Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: If you turn to Proverbs chapter 31, the sayings of King Lemuel, we'll see what we can do. Now, remember that this is a poem in honor of the virtuous woman. Every single verse about her begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. So, it's the ABC of the wise woman.

Sometimes it gets a bit discouraging and you think, "Where do I start? How do I begin?" Well, remember a virtue a day keeps the devil away. What you need to do is to choose one, and maybe as you listen to me, you can pray that the Holy Spirit will show you which piece of this talk is for you.

I always find it helpful when I'm listening to a speaker or teacher or listening to my husband preach on a Sunday to say, "Lord, which part of this is for me, just for me?" Now, obviously all of it is for me, but there is a specific part that I can get hold of. And so, I'm hoping that each of you will listen to the Spirit's voice for that today.

Remember, she was a woman who feared the Lord. She was queen of his heart because she obeyed him, she feared him, she had a reverential trust with a hatred of evil. That's the definition of fear of the Lord. Therefore, she was queen of her own heart. The thing that makes us thoroughly content and thoroughly happy with ourselves is knowing that we're making him happy.

If we could only get hold of that, we'd do away with a lot of need for the counseling that is wonderfully available to us but perhaps wouldn't be needed anymore. We met this wonderful lady, and today we're going to be introduced to her husband because he is here as well. We see in the text that he is hidden and yet he is there. He is sitting in the gates and he is very much around the family.

Our children might say, "Well, they don't look like any family I know," and our children are right. But remember that 10 through the end of this is the perfect family; it's the model. They didn't exist. So, as I talk about a perfect marriage today, the bionic Christian marriage, remember this is what we shoot for. This is how it is. This is what it's all about. This, in a sense, is what the Scripture lays forward as principles for biblical living in relationship to your husband in your marriage.

At the question time after Evening Edition last night, one of the questions was, "My teenagers were talking to me. Her best friends just got divorced. We have people getting divorced all the way around us. My daughter just threw up her hands and said, 'Then what's the point of getting married?'" And she said, "I panicked. Here's my Christian kids saying, 'Well, it looks so unsure, you can never be quite sure. We went to the guy's wedding and it looked absolutely wonderful, and now they're getting a divorce. So what's the point of us getting married at all?'"

I suggested that she knew where to turn in her Bible to explain to those kids that the Bible teaches that marriage is ordained of God. You need to know that Mark chapter 10 is the chapter where Jesus talks about marriage. Read it over with your children and know where to turn in the Bible. This is another good place to turn and perhaps to read it together as a family.

The other thing I suggested was making sure that the kids read some books. I would suggest something like Stuart's and mine, "Marriage Matters." It's a story, it's light, it's a fun reading book, and teenagers are gobbling it up out there on the campuses, so I'm told by the publisher. Other books like "Fit to be Tied," Bill Hybels' book. There are lots of good books that teenagers can certainly reach for and read and that they should be getting an idea of what the Bible says about marriage.

So, what does Proverbs 31 say about this whole business? Well, there are some words here I'm going to throw out to you that I found as I looked at the text. The first one is this couple were complementary. They were the perfect couple. They complemented each other. They didn't conflict, they didn't compete. They seemed to delight in their differences. They seemed to be able to cope with the fact that they were not clones, that they were very different in their thinking, in their ways of doing things.

I mean, just look here. In verse 14, let's look at her. She is bringing her food from afar. She is like the merchant ships. That didn't mean she looked like a merchant ship; it means that she was busy out and about, getting the right bargains and looking after the food for the household. Verse 16, she considers a field and buys it. Verse 18, she sees her trading as profitable. Verse 20, she's opening her arms to the poor, getting involved in the hospital pink lady thing and all of that. She is busy. She's a hands-on sort of person. She's a task-orientated woman.

Meanwhile, we look to see what her husband is doing. Her husband, as far as I can see, isn't doing very much in verse 23. Her husband is respected at the city gate where he takes his seat among the elders of the land. Now, when I first came to Christ, I was taught to ask the text questions and the text would answer me back. And so, I want to know about this man.

Why are you sitting in the city gate? The simple answer, if you don't think about it, could be, "Well, what's the point of going home? She's never there." Well, I really don't think that's why he was sitting in the city gate. You have to look a little bit deeper and understand that the culture of the times was this: if you were a leader, that's where you were. That's city hall. That's the judge's domain. People brought their conflicts to the city gates.

The most important people and the government and the decisions about who to go to war to and all of those things happened at the city gate. That was the place of the respected leaders of the city. And so here we have a very obvious thing. This man was a leader. He was a leader, and so was she. You say, "Look at that, they're complementary. They're the perfect couple. They're both leaders."

Now, we don't know that for certain. Don't presume. Certainly in a marriage, you might look at people and say, "Well, they're just perfect, they're both matched." I'm sure that in many, many ways they weren't, because there isn't a couple I know that matches in the sense of being alike. The problem with marriage is, if we're going to complement each other, we have to celebrate the differences.

We have to celebrate the differences in our personalities, in the way we do things, in our thinking, in our parenting. Sometimes you get a man and a woman and they're different in the way they want to parent, and the way they want to spend their vacation, and the way that they want to relax. What you've got to learn is to celebrate those differences and don't insist on trying to change your spouse to be like you. Now, this might sound very obvious and maybe you know it, and yet subtly we manipulate to make that happen if we really are honest with ourselves.

Often I get a phone call and somebody says on the other end of the phone, "Is the pastor in?" and I say, "No," because he never is. And they say, "Well, I need to talk to him," and they sound a bit desperate. I say, "What's the matter?" and they say, "I want a divorce." I say, "Well, he doesn't do divorces." They say, "No, no, no, you don't understand, we're in trouble." I say, "I do understand, but he really doesn't do divorces. He institutes Christian marriages." "Yes, but the problem is our marriage is over. We're in total conflict, we are so different, we're incompatible."

I always love and push to get them to tell me that because then I say, "Oh, didn't you know that's the reason for marriage, not divorce? What attracted you? The incompatibility, the opposites, the things you don't have that you would like to have." So their strengths are your weaknesses, your weaknesses are their strengths, and so opposites attract, as you know. Then after marriage they begin to irritate because you cannot complement, you can't put them together, you can't fit them. And so what you tend to do is pull them along and try and make them like you, and that never works either.

I can illustrate this very well from my husband and my point of view. Stuart and I are so different. He was a bank inspector and when my checkbook gets in a mess, I open another account. So, here we have two totally incompatible people getting married. He has never really believed anybody can be as stupid as I am about numbers. He thinks I'm doing it on purpose. One of these days he's going to believe me, it just isn't there.

We are very different in many ways. I like to prepare, for example, messages three months ahead if I can. Now, you might not think that because you're always saying, "What are you going to teach at Young Moms?" and I say, "I don't know yet, I don't know yet." But actually it's not that I'm unprepared; I'm usually over-prepared. I've got a lot of things I want to do and I don't know which one I'm going to do.

I do my homework and I prepare, and I learn it, and I practice it, and I sleep with it, and I get up with it. That's the way I work. Stuart reads. He is a bookaholic. If there's a group for bookaholics, he should be the president of it, a real help group. It is incredible. I have these nightmares of being eaten alive by books. But he is able to retain and he can tell you facts about the first moonwalk and things like that. He's practically got a photographic memory; it's incredible.

So, he learns differently. He prepares differently. He just reads, reads, reads, reads, reads. He'd read brown paper if you gave it to him. Then he gathers all of that somewhere in here and computes it all and puts it in an outline. That's all he has and then he gets up and preaches it. So, when we came to the States, we had been apart in ministry with him traveling so long, I got so excited. Now we were going to do this together.

We got an invitation to do a marriage seminar in Racine. I said, "Stuart, let's do it. This is wonderful. We're going to minister together instead of ministering apart for all these years." So he said, "Yes, okay, that sounds fun. We'll do it." Well, two months ahead of it, I said to him, "Now can we sit down and talk about what we're going to do? We're going to get us something so I can start because you know I have to do this. I work a lot harder than you do at this." "Yes, yes, yes, we'll do it, we'll do it, we'll do it."

We got to a week before and we had still not done it. My stomach was in a knot and I was absolutely panicking. The day came and we had still not had time to sit down and do this. I had gone ahead and prepared a little talk because I could see this wasn't going to work and I didn't know whether it would fit or what it was like. On the morning as we were about to set out, I called upstairs to Stuart who was rushing around upstairs, "Do you yet know what we're going to speak about?"

He came downstairs and he looked at me and he said, "Jill, you know the material you need to use. You just don't know you know it. You've got all this stuff, you've done these things, you know it, you do." I said, "Well, that's not the point." We had this incredible row and I burst into tears and got in the car and drove to Racine crying my eyes out. Well, this was on the way to teach on marriage, of course.

We arrived there and I say, "Well, you'd better do it because I'm in no fit to stay to do anything. I'll just do it, just teach." He said, "No, they've asked us both to do it." I said, "Stuart, what are we going to do? Look at me." He said, "Well, I'll lead you inside." So he took my hand because I couldn't see, my eyes were closed. We get inside all the time with me saying, "What are we going to do? What are we going to do?" And then he says, "We'll talk about it." I said, "What do you mean we'll talk about it?" He said, "In front of them. That's what we'll do." I said, "We'll what?"

He said, "Yes, we'll discuss this. They can listen if they like, but this will be the part of the seminar that will be very practical and helpful." So here I stand, obediently but wetly, and we discuss. We do forget them and he says, "Now, Jill and I have had a little difference of opinion." That was putting it mildly. We begin to have this dialogue and we try to explain what went wrong, that we are very different and that we do things differently.

I told him it would be a lot better if he did it my way, and he told me it would be a lot better if I did it his way. We began to move together and compromise. We said we were sorry and we made up, and he gave me a little kiss on my cheek, of course; this was public. Then he said, "Now let's talk about this. What went wrong? You've got to learn to fight fair. You've got to learn to resolve conflict. You've got to learn to come together." And he said to me, "Jill, I have not been fair to you. I understand that's what you need. I will try and get to this two hours before the event next time."

I compromised too and said that I understood that's how he worked best, and I would try to relax a little bit and believe I knew what I knew I knew and that we would try and work together on it. So we are very, very different. If you're going to complement each other, you have to take your strengths and make them fit. It's been very difficult for Stuart and me to minister together. We've found the way to do it. He takes an hour, I take an hour. We do not try to dialogue anymore. That was the first and last time we ever tried to do that. It doesn't work with our style, with our gifting, with the way that we are.

Not long ago a psychiatrist was listening to us talk and he said, "I've never heard such an example of left brain, right brain in my life." He said, "Jill, you go for the heart and he goes for the head and you get us all." I realized that God had helped us complement each other in ministry. It takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of talking, it takes a lot of tears sometimes, but it can be done. If you're going to complement each other, you have to celebrate the differences, and we're able to do that now.

Now, if you're going to celebrate the differences, you have to accept each other as you are. Acceptance is not resignation. There's a difference between accepting somebody as they are and resigning yourself to living with this stupid man. That's resignation. "Oh, all right, have your own way. Oh, all right, do it, and I'll just have to bend and I'll have to do this." That's resignation. Acceptance accepts, celebrates the differences. This is how he is. Now then, how can I fill up that which is lacking? In his weaknesses, my strengths can match. How can I accept what he is and say, "Lord, in what redemptive way can You use this?"

That's acceptance. You see the situation, you are very different people. Now, how can we buy this back? How can we maximize it? How can we make these two people one in a sense that's going to have more impact in our world, in our family, in the ministry? So, they were complementary. There's no doubt about it; they were very different but they're obviously doing their thing and happy about it.

That's the second word: contented. You say, "Well, no wonder they're contented; they're rich and they're powerful." Have you noticed she's got servants? Have you noticed she's clothed in purple? The word is "double," which means she had long johns on. It means she was warm for the winter. She has no fear for the snow. She is dressed in purple which, of course, is the color of queens and royalty and leaders' wives and all of that. But the word is also double: warmth and thickness, which was very expensive in those days.

You say, "Well, I'd be contented if I was rich and if I was powerful." That helps a marriage if you're not always arguing about money and you're not always strapped. Don't always believe that. Sometimes it does help to be financially viable and there isn't that strain, but it is not what your life possesses that matters, or that possesses you. A man's life does not consist in the things that he possesses.

I always remember my dad sitting in this beautiful 800-year-old house. Over the mantelpiece, which was absolutely magnificent, the twelve apostles were carved in the oak. He was sitting there, his body language looking very miserable and very depressed. My mother gave me a drink and she said, "Take this drink to your father and try and cheer him up. I don't know what's wrong with him."

I remember standing at the end of that incredibly beautiful old English room that was our home with the drink in my hand, looking at my father. I was not converted and thinking to myself, "What's wrong with him? He's got the world, and it's not enough." It was very easy for me when I came to Christ, therefore, to understand that a man's life does not consist in the things that he possesses, for I had seen that in my father's life.

All his life he had dreamed. He'd started on a bicycle going from house to house asking, "Can I mend your car?" He refused ever to work for anybody but himself; he was going to do it. And he did it. He became the richest automobile man in the whole of the north of England, and he made a lot of money. He bought this beautiful property, we had two or three homes, and this was how it was.

And his salmon river. If he could just have a salmon river, he could just fish anytime he wanted if he could do this. And then he got it, and it wasn't enough. And then you get the next thing, and you get the next thing, and it's never enough. It's just like a hole, and the more you put in it, it just falls out at the bottom. Yet, if you've never been in that position, it's very hard to be convinced that things or vacations or whatever it might be that would add to your life would not bring you contentment.

But God can give us contentment with such things as we have. "Be content," the Bible says, "with such things as you have, for God has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake me.'" I remember in those days when my parents had this beautiful country home in the Lake District and they had a home in Liverpool where my father's business was and they would come up to their country home for the weekend. Our house at Capernwray, where we were based at the youth center, was in the middle. So they would always stop in and we'd have a cup of tea and we'd chat.

I remember one day my mother saying to me in this little tiny house that was our home at that point, a little gatehouse. There were four gates to this big estate where the youth center was and the youth center was in the castle and we lived in one of the little tiny gatehouses. It was very tiny and it was very uncomfortable and it was very damp and it wasn't at all glamorous. My mother said very wistfully, "Jesus lives here, doesn't he?" And I said gently, "Yes, Mom. I'd rather live in my cottage with Jesus than in my castle without Him." She just nodded very sadly. She had everything, but it wasn't enough.

I have often quoted my favorite poem on this, Scott Wesley Brown's "Things." Things upon the mantel, things on every shelf, things that others gave me, things I gave myself. Things I've stored in boxes that don't mean much anymore, or magazines and memories behind the attic door. Things, things on hooks and hangers, things on ropes and rings, things I have that blind me to the pettiness of things.

Am I like the rich young ruler, ruled by all I own? Jesus came and asked me, could I leave it all alone? Lord, I look to heaven beyond the veil of time, to gain eternal insight that nothing's really mine. And to only ask for daily bread and all contentment brings, to find freedom as Your servant in the midst of all these things. For discarded in the junkyard and rusting in the rain, are things that took the finest years of lifetime to obtain. And whistling through the tombstones, the hollow breezes sing, a song of dreams surrendered to the tyranny of things.

That's powerful, Scott Wesley Brown's song. When I think about that, I have seen it in my own family and know it in my own experience. When I look at the Proverbs 31 woman and man, and certainly about her, there is that contentment. Her children call her blessed, happy. The word is contented, fulfilled.