He Was Always Speaking, But I Was Always Talking
For 15 years, I cried out to hear God personally. I believed He still spoke, but I could not understand why I was not hearing Him the way others seemed to. Looking back now, I can see that God was always speaking, but I was always talking.
I wanted to share my life with you in excerpts, but life took off on me, and it has been ten months since my first blog. You will hear all about those adventures as I continue to write, but today I want to talk about something that shaped my life for years: I desperately wanted to hear God, but I did not know how.
That became part of my healing, part of my story, and eventually part of the assignment God gave me to help others recognise His voice for themselves.
A Belief That Shaped Me
I have been in church since I was born. I even earned an Associate Diploma of Theology. Growing up in a conservative church, I believed the gifts of the Spirit and hearing from God were things from the Bible that disappeared after the disciples died. I did not know how much that belief would affect the way I related to God.
How many Christians, and I mean seasoned Christians, are still living without that intimate one-on-one relationship with the God who sacrificed His Son so the veil could be torn? Jesus opened the way into the Holy of Holies, yet many of us still live as though someone else has to go in and hear God for us.
We may not say it that way, but we often live that way.
Old-covenant patterns of law, distance, performance, and striving can still creep into our new-covenant thinking. I want to explore more of that in the weeks to come, and what I mean by it. What God is showing me now about what the Bible actually says has been mind-blowing.
I wish my eyes had been opened earlier.
But nothing is lost in the Kingdom, so my life now becomes a lesson of what not to do for others. Haha.
It also gives me empathy for those in similar fights.
Jesus Did Not Leave Us With Less Access
In John 14:12, Jesus said those who believe in Him would do the works He did, and even greater works, because He was going to the Father.
Jesus went to the Father so Holy Spirit could come and live in us. That means we do not just read about the works of Jesus. We are invited to continue them with Him.
Paul’s Foundation Was Revelation
Paul’s story fascinates me because he did not learn Jesus the way the other apostles did.
He did not walk the dusty roads with Jesus before the cross. He did not sit beside the disciples and ask them to explain every parable. He was not there when Jesus fed the multitudes, calmed the storm, or stood outside Lazarus’ tomb.
Paul encountered the risen Jesus.
Paul makes it clear that the gospel he preached was not handed down to him as a second-hand message from people. He received it by direct revelation from Jesus Christ (Galatians 1:11–12).
He also explains that after God revealed His Son in him, he did not rush to Jerusalem to consult with the apostles. Instead, he withdrew into the Arabian desert, later returned to Damascus, and only went up to Jerusalem three years later (Galatians 1:15–18).
That matters to me.
Paul still honoured the apostles. He still went to Jerusalem. He still met Peter. He still became part of the Church. But his foundation was not second-hand religion.
It was revelation.
God taught Paul who Jesus was.
And I believe He still teaches His people today.
When I Saw That God Still Speaks
Later, I started going to a Pentecostal church where the gifts of the Spirit were prominent. That was where I began to see that God was still speaking through His people today.
At first, I wondered if people were making things up. Then I started seeing words given that no person could have known. I saw people receive words that spoke directly into situations no one else knew about.
I stood at the front of the church for prayer one day and set my feet so rigid and strong because I was determined not to be pushed over just so it looked like I had been slain in the Spirit.
Well, that did not work out.
I went down like a potato sack.
Holy Spirit ministered to me simply by comforting me, and I lay there sobbing as He wrapped His arms around me for many Sundays.
I started seeing things in the Spirit. I started having dreams every night, and I learned to interpret them. I could receive rhema through the Bible, through sermons, and through conversations.
So my issue was not unbelief anymore.
I believed God still spoke.
I had seen enough to know He did.
But I still could not hear God in the way others seemed to. I did not have instant words for people. I did not hear Him chatting with me in the intimate way I longed for.
I wanted to hear Him personally.
For 15 years, I cried out for that kind of intimacy with God. I wanted more than knowing about Him, praying to Him, or receiving moments of revelation through Scripture, sermons, and conversations. I wanted the closeness of hearing Him speak to my heart.
When Prayer Became Striving
Years later, when I was laid up with CIRS, I stopped praying.
That was a big thing for me.
I was an intercessor. I followed Mark Batterson’s book Draw the Circle and would walk around the church, my house, and the charity shop seven times every day. Then, on the seventh week, I walked seven times seven around one of the buildings each day.
I prayed constantly.
I prayed while driving in the car. I prayed early in the morning at church, sometimes from 6am until people started arriving for the 2pm service. Prayer had become something I did with discipline, force, and determination.
When I got sick, I declared healing. I went to healing rooms. I received deliverance ministry prayers. I had Jezebel and many other spirits prayed out of me. I had so much faith that I began buying things as though I was already healed and simply waiting for my body to catch up. I was still setting myself up for the life I had planned: locksmithing around Australia, doing markets on weekends, bushwalking, painting scenery during the week, and finally living a wide-open life instead of the constricted one that being a workaholic had forced on me. I had signwriting put on my vehicle, added solar panels and a fridge to my already customised setup, and spent thousands of dollars preparing for a future I believed was about to begin.
I was a workaholic by nature, and without realising it, I had taken that same workaholic nature into my prayer life.
I thought I was being faithful. I thought I was being diligent. I thought I was pressing in.
But I never allowed God to be heard.
He was always speaking, but I was always talking.
I could not hear Him clearly because I did not know how to stop striving long enough to listen. My prayers were full of words, warfare, declarations, petitions, and pushing through. I knew how to talk to God, but I did not yet know how to sit with Him, receive from Him, and let Him speak.
That is why I believe He needed to show me things in dreams. My waking mind was too busy, but when I slept, the noise finally stopped.
So one day I said to God, “I have to stop praying now. You heard me the first time. Praying to You is drawing my heart to stone rather than closer to You. So know that I still believe. Know that I still love You. But I can’t keep having this one-way conversation anymore. It is drawing me into depression.”
Then came the brain fog years.
I lost words. I lost clarity. I lost the ability to understand the way I used to. Each day felt like a daze.
How God Began Teaching Me to Hear Him
Eventually, there were two main ways God began teaching me to hear Him.
The first was journalling.
On one of my clearer days, I grabbed a pen and paper. Psalm 91 speaks of dwelling in the secret place, hidden and protected in God, where the enemy cannot touch me. That meant I could sit with Him in a place where I did not have to listen to anything damaging or accusing. So I sat with Him. I gave thanks, because Psalm 100:4 speaks of entering His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Then I began to write.
I would ask God a question and let the first thoughts come onto the paper.
At first, I did not know whether it was God or me. I simply wrote.
One of the first questions I asked was, “How do You see me in Heaven? What name do You call me?”
After a few weeks, I read back over my journal entries and realised there was no way those words were coming from my own thoughts.
Jesus was speaking to me.
When Imagination Became Encounter
Then I wanted to hear God without the pen.
So I sat back and imagined myself in a garden with Jesus. Isaiah 26:3 TPT says, “Perfect, absolute peace surrounds those whose imaginations are consumed with you; they confidently trust in you.” Ephesians 1:18 TPT also speaks of “the eyes of your imagination” being illuminated by the light of God.
That mattered to me because I had always thought imagination was just daydreaming. It belonged in the world of unicorns, fairies, made-up stories, and wandering thoughts. But I began to realise that when I use my imagination with God, He can take over that space and show me things I could not see with my natural eyes. Some people might call that vision. For me, it became a way to focus on Jesus and allow Him to reveal what was unseen.
At first, I just sat with Jesus.
I enjoyed His company. I enjoyed being close to Him. I knew Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit lived in me. I knew I was their temple.
After a while, I would ask a question, and Jesus would look at me with so much love as He answered. At first, it was still small words. Intermittent words. Gentle words. But they were there.
One day I said, “This garden is claustrophobic.”
I had needed the garden at first. It felt protected, like a cocoon around us. But over time, what had once felt safe began to feel like thorns instead of beauty.
So I said, “Jesus, let’s go to the beach.”
Then we began walking along the beach or sitting on the dunes.
That was the place where He really started talking to me.
My heart began to open.
One day I said, “Let’s go to the top of the cliff.”
That is where the adventures began.
From eagles, to flying, to going above the earth, Jesus began showing me what He had in store for me. He was not just giving me information. He was building relationship. He was teaching me to recognise His voice, His presence, His ways, and His heart.
Why This Matters to Me Now
That is why I care so deeply about helping people recognise the voice of God for themselves.
Not so they become isolated or unteachable, but so they stop living as though God is far away or only accessible through someone else.
Jesus made the way open.
Holy Spirit lives in us.
Father invites us close.
Adventures with God is one of the ways I now get to help people slow down, ask questions, listen, journal, imagine with Him, and discover that God is much nearer and more personal than they may have realised.
