Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: This is my favorite book in the Bible. I don't know if you're allowed to have a favorite book, but I have lived in Isaiah as a new believer. I've lived in Isaiah as a young mother. I've lived in Isaiah as a mother of teenagers. I've lived in Isaiah as a mother of adult children and as a grandmother. It is something that I never, never tire of. I think it's because it is so tender and real and poetic and everything that is very precious and treasureful for me. So I want you to turn to Isaiah 5.

Now how do we know the help of God in the middle of pressure? We're going to talk about pressure. I know that pressure is something that is part of our life. We try to get rid of it. There's good pressure and bad pressure. This isn't going to be a talk on pressure, and yet it will end up showing us that God has a reason for pressuring the wine out of the grapes. God has great plans for grapes; He's going to press them. That's His plan.

God never had a wine press for a mile high of grapes. That's not the point of a vineyard or a winepress. The point of a winepress is wine. God is going to do that through various pressures in our life. One of the reasons He does it is to teach us who we belong to, to teach us where to go when the pressures come, when the dark tunnels come, when the storms come in our life.

I love the story of the little girl in the railway carriage. She was probably three. She was at the age where she was a very social little creature, and she was flitting from one person to the other. The train was clickety-clacking along at a terrific pace. People were a bit bored and they didn't have much to do, and they were watching this little girl. A man said to the person next to him, "Who does she belong to?" because it was very difficult to figure it out.

She would stop by this lady and look as though she belonged to this lady, and they'd have this lovely little interaction. Then she would go and climb up on this man over here, and they thought, "Well, maybe that's the father," or "Maybe this is the mother." They just couldn't figure it out. This went on for some time, and suddenly the train took off into a dark, long tunnel. Immediately, the little girl dashed down the carriage into the arms of a man who was sitting there.

Everybody knowingly looked at each other because there suddenly wasn't any doubt who that little girl belonged to. She belonged to the father who had been sitting there. When everything was all right, when everything was normal, that little girl was flitting around, and nobody could tell who she belonged to. As soon as she went into the tunnel, there was no doubt.

God allows tunnels in our lives so there's no doubt. In the eyes of the onlookers, He's always concerned about people that are watching. The only way they can read the Bible sometimes is to read us. They don't have a Bible, or they don't read the Bible, but we are supposed to be living letters, explaining God to people. When we enter our dark tunnels, when the pressures of life, great and small, come to us, do we fly into our Father's arms?

How do we know the help of God in the middle of pressure when we feel we're being walked all over and when life is tough? God can be a shelter for us, a refuge for us, a shelter from the wind. Now the Bible tells a story of a people of God. God obviously decided to do something. He decided to draw out a people, be their God, they would be His people, and they'd make promises to each other.

They would live a certain way and be His spokesperson. There would be special leaders and prophets. They would live in a disintegrating world. They would be a called-out people. They would be the alternate society in the middle of this society that was falling apart because of sin. God's people would behave differently, talk differently, and have different rules and regulations.

They would be a picture. When tough things happened to the people of God, because the rain falls on the just and the unjust, God is no respecter of persons. We live in a fallen environment with a sinful nature. When tough things happen, when the tunnels come, everybody in the world would know who this people, this Israel, His people, His bride belonged to because the bride would run into her husband's arms.

Then something awful happened because this called-out people, this Israel, this bride began to be unfaithful to the husband. She began to behave in ways that brides are not supposed to behave. Everybody that was watching in this world said, "Well, what's happening? Isn't the husband strong enough? Isn't the husband protector enough? Isn't the husband satisfying this woman, this bride, this people?"

God began to have a broken heart. We talked about the fact that God is like a father and God is like a husband. We went into Hosea a little bit and showed how Hosea's heart was broken because he married a woman who probably was a prostitute before he married her. They had a couple of kids. He married Gomer, and then they had three children together. Gomer became unfaithful and went after her lovers.

The last lover she went after made her a slave, just absolutely degraded her, and she was caught in this trap. God says to Hosea, "Now go and love your wife. Love her back, buy her back, buy her out of slavery." He paid the slave price for Gomer. God says, "Now love her as I love Israel." You know, there is no deeper pain than the pain of one rejected by one's faithful spouse. There is no deeper emotional pain, I believe.

That's how God feels. That's how God feels every time His people, whether Israel or whether the church, whether you and me who belong to Him, go after other lovers. When we are worldly, when we do not love Him, when we do not respect Him, as in Isaiah 1, it says we treat Him no better than a dog and a cat. We give Him no respect. Then He grieves. His heart is broken.

He is in this emotional pain. It says in Genesis 6 that when He saw this sin of man, His heart was filled with pain. His heart broke. So God calls His people back into a relationship with Him. When we come to Isaiah 5, God is speaking through Isaiah. He is singing a song. Isaiah used many methods of teaching. Sometimes he taught, sometimes he dressed up, and sometimes he walked almost naked through the streets to be a parable to the people.

Sometimes he sang; he must have had a good voice. There are songs of Isaiah. There are servant songs, and we'll be looking at some of those in the series as I teach some of these things from Isaiah. This is a song. "Let me sing to you," he says. "I'm going to sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard. My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it, and he cleared it of stones, and he planted it with the choicest vines.

He built a watchtower in it, and he cut out the wine press as well. He looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more could I have done for my vineyard than I've done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad?

Now I'll tell you what I'm going to do to my vineyard. I'll take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed. I'll break down its wall, and it will be trampled. I'll make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated. Briers and thorns will grow there. I'll command the clouds not to rain on it. The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the garden of His delight. And He looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress."

You know, when I just read that again, I caught that phrase I hadn't seen before. The men of Judah are the garden of His delight. I thought, "Lord, that's what you want us to be. That's what you want me to be. That's what you want my life to be. That's what you want everybody's life to be, your called-out people, a garden of His delight." Is that what your life's like? Does God look down today to you and say, "You are the garden of my delight. I see this wonderful fruit"?

Part of the fruit is the pressure pressing on the fruit of your life, and the wine spills out. Of course, wine, as the scriptures say, is given to us to delight the heart of man, to make him joyful. That's what our lives are supposed to do for others. God allows pressures so that out of us will be squeezed the life of Christ, and other people will benefit. Now, I'm English, in case you haven't noticed.

My mother had a beautiful little cottage before she died. She moved out of her big house into this little cottage. It was a typical English cottage. Just imagine what you think an English cottage is like, and it was like that. It was just absolutely gorgeous. In the garden, if you could see any grass at all, which you could hardly see, all you could see was roses.

I have never seen so many roses in my life until I went to New Zealand with Stuart, and there there were gardens like the English gardens, even more beautiful. Here my mother would spend her last days reading about them, adding to them, pruning them. It was a little tiny house just almost buried in roses. Her favorite one was called Peace; it was the white rose with a tiny little bit of pink inside it.

In her hallway, she had a piece of embroidery: "The kiss of the sun for pardon, the songs of the birds for mirth. One is nearer God's heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth." God made a garden. He didn't build cities; we did that. God made a garden and He called it paradise. Right at the beginning of time, who would know, could we ever know, what the world would have been like? Would it only have been a garden if sin hadn't come?

But God is there. This is a parable of a garden. The men of Judah, His garden of delight. When God looks at me, does He see this beautiful rose garden, this beautiful flower garden? Does He say, "Jill, you are the garden of my delight"? I want Him to say that about me. I really do. But if that is going to be the case, then my vineyard, my garden—the vineyard was the Jews' garden. That was their garden.

So much of biblical life talks about the vineyard. First thing Noah did when he got out of the ark and the whole world was his to start and populate all over again was he planted a vineyard. He got into trouble, planted a vineyard, got drunk on the wine, and all sorts of problems started then. But God loves the vineyard. This is God's idea. Israel, this is the picture: "You're my vineyard, you're the garden of my delight."

The figure of the vine was well understood by the people that Isaiah was talking to. It was as common as the hamburger to the American, the cup of tea to the British, or the garden to the British. If Jesus was in Britain, if He hadn't been born and brought up and taught there, I know that He would have used gardens and things like that in His parables because that would have been understood by the people of the time.

Isaiah knew that they understood all about vineyards. In the natural sphere, the vine spoke of fruitfulness, prosperity, and blessing. Listen to Psalm 128:3: "Thy wife shall be like a fruitful vine by the side of thy house, thy children like olive plants around thy table." That's the King James. It says in the Living Bible, "Look at all those children. They're sitting around your table as vigorous and healthy as olive trees."

I love these verses. "Thy wife shall be like a fruitful vine by the side of thy house." It doesn't mean she's climbing the walls. "And thy children like olive plants around thy table." It doesn't mean that the kids are eating Honey Nut Cheerios, these little olive plants that you had around your table. It means the kids were your retirement plan. They were the retirement plan. More kids, more help in your old age, right?

That was Israel. That was family. That was the tribal setup. Children were incredibly important in Israel. So the vine speaks of this in their writings, in their songs, in their history, in their culture. In the spiritual sphere, over the entrance to the temple, there was the vine knocked out in stone. Potentially essential to life, when you saw a vine, the potentiality essential to life sprang out to your mind.

God intended Israel to be a grand demonstration of the fact they belong to Him, and the internal spiritual benefit and blessing was going to be obvious. Is the internal spiritual benefit of God in your life obvious to everybody around? This figure of speech is used over and over again in the scriptures. If you just turn quickly to Psalm 80, look at verse 8: "You brought a vine out of Egypt, you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it, it took root and filled the land.

The mountains were covered with its shade, mighty cedars with its branches. It sent out its branches, its boughs to the sea, its shoots as far as the river. Why have you broken down its wall so that all who pass by pick its grapes?" Here's the picture over and over again, even in the Psalms. "Return to us, O God Almighty, look down from heaven and see, watch over this vine, the root your right hand has planted, the son you've raised up for yourself."

That's Israel. "Your vine is cut down, it's burned with fire. At your rebuke, your people perish." There's a call in this Psalm to revive it. "But you brought a vine out of Egypt, you drove out the nations and you planted it." This is the whole picture throughout the scriptures. What happens in the lives of God's people that causes them to allow this to happen to the vineyard? Collectively as Israel and individually, we're going to think about that.

To know God is to love Him. To love Him is to serve Him and be obedient. When I was a teenager, I was 14, I guess. I loved my dad very much, but he was a very distant figure. He was not a close father. He was not a hands-on father. I can't ever remember my father actually hugging me apart from when I was a little girl, but I can't remember a lot of hugging and touching.

But I loved him intensely, and he loved me intensely. I knew this, and I knew that he had fought for me in the war. He had risked his life and he had cared for me and done what he could to protect me. But when I was 14, I got into the wrong company, and I began running with some junior high kids that were not good for me. We all used to meet in this park.

We all had our feet on the edge of things. Mine weren't too far over the line, but they were about to be. I used to be there night after night. My mom would say where am I going, and I'd just say I was going to a friend's house. Then I would head off for this park in the middle of our town. One day my sister, who is three years older than me and just a wonderful sister, was walking home from something she'd been to, and she took a shortcut through the park and she saw me there.

I didn't know she'd seen me. She just saw the crew I was with and she summed up the situation pretty well. When I got home, she took me and closed the door in her bedroom and said, "Jill, I want to talk to you. I just want to tell you one thing: if you ever get pregnant, it will kill dad. That's all I want to tell you. It will kill your father." Then she went out the room.

That one sentence stopped me getting pregnant because I loved him. I didn't want to dishonor him and I didn't want to break his heart. Now, if we say we love God, we don't want to dishonor Him because we don't want to break His heart. The thing that runs all the way through this book of Isaiah is the broken heart of God. "You treat me no better than my ox and donkey," says God.

"You don't respect me, you don't care, you're just playing the harlot under every green tree." He's like a father, he's like a husband, and in this parable, we're going to see three things about Him: He's like an owner, He's like a lover, and He's like a gardener. He's like an owner. God is the owner of the vineyard. Jehovah is the undisputed owner of Israel. As a man owned his vineyard, God owned his people.

"Now I will sing a song," says Isaiah, "to my well-beloved." Notice the love words here. We'll get to that in a minute. Here's Isaiah. He loves God; God loves him. There is a love thing going on between this man and his God. Now he's talking to collective Israel, and he's saying, "God created you. He's the owner; He made you. He has every right. What you make, you own."

In this sense, that's true. Isaiah 43:1: "I created you, I formed you, O Jacob, O Israel. Fear not, I've redeemed you, I've summoned you by name. You are mine. You're mine." God owns His people. God owns you, God owns me because He created us. He formed us in our mother's womb, He knit us together, He embroidered us. We are His because He made us. We're His by right, but we are His because He redeemed us. He bought us back.

A little boy had a boat. He made it over the winter months. He took it down to a stream and he sailed it on the stream. He lost it; the current took it away. He ran down the stream as far as he could, but it was out of sight, and he mourned his little boat because he created it. He owned it. He was the owner of the little boat.

Then one day, a few weeks later, he was walking past the pawnshop in the village, and he saw his boat. He walks in and he says, "That's my boat. I made it. I'm the creator; I'm the owner." And the man said, "Oh, yes? You want the boat? It will cost you such-and-such. This is the price." "Well, that's not fair. I made it, you see? I lost it and it floated down." "Yes, well, you buy it back."

So the little boy went away and he saved and he saved and he saved. He kept looking in the window to make sure nobody else bought it. One day he walked in and he purchased his own boat back. As he walked out the door, he said, "Twice mine. I made you, now I've bought you. Twice mine." We're twice His. He made us, sailed us down the stream of life, lost us to sin, paid the price, bought us back.

We're twice His. We are owned. You know, in our society, there is a thing against anybody owning you. We're so independent; we don't like that concept. I want to tell you something: God owns you. He so thoroughly owns you. He made you, and He couldn't spend anything more expensive than He did to buy you back, which was the blood of His own son, Jesus.

So we must fully know and grasp that for our lives to be fruitful and productive. He's responsible for us, however, because He owns us and created us. He's responsible for the vineyard. You get that through this whole story of the vineyard. "My beloved had a vineyard in a very fruitful hill." Look what he's doing: he's digging it, he's clearing it, and he's responsible. He's planting it and he's raining the rains on it.

He's doing everything you need to produce to get the grapes. The expectations of God are there. God has expectations; we don't hear that too much. He expects some things from me and you, rightly because He owns us, rightly because He bought us, rightly because He redeemed us. He's responsible. He's the owner for all that goes on in the vineyard. Now, this will relieve you of a lot of stress once you get hold of it.

I'm His business. So all I've got to do is mind my business and let Him mind His. Favorite story of Gladys Aylward, a little tiny lady that went to China. Couldn't read, couldn't write. God called her. She went to a missionary society and said, "Please send me to China," and they said, "Fill in the application." She said, "I can't. I can't write, can't read. God's called me to China." She was a maid in one of the big houses in London.

They said, "Well, why don't you just pray for the missionaries? But our society would never take anyone like you. Couldn't study the Bible, couldn't get prepared." So she saved up for four or five years, I think, bought a ticket to London Euston station, and went to China. You could do it in those days on the train in various ways. She arrived in China illiterate because God sent her there.

She had an incredible ministry. There was a film made of her. I met her when she was about 65. She had the biggest voice I've ever heard from such a little woman in my life. She was absolutely incredible. Gladys Aylward went to China and started an orphanage with all these kids, ended up with about 100 children.

The Japanese came in the Chinese-Japanese war and were killing everybody in front of them, and they were coming towards the orphanage. Gladys decided to try and escape backwards, literally to the mountains. She had all these little children; the oldest was only in her teenage years. As they were about to start and try and climb over these mountains, which were mountains, not hills, with these 100 kids, a man appeared at the door with a baby in his arms.

He said, "Miss Aylward, please take my child. Please take my child. We will be killed if you don't take my child." She said, "I can't. I can't take—this is a baby you're giving me. I've got these babies. I've only got children to carry children over the mountain. I can't do this." She shut the door on this man, and she turned around and said, "God, not one more child, not one more child."

At that point, she says, as she tells the story, God leaned out of heaven and said, "Gladys Aylward, mind your own business. This is my business. This child is my business. Get that baby." She opened the door and ran down, took the baby out of the man's arms. The story is told, an incredible story, of how these 100 children and Gladys got themselves over the mountain. God, with His angels, protected them and managed that incredible feat. They escaped.

He's responsible. "Gladys Aylward, mind your own business." I have thought so much about that. When I was in my missionary days and my husband was on the road all those years, loneliness caused me to forget that if God owned me, then that included all that I owned, even my husband.

God leaned out of heaven one day and told me to mind my own business, too. He did it by leaning out of His word. How does God lean out of heaven and say things to us? He does it by leaning out of His word, by taking the words of scripture and leaning out, as it were, and offering them to you. The more you've got in here, the more He can figure out to bring to your mind when you need it.

That's what He did to me. As I was struggling with that whole thing, ownership of my husband, forgetting that God owned my vineyard and everything that happened in the vineyard of my life was His business, not mine, and apparently, it was His business to use my husband in worldwide ministry. As God leaned out of heaven, out of His word, into my mind came that parable of the men working in the vineyard.

I went to my Bible because it came into my mind so strongly, and I read it through. How some of them worked a short time, some of them worked a longer time, but they all got paid the same. I thought, "Well, this isn't relevant to my problem." Then a little tiny verse, it was as if God picked the verse off scripture and said, "Here you are." It said, "Is it not lawful," this was the owner of the vineyard speaking, "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with my own?"

"Don't I have a right to do what I will with my own? Stuart's mine, he's not yours. Everything I own, everything in my vineyard belongs to Him." He's responsible, not me. I had to learn to mind my own business and let Him mind His. This sounds rough, but it's softened by the fact that God is not only the owner of my vineyard, but the lover of myself.

This is a love song, folks. Everything He's responsible for allowing to pressure me in the vineyard through life, He is responsible for all of that, for allowing it to happen. God, in charge of our vineyard, is going to allow things to happen. Remember Christmas? A very important day in our family's life when I got everybody together. You know that's hard. Christmas is coming, and so are the relatives.

Well, the relatives came, and I had planned, prayed, tried, worked, and prepared. I overdo it. This one day came when all of us were there, and we had this ball. We had a day, an incredible, incredible day. I had said to God, "Now this is—I'm putting you in charge." Listen to me. But I had literally knelt down and said, "Now this is your party. I really want to keep my hands off it. I really want to mind my own business. I've done my bit, now Lord, everything that happens this day is under your control, under your control."

Right at the end of the day, we were trying to get all the kids out of the house into the van into Dave's van. Dave had his four children there and he said, "I'll take two of Judy's children." They were going for an overnight. There was so much excitement. These six kids, you know what it's like. You get the mittens on and after a day of Christmas and presents, our little breezeway was just packed with all these kids and whatnot.

Their little dog, Mopsy, was sort of lost in the middle of all of this. They got out into the van and Mopsy ran down the road under a car. It was Dave's kids' dog. Their little dog. Stuart came running in the house and he said, "Mopsy's been killed." I said, "God! And you're in charge? Why'd you let Mopsy get killed?"

Immediately He said, "It wasn't a child. I made sure that no one was at the end of the leash. I made sure the little dog got in the van and got out again so a child was not trying to save it. It wasn't a child. Mind your own business." Immediately I began to see and have sense how that heartbreaking thing—and it was a heartbreaking thing—that little dog for all sorts of reasons was very important.

Another loss. How God began to use that pressure in our particular family vineyard. What an incredible thing it is when the burden is gone, when your responsibility—you see, you're not responsible. When you have committed your life, when you have committed your children, when you have committed your days, when you have committed your hours and moments to Him, and He's the creator and He's the redeemer, He's the owner, He is the lover of your vineyard.

Then you can trust Him. These are loving hands that allow the pressures of life to come to us and the hard things of life to happen. My mother-in-law had her favorite hymn: "Loved with everlasting love, led by grace that love to know, spirit breathing from above, Thou hast taught me it is so. O this full and perfect peace, O this transport all divine, in a love which cannot cease, I am His and He is mine.

Heaven above is softer blue, Earth around is sweeter green. Something gleams in every hue Christless eyes have never seen. Birds with gladder songs o'erflow, flowers with deeper beauties shine since I know as now I know I am His and He is mine. His forever, only His, who the Lord me shall part. Ah, with what a rest of bliss Christ can fill the loving heart. Heaven and earth may fade and flee, firstborn light in gloom decline, but while God and I shall be, I am His and He is mine."

Read the Song of Solomon: "My beloved is his, I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine." God is like a lover. It is the fact that He loves us to distraction. It is the fact that I know that God's heart is filled with pain. He loves us so much, our family so much, every time we hurt Him because He loves us. He is doing something in the garden of our lives, the garden of every single life.

I must allow Him to do that. I must allow Him to do that in the lives of my children. I can't do anything about it anyway, but I must respect Him. I must give Him space because I must know that even as in my own life, He allows these pressures and troubles to come in order that out of my life may be pressured the sweet vine, the fruit of the vine that my world might celebrate.

So it is in the lives of those I love. God is like a lover. He speaks to me in the language of love and He gives me actions of love. The actions of love in this vineyard: what are they? He plants it with a very fertile place. He prepares it by sifting out the stones. He plants the choicest vine in it, and he puts a tower in the center of it, and he makes a winepress.

Now, God is like a gardener. He is like a gardener, and gardeners have expectations. Do you ever know a gardener that works his tail off and never expects anything to grow, and never expects to see the harvest? Have you ever met a gardener like that? Then how can you expect God to be a gardener that does all the things He does and takes all the trouble He takes and not expect Him to expect something from our lives?

First of all, He planted it in a very, very fruitful hill. I want to tell you something: we are planted in a very, very fruitful hill. I had an incredible privilege: I had breakfast at the White House, and I was among 80 leaders, ecumenical leaders, Christian leaders from around this nation. I heard the President talk about the Bible and the fact that he had chosen to start his inaugural year with that prayer breakfast and with religious leaders.

Then he talked about other things. I sat in that place and I thought about America. I want to tell you something: we have been planted in a very fertile hill. The church in America, the body of Christ, has been planted in a very, very fruitful hill. God has enriched and blessed America so incredibly, and to whom much is given, I know much is going to be required. We are planted in an incredible privileged place.

God has planted us, but then He plows us. Sorry, folks. He digs out the stones. What gardener wouldn't? Because the stones are those things that stop the vine spreading. Did you remember when somebody came up with this silly idea of selling pet stones? Pet stones were everywhere. In the grocery store, you couldn't go anywhere without these little boxes, and you opened it and there was this stone. There was nothing about it, didn't have a face on it, wasn't dressed, wasn't painted—just a pet stone. People were saying, "Oh, I've gotta have more pet stones. I've got all these relatives that haven't got a pet stone yet."

And everybody was rushing around buying pet stones. Well, you know something? I think we've got some pet stones. God is going to get His hands in our lives, and He's going to dig out those stones. Yes, He is, and we're not going to like it one little bit. We do not have time. You can do that on your face before God. I don't know what your pet stones are; I know what mine are.

Maybe it's a pet stone of greed or unforgiveness or lust or anger or laziness or selfishness. I don't know. Good things, good stones—you know, they're neutral. Some are big, some are little. Maybe some are bad, some are good, I don't know, but stones are stones. Anything that hinders, He's going to get out because He's looking for a crop, He's looking for a harvest, He's looking for the heart of men to sing.

He dug it, He turned it over, He gathered out the stones. Then it was winepress time. Don't you hate it? I do. Next time you're pressured, say, "Oh, it's winepress time." That will help enormously. I promise you. There were three ways the grapes were pressured. The first was trampling. Everybody just took off their shoes, jumped in, and started stomping.

I've been at one of those events. They are the most incredible thing. I mean, it makes you absolutely certain never to drink wine in your life. However, you have a great time splodging around in the stuff. That's trampling. You know, that's one way that God does it. Sometimes we get trampled all over. I'm not saying let people trample all over you.

You stop them. You shouldn't let people trample all over you. Sometimes you can't stop them. Sometimes your feelings get trampled all over. Sometimes your kids' feelings get trampled all over, and that hurts even more. But that's one way. Say, "Oh, winepress time. God wants to squeeze out of me some love and patience and forgiveness, some wine."

Trampling. Another way was grinding. You know, they just put one of those big stones in, in the garden of Gethsemane—that's a winepress, the garden of Gethsemane, there's a winepress still there in that place. It would just go grind and grind and grind, just never stop. That's a way God pressures us. Something that just keeps on and on and on and maybe never will stop.

Grinding doesn't always stop. But if you can start and say, "Oh, He's the owner. I'm not responsible. I've gotta mind my own business, let Him mind His. Winepress time. God, what do you want to pressure out of my life? Do it. Do it." And the third way is the bunch. We all belong to a bunch. One way we get pressured is suddenly on a committee, suddenly in a neighborhood, we find ourselves put next to that grape we cannot abide.

You mean she's going to be on this committee? She's part of the bunch. Well, Lord, let me move up the bunch. God says, "No, I want you two together because as you both grow, you'll get fatter and fatter and fatter, and you'll start and press each other and suddenly the wine will spill out." It is my experience that God pressures us more that way than any other way in the Christian life.

Somebody that you don't like, somebody that you have a problem with, and God has His incredible way of putting you together in order that there may be celebration. When I was in hospital when I was converted, there was a nurse I could not abide. She was horrible, she was a terrible nurse, everybody hated her. Then I heard she got converted and I thought, "Oh, boy." Name was Maureen.

Then she joined my church. Now there were 10 other churches, why'd she join my church? Never mind, I could keep out of the way of this particular grape. Then we all signed up to go to InterVarsity's camp at Keswick Convention. I was so excited. There were six buses going from Cambridge and we all got on the buses. I looked around and sure enough, on my bus was Maureen.

She smiled at me, I grimaced back. Never mind, we're going to Keswick, there were 5,000 people there. But it was a tiny little town and we were all in different places. When I got in my little tiny bed and breakfast, guess what? Maureen and I were in the same room. But guess further: we were in the same bed. God, what are you doing? Winepress time.

I tell you, it was pretty painful, but I still write to Maureen. She's supported us ever since we went into ministry. We had some good talks together. God delights to do things like that. Yes, He does. Pray with me.

Heavenly Father, as we think of the pressures that you allow in our lives—the hard things, the difficult things, the painful things, the daily daily things, the grinding things, the trampling things, the bunch—we want to, with trembling heart, say to you, however you wish, press us. You have planted us in such a fertile hill in this country. Thank you for it, this church, and the churches of this land.

Thank you for them. You came to live within us, you planted us with the choicest vine, with Jesus. Now help us to expect the digging out of the stones, the turning us over, the plowing us so thoroughly, the preparing our soil. Help us to expect the gentle rain of your spirit and the sunshine of your smile because you are not only the owner, but the lover. May the garden of our lives bring you joy. We ask it for Christ's sake, Amen.