Priscilla Shirer: We’re Desensitized to Our Blessings

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 times do not even recognize God’s presence in our lives.

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.
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 options 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 an 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 hand full 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 him 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.
The same god that did those things. We don’t wanna just celebrate it in the lives of other people.
we wanna stand in line to have an 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 Saturn 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. Amen. 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 in flux of chaos and an influx of destruction in our nation.
But Luke doesn’t just write to people who have national trouble Luca’s 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 a 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 rest you 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. Yeah.
Underneath the roof of your home, the trouble that might be happening in your marriage, the thing that causes the tears to fall 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 wanna 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 do 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 be 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 in.
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 hardened 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.