What if the mistake you made while trying to follow God wasn’t a failure after all?
In this podcast episode, Colleen Orchanian, author of Whose Voice Are You Listening To? (on spiritual warfare), shares how she discovered what God can do with our mistakes.
Sometimes our mistakes come from failing to recognize the difference between God’s voice, our own voice, and the voice of the enemy. Sometimes they come from a lack of clarity and we misinterpret God’s will.
Colleen’s story shows us how God uses our mistakes. Instead of thinking that your mistakes in discernment mean you’ve failed God, hear Him speaking to you in this episode of Footsteps to Heaven.
Colleen Orchanian is an author, podcaster, retreat leader and spiritual director. She has served as Director of Religious Education, She is founder of Results Through Training, designing and delivering training workshops in corporate America.
Are you wondering?
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How can I tell if God is calling me to do something or if it’s just my own idea?
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How do I know whether I’m hearing God’s voice or my own thoughts?
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What are the signs that God is leading me in a new direction?
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What should I do when I’m unsure what God wants me to do with my life?
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How can I discern whether I should stay in my current job, ministry, or calling?
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What should I do when I realize I’ve made the wrong decision while trying to discern God’s will?
Chapters:
00:00 How God Calls Us Without Us Realizing It
02:05 How Colleen Returned to the Catholic Church
03:29 How God Speaks Through Other People
06:55 Recognizing God’s Call Through Repeated Themes
07:16 Discerning a Call to Spiritual Direction
08:17 Learning to Hear the Holy Spirit
09:35 How Prayer Helps You Hear God’s Voice
10:35 Letting Go of Control in Discernment
11:20 When You Get God’s Will Wrong
12:17 How God Uses Your Mistakes
14:16 Why Mistakes Are Not Failures
15:18 Knowing When God Wants You to Let Go
16:16 How Inspiration Reveals God’s Will
17:35 Hearing God When You Don’t Like the Answer
18:18 God’s Voice vs. the Enemy’s Voice
19:07 How God Opens the Next Door
20:38 When Your Calling Becomes a Burden
22:16 How God Prepares the Way for Your Calling
24:16 Learning to Wait for God’s Timing
25:30 How to Recognize God’s Voice
26:06 Recognizing Discouragement and Spiritual Attacks
27:14 Is Fear a Sign You Shouldn’t Do It?
28:09 How to Know What Is Drawing You
31:34 When You Don’t Get What You Thought God Wanted
33:18 Healing Misconceptions About God the Father
36:02 Spiritual Warfare and Whose Voice You Hear
38:01 Closing and Prayer
KEY TAKEAWAY: Discerning God’s will requires patience in prayer, surrendering control, and paying attention to what God is teaching you — even if you don’t immediately recognize His voice.
📚 Visit Colleen Orchanian’s website: colleenorchanian.com
Connect with her on Facebook
Excerpt:
Colleen Orchanian: I had a situation once where I felt God was calling me to start a group at our parish — an anxiety and depression support group. And I was absolutely certain He was not wanting me to be the facilitator of the group. He only wanted me to find some other people to lead it and get out of the way.
I was certain of that. So I did. I found two people to lead the group, and I gave them the format that I thought was going to work, and I left them to it, and it did not work.
So I stepped back in. I had the wrong format. It wasn’t the people as much as it was the wrong format. But I stepped back in, and now having done that for a year and a half, I know that the idea that I was not supposed to lead that group was mine. That was not God’s idea.
It’s kind of like He’s saying, “Okay, if you want to go with that, you go with that idea, Colleen, and try that out, and then you’ll figure out that I actually have this for you. This is the work I’m giving you to do. So sometimes I was right that God wanted me to start the group. I was wrong that He didn’t want me to be the leader of it.”
So we can have mixed messages. I was feeling that I didn’t need anything else on my plate, and God was saying, “Well, this is something I’m giving you to do. So you’re just going to have to do it.:
And I did, and it’s been beautiful, because my experience as a spiritual director helps me in this particular group. I’ve never experienced anxiety or depression. That’s not been one of my struggles, thank God. But as a spiritual director, I can hear what they’re saying, and I can speak to that in a spiritual way, in a holy way. I’m not trying to give them techniques to overcome depression because that’s not what this group is about.
So all of that was a discernment process.
It’s a lot of prayer, a lot of saying, “What did I do wrong here?” and listening for what I might have done wrong, where I listened imperfectly, where I discerned my voice instead of God’s.
Terry Modica: Yeah, and we need to remember that when we make mistakes, when we incorrectly discern what God wants, that’s not a failure. We should not be beating ourselves up for it. It’s a learning lesson.
God, let us get into there. I mean, yes, He doesn’t go against our free will. But yeah, there have been times when I really wanted to do something — there was an opportunity in my parish to serve in a way that I really wanted to do. And I just felt like, “Well, of course God wants this.” I was still running Good News Ministries full time, but I felt such a strong pull to doing it. And I finally heard God say, “Yes, go ahead and do it. And then you’ll find out why you really don’t want to be doing it.”
I served that way for a couple of years. It was as RCIA Director. I loved being an RCIA Director. And it was just something that I had a hard time letting go of. Until it became so uncomfortable. God also works that way.
When it becomes so uncomfortable to keep going forward, that’s a sign that God is saying, “Nope, this is not it.” Not anymore anyway.
We need to figure out the difference between the discomfort that comes from “Oh, I don’t want to do that. I don’t think I can do that. I don’t really want to step out and do that.” Versus “I want to do it, but I’m just not feeling it anymore. This job is frustrating me. This ministry is causing me to feel dead and uninspired.”
That’s one of the ways I discern God’s will: if I have the inspiration that comes from the Holy Spirit, an inspiration about something that makes me feel alive. Then that’s what I move forward in until it no longer makes me feel alive. And then I know it’s time to let go.
Colleen: Yeah, there’s an excitement that we have when we’re inspired by the Holy Spirit. Yeah. And now there are times too, though, when I had to discern whether or not to retire.
My husband had retired a year or two before me and kept wanting me to retire. But I loved my job at the church. It was the best job I ever had. So I didn’t want to retire.
But there came a point where I had to say, “Okay, God, You’re going to have to decide this for me, because if it was up to me, I’m not going to do it.”
And so what I did is I made a commitment that I would pray for the month of February to see if God wanted me to retire or not. I prayed every day, whenever I could in adoration or in front of the Blessed Sacrament, asking God every day, “Do you have an answer?”
An answer? No answer until the very last day of February. And I heard very clearly, not as a voice, not as anything audible, but in my heart, I heard, “It’s time to retire.”
And I remember my internal response was fine because it is not what I wanted to do. But it was very clear it was what God was calling me to do.
So sometimes you do hear a voice from God that you don’t like. But if you’re truly trying to discern his will and desiring to do his will, even when you hear what you don’t want to hear, you’re going to know it’s Him, because the devil wasn’t going to tell me to do something that I didn’t want to do anyway.
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This episode is a companion to Terry Modica’s workbook “Knowing God’s Will and Doing It Well“.
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