Time with God the point, speaker tells women

AMARILLO?God wouldn’t let Priscilla Shirer sleep one night. He kept waking her with thoughts of Matthew 11:28.

“Come to Me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

“Don’t you know its 3 a.m. down here? Could you wait until 9 a.m.?” she complained to her Lord.

But God would not let her rest until she got up and came to him. And that, she said, was the point.

Shirer, a Bible teacher and motivational speaker, has published two books and a six-week LifeWay Bible study titled “He Speaks to Me: Preparing to Hear from God.” Speaking to 175 women at the annual SBTC Women’s luncheon Oct. 24, Shirer told them that in order to come to God to find the rest of Matthew 28:11, they must come away from something else.

“It’s a simple matter of geography,” she told those gathered.

Shirer looked at all of Matthew 11 to find out what a person needed to leave behind in order to come to Christ to find rest.

There, she said she found John the Baptist in prison, sending out a question to Jesus about his true identity and in John’s question a sense of abandonment and self-pity. She said it was bad enough being in prison for doing no wrong.

What added insult to injury was that John was hearing about the miracles Jesus was doing for others while he remained jailed.

Shirer said Christians can find themselves in their own personal prisons, wondering if they have wasted their time doing things God’s way.

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“Don’t,” she stressed, “get tangled in the temporary. Quoting from John 16:33, Shirer told the women to not let temporary circumstances on Earth keep them from seeing God’s work.

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“Take your eyes off the bars,” she said. Eternal kingdom purposes are being served despite our circumstances.

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In a moment of doubt John sent his disciples to ask Jesus if he was the promised one. Shirer reminded the audience that this question came from the man who baptized Jesus and proclaimed him to be the Messiah. ‘

“I wonder,” she asked, “if you’re here and you doubt what the Lord can do for you. Today he says, ‘Don’t doubt me. Just come to me.'”

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Furthermore, Shirer said, “Don’t count on what you feel but what you know to be true.”

When a weary believer submits to the will of God and comes away from the things that would inhibit true rest, she finds “peace that can’t be tampered with,” Shirer said.