Priscilla Shirer: Uncover the Secrets to Hearing God’s Voice | Women of Faith on TBN

Join Priscilla Shirer and Jerry Shirer as they share their wisdom on discerning the voice of God in your life. In this powerful session, you’ll learn how to recognize God’s guidance and make decisions aligned with His will. Don’t miss this life-changing message!

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The outcome
of obedience is always freedom and victory. Wow.
And it’s hard to see that from this perspective, but if you trust god, if we trust god, Then when we sense that conviction of the Holy Spirit, to not say this, to not buy this, to not eat all of this, to restrain ourselves, it’s because there’s freedom
discerning the voice of god. Today, we’re gonna unpack that.
So why is this subject matter something that is really important?
It is important because This facet of our faith is what separates our faith from every other so called faith on the face of the earth K.
That our god lives. He’s alive and he speaks to us. We have an actual relationship with him.
And that that’s so casually thrown around this whole relationship thing.
But what good is any relationship if nobody’s talking to each other? Right.
If there’s no communication, if there’s not, um, uh, a connectedness that is ongoing and continual.
So this issue of discerning the voice of god, first of all, believing that he does speak, but second of all, trusting in the fact that as his kids, we have the privilege to actually discern and uh, have a distinction of his voice between all the other voices that also wanna get a word in edgewise.
That’s something that really can change and transform the trajectory of your entire Christian
Okay. Let’s let’s lay a little bit of the ground rule in your in your world where you’re our guest today, you and Jerry, uh, Jerry, jump in anytime you want to.
You’re much bigger than I am. You can do that. I am.
You need time you
want. Yeah. And so You know, you’re a miracle worker that you on the show. Jerry doesn’t
want my buddy.
Come on, man.
I saw
y’all are buddies.
You guys are just gonna have a good time now. We’re gonna we’re gonna discern the voice I’ve got.
Let me ask you a question. In the Priscilla Jerry World.
Yeah.
Uh, does god speak audibly? Does he only speak through his word? Does he speak?
How how what are the different ways that you certainly know of that god speaks to you?
I’ve never heard the audible voice of god babe. Have you ever missed something?
I have not.
No? Not
yet. No. Not yet. But I think there is something internal.
Yeah.
In you that you that you feel the presence of god and it lines up with scripture, which confirms, okay, this is what I’m hearing.
That’s right. The Holy Spirit of God, a Lumen scripture.
The book is alive, and he causes the the old preset of scripture to have a nouness and a newness that applies and intersects with our personal experience.
So as Jerry mentioned, the Holy Spirit in us confirms and corroborates and connects with the the the word of god and causes it to intersect with our experience.
So that that verse that has something
to do with David and Goliath All of a sudden, it’s not about David and Goliath.
It actually applies to what you’re facing right then in your life, and you understand it as a directive straight straight from god.
And then there’s the conviction, you know, the conviction of the Holy Spirit, that that green light of ease and peace that says go.
That that yellow light of warning and uneasiness that says, hold up a minute till you get clarity.
And then that red light that is a straight up. No. There’s no peace. There’s confusion. There’s dissension.
That’s the Holy Spirit’s way of telling you, no. Don’t go there.
There’s a better yes for you if you’ll just wait and be patient.
Have you ever heard the still small voice of the lord in a phrase and an impression?
How what describe some of what is in discerning the voice of god, how how the lord speaks or how this conversation unfolds with you.
Yes. While most of the time, most of the time, god speaks to me through his word.
It is exactly what I described. It is reading through a portion of scripture.
And on that day, it’s like the Holy Spirit has taken out a highlighter and has highlighted this verse.
You have seen a million times before But on that day, it leaps up off the page and it grips you.
That’s the only way I can really describe it is that it grips you in the depths of your soul and causes you to pause for a moment.
Because it it seems to be literally speaking to something that’s happening in your life.
Most of the time, that that is the voice of god. We have discounted, I think, the power of scripture.
Because if we say we wanna hear from god and we never actually read the love letter that he wrote to us, we don’t wanna really hear from god, and we rarely will.
Because the canon of scripture is not only it not only provides the boundary into which everything god says to us will fall, because he’ll never say anything that manipulates the scriptures or his character as revealed in the scriptures, so it not only gives us the boundary but it also provides for us the number one mechanism through which we have the privilege to hear him in the first place.
Beautiful. You know, I have been sitting or standing in a place before.
And from one moment to the next, you know, I I hate to be so secular, but remember that remember that that moment in on TV back when we were kids, do you remember remember, the I dream of Jeannie where she kinda do like that.
You know? Totally. Okay. So, um, I have from one moment to the next.
I mean, this is, like, one heartbeat to the next heartbeat.
I’m remembering some kind of conversation that was a longer conversation. For instance.
And I felt like that was something that got communicated to me, a big subject matter communicated to me in a blink.
Yeah.
So what the voice of the lord sometimes feels like to me is like I’m remembering a conversation.
Mhmm.
Not like I’m talking and and going, Hello, lord. And he says, well, hello, Matthew.
It’s nice to have you here with me today.
It’s been a long time.
You know? Okay. So I’ve never had any kind of an experience like that at all.
Every time I felt like volumes of information get communicated in a in a in a snap of a finger.
And then it just feels like you’re remembering When we’re done with this conversation today and we’re out of this studio, we’ll be able to remember this conversation.
And we will be able to ultimately think back on it.
That’s that is a way that the lord has communicated.
I have heard the still small voice say one word to me or 2 words one time, Hillsong channel.
Mhmm. 6 months later, The Hillsong channel was on the air.
Yeah.
K. Uh, we’re sitting here today.
Laurie and I, um, you know, have often heard the story, but just just because of what we’re talking about, and I wanted to set a little bit of the stage.
And by the way, what a thrill to have you guys seriously. I mean, it’s I know.
It’s like I’ve known your parents, and I was like, what’s the matter with us, man?
I mean, so we met, actually, at TD Jake’s church, not long ago.
You sat behind us and made us laugh through the whole purpose.
I I’m sorry for that. I was cutting up. And the kids were thank you for sharing.
Thank you for that because they were okay. When is this gonna be over?
You realize you’re making fun of a TD Jake service. That’s okay.
No. It was a fantastic service, but kids in church for 3 hours. They were they were glad Matt
was sitting for uncle Matt. That’s right.
And just so that they wouldn’t freak out, I gave him a little money to, you know, kinda bribing.
Okay. Anyway, uh, so work for me. 1 Okay.
So one of the the things that I think is pretty interesting about discerning the voice of god, again, it’s our love gift, uh, this month.
Gift offer this month, is my mom and dad were working for somebody else in the sixties.
It was a TV station.
And after one very successful night, they were leaving the parking lot And the lord said, I’ve released you from your work here.
Now my parents believe it was almost like one of these moments where you look in the seat, make sure that somebody’s not in the back seat.
Yep. But they were in their car, and my dad didn’t recall it as being an audible voice but it might as well have been because he looked at my mom and said, you’re not gonna believe what the lord just said to me.
And she said, no, I will. He said the same thing to me. He’s released us from our work here.
Very, very unique thing. They quit that job. I’m eleven years old. My dad doesn’t go to work anymore.
This is, you know, here in Southern California in the early seventies.
And then, uh, a few months later, praying the lord set had to say these words somehow because my dad heard call Angel Lerma.
He was a gentleman that owned a TV station here in Soquel.
He called, and he said, uh, to he said to Angel, he said, uh, I’m just calling you today checking on your channel.
And there was a long pause on the phone. Paul, I just came from the boardroom.
We just had a board meeting just now. We just voted to sell this channel. Did you know that?
And he said, no, sir. I didn’t know that, but based on that, I’d like to come see you.
Mhmm. By the end of that day, there was a deal worked out, which was the birth of TVN, which was this channel here in Los Angeles, channel 40.
Channels actually changed now because of digital, but that was channel 40 back in the day.
So here’s the here’s the thing.
We’re sitting here today because of a couple of moments that the lord was wanting to communicate to someone to see if they would respond to it.
K? So now 40 something years later, we’re sitting here. There’s 31 television networks on the air.
In 13 or 14 different languages, and we are literally ultimately uh, now communicating to the globe as we’re sitting here.
Okay? Yeah.
So if everyone can realize it’s kind of an important subject that we’re talking about.
K? Yeah.
K. And so
Well, if everybody moved on something that god spoke to them There it is.
You know, take another generation, what would that become?
What would god have done if we would have obeyed at that? And we
and we’ve had that. We’ve had that in a while.
I’m thinking about when we first got married, babe, where you’ve had these these moments where, like you said, there is almost like a huge conversation that has already happened and the wealth of it download.
It just downloads to you with an instant.
Um, and and one of those things happened when we were married for our very 1st year of marriage.
Very 1st year. What happened?
We were at a a family reunion on my father’s side of the family.
And, uh, I remember one of my cousins said, Jerry, do you realize that if you in Brazil don’t have any boys, the Shining will die with you.
I’m like, and I looked around. I’m like, wow.
And at that moment, I felt like Laura said, to me, Jerry, you have nothing but boys. Wow.
And so I looked at Priscilla, and I told her what I said. You have nothing but boys.
We have nothing but boys. And, uh, I remember when our first son was born, Jackson, a boy.
Uh, the second son, Jared Junior, a boy.
And it
was so funny. The 3rd child, everybody, you know, all the way she’s carrying it. It’s a girl.
I’m like, no, it’s not. It’s a boy.
And everybody asking me how confident was I that I knew that it was a boy. Wow.
And I told him years ago, the lord told me I had nothing but boys because what he’s doing is starting a new generation Wow.
Of Shireman.
Wow.
And, uh, I remember being in the delivery room and, uh, uh, when when when Jude was coming out and his head was out, uh, I said, oh.
I bet you a $1000. It’s a boy.
That’s a boy. The doctor said, we haven’t seen everything yet.
I said, if that’s a girl, she’s gonna be with me for the rest of her That’s a boy.
But you know what?
And and some
of the details of that that you have to know is that some of the, well, most of the men in Jerry’s legacy, um, did not live well.
They didn’t honor god. They didn’t stay with their wives. They didn’t honor their kids. Nothing.
And so in that moment where he felt like the lord said that to him, he really felt like the lord was saying, I’m doing this on purpose.
Wow. I’m going to change what it means to be a shire man Wow. Through this legacy.
And he looked at me just barely into our 1st year of marriage and said, we don’t have voice.
God’s doing this on purpose. And here we are 18 years later with our 3 boys.
And so we have high expectations that god’s got a plan for them. Yes.
He does.
Um, and And
you don’t have me plan for any more kids.
We actually do not. Oh,
she says, you know, she always says she always says from this stage, our youngest is jude.
Because that’s as close as she can get the revelation because it is finished.
It it is finished. That’s the end of the line right there.
Oh, gosh. Uh.
Okay. So start us out on, um, cause I know so many people wonder.
Oh, you know, how can I hear god’s voice for yourself? And I know
trust it.
Or trust or trust it. How can I trust god’s voice? When I do hear it, is that really him?
Is it me? Is it Yeah. Yeah.
Well, let me let me just start by putting a little grace over this entire situation.
The reality is that sometimes you do not know until hindsight that what you heard was the voice of god.
There you go.
And the reality is that there is grace and mercy cover our missteps and that the lord in his graciousness toward us, his knowledge of our frailty and our humanity, for the willing heart who desires to do his will, even when we make mistakes, he allows them to become our greatest teachers for hearing him correctly in the future.
He does not hold it against us because we’ve misstepped along the way.
So just grace for those of us. Yes. Who have ever heard god wrong?
And, um, wish we could get it get it right.
1 people I sort of interviewed when I was first writing that book many, you know, over a decade ago, uh, now I interviewed Henry Blackabee who wrote experience in God.
And I, you know, had my notebook out, my pen.
I was gonna take a seminary class from every black guy, you know, and I said, how do you know when you’re hearing god?
And he gave me lots of incredible answers to that question, but really he summed it up this way.
He said the more you know god, the more clearly you can hear god.
There was really nothing for me to write down because it boiled down to.
Priscilla, it’s simple, he said. The more you know him, the more clearly you can hear him.
So the reason why we go to the scriptures, the reason why we have quiet time, the reason why we fellowship with other believers who are gonna help us remain encouraged in our faith is because we’re just trying to get to know god.
Yeah. When you know his character, when you know, um, the nuances of what he does say and what he wouldn’t say because of how we spoke to our forefathers because of how he handled circumstances previously with people in the scriptures who were going through some of the same scenarios we’re going through now.
When you see his personality and his character, then you know when you hear the voice of fear, uh, uh, that don’t sound like my god.
When you hear the voice of your ego cry, jealousy, divisiveness stepping in, all that stuff that in our flesh is also trying to get a word in edgewise.
We can quickly quickly pinpoint the voice of a stranger because if we know god, the more clearly we can discern and dis divide his voice from a stranger.
Okay. Now you talked about seeking god’s provision and his blessings on our life, and then knowing who what his character is, talk about that because
I found that fascinating. Yes. So god’s blessing, um, and I believe his provisions are corroboration of his word to us.
So in other words, while in the Old Testament, there were external means as a primary way for folks to hear god in the new testament.
And now in this time frame as well, we have something they didn’t have. We have the Holy Spirit.
So the primary way he has speak to us is that he speaks to us has changed, but his goal hasn’t.
His goal is still for his kids to hear his voice.
So he’s chosen the holy spirit of god to be the the way that we, uh, hear and know what it is that his will is for our life, but he still uses external means his provision, his blessings, his aligning of providence.
Some people would call it luck or coincidence. No. It’s the aligning of god’s handy work in our life.
To confirm that what we’re sensing on the inside is indeed how he’s aligning the direction for our life to just F.
B. Myers, a great theologian put it this way.
When a big, uh, 747 is getting ready to land on a runway, well, well, the plane better not just be looking for one light somewhere to land, but or not just look for 2 lights somewhere to to land.
There better be several lights that are that are lining a runway so that that 747 knows exactly to relent.
The bigger the decision that you have to make, the more you need to trust in the mercy of god’s external confirmation that aligns for you where to land that plane in your life.
Beautiful. And and so that’s important that we have external bliz blessings, provision, coincidence that really shows us the sovereignty of god aligning.
I’ll give you an example. I was just telling you guys before we started.
Um, Erin, that I that I started to to look at this concerning the voice of god book, the material that we’ve been privileged to be able to develop through the years on the topic, And I just started, you know, how the lord puts layers of maturity on a message, the more you grow in him, aren’t we so great?
Sure. That he lets us grow and mature and learn from our mistakes.
And I thought I was just starting to feel like, you know, it might be time, especially with the the video series that we’ve done in regards to this.
It was taped 11 years ago.
So it kinda looks dated now, and I thought we might need to do something different with that at some point.
This was gonna be my lazy year where I just kinda sat down and didn’t write too much.
But at the same time, I started to sense that on the inside, maybe we need to do that at some point.
One of my publishers called to say, you know, let’s redo the discerning the voice of god bible study.
Then the publisher of this particular book called and said, hey. You know what?
Maybe we’re gonna put in a a re face this and go ahead and freshen up the material here and the new insights that the lord has given you.
So there were 2 things, 2 lights there that kind of corroborated what I was already sensing on the inside.
And then Matt and Lloyd Krausch called and said, you know what, Priscilla?
We think that we would love to offer this to to people who want to know how to discern god’s leading.
That 3rd light Wow. Was the confirmation for me.
That what it was I was sensing on the inside, the lord was very clear clearly giving me a light bulb to let me know this would be his direction for me.
A number of years ago, when laws were different, um, today, if we’re hiring somebody here at Trinity Broadcasting, we can say, by the way, your, you know, TBN is a Christian organization, might have noticed, Are you a Christian?
We can say that.
That is but there if you wind the hands of clock back about 30 years, you couldn’t say that.
You couldn’t make somebody tell you whether they were a Chris or not in in the application process.
There’s a different rules. Well, my dad, uh, when he or in the early days, somebody called And Trinity Broadcasting is, you know, under the authorization of the Federal Communications Commission, we have employees here that make sure we stay in tune with those policies and procedures and rules and all that kind of stuff.
We have different sets of employees that do lighting and sound and this and that, but my dad was, of course, the general manager.
And and somebody called and my dad’s on the phone.
Uh, Mister Crouch, you have to be a Christian to work at your channel.
He had the phone in his hand. He went, and wanted to say, yes.
And the discerning voice of god at that point was Holy shit.
He couldn’t say the word yes. So he went, yeah.
And tried to say yes again and couldn’t.
And he said, hold second, put the call on hold and said, you know, just kinda went, what, you know, lord?
And he clicked the button back and went, well, sir, I suppose you don’t have to be Christian to work at our channel, but you might wanna be.
Uh, you know, much like if you were applying for a Spanish language channel, you might wanna know how to speak Spanish.
Yeah.
And the guy went. Well, that makes a lot of sense. Okay. I get that.
Uh, oh, by the way, if he’d have said yes, I was gonna file uh, you know, against your license at the Federal Communications Commission.
So my dad’s, you know, hit over the head with a ball being hammer from the lord that moment was that was god having a conversation by literally not allowing him to make a mistake.
And see, here’s the thing that I love about this story about your dad and the story about your parents at at the very beginning of this.
What I love is their willingness to not push past those moments of restraint when they sense the cat that that warning, that conviction to not put the foot call on hold, but then pick it back up only to get yes out that they wanted to that he wanted to get out.
And that’s the problem with most of us that rebellious streak that we all have. Yeah.
That when we send that conviction, that warning. Don’t say that to your spouse. Not not right now.
That’s not the time to say that to your spouse.
You had to say the spouse thing.
Yes. You know, when you’re in heat and fellowship with your spouse, and you you know, sometimes it’s wives we get ready because we know what we’re gonna say is I’ll shut this whole thing down.
And we’re gonna win this battle. We plan to win the battle. And then we feel that warning, that conviction.
That’s not that’s not going to be healthy for the the longevity of your marriage.
The question is when we sense that, will we push past it and say what we wanna say anyway?
Yeah. Wow.
Or will we submit to the leadership of the Holy Spirit.
And the moment it might seem a little bit, uh, limited. Losing. Yeah.
It might seem like you’re limp you’re losing. But, really, the outcome of obedience is always freedom and victory. Wow.
And
it’s hard to see that from this perspective, but if you trust god, if we trust god, Then when we sense that conviction of the Holy Spirit to not say this, to not buy this, to not eat all of this, to restrain ourselves, it’s because there’s freedom and victory that he’s trying to lead us to.
Okay. So I’m gonna personally hold you to that when the butter cake is is served a little bit later.
There’s this thing called butter cake. Both of you’ve had that both of you talked about. Okay. We
ain’t gonna be talking about the Holy Spirit, which butter cake is on the view.
So when it comes to this kind of discerning the voice of god, we’re unpacking this all hour with Jerry and Priscilla Shire
I have a question.
Uh, let let me let me just let me let me say this one thing when it pertains because I wanna jump off of something you’re saying about marriage.
I was running one day, and the lord said, I didn’t call you.
Seem to be pointing at me. Okay. This is like a daydream.
This isn’t like know, I mean, this is like
You’re just trying that
just to sound weird.
I’m not sounding weird because I don’t want it sound weird.
Uh, but the it felt like the lord was pointing at me with one finger.
Yeah. You know,
I didn’t call you. I called you.
And then he had two fingers pointing, and Lori was next to me in this kind of daydream.
Yeah. And
I knew I was running, and I was on the side of the road and all that.
Came home and told her, and and let me tell you something.
That got more important the years later that this happened 20 years ago, because I’ve always loved her, but the idea that he didn’t call me, he called me.
I didn’t call you. I called you. And she’s there.
So I wouldn’t be the me that god sees without her. Come on, Rory.
That’s a good man right there.
So all I
have to remind him of that on it.
No. No. Honestly, you you got you know, I she doesn’t.
I’ve always known that, you know, so let me tell you, bickering in marriage pales to comparison of just making this one statement.
If the lord said that to me and he did, or I thought, you know, again, it it wasn’t this conversation, then if I divorced her, I wouldn’t be divorcing her.
I’d be divorcing my destiny. Yes. Now when in in in light of that, who cares? You know?
Yeah. What she looks like. What kinda what kinda what I
oh my god.
Yeah. Yeah. Let’s go there immediately.
So so the I the idea that you know, the voice of the lord changed my dynamic about what marriage was 20 years ago or so.
I’m different.
Yeah.
You know,
I’m different about that. Why is it important to hear god? Because it changes you.
Prasette? Me.
Why is that right. It does change you. You know what it does?
You know what it does? Yeah. It ruins you for church as usual.
Oh, hey.
Ruins you. Yeah. That regular, old, mundane, Christian, redivers a day to keep the away, sit in church, go because my mama went, my grandmother went, this is what we do.
All of that goes away.
Okay.
Because you’re hungering for what you know you’ve experienced before actually sensing the voice of god, his presence near you.
Listen, sometimes hearing god is less about having a specific word and more about just the nearness of his presence.
Yeah. Just knowing that he’s near, I’m talking about where your physical body responds to the presence of god.
There are times when you know he’s near because he’s omnipresent.
There are times where he manifests himself in a way where the the hair on the back of your next
used up. Kinda fail.
Yeah. Goosebumps. Yes. And in those moments, once you start sensing the nearness of god in that way, you’re ruined for all just doing stuff because it’s what you’re supposed to be doing.
Want more of that. And
I think what a lot of people need to understand, and he also speaks through his silence.
Mhmm. Very much so.
You know, I’m not saying anything.
You know, think about the years in the world where, you know, from the old to new testament, he was just silent.
Yeah. And his silence means stay still. Don’t move. I got you.
Yeah.