I Used to Love Conversations with God, Then I Met Jesus

A gentle, honest reflection on why Conversations with God once felt like truth and how Scripture led me to the real voice of God through Christ.

About 30 years ago, I read Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch. I was in a deeply introspective season, spiritually open, intellectually curious, and longing to understand the deeper truths of human nature. I wasn’t reacting to religious hurt. I was responding to a hunger: for peace, for wisdom, for something that made sense of the pain, beauty, and complexity of life.

At the time, Conversations with God felt like a lifeline. I reread it every year, and for a long stretch of my life, it became something of a personal anthem. Its words felt expansive and liberating. They gave me permission to slow down, ask questions, and believe that God was near, accessible, and even conversational.

I remember highlighting lines like:

“You are goodness and mercy and compassion and understanding. You are peace and joy and light.”

It felt empowering. It felt safe. It gave me a sense of control over my spiritual experience, one where guilt, sin, and judgment were gently removed from the conversation. I didn’t realize it then, but I had embraced a version of God who always agreed with me.

Years later, when I came to truly know Jesus through Scripture not just in theory, but in relationship, I began to see things differently. Not with bitterness toward the book, but with gratitude for how God had used even my wandering to lead me home.

I Loved That God Felt Kind, But I Mistook Agreement for Love

What moved me most about Conversations with God was how non-threatening its portrayal of God felt. This God didn’t correct me or confront me. He affirmed me. He told me I was already perfect. That there was no such thing as sin. That my desires were divine.

At the time, this felt like love, but in hindsight, I see it more clearly. It was agreement, not transformation and agreement, while comforting, isn’t always love.

When I encountered the God of the Bible, the one who spoke to Moses from the burning bush, who walked with Adam in the garden, who wept over Jerusalem, and who laid down His life for mine, I saw something deeper. His love included correction. His nearness included holiness.

He didn’t tell me I was perfect. He told me I was precious and in need of rescue.

“For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”—Isaiah 55:9 (NLT)“God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”—Romans 5:8 (NLT)

I Trusted My Inner Voice, But It Wasn’t Always Trustworthy

One of the book’s core messages was that truth is internal, that we can know God by trusting our feelings, instincts, or “inner knowing.” For someone like me, who was naturally introspective and intuitive, that was deeply appealing.

But that “inner voice” isn’t always benevolent. Sometimes it’s fear. Sometimes it’s unresolved trauma. Sometimes it’s self-protection disguised as spirituality.

I once felt strongly led to walk away from a painful relationship, convinced it was divine wisdom. But with time and deeper healing, I came to realize I hadn’t yet faced my own patterns or pain. It wasn’t discernment. It was self-protection dressed up as spiritual clarity.

Scripture showed me another way. God’s Word doesn’t just echo my preferences, it shapes my heart and teaches me to test every spirit, every voice, even my own.

“There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.”—Proverbs 14:12 (NLT)“The human heart is the most deceitful of all things…”—Jeremiah 17:9 (NLT)

I Thought I Had Peace, But It Was Fragile

I clung to the book’s sense of peace. I even wrote quotes in journals, repeated them as affirmations, and used them to ground myself in moments of anxiety. The peace it offered was real, but it was shallow. It helped me feel better temporarily, but it didn’t heal what was underneath.

When I began walking with Christ, I experienced a different kind of peace. It wasn’t dependent on my emotions or energy. It came from knowing I was forgiven, loved, and no longer carrying the weight of self-salvation. It held me through grief, uncertainty, and spiritual warfare in ways that mantras never could.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives.”—John 14:27 (NLT)“Since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.”—Romans 5:1 (NLT)

It Was a Gateway, But Not the Truth That Sets You Free

I don’t regret reading Conversations with God. God used that season of spiritual exploration to awaken something in me. It cracked open my heart to the possibility that God was near and that He wanted a relationship, not just religion. For that, I’m thankful.

But over time, I needed more than openness. I needed truth. I needed a foundation that wouldn’t shift based on what felt good in the moment and I found it, not in myself, but in Scripture.

When I opened the Bible again, slowly, cautiously, I didn’t find the harsh God I feared. I found Jesus, gentle, honest, present, and deeply personal. He didn’t just comfort me. He called me to follow Him and that’s when the real healing began.

“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”—Jeremiah 29:13 (NLT)“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”—John 8:32 (NLT)

Now I Walk with Christ, Still Learning, Still Being Loved

I’m not writing this as someone who has it all figured out. I still wrestle with questions. I still have moments where my old thought patterns resurface, but now, I have a Savior who walks with me, gently correcting, always loving, never leaving.

Jesus didn’t offer me a conversation of convenience. He gave me a cross and then He carried it for me. He gave me Scripture, not to control me, but to set me freen and He gave me His Spirit, not just to comfort me, but to lead me into truth.

That’s the kind of God I had been looking for all along and He was never far.

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”—John 10:27 (NLT)

If You’re Seeking

If Conversations with God has spoken to you, I honor your journey. I really do. I know what it’s like to hunger for spiritual clarity, to long for a love that doesn’t shame, and to want peace in a noisy world.

My only invitation is this. Don’t stop seeking. Keep asking questions. Open your heart even wider. Please consider that maybe the truest, deepest, most faithful voice isn’t the one inside us, but the

One who made us.

He’s not angry. He’s not far. He never left.

He’s not silent.

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; He rescues those whose spirits are crushed.”—Psalm 34:18 (NLT)

"Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.”Proverbs 4:23 (NLT)

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