Does a subjective voice have authority? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
So Shirer starts off with another story about, surprise, surprise, herself! Her experience is meant to tell you what is really going on in Scripture. Want to know the basis for knowing how God speaks to you? Shirer tells you from her experience.
She does get to Scripture later on. Let’s see how she does.
Truly, you can distinguish the voice of God from any other voice by the powerful influence it carries in your soul.
My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned.
Psalm 39:3Shirer, Priscilla. Discerning the Voice of God: How to Recognize When He Speaks (p. 146). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Does she really want to use this Psalm? This is about David struggling with a sin and the burning is not a good burning. It is his wrestling with what he has done wrong. Unfortunately, Shirer gives no context. It’s as if she looks through and says “I could possibly twist this in such a way so it fits with what I want to say so I will go with it!”
Just last week, I was a bit overwhelmed by the pressure I was feeling. There were three—count ’em: one, two, three—specific problems that were pressing in on me. I felt like I was staggering under the weight of the burden of these difficulties and prayed specifically that God would give me the knowledge on how to deal with them and the power to do so. My Bible study reading that particular morning was 2 Chronicles 20:12, where King Jehoshaphat prayed, “O our God … we are powerless before this great multitude who are coming against us; nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are on You.” I began to feel the soothing comfort of God’s Spirit wash over me as this verse became a personal prayer from my own heart and I began to focus my attention on Him as instructed in this passage. Intrigued, I looked back to the beginning of the section of Scripture to read more, and I was quickly captivated by the fact that the “great multitude” Jehoshaphat was praying about was composed of three—that’s right—exactly three different armies. I knew God was using His Word to speak directly to me.
Shirer, Priscilla. Discerning the Voice of God: How to Recognize When He Speaks (pp. 149-150). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.
And once again, Shirer uses her personal experience to interpret Scripture. Since she had three problems and Jehoshaphat had three armies, obviously this was God using the text to speak to her.
But what about all the times that that doesn’t happen?
Never mind that I think this is horrible eisegesis on her part, but it’s easy to say something like this works if you look at only the times that something like this works. What we would need to do is measure out Shirer’s days and see how many times she goes to the Bible and really thinks she finds something specific to her personal circumstances going on right then. WIthout that data, I remain unconvinced.
Again also, her shoddy eisegesis doesn’t help her case.
Then as we close, she has this:
I can assure you—from the evidence of Scripture, from the centuries of accounts of men and women who have followed Him, from even the limited experience of my own life—He will speak. And you will know. When the Bible talks about us having freedom in Christ, this is at least part of that glorious privilege and spiritual abundance we’re allowed to walk in by God’s grace. There’s no need for you to be burdened by or gripped with a paralyzing fear that you are not in God’s will. If you are seeking Him and being obedient to what He has placed before you today, then you are in His purposes for now, and that is all He is asking of you and of me.
Shirer, Priscilla. Discerning the Voice of God: How to Recognize When He Speaks (p. 152). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.
From all those centuries! Cool! Well I have been going through the church fathers and I remember reading in Justin Martyr of….oh wait. He never described this. Well St. Augustine talked bout how God told him to….oh wait. Not there. Thomas Aquinas…..nope. It’s hard to find this until you get to modern times. It’s almost as if God decided to become a chatterbox when we all became individualists.
Funny, isn’t it?
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)