Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: So you can open your Bible at John's Gospel, and I'm going to talk about changed lives. I don't believe that you can have God come into your life and not be changed. How could you? How could anybody receive the very life of God and be the same? And yet there are many people that profess to be believers, and somehow their lives stay the same. Or they struggle in one area of their life, and it's not changed. Maybe this changes or that changes, but there's something there that never gives, that never changes, that you never overcome. How can this be?

Well, we're going to look at the life of Peter and some incidents in his life, but we're going to take them all from the Gospel of John. And the reason that we're going to take them all from the Gospel of John is because John was Jesus' best friend, if you remember. He was the one who called himself or spoke of himself in his own gospel as the one that Jesus loved, the disciple that Jesus loved. Now, he loved all the disciples, but he sort of loved John. We get that impression as he leaned against his shoulder at the last supper, and as he chose John continually with two of the other disciples to go with him up the Mount of Transfiguration or to come with him to this event or that event, and signaled him out over and over again.

And when I think of John, I think, well, he must know him best. He just must know him best. And what John did was he put out all the snapshots that he had taken of Christ in his mind, if you wish, as he had followed him for three years. And then he had to decide, can you imagine, which one goes in my gospel album? And how hard that must have been.

In fact, he says, if everything Jesus had done and everything Jesus had said could be written down, not all the books in the world could contain that. Not all the albums in the world could contain all the pictures. And that frustrates me a little because I want to know the ones he left out, right? When you're rummaging through those boxes of pictures that you don't put in albums, one or two, maybe they're not a very good picture, but they catch something, and you think, yeah, I wish I could—I'm going to have to find a place for that. Well, John had to select.

And what he selected were pictures of Christ in all the different dimensions of his character. But basically, he selected overall a great big picture that he blew up for us of Christ as the life-changer. Christ said, I've come to give you life and to give it you to the full. Christ, the life-changer. He doesn't come into our lives to put his feet up and feel at home and just settle down. He comes into our life to change us and to make us like him.

And we're going to try and find out how that happens. And I've already investigated a little bit of John chapter one. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him. Without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

And then in that wonderful verse 14, the Word became flesh. And we've just looked a little bit at the idea of the Word. Christ is God's best thought, if you wish. And I have many thoughts that I want to get over to you today. I have to use words to do it. And so God's best thought for the human race was Christ. And so he spoke at Christmas, and Christ was born. And I remember trying to capture that a few years ago.

The Word lay in a manger, just a Word. No long sentence or complicated explanation. It was pink and warm with a little puckered mouth that seemed to be smiling at the cows. A Word lying in a box of new-mown hay in the shape of a man-child. "Baby," said the Word. "That's what I am, a baby." Then it said, "Hello, world. I'm your creator." Then it cried because it was hungry.

The Word played in the streets of Nazareth. It tumbled down the slopes and romped about the lake. It liked that. "Boy," it said. "That's what I am, a boy. Jewish, strong, belonging to a family." Then the Word grew up and went about doing good. It said, "Let there be light," and there was. When it said, "Look at me," even blind eyes saw it.

Some followed the Word to quiet places so they could hear what it said. It said, "I am God's best thought and his last word. Listen to me." When they nailed the Word against a wall of sky, it said, "Man. That's what I am. A man who feels the pain of men, yet God who feels the pain of God. Grieve with me."

After three days, the Word got up out of its bed of death. It wanted to smell the flowers in the garden, especially the lilies. And it found Mary's ear, and it whispered, "Go for me. Speak for me. Follow me." In the beginning was the Word, and God spoke and Christmas happened. The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us. I love the Message's rendition of that. The Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood. I like that.

He moved into the neighborhood, and he's still doing it today. He moves into the neighborhood when he moves into you. And you're in the neighborhood. And guess what? He wants to work through you. He wants to walk out of your life into the lives of others and do what? Change people. Change them. That's what he's all about.

Now, we see this in John chapter one as lives begin to be photoed, if you wish, taken a photo of by the Apostle John. He takes the photo of the John the Baptist. Now, he could do this because he was a disciple of John the Baptist. John and Andrew were disciples of John the Baptist. They'd been around helping to baptize. They had baptized thousands of people. They had listened to John the Baptist preach. "There's one coming after me. I'm not worthy to touch his shoes, to clean his shoes. There's one coming. He's coming. He's here. I'll tell you who he is in a minute. God told me how to find out."

When I see the dove representing the Holy Spirit, then I'll know that's the one. And then his cousin comes along, Jesus of Nazareth, and stands in the water. And John says, "I have need to be baptized of thee." And Jesus says, "Well, let it be done. Let's fulfill all righteousness." And as he baptizes Jesus for his ministry of redemption, John sees the dove.

And so from that point on, he says to John and Andrew, "Follow him. Don't follow me." Now, here immediately you see what Christ does. He changes people. He changes people. Here's John the Baptist. He's been it. He's been the Billy Graham. He's had the thousands coming. And suddenly he says to his disciples, his closest, I bet his best, John and Andrew, "Follow him. Go on, follow him."

And you know the biggest change in the heart of man that takes God to engineer is selfishness to selflessness. And that's the change we'll be talking about over and over again. You know, really, all that's the matter with us is selfishness. That's what's the matter with marriages. That's what's the matter with relationships. That's what's the matter with our mothering and our grandmothering. We're selfish. Core selfish, ego selfish. We are egocentric instead of Christocentric.

And the change that came into John the Baptist was, "I must decrease, he must increase." Now, it takes Christ's power, the power of the Word that made the universe, John 1 tells us. It takes that sort of power to change a selfish person into a selfless one, to get us out of our wretched self-absorption, even our spiritual self-absorption. You know, we just transfer things and make it look religious. We're always taking our spiritual temperature. "How am I doing? Am I growing? Am I doing?" That's self-centeredness.

And I just pray, I've been praying for myself, God, will you release me, give me victory from my self-absorption and make me Christocentric. I want to be like John the Baptist. And you see, even though John the Baptist was never a disciple of Jesus, he was the forerunner of Jesus, Christ changed him. I mean, when you look at this sort of man and the sort of man John the Baptist was, it's going to take Christ to change him from saying, "I'm the preacher" to go and listen to the guy that's got his church around the corner of the river.

If you read on in John, some of John's disciples that didn't follow Jesus come to him and say, "You know that guy that you said was the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world? Well, he's just around the corner of the river baptizing, and he's got more people coming to his church than we've got coming to ours." And that's when John said, "Well, he was before me. He's the first Word, and he's the last Word, and he's all the Words in between. I've done. He must increase, and I must decrease."

Well, Andrew and John, they're interesting. And what I want to do is take a little look at the first five disciples who come to Christ in this passage of scripture, the first five disciples that come to Christ, and have a look and see first of all how they came to him and then what happened after they'd come to him and how they started to follow Jesus. Verse 35. The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, "Look, the Lamb of God."

When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and said, "What do you want?" They said, "Rabbi," which means Teacher, "where are you staying?" "Come along and you will see." So they went and saw where he was staying and spent that day with him. Do you ever wonder what happened in that day? Spent a whole day with him. Hadn't done—hadn't done a miracle, hadn't done anything. At this point, all they knew was that John the Baptist, their master to this point, had said this is the God-man, this is the Word, this is God himself in human flesh.

And they spent a whole day with him. Well, at the end of it, they were convinced. Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. The first thing Andrew did to find his brother Simon and tell him, "We've found the Messiah, that is the Christ," and he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, "You are Simon, son of John. You will be called Cephas," which when translated is Peter.

Well, the next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee, and finding Philip, he said, "Follow me." Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip found Nathaniel and told him, "We've found the one Moses wrote about in the law, and about whom the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." "Nazareth? Can anything good come from there?" Nathaniel asked. "Come and see," said Philip.

When Jesus saw Nathaniel approaching, he said, "Here's a true Israelite in whom there is nothing false." "How do you know me?" Nathaniel asked. Jesus answered, "I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you." Then Nathaniel declared, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you're the King of Israel." Jesus said, "You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree? You shall see greater things than that." He then added, "I tell you the truth. You shall see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man."

Now, I am going to feature Peter, but I want to look at all the disciples and see how they all came to Christ. In Peter, however, we have this little piece, this little vignette, this little photograph that again I think John blew up. I think he blew up—he chose all the pictures of Peter and made sure Peter was in there all the way through that album. In fact, I was looking through my album the other day and Stuart said, "Why do you have so many pictures of so-and-so and you don't have as many of this?" and so I hastily, you know, our grandmas have to do, they have to have the same amount of pictures of everybody in case any of the family looks at the book.

But I really think he's put more of Peter in than anyone else. That little phrase, "Thou art Simon, thou shalt be Peter." And there is the whole of the series. It's our 'Simon-ness' that he's going to change, and we will be Peter even though we get discouraged, even though there's bumps along the way. He is determined to finish the work he started when he came into you. And what was that work? To change you into his likeness. He will finish the work he began in you.

And so Peter gives us the clue, and we'll look at his story later, but let's first of all look at, who shall we go for? Let me think. I think we'll start with Philip. How did Philip come to Christ? Well, you look in the Bible, and it'll tell you. Christ came to him. Andrew didn't, John didn't, no human being. This was a direct approach to the soul, if you wish, by Jesus of Nazareth.

Now, do people come to Christ like that? Does there have to be a human agent? It's interesting to me that this is the only one of the five that Christ personally called without using a human agent or without a human agent being involved. And usually, in my experience, the majority of people come through a human agent. And we'll look at how that happens in a minute.

But here we have Philip, and Jesus was on his own, and he approaches Philip, and he says, "Follow me." Now, there are many, many stories that you have heard and I have heard. I had a woman say to me, on my own in my room, I wasn't even thinking about God. My mind was suddenly arrested with the need to find God. And she told me what she did, and it was definitely a story as she ended up on her knees knowing what to say and how to say and the Holy Spirit came into her life and she was changed. That was the point of her conversion. She is an example of how Christ doesn't need to use a human agent.

Maybe that's why Philip is here. He will do this. However, this does not let us off the hook. "Oh good, if Christ's going to do it, I don't need to be the human agent. If Christ is going to do it, I don't need to be a missionary." No. And remember, the mission field's between your own two feet at any given time. It certainly was for these men.

But Christ can certainly approach the human heart as we have the choice and the privilege of traveling around this world. Stuart and I hear incredible stories in places where there have been no human agents yet. And the Old Testament says, God speaking, "I will reveal myself to people in dreams." And sometimes he does that. However, that is his sovereign choice, and he doesn't say to us, "Well, you just sit back and I'll do all the work and reveal myself to everybody in dreams. I'll go around and find all the Philips in the world for you." No.

But he does do it. He is not limited to one type of way. And this is the point I'm trying to get to. We must be careful not to say everybody must come to Christ this way because here in these five men, it's so different. Look at Simon himself, a family member, his brother. And it says "the first thing he did," and that was really convicting to me when I think back to my conversion. Was the first thing I did to go to my family? No, it was not the last thing, but it was down the list. My friends came first.

But I thought that was such a lovely touch. The very first thing he did was to say, "now my responsibility is my family. Nobody else is going to care for my family. Make sure they know about the kingdom of God if I don't. I mean, why should anybody else do it if you haven't? They've got their own families to look after." The first thing he did is go for Simon.

And you know what I love about this too? He had no idea who he caught that day. What sort of a fish he caught when he caught Peter. He caught his big brother. He had absolutely no idea. And we never have any idea who we're catching and landing safely on eternity's shore out of their sea of confusion, if you wish. We have no idea.

But Andrew never seemed to be up preaching to the crowds. He always seemed to be working on the one-to-one. He was the one that said, "come and meet Christ, we've found the Messiah." So a family member. I think of my husband. It was his mother when he was a little boy. He was sitting on a little stool by the fireplace and he was four years of age. And he'd heard enough in Sunday school, maybe he'd just heard a lesson on the second coming or something, but he'd heard about the second coming and he became horribly frightened that perhaps his mommy and daddy would go when Jesus came again and he wouldn't because he knew that he hadn't asked Christ into his life.

So he ran to the bottom of the stairs and he shouted up the stairs, "Mommy, mommy, mommy, I'm not a Christian." He was four. "I'm not a Christian." And she nearly fell down the stairs, she came down so quick, and she took Stewart Briscoe's hand and sat him down back on that little stool by the fire and got down on her knees in front of him and she used Revelation 3:20. "Jesus is standing at the door of your heart and knocking, and what you need to do is open your heart and ask him in." And there and then, four years of age, a family member, an Andrew led a Simon, if you wish, to Christ.

And I remember right at the end of her life, mother saying to me, "I feel I've wasted my life, Jill. I look at what everybody's doing in the family, and they're speaking and teaching and people are being converted all over the place and I just—I feel I've wasted my life. I've never—I've never led anyone to Christ." And I said, "You led Stewart to Christ. You have led thousands of people to Christ." Just like Andrew led thousands of people to Christ, why? Because he went first and found his brother.

So a family member. Don't let anybody rob you of that. If you're a grandmother, don't you let anybody rob you of the joy if your own children are not able or doing the work they should be doing with your children. You do it. You be the Andrew. So that's one way. Directly, that's another way. What about Nathaniel? A friend. Now, I bet if I said give me your hands now, how many friends brought you to Christ? Probably nearly all of us might put our hands up because that's what I find is the most wonderful thing. The power of friendship to influence people for eternity is huge.

And I'll give you an example of that at the end of the talk, and terribly important. So Philip directly by Christ, Simon through a family member, Nathaniel through a friend. And all these things are valid. All these ways are valid. And you can just have a little look in the gospel as you go along and see how else the other disciples came to Christ, although we're not told individually how all of them personally were introduced to Christ. But here we are told how the first few disciples came to the Lord Jesus.

Now, when I think about friendship and influence, I think again about my husband as a young banker in Manchester and there was a young man like Nathaniel. He could have been called Nathaniel. He was cynical. At the beginning, Nathaniel saying, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Don't tell me a prophet comes out of there." He was picking the scriptures that he knew so well together and saying it doesn't fit. He's supposed to come from Bethlehem and he's from Nazareth, so it doesn't fit. And he didn't know, of course, that Christ had been born in Bethlehem at that point.

And so he's taking on the premise. He's examining the evidence of the claims of this Jesus of Nazareth, if you wish, to be Christ. And there was a young Nathaniel called John Smallwood at Montgomery House, where my husband was living when I first met him, actually, in his banking career. He was in Manchester, I was in Liverpool, but he was in this YMCA hostel and he had a room there, and so did John Smallwood.

And John Smallwood wandered into my husband's room one night and saw his Bible and saw that my husband had been reading it, and he took it on. He said, "You don't believe all that, do you?" And so Stewart said, "Yes, I do." And he began to talk to him about the claims of Christ. And he said, "I can't believe anything miraculous. I can't believe anything like this, that, and the other."

And so Stewart handed him a Bible, not his own, another Bible, and he said, "Take it away, John, and here's a pair of scissors. And I want you to cut out of this Bible everything that you cannot accept and believe because it's too way out or it's too miraculous or weird or whatever." And John said, "Oh, I couldn't cut the Bible. I couldn't do that." Stewart said, "Well, you've been doing it with your tongue. Now go away and do it. And when you've got what's left, come back and show me what's left that you can accept."

And so he did. And a week later or so, they started getting together to talk and to talk about these things. He came back with quite a small piece of the Bible because he'd cut out everything miraculous and everything that he couldn't accept with his—he's a scientist, scientific mind. And so Stewart sat down and he said, "Now I'll tell you what you've got left, John. You've got left a God that John Smallwood can understand. And what sort of a God is that? He wouldn't be any good to me, John. But that's what you've got left."

And he said, "My God is not the sort of God that can fit into your intelligence and that's all. You only accept what you can understand. What sort of a God is that? Your God is too small. Your God is too small." And it was at that point this Nathaniel began to examine the claims of Christ and say, "Okay then, why did he say he was God?" and eventually he came to faith and ended up a very, very loud voice in the scientific community.

I always remember hearing a lecture that he took on the other professors and the students and the university he was teaching eventually. And he gave a lecture as a scientist and he picked up the Bible, I remember crying, I couldn't believe it, he picked up the Bible in front of this wild secular university, in Lancaster University, and he said, "Now then, I'm going to talk about Genesis. This book, however, is not a scientific textbook. It does not tell us how the heavens go. It tells us how to go to heaven." That was the beginning. It does not tell us how the heavens go. It tells us how to go to heaven.

Now, where did John Smallwood come to Christ? Through a friend. My husband at the age of 26 made a friend of a young man the age of 22. And in the end, he became a force for God. And so I want to encourage you. It's this one-on-one, and it's the friend, it's the fam—it's the very ordinary people in this story that really touches me. We do not have to be this brilliant person, this marvelous super-bionic Christian. We just need to be an Andrew. Just need to be a Philip bringing Nathaniel and know that Christ is working with you.

As surely as he walked up to Philip and said, "Follow me," by the Holy Spirit he is doing that to everybody you're working with. It says the Holy Spirit in John's gospel approaches the soul, convinces them that Christ is the answer, convicts them of sin, and converts them to Christ. Now we see him doing it in his body, his Jewish body. Now he is doing it through his spirit and through his people. You take Christ because he lives within you into your neighborhood. He moves into the neighborhood with you. And then through you, he begins to reach people. The Andrews and the Philips and the Johns. And that's how it's going to happen. It's going to happen one by one by one by one. Not the huge crowds at Pentecost, the one by one by one by one.

The direct encounter with the teacher or with whatever. And that's how people commit to Christ. As soon as they commit to Christ, however, obedience has to begin. And I want you quickly to turn to Luke for a minute because Luke adds some snapshots in his gospel that John misses out in his on Peter. John tells us when Peter first met Christ. Peter began hanging around Jesus in his spare time. Still fishing.

When we get to Luke 5, that's the situation. Jesus is standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, the people are crowding around him, he's teaching and they're pushing him into the water. And he looks along and sees Peter's boat, and I'm sure I've used this illustration with you before, but he looks at Peter and he says, "I want your boat." He gets into the boat, they push out from the shore, Peter keeps it steady, Jesus uses the boat as a pulpit and he addresses the crowd on the shore.

Now, there is a picture. Christ says, "I want your boat." I did this talk with the junior highs, and I just watched their little faces because it's a picture that everybody can get hold of. I want your boat. He wants to get into our boat, into our life, and then he wants to use it as a living pulpit out of which he addresses the crowd on our shore. There's the picture. That's what he did with Peter's.

And here's this little boat. And I said to those gorgeous junior highs, bless their hearts, "Your boat is absolutely perfect for what the Jesus Christ I'm talking about has in mind. Peter's boat had no bells and whistles on it. It wasn't the Titanic. It was just a little fishing boat. But let me ask you what was most important: the boat or who was in it? And what is more important in our lives isn't the boat, it's who's in it, right?"

And if Christ is in our boat, then he's the one people want to hear about and he's the one people should hear from as we keep the boat steady, if you wish, and let him be Lord. What is lordship? It's Lord of the ship. Lord of the boat. And in this passage of scripture, if you remember, when Jesus had finished speaking, verse four, he says, "Put out into deep water, let down your nets for a catch."

And Simon says, "We've worked hard all night trying to catch fish, Lord. But because you say so, I'll do it." Very reluctant. "Oh, because you say so." Now, he was one miracle perhaps into his relationship with Christ. I believe, I'm not sure, the wedding of Cana had happened because the order is different in the gospels. But I think Peter had seen Jesus turn the water into wine. But that was it. The Lord had just begun to heal and to teach.

And so he's not really convinced yet because he hasn't been part of the miracle that Christ can do, and so he says, "Well, because you say so, I'll do it." And he lets down a net. The word is singular in the Greek, which was stupid because they broke. Jesus said, "Let down your nets," plural, all of them. And I can just see Peter saying, "Well, I've been all over, Lord, you don't catch fish in the middle of the day anyway. And I know there aren't any over there because we've trawled all night and there aren't any. So I'll just let one net—after all, I have been mending all the nets, and so I'll just let down a net."

And it breaks. Silly man. Had to mend it all over again, I'm sure. And so he is amazed. The word is staggered. When he saw this and all the others saw it, they were astonished. The word is staggered. They were staggered at the catch of fish. They had never seen such a catch of fish. And especially when they as veteran fishermen knew that they had trawled and trawled and trawled and there were no fish there.

And so he says to the Lord, "Oh, whoa, depart from me. I'm a sinful man." And Jesus said, "Don't be frightened. From now on, you're going to catch men." Peter, like Andrew caught you, like Philip caught Nathaniel, like I caught Philip, Peter, you're going to be a fisher of men. A fisher of men. You're going to be other-orientated. You're going to care more about their salvation than your own selfish whatever it is. I'm going to change you so that you care about people. So that you care about people.

So first of all, he wants to change us, and then he wants to give us this heart for people's souls. That's an old-fashioned way of putting it: a burden for souls, a heaviness that cares about people spending eternity without Christ because that's what Christ, who is the Word, the last word from God on heaven and hell, said: that if we accept him, we can go and live with him in his heaven. And the Father says if you don't accept my Son, then you can't come to live here. You know, when we stand before God, the only thing that God is going to ask is, "What did you do with my Son?" It's the only thing. "What did you do with Jesus?" That's what he's going to ask.

And so it's very, very important that we get this. I wish I didn't have to believe it sometimes. I wish I could believe in universalism so that everybody comes to heaven some way, somehow, you know. I mean, it would be a lot easier. I don't know about you. A lot easier. I would much prefer to believe that, that even the devil would repent and become Lucifer, son of the morning again. Some people believe that who count themselves in Christendom. That everybody, even the devil and demons, will be saved.

But I don't read that in the Bible. And nor does any sound theological evangelical Christian. And so what do we face? He wants us to follow him in order that we might fish with him. Now, what does that mean? Well, what it means is you start and say, where would Jesus go tonight if he was here? We've had dinner. What would Jesus do with the evening? You follow him because that's what he'd be doing. He'd be finding the Philips and the Andrews and the Marys and all the other people waiting for him, the woman at the well and the Nicodemuses. That's what he would do with his spare time, right?

Now, he'd do it in the context of life. He'd go to the party, which he did, got into trouble for going to these parties, but he said, "I didn't come to save the saved, I came to save the lost, and that's where they are, so that's where I'm going to go and I'm going to be involved in the world. I'm not going to be of it, but I'm going to be in it."

And so that's what Jesus would do. I remember shortly after I was converted doing teaching practice in Liverpool, and I'd had my dinner in our lovely English home and my dad settled in front of the TV and my mom was in the kitchen doing what she usually did and I don't know where my sister was, but I had been reading the gospels and I'd said to the person that led me to the Lord, "What does it mean that I should follow him?" And she said, "Well, just ask yourself if he was literally here and you said to him, 'What shall we do tonight, Lord? Where are you going tonight?' He would tell you, right?" I said, "I presume." And then she said, "Follow him. Just go with him."

So as I sat there, I thought, where would he go? And I knew where he'd go. I had just had a very, very hard day at school, and one of my small children—I was teaching young children—his brother had been arrested by the police and I knew that night after night these kids that live downtown Liverpool were just out. They were just out. They were waiting on the pub steps for dad to come out late at night if they were little because there was no one at home. If they were big, they were in there with their dad.

And this big brother was 16 or 17. And as the teacher of this child, I'd sort of been caught up with going around to the family's house and I'd sort of walked into this situation and met this young boy and learned that he spent his time hanging out in Lime Street, which was the worst part of Liverpool, quite famous for its nefarious stuff. And as I thought, where would Jesus go? I knew where he'd go. I'm going down to Lime Street, he would have said. And so I followed him.

And I literally put my coat on, told my parents I'd be back, and I got on a bus, it was never a car, and I went down to Lime Street and I just started walking around Lime Street. And I walked into another world. Absolute other world. But I found my boy. There he was, like he'd told me. He was in the Heaven and Hell club. I went in a few of these places, I didn't know such places existed—strip joints places—there were my junior high kids, there were my younger kids. No right to be there. All sorts of things going on.

And I followed Jesus. And that's where the miracles began to happen. That's where I began to learn to fish for men or for boys. This particular boy ended me in jail, actually. He was a charmer and he was a rascal and he was a liar—a very good one—and I believed him. And I took him into church to lead him to Christ, and on the way out, he stole the gold cigarette case of the church secretary out of his pocket. Of course, why he should have had a gold cigarette case, who knows, but that's what happened and I did not know. And he was marvelous pickpocket, just wonderful pickpocket.

So this was my new convert and my spiritual giant sort of went from bad to worse. And in the end, the police hauled me in because they knew I was somehow connected with him and they thought I was all wrapped up with it and my dad had to come and get me out of jail, which he was not happy about. And then the next week, the policeman hauled me back in again, and I said, "Why are you asking me back?"

He said, "I want you to tell me everything you know about this young man and all his friends." I said, "Look, this is what I was trying to do. I was trying—" He said, "You were trying to make him religious? Don't be so utterly ridiculous." He wiped the floor with me. He said, "You don't know what you're doing. If this is true, then you get out of this situation, you stick to teaching, you don't get yourself—that's where the police belong, and this, that, and the other, and he's bad, he'll—he needs to go to jail and he needs—we'll settle him."

And I just sat and listened to this tirade. And then as I turned—he dismissed me, I felt about this big—he said, "Stop a minute." He said, "You know, even policemen like me need to know about these things." And I turned around, came back, and eventually he came to the Lord. Eventually, he came to the Lord. And it's a long story, that wonderful story of that policeman's conversion.

But it all happened because I went fishing. I just went fishing. Now, I'm not suggesting we all get in bus and go downtown, although why not? Could be a possibility if that's where Jesus wants you to go, then maybe some of us should be down there doing things. But I am trying to get a very simple point across. What would he want me to say? What would Jesus do? What would he want me to say? It's as simple as that.

Following him is staying in touch with the internal Christ who is your Savior, your friend, and a fisher of men. That he always catches the fish he goes after, and letting him lead you and take you where he wants you to go. And when you do that, you're being obedient. You know, obedience matters. It can save lives. It can save lives.

Let me give you one small illustration as I'm finishing up here. It was in 1983, we were living in America, and I went down south somewhere to take a meeting. Don't ask me where, it's too long ago. But as I was cleaning out my cupboard yesterday looking for something else, I came across a photo. And I sat there and I read it again and once more it brought tears to my eyes. It is the photo of the most beautiful child. She is absolutely like a little angel. She's about three years of age or two and a half, and she's holding my book, Jonah and the Worm. Book about obedience, actually.

And I had been, as this mother tells me on this postcard—I never met this mother, but she sent me this in '83, in October '83—I had been speaking at a meeting and I had given an invitation for people to come to Christ. Apparently, a friend had knocked on her door and said, "I want you to come and hear a woman speak today at this meeting at my church," and took her to hear me, and without me knowing, she had bowed her head and asked Christ to change her.

What the friend, the Andrew, did not know and what I certainly didn't know till she told me was she was on the way that day to have an abortion. That's what she was going to do. And she came to the Lord and apparently one of the things I said, I'd given a few instructions, just a sort of throwaway comment at the end, was if you have accepted Christ, you must obey him. Now you must obey him, you must follow him, and you must ask what would Jesus do?

And apparently that's what she did. And she told me on this postcard, "I gave my life over to Christ that day. I think of all the people that were pressuring me to have an abortion, and I cry when I look at this picture." And she said, "My little girl is too young to understand your book, but I have read it. I have read this children's book about Jonah being obedient, or the worm, it's about the worm, a little worm in chapter five that God said go to Nineveh and he did, he was obedient, right?"

He said to Jonah, the big man, "Go to Nineveh," and he wasn't. But the little worm was. Worm said, "I'll go, I'll be obedient." And when he got there, God says, "I've got something for you to do," and the worm said, "What?" And God said, "Eat the vine." And the worm looks at this vine, humongous vine, and says, "Eat it? I'm a worm. I can't eat a vine. You know that, you made me." And God said, "If I tell you to do something, you can do it. How do you eat a vine? Take the first bite."

Takes the first bite, and the vine withers. Wonderful story of obedience from a worm. And she said, "As I read your book, I realized that because I have been obedient, this child lives." And I tell you, obedience throws a long shadow. Coming to Christ, if you're going to change, means being obedient. Following him means simply following him. Get rid of all this other stuff. Simplify it. Make it simple because it is.

Christ is in my life. He's busy changing me. What does he want me to do? He wants me to find my family. He wants me to find my friends. He wants me to live life socially and in every other way with always one thing in mind: other people and their need of the Christ who can change their life. That's why you're a believer. And that's what John's gospel is all about.

John says, these things are written that you might believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that believing you might have life in his name, life that changes other people's lives. Pray with me, if you will.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this simple story. Thank you for the gospel. Thank you that you came into the world to achieve something that would mean you could come into our lives by your spirit. And thank you, Lord, that when you come into our lives, you change us. You make us like you. You make us want to be like you, want to live like you, want to do the things that you did.

And Lord, I thank you for this very, very simple lesson because it encourages all of us. Not one of us can go out of here saying, I can't do that. All of us can go and find our brother. All of us can write a letter to our sister. All of us can pick up the phone to our father. All of us can invite a friend. All of us.

And thank you, dear Lord, that you are today as surely walking up to people like Philip as you were in these days in the Bible. And that you work with us. We are co-workers with you in this wonderful work of fishing with men. So help us to give you our lives, to give you our boat, as it were. And would you make our lives a living pulpit out of which you, the Christ, addresses our crowd on our shore? We ask it for your sake. Amen.