Ad copy

For eleven years I listened to women in my Bible study group say "God told me" and "God spoke to me" and "I just heard the Lord so clearly." And I would nod and smile. And drive home wondering why God had never once said anything to me. A woman who has spent the last two decades teaching the Bible to millions of Christian women. The daughter of one of the most respected pastors in America. Whose Bible studies have sold millions of copies and whose voice has been carried into more living rooms, small groups, and Sunday school classes than almost any woman alive. And out of everything she has ever taught — every conference, every book, every packed arena — there is one study women come back to more than any other. It's called Discerning the Voice of God. She wrote it because of a question she kept hearing everywhere she went. The same question. From thousands of different women. In every city. At every conference. How do I know when God is speaking to me? And underneath that question, she says, is a quieter one that most women are too ashamed to say out loud. Why does God speak to everyone except me? Priscilla tells a story about being a little girl. Her mother dropped her off somewhere and told her — wait here. I will come back for you. And she waited. Without panic. Without doubting. Because she knew her mother's voice. She knew her mother's character. Her mother had never once lied to her. The words were trustworthy because she knew the person saying them. And then Priscilla says the thing that stopped me cold. Most Christian women are waiting to hear from a God whose voice they have never actually learned. They are listening for someone they don't fully know. She says God is not silent. He has never been silent. She points out that the Bible itself draws the line clearly — the idols of the nations are silent. Our God speaks. He is speaking all the time. Primarily — she says this over and over — through his Word. The Bible is not a record of things God said a long time ago. It is the main way he speaks right now. Today. To you. And his voice — when he speaks in your spirit, in your circumstances, through that quiet impression you can't shake — will never, ever contradict what he already said in that book. Which means something that took my breath away when I finally understood it. If you don't know the Word — you don't know his voice. You can't recognize a voice you've never listened to. Think about how you recognize your best friend on the phone before she says her name. How you can tell your husband's footsteps in the hallway. How you knew, as a child, your mother's voice across a crowded grocery store. Familiarity. Hours and hours and years of listening. That is the only way any voice becomes recognizable. And Priscilla says most Christian women have spent twenty, thirty, forty years asking God to speak — while the book where his voice actually lives sits on the nightstand, opened only on Sundays, understood barely at all. I know because I was that woman. For eleven years I sat in the same women's Bible study group on Tuesday nights. Eleven years of listening to the women around that table say things like — God told me to take the job. God spoke to me about my son. I just felt the Lord say wait. And I would nod. And smile. And say something encouraging. And drive home in the dark feeling like a fraud. Because in eleven years of Tuesday nights — in twenty years of praying every single day — I had never heard anything. Not a voice. Not a whisper. Not a feeling I could point to and say that was God. I prayed about my marriage. Silence. I prayed about my mother when she got sick. Silence. I prayed about the decision that kept me up at night for an entire year — and I got nothing back but the sound of my own thoughts going in circles. And I started to believe something dark about myself. That God had favorites. And I wasn't one of them. That the women at that table had some connection I was never given. Some spiritual gift. Some direct line. And I was on the outside. Praying at a closed door. For twenty years. I want you to know I never said any of this to anyone. You don't say it. You keep smiling. You keep saying "amen." You keep showing up. And you carry it — that specific loneliness of talking every day to someone who never seems to answer. Then one night I couldn't sleep and I found a Priscilla Shirer teaching online. And she said the sentence that broke the whole thing open. She said — when our God speaks, he does not speak to be heard. He speaks to be obeyed. And he speaks, first and always, through his Word. Through his Word. And I sat there in the dark and did the math I had been avoiding for twenty years. I had prayed thousands of prayers. And I had never actually read the book. Not really. Not the whole thing. Pieces. Verses. The Psalms when I was sad. The parts the pastor preached on. I had spent twenty years begging God to speak — and never once sat down and seriously listened to the ten thousand things he had already said. It was like complaining that my best friend never calls while her letters sat unopened on my kitchen counter. Stack after stack after stack of them. Unopened. Priscilla says God's voice will never contradict his Word — that his impressions inside you and his Word outside you and his hand moving around you all line up and point at one thing when he is truly speaking. But how would I ever see them line up? I didn't know the Word well enough to recognize when something matched it. I couldn't discern his voice for one simple reason. I had never learned it. Not because I was lazy. Not because I didn't love God. Because every time I tried to actually read the whole Bible — I drowned. I would start in January. Genesis was fine. Exodus was fine. Then Leviticus swallowed me whole and I would quietly stop, and add one more year to the pile of shame. The book where his voice lives — and I couldn't get through it. That is what finally changed for me with this. A 52-week guided study that walks you through the entire Bible, one theme at a time, from Genesis to Revelation. Before you read anything each week, it gives you a short explanation of exactly what you're about to step into. Who wrote it. When. Why. What was happening in the world at the time. And how every page connects to the voice you've been straining to hear your whole life. The Gospels — where you don't just read about Jesus. You listen to him talk for four books straight. How he speaks to the woman at the well. How he speaks to the woman caught in shame. How he speaks to the ones everyone else had given up on. You start to learn his tone. His character. What he sounds like when he corrects someone and what he sounds like when he comforts them. The Psalms — where you hear what a real conversation with God actually sounds like. Not polished. Not performed. David yelling, doubting, begging, thanking — and God never once walking away from him. The Prophets — where God speaks directly, at length, in his own words, to people who felt exactly like I felt. Forgotten. Unheard. Outside the door. And somewhere in those first months, something happened that I honestly cannot fully explain. The silence changed. Not because God started speaking. Because I finally started recognizing what had been there the whole time. I would be praying about something — and a passage I had read two weeks earlier would rise up in my mind, and it would fit my situation so precisely that I would get chills. I would be worried about my son — and words from a page would come back to me at 2am like someone had said them out loud. That impression I used to dismiss as just my own thoughts — I started to recognize when it lined up with the Word. Because now I knew the Word. Priscilla was right. He had been speaking the entire time. For twenty years. I just didn't know his voice — because I had never sat down and learned it. Now Tuesday nights are different. Last month, for the first time in eleven years, I said the words I never thought I would say at that table. I said — God spoke to me this week. And I meant it. Right now this study is up to 62% off, and every order comes with a free pen pack. Don't spend another year praying at a door you think is closed. It was never closed. There are ten thousand answers sitting in that book, and every one of them is in his voice. This is how you finally learn to recognize it. Tap below and grab yours before they sell out.