Priscilla Shirer: What is YOUR Obedience Plan?

Priscilla Shirer empowers you to intentionally plan on obeying God and what He’s been asking you to steward.

“God is the God of “right now.” He doesn’t want you sitting around regretting yesterday. Nor does He want you wringing your hands and worrying about the future. He wants you focusing on what He is saying to you and putting in front of you … right now.”
― Priscilla Shirer

Be obedient to god intentionally and deliberately and then enlist accountability so that you can have some people around you.
This is what church and family. The family of god is all about.
Put some people around you who will challenge you and ask you and get all up in your business and say, did you do what god has asked you to do.
Make a plan to be obedient to god.
What to be encouraged, didn’t know?
That every single time I sit down to have my quiet time, which by the way, as much as I want it to happen every single day, sometimes it doesn’t because, you know, life happens.
But every time I do sit down, I want you to know that each time, it doesn’t mean that I just find, god’s word spoken over my life, just leaping up off the page every single time, and it feels vibrant and fresh and on fire every time.
No. Sometimes I’m reading along, and it’s about the Jebu sites who were fighting the heavy sites and the amorites and the cana nights and the otherites ate those ights, and it just seems like a waste of time.
What in the world does this have to do with my personal life right now?
The crisis that I’m facing or god, what you want me to do with what I’m dealing with my child or my financial situation or my health or the greed for the longing in my heart.
What does this have to do with that?
But I find that even those portions of scripture are vital to us because if nothing else, you’re still gonna ask yourself.
What does this teach me about the character of god? What did he do?
What did he not do? What did he say? What did he not say?
What did he allow what did he not allow?
It shows you who your god is and getting to know his character is what this is all about.
A friendship develops, intimacy develops, the more we know. Think about your regular friends.
The more you know that person, The more you know the nuances of who they are and how they think and what they say and what they wouldn’t say, then remember in John chapter 10 when Jesus said, the sheep know my voice.
He says they do not respond to the voice of a stranger.
The only way to be able to detect the voice of stranger is if you know God well enough that when the enemies chooses to speak fear over your life or when your ego tries to get a word in edgewise or when your pride is trying to sneak in there, or when the opinions of the culture in the world sound true.
The only way you wanna know if it ain’t got is if you’ve come to know his character so well that you can detect the voice of a stranger a mile away, you know my god would never say or do that.
My brother, Anthony, is named after my dad.
So I got Anthony senior and Anthony Junior, and they walk alike, they talk alike, there’s so much alike about the 2 Anthony’s.
And I’ve seen my brother use this to his advantage and kinda fool people.
I remember when we were growing up, people would call the house. And so he’d answer the phone.
People thought they were talking to pastor Evans.
And so they’d give him the whole story of whatever they were calling for.
He’d get all the juicy details before saying, dad, somebody’s on the phone for you.
I remember 1 time he went up to the ticket counter at American Airlines so that he could get his ticket to get on the airplane.
And he said, well, my name is Anthony T Evans, and he showed the license.
It said that he was Anthony Evans. So they pulled up my father’s profile.
And my father had executive platinum status because he flies so much.
So immediately, they upgraded Anthony gave him first class treatment, put him in first class, let him eat the meal that first class gets.
He got all of that because he was able to confuse people because they are so similar to each other.
But let me tell you who he can’t confuse, me and other members of the family.
If the phone rings, In the first 2 minutes of the conversation or 2 seconds rather of the conversation I’m having with either Anthony, I can tell you exactly which Anthony I’m talking to because no matter how similar they sound.
I have known them for so many years and been a part of their life and them a part of my life in so many specific ways that they cannot confuse me because I know the 2 Anthony’s.
Do you see the more you know god?
The more clearly and easily you’re going to be able to put a finger on the voice of the enemy when he comes by trying to play you for the fool.
So you pull out the spiritual principles.
Once you pull out the spiritual principles, here’s the fourth p, pose the question. Okay.
This is where you turn the spiritual principle you just pulled out.
You turn it into the form of a personally directed question.
Man, this is where the rubber meets the road. This is when the Holy Spirit starts speaking.
Because you say to yourself, am I living in a way that’s congruent with spiritual principle that I just wrote down.
Am I heeding that promise? Am I behaving in that way? Is my attitude adjusted to that?
Have I forgiven that person? Have I been committed in my tithe? Have I submitted to that authority?
Maybe that verse said that I need to be still and see the salvation of the lord have I been still or have I frantically been trying to figure out everything on my own?
Lord, what is it that you’re asking me to do? Ask yourself a personally directed question.
And when you start asking honest and authentic questions of the text, You will find that the Holy Spirit starts giving you the answers.
He starts shining a spotlight on the areas of your life and mind that I didn’t even know existed.
That I need to get right with god, that I need to line up so that I am in line for the favor and promises of god to be experienced in my life so that I have fresh revelation of god’s truth so that I can see clearly where in the culture or in the opinion of my friends actually that is antithetical to what it is that god is saying, in his word.
And listen, there are 2 answers to every question. God’s answer? And everybody else’s.
And everybody else is wrong when they are in contradiction to what it is that God has said.
So as the Holy Spirit starts answering, in your spiral notebook, you write down what it is that he’s been saying in your note write down the parts of your life that are coming to life.
Like the solomon, Psalmists said, search me oh god and know me.
Find out if there’s any way in me that ain’t like you so that I can get back to being in right relationship with you and having the opportunity lord to experience everything you have for me.
And after you posed the question, plan obedience and pin down a date to obey.
Now the reason why that’s critical is because we seem to plan for everything else except obeying god.
We’ve got a plan for our physical health. We’ve enlisted a trainer.
We’ve got our meals planned out for the week. We’ve got a membership at a gym.
We plan for our financial security.
We got a financial advisor to make sure that we can retire at the age that we want to so that we can save the way we want to.
We’ve planned, for the project that’s due at our job to make sure that we are working incrementally and progressively to make sure that the segments of the project are each done well.
We plan for everything. Except honoring god.
As god makes clearly what he’s asking you to do, forgive that person or write that blog post that was on your heart to write or move forward in starting that business or stepping out in faith from the place that you’ve been employed, whatever it is god’s asked you to do.
Make a plan. I mean on paper.
Be obedient to god intentionally and deliberately and then enlist accountability so that you can have some people around you.
This is what church and family. The family of God is all about.
Put some people around you who will challenge you and ask you and get all up in your business and say, did you do?
What god has asked you to do. Make a plan to be obedient to god.
In closing, let me just tell you that, I was traveling, you know, back when we traveled, and I was packing some jewelry.
And I remember trying to put this jewelry together And I put it in my, carry on case.
Then when I got to where I was going, I pulled it all out. And it was all tangled.
Every little string or a little chain was tangled together, man.
I was just jingling and around trying to get it all separated.
My husband said, as he watched to me in frustration trying to get just this 1 necklace out.
He said Priscilla, I think if you stop massaging the whole wad of tangled mess, and you just grab onto 1.
Unhook that 1 and then just start working to get that 1 out of there.
I think it’ll be more successful. He was right.
I grabbed onto 1 little necklace, and I just worked on getting that 1 unwound. And you know what happened?
When I not only worked on that 1, did I get it out?
But the whole tangled mess started to loosen up because it actually wasn’t about taking care of everything.
All I needed to do was focus on the 1 thing and the 1 thing took care of everything else.
Brother, sister. Focus once again on the 1 thing.
I know you’ve got a tangled mess all around you and your family and in the culture and in your marriage with your children and on your job and in your finances and your health and your aging parents or Whatever it is that you’ve got going on, I know it’s a whole big tangled mess, but if you will just get back to the 1 thing, you’ll find that focusing on that 1 thing untangles everything.
Lord, Jesus, I thank you for your word, and I thank you that you desire to speak to us through it.
Lord, I pray for fresh wind and fresh fire over your people. In Jesus’ name. Amen.