When I was lost in Italy, after my travelling companion made off with my wallet, passport and bank cards, I was drawn to sit in a cafe/reading room for esoteric/religious texts, I had a small amount of cash that I had kept in my pocket that was not taken, and bought a cup of tea and connected to their wifi and checked my facebook messenger.

My dear friend Pieter, a dutchman who lives in Lviv, Ukraine, to a very talented concert pianist, sent me this bible quote:

Philippians 4:6-7 (New International Version)

6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

I realised that this relates to the First Commandment - to not worship any other (no man, no idol, no fake god) than God. As an aside, I believe this includes deifying Jesus, which is a pagan doctrine that was originally promoted by the Catholic church. I believe it is false that God is not merciful and that we must use Jesus as an intermediary, but rather, that he is a model to follow, just like you say.

After this gift from God, my heart was greatly relieved. I started to regularly talk to God exactly as this verse explains to do, and all sorts of amazing things happened. The most striking example was when I was leaving Bologna, 'something' told me to stop and wait for a minute.

Then a car pulls up in front of the little country house by the side of the crazy little 2 lane main road I was walking on, partly I was just a little unnerved by the lack of adequate space for me to pass the sharp curves up ahead, but then the thought entered my head that I should stop.

Out of the car, a nice old italian lady came out, I had been completely without money at that point, and scavenging food wherever I could find it, mainly in bins along the sides of streets.

She invited me into the house, and introduced me to the other family members who were in the house, fed me an authentic pasta with real bolognaise, gave me a glass of home-brewed wine from their vinyard, and sent me away with a bag full of food that kept me going for the next day.

It was a miracle, truly, and I attribute it entirely to having opened myself up to hear His guidance. This one event cemented my faith permanently. The praying gave me great tranquility, alone, but when you hear the voice and it tells you the future, you cannot be in any doubt any more that the voice is the voice of God.

Meekness is vitally important. You can't have faith and be full of pride at the same time. We must have some pride, or we would just lay down and die, but if we are full of pride, we won't listen to the voice either.