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."