Priscilla Shirer's "Discerning the Voice of God" Session 3

Session 3 notes from Priscilla Shirer's "Discerning the Voice of God".

Continuing to teach about the person of the Holy Spirit and His voice, Priscilla shared with us that the start of her ministry was progressive.  The doors just kept opening up as she walked through each door - "enough light for the step", she says.

Her advice to us was "keep doing what He's put in front of you to do today."  Great advice.  This is the same advice my dad gave me in being a pastor's wife and my calling.

The main verse used was John 16:13

"But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth for  He will not speak on His own initiative but whatever He hears, He will speak, and He will disclose to you what is to come.

The Greek word for guide in this verse, Priscilla says, means to lead someone who is already on one's way or a person who advises, points out and shows others the way."

So, the Holy Spirit guides you progressively.

"......so that we may know the things freely given to us by God..." I Corinthians 2:12.

What has been freely given to us - that is our assignment right now, Priscilla said.  "Our frustration comes when we want more than what God has freely given to us."  Wise words.

Another piece of good advice was this:  "If we rush too quickly forward to the destiny God has for us, the character in us will not be fortified."

Each step carries something for us into the next step.  "Invest yourself fully right where you are."

The verse in John not only says He guides but there is someone He guides: You!  

The Holy Spirit guides you personally.

He knows you.  Everything about you.

The Holy Spirit is the one who awakens our desires to be more fully engaged to His, Priscilla shared.  He aligns us up to Him.

Priscilla put it like this:  "He realigns our want to so that our want to wants to do what God actually wants us to do."  

Think about that for a moment.

This verse in John not only says guide, you but also the word into.
Which means - He guides you internally.

What does that mean?

"There is an internal layer of truth that we do not have access to in our human wisdom."

With the Holy Spirit in us, He helps us to see what's below the surface, not just what we are seeing with our physical senses.  We can see "into" a person, a situation, a reaction.  "It changes our response" because we can now respond with the gifts of the Spirit not our own human spirit.

He allows us to "see" what's in our "blind spot."  The Holy Spirit will steer our: 

• will
• emotions
• conscience
• heart

The result: 

A soul completely transformed from the inside out.

According to the apostle Paul in Ephesians 6:14 we need to have on our breastplate of righteousness to guard our heart, so we can be transformed, not allowing the enemy any access to our heart.

We learned that the heart is the hub of our soul.

The enemy is after our heart.  "If he can get access to our heart, he has access to our mind, will, emotions and conscience."

The enemy wants to set up strongholds in our life.  These strongholds stand against the knowledge of God.

We can stand firm against the schemes of the enemy.

Priscilla ended with this statement:

"keep the airways clear between us and God, have our spiritual radar peaked and ready to pick up on divine frequencies and hear God's Word for our lives."

Next week Session 4: "Reflective of His Heart"

Priscilla Shirer Session 2: "Discerning the Voice of God"

Welcome to Session 2 of Discerning the Voice of God.  Priscilla's teaching: The Holy Spirit, was captivating and challenging to all of us on this great adventure in God's Holy Word.

Her opening statement was "make sure you're doing what God has called you to do. Look for that 'well-done.'"

She talked about our front line, our assignment or mission. For each of us, it will look different than someone else. Priscilla said "to know what the front line is for your life, you must hear the voice of God."

Our example, Jesus Christ, only did the will of His Father and nothing else.  

For us, we spend too much time "doing the good thing that when the God thing comes, we don't have enough energy left for it."

Jesus spent time with the Father to know His will, so must we.

Matthew 17:5 talks about the transfiguration.  The Father spoke from Heaven saying "this is my beloved Son....listen to Him."  The key word here is listen.

A personal relationship with Him includes a two-way conversation. "He gave all to have a personal, one-on-one relationship with us."

• Six different trials
• Brutal whippings
• Beatings
• Mockings
• Crown of thorns driven into His skull
• Hung Him high, stretched Him wide, hung His head, died

He didn't just give us salvation, but also gave us the Holy Spirit, a gift given to us.

The Holy Spirit is the primary way that we hear from God, Priscilla said.  We looked at Ephesians 1:13-14a (ESV) where it says "when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee".....

Sealed means:

• to mark
• to certify
• to enclose with a seal
• to authenticate

The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity with glory, grandeur and the power of the Father.  Since he lives in us as well, we have the glory, grandeur and power of the Father.

The Holy Spirit is our down payment.  With the Holy Spirit's seal in our life, He is our pledge.  Priscilla said "everything He has promised He will do."  The Holy Spirit gives us"the privilege to tune in to divine frequencies."

Every human being - saved or unsaved - is made up of three parts, Priscilla shared: Body. Soul. Spirit.

Body: physical world, 5 senses.

Soul:  mind, will, emotions.

Spirit: the real you - designed for connection with God.

It's the Holy Spirit that regenerates us. "He becomes the cable, the network, so we can have relationship with God and hear from God."

"If the Holy Spirit lives in you, you haven't changed, you have been exchanged."

Priscilla encouraged us that "relationship is the prerequisite for recognition of God's voice."

We then looked at Ephesians 1:17-20 (ESV).  The main words in these verses are:

• spiritual wisdom (v.17)
• revelation (v.17)
• knowledge (v.17)
• know (v.18)

Paul is asking God to give the Ephesian believers a revelation of the gift that they have.  

Cooperating with the Holy Spirit is essential.  We cooperate by yielding and surrendering.

Priscilla also said that "external signs will not be the primary way we hear from God, but will confirm the leading of the Holy Spirit."

Our soul is also comprised of our conscience as well.  It is not the voice of God.  "Our conscience is shaped upon the way we were raised, and the environment we were raised in."

The goal of the Holy Spirit is to sanctify us; mold us to look more like Christ.  The Holy Spirit will seep out into areas of our life and our unregenerate conscience the moment we are saved, Priscilla shares.  "He shakes our conscience awake to be more aligned to God."

"When we feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit, take note of the conviction."

Priscilla gave us the red light, yellow light, green light conviction analogy:

• Red light. His way of saying STOP.
• Yellow light of dis-ease means WAIT.
• Green light of ease and peace is His way of saying GO.

The apostle Paul confirms this connection with our conscience and the Holy Spirit in:

• Romans 9:11 "my conscience bears witness with the Holy Spirit.
• Acts 23:1 "I have lived my life with a good conscience before God."
• 2 Timoty 1:3 "I thank God whom I served with a clean conscience."

Priscilla also stated that the way we can distinguish God's leading through our conscience in our life is this: "your own voice, your own thoughts, your own subconscience will try to convince you, argue with you, rationalize, work to try and get your mind and your heart to cooperate, but God's voice has authority."

He will never say anything to us that is outside the boundaries of His word.

In conclusion, "we yield to the Holy Spirit because He knows the mind and thoughts of God.  As we yield, we experience the abundance He has come to give."

Practice hearing God!

Next: Session 3: The Holy Spirit's Voice

Priscilla Shirer "Discerning the Voice of God" Session 1

The Girlfriend's of Faith Bible study Discerning the Voice of God session 1 - "A Proactive Stance to Obedience" was a heart-rending start to this series.  All of us experienced varying degrees of searching our heart regarding our stance of obedience.

To begin, Priscilla Shirer reminded us that trends come and go but what never changes is the "timelessness of our God."  Our God is not transitional. He does not change.

She spoke about the things we can definitely count on about our God.  The things that still matter:

• Prayer 
• Stillness
• Time spent in God's Word to renew our mind
• Faith is still the shield of that extinguishes the flaming missiles of the evil one
• Jesus is still the only mediator between God and man
• Obedience
• Holiness 

Priscilla shared her story of the balance beam in her gymnastic class.  Before her coach would give her any further instructions, such as twists, turns, leaps, he made sure her alignment was correct on the balance beam.  She waited for his okay to continue. He would stand at the end of the beam and check her posture, making sure her whole body was aligned correctly so no injuries would occur.  When it was correctly aligned, he would then give her further instructions, the next move.

This was a powerful imagery for all of us.  Listening, obeying, waiting for the next bit of instructions.  Obedience is where it starts, Priscilla said. Aligning ourselves to the voice of God and then moving on His instructions, His commands.  The question is this, "do we really want to hear from God?  Have we postured our heart in a state to say yes Lord?"

The questions posed by Priscilla were:

• Are we off balance in any way in our life?
• Do we need to be realigned?
• Is there an area of fear, pride, ego, intimidation in our life?
• Is there an area we need to loosen our grip on?
• What keeps us from being fully engaged in obedience?

The main scriptures Priscilla used in session I were from 2 Kings 5:1-3, 9-14 and Luke 4:27.

The story refers to Naaman whose leprosy remained dormant - not fully revealed as yet - functional leprosy.  It had been hidden for many years.  She suggested to us that we also "live in a generation of functional leprosy."  We fail to highlight the leprosy that plagues our life.  It's possible to be a functional leper.

It was the captive girl in verse 3 who knew to go to Elisha the prophet.  It gave us something to think about.

In verse 7, the King tore his clothes when he read the letter sent to him by the King of Israel. "Am I God to kill and to make alive, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy?"

Priscilla suggested that when we "misplace our issues onto other people to carry, who were never supposed to be God for us, we cripple them under the weight of burdens they were never created to bear."  

We must turn our eyes upward where our help really comes from -Psalm 121:1-2, Psalm 20:7.

Elisha's response:  "send him to me."  God is calling to us as well "come to me."

Priscilla concluded that in this passage Naaman's issue is pride. She said "Naaman had expectations and so do we."

• It's too simple to be supernatural - but the ordinary is the disguise of the divine
• It's too small to be big - sometimes the biggest moves of God are wrapped up in the smallest assignments of obedience
• It's too dirty to be clean

"God will get to the leprosy in our soul first before He deals with the leprosy of our circumstances."

"Go wash" was the command.  Wash in this dirty Jordan river 7 times.  A filthy body of water, inconvenient and far to go for Naaman.  But the words "I thought" appear in scripture. Naaman had suggestions:

• Damascus is closer
• There's clearer, cleaner waters there to wash in

Do we sometimes give God suggestions about how He should work in our lives, our circumstances?  

Priscilla shared that "God sometimes will have us trudge into difficult, uncomfortable places; places that stretch us, but it's the dirty that will make us clean. Just like Jesus.  He became dirty, taking on our sin to make us clean."

Verse 14 says "so he went down and dipped." Humility is the bridge to our healing.  We need to say "yes Lord, I surrender."

Session 2 will begin the teaching "The Holy Spirit."

7 Ways to Stay Connected to Your College Student

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I found this helpful article for all those who have kids leaving for college this year.  I hope this helps you with the transition:

Set up a weekly or biweekly time to video chat or plan a date when you'll visit. That way, everyone will have a specific time or date to look forward to. But don't forget that students get busy, sometimes forget, or don't always have that much to say. Don't take those missed video dates or unanswered texts personally. Hey, you may need a little "grace" now and then, too!

Support them, and yourself, with prayer. Identify other parents in your church or community who also face their child's absence from home. What a great opportunity to reconnect with parents of your child's friends apart from the context of being "your child's parents." Set aside time each week to meet, discuss issues the students may be facing, offer advice on parenting from afar, and lift up any praises/prayers/concerns you may have. Also, ask your student if she/he has anything specific that the group may pray for.

Invest in your student's intellectual interests. Take them to a bookstore to select a book on their area of study. Be aware of magazine articles, newspaper clippings or TV programs that feature their interests. If your teen wants to be a veterinarian, for example, ask your local vet for resources your student might enjoy. If you have friends that work in the profession your child would like to enter, ask them to speak with your child. When your student knows you care about more than just grades, they're more likely to focus on the learning process rather than the resulting GPA. You may learn a little something too!

Remember details of their lives. As they tell you about new friends, jot down a few things about each one so you can demonstrate your interest in the progression of these friendships over the year.

Help them keep family traditions alive. Send holiday kits complete with carving patterns for jack-o'-lanterns, cookie-baking supplies for Christmas, or construction paper and glittery markers to make Valentine cards. Not only will they be reminded of good times at home, but you'll find comfort in knowing they're carrying on those traditions with their new "family" of friends at school.

Surprise them with little gifts. Send a postcard from your hometown, a subscription to a favorite magazine, or an e-card "just because." And don't forget: College kids always love homemade cookies!

Jeremy Wallace, an admissions counselor for Tennessee Temple University in Chattanooga, provided ideas for developing these tips.