Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: The choice of this conference, the choice name, "The Balancing Act," comes from top needs that we identified that women in ministry need. This to me is what I find all around the world as now, full-time, we minister to leaders and families and missions and church. It is what we're dealing with in the people that are serving God. How do I balance family and ministry? And if you're single, you've got a family. People forget that. Single people have a family, and they have to balance family and ministry just as surely as we married folks do.

So, it's the balancing act. How do we do this? Stuart and I get asked these questions more than anything else when we're on the road. The last couples conference that we did, they asked me to address, "Can a Christian committed to serve have a private life? What is a private life?" I could have called this, "Private what?"

There's a huge concern for balance. Oswald Chambers said, coming off 1 Corinthians 6:20, "You are not your own, you're bought with a price," that verse, there is a quote in *My Utmost for His Highest* which I have stuck in the back of my Bible. "God breaks up the private life of His saints and makes it a thoroughfare for the world on the one hand and Himself on the other. God breaks up the private life of"—let me rephrase this—"committed serving women Christians in a lay capacity or a professional capacity. God breaks up the private life of His saints and makes it a thoroughfare for the world on the one hand and for Himself on the other."

Certainly, after nearly 50 years in ministry, that is my experience. A few years in business and lay ministry, 13 years in missions, 30 years in the pastorate, and now ministers at large, which means all of the above. So, that's how it is. Let me tell you, after all these years, God breaks up the private lives of His servants and makes them a thoroughfare for the world on the one hand and Himself on the other. I want to investigate that little quote and see where we get to.

In the magazine *Just Between Us*, we get all sorts of letters. I have wonderful retired veteran missionaries that count it all joy to take those letters one by one and answer them longhand, most of them. What a gift to us and to you and to the people out there. But what do we hear? Pastors' wives saying, "I'm living in a fishbowl when the cat is watching," struggling with "the other woman in my husband's life." What do they mean by that? The church.

I have a very dear friend who is one of God's gentle ladies, mighty, mighty women of God. She wrote an article for us that we have reprinted many times. It was "The Other Man in My Husband's Life," and it was the church. She said, "The other woman in my husband's life. My husband dresses for the other woman, always. He's on time for the other woman. He looks after the other woman's children before he looks after my children." It was a very astute article on how many pastors' wives feel that in their husband's lives, there is another woman that seems to be so many times more important than they are or than their family.

We get a lot of letters on that sort of thing. I was in Singapore doing some meetings with Stuart for about five weeks this year. It was wonderful. I talked with a pastor's wife and I said, "Tell me about the pastors' wives in Singapore. Are you the same as we are? Do you have the same struggles?" I shared the top ten needs, those things that we've discovered. She said, "I think many of those things are the same." But she said, "The pastors' wives in Singapore all have to clean the church." That's different, maybe not for all of us.

I know when Dave, our eldest son, was pastoring up in Menominee, Michigan when he came out of seminary in a smaller church, he said one day, "Mom, I mow the lawn, I move Mrs. Smith, and I'm mending Uncle Bob's roof." He did it all. He did it all. But the pastor's wife was not expected to clean the church, even in a small situation like that. The pastor was expected to do more domestic stuff than the pastor's wife.

It's different everywhere. I was training two years ago all summer in secret, in cellars, in attics. 38 to 50 pastors' wives at a time came at the risk of their lives and their husbands' lives to those meetings. Stuart was doing the same with other team members with pastors. We met up on the last two days. We didn't see each other because it was too clandestine, too difficult.

But I looked at those women. In one instance, we were in a pastor's bedroom because his church had been closed down by the communists about ten years previously. They chopped up the pews. The water was still in the baptistery from that day. They wrecked his church and said, "You can live in the attic." So he did. He moved upstairs with his wife and three children in two rooms right up at the top of this decrepit typical crumbling communist building.

We met in his bedroom. He put the bed up against the wall and here we are sitting on the floor, of course, which they do very well and I do very badly. They had, bless their hearts, gone to no end of sacrifice and trouble to get me a small chair so that I could sit to teach. 8:00 in the morning until 8:00 at night, we trained. We went down an hour in the middle of the day for the compulsory sleep. They gave me the bed. I insisted that others came on it with me. Others just went right down on the floor.

We talked, and I asked them this question: "What's it like being a pastor's wife here?" You know the amazing thing was, about eight of the ten challenges were the same as on our list. There was, however, one different thing. She said, "It's like being daughter-in-law to a hundred mothers-in-law." Think about that. I would say eight of their answers were positive. "What a privilege to suffer with the church," was one of them. "I love being a pastor's wife because we have the privilege of suffering with the church," etc.

A little different, the pluses and the minuses. I remember coming back after that to a large convention in the United States, straight back from that soul-changing experience in my life. My soul will never be or return to its original shape, I want you to know that, because of two summers ago. I went into this typical American situation, a women's situation. I listened—I wasn't doing it deliberately, I just was in the prayer meeting—listening to everybody praying before the women arrived. I was hearing things like, "Oh Lord, please let there be a parking space for Mrs. Smith, because if she drives up and she has to walk ten yards, she'll go home again." And I am thinking, "What?"

I realized that we get hardship and inconvenience mixed up here, big time. I realized a whole lot of other things. I had this huge homesickness because I wanted to go back and be with my sisters that had been such an incredible blessing to me in those situations. So, it's different all the way around the world. But they're struggling with balance too. They're balancing different things, that's all.

And the needs are the same. Incidentally, they don't have a complete Bible, and the translation is very, very bad and difficult. For example, Genesis 3, Adam and Eve in the garden. My partner I had taken with me, she was teaching the worth of a woman from Genesis. Everything we taught them, we showed them how to make it into curriculum and go back and teach ten more people. Before we'd left, this was happening all over the place.

She wanted to get this Genesis thing down, that both of us were equally guilty, both of us equally fell, men and women and all this. So she was teaching through and she came to the bit where it says that Eve took the fruit and ate it and gave it to Adam and he ate it. He was with her, remember that. And there was murmuring, and I asked my interpreter, "What's the matter?" She said, "It doesn't say that in our Bible." I said, "What does it say?" She said, "It says that Eve forced it on the man and made him eat it."

Now think about this. And so, the progression of that, folks, is "as in Eve all die," not "as in Adam." That's where you get your whole problem in other philosophies of religion across this world. Because if the woman deceived the man, she is the one that caused sin to come into the human race and she must be hidden, covered, kept out of sight, subjugated in case she ever deceives a man again. It's all stemming from that one verse. And if you've got the wrong translation in those sort of key verses, you're in trouble.

What are the needs of the pastors' wives? The same as ours in many ways. But balance, balancing the risks of doing what they're doing to themselves and their families and continuing to train and teach and reach and evangelize when in many places it's forbidden today. And so, what do we do with all of this? I don't want to make us feel guilty just because other people are doing a whole lot better job than we are at it. No, it's not my intent. But it's hugely challenging to me. I know I've got one life. I wish I had another. I'd give anything to have another life. I'd love to be a Wycliffe translator and go where nobody's ever gone and put God's word down in a heart language. Oh joy! But I never did now.

So many things I want to do. And so I want to get it right. When you've got a heart for God, the danger is to get unbalanced, just to be thoroughly, thoroughly unbalanced. When I look at Jesus, I see that He struggled with the same things that we did. Now, I'm going to just look at Jesus' family and what happened to Him in this balancing thing that He had to go through as well.

Jesus had this huge burden. "I must be about my Father's business." He was twelve. Not "I might be" or "I might not be" or "I may be." "I must!" And there's that "must-ness" in us, isn't there? We want to be about our Father's business, whatever shape and however that looks at different stages in our life. So, He had this huge burden. But basically, the burden that Christ had was for the lost. The people that aren't going to go to heaven if somebody doesn't go and tell them how to get there. The people who haven't rejected Jesus, the people who've never had a chance to receive Him. Those people.

Jesus was always thinking about them. I think about this lost man, Nicodemus, this religious man. He came to Jesus after church hours. Jesus had been in meetings all day. He stayed up past His bedtime, well past His bedtime, knowing well what faced Him on the morrow. You need to read that part of the early ministry in Galilee and see what His days looked like. Incredible.

I think about John 4. A lost woman comes in His lunch hour. He's tired and He's hungry and He's hot and He's thirsty, and He asks her for a drink. And He saved her in His lunch hour. A multitude interrupted His grief, and He fed them and He taught them. A mob interrupted His teaching, and a woman in the act of adultery was dragged out of bed, thrown down in front of Jesus and her story told, and He forgave her. A sinner woman interrupted His meal and He dealt with it.

What's the first thing we do when we're interrupted? God breaks up the private lives of His saints and He makes them a thoroughfare for the world on the one hand and Himself on the other. He gives a pick and an axe to our congregation and the world and says, "Go to it. Break up that life. Let's get those hearts broken." And that's what I find has been a huge challenge to me, just the interruptions—God's wonderful interruptions.

I have written in my diary—I saw it ages ago when I was looking for an illustration—years and years ago: "I can't have hours like the post office." I don't know when I read that, but we have a little post office where I am and I don't know when it's ever open. I've tried to take it by surprise, just drop in. It is incredible to me they do any business because it's never open. And you know, I think some of us are like that. We have hours like the post office. You can't do that when you're in ministry, otherwise you're going to get very frustrated and probably get out of ministry.

I look at Jesus being constantly interrupted. I have a book that's coming out, in fact, it's out in England. It's probably the only book I've ever really wanted to write. Nobody wanted to publish over here and so I went back to England and a publisher took it. It's really my heart. It's my conversations with God, it's my poetry, it's that stuff. One of the pieces in it is about interruptions.

It was at the end of such a day I carried my complaints to the front door. It's called "God's Front Door," coming off Lewis's "There is a door in the universe and we are living on this side of it, but one day we shall get in." I love that whole passage of his vision of heaven and the idea of a door in the pitiless thing of the universe. It's a fabulous quote and so that's why I called it "The Front Door." These are conversations on the front doorstep that I'm having with the Lord.

It was at the end of such a day of being interrupted, interrupted, interrupted, that I carried my complaints to the front door and sat down. I couldn't wait for Him to come, but the door was shut and He didn't immediately appear. I was irritated because my day had been full of interruptions and I couldn't wait to start griping about it. A thought occurred to me that I had come to complain about all my interruptions, but I was going to interrupt Him doing whatever He was doing. "Well," I reasoned, "that was different. It was His job to drop everything and attend to me."

I began to think about my messy day. It had all been scheduled and it had all been so wonderfully scheduled. And then it began. I no sooner got going when the phone rang, the kids called, the washing machine overflowed, the dog ran away, and a needy person appeared from nowhere and demanded my attention. I hate that. She didn't fare too well. I tried to listen to her litany of woes, but I had my eye on the clock and she caught me glancing at it every two minutes. She left hurriedly, feeling unwelcome and uncared for and unloved and as empty as she came.

I did feel a twinge of guilt, but thankfully it soon passed, hurried out the door of my conscience by all my righteous excuses. "Well," I assured myself, "it was her fault. She hadn't made an appointment."

"I made it for her," a voice said in my ear. I jumped. I hadn't seen Him arrive. "You made the appointment?" I asked as if He was speaking so quietly I couldn't quite hear. He knows I'm a little deaf. And then, "But you didn't check with me first."

"Well, you didn't check with me either," He pointed out mildly, sitting down. I noticed He had some plans in His hands and I managed to peek surreptitiously at the papers and they looked incredibly complicated. Had I interrupted some grand cosmic meeting with the Trinity looking to create a few more universes?

"What's the matter?" He said kindly. Well, I began my litany of woes and I talked for at least 20 minutes without stopping. After all, I had had a lot of interruptions and I wanted to make sure I complained about every single one of them. I suddenly noticed He hadn't looked at His watch once. He was just sitting there and I knew I was center stage in His thinking.

I thought about the grand cosmic plans in His hands and then I thought about all my petty little gripes. The worried woman's face appeared in my mind and I tried hard to ignore it. What had He said? That He had made the appointment for her.

"She needed you," He said simply, following my thoughts.

"But Lord, you know what my schedule looked like," I argued.

"You had a choice," He replied. "It's really quite simple. People matter more than schedules. When I lived outside the front door, I was constantly interrupted by the multitude. But I believe my Heavenly Father made My day and He knew He could interrupt Me as He wished."

"Oh," I muttered miserably. He didn't pat me on the head and say, "There, there, it doesn't really matter," or hit me over the head with a verse from His book. He just sat there and I looked at Him carefully and then I noticed He was praying. I didn't want to interrupt that, so I stayed very still. I was certain He was praying for me. When He stopped, I said, "Thank you, Lord, for praying for me."

He said, "I wasn't praying for you. I was praying for her." Now I was speechless. Well, that was good.

He left then and I got to my feet and I reached out to Him and He turned at the door and looked right through me. I knew He was looking right at my heart. "Is it hard?" I whispered.

"Yes," He said.

"Soften it, Lord, please."

"Alright."

"Please Lord, if it's not too late, send her back to me tomorrow."

"But your schedule's full of things to do, Jill."

"Please Lord, I'll be waiting." There was a long silence and then He was gone. And she didn't come back. Why should she?

What did I miss that day? And who else received the blessing of investing in her life? What a loss.

And that little conversation has been repeated many times in my life because I'm a list lady and I'm a schedule keeper and I'm very, very organized. Actually, I don't look it, but I am. People matter more than schedules, than programs, than having to be here and there and keep this or that.

I thought the other day, "Lord, I need to get to the point where I let You write anything on my schedule You want to." I mean, do you really get irritated when somebody came along to your schedule and just started to put things on? It'd irritate you, wouldn't it? We've got to get to the point where we say, "I'm going to live an unplanned life." Yes, I'm going to plan, yes, I'm going to schedule, but when the interruptions come, I have to think, "Did He make that appointment for her or for him or for this other person?"

Balance is being obedient to His plans for your life and calling and doing what He says is first on a daily basis. Remembering that people matter more than programs so you treat all interruptions as His.