What’s Blocking Your Vision? Priscilla Shirer on Readiness, Excellence, and Staying Focused on What Matters Most

The second speaker of Day 2 at the Global Leadership Summit 2026, Priscilla Shirer, brought a message that was both deeply spiritual and intensely practical.

Her challenge was simple enough to understand and difficult enough to sit with:

What’s blocking your vision?

• Not what’s wrong with your strategy.

• Not what’s missing from your resources.

• Not what someone else should change.

What is distracting you, dulling your focus, or keeping you from fully stepping into what you’ve been called to do?

Priscilla’s message moved between calling, discipline, excellence, work ethic, identity, and our willingness to pause long enough to recognize the sacred moments happening right in front of us.

It was a powerful reminder that sometimes the greatest barriers to our leadership aren’t enormous obstacles. They’re smaller things that slowly become bigger than they were ever meant to be.

Priscilla Shirer is the co-founder of Going Beyond Ministries, an organization that creates Bible studies, books, conferences, and films designed to help people deepen their faith and live with greater purpose.

She has authored more than two dozen books, including the New York Times bestsellers Fervent: A Woman’s Battle Plan for Serious, Specific and Strategic Prayer and her newest discipleship-focused book, I Surrender All.

Priscilla is also known for her work in films including War Room, I Can Only Imagine, and The Forge.

A graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary with a master’s degree in biblical studies, she has spent her life helping people understand Scripture and apply it practically to their lives.

Her keynote challenged us to examine what might be keeping us from seeing and fulfilling the calling directly in front of us.

Priscilla opened with an image I won’t forget anytime soon. She described the impala, an animal capable of jumping nearly ten feet high and thirty feet forward.

That’s an extraordinary ability. And yet an impala can reportedly be contained behind a relatively low wall.

Why? Because it won’t jump when it can’t see where it will land. Its ability hasn’t disappeared. Its vision has been blocked.

That became the metaphor for the session.

“What’s blocking your vision?”

How many leaders have enormous potential...

But allow distractions, responsibilities, fear, or secondary priorities to obscure the very thing they were created to pursue?

Priscilla said:

“If we make secondary things primary, we’ll never accomplish the primary thing God has called us to.”

That line hits hard. Because the secondary things are rarely bad things.

They’re often legitimate responsibilities.

• Meetings

• Projects

• Deadlines

• Emails

• Opportunities

But when good things consistently displace the most important things, vision begins to shrink.

Priscilla warned:

“If we make secondary things primary and primary things secondary, our vision and our potential will be subdued.”

That’s worth sitting with.

The question isn’t simply:

What am I doing?

It’s:

Am I doing the right things in the right order?

One of the most interesting concepts of the session centered on what Priscilla called the parenthesis. She challenged us to look beyond titles, résumés, platforms, accolades, and achievements.

“The parenthesis is what really determines our direction. It’s behind the titles, the résumé, the platform, the accolades, and the achievement. It’s the core of who you are.”

She used the biblical character Obadiah as an example. Obadiah held an important position in King Ahab’s household. But Scripture also tells us something deeper about him:

He feared the Lord.

That was his parenthesis. That internal reality shaped how he responded when the moment of leadership arrived.

So Priscilla asked:

“What’s in your parenthesis?”

That may be one of the most important questions of the entire Summit. Because eventually, pressure reveals what titles conceal.

Priscilla repeatedly returned to the idea of readiness.

Her question was direct:

“Leaders, have we risen to the occasion?”

• Have we worked hard?

• Have we developed the skill?

• Have we paid our dues?

• Have we become dependable?

• Have we proven ourselves trustworthy over time?

This wasn’t glamorous leadership advice. It was old-fashioned discipline. And I appreciated that.

She said:

“Don’t undervalue good old-fashioned work ethic.”

And then she delivered one of the strongest lines of the session:

“You cannot have uphill success with downhill habits.”

That’ll preach in leadership, business, family, health—pretty much everywhere.

Priscilla made it clear that faith should never become an excuse for mediocrity.

“Being committed to Christ is not a license to be lazy, average, or mediocre in your life and work.”

That may sound obvious. But it’s worth saying. She followed it with this:

“Your pursuit of excellence is even more important when you are an expression of the Creative Genius.”

That reframes excellence. Excellence isn’t ego. It’s stewardship.

If we believe our talents, opportunities, and influence are gifts, then developing them becomes part of our responsibility.

She also warned:

“If you refuse to work hard now, you’ll burn the bridges you need to walk across later.”

Preparation rarely feels urgent in the moment. Until opportunity arrives. Then suddenly it matters enormously.

One sentence from my notes really stood out:

“The process you have with yourself in private is what impacts your performance in public.”

That’s leadership.

People see the presentation. They rarely see the preparation.

They see the decision. They don’t see the years of experience behind it.

They see the confidence. They don’t see the discipline that built it.

Public effectiveness is usually the visible result of invisible preparation.

There are very few shortcuts around that.

Priscilla then moved from competence to credibility.

She asked:

“When there’s a fire raging in your work, ministry, or family, have the people around you been given adequate reason to rely on you, to trust you, to follow you?”

That’s a leadership gut check. Trust isn’t built during the crisis. It’s revealed during the crisis.

The groundwork was laid months or years earlier.

As one of the notes from the session captured it:

“You have to till the soil of rapport to garner respect over time.”

Leadership credibility compounds slowly.

Then suddenly everyone needs it.

Near the end, Priscilla shifted the message again. After emphasizing work ethic, discipline, and excellence, she offered an important counterbalance.

“As leaders, are we alert to and willing to pause for sacred moments?”

That mattered. Because driven leaders can become so obsessed with productivity that they miss what is happening right in front of them.

My notes captured it this way:

Don’t become so focused on the grass that you miss the presence of God.

The work matters.

The deadlines matter.

The goals matter.

But sometimes the interruption is the assignment. Sometimes the person walking into your office matters more than the agenda sitting on your desk. Sometimes leadership requires us to pause long enough to recognize that this moment is about something bigger than productivity.

If I had to summarize Priscilla Shirer’s keynote in one sentence, it would be this:

Great leaders protect their vision, prepare with excellence, and remain spiritually attentive enough to recognize what matters most when the moment arrives.

David Ashcraft opened Day 2 by challenging us to confront the pride that can sabotage our leadership.

Priscilla followed by challenging us to confront the distractions and habits that can obscure our calling.

Both messages pointed to something deeper than technique.

Leadership begins with who we are becoming.

And Priscilla left me thinking about three questions:

• What’s blocking my vision?

• Have I risen to the occasion?

• Am I so busy pursuing the next thing that I’m missing the sacred thing happening right now?

Those are questions worth carrying long after the Summit ends.

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