Priscilla Shirer - Learn to Hear from God Through His Word
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Summary
This sermon urges believers to move beyond merely owning Bibles to actively engaging with God’s living word personally, drawing an analogy from the preacher’s tech-challenged dad who had computers but couldn’t use them. Using Hebrews 4:12 as the foundational text about the word being alive and active, she teaches her practical «Five P’s» method for Bible study to foster a vibrant daily friendship with God. The conclusion challenges listeners to prioritize this one thing—personal time in Scripture—because it brings clarity, peace, and untangles life’s messes in chaotic times.
Opening Prayer
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 are going to 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, uh, by ourselves, having our own personal devotions and quiet time. Now, more than ever, Father, we need to hear Your voice. So, I’m praying, Father, that You will speak, and that today everyone under the sound of my voice will know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they’ve been in the presence of God. In Jesus' name, amen.
A Story About My Dad and Technology
My dad got a tell on him just a little bit; he is technologically challenged. What I mean by that is, even now in this year of our Lord 2020, um, he still does not really know all the nuances of technology. Every advancement sort of goes over his head, and you know, I can sympathize with him, because I’m a little bit the same way. I’m not really into all of the new advances in technology. I can’t quite keep up.
Well, he’s been this way all the time, so much so that you need to know that my father, who many of you know as a pastor, has been preaching in this community for 44 years or so. He and my mother started the church when I was very, very, very little—brand new, actually—they started the church. So, they’ve been preaching, teaching, and shepherding God’s people for a long time. Dad continues to, and just to give you a little hint of where he stands on technology even to this day, my father writes down all of his sermon notes on one of those yellow legal pads, you know, the ones that come bound together at the top, and you sort of just write down on all of those lined yellow sheets of paper.
My father’s got those yellow pads lying all over the house. He still does not type—not a single note. He writes them all by hand to this day. Well, his lack of knowledge regarding technology isn’t a new thing. Early on, years ago, I remember maybe 15 years ago or so, when there were no iPads yet. You know, it wasn’t as advanced as it is now, but about 15, 20 years ago, I recall something that happened.
Dad Wants to Check on My Brother’s Football
My dad really wanted to figure out how to get online, but the only reason he wanted to get online is that at the time, my youngest 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 not be about technology, but he sure is about that football.
So, with his youngest son playing college-level football, he wanted to do everything he could to look him up. 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 20 years ago. Back in that room, there was a whole monitor sitting on the desk there with a keyboard, but he really didn’t use it.
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 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 he could get to the website that he wanted to be on. 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 kitchen where the phone was plugged into the wall.
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 world she was talking about. He, of course, lays eyes upon this little gadget that’s got a tail sticking out of it.
The Funny Mouse Mishap
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 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, you know, folded and unused in the drawer of his desk at his office. There’s also another computer monitor and a keyboard that are 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 available is not enough; you’ve got to know how to use it.
The Analogy to God’s Word
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, as our culture continues to be increasingly godless, you and I are going to have to know how to do what the psalmist said: «I hide God’s word in my heart so that I might not sin against Him.»
We’ve got to use God’s word. It’s not enough for us to just have, um, the Bible around our home—because you know 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’ve 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 Bibles available to us, but the Bible doesn’t do us any good just sitting there looking pretty. It only does us good if we know how to actually take advantage of the truths of God, the fresh breath of God that is available to us through the Scriptures.
The Urgency in Today’s Culture
So, I want to talk to you, to me, to us—challenge us about utilizing God’s word. Truth, everyone is saying, is so relative. No one has any 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, mother and father, wife, husband, single woman, single man, entrepreneur, ministry president—if we’re going to have the opportunity to stay firm, then we’ve 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 tell you this 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 Him and certain people—that it’s just our spiritual leaders, our pastors, our Bible study teachers, the 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, um, admonished or encouraged because they are teaching and preaching to masses.
You Can Hear God for Yourself
The enemy wants you to think that it’s a seminary degree that is required before you can 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 illuminate the Scriptures and give you guidance, direction, insight, clarity, encouragement, and comfort. He wants you to think that that kind of fervent friendship with God is only for certain people, because 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’ll 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; there are people that I admire, their faith, their ability, 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 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 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 illuminate the Scriptures so that you too can hear the voice of God.
Don’t Depend Only on Others
And so, I want to encourage you to not wait until Sunday morning for a word from God. I want to encourage 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 His word. Your stability is counting on it—your peace, 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 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 P’s of Bible study—like the letter P. So, you know if you like to take notes, I want you to get the notes app on your phone or get a pen or a pencil. I want you to write these five P’s down.
Introducing the Five P’s
These P’s have changed the way that I relate to God through His word, and I say the word «relate» specifically because it’s not just about reading a book. Y’all, this just ain’t no book. It’s not just a regular, um, book filled with pages and papers and 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 that we are facing right now. No regular book does 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 P’s have transformed my relationship with the Bible and with God Himself, and I want to share them with 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, you’re not 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 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.
First P: Position Yourself to Hear from God
The first P of Bible study is to position yourself to hear from God—real simple. In fact, all five P’s start with 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 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 know, you maybe have just sat up in bed, and you’re going to have 10 or 15 minutes that you’re spending with the Lord, or you’ve come out of your room into the kitchen table, maybe in the quietness of the morning or in the quietness of the evening 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 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 a quote from 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. They’ll think that it was just a coincidence. They will attribute it to anything and anybody else except what it is—God’s breathed 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.
Expectation and Posture of Heart
And so, you have to have a heart—I have to have a heart—that is filled with expectation, that I am one of the sheep of God’s fold and I can hear the voice of God. In John chapter 10, 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 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 other than a son 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 no matter what I look like, I have the privilege to keep company with You. That You want to cultivate, Lord Jesus, 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, 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 psalmist put it this way in Psalm 27; it’s one of my favorite verses, verses 13 and 14: «I would have despaired unless I believed that I would 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, except 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, an expectation that God is going to come through on my behalf.»
Habakkuk’s Watchtower
The prophet Habakkuk 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 Habakkuk is Habakkuk 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 looking around him at the destruction that he is seeing happening in his culture, in his Nation.
Man, if that doesn’t speak to us right now, I don’t know what does! You and I can’t flip past all the tap on our Twitter feeds, our Instagram feeds, the news channels that we’re watching and not see the vortex of chaos that is swirling on all around us. Habakkuk knows exactly how you feel, 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 our concerns. He knows that in our humanity, we have some worries and some issues and some fears, and He lets us come to Him and bear it all. But after Habakkuk bears it all, in chapter 2, he says, «Now I’m going to climb up on the watchtower and I’m going to wait to see what it is that my King is going to say to me.»
How God is going to respond to me—do you see that? He positions himself to hear from God. He says, «I’m going to 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 watchtower, position himself above ground-level circumstances.
In other words, he was saying, «There’s too much chaos swirling around down here; I’m going to be distracted if I keep myself positioned here. So, I’m going to climb up on the watchtower where I’m above ground-level distractions, and I’m going to position myself here, because from this vantage point, I’ll have a clear view to the horizon, and I expect that God is coming!»
Physical Positioning Matters
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 going to position myself in a place and in a posture where I can hear God, where I can see His hand, where I have a clear view and there’s nothing to distract me. Position yourself in spiritual expectation and anticipation, but not just spiritually like Habakkuk; 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 there? You’ve got your to-do list, and I’ve got mine. We’re trying to check off the things that we’ve got 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 24-hour day.
There are so many ground-level circumstances that aren’t unnecessary; they’re critical. We’ve got to keep going from day to day, but there’s got to be a moment of time where you decide, «I’m going to climb up on the watchtower 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 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. Many of you or you’ve got your, you know, your phone buzzing and ringing and beeping, and all the things that our devices do. So this is going to take some intentionality on your part. It’s going to take you being proactive.
Practical Ways to Find Solitude
It’s going to 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, 10 or 15 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, then I’m going to turn off talk radio or I’m going to turn down the music just a 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 10 or 15 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 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 clearer opportunity—more clear opportunity—to hear the voice of God. I want to encourage you before we move on to the next P of 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 looks like the most beautiful photo shoot you have ever seen in your life!
That can be discouraging to regular folk 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’ve got the laundry sitting over there—every single load that we, you know, we washed and dried—but we dumped it out on the floor hoping that somebody was going to come fold it at some point, but there it still sits, still waiting on us.
Your Quiet Time Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect
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 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 the bathroom is the only place where you can find some silence and some solitude, I got to be honest with you and tell you that for many years when my children were younger, I would 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 who, when her children were young, 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. 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? You’re in that car anyway and you’re by yourself there; why not make that an opportunity where you can make that space a sacred space 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 worshiping 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 watchtower where they can meet with God around His word.
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—not just to hear them, but we’ve got to prioritize positioning ourselves to hear a word from God.
Choosing a Passage and Second P
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 a verse, there a verse, everywhere a verse, verse. 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 at verse one, and go all the way through. It 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 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 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 Habakkuk—and just decide you’re going to start right at the beginning. The second P actually has two P’s in it: I want you to pour over the passage and paraphrase the major principles.
Pour over the passage and paraphrase the major principles. When I say pour over the passage, I mean that real specifically. I mean that as in opposition to scan the passage. When I say pour, 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 words that maybe need to stand out to you in a different way.
Pouring Over and Paraphrasing
I mean that you open up opportunities 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 sin 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, 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 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, encouraged, and sense the presence of God in a practical way, not in theory, but a friendship with God where you feel and know that He 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 surrounds them—the context around them. For example, in Joshua chapter 1, 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 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 verse a day keeps the devil away.» This ain’t a checklist. This is you developing a friendship with God who is longing 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 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 deep or 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 point in the five P’s, 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.
Third P: Pull Out Spiritual Principles
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 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 directive 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 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 that I’m supposed to trust in? Prayerfully pray and ask the Holy Spirit. This is what the old preachers used to call «illuminating the word.» Ask the Holy Spirit to illuminate 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, 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 doesn’t mean that I just find God’s word spoken over my life just leaping up off the page every single time, and it feels vibrant and fresh and on fire every time. No!
Sometimes I’m reading along, and it’s about the Jebusites who were fighting the Hebusites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the other I.E.S-ites! And it just seems like a waste of time! What in the world does this have to do with my personal life right now, the crisis that I’m facing, or God, what You want me to do with what I’m dealing with, my child or my financial situation or my health or the 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 going to ask yourself, «What does this teach me about the character of God? What did He do? What did He not do? What did He say? What did He not say? What did He allow? What did He not allow?» It shows you who your God is, and getting to know His character is what this is all about—a friendship develops; intimacy develops the more we know.
Knowing God’s Voice
Think about your regular friends: the more you know that person, the more you know the nuances of who they are and how they think and what they say and what they wouldn’t say. Then remember, in John chapter 10, when Jesus said, «The sheep know My voice, ” He says, „They do not respond to the voice of a stranger.“ The only way to be able to detect the voice of a stranger is if you know God well enough that 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 in the world sound true, the only way you’re going 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 never say or do that. My brother Anthony, um, is named after my dad, so I got Anthony Sr. and Anthony Jr. They walk alike, they talk alike, uh, there’s so much alike about the two Anthonys. And I’ve seen my brother use this to his advantage and kind of fool people.
I remember when we were growing up, people would call the house, and so he’d answer the phone. People thought they were talking to Pastor Evans, and so they’d give him the whole story of whatever they were calling for. He’d get all the juicy details before saying, „Dad, somebody’s on the phone for you!“
I remember 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 he showed the license—it said that he was Anthony Evans. So, they pulled up my father’s profile, and my father had executive platinum status because he flies so much. So immediately they upgraded Anthony, gave him first-class treatment, put him in first class, let him eat the meal that first class gets. He got all of that because he was able to confuse people, because they are so similar to each other.
But let me tell you who he can’t confuse: me and other members of the family! If the phone rings in the first 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 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 of the enemy when he comes by trying to play you for the fool. So you pull out the spiritual principles.
Fourth P: Pose the Question
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 into the form of a personally directed question. Man, this is where the rubber meets the road! This is when the Holy Spirit starts speaking, because you say to yourself, „Am I living in a way that’s congruent with that spiritual principle that I just wrote down? Am I heeding that promise? Am I behaving that way? Is my attitude adjusted to that? Have I forgiven that person? Have I been committed in my tithe? Have I submitted to that authority? Maybe that verse said that I need to be still and see the salvation of the Lord. Have I been still, or have I frantically been trying to figure out everything on my own?“
„Lord, what is it that You’re asking me to do?“ Ask yourself a personally directed question, and when you start asking honest and authentic questions of the text, you will find that the Holy Spirit starts giving you the answers. He starts shining a spotlight on the areas of your life and mind that I didn’t even know existed that I need to get right with God—that I need to line up so that I am in line for the favor and promises of God to be experienced in my life, so that I have fresh revelation of God’s truth, so that I can see clearly where in the culture or in the opinion of my friends actually that is antithetical to what it is that God is saying in His word.
And listen: there are two answers to every question—God’s answer and everybody else’s—and everybody else’s 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, 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 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 You have for me.“
Fifth P: Plan Obedience and Pin Down a Date
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 except obeying God. We’ve got a plan for our physical health—we’ve enlisted a trainer, we’ve got our meals planned out for the week, we’ve got a membership at a gym. We plan for our financial security—we’ve got a financial adviser to make sure that we can retire at the age that we want to.
We’ve planned for the project that’s due at our job to make sure that we are working incrementally and progressively to make sure that the segments of the project are each done well. We plan for everything except honoring God as God makes 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 in starting that business“ or „Stepping out in faith from the place you’ve been employed.“ Whatever it is God’s asked you to do, make a plan. I mean on paper, be obedient to God intentionally and deliberately, and then enlist accountability, so that you can have some people around you.
This is what church and family, the family of God, is all about. Put some people around you who will challenge you and ask you and get all up in your business and say, „Did you do what God has asked you to do?“ Make a plan to be obedient to God.
Closing Illustration and Prayer
In closing, let me just tell you that, um, I was traveling. You know, back when we traveled, I was packing some jewelry, and I remember trying to put this jewelry together, and I put it in my carry-on case. Then when I got to where I was going, I pulled it all out, and it was all tangled. Every little string or little chain was tangled together.
Man, I was just jingling 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, 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? When I not only worked on that one, but I got it out, 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 got a tangled mess all around you—in your family, in the culture, in your marriage, with your children, and on your job, and in your finances, in 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, and I thank You that You desire to speak to us through it. Lord, I pray for fresh wind and fresh fire over Your people. In Jesus’ name, amen.