Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: I would like you to turn to the book of Joshua. Inadequacy: Standing in Moses’ sandals. After the death of Moses, Joshua 1:1, the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ aide, “Moses, my servant, is dead. Now then, you bring these people into the Promised Land. Now then, you.”

And I can just sense the incredible inadequacy that drowned Joshua at this time. There are many things that bring a sense of inadequacy. It might be that you are a single parent. You have found yourself a single parent through no choice of your own, and you are called to be mom and dad. There is that daddy space in your life, and perhaps you have one, two, three, four, five children. Suddenly you have this incredible sense of, “How can I do this? There is no way.”

Or maybe you have a sick parent who needs hospice care, and it isn’t possible to have someone else care for them. They need to come and live with you, and you find yourself in the situation where you are the caregiver. You say, “I can’t do this.” Or maybe you’re promoted in your job beyond your ability and training, and you find yourself in a hostile, perhaps, environment of people’s expectations drowning you. You say, “I just am not up to this. I’m not adequate for it.”

Or maybe you’re called to say something to a hostile relative or a dying friend, or a group of refugees who’ve just arrived from seeing their husbands murdered and their daughters raped. You say, “I just can’t do this. I feel so inadequate.”

In a sense, in all of those little scenes I’ve painted, I’ve had a small part. When Stuart was traveling, I was that single parent with him on the road months and months on end, saying, “I can’t do this. I don’t know what to do with the daddy space.” Or when my mother-in-law came to visit for three months and stayed 18 with five cancer surgeries and chemo and no insurance. I faced nursing to the end, and I don’t really even like the sight of blood. I remember standing in my bedroom saying, “I can’t do this.”

Or perhaps when you are promoted beyond your training and you find yourself in a situation where people are looking to you for biblical wisdom and you’ve never even been to Bible school, like me. You say, “I can’t do this.” Or perhaps when you stand in Croatia and you’re facing a thousand refugees who have just seen their husbands murdered and their daughters raped. Dr. Peter Kuzmič says, “Jill, I want you to talk to them. I want you to say something to them.” You look into those faces still in shock, and you say, “I can’t do this.”

How can I stand in Moses’ sandals? Yes, Dr. Peter Kuzmič could do this, but I’m me. I’m Joshua. I’m not Moses. I’m just the aide. I’m just the follower. I’m just the weak one. Yes, I can do certain things, but I can’t do this. This is too big for me.

My husband told me about a film. I didn’t see it myself years ago where Jack Lemmon was a middle-aged man, married with some children, happily married in a very tight family: patriarch, matriarch, everything in place. He comes to his midlife crisis, and he buys a sports car. He starts to have an affair, and he gets a shirt that’s open down to the waist to show his chest. It is a typical midlife crisis, and he takes off with this young woman and begins to live it up.

Then his father dies, and he comes back to the funeral. Everybody shows him and tells him how much they need him: the kids, his wife, the mother. There is a scene my husband said that impressed it upon his mind all these years of him going to the graveyard and sitting on the grave of his father who has just died. He beats the ground saying, “I don’t want to be the daddy. I don’t want to be the daddy. I can’t stand in my father’s shoes. I can’t take this responsibility. I don’t want any responsibility. I’m inadequate as a father, as a husband, to do this.”

I remember the same feeling coming over me as I sat by my mom who has died. Even though she had become the child relying on me to care for her in those dying days, she was still my mom. You know what that’s like? Then she goes, and I don’t want to be the mommy because this feeling of inadequacy. How can I stand in my mother’s shoes?

I remember babysitting our twins. We used to call them Search and Destroy. They were about three at the time. I was there for three days while the kids had a very needed break. I would beg the children to go to bed about 5:00 in the evening. “Please, please go to bed so I can.” In the end, I would say goodnight to them, and they would say goodnight and tuck me up. I would go to bed, and they’d still be up.

But I remember sleeping till about 5:30 in the morning when Christie, the little twin, would arrive in my room about three years of age. She would poke me and nudge me, and I would invite her to come into bed with me. No, she didn’t want to do that. She wanted to play. I just used to get up and open up her mommy’s cupboard and say, “Go for it,” and get back into bed and go to sleep.

About an hour later, I would wake up, and she had had a wonderful time. Her mommy’s closet was in total chaos, and there would Christie be standing with a hat on and her mommy’s handbag and in her mommy’s shoes. We’ve all seen children do this, maybe our own children or our grandchildren. I remember looking at her thinking at the time I was dealing with a lot of ministry wives, pastors’ wives, that’s just like us. We are called to stand in somebody else’s shoes.

I had just been counseling a young pastor’s wife who had followed a very successful pastor’s wife. She’d written me a very desperate letter. “I cannot stand in this woman’s shoes. She was the perfect pastor’s wife, and here I am. I don’t even know how to do it. I’m straight out of seminary. I feel,” well, she felt like little Christie. All of us have felt like that, finding yourself through the circumstances of life and the permitted will of God in a situation where the shoes are too big and you are too small and you know you’re going to go flat on your face.

Joshua felt just like that. Even though he had leaders around him, he felt like a very weak link on a very strong chain. I remember that phrase being used by a beautiful 6’2” woman, an athlete, gorgeous girl on the tennis circuit. She was now working for Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and she was running the whole girls’ side of Fellowship of Christian Athletes. She was talented, she was beautiful, she was an athlete, she was everything.

To my amazement, she came out with this huge testimony of her inadequacy, and she used that phrase: “I arrived here at FCA headquarters, and I feel like a very weak link in a very strong chain. I cannot do this. I feel inadequate.”

When God said to Joshua, “Now then, you bring the people into the Promised Land,” he freaked out. God had to keep saying, “Be courageous. Don’t be terrified. Be courageous.” If you want to know how he freaked out, then read those verses again. This huge sense of inadequacy is enough to take us all down into the spiritual dumps.

Now Joshua had had many reasons in his life to feel inadequate if you remember his story. Remember where Joshua begins. It does not begin in chapter one here. Joshua’s story begins in Egypt when he was a teenager or certainly a young adult, when he was a slave. That young man would be out under the Middle East sun the day that the slave masters came to crack their whips across their backs and say, “Make bricks, make bricks.” Well, he was used to that. He’d been making bricks.

He was strong. Remember, he became the commander of Israel’s army, an incredible specimen of a young man, physically fit through slave labor, trained. Then the slave master said, “And today you will make bricks without straw. Today you will make bricks without straw.” Maybe it was Joshua that said, “How can we do this?” Maybe it was Joshua that went up to the cruel slave master and took the beating that he would surely get for daring to ask how they would do that.

Incidentally, God never asks us to make bricks without straw. He might ask us to make bricks, to do the back-breaking labor of this or that, but He always gives us the straw to do it, not the Egyptians. Joshua knew the feeling of inadequacy. How could he do this? This physical task. They put slave masters over them to oppress them. They forced them to labor. They built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. They made their lives bitter with hard labor in bricks and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields. In all their hard labor, the Egyptians used them ruthlessly.

That’s where Joshua was coming from. Do you think he ever felt inadequate as a teenager? Do you think he ever felt inadequate as he was oppressed and persecuted in his youth? Of course he did. He felt inadequate to change things. Don’t you think in all his youth and vigor he wanted to have a revolution? He wanted to get out of Egypt. He wanted to help his people.

Then of course, Moses, their only hope. The man who’d been brought up in the palace, who would be Pharaoh—Pharaoh’s child, Pharaoh’s daughter’s child—who would sit on the throne. Then maybe he would release them. Then this Moses blew it and fled, a murderer out of sight. How do you think Joshua felt then? Joshua was now a leader, even though he was young. He was a leader of the leaders among the leaders, without Moses, yes, but how inadequate must he have felt?

Then Moses came back and became a hero. He returned and with Aaron, they faced Pharaoh. God began to do the miracles and signs. God led a quarter of a million people in one night out of Egypt during a gigantic funeral for every firstborn in that nation. Joshua had been part of all of that, and he became head of Moses’ army. He became Moses’ aide. There was no one more awestruck, no one more loyal than he.

In Numbers 11:28, people are being disrespectful of Moses, and Joshua takes them on. Moses says, “Don’t worry about it. There are other people that are prophets like me. Yes, there are other people prophesying in the camp.” Joshua said, “Forbid them, Lord. You are the prophet.” He was loyal to a fault. He had Moses up on a pedestal. Hadn’t this man seen God face to face? Joshua had seen Moses come down the mountain with his face so radiant because he’d been with God, he’d had to put a veil on it because the people couldn’t even look at it without being blinded. Joshua had been with him on the mountain before the veil had been put in place. He honored Moses. Moses was his hero. Now this Moses was dead, and God said, “Now then, you lead the people.”

How could he possibly stand in Moses’ sandals? I can just imagine him saying, “Here am I; send Caleb. Here am I; send Caleb. I can’t do it.” Dictionary definition of inadequacy is not being equal to the purpose, insufficient to affect the object, inadequate in power, strength, and resources.

The first thing we have to realize is that the first step to overcoming inadequacy is to realize it is God who is asking you to do what you are asked to do, not a man, not a person, not a wife, not a child. It is God who asks you what to do. Turn, if you would, with me back to Deuteronomy chapter one for a moment. Deuteronomy chapter one, verse 34 to 39.

Moses is rehearsing the history of the children of Israel. Verse 34: “When the Lord heard what you said,” their grumbling and mumbling, “he was angry and solemnly swore: ‘Not a man of this evil generation shall see the good land I swore to give your forefathers, except Caleb son of Jephunneh. He will see it, and I will give him and his descendants the land he set his feet on because he followed the Lord wholeheartedly.’ Because of you, the Lord became angry with me,” says Moses. “Because of you, the Lord became angry with me also and said, ‘You shall not enter the Promised Land either. But your assistant, Joshua son of Nun, will enter it. Encourage him, because he’ll lead the Israel to inherit it. And the little ones that you said would be taken captive, your children who do not yet know good from bad, they will enter the land. I will give it to them, and they will take the possession of it.’”

“Joshua son of Nun will enter it.” Who is speaking? God. Moses was told by God Joshua would follow him. It was God calling Joshua. How do I know if God wants me to do something? Maybe somebody has asked you to fill a position, to fill someone’s shoes, and you say, “I can’t do that.” Who has asked you? A leader? I think we’ve got away from this whole concept that when we’re asked to do something, for example in the fellowship of the church, it’s God asking us to do it through a leader. We think of ourselves as volunteers instead of servants.

It is God who asks us. I’m so glad I got hold of that concept as soon as I was converted. I’m sure it was the girl that led me to Christ that got me there. I remember thinking I will never say no to anything anybody asks me to do until and unless I am sure it is not God asking me. I will just presume that God has prompted this person to ask me to do this particular thing. Joshua’s call did not come from heaven—a great big megaphone voice of God or a voice like a waterfall—it came through a man. God calls in a very, very ordinary way. He calls through a man.

Turn to Numbers 27 with me. Numbers 27:12: “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Go up this mountain, see the land I’ve given to the Israelites. After you’ve seen it, you will be gathered to your people as your brother Aaron was,’” etc. Verse 15: “Moses said to the Lord, ‘May the Lord, the God of spirits of all mankind, appoint a man over this community to go out and come in before them, one who will lead them out and bring them in, so the Lord’s people will not be like sheep without a shepherd.’ So the Lord said to Moses, ‘Take Joshua son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay your hand on him, and have him stand before Eleazar the priest and the entire assembly and commission him in their presence. Give him some of your authority, so the whole Israelite community will obey him. He is to stand before Eleazar the priest, who will obtain decisions for him by inquiring of the Urim before the Lord. At his command, he and the entire community of Israel go out; at his command, they will come in.’ And Moses did as the Lord commanded him. He took Joshua, he had him stand before the priest and the whole assembly, and he laid his hands on him and commissioned him, as the Lord instructed through Moses.”

Next time somebody asks you to do something, realize God’s calling. Get your whole thinking turned around. This is not Anne, this is not James, this is not Judy, this is not Laurie, this is God calling. You better be careful how you respond to that. God calls through leaders, as the Lord instructed through Moses, verse 23.

So what did God call Joshua to? Verse 16: to be a man over the community, to lead out and bring in as a shepherd. Moses gave him some of his authority. Those of us that are leaders, we must be careful when we ask somebody to do something, to give them the authority with the responsibility, not just the responsibility without the authority. Give him some of your authority. Let the people see this is somebody that we believe God is asking to do this particular task. The call of God comes through men.

I remember when my husband tells that wonderful story of his call to ministry. When we are among missionaries, ministers, and pastors’ wives, I love to hear him tell it over and over again. Here he was, a young banker, moves to another town to a tiny church, a little assembly that he belonged to. A stranger comes up to him. He has been there three or four weeks and joined the youth group. He said to him, “How old are you?” Stuart said, “I am 17.” He said, “It is time you were preaching.” He said, “I can’t preach.” He said, “Have you ever tried?” “No.” “Then how do you know you can’t do it if you have never tried?” Well, there is no answer to that. “You will preach,” said the man, “next Sunday, and your subject is the church at Ephesus.” Stuart said at that point, he didn’t know they had a church at Ephesus, but he became highly motivated to find out all he could about it. That Sunday, he preached about the church at Ephesus. Why did he do that? Because he believed and respected that his leaders were in touch with God and that God was calling him.

That’s Stuart’s call to preach. I could tell you many, many other people in the ministry, probably 99.9% who have been called through somebody walking up to them saying, “You will do this. I’d like you to do this. God’s call.” God’s calling.

Now then, you’re going to have to be on your face before God when you’re asked to do something, even if it means something you feel totally inadequate for. How could I do this? How could I stand in Moses’ sandals? So we treat with respect the request with honor. We realize that God calls through people. We seek God’s face to confirm it through His Word. How does God call through people? How does He confirm it through His Word?

Of course, the first chapter of Joshua: “Be strong and very courageous,” verse seven. “Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you. Don’t turn from it to the right, to the left. You may be successful wherever you go. Don’t let the book of this law depart from your mouth. Meditate on it day and night so you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Have not I commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Don’t be terrified,” etc.

How is God going to confirm it? By and through His Word. As we live our life, as we respond in faith, shivering in our shoes, our little faith feet feeling too small to fit those huge shoes or those sandals, then scripture helps us deal with this huge sense of inadequacy. Joshua’s told to mind it and to meditate on it. Mind it: be careful to obey it. Order your life after its rules and commands. Live rightly according to it and meditate on it. What does this mean to me? What are you telling me to do? Are you confirming this? Are you not?

I remember when the young man asked me to go down into an incredible place and speak to his friends. This place was not the sort of place that Christians would ever be seen dead in. I remember thinking I don’t want to do that because my Christian reputation would be at stake. What would happen if somebody saw me going into this den of iniquity, which it was, and they knew that I was a youth leader, a Christian missionary? It wouldn’t look good. It would bring dishonor to God. And I wrestled with this.

Then I said to God, “This is something somebody has asked me to do. This is a young Christian, but he is a young Christian leader. He is growing in God. He is straight off the streets. He’s a leather-jacketed, was, thug. Now he loves the Lord. Now he’s trying to win his friends. Now he has become their leader. He is a leader. Is this God calling?”

For all sorts of reasons, I felt inadequate, but I took it that it was God calling. That’s where you begin until you’re proved otherwise. And I minded the Word of God. I wanted to obey it, and I began to meditate on it as I read, “What are you telling me to do?” Meditate means to chew it over, to think about it, to digest it, to figure it out.

I remember coming to Philippians chapter two, how God made that great graph of grace from highest heaven to lowest hell. It says in that little passage, “He made himself of no reputation.” I remember writing in my Bible at that time, “If God made himself of no reputation for me, then I can make myself of no reputation for him.” As I meditated, as I minded it, I heard the call of God through a young ex-street gang leader. And I went. I obeyed it like Joshua. With the army of God, nothing much else, we started that street ministry. You mind it. You meditate on it. You confirm it, and God’s glory is made manifest in our weakness.

I don’t know if you remember the sense of the song in the play *Choices*. Play *Choices* was about Jonah and the worm. In chapter five of the story of Jonah, Jonah is the big prophet, but there is a little worm. This little worm is appointed by God. The same word that’s appointed the prophet is used to appoint the worm. He’s an appointed worm. He’s called. I wrote the whole story of Jonah and the worm from the worm’s point of view, how inadequate this little worm felt. God is calling him to go to Nineveh and be a missionary, a missionary worm.

And here’s Jonah. God is calling Jonah to go to Nineveh and be a missionary. Jonah takes off in the opposite direction in disobedience. And the worm puts his little backpack on and takes off for Nineveh in obedience. And he obeys, just a little worm, but he feels so inadequate.

When the letter from heaven arrives, if you remember, at his pond and everybody says, “Here’s a letter from God. Look, it’s all shiny. Who’s it for?” Bookworm, who’s the only one that can read with the big glasses, reads the letter, “Oh, it’s for little worm. Little worm? The littlest worm?” And little worm says, “For me? God’s calling me?” And it says, “Go to Nineveh.”

At the end of that scene, little worm sings a song. I enjoyed writing this song because there’s so much of me in it. “I wouldn’t choose me if I were to choose. If I was the almighty and I didn’t want to lose, I wouldn’t choose a small thing. I’d likely choose a tall thing. I wouldn’t choose me to do his will. Why, I’d choose a wise worm attending private school, or a perfect little worm who never broke a rule. I wouldn’t choose a weak thing, a frightened little meek thing. I wouldn’t choose me to do his will. But he didn’t choose the wise, and he didn’t choose the good, and he didn’t choose the handsome as we often think he should. He chose a little worm so that he could get the glory. He chose humble, simple people to tell out the gospel story. He chose little worm, a willing worm, to do his will.”

Then of course, all the verses: “I’d choose a rich worm who’d saved up all his money, or a sweet busy bee who’d grown up sweet on all that honey. I wouldn’t choose a weak thing, a frightened little meek thing. I wouldn’t choose me to do his will. But he didn’t choose the wise, and he didn’t choose the good, and he didn’t choose the handsome as we often think he should. He chose a little worm to do his will.”

And when God calls and God confirms, God gets all the glory because we’re inadequate, because we’re inadequate. And his strength is made perfect in our weakness. This book is your confirmation. This book is your strength. There’s a marvelous verse where Moses on his dying day gives his last message to the children of Israel, Joshua standing by his side, and he talks about the book, this book. And he says, “These are not just idle words for you; they are your life.” What a verse. Not just idle words for you; they’re your life.

That’s what this is all about. Joshua knew it. He’d been up the mountain and saw Moses come out of the mist, his face shining in glory with this huge great tablet of stone. I can imagine him going up saying, “What’s that?” And I can see Moses saying, “It’s been written with the finger of God on both sides. This has been written with the finger of God on both sides, through and through. And this is my life. Is this your life? Do you obey it?”

Does somebody ask you to do something? Do circumstances ask you to do something? To be the mommy, to be the single parent, to be the leader, to be the follower, to be the servant, to be the slave? Do you say, “I can’t”? God says, “No, you can’t, but I can. I can because I’ve called you, and this word will be your strength. And you will be prosperous and successful. These are not idle words; these are your life.” Are they your life? Do you believe it’s written by the finger of God on both sides? Do you respect this Bible, not question it, as the authoritative, powerful, inspired word of God?

Well, His word will bring you hope in despair and life in deadness, and the power to perform in your inadequacy. Yes, it will. God calls you, God will instruct you, God will confirm it, and God will empower you. For God never calls without equipping. Faithful is he that calls you, who also will do it.

When you reckon on his inner company, on his power, you hang your weakness on his strength, and you take the step, you open your mouth, you nurse the patient. I found, as I remember back to nursing my mother-in-law in her last days of cancer, how I never thought I could do any of those things. Those awful things, those horrible things. Death is horrible, the process of death. Jesus wept at the process of death. How could I ever, without any nurse’s training, nurse a terminally ill cancer patient? How could I do that? But faithful is he that calls you who also will do it.

Reckoning on his company, I found myself adequate. I found myself adequate. How? Because of the Spirit, because within me there is the one who knows how to nurse cancer patients. Take Joshua son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit. There’s the secret. In whom is the spirit.

You see, Joshua was looking at Moses as Moses was dying. He was not looking at Moses as Moses was. Because Moses was inadequate, desperately inadequate. Read chapter three of Exodus when God calls Moses who has been sitting in the backside of the desert looking after a bunch of scraggy sheep, a failure, a murderer, a fugitive, blown his opportunity, his glorious opportunity to be Pharaoh and set the people free. Moses says, “I can’t do it.”

God says, “No, I’m sending you to bring the children out,” and he says, “I can’t do it.” And he begins to come up with all these excuses. “I’m not eloquent. My brother Aaron, he’s the eloquent one. I can’t even speak.” “Who made your mouth?” says God. “I made your mouth. You can speak well enough.” “Well, I can’t preach, I can’t speak.” “Well, you’re pretty good with the excuse.” Just go. I’m sending you. And he comes out with this incredible verse, “Here am I; send somebody else. Send Aaron.” And we’re either saying, “Here am I; send Aaron,” or “Here am I; send Caleb.”

Moses must have been tempted many, many times. You see what we do is compare ourselves to someone who is completed or nearly, instead of realizing that they too have felt inadequate. How could Moses stand in Joseph’s sandals? Imagine what he felt like when God called him. But for this we have Jesus. Take Joshua son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit. And this is the same God in different people.

When you feel inadequate, it’s often because you’re comparing yourself to someone else. You are you. God calls, God equips, God prepares, God has made you you perfectly. Same God, different instrument. Same God, different people. Preaching is the dissemination of truth through different personalities. God calls. God equips. God prepares.

As Joshua began to think of his idol, Moses, “How can I stand in his shoes?” perhaps God brought to mind all the things Moses must have shared, for he was the humblest man on the world, so the Bible tells us. Joshua maybe thought back to the stories that Moses had told about his feeling of inadequacy, that here is a man that had had to get over his own sense of inadequacy as well. Moses, I’m sure, had told Joshua—Joshua knew about his palace training, God’s permitted will.

And you know what’s going to help you when you feel inadequate? You look back on your past and you see that everything that’s happened in your past is in the context of his permitted will for you. It was God’s permitted will that Moses should be brought up in Pharaoh’s household. That was his palace training. It was Joshua’s palace training, the permitted will of God, that he should be a slave.

What we need to do is not look back on our past and say, “Look what happened to me,” and feel inadequate. Look back on your past and realize that’s all part of what God is now going to use as you take people into the Promised Land. God prepares by permitting your past to be what it was: to be non-Christian, to be terrible, to be good, to be everything in between. Your part is to realize that God has had a past that he has permitted and to thank him for it.

Joshua’s past was permitted by a loving, sovereign God and all part of his palace training. When I think of my past, of my war years that I talked about at the beginning, of my non-Christian but good home, of my training in a top university but very secular scene, then I know that’s my palace training. I don’t say, “God, why didn’t you bring me into a Christian home? Why didn’t I hear the gospel when I was a child? Why didn’t I have a chance to go to Bible school?” etc., etc. I say, “No, I am the perfect person. I have the perfect past. I have the perfect present. And I will have the perfect future. I am just the right person for this job. I am Joshua.”

God did not use Moses to bring the people into the Promised Land. He used Moses to bring them to the point of going in. And then Joshua’s soldierness, everything that made Joshua a soldier was now needed. Not a statesman like Moses, a soldier. That’s what God needed.

When you look at the opportunities you’re given, when you look at who you are and who you live with and whose wife you are and whose mother, you are the perfect mother, you are the perfect wife for your husband. You are just right. I edit this little magazine, *Just Between Us*. It goes out to pastors’ wives and ministers’ wives. We come back to this over and over again because one of the biggest problems with pastors’ wives and ministers’ wives is a sense of low value. Their husband is very prominent. He’s the one up there. They are the pastor’s wife.

Now, you’re not called the garbage collector’s wife. You’re not called the shopkeeper’s wife. Maybe you’re called the doctor’s wife, but that’s probably about it. You are who you are. You have a name. You have a personality. But not so the pastor’s wife. She’s the pastor’s wife. She’s an appendage. She’s taken along so often on the coat-tails of her husband’s call. She doesn’t feel valuable, but she’s expected to do all the things she’s never been trained to do, like run the women’s work. So she tries to run the women’s work, and the women’s work doesn’t go well. “Well, it must be me. If I was a better pastor’s wife, if my husband was married to a better pastor, or to another woman.” I get those letters all the time.

This low sense of self-worth. Over and over again, we write back and we talk to them and we say, “You’re just the right wife for this man. God made you. Everything that’s gone into bringing you to this point. You’re the perfect personality for what God has in mind.” And what you have to do is to realize that God’s permitted past and his perfect timing come together. He calls you through people and he affirms it through the word. And you get out there and you do battle for the Lord. Perfect timing. God’s clocks keep perfect time. They really do.

My daughter, Judy, had just got married. I needed somebody to go with me to Australia for five weeks’ ministry. I called Judy knowing that her husband was in the middle of his MBA and spent his life in the library and said, they had no children at the time, “Do you want to come? Do you want to come with me? Do you want to come and carry my bags? Do you want to come and be with me and help me?” We worked it out, and she came.

About two weeks before that event, my back went out. A couple of the doctors said, “I don’t know if you should do this Australian trip.” However, I got the brace and the pills and off we went. Well, by the time I got to Australia after 25 hours in a plane or whatever it was, I couldn’t get up. I had locked into place, and I was in a mess.

My daughter not only had to carry my bags, but she looked at me and said, “We’ve five weeks’ meetings, two or three meetings a day, thousands of women, travel, awful beds, little tiny places that they put you in, standing for hours, all of this. Mother, what are we going to do?” And I said, “What are you going to do?” And she said, “I’m going to carry your bags.” I said, “You’re going to have to do more than that, Judy.” She said, “What you mean?” I said, “You’re going to have to speak.” “I can’t do that. How can I stand in your shoes?”

Well, the first meeting, there were 1,200 women in Sydney in a great big convention center. I said, “I can manage one sitting down, and you’ll have to do the next session.” So I did the first one. Judy, in her own words, went a walk with her Bible. And she said women kept coming up to her on those paths as she was walking around, desperately inadequate, saying, “Oh, your mother was wonderful.” And she said, “I’d prayed so ardently she wouldn’t be. Don’t let her be that good, God.”

But she said, “My mom was.” And they all came up and said, “Oh, she was this, she was that.” And she said, “The more they said, the worse I felt.” She had one talk she’d given to some kids, and it was on anxiety. I said, “Do that.” She said, “Oh, that’ll be easy.” She got up that day, and she told the women how she felt, which immediately got them all on her side as you can imagine. And Judy Briscoe Golz’s ministry began in Australia. God leaned out of heaven and said, “Now then, you. Now then, you.”

Somewhere along that path at that conference center, she had opened her Bible. She still doesn’t know where it is. We think it was the passage where Paul is speaking about many instruments giving a different tone and sound, and every one has a distinctive note. God said to her, “You are not Jill Briscoe; you are Judy Golz. Every instrument makes a different noise, and you have a sound to make that your mother can never make. Now then, you get up there and do it.”

So called of God, affirmed by the word, inadequacy hanging on his adequacy, Judy did it. She celebrated the difference. She maximized her gifts, her talents, her personality that God gave her. That’s how it works. That’s how it works.

Do you feel that you’re standing in Moses’ sandals? Do you feel you’re called to stand in Moses’ sandals? Feel you can’t do it? Well, you can’t. He never said you could. He will. He always said he would, like he said to Moses, “I am all that you need me to be when you need me to be all that you need.” He says it to you today. Like he said to Joshua, “Be careful to do everything. Have not I commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Don’t be terrified, don’t be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go, whatever he calls you to do, say, be.”

Pray with me. Heavenly Father, many of us are called to stand in Moses’ sandals in different ways. All of us can identify with Joshua. And yet, Lord, when we start comparing ourselves to Moses, we’re all going to get into trouble until we realize that Moses too has had his struggles. Moses too is inadequate in his way.

We all face this sense of overwhelming inadequacy. What we need to do if we’re going to fight the battles of the Lord against an enemy who is big but not bigger than you is to, like Joshua, obey the call, confirm it through the word, draw on the power of God, the equipment that you’ve given, take the sword of the spirit, and get out there and do business for you. I pray, dear Lord, that these words will be life for someone here. These are not just idle words; these are our life, Lord. May it be so. We ask it for Christ’s sake and in his name we pray. Amen.