WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.120 Hey guys, welcome back to the WK Podcast. This week we wanted to revisit an incredible 2 00:00:05.120 --> 00:00:11.280 conversation we had with Katia Adams at Wildfires Festival last summer. So without a further ado, 3 00:00:11.280 --> 00:00:16.240 let's take ourselves back to that 10 in Sussex, where Katia chatted with myself and Jessie. 4 00:00:20.800 --> 00:00:23.440 Guys, this is Katia. Everyone say, hey Katia. 5 00:00:23.440 --> 00:00:28.480 Hey Katia. Oh. Hello everyone, am I on? Yes. 6 00:00:28.560 --> 00:00:33.920 You are on. You got the comfy couch. Oh, what's up? You're very pretty good. 7 00:00:33.920 --> 00:00:38.320 It feels so good. I've got the same one. This is comfy. 8 00:00:38.320 --> 00:00:45.760 Yeah, all comfy. Katia, I could give you a pretty good introduction, but I feel like you might 9 00:00:45.760 --> 00:00:50.560 know yourself slightly better than I do. And do you mind just giving a little introduction? 10 00:00:50.560 --> 00:00:56.480 Who you are? What do you do? What does your day today look like? Sure. Yes, hi. My name is Katia. 11 00:00:57.120 --> 00:01:02.640 I am a wife and a mom. I've got a nine-year-old and an eight-year-old at home and we're just in 12 00:01:02.640 --> 00:01:08.880 the process of adopting a baby. So my life is about to get much more fun and exciting. 13 00:01:10.240 --> 00:01:17.280 I passed her churches. That's my day job. So my husband, Julian and I, we planted a church in 14 00:01:17.280 --> 00:01:23.680 Boston in America five years ago, led that. We overseen another church in the states called 15 00:01:23.680 --> 00:01:29.600 the Table Chattanooga. And then about six months ago, God moved us out of the states and we've 16 00:01:29.600 --> 00:01:34.480 just moved to Cape Town, South Africa. And we are currently in the process of planting the 17 00:01:34.480 --> 00:01:43.040 table Cape Town. So I lead a fun, busy life. My background is, I've been in ministry of one 18 00:01:43.040 --> 00:01:48.400 for more and other really most of my life. But my background is in medicine. So I'm a medical 19 00:01:48.400 --> 00:01:54.560 doctor. I used to do emergency medicine here in the UK. So there's a lot about me, but my life 20 00:01:54.560 --> 00:01:59.360 is wild. The life is wild. Yes, tiring, I should also say. Really? Well that's why we go to the 21 00:01:59.360 --> 00:02:04.720 town. Yes, thank you. I'll have a little nap during this conversation. And yeah, it's amazing. 22 00:02:04.720 --> 00:02:10.240 To have experienced a little bit of Katia in her pocket in my own life. She came to my church 23 00:02:10.240 --> 00:02:14.800 a few months ago and one of the things that she's amazing at is I'm going to try to get the 24 00:02:14.800 --> 00:02:20.240 my positioning well. I'm moving it up and down. One of the things you're amazing at is hearing 25 00:02:20.240 --> 00:02:27.760 from God. Does anyone want to hear from God more in their life? Oh yes, I do. Hearing from God 26 00:02:27.760 --> 00:02:34.160 can be confusing. There's lots of distraction around us. There's lots of voices around us. 27 00:02:35.600 --> 00:02:39.200 And I don't know if you've ever gotten your head about whether it was God or whether it's not, 28 00:02:39.200 --> 00:02:44.720 but that's often a big barrier for me from listening to God is I get caught up in the overthinking. 29 00:02:44.720 --> 00:02:51.120 Oh, is that God? Is that me? Is that not? And if you don't mind, just let's talk a little bit of 30 00:02:51.120 --> 00:02:56.800 about how we hear from God. How have you developed a practice of hearing from God? Is there any 31 00:02:56.800 --> 00:03:02.160 top tips for what that's like, what that looks like in your own life and how we can grow it ourselves? 32 00:03:02.720 --> 00:03:09.120 Sure. I will say I am not claiming to be an expert on hearing the voice of God, but like you 33 00:03:09.120 --> 00:03:16.080 guys, I am hungry to hear his voice. And so I am learning. And I think for me, 34 00:03:16.080 --> 00:03:22.720 is foundational to hearing from God is to recognize that he is a good dad and you are his child. 35 00:03:23.760 --> 00:03:29.680 I think that has been the most helpful framework for me. The Bible talks about us being children 36 00:03:29.680 --> 00:03:38.000 of God. And Jesus describes the Father as a good Father. And he actually uses the example of 37 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:44.640 worldly fathers and then compares them to God as a good Father. And what he says about worldly 38 00:03:44.640 --> 00:03:51.200 dads is, you know, if you ask for bread or a fish from a worldly father, you would expect to get 39 00:03:51.200 --> 00:03:58.560 that another scorpion or a snake. How much more so is God a good dad? How much more so does he 40 00:03:58.560 --> 00:04:04.880 long to give us good things? The point being there that Jesus gives us permission to understand 41 00:04:04.880 --> 00:04:10.400 what goodness looks like through a lens of human fathering. And I understand God to be even 42 00:04:10.400 --> 00:04:15.360 better than that. The reason I'm laboring this point is this, if you had a human dad who picked one 43 00:04:15.360 --> 00:04:20.720 of his children and said, you, my special child, are going to be the one who hears my voice. 44 00:04:20.720 --> 00:04:24.880 And the rest of my children, I don't like them nearly as much. They're nowhere near as important 45 00:04:24.880 --> 00:04:30.320 and therefore I will not be speaking to them. I will only speak through my chosen child. You would 46 00:04:30.400 --> 00:04:36.560 think rightly about that human dad. Gosh, they're a terrible father. They're abusive. That's not 47 00:04:36.560 --> 00:04:42.480 good parenting. Every parent who loves their children knows that it is important to speak to 48 00:04:42.480 --> 00:04:48.160 all of their children. And so when Jesus gives us permission to see God as an even better father 49 00:04:48.160 --> 00:04:54.560 than human fathers, what he's teaching us is the things that you would see as abusive on earth. 50 00:04:54.560 --> 00:04:59.760 God never does those things. Don't ever accuse him of those things. So in hearing God's voice, 51 00:04:59.760 --> 00:05:04.560 I love that so many of us put our up our hands. I want to get better at hearing his voice too. 52 00:05:04.560 --> 00:05:14.480 I think the foundational framework that he is a good dad. And therefore, he must want to speak to 53 00:05:14.480 --> 00:05:19.920 you as much as he wants to speak to anyone else is really important. Because then that opens up 54 00:05:19.920 --> 00:05:25.200 our hearts. We think, oh, I'm not trying to twist his arm to do something that he doesn't want to do. 55 00:05:25.200 --> 00:05:28.960 Oh, I'm not as special as my friend who's been prophesying for two years. So God must love 56 00:05:28.960 --> 00:05:33.680 her more. No, no, if you're a child of God and we all are, if we put our trust in Jesus, 57 00:05:34.480 --> 00:05:40.000 you were designed to hear him. And from then, I want to say the biggest thing that you can do 58 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:45.520 is practice. And we can talk more about that. Maybe I should just go lean into that. But 59 00:05:46.560 --> 00:05:52.000 once you know that you're his child, he's a good dad. He's not mute. He's not on mute. So 60 00:05:52.000 --> 00:05:59.280 he speaks. I would start really simply by spending time with Jesus. This is how I started. 61 00:06:00.320 --> 00:06:08.080 Spending time with Jesus with a note pad and saying, God, you've said that you're a good dad 62 00:06:08.080 --> 00:06:13.680 and you've said, I'm your child. By that, I know that I'm designed to hear your voice. Won't you 63 00:06:13.680 --> 00:06:19.520 speak to me, please? And then I kind of just listen. And the way I hear God and people hear him 64 00:06:19.520 --> 00:06:24.240 differently, sometimes some people hear him with an audible voice. I have never heard the 65 00:06:24.240 --> 00:06:30.960 audible voice of God. I would like to hear the audible voice of God. But often, I see a picture 66 00:06:30.960 --> 00:06:38.080 in my head, or I suddenly have a thought that drops more into my heart than in my mind that 67 00:06:38.080 --> 00:06:43.600 wasn't what I was thinking before. And so I write those things on a note pad. And it might be simple 68 00:06:43.680 --> 00:06:50.240 things like, I love you, or it might be more significant things like perhaps some detail about 69 00:06:50.240 --> 00:06:56.880 a friend or a loved one. I write it down. And I've learned over the years that God learns whether 70 00:06:56.880 --> 00:07:04.560 we're going to take him seriously or not. We earn trust with the Lord as we actually do or steward 71 00:07:04.560 --> 00:07:10.560 the initial thing that he's told us. So when I started practicing, once I would write something 72 00:07:10.560 --> 00:07:13.920 down, I would share it with a friend. And I would say, what do you think about this? Do you think 73 00:07:13.920 --> 00:07:18.560 this might be God? You say, yeah, maybe it's God. And then we'd pray over it. And then the next day, 74 00:07:18.560 --> 00:07:24.160 I try again. And the more you practice and the more God sees, oh, when I speak to her, she listens, 75 00:07:24.160 --> 00:07:28.880 and she takes it seriously, the more he's going to speak. So it kind of grows itself, the more you're 76 00:07:28.880 --> 00:07:34.800 willing to practice. I love that. I love how like it goes from the foundations of knowing that God 77 00:07:34.800 --> 00:07:40.000 is a good father and understanding that you're a child of God and the father wants to speak to me. 78 00:07:40.000 --> 00:07:45.040 And also that there's practical ways of doing that, like actually going and trying it and listening 79 00:07:45.040 --> 00:07:51.040 and writing it down and getting accountability with it and praying into it. And I love how you said, 80 00:07:51.040 --> 00:07:58.080 you grow that trust with the Lord and that takes time. Like with any person, like relationally, 81 00:07:58.080 --> 00:08:02.400 like you and I, like if we spent more time together, then I would recognize your voice more. 82 00:08:03.680 --> 00:08:06.640 So I think this is that's the same with the father and I just love how, 83 00:08:07.360 --> 00:08:12.400 yeah, you touched upon that. And I guess I was just wondering whether there have been significant 84 00:08:12.400 --> 00:08:18.480 moments in your life where it might have been like the first time or one of the first few times 85 00:08:18.480 --> 00:08:23.760 where you're like, oh, wow, I really heard you God. And I'm so grateful for that. If there's a story 86 00:08:23.760 --> 00:08:33.840 to love for you to share that. Oh gosh, there's a there's a few fun ones. Okay, I'll share this one. 87 00:08:33.840 --> 00:08:38.720 It's not one of the, well, okay, maybe I'll share with you the first time I ever heard God. 88 00:08:39.520 --> 00:08:49.920 And this really is, I was tiny. But I must have been about three or four. And I grew up in Iran 89 00:08:50.640 --> 00:08:57.040 for the first five years of my life. And it was a wartime between Iran and Iraq. So some of my 90 00:08:57.120 --> 00:09:04.160 earliest memories have have to do with some of the war situation bombs falling near our house. 91 00:09:04.160 --> 00:09:09.760 That sort of thing. And I have great memories from that time. It's not traumatic because I encountered 92 00:09:09.760 --> 00:09:17.920 Jesus. And I remember one night I was really afraid. And it felt like bombs were falling very close. 93 00:09:17.920 --> 00:09:22.000 And I remember thinking that we were definitely going to die that night. 94 00:09:22.640 --> 00:09:29.280 Slightly somber for a three or four year old to be thinking. And I remember my dad saying to me, 95 00:09:29.280 --> 00:09:35.600 we my parents were a wonderful man and woman of faith. And so my dad said to me, we're going to pray, 96 00:09:35.600 --> 00:09:41.920 you're going to see Jesus is going to watch over us. And I remember we prayed together as a family. 97 00:09:42.720 --> 00:09:50.560 And there was a moment where it wasn't audible. But it was like God spoke to me peace. 98 00:09:51.440 --> 00:09:56.640 That's what that's what I felt in that moment. I felt like I could hear him saying he sees me 99 00:09:57.280 --> 00:10:01.600 and he knows where we are and he's watching over us. And God was watching over us. And here I am 100 00:10:01.600 --> 00:10:08.000 to tell the story. That was the very first time I felt like something of God's thoughts towards me 101 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:13.760 dropped into my heart. There's been lots of other moments that I can tell you. So sometimes I get 102 00:10:13.760 --> 00:10:18.480 it right. Sometimes I get it wrong. I will say if you're journeying and hearing the voice of God, 103 00:10:18.480 --> 00:10:25.280 100% guaranteed you're going to get it wrong. Because as we're learning with anything in life, 104 00:10:25.280 --> 00:10:31.200 when you're learning it, you get it wrong. And that's okay. God is totally patient with us. 105 00:10:31.200 --> 00:10:36.160 He he's not disappointed or frustrated if we get things wrong. He's just excited that we come 106 00:10:36.160 --> 00:10:41.920 back and ask again. And when you you've got a baby and a baby's learning to talk and a baby's 107 00:10:41.920 --> 00:10:46.960 learning to walk, we don't see a baby who starts babbling rather than repeating your words 108 00:10:46.960 --> 00:10:51.920 perfectly and say, well, this child wasn't created to speak, unfortunately, because they got 109 00:10:51.920 --> 00:10:56.160 that word wrong immediately. So I know that this child is never going to speak. That that would be 110 00:10:56.160 --> 00:11:01.680 ridiculous. You see a child learning to talk and they make nonsense noises and their parents 111 00:11:02.480 --> 00:11:08.320 who and are these ridiculous noises. Because slowly over time, the more the child practices, 112 00:11:08.320 --> 00:11:14.480 the more those words go from nonsense to clear. And I think hearing the voice of God is like that. 113 00:11:14.560 --> 00:11:19.200 So I've told you a first time where I was very young, but I do want to say that time it was 114 00:11:19.200 --> 00:11:24.320 accurate. But I want to say there's been many years of journeying with God where I would write 115 00:11:24.320 --> 00:11:30.080 something down. I would tell a friend and they read the Bible more than I had. So they had it 116 00:11:30.080 --> 00:11:34.560 greater accurate and just standing of the voice of God than I did. And they would say, I'm not 117 00:11:34.560 --> 00:11:38.560 sure about that because you know, elsewhere in the Bible, it says this and that doesn't really 118 00:11:38.560 --> 00:11:42.960 add up. So I say, okay, that was wrong. Okay, I'm going to go back. God, can you speak to me again? 119 00:11:42.960 --> 00:11:47.440 I'm still trying to learn. And over the process of time, you find the more you practice, 120 00:11:48.640 --> 00:11:51.920 the more you get it right. You don't get it perfect, the more you get it right. 121 00:11:52.640 --> 00:11:59.600 I love that. That is just an incredible story. I just wanted to kind of bounce from that and ask, 122 00:11:59.600 --> 00:12:05.280 you know, there's definitely seasons in life where the father, like God's voice might feel like 123 00:12:05.280 --> 00:12:12.080 he's quieter or you can't hear him. Don't feel anything. Is God even speaking to me? Does he even 124 00:12:12.160 --> 00:12:19.680 care about me? What am I getting wrong when that's happening? Like, if I don't feel like I'm hearing 125 00:12:19.680 --> 00:12:25.200 the father and I'm like really longing for it and I'm trying everything that I can, what are some 126 00:12:25.200 --> 00:12:31.520 things that I might be getting wrong? Oh, it's a great question and it's got so many different 127 00:12:31.520 --> 00:12:40.400 layers to it. I will say there are times where God intentionally gets quieter and I'm going to 128 00:12:40.480 --> 00:12:46.960 come back to that in a second. But I think sometimes we have a preconceived idea of what God's voice 129 00:12:46.960 --> 00:12:53.040 is going to sound like and we're looking for that one thing and it might be that God is talking 130 00:12:53.040 --> 00:12:57.760 to us in lots of other ways, but because we're just looking for one thing, we're missing it. So 131 00:12:57.760 --> 00:13:03.680 I might say hearing the voice of God means that I hear an audible voice. Well, if I said that, 132 00:13:04.240 --> 00:13:09.200 you know, I'm sitting here 42 years old, I've had decades of learning to hear the voice of God, 133 00:13:09.200 --> 00:13:14.080 but I wouldn't have had any experiences of hearing the voice of God if I had only been looking 134 00:13:14.080 --> 00:13:18.640 for the audible voice of God because I've never heard it, but God has talked to me in lots of other 135 00:13:18.640 --> 00:13:24.640 ways. So one of the things that I encourage people in practice is to recognize as human beings, 136 00:13:24.640 --> 00:13:29.520 we have lots of different love languages. There are people who've got the love language of touch 137 00:13:29.520 --> 00:13:35.040 and there are people who have, you know, acts of service and words of affirmation, different 138 00:13:35.040 --> 00:13:41.040 love languages. Well, God speaks to us in a variety of ways because He knows our personalities. 139 00:13:41.040 --> 00:13:45.440 So for some of us, God will speak audibly, but for some of us, He'll speak in pictures. For some of 140 00:13:45.440 --> 00:13:50.720 us, it'll be a quiet voice of certainty on something that you couldn't possibly have known. For 141 00:13:50.720 --> 00:13:56.240 others, they will see signs and lots of places. I've got friends who God talks to them through 142 00:13:56.240 --> 00:14:01.520 numbers and to me, it's gobbledygook. God doesn't speak to me like that, but for my friends, it does. 143 00:14:02.000 --> 00:14:06.400 I want to say when you're approaching this, I really want to encourage you, don't have one fixed 144 00:14:06.400 --> 00:14:14.160 idea because God has got all sorts of creative ways of speaking to us. And He wants to speak to us. 145 00:14:14.160 --> 00:14:18.960 So I would say if you're struggling and you think God isn't speaking to me, read your Bible 146 00:14:18.960 --> 00:14:22.880 because one of the main ways God speaks to us is through scripture. I want to be really clear on 147 00:14:22.880 --> 00:14:30.000 that. John 10 talks about the us being the sheep and recognizing Jesus, the shepherd's voice. 148 00:14:30.320 --> 00:14:35.840 I want to say before you can accurately assess the voice of God in the prophetic, you must have 149 00:14:35.840 --> 00:14:41.920 understood his voice in scripture because this is the baseline. So if you haven't heard his voice 150 00:14:41.920 --> 00:14:47.360 through scripture because you've never read the Bible, then you won't know if it's God or not 151 00:14:47.360 --> 00:14:52.080 because you won't be able to recognize his voice. It's like if I spend time with someone 152 00:14:52.960 --> 00:14:58.560 and I listen to them enough in person when I'm not with them and they phone me and I pick up the 153 00:14:58.560 --> 00:15:04.640 voice, the phone, I recognize them, even though I can't see them because I've spent time with them 154 00:15:04.640 --> 00:15:10.080 in person. And so their voice is now recognizable to me. Reading scripture is like that. It's like 155 00:15:10.080 --> 00:15:15.360 spending time with the person so that when you're not necessarily reading your Bible and you feel 156 00:15:15.360 --> 00:15:20.720 something drop in your heart because you've learned his voice in person, if you like, in the pages of 157 00:15:20.800 --> 00:15:28.240 scripture, it helps you identify his voice in the prophetic. So I want to put that out there, 158 00:15:28.240 --> 00:15:34.160 but I will just say as a caveat to all of this, there are seasons where God does get intentionally 159 00:15:34.160 --> 00:15:42.880 quiet. And I think that's because he is drawing us into a place of closeness with him. 160 00:15:44.080 --> 00:15:50.400 There's a beautiful passage of scripture which talks about God leading them into the desert to 161 00:15:50.400 --> 00:15:56.240 woo them. And there's something of God sometimes getting quiet to draw us closer because he wants to 162 00:15:56.240 --> 00:16:02.320 whisper to us. And there's another scripture where where Jesus gets intentionally quiet and in 163 00:16:02.320 --> 00:16:09.440 that quiet, he's drawing out from the disciples their deepest thoughts. Sometimes when Jesus gets 164 00:16:09.440 --> 00:16:16.160 quiet is because he's trying to draw from you, your deepest beliefs about him. And so if you're 165 00:16:16.160 --> 00:16:22.720 struggling, try the first part. Am I just getting really now reminded in how he speaks? Look wider, 166 00:16:22.720 --> 00:16:28.080 read more scripture. Listen to when your heart starts burning with excitement about something because 167 00:16:28.080 --> 00:16:32.960 that's often the voice of God. But if you really feel like, now I've tried all the things and it's 168 00:16:32.960 --> 00:16:39.440 quite ask God, are you trying to woo me? Help me lean in in this moment, worshiped lots. When he's 169 00:16:39.440 --> 00:16:46.720 quiet, I think worship is a great key. Oh, it's so good. It's so practical. This is why I love it. 170 00:16:48.240 --> 00:16:52.560 And this scripture that backs up all of your points, just as you're speaking, I felt 171 00:16:53.440 --> 00:16:57.520 the scripture in Luke where it's speaking to the context of money, but it says, if you're faithful 172 00:16:57.520 --> 00:17:03.920 to the little, you're faithful with much. If you're obedient in the little, you can be obedient in 173 00:17:03.920 --> 00:17:10.400 much. And it's almost like the Lord invites us to trust in the little moments, which releases 174 00:17:10.400 --> 00:17:15.600 bigger moments. I know I'm learning this. I'm not far away from being in the youth to myself 175 00:17:15.600 --> 00:17:21.280 from 21. So I'm still getting a grasp of all that is to listen to God's voice myself. And 176 00:17:22.240 --> 00:17:28.480 it's so freeing to know that also failure is part of the process. It's not the end of the process. 177 00:17:28.480 --> 00:17:33.600 That's one thing that's kind of shifted a little bit within culture is that failure is the end. 178 00:17:33.600 --> 00:17:38.720 Like once you fail once, cancelled, you're out when actually failure is always meant to be the 179 00:17:38.720 --> 00:17:45.840 beginning and a part of the process. It's so free. And so we're actually going to pivot a little bit 180 00:17:47.120 --> 00:17:52.480 into a little bit of ministry time where we get to practice. It wouldn't be a good, 181 00:17:52.480 --> 00:17:58.480 but it would also be a better seminar if we get to practice it ourselves. And so 182 00:17:59.440 --> 00:18:03.600 we're just going to do that. So if you don't mind coming up on Keyes and Zoe as well, 183 00:18:04.640 --> 00:18:10.960 I can tell you it had a little sense before we started that people are actually going to receive 184 00:18:10.960 --> 00:18:17.680 the gift of prophecy. What does it mean to prophesy? It means to hear from God and speak it 185 00:18:17.680 --> 00:18:19.600 pretty much. It's a simplified version. 186 00:18:21.520 --> 00:18:25.440 Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. As you can see, there wasn't really much of an 187 00:18:25.440 --> 00:18:31.600 official ending. We led into a wonderful time of ministry and prayer. And I'd actually really 188 00:18:31.600 --> 00:18:37.520 encourage you if you have any questions, take this to God, but also those trusted leaders around you. 189 00:18:37.520 --> 00:18:43.680 But again, we'll see you in the next episode. Bye guys!