Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Luke, more than any other writer, any other gospel writer, talks about Jesus' prayer life. He's fascinated with it. How did He pray? Where did He pray? When did He pray? What happened when He prayed? And the information is given back to this gospel writer, and he puts it here for us. And so we can follow Jesus' sandals and find Him at prayer. We can hear what He prays. We can learn from it.

Prayer is the Christian's vital breath, the oxygen of the soul. Yet most of us would, if we're honest, rather be on human life support than breathe in the clear, sweet prayer air in God's waiting room. But if you go to the deep place where nobody goes, far from the shallow place where everyone lives, you'll begin to breathe easier.

I noticed it one day as I sat on the steps of my soul and waited for the springtime. Well, actually, it's always springtime outside the front door. It's only me that brings the winter. It takes a little while to feel the springtime in my heart, but as the Spirit's quiet warmth begins to do the melting, I take a deep breath. Clear air, so clear.

Stuart and I were in New Zealand. As we got off the plane, I turned around, and all of us on that plane, after fifteen hours in the air—I don't know what it was—were breathing deeply for more reasons than one. There is no air in the world clearer, I'm told, than in Australia and New Zealand. It is so clear, and the sunshine is so bright. But it's that air that reminds me of what happens when you still yourself—the stilling of the soul.

The listening part of prayer—how we have to get that right before we can hear the voice of God. God says, "Hey there, human race, let's talk." And it begins with us listening. Mary of Bethany, sitting at the feet of Jesus, looking in His face, just being there, not talking His head off.

Prayer mustn't be divorced from our relationship with God. It's so strange how we do this. I got an email from one of our focus group leaders this week, delighted that we're addressing prayer. He said, "In my efforts, our efforts, our group's efforts to recruit people to join our focus group, we're usually asked one question over and over. 'Well, what do you do?' And when I respond that first we pray, I'm usually interrupted with the same question: 'Oh, well, besides that, what do you do?'"

There's a mindset in this area that prayer isn't doing or being objective or productive at all. And when I respond that prayer is the first thing we do, and a continuing thing we do at every meeting, eyes begin to roll. People usually begin seeking some opportunity to get away. We've divorced prayer from what it is, simply a conversation with God.

Think about a marriage. If I only talked to my husband on a Sunday morning and Wednesday night and at Easter and Christmas, what sort of marriage would we have? Prayer is communication with God. It's our talk with God. And no relationship can grow unless you have good communication. The better communication, the better the relationship.

Prayer is for our sake. If your day isn't hemmed with prayer, it will unravel, someone has said. And it's also for God's sake. Prayer isn't about getting something for ourselves but getting something for God. And that's what the Lord's Prayer is all about. It's all about Him. Him, not us.

And if we're honest, prayer is the last thing, our last resort, and not the first thing in our lives. There's a very famous preacher in London called Spurgeon. You might have heard of him. His impact goes all over the world. And one day, a couple were visiting his church from outside the country, and they were met by the janitor at the door. They were early, and he said, "Would you like to see our church?" And they said, "Oh, yes, that would be nice."

So he brings them in, and they expect to go into the beautiful old sanctuary, and he doesn't even look that way. He opens the door, and they go downstairs, and they think, "Where are we going? Into the boiler room?" Yes, into the boiler room, which stretches all the way through this building. And he said, as he opened the door, "This is the church." And it was filled with people, wall to wall, all on their knees.

And the janitor, who wasn't the janitor but was Spurgeon himself, said, "Take a look. These people will stay on their knees until I am done preaching today. That's the church." A church is only as strong as its prayer. That's a very frightening and challenging thing.

And Jesus modeled the priority of prayer. One day, Jesus was praying in a certain place. And when He'd finished, one of His disciples said, "Lord, teach us to pray." There was something about Jesus. There was something about what He was doing. There was something about His face as He came back to them. There was something that made the disciples who were watching Him say, "I want that. Teach us to pray."

"Teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples." And remember, Andrew and John, two of Jesus' disciples, were John the Baptist's disciples before they were Jesus' disciples. And so there's this hunger, even just as they watch Jesus. And Jesus, being asked that, gives this pattern of prayer.

And all the way through the Gospels, if you read, we get little glimpses of Jesus' relationship with His Father, what it was like. He and His Father were one, and He wanted His disciples to be one with Him. He loved His Father. He lived for His Father. He lived through His Father. He lived by His Father. He lived in His Father.

And He said, "As I have lived by the Father, so you're supposed to live by me." Jesus loved His Father. He enjoyed His Father. He pleased His Father. He obeyed His Father. He served His Father. And He spent quality and quantity time with Him. And so should I, and so should you.

I just went through the Gospels and found every time Jesus was praying, and it was quite extraordinary, actually, a great hour of doing this, and you can do the same. But I found at His baptism, it says, as He was praying, the Holy Spirit came and endued Him with power to accomplish our redemption.

And then it showed me that Jesus went into the wilderness to pray and to fast. And that's where He went after the devil. The devil didn't sort of come behind Jesus, "I'm going to get you." No, the devil didn't want that confrontation in the wilderness. He would have given anything to get away from that. And Jesus went after him in the power of the Spirit and through prayer, and he dragged him from behind the rock and he overcame Satan.

Prayer has so much to do with that. And then I look before the appointment of the apostles. Do you know what it says? He went into a mountainside, and He spent the night praying to God. And when morning came, He called His disciples and chose them. Before He chose those men for His team, He spent all night in prayer.

I would have to tell you, I've only ever in my life spent two nights all night in prayer. Jesus did it before any big decision, when He needed wisdom beyond Himself. Do you ever need wisdom beyond yourself? Big choices to make? Well, at least one hour in Gethsemane. Jesus said, "Come and pray with me. I need you to pray with me."

And they fell asleep on the job. Do you remember those disciples? His three closest friends. They were exhausted. Jesus said, "Well, flesh is weak. You are tired, and the spirit is willing. The spirit's got to do something about the flesh. You've got to keep awake. Couldn't you watch one hour?" Apparently, He expects us to pray for one hour, and it should be nothing. It should be nothing.

And so every time I see Jesus in prayer, I learn something else, and so did the disciples. And as they watched Him and saw how prayer changed Jesus' direction in ministry or gave him wisdom or changed their whole ministry, actually, if you look in Mark chapter 1, starting at 38, Jesus is in the synagogue. He goes and heals Peter's wife's mother.

And then the whole town hears about it, and of course, gathers at the door with the sick and the lame and the blind and the lepers. And Jesus heals, and it says somewhere else in the Bible that every time Jesus healed, virtue went out of Him. And He deals with the demons, and He casts them out. And at midnight or beyond, He falls down on his pallet on the floor.

And the four disciples, for He's only called four at this point, they are out like a light. But they're woken up very early in the morning by who? By everybody from the whole countryside that's heard about all the other healings. And they're all there, and they're so excited. And they say, "Where's Jesus? I mean, we don't need to go anywhere else. The kingdom of God is going to come to us."

And He's not there. Well, where is He? And so they go and find Him, and He is praying, asking His Father some pretty big questions. "What are you doing? Everybody's waiting for you. What a success!" And Jesus says, "Let's go somewhere else."

"What? Let's go somewhere else? Go to the small people, the little people, the villages? I came to preach. Not only am I here to help and to heal, but basically I've come to say the kingdom of God is among you because I'm the King, and I'm here, and I'm going to preach the gospel." And that's the most important thing.

And so Jesus was guided by His Father—where to go and when to go and how to go. I read that in my own devotional life when I was absolutely flummoxed with what to do with a whole lot of invitations that had come from all over the world. Many of you say, "How do you and Stuart know who to respond to and where to go?"

It is very difficult. Pray for us. We try to be strategic. We try to say which is the right thing, not which is the big thing, which is the thing You want us to do. And as I read that, I said to the Lord, "I don't want to make a mistake. We've got to make all these choices where to go and where to preach and to teach." And He said to me, "Come early, Jill. Come early."

He got up very early, and the Father explained it. And so I knew He wanted me to come early too. And that's hard, and the older you get, the harder it gets. But sleep deprivation is better than God deprivation. I hate that sentence. I wrote it, but it's true. And if you'll come early, He'll tell you. He'll tell you.

And so the disciples, watching all this, had this hunger to know how to commune with God, how to be close with God, how to hear God about kingdom work and find His will and all of that. And so Jesus gives them this pattern. And the Lord's Prayer here, the short version—the longer one is in Matthew—is simply divided into two parts.

First, this declaration of dependence on a holy, heavenly, awesome, mighty Father. About His kingdom, His glory, His name, His will. And then the second part is all about the life in the community that Jesus was creating—the community of the faith and the faithful. And there you talk about provision for that community life to do the will of God and the work of God.

And there you see about protection and what that means. And there you see about a life of forgiveness. And so it's really in two parts, this pattern of prayer that we can use to help us as we are taught to pray by the Lord Himself. So first Jesus withdrew. And let me just go back to this one more time. Is it important?

A child asked me, twelve years old, "If God is everywhere, why do we need to go somewhere?" I love twelve-year-olds. Love this. This is my age. God's got age. What am I doing with you big people? I just love those kids. "If God is everywhere, why do you need to go somewhere?" Good question. Is He more evident in some places than others?

I have a little correspondence going with another child, twelve years old. Let's call her Bethany. "Dear Nana Jill"—she calls me Nana Jill—"I have a question for you. Sometimes when I go somewhere like church, I hear a really good sermon or something like that. And for the time I'm in the building, I feel really good. And I feel very new and refreshed. It's really hard to explain. Anyway, when I'm out of the building, it's gone. What's wrong?"

Good question. Do we have to be in a building? A building can help. The music can help. It can be conducive to us understanding we are in the presence of God. Yes, of course we're in the presence of God anywhere. But it makes us center down to that fact, doesn't it?

And I wrote back to this little girl, "Think about your relationship with your mom when you're with her. Like Mother's Day. And somehow you're sort of conscious and you feel love for your mom on Mother's Day, and it's a warm feeling. But then when you're at school the next day, maybe you don't even think of your mom at all all day. Does that mean you love her less? No. You know you love her. You just don't feel it.

"This is another aspect of love, a settled knowledge that you love each other, and that feels different. So when you're in a church building, it's like being with your mom on Mother's Day. So many things in the building—the music, the atmosphere—hopefully that the sanctuary helps you concentrate on God. When you leave, it's sort of like being at school without her."

Hope that helped her. But we rely far too much on our feelings where our prayer life is concerned. Far too much. All of us do. But we allow our feelings to dictate our relationship with God. I think of UK's St. Paul's Cathedral. I think of Cairo, Egypt, and the great cave in the mountains that holds five thousand people, Greek Orthodox.

I never wanted to leave that sanctuary when I was there. I think of a small chapel for the family by my home in England. I think of the Catholic retreat center out here in Delafield. I think of the Protestant clergy prayer room near my house. Anywhere inside or out that helps to still the soul. Where's your sanctuary?

It's amazing what the outside, incidentally, the cathedral of God's creation, does for the inside. Amazing what the outside does for the inside. And Jesus constantly—maybe because He couldn't get alone inside—was constantly out, out among the birds that His Father made and the flowers that He made. And just feeling sort of God's great church was a place that was very easy for Him after all the dirt and the filth and the leprosy and all of this. It was somewhere to renew His soul.

Stuart and I were in Vancouver Island, Canada, and we were talking our heads off. And it was spring, and we didn't even get out for four days, and we hadn't had a walk or anything. And I just felt the Lord was saying, "Come, come outside. Don't go to one more meeting you don't need to go to. Just come and walk with me."

And my Stuart loves God's world just like I do. And after we did that, just had a walk instead of going to one more meeting, my husband caught the way that simple time in the woods renewed us both in God's sanctuary. Sunlight glancing through the trees, branches dance to summer breeze, eagle circle azure sky, redwoods reaching up on high, reminding us of You, Lord, reminding us of You.

Warm as the sunlight, gentle as the breeze, vigilant as eagles, steadfast as the trees, so are You to us, Lord, so are You to us. Go walk, find a lake, park. I don't care. Just make sure you go to a certain place like Jesus did. It helps.

And then, of course, address the Father. Abba, Father. By using this familiar, tender name for God, Jesus transformed a formal theological exercise into an intense and intimate experience. And He taught His disciples to do the same. Abba, Father.

I've had a lot of talks, interestingly, this weekend with people that say, "I come from a traditional background. And you know, when I came into this particular group that pray, I felt uneasy when we address God in such a familiar way, with our own words and our own language. It didn't sound respectful."

Darrell Bock, in his commentary on the book of Luke, says, "Abba, the word itself combines respect for the Father's authority with a sense of intimacy. Intimacy doesn't do away with respect. Just remember who you're talking to. That's all. Just remember He's holy and you're not. That's all. My holy, heavenly Abba, Father. Father dear, yes. But a holy, heavenly God. He is God, and we are not."

And so we need to know who He is as we pray. And we need to know who we are as we pray. And if we concentrate on His holiness, that holiness will become real in us. There's no talk of sanctification in the Lord's Prayer. It's presumed. When we think of who He is, holiness is an obvious. We cannot speak to God unless we have confessed our sin.

And you said, "But Jill, I came to Jesus and He forgave all my sin." Yes. If you think of this line of this pulpit as the timeline, and God is here, and you get born and you live and you accept Jesus and you go all along here, out back into the presence of God. And you accept Jesus here, He forgives you all your sin, all that stuff and all this stuff that you haven't even done yet.

He forgives your sin. So why do I still need to confess it? Because of your fellowship with Him. Your initial confession deals with your relationship. All of this deals with your fellowship because if you have a child, a son, and your blood is in him, he is your child. He'll always be your son.

But maybe he'll leave home and maybe you'll have a row. And what you need is to reconcile and say sorry. And your fellowship—that's why you need to go on confessing those things that stop you talking to Him and listening to Him along this way. Your sin has been dealt with, your sin as a whole, but your fellowship needs to stay intact.

And if you feel far away from God, it might be because those things aren't dealt with. Remember that He is holy. Concentrate on His holiness. Nietzsche, who was not a very nice man at the end of the Second World War, he had influenced both Hitler and Stalin. He was the thinker and writer of Germany then.