Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: In 1945, at the end of World War II, Helmut Thielicke, an incredible theologian and pastor—probably the only one out of jail in Hitler's world—was preaching through the Lord's Prayer in what was left of his church to what was left of his congregation in Stuttgart, Germany. He said this: "A bewildered human race is like a man lost in a forest asking, 'Father, are you there?'"

Thielicke said everything will be all right as long as we hear his good voice calling to us above the howling of the wolves, above the sound of branches snapping, above the ominous noises around us. God is always there. A Christian believes in the father-ness, the fatherhood of God. He or she believes that God is always there. Yes, sometimes he hides his face, sometimes in the dark, but never at a distance. And the human heart calls out, "How can it be in this forest, in this storm, in this rain, that the Father is there at all?"

The issue of Newsweek on the front of the cover says, "Spirituality in America." It says as diverse as America itself are the ways that America seeks spiritual enlightenment. It talks about Christian immigrants bringing their faith to our country in the last years. It talks about a daily website that sends out eight million emails of spiritual wisdom every day to five million subscribers. Some of that is generic inspiration, the most popular one. Some is Bible verses, some is a Buddhist thought for today, some is for Torah devotees, some is Muslim wisdom, and nature-worshipping pagans divided into a mind-boggling panoply of sects, the favorite eclectic paganism. Even atheists are spiritualists, searching for meaning in parapsychology and near-death experiences.

The researcher says American faith has long been characterized by creativity and individualism. That's the secret to their success. Rather than about being a God who commands you, it's about finding a religion that helps you, that empowers you. It's all about me, says America. So, I'll try a little bit of this, I'll try a little bit of that, and I'll find not one size fits all, but something for me. It's me-ness, not God-ness. It's all about me.

But Christianity is all about God. It's all about him. In this book, Christians believe this is a revealed body of truth. It tells us how to know God, tells us how to draw near to God, tells us what we need to say, it tells us how to pray. That was another fascinating thing about this issue of Newsweek. It says about the prayers that everybody's praying to someone in America, or to something. And the researcher was asking all sorts of questions: how do you pray and who do you pray to? But they didn't ask Jesus. So, I thought it was my chance to redress that rather large omission.

In Luke 11:1, a group of men are watching the Lord Jesus Christ pray. When he's finished, they say, "Teach us to pray." It's something about Jesus, and it's something about what happens when Jesus prays. It's something about his face, and it's something about the power that's evident when he's finished praying. This gives the disciples this longing. We don't know where to start, we don't know how to go on, we don't know where to finish, we don't know how to do this. Lord, teach us to pray.

When you look at Jesus and prayer, you cannot get away. It was as natural as breathing. It was something Jesus did all the time. He talked to his Heavenly Father, for prayer basically is just the speaking part of our relationship with God. You look at the start of his ministry. He's standing in the river. He's about to be baptized by the Holy Spirit for the power he's going to need to redeem you and me. Just before, it says in the Gospel of Matthew, he was praying. Here he is. He obviously wasn't praying out loud. There were crowds around. Nobody could hear what he was saying. But his body language was saying to that crowd, "Here I am, I can do no other. I am communing with my Father in heaven."

You look at the whole of his life. You look at the end of his redemptive work when he took the disciples into the Garden of Gethsemane. He said, "I need you to pray for me. I really do. Will you watch with me? Would you pray with me?" He comes back and he finds them sleeping twice. Jesus says, "What? Couldn't you even pray one hour?" Think about that. Couldn't you even pray one hour? To Jesus, it was nothing to pray for an hour. How long do you pray? How long do I? Five minutes, ten minutes, half an hour? What, says God, couldn't you even pray an hour?

Jesus and prayer. What about when he was hanging on the cross? Seven sayings from Christ on his cross redeeming the world. Four of them he was praying. Four of those sayings, he was talking to his Father. "Father, forgive them," the Romans crucifying him. They don't know what they're doing. He prayed for his persecutors. He prayed for the Roman soldiers that were putting him on that cross. "My God, my God, where are you?" When Jesus hung on the cross in that forest and he cried out, "Father, are you there?" there was no answer. That in order that when you and I cry out in the forest, "Father, are you there?" there would be one. There would be one. No answer.

"Into thy hands I commit my spirit." "Into my hands I commit my spirit." And then that great cry from the cross that you might not think is a prayer. I happen to think it was. "It's finished. It's done." Not "I am finished." It. What's the "it"? Redemption. A way to the Father. I've done it. I've opened the way. And in the temple, the curtain was rent in two. God rent it from the top to the bottom. A way into the holiest of all. A way to pray, a way to talk.

Jesus said, "Because of what I've done on the cross, I've opened a way to the throne room for you and for me." So, he prayed in front of people, he prayed quietly, he went away to pray. He was in the middle of success. He was healing people, they were listening to him. There were thousands of people coming to him, and he left them. He went away to get perspective and to hear his Father's voice.

He prayed at all the major points in his life: when he chose his twelve disciples, the miracle of feeding of the five thousand. At the Last Supper, Jesus prayed six times. "Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father." Read it. It was just part of who he was. And he wants it to be part of who we are. Father. Is that how we pray? Think of him standing outside the tomb of Lazarus. He starts to talk to his Father. "Father, I know you always hear me. I'm not saying that out loud just for fun. I know you would hear me if I prayed silently. But because of the watchers, because of the listeners, I am praying out loud that they may know that you've sent me, Father." And then he says, "Lazarus, come forth." And the man came forth. Did he walk out? No, he had his feet bound. He came out by the sheer power of the word of God following prayer. Father, bring him out, give him life.

Jesus prayed. And when the disciples saw Jesus in prayer, they said, "Teach us. I want to be there. I want to do that. I want to go there. I want to know how to pray. Teach us how to pray." And Jesus said, "Shut your eyes and listen to me." And he prayed, "Our Father in heaven, our holy Father in heaven, holy be your name, honored be your name, thy kingdom come and will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Shut your eyes and listen to me."

When I was converted in hospital, the girl that led me to Christ as a student gave me a Bible. In one day, she gave me more information to last me a lifetime because she showed me how to look at the scripture, let the scripture talk to me, to ask it questions and set me off in a lifetime of hearing God's voice speak to me. The third day after my conversion, she said, "Now you need to learn to pray. God speaks to you, you respond to him, and you have this conversation, conversation with God. Do you know how to pray, Jill?" I said, "No, I haven't a clue. Never prayed." Well, she said, "Shut your eyes and listen to me."

So, we shut our eyes. She was in one bed, I was in the other, and I listened to her pray. She opened her eyes, she turned to me and she said, "Now you do it." So, I shut my eyes and tried to copy a sort of prayer like she'd prayed, opened my eyes and said, "How did I do?" And she said, "Not very well. But it'll get better. Practice."

I was reminded of pastors' wives, all leaders' wives. A sweetest young woman came to me, sat down in front of me, and through the interpreter said, "Could I hear you pray? Then I'll know how to do it." Can you imagine the challenge of that? If somebody came up to you and said, "I want to hear you pray, then I'll know how to talk to God." Could you do it? Shut your eyes and listen to me.

Look what it says in Luke chapter 11. The disciples said, "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples." Now we have a lot of groups in this church. We have a lot of youth groups, we have a lot of men's groups, we have a lot of women's groups, we have a lot of couples' groups. And we learn to do a pretty good job with this. But you know what we also should be doing? Helping each other to pray. Saying, "Come with me. Come on. Come to the throne room." Take people to the throne room. Hear the seraphs sing together. What better thing could you do for people to teach them how to pray?

Teach us how to pray. John's doing it for his disciples. Jesus, you do it for us. And so Jesus began. And he gave them a pattern. He gave them words. Shut your eyes and listen to me. And it was very obvious that he began "Our Father." He wanted them to go heart-deep. This is a heart-deep thing. Prayer is a heart-deep operation. How many of us go heart-deep? Don't be like the hypocrites. They love to be seen of men. Pray in secret where your Father only sees in the deep place where nobody goes. Sit on the steps of your soul and talk to him.

I run to the deep place where nobody goes and found him waiting there. "Where have you been?" he asked me. "Well, I've been in the shallow place where everyone lives," I replied. And I knew he knew. He just wanted me to admit I've been too busy being busy. "Well, I'm running out," I began. "Well, of course," he said. "Jill, I haven't seen you in a while." And he sat down on the steps of my soul in the deep place where nobody goes, and he smiled at me and an angel sang and a shaft of light chased away the shadows and brightened my daily day and I smiled back. "I'm such a fool." "Shh," he said, putting his finger on my lips. And he touched my hurried heart and startled it. It took a deep breath and skidded to a near stop. My spirit nestled into nearness in the deep place where nobody goes. And my soul spoke then, and he answered with words beyond music. Where on earth had I been while heaven waited? Such grace. The waiting Father, the waiting Father. Where have we been while heaven waits?

Such grace. Go heart-deep. If you don't know what I'm talking about, pray about it. I have spent so much time talking to people about where to begin and problems in prayer. And I've just simply said, "Pray about it." Oh, that never occurred to anybody. You mean I pray about prayer? Yes. If you don't know where to start, and you don't know how to do it, and you don't know what I'm talking about about going heart-deep and getting held against the heart of your Father, pray about it. Say, "What I heard gave me a hunger, rang a bell, but I don't know where to start. Father, are you there?" Start there. Start there and ask him to help you.

And then learn to listen. Listen with a pencil in your hand. Listen with your Bible open. Bring your Bible to church. Look at it yourself, check it out. Hang your heart over the word of God. Listen. Listen. And Jesus often went into solitude, into silence. We don't know how to do that. We have managed to raise a generation of children that don't know what silence or solitude's all about. And we're not much better. Some of us are afraid of being alone. Some of us don't want to be alone with ourselves, and some of us are even afraid of being alone with God. But it doesn't work any other way. We have to learn silence, we have to learn solitude. And naturally, when one engages in this inner soliloquy, that's where we become focused on God instead of focused on me, on myself.

It was interesting to see in Helmut Thielicke's book on the Lord's Prayer that I was reading, and it's out of print, but this incredible little book that a friend gave me. What a gift. Said that there was a man who wrote about people praying in Stuttgart in those days in the Second World War. And he said, naturally, when one engages in this inner soliloquy, one need not activist, one was really speaking to a thou, to a God. One must be quite rational about it and abandon this old resort to a world beyond where one's most secret thoughts are supposedly heard. One must quite soberly make up one's mind. It's only a matter of talking to oneself for the purpose of clarifying and composing our minds.

And Helmut Thielicke answers that article in another article in the Stuttgart paper, and he said, "What a tragic delusion, this yearning for prayer, which denies itself any actual fulfillment. Beyond the heroic set face of this man lies the whole tragedy of a child who's lost his father." Father, are you there? You don't need a thou. You just do it for yourself. You meditate, you sit cross-legged, you go to you.

I was sitting on a plane, and I began to have a conversation with a young woman. And it was rather interesting. What I do so often is I get around to talking about prayer, which opens up all sorts of conversations. And I managed to do that with this young woman. And I said to her, "Do you pray?" "Well, of course," she said. "Everyone prays." And then I said, "Well, who do you pray to?" "Well, now I don't really know. God, I suppose." "Which God would that be?" I asked. "Well, actually," she said, "prayer is a lot more than praying to God, you know. I go within myself and meditate. I calm myself down. In fact, praying for me is creating peace for myself in the middle of the noise and confusion around me." "Sounds sort of lonely," I said. "Well, what do you mean?" "Well, just you and you," I said. "Well, I only want me," she said. "I'm enough. Prayer is where you're happy with yourself alone when you sort of commune with yourself." "So, it's nothing to do with God your Father?" "Not really. I mean, sometimes I suppose, but it doesn't have to be. Doesn't have to be."

Doesn't have to be. I tell you something, if you want to know God, it has to be prayer to the Father, who Jesus came to reveal to us. One day Philip said to him, "If you'd just show us the Father." Jesus said, "Look at me." And Philip looked and noticed something he'd never noticed: he had his Father's eyes. That incredible family likeness, of course. "I am in my Father, my Father in me. And his is the heaven, the home I'm going to take you to."

So, there is a God in heaven, there is a Christ to take us there. And if it's God's heaven, the God revealed in the scriptures, in the Bible, then he has every right to have who he wants in his heaven and to tell us the way to get there. And that's what he said through Christ: "I'm the way, the only way. I'm the truth, the only truth. I'm the true truth. No man comes to the Father but by me. Philip, you're looking at him. You want to see the Father? Look at me. Look at me."

And Jesus said, "That's where you begin." The problem is that some of us have this sense, "I can't talk to the Father for some very, very sad reasons." Some of you have been abused by a father. Some of you have been hurt by a father. Some of you have been left by a father. Some of you have been ignored. Some of you have had a father that's showed favoritism or has been absent. And yet this search for father-ness has left a bitterness because of all of that in your heart. And you say, "Don't ask me to pray to God the Father. I'll pray to Jesus, that'll do." Jesus said, "Don't pray to me, pray to the Father through me." The reason you can pray to the Father and must pray to the Father is I've made the way. So you come in my name, you come because of what I did. Don't pray to me. Pray to the Father. When you pray, say, "Our Father." He did it in his life. He showed us that's the way to go.

But you say, "I just want to pray to Jesus or I want to pray to the Spirit." Well, the Spirit helps us to pray when we don't know what to pray for, and he gives us ideas and thoughts and prayers to pray. But nowhere in the Bible does it say you pray to the Spirit of God. The Spirit is the one who holds a torchlight on Christ, and Christ is the one that holds the torchlight on the Father. He says, "When you pray, say, 'Our Father.'" There is a sense of "I want this father-ness. I'm looking for this father-ness." It's in every human breast in the world. The world is homeless, believe me. The whole world is homeless. And that's the tragedy. They've no home to go back to. And you sit there and you cry because you and I know if only we can go home, it'll be all right. There is a sense of "I want to go home." Whenever you're in trouble, you want to go home.

9/11, sitting in Canada with flight 929 all around me for six days in a Salvation Army home. All I heard from 400 people from 18 different nations: "I want to go home. I just want to go home." I was talking to a woman trying to talk about the Lord and she wasn't interested. And she just kept saying, "Oh, I'm not interested in all of that. I just want to go home." So, I said, "Tell me about your home. Do you have a good home?" "No," she said. "I've got a horrible home." I said, "But you want to go home." "Yes, I just want to go home." Whether you have a good home, whether you have a bad home, you want to go home. Because you hear the snapping of the branches and the howling of the wolves and the storm comes, and you want to go home. You want home-ness in your heart.

And when God the Father is in your life, you're home. And I was able to say to that young woman, "Home's the will of God for the child of God. So, I'd like to go home, but I'm fine, I'm home. I don't believe anything can happen to me outside the will of God. I am home." And she said, "I can see you're home. You're the only one on this whole plane load smiling every time I look your way. You're settled, you're there, you're home." And I said, "Let me tell you how that happens." And it was through me saying that to her, touching that nerve. Father, are you there? I want to go home. I want to be held against your heart. I was able to tell that beautiful young woman about the way, the way you can know home-ness in your heart, the way you can know the father-ness of God. Our Father, our Father. Family-ness, this incredible sense: I have a family, I have a home to go to in the high countries. Lewis called them the high countries, heaven. There is a place to go. That's what we can tell people. There is a final home. God will take us home. Abraham said, "Here I have no continuing city. I don't have a home." But that's all right. "I've got a home, and I'm on the way. I'm on the way. I'm on the way home."

Now, if you have had an unfortunate experience, very hard for you to start pray to the Father. I had the other problem. I had a wonderful dad. Didn't see him for four years. He was fighting in the war, and I was sitting in an air raid shelter. But I knew what my dad was doing. He was trying to stop the war. He was trying to stop the bombs falling on my life every night for four years. He was trying, even giving his life, to look after me as a perfect father. He came to my ball games. He was there for me before the war and would be after the war. And even though he wasn't there, I trusted him.

And my problem sitting in that dugout, going heart-deep in my six-year-old mind for the very first time in my wanderings about the father-ness of God was: I think my father's nicer than that Father. Because if my father were God, he would stop the war. So what sort of a God is he? And as I sat there, a small child thinking about the father-ness of God, I remember thinking, "Is that you, Father?" My small heart crying, "Is that you?" And I wondered if perchance it was indeed he in the forest of my life who would bring me out of the forest of my father-less into his arms. Took eight years more before I found the Father. And I found as I went heart-deep, the Father is always there. Sometimes a God who hides himself, never a God who absences himself. Sometimes in the dark, but never at a distance. And as I began to think and listen with my heart, I began to understand when I came home to the Father, I could hear him. "I love you, I love you, I love you. We're going to make it. I'm going to get you home." And I have heard that for nearly 50 years in the deep place where nobody goes.

And so whatever problem you might have with praying to the Father, pray about it. Get over it. Because your prayer life will never have the richness until you understand what the Bible says about the father-ness of God. And do not bring your idea of father-ness and maleness to this. Bring your heart to the scriptures and say, "What does this reveal about your father-ness? What does it say? What is this all about?" And ask him to redress that for you. Our Father, which art in heaven, holy, honored be your name.

Nietzsche was a man alive when Thielicke was alive, and he was the one that influenced Hitler. Hitler had all his books. Nietzsche died crazy, died mad as a hatter. But not before he had influenced Hitler to do what he did and Stalin to do it after him. And Nietzsche talked to Thielicke or Thielicke talked to Nietzsche. And he said, "Christians will have to look a lot more redeemed before I will believe in their redeemer." Because they weren't holy. They weren't honoring God. Their life didn't pan out. And Nietzsche said, whether he was sincere or not, "I look at Christians and they're so little redeemed." Let me ask you something: how dare we be so little redeemed? How dare we? Because the world is looking at us. And we are so little holy, we are so little redeemed. Why would they want to believe in a redeemer?

"Hallowed be your name." And it's interesting to me that in the Lord's Prayer there is nothing about me praying, "Make me happy, make me better, make me like Jesus." Me, me, me, me, me, sanctification. There's nothing there. There doesn't have to be. Because if we concentrate on the holiness of God, then we will want to honor him. We will not want to hurt him by being unholy.

I remember as a teenager years and years ago, being at a party I shouldn't have been at. I wasn't a believer. And my sister had seen me get involved with this gang of kids that was no good. And I was just like them. I was the prodigal. I was living in the pigsty. And she took me, even though she wasn't a believer, she was a morally wonderful sister. She took me, sat me down on the bed when she'd seen me with this crowd of kids in a park. And she said, "Jill, if you ever get pregnant, it will kill Daddy." That was all she said. She said, "That's all I wanted to say. Just know."

"If you ever get pregnant, it will kill Daddy." And after that, the next week, I went to another party I shouldn't have gone to. And a young man tried to get me into bed. And I resisted. And he sneered at me, "You're just scared of what your father will do to you." And I said, "No, I'm just scared of what I'll do to my father." If you're scared of what your sin will do to your Father, you will have no problem being holy. Hallowed be your name. So little redeemed, so little like him, so little I've changed from what I have been, so little like Jesus, so people can see his power and his glory living in me. Are you so little redeemed? Our Father, our Heavenly holy Father, who lives in that incredible home that we're going to, that he's going to take us to. Holy, honored be your name, and Lord, my Father, I am going to honor you. That will take care of all the holiness issues in your life.

And so, I wonder where you are. Are you a prodigal in a pigsty? Well, you need to come home to the Father, he's waiting. Know how to do that? I'm going to give you a prayer in a minute. Maybe you could borrow my words if you don't have any of your own. Or maybe you say, "No, I'm not in a pigsty. I'm a perfectly respectable Christian, card-carrying Christian." But maybe you're like the older brother. Two sons who were prodigals. One in the pigsty, the other in the pew probably. Never did anything wrong. He just sat there and got more and more angry at his father. "I've slaved for you all my life. You never gave me a goat to have a party." Read the prodigal son. The younger one says, "Give me, give me, give me," and then goes and wastes his life with rebellious living. And the older son is there listening. And it says in the parable, Jesus divided unto them their inheritance. And one took it, misused it, and the other kept it. Surely he could have afford a goat to have a party. But his resentment, his anger. Looked a perfect church-going person. He was a prodigal in the pew, and he needed to come home to the Father just as much as his brother. Where are you in the story?

Let's pray about this. Pray with me. It says in the parable of the prodigal son there's rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents, one homeless person that comes home to God, one father-less person that comes home to father-ness and hears him say, "I love you. We're going to make it. I'm going to take you home." And so in this quiet place at this moment, just talk to him. Say what you need to say. Maybe "I've sinned against heaven and in your sight, I'm not worthy to be called your son. Forgive me." And he'll cover it up. Yes, he will. Or maybe you're the older brother who has no heart for the lost or his father, who's cold, angry, resentful. And you need to come home too. And so, I invite you, come.

I know that in heaven the Father is watching and he's saying to the angels, "There's one, she's coming home. There's one, he's coming home." Oh Lord, thank you that when we cry, "Father, are you there?" you say, "Yes, come on. Come on home."

Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Amen.