Priscilla Shirer - Strengthen Your Connection With God

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I start to spend time with him in prayer and
in conversation so that I can take advantage of this
privilege to hear his voice and to speak to him
in prayer. That I won't let everybody keep spoon feeding
me the word of God. I'm going to go to
the scriptures myself and know that I too can have
an ongoing, fervent relationship with Jesus. And when you do,

(00:21):
you will see him and experience him and encounter him
in a way you have never encountered him. That's not
just about reading a book. It's so much more than that.
This book is alive, and so as we engage in it,
we can relate to God through it, because He speaks
to us through his work. There was a commercial that

(00:44):
came to my mind as a honeynut Cheerio's commercial. This
lady's got a hairnet on. She's been working in the
factory all day long. They're interviewing her and she says,
you know, I'm just like regular working moms. Sometimes after work,
I gotta go to the grocery store, so I do
I run my errands. I go to the grocery store
and she says, sometimes I'm walking down the aisleway and

(01:04):
grocery in the grocery store, just one hole after the other.
And every aisle I go down, I see people going.
They're wondering why they can smell what to them smells
like fresh bread baking somewhere, or cookies somewhere. And then
she said, every now and then I'll walk past and
I'll just put people out of their misery and tell them, hey,

(01:24):
you're just smelling me, because I smell like the environment
I've been in all day. So when we leave from
a place like this, we go back into our homes
and our jobs at our neighborhoods, and our high schools
and our universities, and people are just like where you been.

(01:47):
Something different about you. You smell like the environment you've
been in all day. Lord Jesus, I thank you for
this place that is permeating with the fragrance of your presence.
I thank you, Father in Jesus' name, that our lives
will have the residue of your presence on them. That Father,

(02:11):
from this place, we will never ever be the same again.
We are your daughter's Lord, and we are coming over
your word now to hear a fresh word straight from
the mouth of God. Lord, I am so glad that
everybody else in this room is here. But I didn't
come to see everybody else. I came to see you,
and so, Lord, I'm asking that you would open up

(02:31):
the windows of heaven and come down and speak to
your daughters. We are listening in Jesus's name. Everybody agreed
when they said, amen, Amen, you may take your seats.
Years and years ago, man, my babies were little. I
remember this because I traveled to Memphis on one particular occasion.

(02:52):
And I remember this because I was exhausted. I was
so tired. You know, my kids were small at the time,
and I happened to take the particular trip by myself,
and I traveled to Memphis, and I remember being so
excited when the lady picked me up from the airport
that was a part of the church that I was
going to be ministering at. She took me to from
the airport to the hotel. It was early evening. I

(03:14):
was so glad. Anybody ever been glad to just go
to bed at eight pm? I could not wait. I
laid down in the bed, ready to get a good
night of sleep, and I was jolted awake about two o'clock,
three o'clock in the morning, because there was a train
that went by right outside the window of our hotel.

(03:34):
The conductor of the train was sitting on the horn
as the long train blazed right outside of the hotel
where I was sleeping. I sat straight up in bed,
sort of alarmed by the noise, went and looked out
of the window and realized that literally the train tracks
were right there, and it was one of those very
long trains with a lot of cars that went whisking by.

(03:55):
It took a while for the train to finally pass
by and settle. I tried to go back to sleep
as best I could. Lady came back to pick me
up that particular morning. Because the conference started, I had
to be there very early in the morning, so it
was about six thirty or so anyway that I was
going to have to get up and get dressed and
get ready for a seven fifteen or seven thirty pickup.

(04:15):
And so I got in the car, and I didn't
really really say anything, No big deal. We had a
great day at the conference. I went back to sleep
that night, thinking, of course, that the night before had
been a fluke, and that that train wasn't coming by again.
Went to sleep about eight thirty nine pm, so glad
to get a good full night of sleep. But three am,
you guessed it, that train went roaring by right outside

(04:37):
the window. I sat straight up in bed, not believing
that this was happening again, and I couldn't even get
back to sleep that night. I couldn't wait for that
sweet lady to come pick me up. The next morning,
I sat down in the car and I said, so, hey,
did you know that there is a train that goes
by about three o'clock in the morning. At least the

(04:59):
last two mornings that I've been here, that train has
gone by in the middle of the night. Woken me
straight up out of my sleep, and she had this
look of complete horror and regret written all over her face.
She said, I am so sorry. I didn't even think
about the fact that that train goes by, because those
of us who live in this community have grown so

(05:22):
used to the sound of the train that it doesn't
even occur to us when it's passing through anymore. It
occurs to me that those of us who live, particularly
in this western part of the world, where the presence
of God has been so lavishly given to us, where
on every street corner we see another church with a

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pastor that preaches the good news of Jesus Christ, where
we can turn on Christian radio stations, are going across
town to the Christian bookstore. Where we live as women
in a day and age and generation where there have
never been ever in history so many Bibles study resources
by women for women. Could it be that we've grown

(06:06):
so used to the blessing of the presence of God
that when the train of God's glory falls, when God's
presence comes and marks and permeates our presence, that we
don't even recognize it anymore. That God has so blessed us,
that we're too blessed for our own good that we

(06:28):
don't see the fingerprints of God in our lives, That
when there's even just a hint of disappointment or discouragement
or frustration or irritation in our life, that we are
blinded to the fact that even when things are dark,
the light of God's presence can still be found if
we'll just open up our eyes. May we never be

(06:50):
desensitized to the presence of God. And if you have
your Bibles and you want to look with me at
a passage of scripture. I'll just read it to you
that I want to point out today if you still,
you know, actually use a Bible with paper pages like
I do, or your iPhone, your iPad. Any manner of
eye ness is fine. In Luke chapter two, there are

(07:11):
a group of people who are about to be in
the presence of God, and they're not even going to
recognize it. I will tell you as you turned to
Luke chapter two, that the author Luke wrote this gospel
and recorded these stories really to show us how to
have an encounter with Jesus, to not miss him when
his presence is near. And by the way, this is
our goal as believers. This is the reason why He

(07:33):
died on the cross of cavalry, so that we could
not just know about him, but so that we can
encounter him. We're not just supposed to read in the
Old Testament about how he divided the Red Sea, or
caused the walls of Jericho to come tumbling down, or
met with a man named Moses in the form of
a burning bush, or showed up as the Angel of
the Lord in a wine press while a fearful timid

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Gideon was beating out wine threshing wheat, rather in that
wine press. We're not just supposed to read about others
that had an encounter with Jesus. We're not just supposed
to see and applaud and experience the testimonies of other people.
They're supposed to encourage us to realize that if regular
folks like that can encounter Him, so can we. And

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Luke comes along and he writes story after story and
his gospel to show us that we can have an
encounter with Jesus. These people that he is writing to
and that he's writing about, we're in a time of
national decay. There is chaos happening and swirling around them
morally and socially, and you and I can relate to

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that because they were not just in a time of
national decay. So are we. Our country is in a
state of more social decay and decline than we've ever
seen before. And the more God is marginalized and segmented
to the periphery of society, the worst things are gonna get.
The more He is completely ignored and disregarded, the more

(09:01):
we're gonna see the influx of chaos and destruction. But
today I don't want y'all to worry about the White House.
I want to get to your house. I want to
talk about the destruction and the decay happening, maybe underneath
the roof of your own home. Luke is writing not
just then, but now to people who need a savior,

(09:24):
Folks who are waiting on a hero to show up
and rescue them from the plight of their own circumstances.
Luke was writing to them, but by the Holy Spirit,
he is writing to us today for any of you
who are in a state of decline in some area
of your life where we're seeing against the backdrop of darkness,
this need we have for the Savior to manifest himself,

(09:47):
for us to not just know about him from Afar,
applauding him in the testimonies of other people, but if
anybody wants to experience him themselves, then Luke is writing
to you. And I want somebody to know this today,
that sometimes sometimes your difficulties are less about the enemy
being against you and more about God wanting you to

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wanting to show you what it looks like when He
is for you. Sometimes it's about Him finally wanting his
daughter's eyes to be open so that when he shows up,
they're sensitive enough to see him. Lukechapter two, verse twenty
five says, and behold, there was a man in Jerusalem
whose name was Simeon. This man was righteous and devout

(10:34):
and looking for the consolation. He was looking for some hope, y'all,
looking for the consolation of Israel. And the Holy Spirit
was upon him. And it had been revealed to him
by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death
before he had seen the Lord's Christ. And he came
in the spirit into the temple. And when the parents

(10:56):
brought in the child Jesus to carry out for him
the custom of the law, he took Jesus. He went
over to this couple, grabbed this forty day old child
into his arms, and he blessed God and said, now Lord,
you can let your servant depart in peace, because according
to thy word, my eyes have seen your salvation. You

(11:16):
have prepared your salvation in the presence of all the people.
Al liked of revelation the glory of thy people. Israel.
And Mary and Joseph, they were amazed at the things
that were being said about their son, Jesus Christ. Here
on this occasion, Mary and Joseph have come into the
temple for the purification ceremony. It was traditional, it was

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ceremonial that about forty days after a baby was born
and the purification process had taken place, that the parents
of a new baby would bring their baby into the
temple to offer specific sacrifices, a burnt offering, a sin offering,
and just to present their child to the Lord. Now, traditionally,
when folks came into the temple, they would bring sacrifices.

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And if you look back into the book of Leviticus,
the details of those sacrifices are given. They would need
to have a pigeon for a particular sacrifice, they would
need to have a lamb for another sacrifice. And there
is a caveat. I'm just gonna take a little rabbit
trail for a second, because I love that y'all like
rabbit trails. There's a little caveat given in Luke Leviticus,

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chapter twelve that says that if someone is not wealthy enough,
if they do not have the resources to actually purchase
a lamb for this sacrifice, that they actually can just
bring two pigeons. And I didn't read all the details here,
but a few verses earlier than where we started. In
verse twenty five, it tells us that Mary and Joseph
come into the temple with two pigeons or two turtle doves.

(12:44):
They don't have a lamb, which indicates to us that
they have expended so much of their resources that they
are in a state of poverty at least enough, but
they were not able to afford their own lamb. They've
got two pigeons. It's all they had to bring on
this occasion. As they bring their new baby into the
tabernacle to present him to the Lord, They've got these

(13:06):
two pigeons, which means that when they walked into the temple,
people would have looked at them and recognized them as
a couple that was an ins that had insufficient funds,
as a couple that was lacking, as a poor couple.
They would have been looked down upon. People would have
marginalized them because they did not have the accouturements of

(13:26):
wealth that everybody else in the building had. So they
did not have a lamb, and yet they have in
their possession the lamb that takes away the sins of
the world. Can't just say to anybody who is in
the room and you felt like an outcast because you
don't wear what everybody else wears. You can't afford to
drive what everybody else drives you, you don't have the

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resources to live in the neighborhood where everybody else lives. Listen,
my friends, even if you do not have a lamb,
you might be in the perfect position to make sure
you have intimacy with the Lamb who takes away the
sins of the world. And can I tell you that
sometimes it is our affluence that keeps us from having

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the Lamb of God in our grasp, intimacy and fellowship
with him like never before. The people that I have
met that have more of an integral, intimate, ongoing, fervent,
passionate relationship with Jesus Christ, they are not the people
sometimes that live in the mansion on the hill. It's

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the people in a hunt in a village with thatched
rooms and dirt floors, who have, in their desperation, had
an encounter with Jesus Christ. And y'all, I have met
people in third world countries who pray for us. Ooh,
they pray for us. They feel bad for us because

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they say we pray anemic, self centered prayers. They listen
to our prayers that are so focused on having more
comfort than we already have. Where in their desperation they
have met with Jesus, they have seen Him with their
own eyes. They have been marked by the presence of God.
They have watched God show up in so much splendor,

(15:15):
and they want that for us. So sometimes when we
can afford our own lamb, it pushes out the opportunity
and the margin that should be reserved for the lamb.
Comfortable people pray anemic prayers. It's desperation, it's insufficiency, it's lack,

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it's emptiness. When you find yourself in that state where,
like Mary and Joseph, you don't have enough to buy
your own lamb anymore, that might be the perfect setup
for your encounter with the lamb of God. And so
they are coming into the temple with the lamb. He's
in their arms. They walk in to the temple, y'all,

(16:07):
they're at church. There's a group of people, including religious leaders, pharisees,
and sadducees that have all gathered around, probably hundreds of people,
all carrying their sacrifices, that have joined in on this occasion,
and they've been waiting all of these people have been
waiting on the Messiah. They've been waiting for the Kingdom

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of God to be at hand. They've been waiting on
a king to ride in on a white horse and
to redeem them from all that has been lost at
how they've lost at a nation. They've been waiting for
somebody to rescue them from the oppression of Rome. They
have been looking for a hero. And the hero comes
in and they do not recognize him. They are at

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church and they do not recognize the presence of God.
The reason why is because he has come in a
package that they do not prefer. He has come in
a package that does not align with their expectations. And

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so because he does not look like what they wanted
him to look like, about what they had, in their
own estimation prepared as the package that would be, in
their estimation, the best package for the King to arrive.
Because their circumstance does not look like and he has
not appeared the way that they preferred, they downplay the
Messiah when he arrives. I want to submit to you

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that Jesus is there in this difficult moment in your marriage,
in this trying moment in your finances, in this struggle
on your job, in this difficulty, in this relationship you're
rubbing corners with your boss or your spouse, or this
struggle you're having on your university campus or in your
high school campus. There's hard time that you were having.

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He is there. He just may have come in the
package you don't prefer. And that oftentimes the fingerprints of
God are not recognized, not because he's not there. It
is just because the expectation we have set up about
what He looks like and how he will speak and
how he will move the prayer request, the solution that

(18:20):
he will bring doesn't align with the prayer request that
we have prayed. We have boxed God into the way
we want him to answer, instead of believing that his
ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not
our thoughts. As high as the heavens are above the earth,
that's how high his thoughts are above our own. And
so we box God in when we say, Lord, answer

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my request in this particular way. Do you know that
you limit not God, but you limit I limit our
experience of God. When we say, Lord, answer my request
exactly this way. I have learned to pray here, Lord,
is my request. You said that I can make it
known how I would like to see you move in
my circumstance. Thank you Lord that I can come boldly

(19:04):
and make my request known. So I've made my request,
but at the end of that prayer, I've learned to pray, Lord,
do it or do something better? Because do you know
there are categories of options that our brain doesn't even
know are available and accessible to us. And if we

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limit God to what we can think and what we
see as the way, we have not even considered the
categories of opportunity that this divine, holy almighty Being has
accessible to him. Y'all, He's not just thinking about you.
He's thinking about your children, and your grandchildren and your

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great grandchildren and those that aren't to come, and how
His kingdom purposes are going to be outworked in this generation.
And so on this occasion, the Messiah shows up and
nobody recognizes him except somebody, say, except except a guy
named Simeon. He had been told and promised, just like

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we have, that he would see the manifest presence of God.
He'd been told it. He'd been promised just like we've
been promised. Because of our relationship with God, through Christ,
Jesus and the Holy Spirit in dwelling us, that we
will see the fingerprints of God working in our lives.

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This is called the manifest presence of God. It is
unique to omnipresence. Omnipresence means that God is everywhere all
at the same time. I'm so grateful for God's omnipresence
because God's omnipresence means that when I fly back to
Dallas where I live, when my new friends that I
just met from Uganda fly back to where they live,

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that when you all fly back to where ever it
is you've come from, whether all over different areas of
California or Afar, it means that no matter or where
we go, He is as much with me as He
is with you, because He is omnipresent. But if you're
anything like me, you're grateful for his omnipresence, but you
want more than that. You want the manifested presence of God.

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I'm talking about where you can look back over your
circumstances and realize that His fingerprints were all throughout that thing.
I'm talking about where you can see footprints in the
sand as you actually recognize that God was walking beside
you the whole way. I'm talking about what other people
call coincidence encounters. You see the sovereign hand of God
that was aligning your footsteps and setting you in the

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right place at the exact right time, the manifest presence
of God. I wanted to know what made Simeon's eyes open,
to recognize what nobody else in this scenario did. I
figured whatever opened up his eyes might open up our
eyes as well. Are you ready? Three things that I
want to point out to you, it says in verse
twenty six about Simeon. It says that it had been

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actually verse twenty five. I want to start there. There
was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. He
was righteous, devout, looking for the consolation of Israel. We
could spend a whole lot of time in those three,
but here's where I want to hearten. The Holy Spirit
was upon him. The Holy Spirit was upon him. It

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says that he came into the temple verse twenty seven
in the spirit. Verse twenty six says it had been
revealed to him by the Holy Spirit. Look at the
presence of the Holy Spirit permeating this text. Look at
how the author has over and over and over again,

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highlighted the work of the Holy Spirit in opening up
Simeon's eyes to be able to recognize the manifested presence
of God before him, in the person of Jesus Christ.
Luke here he is just in the second chapter of
this book, and by the way, just in these first
two chapters he has already alluded to the Spirit ten times.

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The work of God's Spirit is so powerful and so
needful to a fruitful experience in the life of the believer,
that even before the Book of Acts, even before Pentecost,
even before the Spirit has come, Luke points out the
movement of the Spirit here in the life of Simeon.
This shows you how important the spirit's work is, how

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critical it is to making sure that your spiritual senses,
your spiritual radar, is heightened, so that you can detect
the presence of God. The Holy Spirit was upon him. Now,
I want you to see the work of God's Spirit.
This is just the first characteristic of Simeon, but I
want to just take some time for just a few

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moments on it. The work of God's Spirit is so
important it deserves a little bit of our attention. Here
there are three ways that the Holy Spirit is described
as relating to sin in these few verses. Just a
few ways that the Holy Spirit relates to Simion in
these few verses. The first thing it says is that
the Holy Spirit was upon him. Now listen, I want

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you to know that if you have placed faith in
Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit lives on the inside of you.
Ephesian Chapter one says, at the moment you believe you
received the Holy Spirit, you were sealed by the Holy
Spirit of promise. I want you to know that at
the moment you became a believer in Jesus Christ, you
received the most incredible gift you will ever receive this

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side of eternity, and that is the very presence of
God living on the inside of you. The Holy Spirit
is not a ghost or a wind, or a fire
or a dove. He is often symbolized by those things,
but don't minimize him. That ain't who he is. The
Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. Not
third because he is leased in value, just third because

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he's the last to be revealed to us in the
pages of scripture. But all of the power, all of
the glory, all of the authority, all of the grandeur
of God the Father is in the person of the
Holy Spirit, which means, if you're a believer, in the
Holy Spirit lives in you. That means all of the

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grandeur and all of the greatness, all of the authority
of God himself now lives on the inside of you.
So if you are a believer, you have the Holy Spirit.
You are not waiting on more of the Holy Spirit.
All the Holy Spirit you ever gonna get. You got
the moment you got saved. Now you do need to

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be filled by God's Spirit so that his influence in
your life grows and grows, so that you operate under
the gifting of the Spirit, so that you can live
according to the fruit of the Spirit. That means living
beyond your natural capacity. It means when your patience runs out,
you can still have more patience with that person. It

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means when has long since left the building, you still
find you got a little gentleness for that parton when
self discipline, I mean you just don't know, have no
more self discipline in that area. We need the fruit
of God's Spirit. So we need to be filled by
the spirit. As we yield to Himan obedience, we are
filled which means he influences us more. Our mind is

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renewed and transformed. We are sanctified into the image of
Christ Jesus. So the Holy Spirit is in you. But Simeon,
his relationship with the Spirit is not described in that way.
It doesn't say that the Spirit was in him. It
says that the Holy Spirit was on him, which means

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there is a difference between the Spirit being in you
and the Spirit resting. Listen to me, the gift of
God's Spirit in you. Oh, this brings tears to my eyes.
The gift of God's Spirit in you. He will never

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leave you nor forsake you. There is nothing you can
do to work yourself out of a relationship with the
Holy Spirit. Okay, but him being on you. You gotta
live a life. I want to live a life that
is a magnet for the presence of God to rest
on me. We can sit in this conference until we're

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blue in the face and applaud the truths of God
and say Amen to the truths of God. But if
we leave this room and live in a way that
is out of alignment with the truths of God, we
will not have the Spirit resting on us. If you
want the mark of God's presence on you. I'm talking

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about where other people can see you operating in your gift,
moving about in the assignments that you have been given,
and where they can just see there's a unique favor
on your life toward that particular task or that particular endeavor.
Where you are marked by something that gives you favor,
that gives you His grace for a particular area of

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your life, then you must live. I must choose to
live in a way that honors God so that God's
presence can rest upon us. Because He will not force
himself on you. He offers you this resting of his
presence and his grace upon your life if you will
choose to live in a way that does not disturb

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His presence, that does not keep him from being able
to be near you. Because you have chosen here it
is to be holy. Listen to me. Are you listening? Y'all?
We live in a day and age where we have
become more interested in being impressive than being holy, where

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we are more interested in making sure we have likes
and friends and the applause of people more than just
being flat out holy. By making sure that political correctness
is not our main goal. That we're not after the
applause of people. We're after the applause of Heaven. You

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gotta choose to be ye holy. And so I implore you, sisters,
by the mercies of God, to walk in a manner
worthy of the calling by which you have been called.
So the spirit rested upon him. Let me just show
you quickly. Verse twenty six says if the spirit revealed

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to him, so that means the spirit not only rested
upon him, the spirits revealed to him. Old preachers called
this illumination. It's shining a spotlight. It's when you're sitting
in in church on a Sunday and your pastor opens
up the Bible to preach, and man, he just reads
or she reads that first two verses that they're going
to be preaching from, and you sit straight up in

(30:08):
your seat because you feel like it's all about you.
Anybody know what I'm talking about. It's where you're trying
to figure out, how did the church bug my house?
How did they know? That's the illumination of the spirit.
It's when the old truth of scripture leap up off

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the page and, for lack of a better way, word
it's when they grip you in your soul where you
see how that intersects with something you are personally facing today.
That is the revelation of the Holy Spirit. This is
what the Holy Spirit does. He reveals, he illumines, he
shines the spotlight. Simeon was there that day because he

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had been promised by the revelation of God's Spirit. It
wasn't just a random promise. It was his promise. You've
had that happen over the course of these days that
we've been gathered. You probably have had that happen were
something that has been said. It wasn't just great to
hear it. It gripped your soul. You knew it was
an assignment for you. It was a conviction that you

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knew the Lord was going to send you out of
here with that assignment because the Holy Spirit revealed it
to you. God's Spirit rests, he reveals, and then he
ruled Simeon because it says in verse twenty seven that
he came in the spirit to the temple, meaning the
Spirit told him on this day to go into the temple,

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and it says that he came into the spirit into
the temple under the conviction of the Holy Spirit. When
the Spirit said, go, Simeon said, yes, sir, he submitted
to the leadership of the Holy Spirit, and he was
in the right place at the right time to run

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right smack dab into the Messiah because he was submit
admitted to the leadership of the Holy Spirit. Do you
know that the more you ignore that still small conviction,
the quieter that voice will become, not because he is
no longer speaking, but because you've built a callous of disobedience.

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You have muffled the voice of the Holy Spirit. So
it is better to be so sensitive to God's Holy
Spirit that sometimes you give when maybe He hasn't even
prompted you to give. But it's okay, because to the
best of your capacity, you are obeying the Holy Spirit
of God, just to keep those airways open and clear
from the disobedience that will begin to muffle his voice

(32:38):
in your life, because more than anything else the enemy
wants you've disconnected from the privilege of hearing the voice
of God. Y'all, this is what separates our faith from
every other so called faith on the face of the earth.
It's that our God is alive, It's that he speaks,
It's that we have the privilege that here his voice

(33:02):
never downplay or minimize the value, the beauty, the lavish
grace of this privilege that we have to hear the
voice of God. So the Holy Spirit rested upon him.
There are two other things that I want to point
out to you that were symbolic or were significant about
Simeon that opened up his eyes to see Jesus as

(33:25):
he was to be seen in this package that other
people downplayed and found insignificant, that they totally ignored because
they didn't think that their king would look like that.
Here's what opened Simeon's eyes, not only that he was
in the spirit when he came into the temple. And
by the way, here's another rabbit trail. Sorry, if we

(33:47):
came to church in the spirit, it would change our
experience in church. Can I just say that? Because while
everybody else was looking at that poor couple wondering why
in the world world they were in their midst and discounting
Mary and Joseph, Simeon came in the spirit, and he
was less concerned about who was wearing what, and who

(34:08):
was driving up what, and who sat where, and who
was in his seat and whether or not it was
hot outside, and they had to walk forward to go
take their children to Sunday school. He was less concerned
about his convenience. Whether or not the preacher preached good
was irrelevant to him. He was looking for Jesus. Whether
or not the microphones were perfectly balanced, or the lights
were exactly as they should be, whether or not the

(34:29):
LD's screens were on full display that day. Whether or
not the ushers were or were not kind was not
his priority. He had come with his eyes peeled for Jesus.
We would be less critical and less skeptical. If we
came to church in the spirit. Then the pressure wouldn't
be on the person who's on the stage, because you
didn't come to see them. You came to see Jesus.

(34:53):
Okay verse twenty seven. So he comes in the spirit,
and then look what happens in verse twenty seven, the
parent bring in the child Jesus. Jesus comes in in
his parents' arms. Look at the Savior. Look at how
the manifest presence of God arrives on this remarkable day.
Watch him show up into the experience of this aged

(35:16):
saint named Simeon in a very personal way, and onto
the landscape of human history. He arrives in the arms
of his parents. There is something about the way we
see Jesus when we look at him through the well
worn paths that have been hewned out by our parents,
our grandparents, our great grandparents, our forefathers, and our fore mothers.

(35:40):
Spiritually speaking, the people who have gone before us, that
have walked with Jesus just a little while, who have
spent their lives serving him. I am always nervous when
I see a young group of Christians with their little
skinny jeans and their lattes and their avocado toast, which
I love. By the way, I'm just always a little

(36:03):
nervous when I see them instagramming all their religious experiences
without the oversight of some spiritual parents. Because y'all, we
have modernized Jesus today, the modern version of Jesus that
we have crafted, he has made him water down. Now
he's tolerant of sin without the expectation of holiness. Our

(36:24):
Jesus is politically correct. We need to see Jesus coming
in the arms of our parents, the people who live
gone before us, the folks who have walked the road
a little while, who know what hymnos are who sang
the good old hymns that were based in some theology.
We gotta make sure that our new praise and worship songs,

(36:47):
I love them. We gotta make sure they're rooted in
some good theology, and so the package may change. Listen, y'all,
I still go to the kind of church's I'm a
long way, but it started when I was one year old,
the church that I go to now. So you know,
back in the day, there was no way in the
world I would have ever gotten on a stage with

(37:08):
with with panther. Are you kidding? Anybody know what kind
of church I'm talking about. We still have a few
people in our church, a few mothers of the church.
If anybody knows what I mean jeans in the church,
Are you kidding? They came in their suits. I'm talking
about where the skirt matches the jacket like they were

(37:32):
bought together. And not only that, but underneath that suit,
she's gonna have some actual panty hose on. I'm not
talking about sphanks with the feet cut out, ah, I
mean panty hose, the ones with the girdle top. Anybody
know what I'm talking about? Anybody remember that? And she's

(37:54):
gonna have a handbag in her hand, and that handbag,
that clutch is going to match that jacket which matches
that skirt, which matches her patent leather shoes that she
has on her feet, closed toe, patent leather shoes. But
the outfit is never complete. And you know it ain't

(38:21):
no regular hat, right, you know it's got something. It's
a feather or a net or something that's sitting just
like this. And she's gonna worship God. Anybody know what

(38:42):
kind of church I'm talking about? And I love when
she comes up to give a testimony about what he
has seen the Lord. It might not be modern, it

(39:05):
might not be new and improved, but it's the Jesus
of Abraham, Isaac and Shack. It's the God of our forefathers.
There's some things you cannot learn on Instagram. There are
some things you just need to be with the Mother
of the Church, somebody who's walked the road a little

(39:26):
bit longer than you, to make sure you can bounce
off of her or him from the true, theological, biblically based, unchanging,
venerated Word of God. So the package may change, but
the principles never do. Y'all. Jesus was never politically correct.

(39:46):
He was always a revolutionary. He never dismissed sin. He
called it out in grace, but most certainly in truth.
He was never watered down. He always said, I am
the only way, I am the truth, and I am
the life. He didn't acquiesce or tolerate. He loved, but
he did say repent, for the Kingdom of God is

(40:09):
at hand. God made us in his image, and one
philosopher said, we have now returned the favor by trying
to make him in ours. We gotta see Jesus as
he's always meant to be seen, and sometimes it requires

(40:29):
you going to find a parent, a spiritual parent, who
can show you the Jesus of the Bible. Simeon saw
Jesus because as he was meant to be seen. He
saw him in the package in which our Savior wanted
to come, because there were some spiritual parents who were
willing to bring him in. So I speak to the

(40:50):
younger people that are in this room. I'm telling you
check your arrogance, check our lack of teachability, where sometimes
we just I think we know it all, so we
won't recognize and see the beauty of our Savior, because
we won't receive him from the parents who are trying
to give him to us. So the package may change,

(41:12):
change the package. Enjoy that freedom, but watch and make
sure that you're sticking to the true milk of the
Word of God. And then can I improre you who
are in this room, and you've sort of graduated to
that parent department, take this as your privilege to carry
Jesus to those who need him, to see him and

(41:35):
experience him as you will bring him. Simeon shows us
that in order to have our eyes open, his experience
demonstrates to us that we need to have the Holy
Spirit upon us, and we need to be looking for
how the parents bring him into our experience. But finally,
it says in verse twenty eight that is soon as
he caught a glimpse of him, he went over. Look

(41:56):
at the boldness, look at the audacity, look at the
eagerness of Simeon, and he runs over to the parents.
He takes the baby out of their arms and gathers
him to himself. Because an experience with Jesus from Afar
wasn't enough for Simeon. Can I just tell you in

(42:19):
this room that God does not have grand children. You
gotta have your own relationship. You have to make your
own choice. You have to go and gather him up
for yourself. You have to taste and see for yourself

(42:44):
how good he is. You can celebrate him in the
testimonies of other people, in the experience of other people,
till you are blue in the face. But there's got
to come a time where you decide, I'm gonna stop
sitting on the periphery and applauding his experience with other folks.
You gotta decide to will be the day that I
go and gather him up for myself, That I start

(43:05):
to spend time with him in prayer and in conversation,
so that I can take advantage of this privilege to
hear his voice and to speak to him in prayer.
That I won't let everybody keep spoon feeding me the
word of God. I'm gonna go to the scriptures myself
and know that I too can have an ongoing, fervent
relationship with Jesus. I'm gonna gather him up in my

(43:27):
own arms, And when you do, you will see him
and experience him and encounter him in a way you
have never encountered him before. Let's pray, Lord, I praise you.
I thank you that your word is living, it's active,
it's sharper than any two edged sword, and today you

(43:47):
are gonna use it to speak to your people. Father,
I'm asking you to challenge us to dive deeply into
your word to cultivate an ongoing, vibrant friendship and relationship
with you through the scriptures. Father, I'm asking that we
will hear your voice, not just today, but even more
when we are alone by ourselves, having our own personal

(44:11):
devotions in quiet time. Now more than ever, Father, we
need to hear your voice, and so I'm praying Father,
that you will speak, and that today everyone under the
sound of my voice will know, beyond the shadow of
a doubt, that they've been in the presence of God
in Jesus' name. Amen. My dad got to tell on

(44:32):
him just a little bit. He is technologically challenged well,
his lack of knowledge in regards to technology in a
new thing. Early on years ago. I remember maybe fifteen
years ago or so, when there were no iPads yet,
you know, it wasn't as advanced as it is now.
But about fifteen twenty years ago, I recall something that happened.

(44:53):
My dad really wanted to figure out how to get online.
But the only reason he wanted to get online is
because at the time my younger brother, Jonathan was playing
football for Baylor University. He wanted to get on the
Baylor University website so that he could look up his
youngest son, John John, who was playing football for Baylor.
And if you know anything about my dad, he may

(45:13):
not be about technology, but he sure is about that football.
And so with his youngest son playing college level football,
he wanted to do everything he could to look him up.
So at the time, my sister was at the house,
and so he called Crystal back into the guest room,
the fourth bedroom of our parents' home back there twenty
years ago. Back in that room, there was a whole

(45:34):
monitor that was sitting on the desk there with a keyboard,
but he really didn't use it, and so he said
to Crystal, Crystal, come back here, show me how to
turn this thing on. So when I tell you that
they were starting from scratch, I mean they were starting
from scratch. My sister came back to the back room
and she said, Dad, let me show you where the
on button is. So you will know in the future

(45:55):
how to turn this thing on. Once they got it
all powered up, then my dad said to her, how
do I get to the Baylor homepage? So she showed
him how to type in the URL address so that
you can get to the website that you want to
be on. So finally she got him to the Baylor homepage,
and just when they got to the homepage, the phone rang.
Crystal had to run out of the room into the

(46:16):
kitchen where the phone was plugged into the wall, and
so she raced out of the room, and as she
raced out of the room, my dad yelled after her,
how do I maneuver around this page? She said back
to him, use the mouse. So Daddy starts looking around
for a mouse. He had no idea what in the

(46:39):
world she was talking about. He, of course, lays eyes
upon this little gadget that's got a tail sticking out
of it. He assumes this must be the mouse, so
he picks it up, places it flat on the computer monitor,
and begins to drag it up and down side to
side on the actual computer monitor. Then when that didn't work,
he just held it up in the air and was

(47:01):
sort of just moving it around in midair. My sister
came back to find our fairly bright stable father waving
a mouse around in the air. Now here's what you
need to know. That computer has been in the fourth
bedroom of my parents' house for a long time. He
also has a laptop that someone gave him, and it's

(47:23):
folded and unused in the drawer of his desk at
his office. There's also another computer monitor and a keyboard
that is in his office space at the church. So
my point is he has computers available to him. He
has technology available to him. But technology does you no
good unless you know how to use it. Having it

(47:45):
available is not enough. You gotta know how to use it.
For the next few moments, I want to just encourage
you less preach and more just teach and talk to
you about the importance of us as God's people, not
just having God's word available to us, but knowing how
to use it. Listen to me more now than ever before,

(48:09):
as our culture continues to be increasingly godless, you and
I are going to have to know how to do
what the Psawmas said, I hide God's word in my
heart so that I might not sin against him. We
got to use God's word. It's not enough for us
to just have the Bible around our home. Because you know,

(48:29):
you got the big, pretty one that's up on the mantle,
You've got the little small one that sits on your nightstand.
You got the one that's just for decor, that might
be like a coffee table book. And then you know
you have that one, that one that's got all the
dog ears and it's got all the underlines and all
the post it notes. That's the one that you take
to church with you so you can actually look, you know, holy,
like you use the Bible. We have all of these

(48:51):
Bibles available to us, but the Bible don't do us
no good just sitting there looking pretty. It only does
us good if we know how to actually take it
advantage of the truths of God, the fresh breath of
God that is available to us through the scriptures. So
I want to talk to you, to me, to us,
challenge us about utilizing God's word. Truth. Everyone is saying

(49:15):
is so relative. No one has a reverence anymore for
the truth of God as declared in his Word, now
more than ever. If we're going to be unapologetic about
our faith, if we're going to be able to stand
firm against the schemes of the enemy. If we're going
to be able high school student and university student and
mother and father, wife, husband, single woman, single man, entrepreneur,

(49:38):
ministry president, if we're going to be having the opportunity
to stand firm, then we got to know the truth
of God's word, and we've got to be able to
live off of every word that God speaks to us.
We've got to be found on our knees in prayer
and prioritizing our time in God's word. I want to

(49:59):
tell you before I share with you some principles that
actually have transformed the way I spend time in the
Word of God. The enemy wants to convince you. He
wants to convince me that God has some sort of
hotline connection between He and certain people. That it's just
our spiritual leaders, our pastors, our Bible study teachers, the

(50:22):
folks that are on staff, the people that are in
full time ministry, the folks that have, you know, a
microphone on their jacket, the people that are in the spotlight,
the folks who we go past their Instagram feed and
we are admonished or encouraged because they are teaching and
preaching to masses. The enemy wants you to think that
it's a seminary degree that is required before you can

(50:43):
actually have a fervent, ongoing relationship with God, where you
yourself can open up the Word of God and know
that the Holy Spirit can illumine the scriptures and give
you guidance and direction and insight and clarity and encouragement
and comfort. He wants you to think that that kind
of friendship with God is only for certain people, because

(51:07):
he knows that as long as you and I are
not convinced that we can hear a fresh word from
God for ourselves, then at best we will be handicapped
in our faith because we'll always be waiting on somebody
else to spoon feed us the word of God, instead
of knowing that we can have confidence in our friendship,
in our relationship with God. That person who you admire rightfully, So,

(51:32):
there are people that I admire their faith, their stability,
their strength, their peace in the midst of the storm.
There are people I admire their prayer life. I admire
how they are concrete in their faith and their beliefs
no matter what happens in culture. There are people I
admire their ministry. I admire the fervency in which I

(51:52):
see the presence of God operating in their life. So, yeah,
there are folks that we can admire, but just as
quickly as we admire them, we have to be careful
and guard ourselves against thinking that what they have access
to is not also something that we have access to.
The same Holy Spirit of God that lives in that

(52:13):
person you admire is the same presence and power of
God that lives on the inside of you to guide
you into all truth, to allumine the scriptures so that
you too can hear the voice of God. And so
I want to encourage you to not wait until Sunday
morning for a word from God. I want to encourage

(52:35):
you to not wait until the next time your Bible
study group can get together again in person before you
engage in hearing the voice of God for yourself from
the scriptures. I want to encourage you to not depend
upon someone else to spoon feed you God's truth. I
want to remind you that you can hear God and
we need to have a daily relationship with God through

(52:56):
His word. Your stability is counting on it. Your piece
my peace of mind, particularly in the craziness and chaos
of the culture that we're living in right now. If
we don't have a relationship with God where we are
prioritizing coming to Him in his word, then we will
find that we are not stable. We don't have peace
of mind. We don't have clarity, revelation, direction, insight, and

(53:21):
encouragement to keep on putting one foot in front of
the other and not be discouraged by what we see
happening around us. So I want to encourage you to
have a relationship with God through his word. I want
to share with you what I call the five peas
of Bible study. Like the letter piece, so you know,
if you like to take notes, I want you to
get the notes out app on your phone or get

(53:43):
a pan or a pencil. I want you to write
these five peas down. These peas have changed the way
that I relate to God through his word. And I
say the Word relates specifically because it's not just about
reading a book. This just ain't no book. It's not
just a regular book filled with pages and papers and

(54:05):
bound by leather. It's so much more than that. This
book is alive. The Holy Spirit makes it so that
He shines a spotlight in the place where we most
need to be fed, where we need guidance and direction,
so that God's present word leaps up off the page
and gives us exactly what we need for the circumstances

(54:26):
that we are facing right now. Don't know regular book.
Do that this book is alive, and so as we
engage in it, we can relate to God through it,
because He speaks to us through his word. So these
five piece have transformed my relationship with the Bible and
with God himself, and I want to share them with

(54:48):
you because what this means is that after today, on
a regular Monday, regular Tuesday, on a regular old Wednesday
or Thursday, or Friday or Saturday, sitting around twiddling your thumbs,
waiting until the next time a pastor preaches to you
or a spiritual mentor helps to give you opportunity to

(55:09):
rightly divide the Word of truth. You thank God for
those shepherds, but you're not twiddling your thumbs waiting on them.
You know that you can have the privilege to go
to God in his word and hear him for yourself.
The first pee of Bible study is to position yourself
to hear from God real simple. In fact, all five

(55:30):
p's are position yourself to hear from God. I'm going
to say it again, position yourself to hear from God.
There is power in your positioning, in your posture. Okay,
I mean this in a spiritual sense, but I also

(55:50):
mean it in a physical sense. I want to tell
you about both. When you come to God through his word,
that you're going to meet with Him through the pages
of Scripture. So this is your own personal quiet time.
You maybe have just sat up in bed and you're
going to have ten or fifteen minutes that you're spending
with the Lord, or you're gonna come out of your
room and to the kitchen table, maybe in the quietness
of the morning, or in the quietness of the evening

(56:10):
when all the activity in your house has died down
just a little bit. You're going to position yourself over
a portion of scripture. And I'll tell you in just
a few moments how you can choose a portion of
Scripture to dive into. But when you make that commitment
to posture yourself, to position yourself, I mean that in
a spiritual way, meaning the position of your heart has

(56:31):
to be in a perspective and a frame of reference
that is eager to hear and expects to hear the
voice of God speaking to you. It's aw Tosier, a
great theologian that put it this way. The person that
does not expect to hear God won't because every single
time God speaks, they'll just discount it as their own idea.

(56:54):
They'll think that it was just a coincidence. They will
attribute it to anything and anybody else. Accept what it is,
God's breathes word coming to life through the power of
the Holy Spirit, to speak to you, to give you
guidance and direction in your own personal life. And so
you have to have a heart. I have to have
a heart that is filled with expectation that I am

(57:17):
one of the sheep of God's fold and I can
hear the voice of God. John chapter ten, Jesus said,
my sheep, hear my voice. Listen to that again. He
basically says the default position for anybody who's a part
of the fold, the flock, the family of God, what
my sheep do is hear my voice. It's one of

(57:41):
the schemes of the enemy to get you to think
that you need to be something more, be something else,
have a different perspective or a different personality, or be
someone other than you are, to have excelled in some way,
to not have made the mistakes that you've made. It's
the scheme of the enemy to get us to think
that we have to be anything else than a son

(58:01):
or daughter to have this right, this privilege to hear
God speaking to us through the Word. So we have
to pray and say, Lord, would you carve away anything
in my heart that is a roadblock that's keeping me
from having an expectation that in my own regular quiet time,
while I'm in my pajamas or in my jogging suit,
while I'm in my house shoes, whatever I'm doing, and

(58:23):
no matter what I look like, I have the privilege
to keep company with you that you want to cultivate.
Lord Jesus, thank you a friendship with me, that you
want to speak with me, That you gave me a
love letter so that I can hear your voice and
know you and know who you are. Thank you, Lord
for that privilege. And if my heart doesn't expect it,

(58:44):
would you begin to mold in me a holy expectation
that desires and anticipates that I have the privilege to
hear the voice of God, posture your heart with expectation.
The psawmist put it this way, and somealm to. It's
one of my favorite verses, verse thirteen and fourteen. He says,
I would have despaired unless I believed that I would

(59:10):
see the hand of the Lord in the land of
the living. Did you see that expectation there? He says,
I would have despaired. I would have been hopeless. I
would have been down. My countenance would have been downcast. Man,
accept that I expect that I'm going to see God.
I expect that I'm going to hear God, so I
can wait patiently on him because I have an anticipation,

(59:32):
an expectation that God is going to come through on
my behalf. The prophet Habaccuck spoke to this as well.
If you look at his little book that is named
after him in the Old Testament, you'll see that the
entire first chapter of Habaccock is Habaccac calling out to God,
mostly him calling out to God and saying, Lord, how
long are you going to let this go on? He's

(59:53):
looking around him at the destruction that he is seeing
happening in his culture, in his nation. Man, don't speak
to us, right now I don't know what is you
and I can't flip past all that's happening on our
Twitter feeds, our Instagram feeds, the news channels that we're
watching and not see the vortex of chaos that is
swirling all around us. Habacca knows exactly how you feel,

(01:00:16):
and he calls out to God and says, how long, Lord,
it seems like you're just sitting back idly letting all
this go on. And so Lord, I'm going to vocalize
my concerns to you, my cares to you. I'm going
to be authentic. I'm not going to hold back. And
that's the privilege we have in relationship with God. He
lets us ask our questions, voice are concern He knows

(01:00:38):
that in our humanity we have some worries and some
issues and some fears, and he lets us come to
hear him and bear it all. But after Habacca bears
it all chapter two, he says, now I'm going to
climb up on the watch tower and I'm going to
wait to see what it is that my King is
going to say to me. God is gonna respond to me.

(01:01:01):
Do you see that he positions himself to hear from
God he says, I'm gonna climb up on a watchtower.
Back in biblical days, there was a stronghold or a
citadel that would sit at the front of a city,
and it was designed so that a soldier or a
watchman could climb up to the top of this watch

(01:01:22):
tower position himself above ground level circumstances. In other words,
he was saying, there's too much chaos swirling around down here.
I'm gonna be distracted if I keep myself positioned here.
So I'm gonna climb up on the watchtower where I'm
up above ground level distractions, and I'm gonna position myself
here because from this vantage point, I'll have a clear

(01:01:43):
view to the horizon, and I expect that God is coming.
I have expectation that there is someone coming who's going
to deliver an answer for me. And so because of
that expectation, I'm gonna position myself in a place and
an a posture where I can hear God, where I
can see is hand, where I have clear view and
there's nothing to distract me. Position yourself spiritual expectation and anticipation,

(01:02:10):
but not just spiritually, like a back position yourself physically.
Do you see that he climbed up somewhere, he went
to a place where there was some silence and some solitude.
There's a whole lot of noise in life, isn't it.
You've got your to do list, and I've got mine.
We're trying to check the things off that we got

(01:02:32):
to do on our list when it comes to our
kids and our marriage and what we're cooking for dinner tonight,
and the demands of the job that we have, and
the ministry assignments that are before us, and all of
the things that we have to do that go into
the regular rhythms of a twenty four hour day. There
are so many ground level circumstances that aren't unnecessary, they're critical.

(01:02:52):
We've got to keep going from day today. But there's
got to be a moment of time where you decide,
I'm going to climb up on the watch tower and
have some space where there's silence and solitude, so that
for just a few moments there is nothing standing in
the way of me seeing the King who is coming

(01:03:13):
to respond to me, of me hearing clearly what it
is that God has to say to me. Now, this
can be difficult, I know it, because your house is
probably busy like mine is many of you, or you've got,
you know, your phone buzzing and ringing and beeping and
all the things that all of our devices do. So
this is going to take some intentionality on your part.
It's going to take you being proactive. It's going to

(01:03:35):
take you, you know, setting your alarm to get up
a little bit early, or driving into the office space
whenever we go back to office spaces and getting there,
you know, ten or fifteen minutes before the buzz of
the office starts, or when you're in your car, deciding
that at this particular hour, because I'm running errands all
the time, that I'm going to turn off talk radio
or I'm going to turn down the music just a

(01:03:56):
little while, and I'm going to use that opportunity while
I'm sitting outside of my kid's soccer practice. I'm going
to use that as the ten or fifteen minutes or
half hour that I'm going to devote to having some
silence and solitude, pushing aside in my mind's eye all
of the demands that I have so that I can
have an opportunity to have a clear perspective on what

(01:04:18):
it is that God wants to say to me. So
we position ourselves not just spiritually in expectation, but we
position ourselves by prioritizing some space in our life where
we can actually have a clear opportunity, more clear opportunity
to hear the voice of God. I want to encourage
you before we move on to the next pee of

(01:04:40):
Bible study, to know that this does not mean that
you have to have a specific place in your home
that you go that is just devoted to prayer. Sometimes,
you know, we can look at people's Instagram feeds and man,
their quiet time looks so perfect, don't it. They've got
their little white couch and their little white coffee cup,
and everything is so beautiful and amazing and immaculate. It

(01:05:01):
looks like the most beautiful photoshoot you have ever seen
in your life. That could be discouraging to regular folks
who have, you know, like dinner dishes sitting over there
from last night that we didn't get to or we've
got all the toys from all of our toddlers sitting
around it, or all the homework papers from our teenagers
that are still scattered across the kitchen table from all
the online schooling, or we got the laundry sitting over there,

(01:05:23):
every single load that you know we washed and dried,
but we dumped it out on the floor, hoping that
somebody was gonna come fold it at some point. But
there it still sits still waiting on us. And we
look at the chaos of our life and we think,
can I really have quiet time in here? Can I
really expect God to speak to me in a space
like this? The answer is yes. The enemy always wants

(01:05:47):
you to think and me to think. We've got to
have something different about our space, or different about our
lives in order to actually meet with God intimately and
personally ourselves. But listen, if it's the bathroom is the
only place where you can find some silence, in some solitude.
I gotta be honest with you and tell you that,
for many years, when my children were younger, I would

(01:06:09):
sit on the edge of the bathtub. I would close
the bathroom door, I would lock that door, and I
would sit there, and that's where I would have time
with the Lord. I have a friend, when her children
were young, she used to tell me that she would
go into her closet like she made her actual closet
her prayer closet. And she said, listen, I would sit
right under the blouses where the blouses were with a flashlight.

(01:06:29):
That's the only space that I could find to have
a little silence and a little solitude. For many of you,
it's in your car. I mean, you're in your car anyway.
Why not make that car a sanctuary, a place where
you can meet with God. Because you're in that car anyway,
and you're by yourself there, why not make that an
opportunity where you can make that space as sacred space

(01:06:52):
to meet with God. You've seen people who are doing that.
You know, they're driving down the freeway and you just
see them worse in God, and you see their hands outstretched,
and you see they're having a whole prayer meeting, a
whole church service by themselves in the car. They have
made their car a place that can be a watch
tower where they can meet with God around His word.

(01:07:15):
Position yourself, Oh more now than ever, brothers and sisters,
we're going to have to prioritize positioning ourselves. We're getting
a word from everybody else, from the newscasters, from the media,
from the politicians, from our friends, from opinion makers. We're
getting news from everybody else. We've got to position ourselves

(01:07:36):
not just to hear them, but we've got to prioritize
positioning ourselves to hear a word from God. So once
you position yourself and you've got your Bible, or you know,
you've got your electronic Bible in front of you, and
you're looking at a particular passage of scripture, I want
to encourage you to choose a passage not just you know,
one verse here, one verse there, here, verse there, verse everywhere,

(01:07:58):
verse verse it. Taking little verses out of context like
that can be incredibly dangerous. But what you can do
is take a whole book of the Bible, start a
verse one, and go all the way through. Took me
about two years to go through the Book of John
like this. I would take one verse or two verses
a day, and I would make sure that I read

(01:08:20):
right through so as to not take anything out of
the context, not only of the chapter that it's in,
but the book that it is in. Because the story
that God is telling is linear, meaning not only is
every word and every verse God breathed, but the way
it is located in the scriptures is also God breathed.
So take a whole book of the Bible, maybe one

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that stood out to you recently that your pastor preached from,
and it was from the Book of Ephesians, or the
Book of John or the Book of habaccuc And just
decide you're going to start right at the beginning. And
the second p actually has two p's in it. I
want you to pore over the passage and paraphrase the
major principles. Pour over the passage and paraphrase the major principles.

(01:09:07):
When I say poor over the passage, I mean that
real specifically. I mean that as in opposition to scan
the passage. When I say poor, I mean to meditate
on it, to read it not just once, but to
read it twice, to read it in two or three
different translations, so that you can see different nuances of

(01:09:28):
words that maybe need to stand out to you in
a different way. I mean that you open up opportunity
for you to have space and time to think through
what it would be like if you were the woman
that was caught in adultery in that passage that you
just read. See how it would feel to have God
speak over you. Jesus say to you go and sit

(01:09:49):
no more. It means you mull over it for just
a little while. Now, what this means, at least what
it means for me, is that if I'm really going
to pour over a passage and not just scan it,
but meditate on it and think about it and wait
for the Lord to speak to me through it, that
means that I can't do that with a chapter or
two at a time. It means I can't be more

(01:10:11):
interested in quantity than I am with just quality time
with God. Remember, it's not about finishing. This is about
you having a friendship with God so that you can
be sustained and encouraged and since the presence of God
in a practical way, not in theory, but know a
friendship with God where you feel and know that He

(01:10:33):
is speaking to you through his word. So most of
the time that means one verse or two verses, and
I read those two verses, and then I read them again,
and then I might underline whatever words seem to leap
up off the page. Then I might look those words up,
and I might think through the scenario that is surrounding them,
the context around them. For example, in Joshua chapter one,

(01:10:56):
when Moses has just died and the children of Israel
are now being led by Joshua into the promised Land.
God says to Joshua over and over again, be strong
and courageous. He says, be strong and courageous. Be strong
and courageous. And then he says, be careful not to
let the word leave your mouth, but keep it close

(01:11:19):
to your heart and close to your mind, and meditate
on it day and night. Meditate means to ponder it.
Meditate actually means to press your mind upon it, to
think through it, to evaluate it. Do whatever you have
to do to spend a little time. Not just saying well,
I read a verse a day, and you know a

(01:11:39):
verse a day keeps the devil away. This ain't a checklist.
This is you developing a friendship with God, who is
logging to speak to you. Once I pour over a
passage a verse or two, then I'll paraphrase the major principles.
I usually just have a notebook that's sitting nearby, or
I've got the notes app on my phone, or however
you want to do it, and I just for each

(01:12:01):
verse write down a sentence or two that paraphrases exactly
what that verse said. Now, I want you to resist
the urge to try to be deeper to try to
make it rhyme or sound clever. You're not trying to
be clever. You are literally just taking the words right
out of the verse and writing down a paraphrase of
what that verse says. Usually, when I get to this

(01:12:23):
point in the five piece, i will close my Bible
and I'll put it aside, And now I'm just sitting
and I'm looking at the paraphrased rendition of what the
verse actually says. That takes me to the third p
pull out the spiritual principles. This is where I prayerfully
look at those paraphrases, and I look to see what

(01:12:46):
spiritual principles are hidden in the paraphrase. I ask God
to show me. Is there something he's revealing about his character?
Is there a promise here that I'm supposed to heed?
Is there a I'm supposed to follow? Is there insight
that I'm supposed to uncover? What is it that the
verse says? That's the paraphrase, But now I'm asking what

(01:13:10):
does this verse mean? You will often find that there
are spiritual principles that are hidden you would not have uncovered.
This is the way God begins to speak. You won't
uncover it until you ask yourself, what does this mean?
Is there a direction that I'm being given? Is there
something about God's character that I'm supposed to believe and

(01:13:31):
that I'm supposed to trust and prayerfully? Pray and ask
the Holy Spirit. This is what the old preachers used
to call allumine the word. Ask the Holy Spirit to
illumine it, and you will find that there are spiritual
principles tucked there that begin to direct you. Now, I
want to tell you really quickly here on this third
p I want you to be encouraged to know that
every single time I sit down to have my quiet time, which,

(01:13:53):
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,

(01:14:14):
sometimes I'm reading along and it's about Thebusites who were
fighting the Hebocites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and
the other Heites. Ate those heites, 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,

(01:14:35):
or my financial situation, or my health or the grief
or 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

(01:14:57):
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,

(01:15:19):
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 ten, 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
a stranger is if you know God well enough that

(01:15:39):
when the enemy 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 and the world
sound true. The only way you want to know if
it ain't God 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

(01:16:02):
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 two Anthony's. And I've seen my brother
use this to his advantage and kind of fool people.
I remember we were growing up. People would call the house,

(01:16:23):
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 one 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

(01:16:44):
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, him eat the meal that first claskis.
He got all of that because he was able to

(01:17:04):
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 two minutes of the conversation or two
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

(01:17:26):
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 two Anthonys. 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

(01:17:46):
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

(01:18:08):
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 that
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

(01:18:31):
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

(01:18:53):
Spirit starts giving you the answers. He starts shining a
spotlight on the areas of your life in mind that
I didn't even know 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

(01:19:15):
of my friends, actually that is antithetical to what it
is that God is saying in his word. And listen,
there are two 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,

(01:19:39):
you write down what it is that He's been saying
in your notes, write down the parts of your life
that are coming to life. Like the Psaloman, Psalmist 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

(01:19:59):
you have for me. And after you pose 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 accept obeying God. We've got a
plan for our physical health. We've enlisted a trainer, We've

(01:20:22):
got our meals planned out for the week. We've got
a membership at a gym. We plan for our financial security.
We've 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

(01:20:44):
done well. We plan for everything, accept honoring God as
God makes clear to you 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 and starting
that business, or stepping out in faith from the place
that you've been employed, whatever it is God's asked you

(01:21:05):
to do, make a plan, I mean on paper, be
obedient to God intentionally and deliberately, and then enlist accountabilities
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

(01:21:27):
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,

(01:21:47):
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 of 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 me in
frustration trying to get just this one necklace out. He said, Priscilla,

(01:22:07):
I think if you stop massaging the whole wad of
tangled mess and you just grab onto one, unhook that one,
and then just start working to get that one out
of there, I think it'll be more successful. He was right.
I grabbed onto one little necklace and I just worked
on getting that one unwound. And you know what happened

(01:22:28):
When I not only worked on that one 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 one thing,
and the one thing took care of everything else. Brother sister,
focus once again on the one thing. I know you've

(01:22:51):
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 and 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 one thing, you'll find that focusing on that one
thing untangles everything. Lord Jesus, I thank you for your word,

(01:23:17):
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, saying Amen.