Priscilla Shirer: How to Find Your Identity in Christ

Priscilla Shirer shares an empowering message about the uniqueness of who we are and who God has created us to be. Jesus Christ alone holds the right and authority to define our identity. We are His children, and as His children, the Holy Spirit lives on the inside of us and gives us power . . . power that is our responsibility to use.

Welcome to the Going Beyond Ministries with Priscilla Shirer YouTube channel! Our ministry is focused on the expository teaching of Scripture. Our desire is not only to see people understand His written Word but for all to experience His Power!

Priscilla Shirer has equipped believers through her Bible studies, films and books including Discerning the Voice of God, God is Able, and two New York Times Bestsellers – The Resolution for Women and Fervent: A Woman’s Battle Plan for Serious, Specific and Strategic Prayer. Her movies include War Room (2015), I Can Only Imagine (2017), Overcomer (2019), and The Forge (2024). These theatrical releases are tools designed to inspire audiences to walk with Jesus.

Listen to me, you are not defined by your past. You are not defined by your behavior.
You are not defined by your failures. You are not defined by your struggles.
You are not defined by your feelings. You are not defined by your circumstances.
You are not defined by the here today god tomorrow, false ideologies, and philosophies of our current culture.
You are who god says you are, point by period. That doesn’t change.
Lord Jesus, we your sons and your daughters, we are literally sitting on the edge of our seat in anticipation of what you came to say to us tonight.
Father, we are so glad that each other is here, but we didn’t really come to see each other.
We came to see you. So speak, father. We are listening in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I will tell you that I was a little bit of a mischievous teenager.
I gave my parents of the four of us, I gave my parents a run for their money.
I was the one that was always coming up with stuff to do as a teenager.
And one of the things I decided to do was my freshman year in high school, I decided that I would change my name.
I came up with a little nickname, and I decided to change my name.
Now just to give you a little context for that choice, I went along with my 3 siblings.
We all went to a little private school around the corner from my parents’ house, the house they still live in to this day, Bricolo Christian School was the name of the school.
And we went there from kindergarten to 8th grade, than our freshman year we transferred to the neighboring public school district.
So just to give you context here, the largest my class ever was in this private school was about 20 kids at its largest.
By the time I got to our 8th grade year, there were about 13 kids in my 8th grade class.
9th grade year, so I transferred to Duncanville High School.
It is one of the largest school districts in Texas, actually.
It’s more like a college campus, really, than a high school.
When I transferred from 13 students at Recolo Christian School to the freshman year at Duncanville High School, there were 753 kids in my freshman class, not the high school, just the freshman class is 753 kids.
So it was a completely different context for me.
And these were gonna be people who most of whom did not know me. I didn’t know them.
So I thought this would be a fun opportunity to change my identity entirely.
I would change my name, give myself a brand new name.
I had heard of a student that I’d met through other acquaintances at another school her initials were d k and people called her d k.
I thought it was clever. So I adopted this nickname. My new name was d k.
Now I remember telling Nicole, my friend from youth group at church. We had grown up in church together.
She was already in the Duncanville High School School District. So I remember telling her about my plan.
She’s the only one that knew about my little plan because I knew she was gonna be the connective tissue between me and most of the new friends I was gonna be making.
So I said to her, listen, girl, when you introduce me to people at this new school, don’t introduce me as Priscilla.
Go ahead and introduce me as DK. She said, girl, what? I said, yes.
Introduce me as as DK. And so I remember showing up that very 1st day of school.
I remember walking into this brand new huge new world, this new campus.
And I remember her introducing me to people.
She would look at me inquisitively to make sure I was still still down with this.
This was still my plan before she began to introduce me one person after the other as d k.
I introduced myself to my teachers and my new friends as DK.
And to make a long story short, it caught on.
For the la for the 4 years that I was in school, There was not one student.
There was not one teacher. There was not one school administrator, not one principal, not one athletic coach that did not refer to me as DK.
Most people didn’t even really know that my name was Priscilla. Everybody called me DK.
In fact, just anybody in that whole season of my life.
So people or court coaches from other schools where we would sort of compete with them in different capacities.
They all called me DK. It was monogrammed on all my athletic uniforms, It was monogrammed on my letterman’s jacket.
Every single person in that season of my life called me DK.
In fact, still to this day, if someone refers to me as DK, on social media or someone yells across the mall, hey, DK or across the aisles at the grocery store.
If anybody refers to me as DK.
I automatically know it’s somebody that knew me in that season of my life because everybody called me DK.
Now this didn’t bother my parents too much.
They didn’t really say anything about it until one day, I remember getting sick at school.
I had a fever, so they had to call my mom to come pick me up.
I remember laying on that little cot behind the curtain that they pull in the nurses station, and I remember hearing my mom come up to the to the counter there at the nurses’ station.
I remember hearing her say I’m here for Priscilla, and I also remember the nurse saying, who?
I remember hearing them toggle back and forth for just a few moments before they decided that she was here for d k slash Priscilla.
So my mom took pick me up, took me home.
She didn’t say anything to me for the 1st evening because I didn’t feel well, nor the next day, nor the next day.
She waited till I was 100% until she hemmed me up in the corner with the mama eye.
Y’all know what I’m talking about when I say the mama eye.
And she said now, Priscilla, I wanna be clear about something.
Me nor your father have minded this whole little nickname business. It hasn’t bothered us at all.
We know it’s just been a little high school experiment. No big deal.
Been all in fun, but she said, I wanna be clear about something. Graduation is coming.
And when graduation comes, they’re gonna have a ceremony. Somebody’s gonna have a my phone in their hand.
They’re gonna say your name, and your name is gonna be amplified in that room.
She said not only that, but they’re gonna hand you a piece of paper.
And she said, when they hand you that piece of paper, there better not be a d or a k anywhere in sight.
And she said, here’s the reason why.
She said, the reason why is because it doesn’t matter what everybody else calls you.
It doesn’t even matter what you call yourself.
There’s only 1 or 2, me and your father who have the right and the privilege to give you your name.
Only the one who gave you life has the authority to identify you.
Flew over from Dallas, Texas earlier this afternoon because I want to tonight just speak a word of identity over you.
I want so much to remind you who you are.
I want you to know that it doesn’t matter what other people have called you.
That it doesn’t even matter what you’ve called yourself.
There is only one who has the right and the authority to tell you who you are.
I want you to know that other people are qualified to name you.
In circumstances, they may have made things difficult for you, but they actually aren’t powerful enough to define you.
I want you to know that your history may have marked you, but it is not authorized to label you.
I want you to know that what your mama called you or what your daddy did to you, It may have hurt you, and it may actually take real emotional work and years to kind of come up out of the the unhealth that it rooted into your life.
I understand that. But I want you to know that it does not have the power to shape the totality of who it is that you’ve been called to be Listen to me, you are not defined by your past.
You are not defined by your behavior. You are not defined by your failures.
You are not defined by your struggles. You are not defined by your feelings.
You are not defined by your circumstances. You are not defined by the here today gone tomorrow.
False ideologies and philosophies of our current culture. You are who god says you are, point by period.
That doesn’t change. Your father has given you a name. Did you know that?
He has said that you are a chosen race. You’re a royal priesthood.
You are a person that has been redeemed and chosen adopted and qualified. You are not a mistake.
You are not an afterthought. You are not a liability.
You have been created in the very image of god. That means every aspect of your physicality.
It means the skin you’re in. It means the hair texture that is on your head.
It means the structure of your body every unique aspect of your physicality and my physicality has been made in the very image of god.
That means that any person or any system that seeks to diminish the value of the uniqueness of who I am is actually anti god because I’m an impression of the creative genius of God.
But not only that, It not only means that physically you’re created in the image of god, but did you know that even your personality is a unique expression of the creative genius of god?
You are made and fitted with the uniqueness of your personality and your temperament in the image of god You are not introverted by mistake.
You are not extroverted by mistake. You are who god created you to be.
Even your weaknesses aren’t a liability.
They are actually a unique fitting by god because your weaknesses just become a platform for the strength of And then when we surrender all of who we are physically and in our personality, when we surrender all we are to god and place faith in his son, Jesus Christ, and give him our body and our up residence on the inside of us.
So then we are now becoming temples of the Holy Spirit of God.
God’s actual presence lives on the inside of me.
That means that with this presence in me, well, now I’m an overcomer is what I am. I’m an overcomer.
This issue of identity, y’all, is so important because the enemy wants so much to twist and turn your identity, your image of who god has created you to be.
Because you will either live up to or you will live down to whatever you believe to be true about who you are.
So this issue of identity is so critical that it is one of the theological threads that we see threaded all the way out throughout the pages of scripture from the beginning of to the end.
There are some, uh, theological principles that relegate themselves to one sliver of the Bible, maybe one book or one testament, but not identity.
Identity is all the way from the beginning in Genesis.
You read about it all the way to the end, all the way to the maps at the end of the book.
You see this issue of identity.
From the very beginning, we see god call an obscure man named Abraham, pluck him up out of an obscure town.
And the very first thing he does when he finds this man is change his name.
He changes his name from Abraham to Abraham.
And after he changes his name, y’all, he changes the GPS coordinates on his destiny, because that’s what happens when god changes your name.
He changes where you’re headed. He changes where you’re going to end up.
He changes Abraham’s name, and he says Abraham, I am now going to create out of you a brand new group of people.
They will be mine and I will be theirs. I will set them apart.
They will now not be who they used to be.
They will bear my name, my provision, and my promises, and my blessing will be their staple.
They will be mine and I will be theirs if only they will choose to align themselves with their new identity.
If only they’ll think in alignment with their new identity, if only they’ll behave in alignment with their new identity, not how they feel, Not according to their circumstances, not what other people are saying about them, but if they will just act like who I’m calling them, is who they really are.
They will see my blessings explode in their lives.
But the children of Israel and the Old Testament are exactly like us.
If you read throughout the old testament, you see that over and over again, y’all they’re seduced by the idols of the culture.
Over and over again, we see the children of Israel running in fear from foreign enemies over and over again.
We see that they keep on forgetting who they are.
They don’t live up to the standard of who god calls them to be.
They keep on bending and bowing and settling and living below the standard that they were called for.
That they were freed from 400 years of slavery to receive the blessings of god.
They don’t get to enjoy him.
We literally find in these two verses that I’m gonna read to you in just a second, we find that children of Israel actually on the land of milk and honey.
They are on the real estate of canon. And can’t enjoy the blessings.
They’re in the place where god’s blessings are supposed to abound, but they can’t enjoy him simply because they didn’t this identity issue straight.
And so y’all, we live in a day and age where if you have not noticed where the enemy is running rampant with this issue of identity.
We can tell this because everything is being redefined.
The things that god has already given definitions to, everybody’s trying to redefine.
But you are who god says you are. You are who he has created you to be.
But everything for the children of Israel and everything for you can completely change.
When god meets with one person and reworks their view of their identity, It’s the hinge that changes the course of a life.
Y’all, let’s pray. Lord Jesus, thank you so much for your word.
I thank you that it is living and even sharper than a need to edge sword.
Lord, you have come to speak to us, and so I ask father that you will.
I pray lord that the words of my mouth and the meditation of my hearts will beat acceptable.
I love what miss Joyce prayed last night, father.
She said, do not let me say anything that is not exactly what you want your daughters to hear.
Speak lord in Jesus’ name. Amen.
As was mentioned, um, I have the privilege of raising 3 sons.
Jackson is sixteen and then Jerry Junior fourteen, and then we have Jude. I’ve told y’all before Judith.
He’s ten years old now, but he’s our surprise boy. We still don’t know how Jude made it here.
And, um, we named him jude on purpose because that’s as close as I could get to revelation because, honey, it is finished.
That is the end of the line. Jackson, Jerry, Junior, and Jutes.
I took them earlier this year to the movies.
That’s one of our things we like to do is go to a movie when one comes out that’s really what we wanna see and, um, it is kind of our thing.
And so we went to the movies. We saw it in 30 d. So we sat down.
We, um, are all together at this Disney movie And and we we we started the film.
And after the film was already well underway, I’m talking, we’re 15, 20 minutes into the movie.
Jude, the youngest, looks over at me and taps me on the shoulder and says, mom, I don’t like this movie.
And I said, buddy, why don’t you like the movie? And he said, I cannot see it. It is blurry.
Why did they make a movie in three d? But the whole thing is blurry.
Since the beginning of this thing, I haven’t been able to really clearly see anything.
And I looked down at him, and I said, buddy, did you take the glasses?
Did did you take the glasses out of the package? You know, they gave you those little glasses.
And he said, these? And I said, yes, but he knows. Put them on.
He put the glasses on that he had neglected to put on at the very beginning.
And he said, oh, this is awesome.
I can see I can see I love conferences like this one, opportunities like this one because y’all What it really is about is fitting you with the spiritual eyewear that you need to see your life from the perspective of how god sees you and the story that he’s crafting through your life and through mine.
The movie that I took them to go see was Incredibles 2. Incredibles 2.
I’m not sure if you saw that one, but it was, man, just as good as the first one.
And I loved the story line so much in this one, uh, mister Incredible and his wife, the last girl, you know, they’re in the throes of taking care of evil and sort of coming out of retirement in order to do that, but it incredibles too.
It’s elastigirl that takes the forefront.
She’s the one that’s sort of at the helm of fighting dangers and evil in the society, and the children end up having to get much more involved this time.
Man, they are running across powers that they never knew they had.
They’re being second scenarios that are a little bit dangerous, a little bit risky. Lots of adventure.
That they are called to sort of, uh, be a part of.
And, you know, elastigirl, she’s she’s got a mama’s heart.
And she’s watching her 3 babies in the throes of all of this.
And at one point, she turns to her husband, Mister Incredible, and she says, there are just children.
And he says they’re children, but they’re children with power. Wow.
And because they have power, that makes them special.
And then he said whether or not they choose to use the power is up to them.
But either way, they’ve got it.
It occurs to me in a room this size with women that are actually daughters that have placed faith in Jesus Christ.
We’re children, but y’all, we ain’t just children. We’re children with power.
That the Holy Spirit of God has given you power.
So that whatever place of danger or risk or adventure that you may have been called into, you need to know that you’ve got power to sustain you into that place in which you have been called.
And and but but here’s the deal. Whether or not you choose to use it, now that’s up to you.
I don’t want is to get to the end of my days only to look back and realize I had all that power, but never took advantage of it.
It is at least in part to that end that I believe that there is a portion of scripture that man over the past period has spoken so clearly to me and been a blessing in my life.
I wanna share it with you. It is in Luke’s gospel.
If you have your Bible and you wanna turn there with me, you can if, you know, if you actually still use the Bible with paper pages like I do, or your iPhone, your iPad, pad, any manner of InES will get you to loop chapter 9.
I think they’re gonna put on the screens as well.
I wanna reverse 1 and 2, then I’m gonna jump over to verse 10. I’m gonna reverse 10 through 17.
Loop chapter 9, verse 1 and 2 says this.
It says, and he called the 12 together. That’s Jesus. He called the 12 together.
He gave him power and authority over all demons and to heal diseases.
And then he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of god and perform healing. Listen to that again.
This is the disciples going on their adventure. And Jesus called. He called. Somebody say he called.
He called the 12 together, and then he gave somebody say he gave. He gave them power.
And he gave them authority.
Then verse 2 says, and then he sent somebody say he sent He sent them out.
Yep. Verse 10 says. And when the apostles returned, they gave him an account of all that they had done.
And taking them with him, he withdrew by himself to a city called Beth Sada.
And the multitudes verse 11 says they were aware of this, so they followed Jesus and welcoming them He began speaking to them about the kingdom of god and curing those who had need of healing verse 12 says, and the date began to decline.
The 12 came and said to him, Jesus, please send this multitude away.
They need to go into the surrounding villages and countryside and find lodging and get something to eat for right here.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not Jesus, but here, we’re in a desolate place.
But Jesus said to them in verse 13, he said, uh-uh. You give them something to eat.
They said, come on, Jesus. We have no more than 5 blows.
And two fish unless perhaps we go and we buy food for all of these people, Luke wants to make sure you know that there were five 1000 men there.
I love the physician, Luke, because he wants to tell you the details.
He says 5000 men because there were women and children there.
So scholars say there were likely 15,000 there on that patch of stony ground that day.
Jesus said, have all of them reclining groups of about 50? Verse 15¢.
So they did that, had them all reclined. And Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish.
And looking up to heaven, he blessed them, and then he broke them.
And he kept giving them to the disciples to set before the multitude in verse 7 team says they all ate, and they were all satisfied.
And then they picked up the leftovers.
And when they did, they discovered that there were twelve baskets full of leftovers.
In this very familiar story that many of us probably have heard or are in some way familiar with, is a story of a multitude of people who are being fed.
They are hungry. They are empty. They’re in need of nourishment.
And they are more in need of an encounter with Jesus and Jesus gives them both.
But I want us to turn our attention away from the multitude and really focus in on these 12 disciples, the disciples, those who walk with Jesus and talk with Jesus, those who are in relationship with Jesus, those who follow him, those who want to learn of Jesus, the disciples, the one who from halfway across the country to come to the conference to learn more about Jesus, the disciples.
I believe that this story, this well loved story, an encounter, miraculous encounter that Jesus had in the scriptures, man, I believe that it is it is, uh, starts not just when the crowd gets hungry.
I really do believe that it starts in verse 1 and 2.
We find the disciples the 12 have an close personal encounter with Jesus.
We find more out more about this particular encounter that they had in Mark chapter 6.
You don’t have to turn there. But this exact same story is told in Mark chapter 6.
What I love so much about the first three books of the new testament, is that they’re called the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew Mark and Luke, Synoptic, meaning that there’s synergy in the stories that are told the tone in which they’re told, the way that they, uh, that the writers wrote those particular encounters.
And the more you read them, the more layers of insight you can gain about what happened in that particular story, in that particular encounter that Jesus had.
We find this same story found in Mark chapter 6.
And when we read mark chapter 6, it gives us some texture to the story.
It’s kinda like if someone offered you some chocolate cake, and they gave you an option.
You can either have a 1 layer chocolate cake or a 7 layer chocolate cake.
Well, I don’t know what y’all gonna do, but I’m a choose the 7 layer chocolate cake every single time because the more layers there are, the more rich and delectable the experience becomes.
Mark chapter 6 is our layer of chocolate cake.
What we find out is that this is the occasion where god called Jesus, called the disciples together And do you remember he sent them out in pairs?
He sent them out 2 by 2 to the neighboring towns and the neighboring communities they he sent them out with an with an assignment.
Their assignment was that everywhere they went, every person that they encountered, should walk away with a more clear picture in their head of who Jesus really is, that they were supposed to go out in power and authority.
To preach and to teach and to perform miracles for the purpose of authenticating that Jesus was who he said he was.
And that Jesus could do exactly what he had said that he could do.
The whole point of the disciples coming together and then being dispersed was so that the power and authority with which they would live their life would mean that every person they encountered, every interaction that they had would leave the people who they had encountered knowing that Jesus must be the real deal.
What’s the point of us coming together is after we leave this place, every person we encounter does not know that there must be a god somewhere in his name as Jesus Christ.
So they go out in pairs.
And I mean, they handle their in assignment with integrity.
They are fully entrenched mark chapter 6 tells us in the task that is at hand.
And after they finish the assignment, they come back to Jesus and they give him an account for how they handled the assignment that they had been given, how they handled the ministry that had been entrusted to them.
I wanna make sure that everybody in the room knows that they are in ministry.
If you have named the name of Jesus Christ, you are in ministry.
Don’t let someone else or the enemy convinced you that min ministry is relegated to standing on a platform behind a podium with a little microphone attached to you.
Ministry is the place where you’ve been called to serve in the assignment that you have been given.
Every one of us are representatives of the king of kings and the lord of lords.
You are in ministry. To mother of small children, don’t let anybody tell you that you’re not in ministry.
Every single time you sit around dinner table with the casserole that you prepared, the new way that you figured out to make chicken for dinner tonight.
And you figure it out successfully 1 more night, and you sit those kids around the table and you pray over them, and you teach them a Bible verse before they go to bed, don’t let anybody tell you that that aid ministry.
At high school student, when you’re walking down the corridor of that high school that you attend, and you’re the one that stands for righteousness in the midst of the darkness.
Don’t let anybody tell you 7th grader, 8th grader, freshman, sophomore that you are not in ministry.
And university students, like Mister Dave’s niece, that he just told us about, university student, when you are the only one in the philosophy class where the professor is telling you things and teaching you things that are left of center of the truth of god’s word and you’re the only student in the class of 300 that raises their hands and takes them to term and lets them know that there actually is and truth abstandard.
That is the word of god. You are in ministry.
And corporate man or woman when you sit around that boardroom table, and you’re the only one that when they’re talking about the project for the future, but they lack a smidge of integrity or character.
And you’re the one that stands for righteousness and calls people back and the truth of god, don’t let anybody tell you that that a ministry.
Every single one of us has an assignment.
And just like the disciples, the day is coming when we’re gonna have to give an account.
The day is coming sooner than we think, but we’re going to look our savior in his face, and we’re gonna have to give an account for how we used our time and how we used our talents and how we used the gift that he entrusted to us and how we took care of the assignments that each and every one of us have been called to.
He’s not gonna ask me about her assignment. He’s gonna ask me about mine.
And he’s not gonna be interested in how many Instagram followers I had.
He will not be interested in how many people were my friends on Facebook or liked the tweet that I put up.
He’s only got ask me. Number 1, did I know his son, Jesus Christ?
And then I will have to give an account for the assignment that he called me to.
And when I look my savior in this space, I wanna tell you that I am looking for Well done.
Anybody interested in well done?
I wanna hear well done, which means that my main priority can’t be to please you.
Your main priority cannot be to please me.
Our priority collectively cannot be to garner the applause of people.
Our interest has to be in garnering me a pause of heaven because the day is coming sooner than you think when we’re going to have to look at our savior and give him an account.
Um, I was being a a bit nostalgic as I was here last night, listening to Bishop Louie bringing the word to us.
But I was nostalgic because it was about 2 decades plus ago that I was in Atlanta.
And I was sitting at a conference that was about the size of just this one section right here on the floor.
For a group that at the time was called the Impact Movement.
And there’s a little arm of campus crusade for Christ that would gather together a group of young people in Atlanta.
High school and college age, the last years of high school, and the beginning of my college years, I would come to the impact movement in atlanta and sit just like you are.
And someone that had walked the road a little bit longer than I had would stand on the platform and tell me that I was going to be an arrow.
That the lord would shoot out, that the impact that my life could have, if I would just follow Jesus, would be an impact, the likes of which I could never imagine.
I came to echo what it is that that Louis has said.
Y’all y’all don’t even know what it is that the lord has in store for you. Can’t even imagine.
I’m trying to tell you that whatever is in your mind right now about what god might do with your life.
It is too small for what he’s actually planning to do. Too small.
You cannot fathom what god has in mind for you.
The reason why I can say that with that much boldness It’s because while there are 30 plus 1000 of us that are gathered together in these 3 arenas and then those that are on the other side of the screen in their homes, 30,000 sounds like a big number, unless you consider the fact that with 7 plus billion people on the planet, the fact that he’d let us be the ones that are recipients of what he’s done over these last few weekends, really, it’s just our last few days, really, it’s just a drop the bucket, 30,000 sounds like a lot, but in the grand scheme of all the people that could have been here, y’all, he chose us.
That means he intended for you to know, you’re an arrow that your expectation is that you’re getting ready to go places to like of which you could never imagine.
I’ve asked the lord to put an exclamation point on our on our, uh, conference together in this last session, to just seal what it is, whatever it is he’s been doing in your heart that he wants to continue to do, And I’m gonna ask him to do that in Jesus name.
Would you bow your heads with me? Lord, I thank you so much for this privilege.
I thank you that you speak and that we, your daughters and sons have the privilege to hear.
I thank you, lord, for the great gift that it is to know that you have allowed us to be arrows in your hands, and we say right now, collectively, wherever you send us, we will go.
Whatever mission you send us onward, we’re we’re game for it, father. We surrender to you.
And now, lord, do what you always do open up the windows of heaven and come in here and speak to us, father.
We’re so glad each other is here, but we didn’t come to see each other. We came to see you.
And so father speaks. Somebody say speak lord. Say speak lord.
We are your sons, we are your daughters, and we came to hear a word. Take this simple message.
Would you divide it about 35,000 different ways?
So that every person under the sound of my voice will know that today they have been in the presence of god.
In Jesus’ name, everybody agreed when they said, Amen? Amen. Oh, I like y’all.
Y’all talk back to me. I go to that kind of a church where they talk.
But, you know, I go to the kind of church where If the preaching gets really good to us, we might throw something at the pastor.
A shoe, a baby, anything might go flying up there. Y’all are my people.
Y’all came to have church. So I have 3 boys.
It’s a little bit scary to me that they are nearly.
It will be very soon in the next few years. We’ll be about your age, three sons.
The distinguishing character about my boys is that they are giants. They are huge boys.
My fifteen year old is six foot 2 inches tall, He wears a size 14 men’s shoe.
My thirteen year old is about six 1. He wears a thirteen men’s shoe.
And, uh, they tower over me.
I have a nine year old who’s coming up in the ranks with his brothers. They are tall boys.
Somebody can help me feed these people And one of the distinguishing characteristics about or or what makes their size work for them rather is that they do love sports.
So whatever sport is sort of in season. That’s what we’re playing at the time.
My second son for a lot of years, he’s in a basketball now, but for a lot of years, baseball was his thing, and I enjoyed that.
I enjoyed baseball season. I liked going out there for spring ball.
I liked spring ball because you go sit in the cool of the evening while your kid is practicing.
I remember all those years of of little league when he was just coming up, and we’d sit out there in the cool of the spring evening under the lights of the bleachers watching him practice and enjoying just uh, that that whole atmosphere.
I like spring ball so much.
The only problem with spring ball is that it is going to become summer ball.
And I don’t know what happens where you live, wherever you’re coming from, but I can tell you in Dallas, Texas, which is where I still live, and where I was born, and raised in Dallas, Texas in the summertime.
It doesn’t warm up slightly. It gets hot. I’m talking about slap your mama hot. That kinda hot.
The kinda hot where you feel like the sun must be mad at you about something.
Like, you did something to the sun and son is trying to get you back all summer long.
That’s what it feels like. And you’re sitting out there at a game trying to enjoy your kid’s game, and it really still is okay when there’s just one game.
The problem is that at the end of every season, there’s a tournament.
So you gotta be out there on a Thursday at 8 AM and 10 AM and noon and 2 PM.
And then depending upon how your kid’s team did, you’re gonna have to come back on Friday at 8 AM and 10 AM.
And then they give you a little lunch break, but you gotta come back for the 2 PM game, the 4 PM game.
And then if your kid’s team had the nerve to do well, you gotta come back again on Saturday for the 8 AM game and 10 AM and and noon and 2 and Man, you’re sitting out there under the blazing sun, trying to be happy that your kid is doing well.
Really, you’re wondering if it’s ever okay to trading loose so you can go home.
I will never confirm nor deny that I have ever done that.
But I will tell you that we were sitting out there at a tournament, so several years ago.
Sun was blazing. We were so excited for the lunch break just because that meant would be able to go to a restaurant where there would be air condition.
And ice water that actually had ice in it. We got refreshed. We came back.
We drove our SUV up into the parking lot, opened up the back of the SUV so that we could pull out all the gear that we needed to go to the next game in tournament.
We were 3 days into the tournament hot, sweaty. They were doing well.
We were trying to be excited about it. Ready for the next game.
I was walking behind my son to get from where we had parked the car over toward the dugout where the next game was gonna be played.
And so I gathered up all the stuff, you know, the eye chests that you have and the, um, the umbrella that you might have to go over your head and, you know, the water bottles, the the backpacks, the the baseballs, the mitts, all that stuff.
And I following behind my son. My second son, Jerry Junior is a fairly gregarious personality. He’s outgoing.
He’s excited for a challenge. So I could see that in his step as I followed behind him.
I could see a skip in his step. His chin was up. His shoulders were back.
He was excited about the next game. And I gotta tell you he’s pretty good in baseball.
He has a natural knack for it.
I remember at ten years old was the first time, he got a good hit and sent it sailing over the fence line at ten years old.
And I think it’s partly because of his size, just a lot of power behind his wing a great as a first baseman, so we were really excited about his success in baseball.
And and I watched him as he kinda hopped and skipped over to the next game, just excited about the next challenge in the tournament.
But because I was following behind him, I had my eyes glued on him, and I could see when something changed.
I could see that as we took the short walk, from where we parked the car over to the dugout, I could see that his shoulders started to hunch over and his head hung down.
I could see that that that skip that had been in his step had changed.
He was kind of walking like he was nervous. He was wringing his hands a little bit.
I saw that he was looking around his eyes, darting, and looking a little bit sketchy.
I was trying to figure out what happened to my boy.
It was a short walk from where we parked the car.
Over to the dugout, and all of a sudden, his countenance had completely changed.
So I started looking around, trying to figure out what was going on, why did he look so insecure and fearful all of a sudden?
I realized that as we were going toward the dugout, we were walking past some kids from another team.
They were all laying on the grass underneath the shade of an oak tree getting ready for the next game.
As I passed them, I could see this was the team we were about to play next.
Kept walking, and I kept getting a look at these boys.
And when I looked at them, I realized what my son’s problem was. We had faced this team before.
We had faced them earlier in the season.
And when this team had played my son’s team earlier in the season, they had annihilated us.
It had been a complete embarrassment a complete upset. This team right here, y’all, they were serious baseball players.
You know, the kind of players that had the serious parents?
Hey. Nobody got time for all that.
These are kind of parents.
You know, when they gave birth to their son, they put a mint on one hand of baseball in the other.
They’ve been waiting for this their whole lives And these boys were good. They’ve been playing since they were toddlers.
I mean, really little. This was one of those elite teams. They were amazing.
And so my boys saw this was the team he was about playing the closer he got to the dugout, the more he passed them and realized that they were the players.
I watched this countenance change in response to that.
But we had to walk right by them to get to the dugout.
As we walked past, there were 2 players. They were talking to each other. One was whispering to the other.
I think he thought he was whispering, but we could hear He leaned over to the other one, and he said, there goes that big kid from the red sox team.
Is he the one that hit the ball and it went over the fence? Yeah.
He was the one at 1st base, the one that caught any of the outs that we got in the game.
That was him. So that’s Jerry Shire?
When my boy heard his name cross the lips of the opposing team members, those shoulders that had been hanging down.
All of a sudden, I watched them pop back again. I watched his chin go up.
I watched him get a little swag back in his step as he headed over toward the dugout.
In fact, we had to bring him down a few notches before the game started.
It’s amazing really how your confidence changes when you’re really overhear and understand what the enemy thinks about you when he sees you coming.
It doesn’t mean that the challenge goes away. It means that in the face of it, you’re different.
Your stance is different because you recognize that when the enemy sees a daughter or a son of god coming his way, he’s shaking in his boots, not because of you, but because of the Holy Spirit of god that lives on the inside of you.
I came to tell somebody today, but even if you don’t believe what it is that the word of god declares to be true about you, you need to know that the enemy does.
He knows that every single thing that god’s word declares to be true about you, every word that has been declared over you in these last few days of this conference, even if you’re not convinced about it, the enemy is.
He knows that you have been forgiven.
He knows that there is therefore now no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus.
He knows that you have been given the victory.
He knows that you have been made competent by the spirit of god.
He knows that there is therefore now no condemnation for you or for me, no shame. No guilt.
He knows that you have not been given a spirit of fear, but a power and love and of a sound mind.
And y’all, he knows that in the end, we win.
And I’m saying what ashamed it would be for the enemy to believe more about your potential than you do.
What a shame it would be for us to go out of here with all of this inspiration that we have been given this investment of god’s word that he is gathered us together over the course of these days to worship in spirit and in truth and to hear his word declared true over our lives, what a tragedy it would be for us to walk out of here and still live like we were before we came through these doors.
So what the enemy will do is scatter challenge in front of your life.
Cause, listen, you’re going back home to challenge. Y’all do know we going back home in a little while. Right?
And don’t we wish we could wake up to this every single day?
Don’t we wish that we could have god’s words spoken over our lives with this much authority and power every single day and be in the presence of leaders who can lead us into the presence of god and worship every single day like this, but the reality is we’re going back home.
The challenges of your university campus, the challenges of your home, your relationships, your friendships, on your job, those challenges will be sprawled out in front of you with you get home.
And let me tell you something.
What the enemy hopes is that the sight of them will cause you to shrink back in so much fear and insecurity that you’ll never step up to the plight of being who god has called you to be.
Listen, if you’ve placed faith in Jesus Christ, I hope you know that the enemy understands he cannot destroy you.
He knows. His chances are over of destroying you, so he is going to spend the rest of his time and the rest of his energy just trying to discourage you.
Trying to distract you so that you’ll shrink back in fear and insecurity and not step up to the plate.
And be who god has called you to be.