Priscilla Shirer – Adequacy in Christ

“Because this is war. The fight of your life. A very real enemy has been strategizing and scheming against you, assaulting you, coming after your emotions, your mind, your man, your child, your future. In fact, he’s doing it right this second. Right where you’re sitting. Right where you are.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman’s Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

Second Corinthians chapter three says, not that we are adequate in ourselves as to consider anything is coming from ourselves.
But our adequacy, our competence comes from God. Do you know this is what made Paul Boast?
He said, I boast in my weakness.
I mean, he said, listen, I get so excited when I know I’m not enough, I get so thrilled when I know that I’m getting ready to have to do something that I do not have enough skill to handle.
He said, I love that because when I present my weakness to God, it becomes a platform on which His strength can stand up and demonstrate itself through my life.
Y’all. This is what will draw people to Jesus. This will draw you.
You see when they know that you couldn’t have done it, when they know you didn’t have enough money for that, enough time, for that, enough patience for that, enough skill for that.
When they know you’re not connected enough for that.
And when they realize that you filled a hole that honestly your own skill and talent could never have filled on its own.
But they watch God come through for you when they see God’s power demonstrated in our lives like that, it draws people to see who is this God that can give you that kind of ability to operate with that much confidence in that kind of a scenario.
Jesus shows us that supernatural ability is what will draw people to him.
But not only did Jesus have supernatural ability because look at verse 22 as he is teaching, look at the people’s response.
They were amazed at his teaching for he was teaching them as one having authority and not as the scribes, Jesus, not only had supernatural ability, y’all, he had supernatural authority.
You see the people that were gathered there that day, they had heard good teaching before.
Do you remember the scribes, the Pharisees, the sauces. These were people that were astute in religious law.
They knew the, knew the Torah backwards and forwards.
They knew all 600 plus laws that were included in what needed be followed in order to be a good Jewish subject.
They had been skilled in this since they were little boys and these people had taught the people day in and day out.
And so the folks that were gathered there that day, they had heard good teaching before.
But then this newcomer showed up and it says that when he opened his mouth, it wasn’t necessarily that the teaching was absolutely completely different.
It was that the words that he spoke were dripping with an authority that they had never heard before.
An authority that made the hair on the back of their neck stand up an authority that made their skin prickle with chill bumps because they heard teaching before.
But they had never heard that anointing before come from the teaching that was spilling out of somebody’s mouth.
Do you know what will make you the kind of school teacher that will draw all people to Jesus?
It’s not because you’re a good teacher. There’s a good teacher down the hallway.
It’s because when you interact with young people, the words that you say and the, the little unspoken prayers that you pray because you can’t pray out loud in the school district, whatever it is that you do, it is carrying the anointing of God to pierce past the ears of the student and into their heart.
This is what this is what makes you and I different from every other person that is working on our jobs or shopping in our supermarket, participating in our activities or running the businesses that we run is that we don’t just act as business women.
We are not just women in ministry. We don’t just teach the class.
We don’t just as a lawyer try the case. We don’t just as a doctor soothe the hurting body.
What we do is make sure that we are carrying the anointing and the favor and the presence of God with us everywhere we go and in everything we do.