Priscilla Shirer: Do You See God in YOUR Life?

Priscilla Shirer speaks at the Propel Women’s Conference to discuss how we have become desensitized to our blessings. Listen as she teaches that due to this, we often do not even recognize God’s presence in our lives.

Our prayer for this channel is that you may find encouragement, hope, and a renewed sense of purpose and strength in Christ. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” – Hebrews 13:22

But you can read a verse a day to keep the devil away until you are blue in the face.
But if you read the scriptures with a your heart
with your eyes, not open. You can be filling your days with the duty of religious activity and never catch sight of the lover of It occurs to me that those
of us who live particularly
in this part of the world where we
have been overwhelmingly blessed by the presence and the power of God among us. We’re here
in this country. You and
I can go on a Saturday to a Christians women event like this
1,
or we can go to a Christian bookstore when we could pick up any bible in any translation in any language, or we can turn on Christian radio and listen to gospel if you like that or contemporary Christian music if you like that.
We have available to us. Could it be that we have lived in this neighborhood of blessing for so long that when the train of God’s glory wants to fall unusual way when he wants to show up in power and in glory that we have become so used to it that we don’t even recognize his blessing anymore.
that we’ve become so desensitized to god’s presence among us that it doesn’t cause us
as it always should for us to fall to our knees and adoration, our arms, outstretched and
worship that God would visit us in this unique beautiful way.
Lord help us to never be desensitized to the train of your glory. Yes.
And in the old testament or in
the new testament, rather, in the book of Luke Luke’s Gospel, I love so much because Luke writes about people who encounter the train of God glory in
the person of Jesus Christ. He gives a story after story, encounter after encounter of Jesus meeting with people and transforming their life.
He included a handful of these stories so that you and I would be not only reminded of their encounter with Jesus, but recognize that they are not exceptions to the rule.
They are examples for us of the encounters that we should also expect to have with Jesus.
And listen, this should be your goal. Not just hearing about him, but experiencing him.
That should be your goal, like your appetite should be wet, your heart should hunger for more than just a knowledge of who Jesus is.
You ought to come to the place. I ought to
come to the place in my relationship with the Lord.
We’re more than anything else. We wanna see them with our own eyes.
We wanna hear his voice with our own ears that the same god who divided the Red Sea in the Old Testament, the same god who raises Lazarus from the dead in the New Testament.
Same god that those things, we don’t wanna just celebrate it in the lives of other people.
We wanna stand in line to
have it encounter with god like that ourselves. Luke writes about encounters.
because he wants to wet our appetite to have an encounter with Jesus Christ.
because listen, y’all, we have wasted our time if all we’ve done is come here on this sat Saturday to applaud what Jesus did yesterday.
I’m so glad about what my god has done yesterday, but I wanna see him today. Anybody interested?
I wanna see him in my own marriage and in my own finances and raising my kids and on my job and in my ministry.
I wanna see and encounter the power of the almighty living god. That’s what today is about.
It’s to make you hungry again. It’s to wet your appetite again.
It’s to not let when the day ends, something to end in your life, but really to launch you forward to a brand new beginning and an adventure with Jesus Christ.
So Luke writes about encounters, and he writes during a time when the nation of Israel is experiencing national depravity and decay.
They have been oppressed by oppressors who have come in and stolen from them much of what they valued.
They are living in a in a place of oppression and a place of destruction and Luke writes to them during this time when their nation is in trouble.
And I don’t know if if you’ve noticed or not,
but our nation is in trouble.
We are living during a time of moral and social decay and decline like never before.
And listen, the more god is marginalized, The more he’s segmented to
the periphery of society, the more he has completely ignored or disregarded, the more we will continue to see an influx of chaos
and an influx of destruction in our nation. But Luke doesn’t just write to people who have trouble.
Luke is writing to people that have individual personal struggles. They’ve been waiting on a hero to show up.
They’ve been waiting for the kingdom of god to be at hand.
They’ve been waiting for the prophecies of all to come to flourish and
that there would be a
a messiah a savior who would come and rescue them from all that they’ve been experiencing nationally, but also the things that they have been experiencing personally.
So I
know our nation is in trouble, but I didn’t really come to talk to you today about what’s happening in the White House.
I wanna talk to you about what’s happening in your house.
underneath the roof of your home, the trouble
that might be happening in your marriage, the thing that causes the tears to fall down from your eyes in regards to your kids
or your finances or your health or on your job or in your ministry, you like the children of Israel, like me, been waiting on a hero, somebody who can come in and speak life to the dead places and refresh the dry places of our life.
Luke is writing for people who need an encounter with a God like that.
And I just want to
tell any of you that might be in a struggle personally underneath the roof of your own house and the landscape of your own house and you’re in a struggle, you’re in a time like Luke writes to where man things are just plain old flat, out difficult.
I just want to suggests to you the possibility that sometimes sometimes your difficulties are less about the enemy being against you and more about god wanting to show you what it looks like when he’s for you.
Sometimes the stuff that you are facing, the stuff that I’m facing that are difficult, it’s less about the enemy being against you.
And sometimes, It’s just about god allowing a stage to be set in your life to where when he shows up, you will never ever doubt again that you’ve had an encounter with Jesus.
So the children of Israel need an encounter with the Messiah.
They need an encounter with Jesus Christ, and finally, Jesus arrives on the scene.
After 400 years of silence between the Old Testament and the New Testament, Jesus arrives on the scene after centuries of waiting, after prophecy, desiring to be fulfilled.
Jesus shows up on the scene. Their hope has finally been fulfilled. But here’s the tragedy.
When he comes, He does not come as they supposed he would. He is not on a throne.
He is not riding a white horse.
He is not coming in power and vengeance and authority that they had mirrored in their oppressors that they had pictured that their Messiah would come him.
No. He is born as a baby.
All of that deity and authority and miraculous working power that they longed for was packaged in the skin of humanity and
a small human at that.
This is not what they wanted. It’s not what they recognized.
It wasn’t the expectation they had built up in their heads.
So when he came, they did not recognize him.
When he showed up because he was not in the package that they had pictured in their minds, He didn’t come in the package they had prayed for.
He had come in a
different way because he did
not meet their expectations when he showed up, they did not recognize him.
In the passage that we read Jesus is being brought into the temple, he is being carried by his mother, Mary Joseph, is along for the ride as well.
They have come with Jesus about forty days old into the temple.
They are in a religious gathering where people have come to perform their religious duties And all the people who are gathered that they are in the presence of the
one they prayed for and do not know him when he comes.
Would you please notice that they’re not just anywhere?
They are in the temple and still don’t recognize the presence of God.
I wanna suggest to you that it is possible to be at Propel and not see Jesus.
I wanna tell you that it is possible for you to be in your church every single Sunday, which I pray you are, but you can be in your church and not have an encounter with Jesus.
I wanna tell you that I’m so glad many of you are in bible studies.
Stay in bible study, but you can rediversify to keep the devil away until
you are blue in the face.
But if you read the scriptures with a heart and heart with your eyes, not open, you can be filling your days with the duty of religious activity
and never catch sight of the lover of your soul. Never have an encounter and experience
with Jesus. All these people were in the presence of Jesus Christ and did not know him when he came.
Because oftentimes, many times, When the Lord comes to minister to you, to speak into your life circumstances, he will come in a way that is not the way you expect.