Priscilla Shirer: You Can Hear the Holy Spirit

We have modernized Jesus today. The modern version of Jesus that we have crafted.
He has made him watered down. Now he’s tolerant of sin without the expectation of holiness.
Our Jesus is politically correct. Listen to me.
Are you listening? Yeah. Yeah.
We live in a day and age where we have become more interested in being impressive than being holy where we are more interested in making sure we have likes and friends and the applause of people more than just being flat out holy by making sure that political correctness is not our main goal that we’re not after the applause of people were after the applause of heaven.
You got to choose to be ye holy.
And so I implore you sisters by the mercies of God to walk in a manner worthy of the calling by which you have been called.
So the spirit rested upon him. Let me just show you quickly.
Verse 26 says that the spirit revealed to him.
So that means the spirit not only rested upon him, the spirit revealed to him. Old preachers called this illumination.
It’s shining a spotlight. It’s when you’re sitting in church on a Sunday and your pastor opens up the Bible to preach and man, he just reads, or she reads that first two verses that, that they’re gonna be preaching from.
And you sit straight up in your seat because you feel like it’s all about you.
Anybody know what I’m talking about. It’s where you’re trying to figure out.
How did the church bug my house? How did they know? That’s the illumination of the spirit?
It’s when he, it’s when the old truths of scripture scripture leap up off the page and for lack of a better way.
Word, it’s when they grip you in your soul where you see how that intersects with something you are personally facing today.
That is the revelation of the Holy Spirit. This is what the Holy Spirit does.
He reveals, he illumined, he shines the spotlight.
Simeon was there that day because he had been put promised by the revelation of God’s spirit.
It wasn’t just a random promise. It was his promise.
Oh, you’ve had that happen over the course of these days that we’ve been gathered.
You probably have had that happen where something that has been said, it wasn’t just great to hear it.
It gripped your soul. You knew it was an assignment for you.
It was a conviction that you knew the Lord was gonna send you out of here with that assignment because the Holy Spirit revealed it to you.
God’s spirit rests. He reveals and then he ruled Simeon because it says in verse 27 that he came in the spirit to the temple, meaning the spirit told him on this day to go into the temple.
And it says that he came into the Spirit under the into the temple under the conviction of the Holy Spirit.
When the spirit said, go Simeon said, yes sir, he submitted to the leadership of the Holy Spirit and he was in the right place at the right time to run right smack dab into the messiah because he was submitted to the leadership of the Holy Spirit.
Do you know that the more you ignore, ignore that still small conviction, the quieter, that voice will become not because he is no longer speaking, but because you built a callous of disobedience, you have muffled the voice of the Holy Spirit.
So it is better to be so sensitive to God’s Holy Spirit that sometimes you give when maybe he hasn’t even prompted you to give.
But it’s okay because to the best of your capacity, you are obeying the Holy Spirit of God just to keep those airways open and clear from the disobedience that will begin to muffle his voice in your life because more than anything else, the enemy wants you disconnected from the privilege of hearing the voice of God.
Y’all. This is what separates our faith from every other so called faith on the face of the earth.
It’s that our God is alive. It’s that he speaks.
It’s that we have the privilege to hear his voice, never downplay or minimize the value, the beauty, the lavish grace of this privilege that we have to hear the voice of God.
So the Holy Spirit rested upon Him.
There are two other things that I want to point out to you that were symbolic or was, were significant about Simeon that opened up his eyes to see Jesus as he was to be seen in this package, that other people downplayed and found insignificant that they totally ignored because they didn’t think that their king would look like that.
Here’s what opened Simeon’s eyes. Not only that he was in the spirit when he came into the temple.
And by the way, here’s another rabbit trail.
Sorry, if we came to church in the spirit, it would change our experience in church.
Can I just say that because while everybody else was looking at that poor couple wondering why in the world they were in their midst and discounting Mary and Joseph Simeone came in the spirit and he was less concerned about who was wearing what and who was driving what and who sat where and who was in his seat.
And whether or not it was hot outside and they had to walk forward to go take their Children to Sunday school.
They were, he was less concerned about his convenience. Whether or not the preacher preached good was irrelevant.
To him, he was looking for Jesus, whether or not the microphones were perfectly balanced or the lights were exactly as they should be.
Whether or not the L D screens were on full display that day.
Whether or not the ushers were or were not, kind was not his priority.
He had come with his eyes peeled for Jesus. We would be less critical and less skeptical.
If we came to church in the spirit, then the pressure wouldn’t be on the person who’s on the stage because you didn’t come to see them.
You came to see Jesus. Okay, verse 27.
So he comes in the spirit and then look what happens in verse 27, the parents bring in the child Jesus.
Jesus comes in in his parents’ arms, look at the savior, look at how the manifest presence of God arrives on this remarkable day.
Watch him show up into the experience of this aged saint named Simeon in a very personal way and onto the landscape of human history.
He arrives in the arms of his parents.
There is something about the way we see Jesus when we look at him through the well worn paths that have been hewn, doubt by our parents, our grandparents, our great grandparents, our forefathers, and our foremothers.
Spiritually speaking, the people who have gone before us and have walked with Jesus just a little while who have spent their lives serving him.
I am always nervous when I see a young group of Christians with their little skinny jeans and their lattes and their avocado toast, which I love, by the way, I’m just always a little nervous when I see them instagramming all their religious experiences without the oversight of some spiritual parents.
Because y’all we have modernized Jesus today.
The modern version of Jesus that we have crafted, he has made him watered down.
Now, he’s tolerant of sin without the expectation of holiness. Our Jesus is politically correct.
We need to see Jesus coming in the arms of our parents, the people who have gone before us, the folks who have walked the road a little while, who know what hymnals are, who sang the good old hymns that were based in some theology.
We gotta make sure that our new praise and worship songs. I love them.
We gotta make sure they’re rooted in some good theology and so the package may change.
Listen y’all, I still go to the kind of church it’s come a long way, but it started when I was one year old, the church that I go to now.
So, you know, back in the day, there was no way in the world I would have ever gotten on a stage with, with, with pants on.
Are you kidding anybody know what kind of church I’m talking about.
We still have a few people in our church. A few mothers of the church.
If anybody knows what I mean jeans in the church. Are you kidding?
They came in in their suits.
I’m talking about where the skirt matches the jacket, like they were bought together.
And not only that but underneath that suit she’s gonna have some actual pantyhose on.
I’m not talking about Spanx with the feet cut out.
I mean, pantyhose, the ones with the girdle top. Anybody know what I’m talking about? Anybody remember that?
And she’s gonna have a handbag in her hand and that handbag, that clutch is going to match that jacket, which matches that skirt, which matches her patent leather shoes that she has on her feet closed, toe, patent leather shoes.
But the outfit is never complete and you know, it ain’t no regular hat, right?
You know, it’s got something, it’s a feather or a net or something that’s sitting just like this and she’s gonna worship God.
Anybody know what kind of church I’m talking about.
And I love when she comes up to give a testimony about what she has seen.
The Lord. It might not be modern, it might not be new and improved, but it’s the Jesus of Abraham Isaac and it’s the God of our forefathers.
There’s some things you cannot learn on Instagram.
There are some things you just need to be with the mother of the church.
Somebody who’s walked the road a little bit longer than you to make sure you can bounce off of her or him from the true, theological, biblically based, unchanging venerated word of God.
So the package may change, but the principles never do y’all. Jesus was never politically correct.
He was always a revolutionary. He never dismissed sin.
He called it out in, in grace, but most certainly in truth, he was never watered down.
He always said I am the only way I am the truth and I am the m the life he didn’t acquiesce or tolerate he loved.
But he did say repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.