God doesn't "talk" to me?

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Rozellelily

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Catholic prayers mention that if you be still/quiet when praying that God will “talk” to you.
This is not my experience and whether I be mentally quiet and wait for a response or guidance there is nothing and I’ve never had this experience.

I don’t know if it’s due to sin,or because I never received first communion etc…?
 
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Over the years I have had one or two sensations of an actual voice in my mind but mostly I have not and especially when praying. I think this is a good thing, imagine hearing Gods voice! What would you think about your state of mind?
I sometimes pray and ponder, pause and wait and sometimes I have a thought which is relative to my prayer. Often people call this meditating and that’s probably a good description but I don’t do it for long.
More often than getting a voice I find something occurs, and sometimes it’s a kind of prompt, a clue or as people often call them a sign. Had a dream once when I had been doubting whether when I prayed I was heard, I kept waking up a little several times in the night with a word on my mind ‘ishmael’ I knew it was important and I was determined to remember it on waking up fully. Having finally got up and as soon as I could I looked it up, it was a person in the Bible yes, but it also means ‘God hears’. And He does, have no doubts.
 
rozellelily

God may be talking to you in the form of our new PM. He is a Christian, he attends Hillsong
 
Some saints went through times of not hearing Him. I remember myself a brief moment. when for some reason, I felt abandoned by Him - nothing like the trials endured by these saints.

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It takes discernment to recognize it. We have intuition and we have conscience. God speaks to us through them. But so do our deeper unconscious psychological processes. Our conscience can be distorted by scrupulosity or may be completely unformed. I takes an inner sensitivity and attention to cooperate with the inner workings of the Holy Spirit,
 
You may find it is because you are expecting one thing and it is in fact another thing entirely…just like when Elijah was listening for God and didnt hear him in the earthquake or the great strong wind or the fire but in the sound of sheer silence. He expected to hear God in all those mighty things but heard Him in the silence. Now some translations say Elijah heard God in the soft wind. You are expecting to hear God for one thing and this is not always how it works… sometimes it is just something we ask God and then the answer comes to us through someone else or a scripture reading and we think, now I know. So really it is us learning to listen. God is always giving us His attention, we just aren’t always listening. But dont be discouraged! it is like a new friendship, it takes time to learn how your friend likes to communicate and where and when. You really have to pay attention. It can seem very one sided in the beginning. It’s not, at all. It just seems that way cos we don’t know how to listen. Just pray a lot, especially casual mental prayer. By that I mean in your head, just chat away tell Jesus what you are doing and ask His advice. Offer your activities to Him before you do them, like I’m walking to work/church/school etc. now I offer my walk to you in unceasing prayer and then accept whatever comes out of the walk. You dont have to think about Jesus the whole way but see how he comes into the walk and invites you to smile at strangers and say good morning and appreciate the wonderful world He has created for you. Try remember to thank him at the end. The more you get to know your friend Jesus the more you’ll hear Him communicate with you. God bless you.
 
You might begin by asking God to teach you how to listen. Most of us errantly assume we already know how to listen. But few are born with that gift. Selective hearing is a universal human trait.
 
God has a lot of ways of talking. Sometimes it’s through what other people say to you or something you might see on your own. It’s not always some voice or mental thought when you pray. It takes a lot of faith and a strong relationship with God to have this sort of communication with him. It also to some degree is a gift. God spoke to Paul on the road to Damascus, even though Paul wasn’t really looking for God’s opinion. On the other hand, Mother Teresa was a saint and God chose to be silent to her for much of her life. She just kept on trying to do His will anyway.
 
I am reading the Imitation of Christ and there are sections in the book called ‘the voice of Christ’ where he writes down what Christ tells him. I feel Christ is talking to me too answering the things that I wanted to know. Of course most of us are not at the level of the saints who could hear Christ directly, but we can all benefit reading what has been written down by the saints. God works in mysterious ways.
 
Rozellelily said:
Catholic prayers mention that if you be still/quiet when praying that God will “talk” to you.
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Look into the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. When I was young, I’d always interpret the insights I got when I felt a peace come over me. I felt that peace and calm was evidence of God. For me, it was most profound during periods where I was under great emotional distress. It was as I calmed down through prayer that this peace would overtake me. I first experienced when I was 12 and it was the same sort of comfort I experienced when a parent would hold me in their arms. As I calmed down, I’d have minor insights that helped me gain some perspective over what had upset me. And as I was in prayer later without being upset, I found these inspirations or whatever come with that same sort of calm.

Only in the last few years have I learned about the spiritual exercises, but they’re far more clear in helping one to “discern the spirits.” Afterall, you can have positive emotions while being guided into sin.
 
God doesn’t ‘talk’ to me either. That is probably a good thing. God’s influence comes through grace, the practice of your faith, prayer, fasting, self-control, repentance, the Church. The more you live in Christ I believe the closer you are to God’s ways through grace, a sort of organic revelation occurs - sin breaks this connection, access to knowledge. This is a dynamic situation.

I believe in prayer and contemplation on issues though, that sort of thing, but I think God’s answer reveals itself through your mind, heart, not Him showing up with a few cherubs, in white light, as an audible voice speaking to you. That sort of thing is your imagination, demons. But again I respect dreams, intuitions, signs if they are not contrary to the teaching of the faith. A lot of those experiences come from God I suspect. Sometimes I think I am too skeptical of some of that - hindsight makes it seem more real, fit into place, which is fine.
 
God doesn’t talk to me either. It’s hard to distinguish what’s from God and what’s from man, and I do think many of us assume it’s the former at times.
 
In these times when we are being tracked constantly online it’s probably wise to be suspicious of online synchronicity and coincidence and maybe all electronic media.
Having said that I believe God uses all media to communicate and I mean all. I also think that it’s important to be discerning and that involves some thought. If you think God is telling you something then does that thing lead to the fruition of good? I mean spiritual good. If it’s ambiguous then perhaps ask for an unambiguous pointer, if you don’t get one then perhaps you were mistaken in the first place. That is a problem if you are open to signs etc, you can easily misread things. If God wants you to know something I’m sure He will make it clear to you. If I have seven references to fish in one day do I eat one for supper or go for a swim? Like wise not all dreams I’m sure are meant to be communications from God. I recently had one which was an almost exact reference to a section of the New Testament which I’d been reading but Cher was in it! There was little new information, just my mind processing I expect. If we seek signs there is a danger that we’ll be mislead, no doubt about it.

I try to bear in mind that my ego/personality really wants me to be special, chosen for a special reason, however I believe that our prime task after loving God and our neighbour Is to develop our souls and dedicate ourselves to the service of God, which we can do while serving at the checkout, building a roof or stamping a cheque. The salvation of our own souls is a special mission in itself.
 
You are not listening, with your heart, God doesn’t use a megaphone!
 
I don’t hear God as a voice in my head. If I did I’d doubt my sanity.

I’d like to think of God’s communication as form of a sudden insight or an epiphany. Things suddenly become clear when before they weren’t. More like a Eureka moment.

I sense God mainly by my intuition.

God also talks to us through the teachings of the Church and through other people.
 
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You don’t have to have received first Holy Communion to sit in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. Adoration is often very quiet and not crowded. Don’t read, don’t pray, just sit there.
God does not always speak in words. He got you this far, He spoke to you along the way. Dramatics may not be what God has in mind for you; His silence keeps you longing for Him. If that’s the case, it’s because He knows what is best for you, because He loves you.
 
God literally “talking” to a person, as in you actually hearing a clear, distinct voice, like a person talking, is what is sometimes known as a “flashy” spiritual experience. In every credible spiritual discipline, those incidents are rare. They don’t happen to most people.

That doesn’t mean that God doesn’t communicate with us. If we pray and we listen patiently, the answers come. Be patient, have faith.
 
If you have questions of this nature I recommend that you make a study of the writings of St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross.
 
St Francis whilst in a run down church heard what he thought was the voice of God telling him “rebuild my church.” And so he rebuilt the church and made a fine job of it apparently. Later it turns out God probably meant rebuild my Church, the body of Christ. I think perhaps St Francis acted slightly oddly in many ways and some people would now definitely label him as psychotic, yet he was made a Saint for good reason. Like wise St Pio who also heard voices and saw visions daily apparently. St. John Vianney also experienced such things but who can doubt that these people were truly servants of a God. Such people are rare however and certainly these traits can be confused with psychosis which is also an altered state of consciousness but perhaps the difference is once again in the fruit of the tree.
 
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