God Conversations with Tania Harris

One of the most challenging times to hear God’s voice is in seasons of suffering and ill-health. Clarity is difficult to find in the midst of pain, fear and doubt. On this episode, we talk to someone who understands this more than most. British author, communicator and friend, Kate Nicholas joins us on the GC podcast to talk about her rollercoaster ride of cancer diagnoses and how she heard God sp...

Lyn Packer thought that one day she’d end up in a mental institution. As a young prophet, she experienced revelatory encounters on a regular basis, but didn’t understand the nature of her gifting. Her church wasn’t much help either since they didn’t believe in modern-day prophecy. So Lyn just thought she was weird. Mixed in with the confusion, Lyn was suffering the effects of sexual abuse from the...

Does our personality have anything to do with hearing God’s voice? How does our human imagination, thinking and intuition interact with the Spirit? Our guest on this show Mark Chironna, calls our human interaction with God a “dance,” where God never violates our humanness and the journey to wholeness is the place where theology and psychology meet. Mark calls himself a dysfunctional Italian from N...

Have you ever heard God speak in a riddle or a pun? God is a masterful communicator with a great sense of wit and humour! We see God’s communicative ability from the beauty of creation. The same God who breathed diversity and creativity into the natural world continues to speak with the same qualities by his Spirit. “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. D...

Ps. Adam Dyer grew up with the “Titanic Gospel.” Here, the only thing that mattered was people’s “souls.” The “ship was going down” so, you had to get as many people to heaven as possible before they died. This perspective failed him as a child and, along with the moral failure of his pastor (his father!), led him through a process of deconstruction as a young adult. Later, God called him into pas...

 God Told Arthur Guinness to Make a Better Drink and other Famous God-conversations in History God is and always has been a talking God. The Hebrew Scriptures alone record over 3500 different God-conversations. Then in the New Testament, we read of at least another 30 more. But God continues to speak beyond the stories of ancient Israel and the early church. God has spoken throughout history and t...

We’re called to become more like Jesus. But does that mean we’re supposed to become more like a Middle-Eastern man? When we become a Christian, we learn that the goal is to grow “more like Jesus.” As a young person, I used to wonder what that meant. I wasn’t very enthused by the thought that I should aim to become like someone other than myself! So what does it look like to become spiritually matu...

If God truly is the Creator, that makes him the supreme artist. We’ve all enjoyed the beauty of a world that never ceases to amaze and delight. But if God sent his Spirit to fill us and speak to us, what does that mean for human creativity? How does having God’s creative Spirit make a difference in our lives? On this episode, we’re talking all things Holy Spirit and creativity. Our guest Ps. Bruce...

There’s a lot of talk around discipleship at the moment, but what does discipleship actually look like? We know it’s all about following Jesus. But if Jesus isn’t here, how do we follow?  This is where the Holy Spirit comes in. Before Jesus left the planet, he said that the Spirit would come to  remind us of everything Jesus said and then to speak about things to come (John 14:26, 16:13). So to fo...

A Dream of a Child’s Toy and Feet Full of Maggots One Christmas morning, Nicola had a dream that would change her and her family’s life. It involved a Buzz Lightyear toy, a child in the African slums and feet infested with maggots.  In this podcast episode, Tania talks to Nicola Neal about her journey into ministry, beginning in a church in the town of Bath, UK and finishing in the slums of Africa...

I grew up in a church that believed that God had stopped speaking outside of the Bible. This teaching, known as Cessationism, is seen throughout the church world today and has appeared periodically in history. But the question is, why would someone believe God has stopped speaking, given that the New Testament is clear that the Holy Spirit was given to everyone to hear from God on the Day of Pente...

The concept of hearing God’s voice for yourself bears enormous potential, but it is also fraught with pitfalls. Indeed, the entire scope of history tells of the problems associated with claims to divine revelation. Torrid tales of manipulation, deception, and even murder have all been justified by the claim: ‘God told me’. The proliferation of a wide range of unorthodox beliefs and abuses of power...

Hearing God’s voice may well be the most powerful experience on earth. Think about it. How was the earth created? It began with God speaking (Gen. 1:1). How are people healed? It is the word ‘sent forth’ that overcomes disease and death (Ps. 107:20; Mark 7:34; 9:25; John 11:43). How are people saved? It is made possible through the living Word, Jesus, who became flesh to atone for our sin (John 1:...

During my time in church life, I’ve heard some pretty interesting prophecies. Some of them have been couched in a strange “King James” language. Others have been so vague in content that they count for little. But I’ve also received some breathtakingly accurate prophetic words that are unmistakably from God. Prophecy is when we hear God’s voice on behalf of another person. We become like a “messen...

“Listen to the Holy Spirit” is not the usual advice you hear at a business seminar. Yet this is the approach pastor and business consultant David Balestri takes every time he goes into an appointment. It’s a practice he’s also applied to his own career with great success. On one occasion, God told him to say just one word to address the lack of productivity at a company who was struggling to meet...

What does hearing the voice of the Spirit look like in the business world? How do you balance the tension between working with the natural and and the supernatural in starting and building a business? On this episode of the podcast, we talk to someone who knows the answers to these questions… Meet the man behind the coffee! Peter Irvine cofounded the Gloria Jeans Coffee franchise in 1996. By the t...

In a dream, a man saw a vision of Jesus. To his surprise, Jesus gave him a “Liverpool kiss” (a head-butt in English football terms!) The dream led him to make a decision to follow Jesus. But how does a dream about a head-butting Jesus result in someone becoming a Christian? Dreams and visions are the most common form of God-conversation in the Bible, but they’re the one we know least about. Dreams...

In church life, there seems to be two groups of people. There’s the group who seem to hear from God easily… God’s speaking about this; God’s speaking about that. It’s like God is speaking every day! Then there’s another group who struggle to hear God’s voice. They heard God speak five years ago and there’s been silence ever since.  Which group do you fall into?  If you find it hard to hear God’s v...

God is speaking to Muslims all over the Middle East and he’s doing it through dreams of Jesus! You may have heard the stories. In a vision, Jesus appears in a robe of blazing white. The dreamer is filled with a deep sense of love and is drawn to follow him. Missiologists tell us that between 1 in 2 and 1 in 3 Muslims have become Christians because of a dream. The Spirit is at work drawing people t...

“My Mum was clinically dead for 8 minutes. She saw a beautiful light and moved towards it, but then she heard a voice say, ‘you don’t have access here.'” “An inmate who was deaf in one ear prayed for his friend who was blind in one eye and they were both healed.” How is God real for us? Stories like these reveal the reality of God and his heart for people. But how does this work for us? I can stil...

“Everybody’s looking for something,” the Eurythmics once sang. Augustine referred to a “god-shaped hole” within each one of us that longs to be fulfilled. There seems to be a universal human need to find meaning and purpose in our lives. But where do we find it? During the time of the first Christmas, people were searching too. The wise men, King Herod, Simeon and Anna were all “looking for someth...

“The root of disappointment is misplaced expectations. The question is, what should our expectations of God be?” – Lynn Moresi What does God promise when we sign up to follow Jesus? I still remember as a young woman dreaming of the future. We had such expectations for “greatness.” God was going to give us the desires of our heart. He was going to make all our dreams come to pass. The future was gu...

Recently I completed my PhD in practical theology, examining the theology and practice of hearing God’s voice. Since then, people have asked me about my thesis and what I’ve learnt from it. As with all PhDs, it’s a long and sometimes complex read, so instead of you having to fossick through 80,000 words, we’re bringing you the highlights! In this podcast, I look at three surprising theological ins...

“This is a season of divine paradox. It looks like everything is ‘Stop, stop!’ but in God everything is ‘Start, start.’” (Ps. Vicki Simpson) What is God saying in the midst of this pandemic? It’s been nearly six months since we first heard about the Coronavirus. But during times like these – disasters, big world events our thoughts turn to heaven. God what are you doing? We know that God is not th...

“There are places in my heart that I am still hiding from God.” (Andy Wallis) Why are we afraid to hear from God? I suspect it is because we fear what God might say. Most of the time we ask God to speak, we steer the conversation towards the things we need in life: S hould I take this job; should I buy this house; should I marry this person? God is interested in these questions, but he is looking...