Priscilla Shirer Quotes

The spirit of complaint is born out of an unwillingness to trust God with today. Like the Israelites, it means you are spending your time looking back toward Egypt or wishing for the future all the while missing what God is doing right now.

Lord, please do this ... or do something better!

We pray because our own solutions don’t work and because prayer deploys, activates, and fortifies us against the attacks of the enemy. We pray because we’re serious about taking back the ground he has sought to take from us.

Prayer is the portal that brings the power of heaven down to earth. It is kryptonite to the enemy and to all his ploys against you.

Disciplined runners consistently clear their heads and focus fully on the journey ahead.. .because their passion and zeal for the goal supersedes the strain. The goal beckons them onward. Passion doesn't negate weariness; it just resolves to press beyond it.

God is the God of “right now.” He doesn’t want you sitting around regretting yesterday. Nor does He want you wringing your hands and worrying about the future. He wants you focusing on what He is saying to you and putting in front of you … right now.

God’s real desire, in addition to displaying His glory, is to claim your heart and the hearts of those you love.

Nothing—nothing!—is too far gone that your God cannot resurrect it.

At the end of the day, the enemy is going to be sorry he ever messed with you. You’re about to become his worst nightmare a million times over. He thought he could wear you down, sure that after a while you’d give up without much of a fight. Well, just wait till he encounters the fight of God’s Spirit in you. Because . . . This. Means. War.

If I were your enemy, I’d magnify your fears, making them appear insurmountable, intimidating you with enough worries until avoiding them becomes your driving motivation. I would use anxiety to cripple you, to paralyze you, leaving you indecisive, clinging to safety and sameness, always on the defensive because of what might happen. When you hear the word faith, all I’d want you to hear is “unnecessary risk.

I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth. (3 John 4)

But I say his reign of terror stops here. Stops now. He might keep coming, but he won’t have victory anymore. Because it all starts failing when we start praying.

I want my life to radiate what happens when God has a person's heart at His full control, when every event or circumstance is simply another avenue to know Him better and show forth His glory.

Because this is war. The fight of your life. A very real enemy has been strategizing and scheming against you, assaulting you, coming after your emotions, your mind, your man, your child, your future. In fact, he’s doing it right this second. Right where you’re sitting. Right where you are.

Peace is the deep, inner, eternal stability the believer possesses by virtue of relationship with Jesus, a sense of balance that’s not subject to external circumstance. It’s also the quality that enables us to live harmoniously with others.

Believing that life interruptions—divine interruptions—are a privilege not only causes us to handle them differently but to await them eagerly.

Will you surrender your plans and purposes into the greater known of God's unknown designs for your life?

Passion is the fuel in the engine of your purpose. It’s your “want-to.” It’s what keeps you going when mundane tasks bore you or difficult ones dissuade you. Passion is what keeps you moving in the direction your best intentions want you to go.

If I were your enemy, I’d disguise myself and manipulate your perspectives so that you’d focus on the wrong culprit—your husband, your friend, your hurt, your finances, anything or anyone except me. Because when you zero in on the most convenient, obvious places to strike back against your problems, you get the impression you’re fighting for something. Even though all you’re really doing is just . . . fighting. For nothing.

Call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. (Jer. 29:12–13)

In prayer you gain your strength—the power to gird yourself with armor that extinguishes every weapon your enemy wields.

True success in any endeavor can only come when the Father has initiated the activity and invited our participation.

The decisions you're making today will impact your tomorrows.

Marriage stands for the creation of unity among two people who were once separated in every way before love reached out and found the other—the way God reached out and found us, and covenanted with us, and loved us, and despite who we are, despite what we’re like, still loves us. This image, more than almost anything, is exactly what the enemy wants to denigrate.

God’s plan for you is to move you into a position of impact by infusing you with truth and employing you in prayer. You don’t need to be a genius to do it. You don’t need to learn ten-dollar words and be able to spout them with theological ease. You just need to bring your honest, transparent, available—and, let’s just say it—your fed-up, over-it, stepped-on-your-last-nerve self, and be ready to become fervently relentless. All in His name.

when we talk about the peace of God, don’t think of singing and swaying and holding hands in a circle. The peace of God is strong, intense, palpable, real. You can sense its stable presence giving you inner security despite insecure circumstances.

there’s a time for everything in your life. God alone knows what that is. And because His Spirit dwells within you, and because He is deeply interested in helping you experience the fullness of His plans for your life, you can just stay tuned and know that He’ll make it clear to you right on time, even as He keeps you loved and encouraged by His presence all along the way.

A prayer that’s seeking passion should not be about manufacturing a better feeling or jostling up a better mood. It’s simply about holding out your open hands—in thanksgiving first, in gratitude for God’s faithfulness and His goodness and His assured, accomplished victory over the enemy. Then asking. Asking for what He already wants to give you. Then waiting (expecting) to receive the promise of newness and freshness from His Spirit as you go along, more each day—praying until, as the prophet Hosea said . . . He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth. (Hos. 6:3)

But this ain’t no physical battle we’re dealing with, no matter how much you may wish it to be, no matter how much better you’d feel if life was all five-senses and manageable. We are at spiritual war. So we need spiritual weapons.

. . being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, “I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you.” (Heb. 13:5)

Ah. A virtual impossibility. Just the sort of challenge Ruwach loves,

Persistent, internal inklings matched by external confirmation is often the way God directs believers into His will.

The "word of the Lord" is designed to reshape your purposes, putting you in a position for Him to do through you what you cannot do on your own.

If I were your enemy, I’d use every opportunity to bring old wounds to mind, as well as the people, events, and circumstances that caused them. I’d try to ensure that your heart was hardened with anger and bitterness. Shackled through unforgiveness.

The things that are “freely given to us by God” (1 Corinthians 2:12) are the only things we need to know now. A lot of the reason we grow so upset and disturbed about not hearing specifically from God is that we want what isn’t “freely given.” When we pray, “Lord, show me Your will,” we’re often asking for things that He knows are not pertinent for another twenty years. We want God to paint the whole picture right away, but He wisely withholds certain truths and information from us until we need it, when we can actually do something with it besides just mess it up.

Prayer is how we isolate the real problems. And prayer is how we get up behind those problems and attack them at the roots. It’s how we isolate the real enemy. It’s how we keep him on his heels and off our man.

Hold your own plans loosely and stay ready to submit to His. Consider them to be more important, more desirable than anything you could dream up on your own. He has come down to you with intentionality and purpose because He loves you and knows that you are never more secure than when you're in His will.

To make a time-sensitive decision, prayerfully consider which option will bring God the most glory and will encourage a more intimate relationship with Him.

The presence of passion, faith, and belief in our hearts is a gift. It’s on loan to our souls.

fervently—because fervent prayer keeps your true identity in focus.

Theoden: I will not risk open war. Aragorn: Open war is upon you, whether you would risk it or not. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Prayer Releases All Your Eternal Resources

We pray because our own solutions don’t work and because prayer deploys, activates, and fortifies us against the attacks of the enemy. We

Praying with precision is key.

There’s a sneaky, malicious enemy that you are always in a battle with—even now.

Condemnation always leads to guilt-laden discouragement, while conviction—though often painful in pointing out our wrongdoing—still somehow encourages and lifts us, giving us hope to rebuild on.

Now if you want a book about prayer, this one’s probably not for you. You can find some wonderful books on prayer by some scholarly writers, books that are well worth the time spent reading them. In fact, I highly suggest you do. Can’t really learn too much about prayer, can you? But here, in these pages, we aren’t going to merely talk about prayer or think about praying. No. Get ready.

Always looking toward the next moment, the next month, the next event, rarely allowing myself the privilege of fully participating and embracing the happenings that were right before me for that day.

Ministry is when the people who hear you, don't want more of you; they want more of Him because of what you've said. When you point them to God's fire instead of trying to get attention for yourself-that's ministry.

We think we know what we want. In reality we should want nothing else but to be completely in line with His desires for us and His purposes in our generation. So we must resolve to let God be God on His terms, not ours.

In spiritual warfare, as we detect enemy activity and deploy the various pieces of armor, our prayers need to be fervent and specific, strategic and personal, tied to the specific needs arising at that specific occasion.

Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

God’s impressions within and His Word without are always corroborated by His providence around, and we should quietly wait until these three focus into one point. … If you do not know what you ought to do, stand still until you do.

The warmth of that embrace overpowered Levi’s pain. He had never felt so engulfed in love, except when his own father would give him one of his big bear hugs. He felt tears well in his eyes, knowing that whatever happened, he would still be loved well.

Living in freedom means learning how to walk again—learning how to walk God’s way for a change—because, listen, you can be 100 percent saved and still spend the majority of your time in Egypt. Unbelievers aren’t the only ones who contribute to Egypt’s overcrowding.

Strategy 1—Against Your Passion He seeks to dim your whole desire for prayer, dull your interest in spiritual things, and downplay the potency of your most strategic weapons (Eph. 6:10–20). Strategy 2—Against Your Focus He disguises himself and manipulates your perspective so you end up focusing on the wrong culprit, directing your weapons at the wrong enemy (2 Cor. 11:14). Strategy 3—Against Your Identity

So we strap on weapons that work—weapons divinely authorized for our success in spiritual warfare: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of peace. Then we take up the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, as well as the sword—the very Word of God. But

In order to live in victory, you must call the enemy’s bluff, pull the curtain back, open up your spiritual eyes, and remain continually aware of the one who’s truly behind a lot of the stuff you’re always blaming on your circumstances, your upbringing, your boyfriend, or whoever. Even on yourself.

Yes, we’re all on a journey here. We’re not perfect. We all struggle. We can tell from the fatigue we feel and the stiffness in our spiritual joints that we haven’t always taken good care of ourselves. But prayer wakes us up with mercies from God that are “new every morning” (Lam. 3:23). Prayer is how we start to stretch and feel limber again, feel loose, ready to take on the world. And when we start applying prayer to particular muscle groups—like our confidence in Christ and His victory over our past—our whole body and our whole being start to percolate with fresh energy, with the blood-pumping results of applied faith.

We simply don’t have the luxury of playing nice with prayer. Not if we want things to change. Not if we want to be free—from whatever’s keeping us held down and held back. Not if we want our hearts whole and thriving and deep and grounded . . . different. Not if we want to reach our destinies and experience God’s promises. Not if we want our husbands and children living out what God has called them to do and be and become. Not if we want a fence of God’s protection around us. Not if we want to bear the unmistakable mark of His favor upon us. Not if we want the devil and his plans to go back to the hell where they came from.

According to Scripture, the number-one purpose of marriage—more than even the unique, time-honored partnership it creates between a man and woman, more than even the conceiving and raising of children, more than any Prince Charming fairy tale in any little girl’s head—is how it represents the mystery of the gospel in active, living form.

He amplifies fear, worry, and anxiety until they’re the loudest voices in your head, causing you to deem the adventure of following God too risky to attempt (Josh. 14:8). Strategy 7—Against Your Purity He tries to tempt you toward certain sins, convincing you that you can tolerate them without risking consequence, knowing they’ll only wedge distance between you and God (Isa. 59:1–2). Strategy 8—Against Your Rest and Contentment He hopes to overload your life and schedule, pressuring you to constantly push beyond your

Safe?” he said, a sudden lightness in his tone. “It may or may not be safe, but it will most definitely be worth it.

Because you believed even though you did not see, you will now have the ability to see things that the others did not believe.

I resolved to stop using physical means to fight battles that require spiritual remedies, using instead the power of prayer to do what it’s always been designed to do.

euphoric

Prayer is the portal that brings the power of heaven down to earth. It is kryptonite to the enemy and to all his ploys against you. That’s

It was for freedom that Christ set us free” (Gal. 5:1).

We vigilantly asked God to make our marriage and family (and the families of all those involved in the film) bulletproof against these incessant attacks.

Making sense of God's call is not a prerequisite for following it. His Word and His promises are enough.

He warps your perspective on the current events in your life until reality appears much worse and more desperate than it truly is.

When a man’s ways are pleasing to the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. (Prov. 16:7)

bolstering

As we practice implementing this incredible power tool He's placed in our hands, He divinely positions us - even a little life like ours - in His grand purpose for the ages. Through the connective tissue of prayer, He cracks open the door that makes us at least a small part of how these massive plans of His are translated into the lives of people we know. Including ours.

You may not understand what all's happening in your life right now, but any possible explanation pales in comparison to what you do know because of your faith in God's goodness and assurance.

I'm sitting on the edge of my seat, chin nestled in my hands, to see what God is going to do. With my children. With my husband. With me—a regular, everyday woman choosing to surrender to a life interrupted.

But I do know that when you and I approach God for help, filled with our cares and distresses, our prayers are not confined to this calendar date, to this particular month and year. What may seem to be His silence and avoidance from where you sit today is already reverberating in future places. If not right here, if not right now, you can be sure His ability is taking visible, tangible shape somewhere, even if beyond the scope of your current sightline. You and I are living right this minute on a tiny dot of time within a vast sea of God-moments. And the ripple effect of today’s prayer, today’s faith—today’s now—spirals out in all directions for all eternity, bumping something here, affecting something there, all under God’s watchful eye and wisdom. Each time we turn to Him, each time we trust, each time we bring our all to the surpassing greatness of His all, we find ourselves instantly connected to every future time zone where His ability lives. We link up across generations where He is already working, present-tense, to make His glory known.

Every decision you need to make, every task you need to accomplish, every relationship you need to navigate, every element of daily life you need to traverse, God has already perfectly matched up with an equivalent-to-overflowing supply of His grace. If you don’t agree with that, then you either lack a proper appreciation for what you have, or you are doing things that you’re not supposed to be participating in right now.

say no (Deut. 5:15). Strategy 9—Against Your Heart He uses every opportunity to keep old wounds fresh in mind, knowing that anger and hurt and bitterness and unforgiveness will continue to roll the damage forward (Heb. 12:15). Strategy 10—Against Your Relationships He creates disruption and disunity within your circle of friends and within the shared community of the body of Christ (1 Tim. 2:8). And that’s just ten of ’em—ten

Do you feel like God is asking too much of you? As you scan the landscape of your present circumstances, is it hard to believe this is really what life has brought you to? Does God really expect something promising to come of what you're dealing with, what you're shackled with, what you're stuck with? Could anything be more unwanted or undesirable to you right now? If He didn't have so much meaning and potential and restoration to accomplish in the midst of it, you're right—it would be a tragic mess. But with everything He wants to achieve through you in this vital yet difficult season, there's another way to look at it. Consider it a privilege.

If all we're doing is flinging words and emotions in all directions without any real consideration for the specific ways the enemy is targeting us and the promises of God that apply to us, we're mostly just wasting our time.

(The enemy) laughs at your attempts to fix your own issues with timely words and hard work - tactics that might affect matters for a moment but can't begin to touch his underhanded, cunning efforts down where the root issues lie.

His Word is not a chore. Not a nag. It’s life. It’s love. It’s living truth, solid as granite yet soft as a baby’s skin. And it’s not just to read. It’s to absorb. To bathe in. To live by. To inspire us, reshape us, and define us.

I cannot stop anyone from making wrong choices. I can only help them make the right ones.” There was deep sadness in Ruwach’s tone, rooted in love, as if he would have done anything to prevent Brianna from suffering the consequences of her choice.

This book is just not meant for pretty reading. It’s not for coffee-table curiosity and other such cameo appearances. Think of it instead as industrial-grade survival gear. Duct tape and superglue. Leather straps lashed around it. Old shoelaces maybe. In tight double knots. Whatever it takes to keep it all together. Because this is war. The fight of your life. A very real enemy has been strategizing and scheming against you, assaulting you, coming after your emotions, your mind, your man, your child, your future. In fact, he’s doing it right this second. Right where you’re sitting. Right where you are. But I say his reign of terror stops here. Stops now. He might keep coming, but he won’t have victory anymore. Because it all starts failing when we start praying.

That’s what the enemy wants. He wants you living in a state of defeat. Your defenses down. Your resolve weak and flimsy. Surrendering to an army of insecurities and misdiagnosis instead of courageously thriving in the sophisticated security of your identity in Christ.

The glory our God receives, and will eternally receive, from having saved our souls doesn’t come from all the good things we do for Him. His glory comes from creating people of purity and spiritual passion who once did things like that. Like we’ve done. Like you’ve done. Like I’ve done.

A man chooses a bride, loves her, makes a covenant with her, and gives himself completely to her. The woman responds by receiving his love, surrendering to him, entering into this covenant bond with him, and becoming one flesh with him. It’s not a perfect representation, of course, since the best marriage we can possibly make on earth still involves a pair of fallen, broken people. But in its deepest sense, at its deepest level, this primary human relationship between husband and wife is meant to be a living witness to others of the love of Christ for His church (Eph. 5:22–33).

And I know without a doubt that God planned the chance for you and me to get together like this too—to unite through our passion for prayer. In fact, He whispered to me about you at that very first Bible study. I didn’t know it then. But I see it clearly now. It’s you. You’re the one He had in mind.

It is a privilege for us to look at circumstances and discern God's involvement in them. To recognize them as more than mere happenstance but rather God's own detailed design and plan. To see that He is allowing us to cooperate with Him in bringing life from death, growth from loss, testimony from tragedy.

If I were your enemy, I’d devalue your strength and magnify your insecurities until they dominate how you see yourself, disabling and disarming you from fighting back, from being free, from being who God has created you to be. I’d work hard to ensure that you never realize what God has given you so you’ll doubt the power of God within you.

(People) either overestimate Satan's influence and power, living with an inflated, erroneous perspective of his abilities. Or they underestimate him. They don't assign him any credit at all for the difficulties he's stirring up beneath the surface of our lives... Satan is not God. And he is not God's counterpart or peer... Satan is nothing but a copycat trying desperately to convince you he's more powerful than he actually is... So even though he's given temporary clearance to strategize and antagonize, we don't need to pray from a position of fear or weakness against him... But we can't expect to experience this power unless we're serious about joining the battle in prayer.

Few things hold the potential to so drastically alter the landscape of your life as when you claim godly authority over the insane amount of unnecessary pressures you face. Be ready to see your eyes opened as you close them in prayer. One day soon a whole new kind of woman is going to be emerging from that prayer closet. A free one. A rested one. A contented one.

If I were your enemy, I’d constantly remind you of your past mistakes and poor choices. I’d want to keep you burdened by shame and guilt, in hopes that you’ll feel incapacitated by your many failings and see no point in even trying again. I’d work to convince you that you’ve had your chance and blown it—that your God may be able to forgive some people for some things, but not you . . . not for this.

One of the gifts that comes with age is an appreciation for some of the more simple, more commonplace things that seem mundane earlier in one’s life. As the years pass, the hidden treasure to be found in humble and unpretentious virtues becomes more accentuated—things like rest, silence, and the joy of an ordinary day. The attraction toward activity and achievement lessens, becoming slowly, steadily, and appropriately replaced by an interest in more internal matters.

Moses cried out to God, and God showed him a tree, Moses “threw it into the waters, and the waters became sweet” (v. 25). In one swift move of vulnerability and obedience, Moses found God ready to act, relieving both the peoples’ thirst and their tired emotions. That which was bitter had been made sweet. Are you bitter because of the hand you’ve been dealt? Sometimes He’ll allow us to come face-to-face with an experience that could potentially breed bitterness, just so we can see His ability to work miracles in the way we feel.

Hear that again: Flesh and blood, skin and bones—those aren’t the places where your real struggles lie. The identity of your real enemy, once the Bible has weighed in, is clear as day. It’s him. It’s all him. It’s always been him. But in the rough-and-tumble of life’s exhausting pace, we can quickly lose touch with a passage like Ephesians 6. Even in knowing the truth, we can lose sight of where these attacks are originating from . . . from back there, behind the curtain. And by failing to take notice and remember, it’s not hard then to lose our cool, our temper, and most of our self-control before we ever find our way back to ultimate reality.

Your view, no matter how breathtaking and beautiful or how grim and dismal, is not the full scope of reality. Whatever is seen—all that can be measured or documented or quantified with the five physical senses or through the lens of your current emotional state—is not all that is meant to be seen. The physical cannot fully grasp the comprehensiveness of the spiritual. God’s work is behind the scenes, beyond all the obvious readouts. If we limit the scope for our hopefulness to what’s immediately visible, we’ll get an inaccurate reading on any scenario we’re seeking to evaluate. Believers must live by faith, by believing what they cannot yet see.

Is your heart fixed today to recognize the presence of God? To see His fingerprints and hear His voice? The events that others call coincidence, will you recognize them as sovereign providence? Ask the Lord to sharpen your spiritual senses so that you catch a glimpse of His glory. Focus your expectation. Lean forward or on tiptoe. Resist the inclination to be so caught up in the temporal that you miss seeing the eternal. Scan the horizon for where His voice is calling out to you or where His fingerprints are working on your behalf. Be alert. Be present. Be fully engaged in the day stretched out before you. He’ll be there. Waiting to be seen by anyone watching and waiting.

Makes you wonder, then, why all we often tend to see when we look at ourselves are . . . flaws, inadequacies, failures, weaknesses. And sure, many of those things are really there. Left to our own devices, we really aren’t able to take it all on, not without help. But these difficulties and imperfections that can discourage us so desperately—the ones the devil wants to present as the sum total of our reality—are actually only a part of the battlefield. And that’s the part that is primed to display God’s glory. No matter what is against you, it is no match for the power and authority He’s given you access to. There may be armies standing against you, but they’re only waiting to become an unwitting witness to the overcoming power of God and the overriding ocean of His grace.