice,’” Tania said.

“They’re praying about whether I should buy this house or take this job or even marry this person, but [say they] can’t hear from God.”

Yet as those everyday God conversations unfold, something surprising often emerges.

“We discover that actually they have been hearing from God,” Tania said.

“They’re asking for something else, but God’s already speaking about something they’re not particularly interested in.

“I’m going, ‘I can’t hear you, God,’ and God’s saying, ‘I’m already speaking, but right now forgiving your father is more important than what car you buy.’”

Rather than always being heard as dramatic guidance about major life decisions, Tania says God’s voice often sounds far more ordinary — and more personal.

“It shouldn’t be a surprise to us that God would say, ‘Make the bed’ or ‘Forgive your father’ or ‘Be kind to your grumpy neighbour.’”

Tania believes listening to God in the “smaller” aspects of life often leads to registering what God calls us to in the bigger things.

In other words, we might be spending a lot of time looking for the wrong kind of answer.

“It’s not primarily about guidance; it’s about following Jesus”

“The Spirit has been given to continue speaking [God’s truth], so it’s going to sound like Jesus.”

“We can have a basic misunderstanding about what the Spirit sounds like.

“If we understand that the Spirit speaks to help us to follow and join in God’s mission, that’s a very different frame of reference from getting the answers that I need right now.”

Tania met a couple involved with a Christian ministry in a community filled with addiction and hardship.

What did God want them to do first? What need must be met? Who had to be helped immediately?

Asked to listen for God’s guidance on what to do, they were convinced they heard the same message: “God told us to go and register our car.”

“They go off, fill out the forms, pay their money and come back.

“We registered our car, what’s next?”

For Tania, the moment captures something gentle and hopeful about Spirit-led faith.

“What you see is how the Spirit speaks to us to grow us up, to cause us to flourish, to become whole,” Tania said about being open to how God shapes us (not how we want to shape God).

“The Spirit designs the pathway of following Jesus.”

“To keep asking that question – What is God saying? – is part of what it means to be a Christian.”

“It’s not just about hearing, it’s about the doing.

“And the doing is often more difficult.”

Listen to the full conversation in the player above.

Feature image: Supplied