God Conversations with Tania Harris

We know that God can speak in dreams, but it can be a challenge to know what God is saying. How do we know if a dream is from God? What do the symbols in our dreams mean?   This episode on the podcast gives us an opportunity to learn from the dreams of others. Our host Tania Harris draws on the dreams of five different individuals to provide pastoral guidelines and advice that will help you interp...

Nightmares are common to us all. By definition, they are vivid and frightening dreams that have no resolution. You may see yourself being attacked by a fiendish character or find yourself in a death-defying situation. The experience can feel so real that your body has a physical reaction to it and you wake up sweating and traumatised. When children experience nightmares, they often dream about mon...

If I were to ask you, what was the one thing that was stopping you from being successful in your life, what would you say? Often we point to some sort of obstacle in our circumstances – a lack of money, a bad job or a poor turn of luck. But the truth is, the things in our lives that most thwart our progress are the obstacles inside of us . When we change us , we change our world. On this episode,...

We know that God is able to speak to us by his Spirit, but does God speak to those who don’t know him? You may have heard the incredible stories coming out of the Middle East where Jesus has been reported to be appearing to Muslims in dreams. Thousands of lives have been transformed as a result. Some missiologists say that around ¼-⅓ of Christians in the Middle East follow Jesus today because they...

Unforgiveness stops us from hearing God’s voice almost more than any other area. When we bear unforgiveness in our heart, we can’t get through to God and we won’t be able to hear him. Jesus spoke about unforgiveness many times. He said that if you’re coming to meet with God and you have an issue with someone, first be reconciled to them, then come to him (Matthew 5:23-24). In the Lord’s prayer, Je...

At God Conversations , our emphasis is on how to recognise God’s voice when he speaks back. However, this podcast is all about the other side of the conversation – how do we pray and how do we get better at prayer? We talk about what prayer is, what it does and most importantly, how we build the kind of relationship that invites two-way communication with God. Next Steps Join the journey to hearin...

Have you ever noticed that some people seem to hear from God every day, while others seldom hear from God? What is happening here? We know that God is talking, but is he talking to one and not the other? In this episode, I talk about these questions by discussing the impact of personality on hearing God’s voice. We’re going to look particularly at how people interpret and discern their experiences...

Loneliness has become the plague of the modern world. Even though our widespread telecommunication systems and sophisticated transport networks make us more connected than ever before, we’re also lonelier than we’ve ever been. Recent sociological studies show that the levels of loneliness in Western urban society today are unprecedented. Last year, the British Parliament even created a new positio...

Dr Craig Keener tells the story of his wife to be. He and his wife met in seminary, but he confesses he was a bit slow on the uptake… Medine waited years for the love of her life. During that time, God encouraged her not to give up through prophetic words from three different people: “You’ll marry a white man with a large ministry” they said. At the time, none of them knew the details of her situa...

If we can all hear God’s voice for ourselves, do we still need to go to church? The answer is,  no. You don’t need to go to church, visit a holy place or listen to a preacher to hear God’s voice. That was how it used to be under the Old Covenant. Back then, the only way to hear God’s voice was via his chosen mouthpieces – the prophets (eg. Numbers 11:24, Jeremiah 1:5,9). After the coming of Jesus,...

What is God saying to us in the midst of our pain? On the show today, we’re talking about the questions we ask when life goes wrong. Some people say you shouldn’t even ask God the why question, but that’s what we’re going to do in this episode. We’re talking about how asking God questions is an act of intimacy, what God’s heart is in the midst of our pain and suffering and what to do when there se...

Money, sex and power are some of the most powerful agents in the world. Any one of them can take down presidents and pastors, politicians and kings. History is littered with stories of people who have been able to conquer nations but not their own lives. So how does God call us to handle them? I’m going to be honest with you. Travelling the world, I have the opportunity to hear a lot of stories –...

If you have a God-dream in the African church, no-one thinks you’re unusual. Hearing God’s voice in dreams is common in this part of the world. Some churches even have a resident dream interpreter who offers counsel to congregation members! What can we learn from the African church where Christianity is growing at a rapid rate and where hearing the voice of the Spirit in dreams is a regular occurr...

You don’t need to be a Christian to live a good life. Plenty of my friends live a great life without God. They are well educated, hold successful jobs and live in beautiful homes. For the most part they enjoy happy, contented lives – even with a few bumps along the way.  In our Western world, it’s not difficult to live a good life. There are common sense decisions we can make, self-help books to r...

How could God have created the world in 6 days when geological data shows the earth is over four billion years old? How does the Bible’s description of human creation align with scientific evidence supporting evolution? If Adam and Eve were the first couple, where did their son Cain’s wife come from? These are the kinds of questions that come up today when Bible-believing Christians read the story...

Magnums are one of my all-time favourite ice-creams. I love the smooth Belgian chocolate and the rich ice-cream inside. But some years ago, Magnum launched a new marketing campaign, labelling each of their ice-creams with one of the seven deadly sins. There were names like “sloth” (caramel swirl ice cream and chocolate),“revenge” (raspberry ripple ice cream and dark chocolate) and “greed” (tiramis...

Can anyone hear God’s voice? What about those who don’t know him? Can non-Christians or those who’ve never been to church hear him speak? And what about those from other religions? On this episode, we’re privileged to have the esteemed Dr Amos Yong on the show to talk about some of these questions. Amos is an eminent theologian, a prolific author and researcher with over 20 titles based around the...

Have you noticed that God does a lot of talking at Christmas time? The first God-conversation with Mary was the one that started it all (Luke 1:26-33). But then God spoke a second time – to Joseph (Matthew 1:18-21), then a third time to the wise men (Matthew 2:12) and a fourth (Matthew 2:19-21) and fifth time to Joseph (Matthew 2:22). He also spoke to Elizabeth, Anna and Simeon. God speaks repeate...

Stories of God talking to his people abound throughout the Bible, but we usually only get the highlights. We read; “God said; ‘Go to Egypt’”, and then; “Mary and Joseph left for Egypt.” We’re not told how God spoke, how they knew it was him or how they decided to act on what they’d heard. This is how the blurb of my new book  God Conversations  reads. When I first read Bible stories about God spea...

A few years ago on an Australian reality talent show, a young man expressed his dream to be a famous singer. The emcee told of his dedication in preparing for this moment. His mother spoke of his deep passion and commitment. When the man took to the stage, the audience applauded in great anticipation. In spite of the lead up, the performance was awful. This young man had plenty of zeal, but absolu...

What would Jesus say to a terrorist? Just this week we’ve received news here in Australia of another terrorist plot. Our nation remains on high alert after police uncovered plans to allegedly bring down a commercial airline with a bomb or toxic gas. It’s difficult not to feel helpless every time we hear those kinds of reports. Most of us are not politicians, international diplomats or war strategi...

How do we get better at hearing God’s voice? The answer doesn’t lie in a formula or a set of rules: “Follow these 3 steps, take time out or spend 15 minutes with God each day.” Hearing God’s voice happens in the context of relationship, so if we want to get better at it, it’s the state of our relationship that becomes the focus. This week on God Conversations with Tania Harris we’re talking about...

Back in the first century, it wasn’t normal for men and women to be friends. They didn’t meet for coffee in morning tea breaks or discuss current affairs over the water-cooler. They didn’t sit next to each other in the synagogues and swap ideas about their theology. They certainly didn’t discuss their spiritual lives by the village well. That’s why the actions and behaviours of Jesus with the Sama...

What does prophecy look like in the contemporary church? How do we handle the fact that we can get it wrong when we try to hear from God? And what could God possibly be saying to someone when he gives her a vision of a yellow peacock? In this episode of God Conversations with Tania Harris , I’m excited to be talking to Professor Mark Cartledge, a British scholar who pioneered in the field of pract...

How do we know the will of God for our lives? It’s a question that is often hotly debated with one side emphasising the need for God’s direct guidance for our decisions and the other emphasising human free will (Listen to:  Is God’s will a Narrow Path or a 6-Lane Freeway? ). In this podcast, John Peachey from the Mornings show at Rhema New Zealand and I take a different tack. We explore this commo...