Never heard God speak to me

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Madaglan

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I have a problem spiritually afflicts me: I have never heard God speak to my heart, nor in the less common audible fashion. This is really disturbing me because I wonder if I really am in communion with God. I pray that God might speak to me, and I try to clear my mind from all the anxieties and other junk that might be blocking out God speaking to me. But for some reason I still don’t hear anything.

I’ve read many accounts of people who, in the darkest moments of their lives, cry out to God; and God supposedly answers them. Well, I’ve been in some similiar situations, but when I cry out to God, I get nothing in return. I have also done the Miracle Hour prayers, which at one point ask the person to listen to God. I still don’t hear anything from Him. I bought Br. Lawrence’s book on how to be in the presence of God, and I also read up on the parts in the Imitation where it says essentially the same. But none of this has led me to hear God’s voice. I just wish that God would talk with me randomly, too; but it doesn’t happen.

I’ve never really felt God’s presence in my life, either, which disturbs me. What is going on? Why doesn’t God talk to me when he seems to talk with everyone else?
 
i would suggest a few things you can do to discern the voice of God.

one is to immerse yourself in scripture. when you read the Bible daily, and get used to the things God says, and the way He deals in various situations, etc, you prepare your heart for hearing Him when He speaks in your heart. the Bible talks about His sheep recognizing His voice. the way to ‘tune your ear’, so to speak, to recognize His voice, is to saturate your mind with things that you KNOW are Him speaking - the Bible.

two is to confess all known sin. sometimes we have grudges against people, or pet sins that weigh us down and harden our hearts and deafen our ears, or things we did long ago that we might even have forgotten that we need to confess. asking the Holy Spirit to shed His light on your heart, and help you to find anything in it that might be offending Him, certainly won’t hurt anything, and might ‘soften your heart’ and allow you to discern His voice.

finally, i would say ‘ask Him’. ask Him to speak to you, to give you peace and comfort and joy in hearing Him talk to you in your heart. then trust Him - don’t rush Him - and wait.

when you aren’t expecting it, He might surprise you. He seems to enjoy doing that.
 
I was over 40 yrs old before I first felt truly convicted that God plays a role in todays world. When I was young I used to pray and pray for such direct and personal knowledge (feeling). In God’s time, you’ll know. Have patience and faith. He’ll give you what you need when He believes you need it.

CARose
 
Dear friend,

God’s voice is all around us and He is always speaking. We hear Him in Mass as we listen to the readings, we hear Him when we receive our penances in Confession, we hear Him in beautiful hymns. Sometimes we hear Him through the voices of other people, in the wind, as a tree bends, in water in a river, in the rain or during a Baptism. His voice can be heard in all His creation.

Do not be so hard on yourself, friend. Let yourself relax about all this and just let your heart open to discover how God sounds in all His creation. You will hear Him. Ask Him to speak, and then, most importantly, listen. Keep listening until you hear Him. Notice all the small things you take for granted and see them with new eyes. What are you most grateful to Him for? His voice is there. Who do you most love? In that love you will hear Him speaking.

Many blessings in your discernment, my friend!
 
Some advice I got once.
“Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10)

In the whole of life as we journey in faith, we must always take time to be simply still before God. All we do and say must be based on a spirit of deep prayer so that we can be aware of God’s presence and be open to the guidance of the Spirit and not simply work out of our own agendas or push our own barrows. Let us apply this principle of life especially to our own time of Synod.

We must be most attentive to what God is asking of our Church today and the direction in which the Spirit wishes to lead us. This will often be slow and frustrating and sometimes completely different from our own individual thinking. Let us all surrender and in letting go allow God to be God. We are members of God’s Church and Jesus Christ has promised to stay with us and they send to us their Holy Spirit to be our wisdom and guide.

“Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10.) In most Church debates, discussions and planning, we tend to speak before we listen (to God) and to become busy about many things before we sit at the feet of the Master. It is there that we learn who we are and are able to go forth in his name and not our own.

From cangoul.catholic.org.au/synod/prayer/prayer.htm
 
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Madaglan:
I
. But none of this has led me to hear God’s voice. I just wish that God would talk with me randomly, too; but it doesn’t happen.

I’ve never really felt God’s presence in my life, either, which disturbs me. What is going on? Why doesn’t God talk to me when he seems to talk with everyone else?
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Ah,you wish to hear God’s voice like so many before you.

I agree with Mitchell in this respect -

“His question, the harrowing question of someone who has only heard of God, is “Why me?” There is no answer, because it is the wrong question.”

stephenmitchellbooks.com/transAdapt/bookJobExcerpt07.html

By nature we believe in a lesser God (it is something we inherit from childhood) however the Christian Way has always acknowledged a particular transition from a lesser idea of God to a Greater one and what it means to ‘hear’ and ‘see’ Divine things in Spiritual rather than corporeal terms.

The Book of Job is one of the most beautiful pre-Christian works which demonstrate where questions and answers merge without annihilating each other as a balance of the life of man encompassed in the creation of God.

There is nowhere God is not,if the Life of Christ says anything,it says just that.
 
The church teaches that there are 4 ways in which Jesus in present at Mass. He speaks to us in these ways each time we go to Mass.
  1. He is present in us-two or more gathered in his name
  2. He is present in the word-if something in a reading really speaks to you…then God is speaking to you!
  3. He is present in the priest…In Persona Christi
  4. He is present in the Eucharist…truely present
Hope this helps a little. God bless
Deacon Tony
 
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tom.wineman:
Some advice I got once.
“Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10)

In the whole of life as we journey in faith, we must always take time to be simply still before God. All we do and say must be based on a spirit of deep prayer so that we can be aware of God’s presence and be open to the guidance of the Spirit and not simply work out of our own agendas or push our own barrows. Let us apply this principle of life especially to our own time of Synod.

We must be most attentive to what God is asking of our Church today and the direction in which the Spirit wishes to lead us. This will often be slow and frustrating and sometimes completely different from our own individual thinking. Let us all surrender and in letting go allow God to be God. We are members of God’s Church and Jesus Christ has promised to stay with us and they send to us their Holy Spirit to be our wisdom and guide.

“Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10.) In most Church debates, discussions and planning, we tend to speak before we listen (to God) and to become busy about many things before we sit at the feet of the Master. It is there that we learn who we are and are able to go forth in his name and not our own.

From cangoul.catholic.org.au/synod/prayer/prayer.htm
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Hi Tom, GREAT ADVICE 👍 Let the POTTER put you to the wheel. He will mold you if you allow Him. He wants to make you into the vessel that He has called you to be. Once He shapes you on the outside He now will work on the inside. This is where you need to be still and listen. He is going to work on the inside and work out every impurity you have in you. Once this is accomplished by the hand of God,you then will be put to the fire where you become Gods finished vessel. He now can pour in so that you can pour out. Oh what beautiful vessels he creates if we only allow Him to work on us. 😉 God Bless
 
Dear Madaglan,

It doesn’t seem to me that we have touched upon your need yet. What I hear in your question, is that you go to prayer with a sincere and earnest heart. Because you haven’t heard God speak in any recognizable way, it seems you have not entered the path of all those who seem to find God’s thoughts rather easily. You wonder if there is something wrong on your end, and nothing comes to mind specifically to show you where you have missed the boat. :confused:

Lingo, Madaglan, lingo. It bounces off the lips of those who are familiar with God’s ways in prayer and mutually understand one another. But to one who is learning, seeking, and honestly trying to develop a relationship with God, it can really be frustrating.

I’m going to pray this evening and ask God to show me how to open the door of understanding to you at your own level of growth. Smile, relax, and know that He really loves you!

Carole
 
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Madaglan:
I’ve never really felt God’s presence in my life, either, which disturbs me. What is going on? Why doesn’t God talk to me when he seems to talk with everyone else?
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Well, here’s some good news: You aren’t the only one.

I can’t offer you much besides my own experience, but hopefully it will help you in some measure. I grew up in a charismatic Protestant household, a religious envirnment that puts heavy, heavy emphasis on “hearing God’s voice.” People regularly went up to the front of the Church to share with everyone what God had just told them while they were sitting in the pews. God told people when to change jobs, what TV shows were good, how to reconcile with family and how to fix the annoying knock in the pipes that kept everyone up at night (God included, apparently).

So there I am, convinced something is wrong with me because I don’t have enough faith to get penciled in on God’s contact list. It was deeply distrubing to me, and something that took me nearly a decade to get over. I eventually left faith altogether because my experience failed to correspond with what people told me was the “right” way to experience God.

I still haven’t ever heard God’s voice, or felt is presence in the palpable ways I’ve heard people describe. The nice thing is how very unimportant that is to my Catholic faith. I know that God led me to join the Catholic Church, even though I was completely oblivious to his presence. I know that Christ is present with me every time I am in the presence of the Eucharist, even though it looks a lot more like bread. I know that when I hear in confession that my sins are forgiven, I hear the very voice of Christ, even though it sounds mostly like Father Dave. Christ surrounds me entirely within his Church, even if I am entirely unaware.

Although I remain highly skeptical of persons who claim to hear from God directly, I acknowledge that there are many Catholic mystics and saints throughout history who have recieved awe-inspiring visions and messages from heaven itself. That, I am afraid, is not my gift. So what? I have other faculties, by God’s grace, through which I can serve the Church, and serve it well. Christ is with me regardless. I know the objective reality of it, even if I don’t always (or, in some ways, ever) feel it. It’s part of the gift of faith to be able to do so.
 
Does God speak to us?

Yes.

About 25 years ago early in the morning I walked outside into a terrible wind. I asked God if he was there.

A small bird flew right above my heard working hard to fly in that wind. I looked up and there was one small cloud in the otherwise cloudless sky. One bird and one cloud.

The Trinity, bird, cloud and wind! Each morning I go aout and see a bird or a cloud I say,“Good Morning” That is awsome!
 
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Exporter:
Does God speak to us?

Yes.

About 25 years ago early in the morning I walked outside into a terrible wind. I asked God if he was there.

A small bird flew right above my heard working hard to fly in that wind. I looked up and there was one small cloud in the otherwise cloudless sky. One bird and one cloud.

The Trinity, bird, cloud and wind! Each morning I go aout and see a bird or a cloud I say,“Good Morning” That is awsome!
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Dear Exporter

Dear friend, I have read your beautiful post of how God spoke to you previously in this forum and I never tire of it.

God speaks to us in simplicity, in simple ways and in the stillness of silence or in the beauty of His creation, by the words of a child, by the silence of the night sky, by a moment of relief in a hectic and troubled day. The more I listen and watch for God’s voice in a day, the more He is speaking to me and it usually tells me that I could have done better, normally points me towards Himself and stops me thinking of the ‘self’. BUT, the loudest voice is in sorrow, His closeness to humanity is seen in suffering and He is ever close to those who suffer. The sick and dying have many graces that we could learn from, that we believe we visit the sick to give them comfort only to find that God teaches us through them.

God Bless you Exporter and keep listening to God and much love and peace to you

Teresa
 
Now that I am older God speaks to me all the time. He speaks to me in my sleep but I must Gaurd myself because Satan Speaks to me in my sleep and satan always lies.

God told me in a dream this week. I punish the wicked, My judgment is swift and decisive. I reward the Good children who study hard and I will raise them to my glory. I am the light that shines down apon you and all things to make them grow.

To hear God you must listen, pray and be quiet. God is poweful but he is quiet.

God also talks to me through the holy spirit. I know what words to say when someone is suffering. When I go outside, Ravems flock to me and do tricks… I feed small birds and they also flock and I am reminded of how Saint Francis loved all Gods creatures.
 
I feel thsi way soem times too. I don’t think that God always speaks directly to us, or at least not to me through one voice. Sometimes I see his guidance reflected in the people I meet or readings I discover seemingly “by chance.”

I am trying to attune myself more to eharing God’s voice by learnign how he speaks through reading scripture more prayerfully, and reading the writings of the saints whom have had more direct encounters with God; to see what words of wisdom I hear for myself in the advice he gave them or they gave to others. Also to learn how they discern signs of his majesty and guidance everywhere.

Several saints (such as Birgitta of Sweden in her series of *Revelations *books, Gertrude of Helfa in her writings, and Catherine of Siena in her Dialogue) have addressed the question to God, about why does he seem distant at times and his answer was something to the effect that he is always there even though we do not feel him. That to persevere and to continue to speak to him even when we feel alone gives us greater grace than persevering when we have continual confidence that he is with us.
 
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Madaglan:
I have a problem spiritually afflicts me: I have never heard God speak to my heart, nor in the less common audible fashion. This is really disturbing me because I wonder if I really am in communion with God. I pray that God might speak to me, and I try to clear my mind from all the anxieties and other junk that might be blocking out God speaking to me. But for some reason I still don’t hear anything.
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This concept is a major issue with me. I feel that too many people are being given the impression that if they don’t ‘hear’ God when they pray then they are not praying properly or have no ‘connection’ with God. This is not reflected in any of the saints lives or church teaching that I have read. I checked this out a bit in the past 'cos I am going to become an enclosed contemplative nun and I have never heard God ‘speak’ to me.

When I pray, sometimes I verbally converse with God, sometimes I say formal prayers e.g. The Divine Office, sometimes I think on/meditate on something specific and sometimes I just sit & be with God (quiet & still & open to God) that I’ve never been conciously aware of God speaking to me, whether in my heart or verbally, doesn’t mean that He is not acting on a deeper level or that my prayer is not pleasing to Him. God leads people by different paths some have many ‘consolations’ in prayer, some few and some none. Both St. Teresa of Avila & St. Catherine of Siena have written quite extensively on this subject and both St. Teresa of Avila & St. Therese of Liseaux went for years without ‘hearing’ God.
 
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