Priscilla Shirer: Deepening Your Intimacy with God | Women of Faith on TBN

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 the Lamb of God in our grasp intimacy and fellowship with him like never before [Music] 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 we're on every street corner we see another church with a pastor that preaches the good news of Jesus Christ where we can turn on Christian radio stations or go 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 bible study resources by women for women what could it be that we've grown 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 and 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 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 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 the Bible with paper Pages like I do or your iPhone your iPad any manner of Inez is fine in Luke Chapter 2 there are 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 turn to Luke Chapter 2 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 died on the cross of Calvary 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 Gideon was beating out wine uh 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 honor him so can we and Luke comes along and he writes story after Story in 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 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 worse things are going to get the more he has completely ignored and disregarded the more we're going to 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 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 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 show 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 in Luke chapter 2 verse 25. says and behold there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon this man was righteous and devout 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 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 40 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 have prepared your salvation in the presence of all the people a light 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 um the purification ceremony it was traditional it was ceremonial that about 40 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 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 going to 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 chapter 12. 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 25 it tells us that Mary and Joseph come into the temple with two pigeons or two turtle doves 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 that they were not able to afford their own lamb they've got two pigeons that'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 two pigeons which means that when they walk into the temple people would have looked at them and recognized them as a couple that was um instant had insufficient funds as a couple that was like talking as a poor couple they would have been looked down upon people would have marginalized them because they did not have the accoutrements of 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 God 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 resources to live in the neighborhood where everybody else lives listen my friend 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 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 the people in a Hut in a village with thatched roofs 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 oh they pray for us they feel bad for us because 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 we're 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 and they want that for us 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 desperation it's insufficiency it's lack 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 there 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 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 and how they've lost as 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 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 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 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 the struggle you're having on your University campus or in your high school campus this hard time that you were having 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 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 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 here's how I would like to see you move in my circumstance thank you Lord that I can come boldly 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 thank you 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 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 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 accept except a guy named Simeon he had been told and promised just like we have that we 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 indwelling us that we will see the Fingerprints of God working in our lives 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 um that when you all fly back to wherever it is you've come from whether all over different areas of California or afar it means that no matter 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 as omnipresence but you want more than that you want the manifested presence of God 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 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 26 about Simeon it says that it had been actually verse 25 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 harden the Holy Spirit was upon him the Holy Spirit was upon him it says that he came into the temple verse 27 in the spirit verse 26 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 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 is already alluded to the spirit 10 times the work of God's spirit is so powerful and so needful to a fruitful experience in the life of the 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 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 just take some time for just a few 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 Simeon in these few verses just just a few ways that the Holy Spirit relates to Simeon in these few verses the first thing it says is that the Holy Spirit was upon him now listen I want you to know that if you have placed faith in Jesus Christ the Holy Spirit lives on the inside of you Ephesians chapter 1 says that the moment you believed 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 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 least in value just third because 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 and the Holy Spirit lives in you that means all of the 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 of the Holy Spirit you ever gonna get you got the moment you got saved now you do need to 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 means when gentleness has long since left the building you still find you got a little gentleness for that when self-discipline I mean you just don't 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 him in obedience we are filled which means he influences us more our mind is 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 there is a difference between the spirit being in you and the spirit 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 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 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 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 truth of God we will not have the spirit rest in if you want the mark of God's presence on you I'm talking about where other people can see you operating in your gift moving about in the assignments that you have been given 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 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 uh disturb his presence that does not keep him from being able to be near you because you have chosen here it is to be 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 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 gotta choose to be ye holy 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 26 says reveal 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 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 that they're going to be preaching from and you sit straight up in 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 did the church bug my house how did they know that's the illumination of the spirit it's when he it's when the old truths of script scripture leap up off 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 had been promised by the revelation of God's spirit it wasn't just a random promise it was his promise oh you've had that happen over the course of these days that we've been gathered you probably have had that happen where 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 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 27 that he came in the spirit to the temple meaning the spirit told him on this day to go into the temple and it says that he came into the spirit under the 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 right smack dab into the Messiah because he was submitted to the leadership of the Holy Spirit

Channel: Women of Faith on TBN

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Keywords: women of faith, priscilla shirer, priscilla shirer sermons, priscilla shirer prayer, priscilla shirer inspiration, hearing the voice of god priscilla shirer, priscilla shirer 2022, priscilla shirer 2023, priscilla shirer short sermons, women in ministry, women of faith on tbn, praise, praise on tbn, women support women, W9O6F3, WO96, OF63, 9W6O3F, WOF963, holy spirit, faith, following god, god, love, prayer, going beyond ministries, priscilla shirer 2021, trinity broadcasting network

Id: tWqjMQJ5vOA

Length: 26min 57sec (1617 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 09 2023