Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: If you turn in your Bible with me to the Old Testament, there is a little story that talks about oil in 2 Kings, chapter 4. The wife of a man from the company of the prophets cried out to Elisha, "Your servant, my husband, is dead, and you know that he feared the Lord. Now his creditor is coming to take my two boys as his slaves." Elisha replied to her, "How can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house?" "Your servant has nothing there at all," she said, "except a little oil." Elisha said, "Go around and ask all your neighbors for empty jars. Don't ask for just a few. Then go inside, shut the door behind you and your sons, and pour oil into all the jars, and as each is filled, put it to one side."

So, she left him and afterward shut the door behind her and her sons. They brought the jars to her and she kept pouring. When all the jars were full, she said to her son, "Bring me another one." But he said, "There isn't a jar left." Then the oil stopped flowing. She went and told the man of God, and he said, "Go, sell the oil and pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what is left."

We are beginning a series on the person and the work of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. In revisiting what He has to do with us and what He has to do with me, I got all excited all over again about what it means to be a Christian indwelt by the Holy Spirit. I wanted to share some of those things with you. Let me tell you a little bit of my story.

If you had asked me when I was growing up in England who the Holy Ghost was—and we didn't call him the Holy Spirit then; we called him the Holy Ghost—I would probably have answered, "The Holy who?" I wasn't being rude or blasphemous. I would have wanted a lot more information than any of my friends certainly could give me. When I was six years of age, the Second World War was in full swing. Bombs were part of my life. We lived in Liverpool, which was not a good idea, and I can't remember ever sleeping in a bed, only in an air-raid shelter as the bombs rained down night after night.

Every day in school, when it was time for prayers, we British schoolgirls stood demurely in rows, hands clasped, looking at our shoes. Prayers and scripture readings were daily events in every public school. I'd listen daily to our headmistress intoning the Apostles' Creed, and we were supposed to say it with her. By now, I was very proud to know a little bit of it. One particularly bad night when the blitz just wouldn't quit, I well remember frantically trying to remember some of the words, hoping that if I prayed this mantra, it would stop.

"I believe in God, maker of heaven and earth." I remembered that bit. What came next? "And in Jesus Christ, our Lord, born of the Virgin Mary." What was that all about? "And I believe in the Holy Ghost." Suddenly, my mind focused on those words: the Holy Ghost. Just who was the Holy Ghost? The words sounded strange and a little bit scary to me. Did I believe in the Holy Ghost? Did all the other little schoolgirls believe in the Holy Ghost? I didn't have the least idea about the Holy Ghost. It took me nine more long years before, lying in a hospital bed, the girl next to me explained that the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, was the third person of the Trinity. He was the comforter. He was the advocate. He was praying for me.

It was there in the hospital that I opened my life to the Holy Ghost, to the Holy Spirit, to the one the Father sent in Jesus' name. He invaded my life. Of course, I've never been the same again. How could I be? How could you be the same again? The girl that led me to Christ said, "Jill, I just need you, the first night of your life as a believer, as a Christian, to go to sleep saying, 'All of God in all of me,' because you have received all you are going to get of God." I said, "Really?" She said, "Yes, the Holy Spirit is a person. You don't receive a bit of a person, an arm or a leg. There is nothing more that God can give you than He just has. He's given you Himself in the person of the Spirit. Now, He hasn't got all of you. You've got all of Him. He hasn't got all of you. That's going to take a lifetime of discovering how to yield your life, how to appropriate His power and His energy."

You've got all of Him. Yes, you have. Of course, that's the essence of the gospel: Christ in you, the power and glory of God. Now, if I was to ask you, "What do you know about the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost?" would you say, as I did all those years ago, "The Holy who?" I know this about Him and that about Him. I know a little bit about Him, but I don't know Him. I don't have any experience of the things that you're talking about.

How do we find out? We go to this book. It's an excellent book on the subject. We find out what it says about Him. There are many, many methods of Bible study, and I would love to think that you would pick one as I just zip through them in a minute so that you can be finding out on your own. One of the reasons the Holy Spirit comes into our life is to be our teacher, to be the one who intelligizes our mind, gives us spiritual intelligence that we cannot have unless the Holy Spirit lives in our life. He will then enlighten us to this book and what it says about Him, and of course about Jesus and about God the Father. He is our teacher.

So, you need to have Him in your life to be able to understand the Bible. There are many ways we can study the Bible. We could simply take the Acts of the Apostles, and actually, that should be renamed because it isn't the Acts of the Apostles; it's the Acts of the Holy Spirit in the Apostles. 57 times in the Acts of the Apostles, you read about His work. Just take a pencil and a notebook and every time as you read through the Acts of the Apostles you find Him mentioned, find out what He's doing. You'll learn a little bit more about what He can do in your life, like He could do in these people's lives. These people that lived in the Acts of the Apostles were just like you and me. They were very ordinary people, but suddenly they had a great big extraordinary God living inside of them, and that made all the difference.

I think of one incident as I was reading through the Acts of the Apostles and finding these 57 places where Peter and John had been hauled in front of the Sanhedrin. They'd threatened them and they'd said, "Stop talking about Jesus, or you might end up on a cross like He did." They threatened them. The Apostles said, "We can't stop." They let them go and they went to the prayer meeting. When they got there, they found the Christians gathered. "What happened? What did they do to you? Are they coming for us?"

The Bible says in Acts chapter 4, they prayed. What did they pray? They prayed, "Give us boldness." After they'd prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and they spoke the word of God boldly. We're running out of boldly today. Some of you ran out of boldly, didn't you? You should have said it. You shouldn't have done it, and you knew it. But there were threats around you: the threat of losing friends, the threat of what they'd say about you. You ran out of boldly. The Holy Spirit's work is to give us boldness. Ordinary people being bold.

You can go right through the Acts of the Apostles and find all these other places where He is busy in the work today. God the Father did His work in creation and rested on His Sabbath. Jesus did His work on the cross and sat down at the right hand of God. The Holy Spirit was sent, and He it is who is still alive and active in our world today, and He it is with whom we have to do.

You could take a concordance. A concordance is simply a book that lists all the words in the Bible. You can open it if you want to find out about peace. It's got all the words about peace, and you look them up and you write down and you find out how the peace of God works in your heart, in your life, in the world, in other people's lives. Read about holy and spirit and Holy Spirit and just make a list of all the things the Bible says from start to finish, because the Bible is one book. The old is in the new revealed, the new is in the old concealed, and the two work together. There's a red line of redemption from Genesis all the way through to Revelation. You read about the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. You read about the Holy Spirit in the New Testament.

That's what a concordance helps you to do. As I did some of that work, looking up the Holy Spirit and finding out what He did in the Old Testament, in history—and remember, history is His story—I found out all sorts of things that I didn't know before about the Holy Spirit. Two major things I found out is that He's God and He's active. How did I find out He was God? Because He keeps getting addressed by divine titles. In Genesis 6, God says, "My spirit will not always strive with men." The Spirit of the Lord, I read about. The Spirit of God. He's addressed by the same names that God is addressed. He's as God as God. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. They are God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Co-equal, co-powerful, co-everything. The Holy Spirit is God.

It's not just because of the titles He's given; it's because of His actions. He is active, I found out, as I studied the Holy Spirit through the scriptures. He is active as only God can act. He is creative. In Genesis, He's hovering. I love that aspect of the Holy Spirit's work. He's hovering over chaos and bringing order out of it. I'm so glad the Holy Spirit hovers over chaos, not only chaos in our world but chaos in our lives.

Those of you that are parents and are trying to bring up teenagers, or they're trying to bring you up, thank God for the hovering work of the Holy Spirit. I remember when we were trying to bring our teenagers up, and I remember coming to the point when—I don't know what they were: 12, 13, 14, 15—when I couldn't hover anymore. When a mother cannot hover anymore, she gets very agitated. I remember asking Judy as she went out on her first date, "Would you take me with you?" "No, mother," she replied. "It's embarrassing." That was her favorite word. Stuart came in a little later and saw me dripping into my cup of tea and said, "What's the matter?" I said, "I can't hover anymore. It's all over. Will you hover?" "No, I've got to go to church. I can't hover. You can't hover. God will hover, Jill. Now, shape up."

God will hover? Yes, trust Him. I said, "Well, I want to watch Him." It's hard as a parent when you can't hover anymore, but God will hover. I picked that theme up in Genesis and I looked five or six times through the Old Testament where it says God's spirit hovered. He hovered over Jerusalem. God said to me that day years ago, "If I hovered over my city, I'll hover over your child. Trust me." God hovers. Whenever God does anything big, He does it by His spirit. He did a big thing in creation that only God could do. You see the Trinity: God the Father speaking and things happening from nothing, God the Son, the word—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 and without Him was not anything made that was made—so you've got God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit hovering. God speaking, the Son working, and the Spirit hovering. Light comes, and grace comes, and order comes out of chaos.

Whenever God does anything big, He does it by His spirit. Incarnation. Remember Mary? A great big shining angel appears. "You're going to be the mother of Messiah." "Me?" "You." She didn't say, "Why me? Why wreck my life? I was just going to get married. Now Joseph will divorce me. Go choose somebody else." She said, "Behold the servant of the Lord." But could I ask a question? "Yes," says the angel. "How? How? I'm not married. I've never known a man. That's how you have babies. You know that. You figured it out. How?" Do you remember the answer of the angel? "The Holy Spirit. That's how. The Holy Spirit will overshadow you."

So, we've got His hovering work and we've got His overshadowing work. She was overwhelmed. "I can't do this. How?" When you're overwhelmed, you're overshadowed. That's what He does. Who's overwhelmed because of a job situation? Who's overwhelmed because of an extended family situation? Who's overwhelmed like the girl I talked to whose Christian husband just walked out on her and she's got eight kids? Who's overwhelmed? Well, when you're overwhelmed, you're overshadowed. That's His work. Whenever God does anything big, He does it by His spirit.

He does it in creation and He does it in incarnation. And He does it in redemption. Have you ever figured out how Jesus stayed on the cross? Every Easter, I sit and I marvel. Why did He? He could have come down. He had the power. But He didn't. Why didn't He? How did He have the power to do it? How did He? Well, we read in Hebrews, the eternal spirit gave Him the power. How did Jesus stay on the cross? The Spirit. His work was to empower, to energize. He hasn't changed today. That's still His power. Eternal Spirit, by whose power carried Him in hell's dark hour. Holy Spirit, help me see the price You paid in saving me.

Whenever God does anything big, He does it by His spirit. Resurrection. Ever seen a dead body? Ever said, "What's it going to take to raise that up to life?" You know what the Bible says in Romans? The spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you. The spirit of the one that raised a dead corpse to life lives in you, lives in me. How could we ever be the same again? How could we behave like we're behaving? How could we not be bold? The spirit of Him who raised Christ from the dead dwells in you. Whenever God does anything big, He does it by His spirit.

So, we could study in all these different ways, or we could look at the symbols and metaphors of the Bible. Metaphors and symbols are pictures. That's what I chose to do. I love pictures. When I was first converted, it was just as if God the Father sat me on His knee and opened it and said, "Jill, this is my picture book." Pictures just began to fall off the pages. I suppose ever since then, I've thought in pictures and seen pictures and written in pictures and spoken in pictures. That's why I love symbols.

There are many, many, many symbols in the Bible in the whole scope of scripture that show us what the Holy Spirit's like. Oil, water, wind, dove, fruit, fire, seal. Many, many pictures that tell us what the Holy Spirit's like. Today, we're going to look at oil because oil tells us what the Holy Spirit's like. People in Bible days couldn't eat without oil to cook by. They couldn't see without oil to light their home. If they were needing medicine, they needed oil to pour into wounds to soothe and to heal. Oil is a wonderful picture of the Holy Spirit. In the tabernacle, it was a symbol of light in the Holy of Holies. Light.

Ephesians says that the Holy Spirit enlightens the mind to things of God. It says the Holy Spirit takes the things He knows about Jesus and explains them to us. The Holy Spirit takes the things He knows about God the Father and explains them to us. He enlightens. So, oil is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful picture of the Holy Spirit: energizing, lighting, giving us joy. The oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

I was talking to one of our teenagers and I said, "How are you?" He said, "I don't know. I don't know why. I just feel down." Had a spirit of heaviness. He said, "I can't tell you a reason." Ever feel like that? The Holy Spirit's job is to raise us above that. He will give you the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. But you have to dress yourself. You have to put on the garment of praise. You have to say to Lord, "I have no business being a believer with heaven ahead of me and Christ within me to be walking around under this spirit of heaviness. Show me why. Enlighten me to it. Is it sin in my life? If it isn't, what is it?" And the joy of Jesus is part of the Holy Spirit's work.

Joy is a magnet. Joy is an evangelist. People don't want to become a Christian if they see you wandering around with a sour face. They say, "I've got enough problems of my own. Why would I want to be like them?" But when they see somebody with no reason to be joyful, they say, "What is it?" Of course, what they should ask is, "Who is it?" Then you can tell them how the Holy Spirit makes the joy of Jesus available to us. He takes care of our heart.

In the little story that I told you right at the beginning—the little story I told you right at the beginning—there's a little woman who's run out of everything. She's run out of a husband. She's run out of things in the house. She's had to sell them off to pay the creditors because her husband has died. They're living in this Bible school. They're all poverty-stricken. Bible teacher Elisha, he's poor. Everybody's poor. Her husband, this young husband, suddenly dies and leaves her without any source of income, without any help at all. She runs out.

She goes and she cries to Elisha, "My husband, your servant, is dead. How can this be? We're in short supply of prophets and he's dead." I remember when I was a student hearing about the five missionaries in Ecuador that were martyred all in a moment in Ecuador. It was world news. Five young men who'd spent nine, ten years learning the language and preparing to go and reach this unreached tribe eventually landed their little plane on a little tiny spit of land. The Indians who were waiting in the bushes drew their bow, let the arrows go, and in a moment, five martyred young missionaries lay face down on the beach.

"Your servant," said the wives, "our husbands are dead. And you know they feared. What You doing, God? Were You standing in the corner of their lives with Your hands in Your pockets?" You hear it all in this young widow. Bad things happen to good people. These were Your people. They had given their lives to reach people that had never heard of You. Now they're dead. Now they're gone. I know three of those widows well, and they tell me over and over again when I ask them that they came like the little widow because they ran out of husbands and they ran out of mission and they ran out of life's cause and they ran out of money. They ran out of everything. They ran out.

Maybe some of you have run out and you feel bereaved or bereft. The creditor is coming to take away my sons. Something happens to your husband; it's one thing. Something happens to your children; it's another. You can be running on empty in a hurry when something happens to your children. Henry Gariepy of the Salvation Army says when something happens to your children, the force, the shock of that is registered on the Richter scale of your heart.

This little widow ran out. She ran out and was about to run out of children. They were coming to be taken away forever as slaves to pay the bills for the groceries. Her creditors were coming. Terrible, terrible situation. She couldn't stop it happening. It was the law in Israel. So she goes and she cries out, "What am I going to do? I'm going to run out of children. I'm going to run out of kisses." I know a lot of widows. The older I get, I know more and more. Often they tell me, "The kisses of my grandchildren are therapy for me." I have spoken to grandparents who have lost their grandchildren because of divorce situations. I've spoken to a grandmother whose children live four blocks away. She never sees them because there was trouble and they're living with the estranged ex-daughter-in-law. So she goes to the grocery store hoping she'll see her own grandchildren one day, maybe around the corner of the cornflakes. She's run out of kisses. She's run out of kisses.

I know what it means even as a grandmother and not a widow at all. We have a little plaque in our house, and you can scribble notes on it as you go in and out of the door. One of our granddaughters scribbled on it, "Kisses are given here. We love you both." And then lips: mwah. Can't buy that. Oh, if I run out of kisses. But there's many people running out of kisses in this world and they're bankrupt. They say to their heavenly Elisha, "I've nothing in the house. I've nothing left. I'm out. I'm done. I'm done. It's over."

Elisha begins, available and loving to this woman, he begins to talk to her. He's approachable, he's available, and he says, "You know, haven't you got anything left?" "No, nothing, nothing in the house save a little pot of oil." Ah. In her extremity, she had forgotten the very thing that was going to save her life: a little pot of oil. Got this in Jerusalem. This is what they're like. This is the real thing. Just a little pot of oil. "Shut the door. Get the vessels from all your neighbors and, in faith, pour out."

"Well, if you'd come with me, Elisha. You're the miracle man. I'm just a little widow. I'm nobody. It's got to be your miracle, little widow." He refused to do it for her and he pushed her back on God and he said, "You have all that you need. Now, in faith, pour out and keep pouring." She shut the door and the kids helped her and they got all these buckets and bowls from everybody in the village. I can see the little woman standing there with this. "How ridiculous. What's going to happen if she does this and nothing happens? What's going to happen to the faith of her children?"

Somehow she finds the last little bit of faith to tip it out, and it comes and it comes and it comes until every single bowl is full. Then the oil stopped and they lived off the good of it. Their children became part of the miracle, you see. I love this story for many reasons. Let me tell you a little bit more of my story to illustrate this at the end. When Stuart and I were in mission years and years ago in Britain, his job was to travel the world and establish that youth mission on every continent. So he couldn't be home with me and the kids to do the job he was called to do. He had to go do it.

I didn't do so bad for about two years, and then I ran out. I just ran out. I ran out of kisses—not my children's, but my husband's. I ran out of power to keep pouring, to keep investing, to keep giving. I ran out of patience with the young people that we had living in our house coming off drugs or having babies. I ran out of compassion. I ran out of caring. I ran out.

But then I cried out, which was a very sensible thing to do. First to my heavenly Elisha. "I'm done. I've nothing in the house." "Oh yes, you have," came the still small voice. "You have the little pot of oil. You have the Holy Spirit." I went and talked to an earthly Elisha, my senior missionary, still my model today. I told her I've run out. I want out. I want my husband back. I want a normal life. I can't do it. I've nothing in the house. I've nothing left to give. I cannot keep on pouring. She did exactly the same thing as God had just done in my heart. She said, "You have the little pot of oil. You have all that you need." One of God's names is, "He shall be all that you need Him to be when you need Him to be all that you need. I AM." You have all that you need Him to be when you need Him to be all that you need. You have the Holy Spirit. He's the supply when you think you're bankrupt.

That wise woman said to me what Elisha said to that little widow that day: "Shut the door, go home, and start and pour. I'll send you a babysitter tonight," she said. "I want you to go out with the youth team back onto the streets. You haven't done it for a while. You couldn't; you were caring for the children and everything. But I'll send you a babysitter, and it'll do you good to get out there." I said, "I don't care. I'm out. I'm out of compassion. I'm out of love. I don't care about those kids anymore." She said, "Do it, Jill. Go."

Because I'm British and because I respect authority and because I do what I'm told, I did it. I remember standing huddled in a doorway in Morecambe, Lancaster. It was raining, of course; it was England. Still hordes of kids going up and down the street. It was in the Beatles' days. Nearly every one of them had a guitar on their back. Some of them were running away from home and some of them weren't. Leather jackets, chains on their backs. Just kids.

I remember thinking, "I've nothing left." Then in obedience, in faith, stepping out of the doorway, tapping a kid called Judy on the shoulder saying, "Do you want a cup of coffee? You look cold." "Who's paying?" "I am." Took her into this place and forced myself to listen to her story. As she began to talk to me, I began to pour out. All the compassion came back. As I poured out, God poured in. See, that's the way it works. Don't wait for God to pour in before you pour out. In faith, you invest. In faith, you give and you give and you give and you keep pouring. As you pour, the supply is eternal, you see. You'll never run out until every empty vessel of your neighbors is filled.

The kids become part of the miracle too. My children—David and Judy and Peter—watched their mother come to the end of herself and cry out to God, "I've nothing in the house," and then they watched me in faith pour out my bankruptcy. Then those kids became part of the miracle. As kid after kid began to come and they poured out and God poured in, soon we were inundated. Soon I didn't even have time but to drop into bed at night. The children I took with me, they saw kids come off drugs, they saw lives change, they saw miracles, miracles, miracles happen. They have never been the same. They were part of it, you see.

I'm wondering who's out today. What brought you to this place? Do you feel you've nothing in the house? Can I remind you, you do. You have the little pot of oil. I gave this sermon years ago in our son's church before he ever came here on staff. Our eldest grandchild was about five and he was listening to his grandmother talk about the little pot of oil. He was getting used to my accent—I wonder why. He got it wrong. When we'd finished his little picture—and it was very good; he got all the pieces of the story as I told it that day—he got all the pieces on a piece of paper and he ran up to me at the end and he said, "Nanna, I wrote the story down. Here's my picture." He'd titled it, and because he didn't hear me right, instead of "The Little Pot of Oil," he had written "The Little Pot of ALL," A-L-L.

Yes, Danny, I said. You got it. You got it. He is ALL that we need when we think we can't go on anymore. You've got the Holy Spirit, the little pot of oil. Pray with me, if you will.

Heavenly Father, I would like to thank You for sending the Holy Spirit in Jesus' name at Pentecost: the counselor, the comforter, the energizer, the encourager, the advocate, the God who can live inside our hearts. Thank You for Pentecost. Lord, there are many, many people in the sound of my voice who need to have a personal Pentecost in their life. I ask in this quiet moment that we might open our hearts anew and say, "Holy Spirit, I don't understand it all, but I know that I need You. I know that I want You. I know that I have come to the end of my own abilities and energies, and I feel as though I've nothing in the house and I'm out. So come into my heart and be the oil of joy. Light my mind. Enlighten me to these things of God. Energize me. I need to go out from this place and pour out. I need Your overshadowing. I need Your hovering over situations that are just chaos. I can't do anything about them, but God, You say in Your word that's Your work." Perhaps you want to ask the Holy Spirit to touch your life all over again, or if you've never invited Him in, just open your life and say, "Come in. Holy Spirit, come in," and invite Him to come into your heart.