Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Now then, this is my last chance and as I was diligently working on all of this, I thought you could take all year to study every aspect of the Holy Spirit. I think you've realized that as Stuart and I have showered you with too much information, but information that you can follow through and just dig into one aspect of this. We've tried to tell you the books that you could use and the tools that you could use to do that on an ongoing basis.

There's no point talking about this until I reiterate a very important thing. Unless you receive God by His Holy Spirit, unless you receive the Holy Spirit, you are not a believer. You can sit in church all your life, you can even teach the Bible, but if you do not know Christ through His Holy Spirit, then you are as lost as the pagan in the most pagan situation. That's very hard for churched people to really grasp. I don't know about that because I wasn't brought up churched.

I was very well aware of who I was and what I wasn't by the time I accepted the Holy Spirit at the age of 18. But my children were brought up in a Christian home. I remember one day teaching with my daughter Judy, this is a long, long time ago now when we used to do a lot of ministry together, and I was giving my testimony just a little bit to introduce myself to the women that we were teaching. Then Judy shared a little bit, and I was very interested to hear her say, "You know, my mom came to Christ and she's never sort of come down. She's always been like this."

She said, "I was born in a Christian home. I never had this black and white conversion that she had. So it's been harder for me. There was a time when I thought because I wasn't as excited as my mom, that maybe I didn't even know Him. But I love Jesus just as much as my mom loves Jesus." I remember she remembered her daddy using an illustration of a rose opening to the sun gradually. She said, "That's how I came to realize from my Christian background, the love of God and the power of God."

So it doesn't matter what our background is, the thing is we are not a Christian unless we have received Christ by His Spirit, unless you have received the Holy Spirit. If you're unsure, make sure. To me, it's very easy. Don't just go away again think, "Am I, aren't I? Was I, wasn't I?" Make sure if you're not sure. Go home tonight, kneel by your bed, and just say, "Lord Jesus, I need you. Lord Jesus, I want you by your Spirit, come and enter my heart." He will see the intent, He will see the longing of your heart for that reality, and you will receive Christ.

In John 3, Nicodemus, a very religious man, came to Jesus secretly because he didn't want his fellow Pharisees to know he was going to inquire of the renegade preacher. He began to engage Jesus in talk. It's a very familiar passage if you remember in John's Gospel. He comes and says, "Everybody knows you have to be of God because you're doing all these miracles. You couldn't do all these miracles, you can't open the eyes of the blind and you can't raise the dead, if you're not of God."

Jesus cuts right through to the chase, as it were, and says in reply, "I tell you the truth, no one can even see the kingdom of God unless he's born again." Immediately his gut reaction, Nicodemus's reaction, "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born?" Jesus patiently says, "Well, what's born of the flesh is flesh, what's born from above is of the Spirit. You must be born from above. You must be born by the Spirit."

Nicodemus struggles with this and we don't know all the other questions in between. We only know the few that are in our Bible, but I'm sure there were many other questions in between that we don't know. But maybe one of the questions he asked was, "How will I know if I've been born of the Spirit?" Jesus uses a symbol again. He uses a natural symbol of a tree and wind. He says, "The wind blows where it wants to blow, and we don't know where it comes from, we don't know where it's going. You can't see the wind, but you can see what it does. You can see the effect."

"You can see the effect on the trees. You can see the effect when it's really very windy on people's hair and clothes, but you can't see the wind. It's like that. You can't see the Spirit, but you can see the effect. You can see the change. You can see the wind of the Spirit of God transforming and changing people. That's how you'll know." That's why it's hard if you've been churched all your life and you've been religious, to see the change.

Because as Judy said, "If I'd murdered my mother with an axe, then I was forgiven, I'd have a real testimony to give. But I've been a pretty good little girl more or less all my life, so there wasn't a big change." But there will be indications. It says in the word of God that the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are a child of God. You will know internally in your interior life, the part of us that cannot be seen, the soul, the heart of us.

The Bible promises you will know in different ways. You will have that assurance. It will be far deeper than your feelings. It'll be in your knowings, in your convictions, which feels different. But the Holy Spirit doesn't—I'm sure I've said this two or three times—the Holy Spirit does not come into your life to do His deepest work in the shallowest part of you, which is your emotions, your feelings. The Holy Spirit comes to do His deepest work in our convictions, our knowings.

When I was writing that book on Job years ago, his feelings are not helping him. He's had a horrible Monday, if you remember, and he begins to howl at God. "Why was I ever born? Why wasn't I aborted? Why did you let me come knowing I was coming into this?" He feels horrible. Well, you come to chapter two and he feels worse. He does pretty well, actually, until he's physically stricken.

I don't know the physical sickness that we are all prone to because we live in a fallen world with fallen bodies, and we're dying from the day we're born. When we're well and trouble, other trouble comes, we can manage pretty well. But when you get sick in the middle of trouble, I have seen it again and again and again, when your body is hurting and you're in horrible pain, terrible things are happening to you, that's when it's hard to go on believing because you can't feel God.

All you can feel is pain. That's why your knowings must not be dependent on your feelings. You come to the middle of the book of Job, and right in the middle of the book of Job, he is saying, "Where are you, God? I can't feel you. I don't know you inside. I go to the left and you're not there, in the north and the south and the east and the west, where are you? I can't feel you." Following that is that incredible chapter, "But I know that my Redeemer lives."

Those famous verses in the whole of the book of Job follow this howl of "I can't feel you, I can't feel you, I can't feel you. Where are you?" Suddenly, he feels Him in his knowings. But I know. That is far deeper and far more incredible than any surface emotion that we could know. We can know that we know that we know. That is wrapped up with this book. That is wrapped up with this Word of God.

Conversion begins with conviction. The Holy Spirit makes His approach to the soul and convicts us of sin. Then He convinces us that Jesus is the answer. He convicts of sin, He convinces us that Jesus is the answer, and He converts us. It says in Matthew, Jesus speaking, "Unless you are converted, unless you are turned around, going one direction, you turn around and go in the other direction, unless you are converted and become like a little child, you can't even see the kingdom of God. You can't enter the kingdom of God."

He means by becoming like a little child that you become humble enough to say, "I'm not enough, I can't do it, I can't earn my salvation, I can't barge into heaven just because I think I have a right, an inalienable right to do that." Conviction, conversion, and of course, change and concern. Jesus remembered, John 15:16, the vine and the branches, "You didn't choose me, I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last."

Often in our pride, we think that we chose God. It's all of grace, it's all of the Spirit. No man can know God unless the Spirit draws him, the Bible says. So He draws men, He offers them, He pulls us by some moving of the Holy Spirit, convicting us of the emptiness, knowing there's something to fill it, that hole in our heart, that homeness that we're looking for, that fatherness that somehow is missing.

The Holy Spirit works on us whether we're churched or whether we're unchurched. One day, please God, we accept the Holy Spirit. We're born from above. Once that's happened in our lives, there's plenty in this book that assures us the Holy Spirit is going to affirm that to us. When people say, "I don't feel any different," I say, "Maybe you won't for a week or a month. The change actually will come in your mind first, not in your emotions."

You'll find yourself thinking things you've never thought before. Never occurred to you. You'll sit there and say, "Where did that come from?" Usually, you'll figure out you must have been born again by a change in your thinking, a change in your belief system, which cannot come unless you think. The avenue of all religious experience is through the mind first, and if it isn't, it's not going to work and it's not going to last very, very long.

Then we'll begin to walk by the Spirit. Believe the Spirit inspires this book. That's an incredibly important statement, folks. I've been watching TV lately, news time, I've just been appalled at what's happening in our schools and the public schools, of figuring out that we shouldn't really have God in the equation, rewriting not only American history but God history. It's a bit like the EU when they tried to get their constitution together a few years ago, the European Union.

They tried to rewrite European history without church and without God. They managed to do it. Actually, they managed to say it was really another religion that happened to write history and be history for Europe. They got the whole thing out and presented it to the EU. One man stopped it. One man, and he was an atheist. He was an atheist. It was the Polish Premier who said, "I don't believe in God, but you cannot go two blocks in my country without coming to a church."

"What do you mean there was no church? What do you mean there was no Christian this, that, and the other for all these years?" It was turned down. They still don't have it properly sorted out. But isn't that incredible that Europe, with a church on every block when you go there and that spire pointing up to heaven and the evidence of 2,000 years of history, at this point is saying not only was there no church, but this book might be on a level to every other book in the world, that's all.

Our children are being exposed to this. If they're not being exposed to it in the younger age, they're being exposed to it as soon as they get to university age. To hear what happens when they get into our universities where this book is concerned is quite incredible. Absolutely incredible. So I hope you know your stuff, not only for yourself and your children and your grandchildren, which incidentally we need to be making sure as parents and grandparents that we attack that before the kids get out of our influence and into the university.

We need to know what we're talking about. 2 Timothy 3:16, I hope you're memorizing some of these verses, "All scripture, all scripture, not just the New Testament—it didn't sort of evolve into something almost true by the time it got into the New Testament—all scripture is God-breathed." Know that word by now, Ruach. All scripture is spirit-breathed and is useful for, and then there's a list: teaching, rebuking, correcting, training.

My husband says teaching is "this is what it tells you to do." Rebuking is having to say to some people "that's not the way you do it." Correction is saying "this is the way it's done." Training is "and I'll do it with you." This is all to do with belief and service and character and living the Christian life. All scripture is God-breathed, and it's going to teach us how we should live.

It's going to rebuke us when we don't do it right or we disobey. It's going to correct us and say, "No, no, no, this is the way it's done." It's going to train us. If we have somebody to help us with all that, so much the better. That's what we should be doing for everybody in the influence. Teaching, rebuking, correcting, training. 2 Peter 1:21, "Holy men of old spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."

You need to compare 2 Timothy 3:16 with that. The phrase there means "borne along," moved, influenced, carried along by an influence from above. That's what makes this book different from every other holy book in the world. Not only does it speak of a man who died and rose again, which no other holy book speaks about, but it claims to be the truth, the only truth.

Remember, many ways to Jesus, but only one way to God, and that's through Jesus. It's only the Holy Spirit that can take His word, faithfully preached and taught, and have it have that effect in people's lives. I have to tell you, this is no ordinary book, but I am attacked every time I teach it one way or the other. Not long ago I had to speak at a big meeting, and it was a hard subject they'd given me.

I worked—ask my husband how hard I work at this stuff, I have to—and I worked and worked and I got it all down. I sat back and looked at it, and I tell you, the devil said to me, "You know, it's not very interesting." I thought, "No, it isn't. Maybe I'd better help it. Maybe I'd better brighten it up a bit or some bells and whistles or sing a bit or dance a bit or do something."

But I sat there appalled. I thought, "No, it isn't interesting. Maybe I could start again and tell a little story or what should I do?" So I tell my husband this. He said, "What's the matter?" I said, "The devil's telling me it's not very interesting." My husband said, "How do you know it's the devil?" Thank you, Stuart, that's very helpful. He teased me out of it, and I sat and laughed too.

I thought, "Well, I know it's the devil," and he said, "Jill, this is all we need to do. We need to read it, mark it, inwardly digest it, and take it to pieces and teach it. It has its own power." The Word of God, if we lose our belief in the veracity of scripture, in the inspiration of scripture, we'll quit and do something for an honest living. We've wasted our lives in the ministry.

I believe more than I've ever believed that this is God-breathed. That means that God will not only breathe it into me, but He is the interpreter. Remember, Jesus said He'll be your teacher. He'll interpret it. Not only as you read it will the conviction come to you, but it is for everything: how to raise your kids, how to stand it when one turns away from the faith.

What do you do when somebody dies and you don't know if they knew the Lord? I can't remember all the things I've turned to this book for in all my years of knowing Christ, but I've always found an answer. Now, I haven't found an obvious answer, like "Aunt Mary is in heaven." It's not going to say that. So don't hunt for it. That's what I did when I first came to Christ. I hunted for specifics.

In principles, it will teach you which you can apply. Let me illustrate that for you. When we were doing youth work and street work, Stuart used to be away a lot, so I needed to do something with my time. So I took off into street ministry. I'd get a babysitter and put the kids to bed, and take some Bible students and we'd go out late at night and just talk to kids.

One day Trevor, I remember one of my kids who'd been converted, came to me and said, "You know Jill, I try to argue with my friends in the pub and they just—I get stuck, I don't know enough. Would you come? Would you come next Tuesday with me and meet my pals and I'll tell them to get the list of questions they've been asking me I couldn't answer them? If you'd come."

I said, "Oh that's wonderful Trevor." But when he'd gone, I began to think, "You know, I really don't want to do that." Then I began trying to be honest with myself, and I asked myself why. Why didn't I want to go into the pub in the little local village? I didn't want to go in because everybody knew me. I'd got a big warehouse, which was a youth center and drug rehab, and I was well known in the area.

I'd sort of built up quite a nice little reputation. As I tried to be honest, and the Holy Spirit began to say to me, "Yeah, that's the problem. You're worried about your reputation." I said, "Well, I know Mrs. Smith'll be, the organist will be on the other side of the road when I go in, Lord." Always happened, she was always there, I don't know why. But He nailed it.

So then I began until I found the principle I needed and the answer I needed. I just read. I can't remember that day how much I just read. I started in the Gospels and I just read. Now there was a lot of stuff, "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel," but it wasn't that. I opened my heart up and I said, "Holy Spirit, just nail it." I didn't use that because I wasn't American then.

I can't remember what I asked Him to do. But of course, He loves to answer that. I got all the way through the Gospels, I got all the way to Philippians. Still, I was very interested in this, that, and the other. "Yes, that's a principle I could apply, that is." But it still wasn't just what I needed until I got to Philippians chapter two. It's about that great graph of grace that Jesus started in heaven all the way to hell for me.

Highest heaven to deepest hell. It's about the humility of Christ and all of that. Guess what? It's about His reputation. It says He, in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped and held on to, but He made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, etc. But in the King James, it said, "He made himself of no reputation." That was it.

I didn't need to look any further. That's that stab. That's it, Jill. I remember just saying, "Oh, if He didn't care about His, what am I worrying about my little reputation? Take it, Lord." Have you ever tried to give something to God and it won't go? Just hold it there and give Him permission to take it, and then forget about it and go about your work. And of course, go into the pub.

That was the beginning of an incredible thing that began to happen in pub ministry for years with the team. You've got to let the Holy Spirit convict you. It's not pleasant, and you'll find yourself arguing, but that's how it works. He will absolutely take you at your word. So Peter here wrote of revelation, the source of all scripture. God revealed it. We wouldn't have a chance if He didn't give us the Holy Spirit to understand what He's revealed in this book.

One's belief about revelation is absolutely foundational for faith. Christians must be able to rest on the infallibility of scripture, or their faith is of no value. Now perhaps the false teachers were denying scripture by denying its divine origin, saying the words were merely the writer's interpretations and not God's Word. That's why Peter says "all scripture is given" and gives this little talk of the infallibility and the inspiration of scripture.

Help your kids with this. See what there is. I have no idea at their level of understanding this big person's grasping idea. They can get it. But work diligently so that they are prepared for the barrage that comes and says this is only a human book, there's no such thing as revelation, and of course it's not infallible, it's just one holy book among all the rest. This is no ordinary book.

So you've got to feed that part of you. You've got to hang your heart over scripture. You've got to learn it, read it, mark it, inwardly digest it, and know it inside out. So you read the Golden Book, and you learn how to let God interpret it for you. On the back of one of my little books, I tried to give you a picture that might help.

The first time I noticed things were radically different was when I invited Him to read the book to me instead of me reading the book to Him. If you sit quiet and still in the garden of grace with the Golden Book open before you, the Lord will reveal treasure. Something happens when your soul sits down and has a rest. It's always quiet on the steps leading to the garden of grace, sweetly quiet.

The air is so still and different from any other place on earth. Joy, a whispering of love that seems to be saying, "I see you, I'm coming." He always does because it's His book. If you just read the passage of scripture you're in, instead of even reading it aloud to Him or to yourself, read it aloud to Him and yourself and then read it again saying, "Holy Spirit, point out the points. You read it to me."

"You get hold of that principle or command or promise or warning and say, 'That's for you. That's for you. That's for this. That's for her. That's for him.'" That's what the Holy Spirit does with His word. It's like a sword, piercing between the very soul and spirit. Pricks you, gets to you. It says, "That's for you, Jill Briscoe. Now get yourself into that pub." That'll happen.

Depends which nature you're feeding. If you're feeding the flesh, "I don't want to go into the pub, I'm afraid of my reputation," then you won't obey. So start by feeding your soul the right nature, the spirit, not the flesh. Think. Ask God to revolutionize your mind as you read the Bible. Spurgeon said a little girl said to him, "My soul is my think." I like that. What's your think? It's actually your soul. You can't divide all this stuff.

Spurgeon answered that some of us have so very little soul, I think. My soul is my think, and he's saying that a lot of adults don't have a think, and children often have a think ahead of us. So set your mind, it's all about mindset. Remember, you mind your mind and God'll mind your heart. Set your mind on what the Spirit desires, Romans 8:5. Well, there's a list in Galatians if you don't know what the Spirit desires, then read the list and set your mind on it.

Read Philippians chapter four, "Think on these things." Make a list. If you don't know what to think about tomorrow when you get up, just take the list with you until you learn it, and think about those things. Then apply the principles, and then you enlist the Spirit's help. Ephesians 6:18, "And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests." See all those "alls"? Pray in the Spirit on all occasions, all kinds of prayers, and all kinds of requests.

With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints. Ephesians 6:18. Now let me ask you another question. How is your prayer life? Did you give up? What's more important, He talks to you or you talk to Him? So maybe we need a bit more balance. I don't know. There isn't a gift of prayer. It's a gift of grace that we can talk to God and He can talk to us.

But prayer isn't a gift. People have said to me, "I don't have the gift of prayer." Prayer's a privilege of us listening to God and actually communicating. Prayer is simply our prayer language as we talk to God. But the Spirit, it says Romans 8:26 and 27, "helps us in our weakness. We don't know what we ought to pray for." Right.

"But the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings that words can't express. And He, God, who searches our hearts, knows the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to God's will." Now you have to take a day or two in that passage, figure it out, ask the Holy Spirit to help you understand. What does it mean? What does it mean that the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings that can't be expressed?

Well, what it means is, Romans 8:22 to 27, "we know the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth until this present time. Not only so, we ourselves who have firstfruits of the Spirit groan inwardly as we eagerly wait for our adoption as sons and the redemption of our bodies." Whole creation is groaning waiting to be a new heaven and a new earth.

We groan inwardly because we want to have our new bodies and we want to go to heaven and have no more tears and all of that. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We don't know what we ought to pray for, but He intercedes for us with groans. Everybody's groaning. Lot of groaning going on. The creation is groaning.

When we suddenly started to have the earthquake and somebody on television told us that the world's just been knocked off its axis three percent—what on earth does that mean? Well, they didn't know, so they couldn't tell us. I have no idea what it means. But the earth's groaning. One day there'll be a new heavens and a new universe and a new earth, and creation is indeed.

When Stuart and I were down in Antarctica on this adventure, the scientist that was leading us, we were standing among a million penguins. To get to them, you had to walk through these giant seals that were ripping each other to death, and these little seals, which are the ones you should be afraid of, who'd never seen human beings before, but they thought they looked tasty.

Then you get through all the seals and then you get up to where the penguins are. When we got up to these million penguins, there were little tiny penguins under their pouches. That's when we were there. We were there when a million penguins were having babies. In between scattered in that entire thing, there were rivers of penguins. They were all white coming towards us. They were all black going up away from us. It was just the—I'll never ever forget that experience.

But among these millions of penguins were skua birds. They're nasty little things with skua things, and they just wait for the poor little chick to peek out and then boom. So in my group, there were more women than men, actually, and the scientist was saying, "Isn't this interesting?" and I said, "No, it's horrible. Poor little bird. Oh no, don't do it." I just wanted to sort of put a tent up and stay there and bat those things off of the little chicks.

He said, "No, no, no, it's just nature." Well, he kept talking about Mother Nature and I kept saying, "It's Father God, it's not Mother Nature," but he wouldn't listen to me anyway. So we're having this conversation, and the skua birds are skuaing and the poor little things are peeking out. He said, "You'll get used to it," but he said, "It's really interesting because..." and then he goes into all this scientific explanation. He's an expert on penguins of why this is nature and the way that it keeps the population down, all of this.

I said, "You know, it's the Fall." So he said, "Jill, what does that mean? What do you mean it's the Fall? Is this a new scientific idea?" And I said, "No, I don't think it was like this before the Fall." He said, "What fall?" So I told him what fall, and I said, "It says in my book that one day the lion will lie down with the lamb and there'll be a new heaven. I think when God made the creatures, it was the Fall that made a lion leap on a lamb and tear it to shreds. All nature's out of sync."

I had a wonderful talk with that man. He's a true unbeliever. He was a true liberal man. He accepted the conservative as part of everything else he thought about. A true liberal will do that. A false liberal will not accept the conservative, but he was a true liberal and we had great, great talks about it. Nature is really cruel, but it's groaning, it's waiting.

And what the Holy Spirit does is groan with nature. And what the Holy Spirit does is groan with us. And when we are on our knees and we are beyond knowing what to do to raise our heads, when we are in deep distress and we have no idea what to pray and how to pray, take courage. The Holy Spirit knows how to pray and what we should pray. Ask Him, "Give me the idea because you understand."

And what He will pray is something that is all about the will of God. It says here that the Holy Spirit prays, He intercedes for the saints according to God's will. He knows what we should say, He knows what we should do or shouldn't do, He knows this horrible situation of skua birds or whatever it is that's in our life and it's not going to change. So how do we pray about it?

I just took the services last weekend. I took the thorn in the flesh, Paul's thorn in the flesh, and wonderful talks with people in the lobby. I can't remember going out and not talking about the weather and things that don't matter when I've just poured my heart out from the pulpit. But this time, because everybody wants to know what to do when the answer is no. Well, the Holy Spirit knows what to do, what we should pray when we have to accept the unacceptable because God said no.

He knows. So just be still and say, "Holy Spirit, let your groanings become mine." It's quite incredible what happens to prayer when that's the case. So we obey the Spirit's command, we enlist the Spirit's help, and then of course we produce the Spirit's likeness. Stuart's book on the Fruit of the Spirit, he starts the book by saying it doesn't say the "fruits" of the Spirit, it says the "fruit." One fruit on one stalk: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.

One bunch and the stalk is love. You can't go to that bunch and say, "Well, I'll just enjoy a bit of patience or I'll just work on this." God says, "No, I expect the fruit, all of it, to be manifest in your life if the Holy Spirit's in you." Because it talks of Christlikeness, of godly, godlikeness. So the challenge of studying the fruits of the Spirit is that the Holy Spirit can deal with you if it's the patience bit or the self-control bit, and you can't just stick with love or peace or joy, which is what we'd all like to do, obviously.

So we've been looking very briefly into it. God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Joy, spiritual exuberance, not silliness. Verse in the Scriptures that says, "She that lives in pleasure is dead while she lives." Joy is not pleasure; joy is faith dancing.

Peace. I found a lovely Wesley hymn: "Prince of Peace control my will, bid this struggling heart be still, bid my fears and doubting cease, hush my spirit into peace. Thou hast bought me with thy blood, opened wide the gate to God. Peace I ask, but peace must be, Lord, in being one with thee. May thy will, not mine be done, may thy will and mine be one. Chase these doubtings from my heart, now thy perfect peace impart. Savior at thy feet I fall, thou my life, my God, my all. Let thy happy servant be once forevermore with thee."

So peace is being in perfect agreement with God, "Thy will, not mine be done." Peace like a river when it's well with my soul. That's when we're not arguing, that's when the flesh is not battling with what the Spirit wants. Peace.

Patience, longsuffering, slow anger is the word. Love is slow to anger, 1 Corinthians 13 says, or love suffers long and is kind. Longsuffering, slow anger. The illustration that Peter gives is of Noah. God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built, it says in 1 Peter 3:18 to 21. God waited patiently. So if we want a picture of what we're looking at, look at the patience of God as you find it.

How did I find all those verses about God's patience? I looked in a concordance at the back of your Bible, word "patient," and then looked them all up. So I got a lot of information about God's patience. Now remember, the Holy Spirit is God. So for this we have Jesus. Now the flesh will run out of patience, but we have the Spirit. The Spirit of God, the Spirit is God.

So what's God's patience like? It waited 120 years before the ark went on the water. So God patiently waited in the days of Noah, 120 years for people to say they were sorry. That's a picture of the patience of God. How long do we wait? 120 minutes? 120 seconds? When we're patiently waiting for someone to say sorry? For our kids, shape up?

Well, for this I have Jesus. If I didn't have Jesus, then I'd blow it within five minutes, I'm not a very patient person. But God waited patiently, He suffered long. It broke His heart. Remember I've read Genesis 6. He looked at all the mess that the human race had made and it broke His heart. He was grieved at His heart, His heart was filled with pain. That's what the human race did to God. He patiently gave them a chance.

Noah sat—said he was a preacher of righteousness, it says in the Bible. And as they're coming along saying, "What are you building in the middle of—what is it for? It's for animals. It's for what? And for humans. What do you mean? We're going to sail it. What on? You're going to sail it on, Noah?" God said we're going to sail it, and the door's open. He was a preacher of righteousness. You can read about that in the New Testament. And God gave them all that time to get on board.

Need to be patient, and we have Jesus for it. Longsuffering, forbearing one another, forgiving one another, all part of longsuffering. Well, being inordinately fond of myself, I don't do suffering very well. Who does? Who's for pain? But God can give us the ability to suffer well. I mean, okay. So while we're hanging around waiting for God to say yes or to change the situation, what are we going to do? Be kind.

What are you going to do while you're building the ark? Be kind. Love suffers long and is kind. The two go together. Longsuffering's passive, kindness is active. It's an active verb, kindness. Longsuffering is just being good about it, and kindness is doing good in it. It gives you something to do in the face of people's whatever, just be kind to them.

Being kind is the active part of patience. So you're waiting for something to change. What are you going to do when the boat's being built? Just think of kind things you can do. And I think one of the best illustrations of this is a long, long time ago when one of my children was being a bit ornery and I was being, I thought, pretty patient about it. And I talked to a wonderful lady in our church—it's a long, long time ago when they were young teenagers, 20 years anyway.

I said to her, "I've just—what am I going to do?" and she said, "Be kind." And I said, "She doesn't deserve it." She said, "That's what kindness is for." I wrote it in my diary: "Be kind. She doesn't deserve it. That's what kindness is for." I mean, the human race didn't deserve a boat. They didn't deserve another chance. That's what kindness is for.

It says in the kindness of God He waited for repentance. God is kind. God is very kind. So kindness builds the boat. Longsuffering waits for them to get on board. So it is a relief to do something. And so I just began to be kind to this child who was suffering from being 13. That was the malady. "This too shall pass," I wrote in my Bible. Seemed so long before she was 14, then I had to write "this too will pass" till she was 15.

So you have to forgive them for being 13, 14, and 15, and forbear. That's what the Holy Spirit can do for us. We'd lose it. "Why should I be kind? I've had it." So I began to be practically kind, and I won't go into all the details. One day Judy was babysitting, she called me, and she said—she was in tears—and I said, "What's wrong? Is there anything wrong with the children?"

"No, no, no, mom. I've got them all in bed and I've just been sitting here thinking and I'm sorry. I'm sorry about this and I'm sorry about that and I'm sorry about the other." And I said, "Judy, what brought this on?" and she said, "You've been so kind to me, mom. You've been so kind to me, mom." Do you see, love covers a multitude of sins. Love gives what people don't deserve.

And we can't do that. We want to screw her neck, right? But the Holy Spirit gives us the power to be patient and the power to be kind, and I have watched that child of mine turn around and do that for her own children. We both learned a lesson. So while you're patiently waiting out whatever it is you're waiting out, think of something actively kind that they don't deserve and do it.

You'll be amazed. So, faithfulness. What's that? In Revelation 2, I have to read this because it's perfectly what faithfulness means. God is speaking to one of the churches, Revelation 2 verse 10, "Be faithful even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life." He's talking to the church in Smyrna who was undergoing persecution.

Then verse 13, "I know where you live, where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to my name. You didn't renounce your faith in me, even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness who was put to death in your city where Satan lives." So here we have the early church in a city and a huge persecution has broken out. I looked for some information on Saint Antipas, and this is what I found.

He's known as the faithful martyr of Pergamum. According to Christian tradition, John the Apostle ordained Antipas as bishop of Pergamum during the reign of the Roman Emperor Domitian, and he was worse than Nero. That's when literally all hell broke out against the early church. The traditional account goes on to say Antipas was martyred in 92 AD by burning in a brazen bull-shaped altar used for casting out demons worshipped by the local population. So he was roasted to death.

"Be faithful," says Jesus, even unto death like Antipas. We have a little family that we've supported. They've been out in very, very dangerous places where people are being dispatched in not quite summary manner, although some tortured to death. And they have a family purpose statement: three kids, 13 years living in those places, serving Jesus.

"Our purpose is to live by simple trust and confidence in Him, unflinching, unawed, undismayed by the troubles we may face, holding staunchly to our calling and enduring steadfastly with our gaze fixed on Him. Well done, good and faithful servants." And it's getting worse. It's getting worse. In our own church, we have seen our martyrs, haven't we? More martyrs in this period than any from the beginning of time.

What's it going to take? I always remember talking to Corrie ten Boom, privileged to have her in our lives in early days. The most famous story, one of them in her book, was when as a little girl she said to her daddy, "I hope I never have to suffer for Jesus." And he said, "It'll be all right, Corrie, when if—if it ever happens." "No, no, I hope I never, I really—I mean I hope I really never have to suffer because I'd give in, you know. I wouldn't be able to do that. I wouldn't be able to be tortured for Christ."

"Well, Corrie, where are these all ideas coming from?" just a little girl. And then of course the clouds came and this family in Holland was occupied by the Nazis and the roundup of the Jews began. And I have been in Corrie ten Boom's house where they made a hiding place in Corrie's bedroom that looked like a cupboard and you walked in and it was able to take six Jews just standing one by one like this, and they would hide them there until they could get them out trail.

And then of course she was betrayed—they were betrayed, her father and her whole family who owned the clock shop in Holland were betrayed by somebody in their own family. And they came for them. And what her father had said to her that day because she was worried about suffering for Christ, he'd taken her to school and the bus was coming and as the bus drew up, he said to her, "Corrie, when do I give you the penny for the bus?" "Oh now, Papa, when I'm getting onto it." "Right. God ever ask you to suffer for Him, He'll give you the penny for the bus when you get on it."

And the bus came, literally. And they all got on the bus. And she remembered, and she said, "Jill," I remember in her beautiful Dutch accent, "He gave me the penny for the bus as I went to Ravensbruck." He'll give you the penny for the bus. Not now, we don't need it. When we get on it to be faithful. And that's the extreme and yet sometime it's just as much torture to live in a difficult marriage or to live and see terrible things happen to your children in a safe place.

There's pain at every level. But if God asks you to get on the bus, He'll give you the penny for the bus. He'll give you the penny for the bus. So that's why He's able to say "be faithful," the Holy Spirit will give you courage, persistence, and the word is used patient in all the negative places, to bear gently, etc. It's also used for teachers. "The Lord's servant must not quarrel. Instead he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful."

With fairness, moderation, gentleness, sweet reasonableness. You can look up the word yourself, find out what it means to be gentle. It's usually used as a nurse being gently insistent. Not putting up with any old thing, but patiently seeing the right thing is done. Not patiently letting them away with stuff, but patiently seeing that they do the right thing.

So it's gentle insistence. Self-control, add to your knowledge self-control. Self-rule. Do you rule yourself or does yourself rule you? It denotes the self-rule which a man has over the evil propensities in his nature. And so how do we do it then? Where do we start knowing all this stuff? Yield to the Spirit's sway. You yield. "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit," studiously and with measured steps.

Step by step by step by step. Can't do it all at once. You don't grow mature overnight. Takes time, miracles take time. No less a miracle, Lewis would say. Yielding. What does it mean to yield to the Spirit? Well, to yield the life to God is the first step to a continuous walk in the Spirit.

It's impossible for Christ to become—and this is from a wonderful book, Life on the Highest Plane, I hope many of you bought that book—it's impossible for Christ to become all that He desires and designs to become apart from a wholly yielded life. He is handicapped and hindered in all He would do in and through us by our unwillingness to have it done. To have it done.

The measure of our yielding is the measure of our human life. It includes everything inside: our spirit, heart, will, affections. It includes everything outside: our home, everything outside the home, our children, our possessions, our occupation. It also includes everything: all friendships, time, money, pleasures, life's plans. It includes the past and the present. No matter that the past has held of sin and sorrow or self.

It is all handed over in a once and for all commitment. That's what yielding is. Have you ever done that? Have you ever done that? Some of us can surrender the past who find it difficult to yield the present. There's a desire to reserve a bit of ground. Others are fearful to put the future in His hands. How do we know God'll be faithful? What will happen to us if we make Him CEO of our business?

If we make Him Father of our family, if we make Him Steward of our home, if we make Him Bank Manager? If we do what we should do, if we yield it all in a once for all in a definite act, a decisive act? I don't know what'll happen. I have no idea. I only know I'd rather He handled it than me.

So once you've yielded, you walk in the light and He helps you to keep clean. And He fills you and He equips you and He gives you gifts. And incidentally, gifts of the Spirit—and we haven't even got to that—are tools, not toys. Corinthians were children, remember? Paul was saying, "Grow up and be mature." They had spiritual gifts coming out of their ears, the extraordinary gifts, and they were playing with them like toys, because babies play with toys, right?

Spiritual gifts are not given to us to play with. Spiritual gifts are to equip us. Need to be careful about that. So He will fill us, He will equip us to do what? To have fun? To enjoy it? No. These are tools in order that we can tell the world about Christ, in order that we can bring in the kingdom, etc. And keep in step with the Spirit in the conflict that will come.

The conflict that will come. And so we have to choose to appropriate the Spirit's life. Right back to square one: be strengthened by the Holy Spirit, renewed. We have to guard our interior life and feed the spirit and not the flesh. And there's one little parable I'd like to finish with. It's a wonderful parable, Old Testament parable right in the middle of Jeremiah of all places.

Jeremiah is one of my favorite people because I'm a negative person. I like him. But Jeremiah actually had been getting nowhere with Israel and would never, he would never see a convert. He would never see anything happen through the whole of his life and ministry, and he ended up being martyred in Egypt after being tortured all the way and put in holes and drowned in mud and all of that fun stuff.

Right in the middle, he looks at Israel, which is totally in apostasy. The lowest point of Israel is Jeremiah. And he gives them a little parable, and it's about a scrub bush and a tree. And all the pictures of the Holy Spirit that I've mentioned here and there and the symbols of the Holy Spirit are in this little parable.

And I'm just going to give you the frame and ask you to hang your heart over this parable. But he says in verse five, "This is what the Lord says to you, Israel: Cursed is the one who trusts in man," that means human strength, your own abilities, "who depends on flesh for his strength, his training." He's talking about people in the army. "Whose heart turns away from the Lord. Cursed is that man."

Now he's talking to Israel, he's talking to backslidden believers or non-believing Israelites at this point. "He will be like," I love this, now there's a little list, "He will be like a bush in the wastelands. He won't see prosperity when it comes. He'll dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives. But," turning point of the parable, "Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him."

Look at this list: "He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. Doesn't fear when the heat's on. Its leaves are always green. Has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit." Two little pictures: you're either like a scrub bush, folks, or we're like a tree. What's the difference? One of them has its roots in the river.

One of it has its roots in the river of God. And all of these symbols in this little parable are fabulous. Absolutely fabulous. Do we understand what it is to put out our roots? The river didn't make its way to the tree. The river was available to the tree, the river of God. And the river of God, if you want to do a neat Bible study with a reference Bible, start in Genesis and just follow it all the way through.

The river of God comes from the throne of God, same river. In Revelation, there are trees down each side with bunches of fruit, variety. Every month there's a new fruit, and all the trees have their roots in the river of God, right? So the little scrub bush, it's been in the same desert as the tree, but it's become tumbleweed. If you've ever been in the Arizona desert or Colorado, and your feet get tied up with this tumbleweed, it was a bush.

But it dried up, shriveled under the heat, and its roots came out because they weren't in the river, and it tumbled all over the desert. How sad. But the tree put out its roots till it found the water. And the results were dramatic. Trees of the Lord are full of sap. Psalm 104:16. If they have their roots in the river, of course. Do you know what the sap does for a tree? Makes the leaf shine. I like that.

The tree overcomes fear and worry. Same heat, but has no worries in a year of drought. Had any a year of drought? Keep your roots in the river. There's the symbol of the Holy Spirit, right? The river of God. And never fails to bear fruit. Fresh fruit, variety. I love the verse that says the people of the Lord will bear fruit even in old age. All sorts of different trees, all sorts of different ages.

The trees of the Lord are full of fruit. Turn to Revelation 22 for a minute, and you've got the river of life here. "Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life," verse 1, "as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. And on each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations."

Then it describes heaven. I was teaching this years ago in Russia. My interpreter was named Katya. She told me that the women in Russia despise men and men despise women. Most women have had four or five abortions in their life; that's their birth control. Most of them are because they sleep in the same bed as fathers and brothers and uncles, etc., etc.

Literally, women are abused by men, but women despise and hate men and the whole thing. I've never been in a country where this is so horrible and so obvious. Well, Katya found Christ and became an interpreter in the place where they teach missionaries Russian. She has four languages, she's a brilliant girl, beautiful girl.

And so she said to me, asked me if I would meet with all the interpreters, about 23 interpreters in this language school in Krasnodar, Russia. And so we did an hour, and I used this parable and I split it up and I put them in two parts. And I said, "You look up the scrub bush, you look up the tree. Just chase every single thing it talks about the tree and everything it talks about the scrub bush in the scriptures."

And so they did, and then they started sharing. And Katya chased up the leaves. And of course she arrived in Revelation. So when we were sharing, she stood up when it was her time, and with tears streaming down her face, she said, "I want to keep my roots in the river for my Russia." She said, "Look at this: the leaves are for the healing of the nations. I want my leaves to be for the healing of my Russia."

And I said, "It's all right, Katya, they are. They are. You're beautiful for God. There is so much fruit in your life, even through the hell that you have suffered and come from. God is healing. You're beautiful. And God is using the shiny light that's emanating from you in this room for the healing of your nation."

So what do you want? Do you want to be a scrub bush? Or do you want to keep your roots in the river? You're here because you want to keep your roots in the river. May God help us. Pray with me. Heavenly Father, symbols and pictures and parables and straight talk and instruction, how could we not learn what you want us to know? But we have to put our mind to it first.

We have to take the time. We have to be on our knees. we have to learn prayer and what it means to have the Holy Spirit groaning in us and teaching us what to pray and how to pray and when to pray and why to pray. And we have to feed the right nature, Lord. We have to walk step-by-step-by-step, moment-by-moment-by-moment in the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

And we'd like to, but so often that old nature, that flesh, that laziness, that indulgence, that lack of self-rule stops us and it's to our detriment. Teach us to discipline ourselves. Why wouldn't we? And make us like a tree planted by the river, that puts out its roots by the stream, the stream of the river of God. And may our tree be a sign and signal to all around.

May birds come and rest in our branches, may people come and shade under our presence. Make us a tree, planted by the river, bearing fruit, the fruit of godliness. We ask it for your sake, Lord, and for us. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.