Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Let me just summarize where we have been. Paul is saying, I can know a lot, I can serve a lot, I can do a lot, I can preach a lot, I can counsel a lot, I can sing in the choir a lot, I can speak in tongues a lot, but if I don't love a lot, I'm not a lot of good.

Basically, 1 Corinthians 13 says if you do not love, if the motivation of all we do for Jesus isn't love, then it's not going to amount to anything. We gain nothing, we are nothing as far as God is concerned.

And so he describes the sort of elements that make up the love he's talking about. Love is patient, love is kind. It doesn't envy, it doesn't boast. It isn't proud, it isn't rude. It's not self-seeking or easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

Now, love never fails, that's the title of today. It doesn't mean that love never fails to get a response, because many of you will be saying, look Jill, love does fail. I've seen it fail in a marriage. I've seen it fail when I've run out of patience with my children or somebody in the family has been very antagonistic or hostile. Maybe you have a blended family and you have seen love run out, love has failed.

But it doesn't mean love never fails to get a response. It means love never fails to go on loving whether it ever gets a response or not. And that just changes the whole view of what real love is. Love never fails to go on loving. That's God's sort of love. I mean, he never failed to go on loving me when I didn't love him, or you when you didn't love him.

And he never fails to love people that will never love him. Never fails to go on loving the unlovely and the people that hate him. If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God, all of us were enemies before we became his friends, but he went on loving us anyway. Now, if you and I can translate the power of that love into our lives, we're going to be all right, because there are many people that we need to go on loving.

When I was at that last board meeting, we had a big discussion around that table of what we call compassion fatigue. And you can only see so many starving children on your television screen, or you can only see so many bodies blown to bits, and something happens to you. You just get compassion fatigue. You just can't care very much anymore. You just get used to it. You get numb to it.

And there is only one person can keep us from getting compassion fatigue. This old world of ours has got so many people in it that need loving, it's untrue. And yet we get compassion fatigue. And what we need is to be fueled by agape, ruled by him. Our love needs ruling. It needs rules and authority over our human loving, but it also needs fueling, keeping going when we run out, when our human love gets to the end of its patience.

Love is very patient. It never runs out of patience. Love is very kind while it's being patient. It doesn't envy. It is content with such things as it has. It doesn't boast. It's not puffing itself up in the face of God. It's very humble. It knows it is dependent on being fueled by the power of God.

And so we need to be dependent. We need to say to God, I cannot love this person. This teenager is driving me absolutely crazy. I need your love. I need you to fuel my love when I run out, etc.

It doesn't boast. It doesn't boast of its abilities. It doesn't brag or boast at all. It only boasts on God. Paul says, I have got a lot I could boast about, and he lists his academic abilities. He lists his Pharisee background, and there's a lot there that he could boast about. And he lists his abilities with spiritual gifts and the gifting he has. I could boast about this, I could boast about that. But why brag about something somebody's given you, he says. The only thing I brag about is knowing Jesus. I brag about that.

People brag about a lot of things. They can be proud of their wealth. There's a wonderful psalm, Psalm 49, that says evil men trust in their riches and boast of their great wealth. We have just been down to a conference in a very wealthy part of America. And the people that came, the price to come to that conference, that couples conference, was quite high. And so the people that came were wealthy people.

And there was a lot of money represented in the parking lot and in the clothes and in the talk of those people and in their jewelry and even in their Bibles. The sort of quality of Bible that people buy when you've got all the money in the world. And so there was a lot of money around there.

And as I was listening to some of the talk that was going on, it was interesting to me because I'd just been reading Psalm 49, which really says you can't buy a thing beyond the funeral. You cannot buy one thing beyond the funeral. Getting into heaven depends on who you know, not what you have.

And I remember my father's funeral. My dad was a very wealthy man. And I remember the indignity of stripping him and cleaning him for that funeral. And that is done in England in the home, not in the funeral home, and the family attend and the family help. And I remember that verse coming streaming into my mind, "Naked I came into this world and naked I exit. I brought nothing in, I can take nothing out."

And I remember how vivid that was to me. A person can never redeem himself. He cannot pay God the price for his life because the payment for a human life is too great. What he could pay could never be enough to keep him from the grave, to let him live forever. And I thought my poor old dad, he had all that money in the world and yet it wasn't enough to keep him from the grave. Getting into heaven depends on who you know, not on what you have.

So why boast in our riches? It is he that gives us power to get wealth. And if he does that, we are stewards of it. And that's all right. He gives us all things richly to enjoy. And if he has gifted and blessed some of us like that, then what we do with those things is what we are accountable for. However, if we depend on our riches, if we boast on them, if we're proud of our wealth, then we'll be in trouble.

We mustn't boast of the plans for our life. James says you mustn't say tomorrow I will do this or tomorrow I will do the other. You should say Deo Volente in Latin, if the Lord wills, DV. My husband comes from a group of Christians, and when I first met these Christians that worshiped in a little different way than we worshiped, I kept hearing this little phrase DV, DV, DV. My mother-in-law would say, well, we're going to go down to see Auntie Mabel tomorrow, DV.

And the notices that were given out in church, there will be a conference coming and there will be Bible teaching and there will be a youth meeting, DV. Always DV. And after a bit I said, what's DV? And Stuart said Deo Volente, if the Lord wills. And they took it from James. We should not say this day I will go into the city and do my shopping and tomorrow I will take a trip, James says. We should say if the Lord wills I will go tomorrow.

We must not boast of tomorrow. We only have today. And you know, if we could only live as if we only had today, then our living would be very different. We only have today and we do not have tomorrow. We are totally dependent upon God. Therefore, how could we ever boast?

Love depends on the blessing and the blessed one and does not boast of itself. Love isn't boastful, it isn't proud, and it isn't rude. Behavior follows belief. Love doesn't act in an unbecoming way. Love doesn't behave itself unseemly. It isn't filled with its own importance, riding roughshod over others. It has charm, it is winsome.

It never forgets seemliness, respect, politeness. Love doesn't take delight in meaningless ostentation. Does not make a great fuss, but always acts in a moderate or seemly way, says Calvin. Clark says love isn't indecent. The Corinthians had no qualms about abandoning all graciousness. Love never treats anyone unfairly.

So instead of practicing self-assertiveness, love makes us more tactful and polite. Love has good manners, Phillips renders. Love is not rude. Love has good manners. Love always writes thank you notes. Love always replies RSVP. Love has good manners.

Because love is always primarily concerned with the other's well-being. Love always says thank you, please. Love isn't proud, it isn't rude. It always offers somebody else the place in the queue instead of pushing in front rudely. And you know, behavior like that is hard to find.

And I have been really put back on my heels myself just thinking practically what that means. If I'm really loving in my attitude to other people, then I will be gracious, I'll be full of grace and truth. There's a mixture. Some of us are full of truth and no grace, and some of us are full of grace and no truth. Jesus was full of grace and truth.

Love is not easily angered. It isn't supersensitive. It isn't easily upset. It's not self-absorbed, that's why. Rather other-absorbed. So you're thinking of the other's well-being or respect at the cost to yourself. If you're thinking self-orientated all the time, then you'll get supersensitive, you'll get prickly, you'll get suspicious. What did she mean by that? Supersensitive.

Love doesn't instigate fights. Love is a peacemaker. And some of you do have junior high and high school kids. And those of you that are coming into those years, you'll find that when they hit that junior high, senior high, something happens to them and you look at them and say, is this my child? Did an imposter walk into the house? They can go to sleep one night and wake up a junior high kid and it's all over.

And they'll come down that staircase, if you've got a staircase, and round the corner into the kitchen and your stomach will be in a knot. Mine was in those junior high years and senior high years. I was just waiting for one particular child who happened to be my girl, who would come down looking for me. Where's mother? Let's have a fight.

She used to wake up like that, I know. And I'd be getting things ready in the kitchen thinking oh oh oh, and then she'd appear. And I'm not a fighter, I'm not a confronter. But she would just be looking for me and it didn't matter what it was about. And so I began to respond to that. I was not patient and kind.

Love isn't easily angered. It's not drawn into a fight that's not worth fighting about. Learn to pick your fights. When Judy and I used to go at it over and over, my husband had great advice for us. I remember arguing about a pair of jeans she wanted to wear to church. I come from England, we wear little school uniforms, we dress up to go to worship. And it was difficult for me to get used to the casual clothes in America and the fact that you wore jeans to, nice pants yes, but not jeans.

And so we were fighting about this, and Stuart said, it's not worth it, Jill, over a piece of cloth. Learn to pick your fights. Remember Muhammad Ali? And I said why? And he said he let the coach pick his fights. And the reason Muhammad Ali was defeated in the end was he quit listening to his coach and he picked one fight that his coach told him not to fight and he was defeated.

And you know we have a coach, he's called the Holy Spirit. And he will pick our fights. So as you're coming up to this, let's have a fight, Mom, and even smaller children can do this with you, then try and run that little tape through quickly in your mind, is this worth a fight? Is this a moral issue? Can I let this go? Because if you fight about every single little nothing, you won't have any energy when the big fight you've got to fight come along. The moral issues. The things that really matter and that you're not coming from your Christian cultural background of fighting about those things like I was over the sort of clothes you wear to church.

I remember Stuart saying, aren't you glad she even wants to go to church, you're not fighting over that? Learn to pick your fights. And who's going to help us? Jesus. For this you need Jesus. He's the coach. Is this worth it? Try and do that little in-touch thing. Help, should I fight this? If the Lord says yes, this is something that needs fighting about, then have a fight, but fight fair.

If you fight about every single little thing with your children, don't you ever often get to the end of your day and say, all I've done is say no, no, no, no, all we've done is have this thing going on. And it's too much. I think it was Bill Cosby said he grew up really believing his name was Bill Don't Do It. William, William Don't Do It. And then he found out it was just William. But you know, we can get like that.

And it distresses me to always be no, no, no. I'd love to be saying yes, yes, yes, but how can I when I need to be saying no, no, no. And that makes you easily angered. Are we easily angered? Are we drawn forth into a conflict that we don't need to fight? Many marriages have unresolved anger, they're mad. Somebody's mad with someone and it spills over onto the nearest object which often is a child.

If you're struggling in your marriage, then often you get very irritable with your children because they are the scapegoat as it were, they are the person you can dump on. Many times when I'm counseling in a really bad marriage situation and there are teenagers, I am horrified to find out that the wife is emptying out on this teenager everything, sexual things, everything because they need an outlet and that's the nearest person. It's not helpful, it's not a good idea.

But often there is repressed anger. And we shouldn't repress anger, but if we're concerned about the other person, we shouldn't just dump on them to get it out, to express it if it's not going to be to their advantage. We need to do something with it, what do we do? We confess it. We don't repress it. We don't necessarily express it to the person that's causing us pain. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't if it's the right thing to do.

But God gives us the wisdom to know the difference. We confess it to him and ask him to help us to know what to do. I have always found prayer an extraordinary place and environment where my anger can find a home and I get up off my knees a different person. Doesn't mean I'm not still angry but I know what to do with my anger by the time I get off my knees.

And so he's the one that helps us. Love will help us sort it all out and figure out why we're angry and have we righteous anger? There are times when we should be angry, then it's all right to be angry. I tell you if I had not been angry standing in the killing field, there would have been something wrong with me. God says you should be righteously, rightly angry about this, about that, but it's how you handle your anger.

And anger can push you to attack. It starts with just being irritable. Irritability is the launching pad for anger. Irritability makes us prone to anger, robs us of joy and pushes us towards more irritability. And that can end in violence. We grind our teeth if we're sixth in the checkout line. That's where it begins. The irritability in the normal things of life. And by the time we get to somebody, we are full of this something that has to explode.

There is a safe place for all of that. God is able to absorb our hostility. He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows and we can empty out on him and he will tell us what to do with it. He'll tell us whether we need to confess it, whether it's the right sort of anger, the wrong sort of anger, and he'll tell us what to do with the anger that's the right sort of anger.

Hostility is anger turned aggressive. And you see the person you're angry with as the enemy, which might or might not be true. We cannot make ourselves feel loving in the agape sense when this happens. But love isn't feeling, remember. We can do the right thing with our anger and in our situation. Some anger is obviously legitimate.

Gratitude is a great antidote to irritability. A lot of praise helps. When you're angry, start and praise for the things that you can praise with and for, and that will help. We come back to this sense of the inner core of us being selfish. I was standing in a checkout line quite some time ago, and there was a small child and mother in front of me. There was a long line, it was one of those long lines.

And she got to the checkout center and the child was whining, whining, whining. Can I have some candy? Can I have some candy? And seemed a particularly obnoxious child. And everybody in the line seemed to take on this battle that ensued as we were waiting. There was nothing else to do but to watch this young mother.

And she had been back in the line and the child had started "I want candy, I want candy, I want candy." And all of us began to will this young mother not to give in to this whining child. Don't give in, don't give in, you could hear it. Sort of like a rumble. Don't give in, don't give in, don't give in.

And she got there and she was doing very well. "No, no." "But I want candy." "No, no." "No, no." She gets there, picks the candy and gives it him. And you could hear it, "Oh," down the line. And that child to me was such an example of total self-want, absorption, you know, just the whole of self. And I thought all of us have a child like that in us. It's called the old nature, the sinful nature.

And it's always selfish. I want this, I want that, I want the other. And the Christ nature saying, "No, no, no, no." And there's this battle going on inside us. Now we have the power, oh yes we do. We have the will to say no to the child, to go on saying no to the child when we should say no to the child, to the selfishness.

We have the power. We do what we like. We make our decisions. We have a free will. We can just as well say no as we can say yes. But there comes a point where we are too weak to say no anymore. And that's when we need to appropriate, draw on, call to our help, God. The power of God, the love of God, the ability that God has to go on saying no. God always goes on saying no to selfishness. Look at Jesus, watch how he lived.

And so love isn't selfish. What's more, love keeps no record of wrongs. This is an accounting term. John MacArthur says love doesn't keep a running record. Doesn't keep a book on the person. Write it down indelibly. Now, in other words, love is quick to forgive. Love is quick to forgive. Forgiveness like love is not primarily a feeling. If you're waiting to feel forgiving, forget it. You never will. But you act in a forgiving way before you ever feel forgiving or you ever feel like forgiving.