Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: I just, before I came out today, looked at the morning show on one of the channels, and it had a little picture of three small houses somewhere in this country—I don't know where—where they were going to evict the people that lived in them because they insisted on putting Christmas decorations and a crèche in front of the house. They had been warned by the owners of these buildings that they’d be evicted if they didn't take them down.

Is this America? It just shattered me, especially since I just came back two days ago from Egypt. I happened to have to walk to the church I was going to preach at on Friday morning, which is the holy day for the majority of the people in that land. As I walked out of my hotel, the call to prayer echoed from a thousand minarets, so it sounded, and Cairo emptied onto the street.

I was going against the crowd. The mosque was behind me, and I was walking to the Maadi church, which was in the opposite direction. I was a woman alone. I was a woman with my gray hair flowing freely in the breeze, and I was meeting hundreds of faces that represented other symbols, other beliefs. For the first time, I honestly think for the first time in my life, I became conscious of my cross. I never remember being conscious of it, really conscious of it, before.

As I walked along, I thought, "Do I just slip this inside my shirt, or do I leave it there?" I was wondering what was culturally and Christianly the right thing to do in that situation, since I was on my own and I didn't have a member of that Arabic church with me to tell me what I should do. So I just left it. I suddenly realized the symbolism and how important that was. It was really quite a personal experience for me, and I remember just fingering my cross and saying, "This is who I am. This is what I believe, and I'm so glad to have this symbol of the reality around my neck in the face of a lost world."

I love that. It's telling us physically what Christmas is all about. On the way to Egypt a couple of weeks ago, Stuart and I had to stay overnight before we could get our plane in Frankfurt. The paper was at the breakfast table, and of course it was in German. My husband fortunately speaks fluent German, but I don't. So I said to him, "What are all those kids doing on the front of the paper?" He said, "The entire first section of the Frankfurt main paper is asking three to five-year-olds what they believe about Christmas."

I wanted to read it, so he translated it for me. It was very interesting. The Weihnachtsmann, which is the Christmas man as they call him—they were discussing him. One said, "Why doesn't the Christmas man have an airplane?" "Why doesn't he have a round table of experts to talk about Advent?" said another. These are five-year-olds. "Do they know each other, Jesus and the Christmas man?" asked Joan. "Oh yes, they work together. One picks the gifts and the other brings them."

"No, no, they have to get them ready and pack them. One of them packs the gifts." "Jesus packs the gifts." "No, no, that's the angel." "Well, they make the gifts in England," said Anna. The Christmas man tells the children where to take the gift. "Do you mean the Christmas man is chief of Jesus?" "No." Talk about confusion! "Yes he is," said Joshua. If they're confused in a country where there is no separation of church and state, and Christmas is Christmas and all the papers are full of it, then I think our children are doubly confused in America.

As I was coming back from Chicago, we were being driven home by a friend two days ago. He was fiddling with the radio and country and western came on. I said, "That'll do, I enjoy country and western." There was a Christmas song, and one of the verses said this: "Santa knows that we are all God's children, so we know everything will be all right. So say your prayers to the Lord Almighty, for we know Santa comes on Christmas night."

Is it only the children that have got all this mixed up? Isn't that incredible? I love Christmas songs. My favorite is Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. I love that song; it's hysterical. Picture of Grandma drinking too much eggnog. But the confusion is there. I was saying to the committee yesterday as we prayed before we took the meeting, I have such a heavy heart this Christmas for many reasons. But one of them is just for Him. I want to keep apologizing for the human race.

Think about it. God came in Christ to us in order that we can go to heaven at Christmas, knowing it would mean His death. And He still came. I wonder when He looks down this year, our man-year—for He lives in eternity outside of time—but as He looks at us, I just wonder if He thinks, "What's with the reindeer?" It's all about a cattle shed, sheep, camels. As I say, I just want to apologize for the human race, which I do, Lord.

But as for me, I want to tell my world what Christmas is all about. Those of us that love Jesus, I know this is an incredible opportunity to do just that. There's a little verse in John 10:10: "I am come that you might have life, and might have it more abundantly," or life to the full, or the fullness of life. That's when Jesus was talking about being the Good Shepherd. In the Old Testament, He was called the Shepherd of Israel. That was a loving term that the people of Israel loved to think about.

Think of David's psalms, Psalm 23, He's the Good Shepherd. And the Shepherd became a little lamb at Christmas, didn't He? The Lamb of God that took away the sin of the world. Who is that baby in the manger? I have talked about that to people all over the world. I remember in Japan years ago, Stuart and I were at a university campus, and most of the students that we were working with that day had very good English. One of them said to me, "What do you mean that you are Christians? I don't know what that means."

Stuart said, "Well, have you ever heard of Jesus Christ?" And she said, "No. Is that a brand of cigarette?" She's a student: bright, educated, in Japan. And yet there are so many people that have never heard His name once. What a joy it is to tell them. Stuart began with that student and said, "Let me tell you a story," and he told her the Christmas story. I wondered where he was going to start. Where do you start?

Do you start at the cross? Do you start with the Bible stories? Do you start in the Old Testament? Where do you start with somebody that's never heard His name and certainly doesn't know what a Bible is? I've had that experience this year with the Inca Indians in Peru. I've had that experience up along Siberia with tribes that are trying to find out what Christianity is. I've had the experience of standing up in front of people with an interpreter and saying, "This is a Bible," which the people in front of me have never heard of or seen.

Where do you start? I'm learning to start at Christmas: that God came. That baby in the manger, I believe as a believer, a Christian, was God incarnate, Emmanuel, God with us. Stuart and I were with friends in Belgium a couple of years ago. It was on the Riviera; it was very upper-and-outish. It was with people that intimidate me; always have. Very rich, wealthy people. They asked us to go and have a few days with their church among these people.

There were some men in the room who were the committee, and three of them said, "Jill, we didn't tell you until now because we were trying to get it together, but this morning, in about half an hour, we're going to put you in a car and take you to the country club. You're going to talk to about 300 women that we three men have made sure will come. We have paid for a fabulous meal, and as far as we know, every single one of them is not a believer." I said, "Well, thanks for telling me."

We get in the car and I am thinking, "My word, what do we do?" We get to the country club, everybody's drinking on the veranda—absolutely gorgeous place right on the ocean. I leave them and I go into the dining room which is empty, and I put my back to the door and I get my Bible out and I say, "Lord, where do I begin?" It was right at the end of November, and the Lord very definitely impressed upon me a thought: Christmas. You start at Christmas.

I was turning in my Bible. I didn't see her come in, but a beautiful UK girl, tall, gorgeous—she came around me and she sat at my feet on the floor and crossed her legs and looked at me and said, "Can you help me?" I said, "Well, I'd love to. What do you want?" She said, "My name's Victoria, and I'm on a journey, and I can't find what I'm looking for." I looked at her and realized she was indeed on a journey.

She was festooned with typical European spirituality—looking for spirituality, not looking for Christ, but looking for what they're looking for. She had markings all over her, she had crystals around her neck, she had two crosses. She said to me, "You see, I've got crosses on. You're a Christian lady, right?" I said, "Yes." She said, "Well, one of my crosses is empty and one has a little man on it." She hadn't a clue.

I said, "I'm going to tell you about that little man on the cross in a minute. I see that you're really searching." "Well, yeah, I think that's what I'm doing." I said, "Which of the philosophies you're into has helped you the most?" She told me she was a channeler, apart from everything else. "Which of the philosophies you're into has helped you the most?" She said, "Oh, that's easy: astrology." I said, "Let me tell you a story."

I told her the Christmas story. I said there were three astrologers. They lived in Persia, mighty men, princes of their country and tribes. They read the stars. They understood there were messages there from the gods, as they thought it. One day they saw a star they'd never seen before, and it appeared just at the right time, and it told them a king had been born. They left everything and they made this incredible journey. She had never heard this story.

They came to a stable, and then something triggered and she said, "Oh yeah, stable, that's Jesus." I said, "Right." They came in and there was a baby in the manger and they knelt and they worshiped Him. I said, "Victoria, every religion in the world will do that. They will kneel at that crib one day and acknowledge that baby is God of gods, Lord of lords, and King of kings." I said, "When you find out who that baby is, you'll find what you're looking for."

We had quite a talk and then everybody came in and I told them all the Christmas story, which was about to happen in Belgium in a couple of weeks. It's a great place to start. "I came," said Jesus. Who came? Who was He? Was He really God? How can we figure this? Well, everything to do with the Christmas story is supernatural. It started with what we Christians believe was a conception that had never happened before in the history of humankind: a conception of a real live baby without a human father.

Everything was attended by angelic beings. Maybe you find it difficult to believe in angels. I don't find it difficult, and the more I travel this world, the less difficult I find it to believe in angels. There were angels all over the Christmas story. An angel came while Mary was just getting water from the well, and here's Gabriel—Gabriel, one of the greatest messengers of God. He said, "You're going to have a baby."

She said, "Yes, I know, I'm going to get married to Joseph and it's going to be absolutely wonderful." "No," the angel said, "I've come to ruin your life, actually. It's not going to be Joseph's baby." "Well, what do you mean it's not going to be Joseph's baby?" "You're going to be overshadowed. And that holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." Mary was totally overwhelmed, but she was overshadowed. When you're overwhelmed, remember you're overshadowed.

She said, "Well, I don't understand, but be it unto me according to your word." She didn't say, "Go choose another Mary." She said, "I'll be the Mary to bear the Christ." Angels were all over the place. They were up on the hillside, hundreds of angels, hosts of angels. And the unexpected shepherds—they weren't expecting angels. They didn't make it up. Angels everywhere. Joseph, believing she'd been unfaithful—for a betrothal is the same as a marriage, actually.

We went to two betrothals in the hotel where we were staying in Egypt. They went on for about six hours. It was the most incredible thing. That's the wedding as far as it's concerned, although they never sleep together for a year or two until the marriage ceremony takes place. But betrothal is the thing, and Mary had got pregnant in between the betrothal and the wedding, which in Jewish law meant she should have been stoned to death because she had committed adultery in man's minds.

What happened? Joseph is figuring, "How am I going to save her life? She's going to be stoned. Synagogue's not going to put up with this. Maybe I can put her away privately. Maybe I can get her up to the hill country and divorce her quietly." Suddenly, there's an angel. Do you think Joseph was trying to make some fantastic story up? He needed convincing. Angels all over the place. So he marries Mary.

Who was this baby? He's going to be no ordinary child. Every mother believes her baby is no ordinary child, but this was an extraordinary child. Birthed in a way that none of us have been birthed. God chose to do it this way. He chose to come. When Jesus said, "I am come," He said it to a lot of people that had got used to having Him around and seeing Him be a healer, and a helper, and open the eyes of the blind.

They'd forgotten who He really was. Even Philip, even His closest people said to Him one day, "If you'd just show us God, I'd be happy. Jesus, show us the Father." Jesus said, "Look at Me! You're looking at Him! I've been with you three years, what's the matter with you? Don't you recognize Me?" I often think, did Philip suddenly realize He had His Father's eyes? As He looked at Him, He saw God because God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.

"I came," said Jesus. Another thing that I always tell people when they're doubting the baby is any different from any other baby: the Bible writes history in advance. All the people in the Old Testament talked about the Messiah, the anointed one, God Himself who would come in human flesh. They talked about Him from Adam all the way through to the end of the prophets. And they gave details.

They gave details of which Bethlehem He would be born in. There were two Bethlehems. Bethlehem Ephrathah, they said. Another prophet said, "And His lineage will be this," and traced it all the way from David, which of course Joseph and Mary's lineage was spoken about in the Old Testament. These people are writing history in advance all the time. They're called prophets. And there are hundreds of prophecies about Jesus.

Not only about His birth, but that He would become a Nazarene and come from Nazareth. We know that that was true; He grew up in Nazareth. Not only about what would happen when those thirty silent years were happening, but it also talks about His ministry. Jesus Himself stood up in His home church crowd. He said, "I am anointed to open the eyes of the blind, and to help the oppressed, and to set the prisoner free."

Everybody in that synagogue knew that spoke about God coming in human form. They looked at Him; it says every eye was on Him. Jesus put the scroll together after reading it out and said, "I'm here," and sat down. The shock! Isn't this the carpenter? Yes, but this is God in a carpenter's body. His life then began to show them all the prophecies were true. He opened the eyes of the blind. He raised the dead.

When people doubted His words, He said, "Look at my works! If you don't believe my words, watch me! See what God is doing through me." Feeding the 5,000 people, miracles, walking on water. Only God can do that sort of thing. Some clever mathematicians told me that the chances of all these things happening, the chances are nil. It's like throwing a phone book up in the air and all the names come down in the right order.

That's the chance. Just by chance, Jesus could have fulfilled all the things it said about Him. He couldn't have arranged it. I was arguing with a student not long ago: "Surely Jesus knew what it said about the Messiah, and he just went around and made these things happen and he pretended to be God." I said, "Well, how did he pretend and be born in the right place, at the right time, to the right parents?"

"How did he pretend and get it all to work when he was on the cross?" It says in Isaiah that people will come and play a game for his clothes. Did he shout from the cross, "Hey you guys, would you come over here and throw the dice for my clothes so that people will know I'm the Messiah?" No, stupid. People ask us to believe what is wilder than the truth: that He was indeed God. "I came," says God in Christ.

What did He come to do? To give life. What sort of life? We've got life. Well, there's another sort of life we don't have before He gives it to us, and it's called eternal life. All of us want to go and live in heaven, then you need eternal life to survive in heaven. Human life won't do. You can't live in heaven with the life that we have. We need to receive eternal life. What's that? The life of the eternal one.

What sort of life does Jesus have? Eternal, everness life. He comes to give it to us. He died on the cross for us, He rose again, He went back to heaven, and He sent His Spirit. That's how He can come into our hearts at Christmas. Somebody said to me on an airplane not too long ago, "I don't get it. How can Jesus come into our lives?" I said, "I don't get it either. It's a mystery. But it can happen."

I told him my own experience of being in an air-raid shelter during the Second World War. A little girl of six in Liverpool, England, praying frantically as the bombs were coming down. Praying that God would stop the bombs. He didn't stop the bombs, but what happened to me in that air-raid shelter? I began to pray through the Apostles' Creed. I knew it from school. That's pretty good theology, I've discovered.

I began to pray to God the Father, and I prayed to God the Son, and I prayed to God the Holy Ghost—we called Him. My six-year-old mind just stopped, camped on that verse. Who's the Holy Ghost? Well, bombs fell, so I didn't care who He was; I began to pray to Him. I prayed fervently as a little girl of six: "Oh Holy Ghost, I don't know who you are and where you are, but please, would you stop the bombs and please, would you help my heart?"

My little heart was going like this, and I was clutching my mother in that dark hole underground. Suddenly, into that air-raid shelter came the Holy Ghost. Couldn't see Him, but I could feel Him. My little heart started to go slower. I just relaxed. I just knew God had come, somehow. How does God give me eternal life? He comes Himself in the power of the Holy Spirit, of Jesus' other self that He sent forth at Pentecost.

He said to His disciples, "I'm going away so I can send my other self." That happened at Pentecost, and it can happen again and again all over the world as you and I say, "I need eternal life." I ask the young moms, "What do you want for your children?" "Oh," you say, "I want them to be safe. I want them to grow up and marry somebody that will care for them." Yeah, pray about it.

"I want them to be good people. I want them to love God." Do you want to live with them forever? I would hope. Do you believe that's possible? Well, only if you all receive eternal life is it possible, because only people with that quality of life can live in heaven. Your job, my job as a mother, is to declare that to the next generation. "I am come," said Jesus, "to give you my life and to give it to the full."

I remember at the age of 18 listening to a girl that was trying to explain all this to me. I said, "I think if I accept this Holy Ghost and all of this and ask for forgiveness, He's going to rob me of everything I want to do. I think He's going to make my life miserable." That's the devil's lie, but that's what I was thinking. I said to her, "What would I have to give up if I became a Christian?" She said, "Only your sin."

I said, "Really?" She said, "Do you need your sin? Is sin doing you any good, Jill? Your lifestyle? Is that doing you any good? Is it doing anybody else good that you love?" I said, "No." She said, "That's what you'll have to give up. You have to turn your back on your lifestyle, Jill. You have to turn around. That's conversion—turning right around 180 degrees. That's what you'll have to give up."

"But will you make me miserable?" She said, "He might give you hard things, but He'll help you bear them. He'll be with you in it. He's not going to make your life a bed of roses; He never promised that. In fact, He said, 'In the world you're going to have trouble, but in Me you'll have peace.' So you've got peace in the middle of the trouble. If you want to stay safe and secure, then ask the devil to do that for you, and he probably will."

"But if you want eternal life, then you receive it with all that comes with it, with a cross." I was blessed to have somebody to explain that to me, but there I received eternal life. That was hundreds of years ago, and there hasn't been one day in my life I haven't been sure of what I'm telling you today. I believe He came to give us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. 1 John 5:11-12—go and look at it in your Bible.

He that has the Son has life. He that doesn't have the Son doesn't have eternal life. So if you have Jesus living in your heart, if you have opened your life to Him, if you have said, "I'm sorry for this mess and this sin," put it at the foot of the cross, and invite His Spirit to come into your heart. He'll come; He promised. He that then has the Son, by His Spirit living in his heart, has eternal life.

And what's it like? It's fullness of life. He said, "Life to the full!" You say, "Well, my life is full." Well, what's it full of? Is it full of things? Is it full of plans? Jesus said, "If you would be full of Me, you would be fulfilled, not just filled with stuff that's not satisfying you." You'd be filled with peace when everything's chaos outside you. He'll fill you full of things that everybody's looking for: purpose, peace, and the intangibles that really matter.

I was listening to Chuck Swindoll who had just been to visit someone in hospital who'd just had a massive heart attack. They'd opened him up and saved his life. This man had simply said to him, "Take time for Cynthia. Make sure that you put your arms around her and love her. Because here I am; I thought I had twenty years, and look at me. Don't know whether I'm going to survive this."

Chuck Swindoll said God has filled his life to the full with family, with marriage, with children—not without problems, but the real things that matter are love and each other, not stuff. Most of our lives are full of stuff, and you don't realize that until you get as old as me and you look back and you think, "What really matters?" I want to testify that when Jesus Christ came into my life, He came and He filled my life full.

When He asked us to give up everything and come with two suitcases apiece to the States, we did it. My life was full. Now we have a house full of junk this side of the Atlantic. Jesus didn't say, "Come to me and I'll fill your life full of stuff." He said, "I'll fill it full of Me. I'll fill it full of God, and then you'll have life to the full." That's what Christmas is all about. We forget.

Don't be afraid or ashamed of getting your symbols out and putting them all over your house and all over your conversation. Great opportunities. I preached a sermon once here: "Christmas is coming and so are the relatives." Not all of us are looking forward to Christmas. The more brokenness there is in trouble, the harder Christmas gets. Take it from me. How are we looking forward to it? By having a message to say, however hard it is, His life will give us words to say, attitudes, and peace.

We'll be a messenger of peace and reconciliation. God will give us something to do; God will give us something to say. This Christian life is absolutely incredible. "I am come to give you my life and to give it to the full." Pray with me if you will. I want to just offer a little prayer here, a little prayer that I was offered at the age of 18 to help you receive the Holy Spirit, to invite Jesus' life into your heart.

It can be very simple. You can just say, "Lord, I've known about this, but I've come to realize I don't know if I really have experienced this. I thank you. I do believe that baby in the manger was yourself. I thank you for coming knowing what you were coming to: a world that would reject you and crucify you, and you still came because you love me and you wanted to live with me forever."

"I need your life, eternal life, to do that. It's incredible, Lord. I don't deserve it, but you offered it as a gift, and I ask you to give me eternal life right now. Jesus, your life. Come into my heart. Be my Savior, my friend, my God, my life. Give me life to the full. I ask it for your sake. Amen."