Telling the Truth

Guest (Male): When you let him, God can use you in miraculous ways. Today, Jill Briscoe wants to show you how you're part of his eternal plan, and she'll dive into this exciting message in just a moment. But first, building a consistent prayer life can be a challenge.

That's why we want to let you know about a special opportunity to soak in Stuart and Jill's wisdom on prayer through a newly curated collection of their messages called Powerful and Effective Prayer. This resource is our thanks for your gift today to help others experience life in Christ through the global ministry of Telling the Truth.

But this offer ends this week, so call today to request your copy of this special collection: 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388. Or, you can give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now, let's hear from Jill and her message, Honoring God.

Jill Briscoe: Windbreaks. We can do it for our husbands, we can do it for our children. We can pray. We can be a windbreak for each other. One of the stories on this: when Stuart had been away all those years, and then we came to America, he wanted to show the children why he'd been away all those years from them.

As each graduated, he organized a missionary trip and took each of the children, one by one, around the world. It sounds very glamorous. It wasn't very glamorous; it was tough. He took Judy specifically to Bangladesh, and China had just opened. He took her into China. She was one of the first in after the wall came down, which was very exciting.

India—she never has wanted to go back to India, I assure you. She got very, very sick in Bangladesh in the middle of the boondocks. Stuart was visiting two of our missionaries who were translating the Bible and working with Muslim people. And right in the middle of these jungle villages, Judy picked up something.

There was no water, there was no aspirin. Her temperature just went off the roof. She was with a doctor, actually, but a doctor who had no medicine out there in the middle of the country. I was at home, and usually, my antennae are up. If I was not a believer, I'd probably be into all sorts of ESP and all of that.

I just know. I'm one of those people. My mother had all those senses to know what was wrong. And usually, that's how I live my life. I pick up the phone and say, "Something's wrong here," and I'm right. But I was totally oblivious. There was absolutely no sense that anything was wrong.

Here was my daughter and my husband stuck in this incredibly dangerous situation. And the doctor said to Stuart, "We've got to get her out. We've got to get her out of the jungle. We've got to get a truck." And they got on the radio and they got a truck in.

She was half unconscious for a half day's ride in that truck out of those jungle situations to the airport, where she was absolutely out of it onto this incredible situation on Bombay airport into India. They had to get out of Bangladesh and they were going to India.

Of course, the planes are not only delayed, they're canceled for days on end. Nobody tells you anything about it. And so for a day on Bombay airport, she was just sick. She couldn't get any medicine, couldn't get any help. Somebody had come up to me at the missions conference the year before this happened—a missionary that I hardly knew.

In those days, we had pictures of everybody on the board, and we'd take a picture and pray for that family. And this lady missionary said to me, "I want your picture of your children. Give me one of the children to pray for. You do it for us, I just want to pray."

I had given her Judy's picture a year previous. And somewhere in Africa, where she was, she was awakened in the middle of the night with an insistent sense: pray for Judy Briscoe. She had no idea what was going on. She got out of bed and she said she tried to get back into bed and thought, "No, you stay there. You pray."

She prayed all night. She became a windbreak for my daughter. It was six months later she wrote to me and said, "I had the most strange experience. Let me tell you about it." And she told me about this incident. Of course, I matched the dates and the times, and they were absolutely to the day of what was happening in my daughter's life.

Now, if I could just excite you. If the King is King in your life, can you not imagine the thrill, the spiritual excitement of becoming a windbreak for someone? Would you dare to become that person? What a blessing. When the King is King, you will want to be a windbreak in other people's lives.

Secondly, you will want to be a watershed. Now, it says that when the King is King, each man will be like a windbreak, like a watershed, like streams of water in the desert. Now, Jesus is the water. We are the watershed. What's a watershed? It's a ridge off which water flows.

You get a high piece of ground, and a lot of water falling on it, and so you build this ridge and divert the water. You see a lot of this in Israel. So this would make a lot of sense to the people that the prophet was writing to. When the rain, which is very precious, and the water falls, then we have to divert it to the crops this way, and we have to divert it to the village that way.

We have to divert it to the driest places, to the places where water is needed. Jesus always was talking about himself as, "I am in you a well, out of you rivers." This spoke of the Spirit. Water is a picture, a symbol of the Holy Spirit in Scriptures.

In John chapter 4, he talked to a woman sitting on a well and said, "What you need is the life of the Spirit of God in you, and it will be like a well springing up into eternal life." He was talking about himself. When he had gone back to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit, that's what Jesus Christ can be like in us.

As he reigns and rules in our life as King and Lord, he will enable the Holy Spirit to fill our lives and flow out. Where's it going to flow? Hopefully, to people that really need the water. The water of the word. How do we get the word of God? How do we get the life of Christ into people's lives where they really need it?

First of all, you have to let the water flow over you. You have to be washed with that water yourself. You have to be able to be soaked in the Scriptures. And you say, "Well, Jill, how can I do that? How can I ever get quiet? How can I ever do it?" I don't know the answer to that, but you need to do it.

You need to make a way. Actually, you can do anything you want to do. You can spend your time doing anything you want to do. Be honest. You do what you want to do. And maybe it's the art of leaving something undone so the thing that should be done is done.

Maybe it's saying, "I'm going to stop doing this." But there has to be time for immersion in the word of God. And you can do it all day. Just leave a Bible open in the traffic pattern of your house, in the place everybody dumps. Have you got one of those places?

Everybody has a place in a house where you come in the door and everybody dumps. I'm forever trying to create places where things should be dumped and keep that particular precious piece empty. It doesn't work. For us, it's the kitchen block in the middle, which I need clear, but I've given up.

In the middle of everything else that's dumped, there is an open Bible on that traffic pattern, underneath everything else sometimes. But it's there. Somehow the water has to flow over you so that you can divert it into the right direction. As you are immersed in the Scriptures, as you go around your daily doings, somebody will come along and it'll just be the thing that you have absorbed that they will need.

I remember sitting on a plane writing a Bible study on a man in the ditch. I had this assignment that I had to do before I got off the plane for my publisher, and I was behindhand. So I spread all my books out and I got going. I was writing about the man on the donkey getting in the ditch.

Getting off his evangelical donkey and getting in the ditch and getting his hands around the problem. I was really enjoying the way that this passage of Scripture was flowing onto the paper. The guy next to me started to show an interest, and I was praying, "Keep him quiet, Lord. I don't want to have a conversation about this. I've got to get this finished."

So I was letting the water flow over me, and I was thoroughly enjoying it and being very convicted about my own life. And the young man next to me started to ask me questions. "What are you doing? Are you a teacher? What is this?" I would answer yes, no, and think, "Oh, Lord, this is awful. Now I've lost my concentration."

Suddenly it was just as if the Lord said, "Divert it, divert it, you silly girl. He is the man in the ditch." I turned and looked at him, and he didn't look like the man in the ditch. Nicely dressed, he looked fine to me. But I want to tell you something: he was the man in the ditch.

He was very much the man in the ditch. I suddenly closed my books and thought how easy this is to do—to write about it, to talk about it, think about it. But are we diverting what God is giving to us where it's really needed? We can all fall into this category.

I was able to tell him that in the end. I said, "Let me tell you what I'm writing about. I'm writing about religious people running to church and running to Bible studies right past trouble, past somebody that's in need, that needs to know God. That's what I'm writing about."

Through that conversation, as I explained what I was writing, he opened right up. He didn't say, "Well, I'm the man in the ditch," but in his own way, he told me he had some needs. And I was able to start and try to address them. So here is the watershed.

We are supposed to be like streams of living water in the desert. We're supposed to have our antennae out. He doesn't look like the man in the ditch, but what's going on inside him?

Guest (Male): You're listening to Jill Briscoe on Telling the Truth. She has more for you today from God's word, but before she gets back to today's message, okay, let's be honest. Prayer can sometimes feel like a bit of a mystery. Some people feel so confused by how prayer works that they'll just forget it all together.

But Scripture paints an exciting picture of what a life of prayer can be and how you can experience it yourself. That's why we want to send you a newly curated collection of messages from Stuart and Jill called Powerful and Effective Prayer. These five eye-opening messages will help you push past today's common platitudes on prayer and develop the rich and vibrant prayer life you're longing for.

We're excited to send you this one-of-a-kind resource as thanks for your gift today to help keep sharing the life-changing truth of God's love with people around the world through Telling the Truth. This special resource offer ends this week, though. So call today to request Powerful and Effective Prayer when you give: 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388.

Or, you can give online when you visit tellingthetruth.org. For many, our smartphones have become our social connection. But we want to help you make a spiritual connection with the Telling the Truth mobile app. You can listen to daily programs, engage in Bible reading plans, journal, and share your thoughts and prayers on the community wall.

Get the Telling the Truth app through your App Store or log off to tellingthetruth.org/mobile-app. All right, let's join Jill with more from today's message on Honoring God.

Jill Briscoe: I love to sit on O'Hare and watch people. Airports are both sad places and great places. You come out of an airplane, and there are two things happening. There are people waiting to get on it, and they're all in tears because they're saying goodbye.

Then there are people who are waiting for the people on the airplane and they're all grabbing and signs and pom-poms. It's really incredible, the two things happen every time I go anywhere. Just this incredible celebration and this incredible sadness of leavings and goings and comings.

I love to sit waiting to get on my plane and watch people. What I've learned to do is to be a windbreak and also to be a watershed in those situations. To look at people and think, "I wonder if anybody has ever prayed for that person sitting opposite me eating their McDonald's French fries, looking impatient. Has anybody ever prayed for their soul?"

I think about that verse in the Scripture: "No one cared for my soul." So I say to God, "I'll care. Give me a prayer to pray for them. You know who they are, you know everything about them. You made them. You've sustained them. Let me be perhaps the first person that ever prays for the salvation of their soul. Let me be a windbreak."

Then, of course, I'm praying all the time, "Let me be a watershed. Is there someone that I sit down to casually?" I have this incredible excitement. "Lord, I think I'm going to sit over there. Direct me to the right place. Put the right person in the seat next to me."

It transforms sitting on O'Hare for five or six hours if the plane's delayed. It really does. It's very exciting because everywhere you go, there are people that need the streams of living water. Everywhere you go, there are people that need you to be a windbreak and a watershed.

Lastly, are we like the shadow of a mighty rock in a thirsty land? One of my favorite hymns is Beneath the Cross of Jesus. "Beneath the cross of Jesus I fain would take my stand, the shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land. A home within the wilderness, a rest upon the way, from the burning of the noontide heat and the burden of the day."

Now, Jesus is the rock. You can go home and take a concordance and look up the word rock. You will see that in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, the picture of Christ as the rock is there. In fact, in Corinthians, it says that he was the rock that followed them through the wilderness.

That's a wonderful picture—this mighty rock following them. It's a marvelous picture because it speaks of stability. It speaks of strength within a weary land. How often in the wilderness might they have seen in the distance, after sand and dunes and heat and blinding light, the shadow of a mighty rock?

Because a rock meant water and a rock meant oasis and a rock meant shelter from this blinding, terrible heat. We don't know too much about that. When it gets too hot for us, we go inside and we turn the air conditioning on. But if you can imagine living in a desert, what it must be like.

Going through sand up to your knees—and if you've ever run on a beach that isn't firm, you know what it's like to run in sand that just exhausts you. Some people's lives are like that now. Jesus is the rock and we've got to be the watershed and tell them that.

We've got to be the windbreak and be praying they'll come to realize that Jesus is the rock. We cannot be the rock in one sense, but we can be the shadow of the mighty rock within a weary land. I looked up in the dictionary the definition of a shadow.

And do you know what it said? It said that a shadow is an inescapable companion. Isn't that beautiful? A shadow is an inescapable companion. And what you and I need to be in our life is to be the shadow of the mighty rock for people within the weary land so that when people look at us, they cannot tell the difference.

How is that going to happen? When we are an inescapable companion of Jesus Christ by His Spirit in our lives, moment by moment, day by day, this relationship invading everything we do, everything we say. When the King is King. When we run our life under orders, when we realize we are not our own.

We do not have choice if we are a believer. Our choices must be submitted to the King. We are His. "Lord, is this your will? Is this what you would like us to do for vacation? Is this what you want us to do with our money? Lord, is this what you want to direct our children to do for their career and for their life? Is this the school you would like our children to go to?"

As we become this inescapable companion, figuring out what God wants us to do with our lives and our children and our ministry and our world and our neighbors and our friends, then we become for them a shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land.

Guest (Male): That's Jill Briscoe you're hearing today on Telling the Truth. She'll be right back to conclude today's message. But first, you probably hear people talk about prayer all the time. But aside from knowing that you ought to do it, how much do you truly know about prayer?

For example, how does God want to use prayer in our lives? Is he listening to every single request? And can prayer really make a difference? We'd love to help shine some much-needed light on the subject of prayer by sending you Stuart and Jill's new five-message collection, Powerful and Effective Prayer.

This specially curated set of messages is our thanks for your gift to share the life-changing truth of God's word around the world through Telling the Truth. It's only thanks to the support of generous friends like you that broadcasts like this one can keep going out, reaching others with God's love so they can experience life in Christ.

So if you haven't given before, please consider a gift today and remember, this is the last week to request Powerful and Effective Prayer, so ask for yours when you call and give: 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388. Or you can give online when you visit tellingthetruth.org. Now, back to Jill to wrap up today's message.

Jill Briscoe: I said to Stuart, "Can you think of an illustration of this?" He said, thinking of me specifically, "What about the deacon that picked you up when you joined that church when you were first converted?" I had just been converted and I went back home and tried to find a church that would have me.

None of them were very keen on that. But I eventually found a group of people that were willing to take in this wild, radical student who had just been converted to Christ. It was a little Baptist church, and one of the deacons was Mr. Gorton. Mrs. Gorton was very sweet and very alive and very discerning.

She was a windbreak and a watershed and a wall, and so was he. She said to me one day, "Every day you teach, you teach around the school from me, don't you, Jill?" And I said yes. She said, "On the way home, would you just stop by and have a little cup of tea and talk?"

So this very little conservative little lady and this very wonderful Baptist deacon took this student that had just been converted. Day after day after my teaching assignment, I would knock on the door and I would go into that house. I came to such a thirst and hunger for that experience.

I would say to them, "Just let me sit here in the corner and just be here." The whole aura of that house was Jesus Christ. The King was King in his life, her life, and her three children. I watched how they treated each other as Christian husband and wife.

I watched how she ironed the clothes. I watched how she ironed them as if Jesus was going to wear them. I watched how she baked as if he was going to eat it. I watched these people, and they were for me the shadow of a mighty rock in a very, very difficult place in my life.

I was struggling with losing my family because of my faith, as I was struggling with certainly losing my friends because of my faith, as I was going through this deep, deep sand at that point. As they nurtured me, as they became for me what Christ wanted in my life at that time, I took off and began to witness to the kids I was teaching.

That whole story of youth ministry began and I ended up with these 50 wild street kids who found Christ. Each day I'd go back, I couldn't wait to get there and say to Mrs. Gorton, "This is what happened." And she would be ironing and say, "Oh, yes, yes, it's wonderful."

I can just see her now. She was so excited. And she became my windbreak. "Well, I'll pray for you because it's dangerous out there, Jill." I would know that she was my soldier. When I was out on the streets in very dangerous situations, there was an unseen soldier because Mrs. Gorton was on her knees for me.

They became the shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land. Then, of course, the church didn't like me bringing all these people in. It disturbed things a little bit, and so they asked me to leave. Mr. Gorton went to bat for me.

He went to the pastor and the elders and said, "What's happening is shaking our little church to its foundations, but God is doing this. God is using this young student, and you are not to touch this ministry. I will take it on myself to be there and to nurture it and to help her with it."

He literally made a way that I didn't know till afterwards for me, or I would have been out of that church and goodness knows what would have happened to me. Here he was, the shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land. Doesn't have to be dramatic.

It can be you and me helping someone else that needs stability, needs to see some wisdom, needs to see some Christians that are solid and reliable. I have every day people come up to me and say shyly sometimes, "I need an older woman to mentor me."

People are apparently saying to me there is a stability, there is the shadow of a mighty rock. You're stable, your family's there. I want that. I want to be near it. And you can be that as you are growing, maturing in Christ. Isn't a matter of age.

Do that for other people. Be the shadow of a mighty rock, because I tell you, the whole society is falling apart and they are looking to you and they're looking to me to be those things. When the King reigns, that's what happens.

Guest (Male): Thank you, Jill. Before we go, we want to remind you that this is the last week to request Stuart and Jill's newly curated five-message collection, Powerful and Effective Prayer. It's our thanks for your gift today to continue sharing God's word through Telling the Truth broadcasts and resources.

Don't miss this exciting offer. Request yours when you call and give: 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388. Or you can give online when you visit tellingthetruth.org. We're so glad you've joined us today for another faith-building message from Telling the Truth. Join us next time for more wisdom from God's word. Listen in and experience life next time on Telling the Truth.