Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Now then, owning is an obsession in our culture. Absolutely no question about that. Owning is an obsession in our culture. See what's so exciting about the television programs, the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Who cannot say that we haven't snuck a peek at that and drooled over some of those things? There is something in us that wants to know how they live and what it must feel like to have all that money and houses here and houses there.

It's fascinating to us, to all of us, Christian women and non-Christian women alike, and men, too. Wealth is the benchmark of achievement in this country. It isn't a question of how much character we have, but how much cash. But what is this wealth that makes our modern heroes heroes and our modern heroines heroines? Well, very interestingly, the modern hero is the poor boy who purposely becomes rich, rather than the rich boy who voluntarily becomes poor. Think about that. The modern hero is the poor boy who purposely becomes rich, rather than the rich boy who purposely or voluntarily becomes poor for a cause.

I had absolutely no problem whatsoever picking up at least half a dozen magazines to underline my point. This one is for women and it's called First. And the whole thing is on from rags to riches. Twenty-four women who went from rags to riches and they tell how they did it and how you can do it, too. Dolly Parton, her childhood reads like the lyrics to a sad, sad country song. Dolly's parents were so poor when she was born, they paid the doctor with a sack of cornmeal. And then they tell you, incidentally, how much they're all worth.

Then, of course, Sophia Loren, a destitute street urchin. There was one big, big bed where my grandfather, grandmother, and I slept. A little bed for my mother and kids' sister, Maria. My mother even stole a cup of water from a car radiator, melting it so that she could give her daughters a drink. Young Sophia was so emaciated she earned the nickname toothpick.

Then, of course, there's Mary Higgins, who is a quite well-known author. She knows of what she speaks. After an impoverished childhood, she was widowed at 36, left with five kids. It's incredible. Over and over again, woman after woman. Barbara Streisand, family was so poor that her only doll was a water bottle dressed in a sweater and a hat.

What about Mary Kay? By the time Mary Kay was seven, her dad was bedridden, her mom worked 14-hour days. Mary Kay ran the house. Can you imagine a seven-year-old cooking dinner, she asks? And then, of course, there's at the end of each page there's a little thing of how you can do this, too. Successful women have a firm belief that they control their own destiny. Successful women believe not only that they control their own destiny, but that they have to develop a strong ego, not only to survive adversity, but to believe they deserve better.

And so here we have over and over again the modern heroine who is the poor woman who purposely becomes rich, rather than the rich woman who voluntarily becomes poor. And people like your Mother Teresas and your missionaries and my favorite missionary, I think, of C.T. Studd. He was an Englishman who was born to wealth, highborn as we call it in England. And he was converted when he was a student at Cambridge. He was captain of the English cricket team, which was like being the MVP for everything in England.

And after he found Christ, he took his checkbook and literally signed away, mostly to the Salvation Army, I believe, his entire fortune and inheritance and took off with seven young men from Cambridge University to China. They were called the Cambridge Seven. And they were all the brightest and the best of Cambridge University. That's like the Harvard of England. It made headlines all over the world. The farewell for these seven young men was covered by nationwide radio. Of course, they didn't have television in those days, newspapers from around the world.

It was news then. In a sense, they became heroes. But you know they probably wouldn't even have a send-off now. People would just say, "Well, I think that's rather foolish, and I think it's a little irresponsible to do something like that." Well, what is the definition of wealth? Webster says, "A large amount of something." I like that. That's the definition of wealth. A large amount of something, an abundance.

And these are the words in the dictionary: affluence, the connotations of influence in the community, lavish spending, ostentatious, luxurious, sumptuous, mansions, happiness, power, kingdoms, empires. All of that in Webster's little piece of his definition of wealth. Then Webster says it's having more than enough of material property, having more than enough. In other words, then I looked up rich. It said, "Rich is the general word for one who has more money or income-producing property than is necessary to satisfy his normal needs."

That means all of us, folks. If you've come here to hear about the rich, we are. Because I don't believe there's anybody sitting here, unless you've just been declared bankrupt, maybe you're the exception, who does not have enough money or income-producing property than is necessary to satisfy his normal needs. Not wants, needs.

Have you ever had a vacation at the beach? We used to get in the car and traipse our kids all the way down to South Carolina and take a big old beach house and stay there for two weeks with some friends. It was just wonderful. I think we took one little duffel bag with sweatshirts and shorts and swimsuit. And we cooked with a couple of pans that were in this old beach house. And at night we swept out the sand that was on the floor and didn't bother cleaning up for two weeks.

And I remember thinking every single time at the end of that, we have had absolutely nothing in this house. I mean the beds were there and that was about it. And we haven't needed anything else than we had. And it's been wonderful. It really was. Have you ever had an experience like that? And you sit there and you think, "What do I need a house full of junk for? I'm going back to all this responsibility and a lawn that needs mowing and maybe a swimming pool that needs cleaning and this whole hassle of looking after all this stuff that we accumulate."

Well, rich is having more than satisfies our normal needs. And of course, it's all relative. The Board of World Relief, we don't even talk about third world poverty now, we talk about fourth world poverty. With people that have incomes of $50 a year. I was sitting on a plane not too long ago and I got talking to the young man next to me who was quite a snazzy-looking businessman and he was interested in the work and so I was telling him what we did.

And he said, "Well, I don't have much sympathy for all these people that out of work." He said, "If they would help themselves then maybe I'd give my money to a relief organization." He said, "If they'd just get a job then maybe I'd be interested." So I said, "How well would you work on half a cup of rice a week, period? Would you have the energy in incredible temperatures to go out and dig ditches and do the only work that's available in some of those fourth world countries on half a cup of rice a week?"

I said, "Those people are on one eternal fast until they die. And anyway, they would give their right arm if there was a job, but there aren't any jobs." Now then when you're talking like that, everything is relative. Our homeless are rich compared to third world countries, never mind fourth world. Have you ever seen a homeless naked man on our streets? I haven't. I've seen many homeless. My son-in-law and my daughter are heading up a homeless project in the inner city of Chicago, adopting homeless families through their church and getting them settled.

And Greg was telling me the other day, he said, "I cannot believe it, my homeless family bought a car today." He said, "What are they doing? It's an old junker, but he doesn't have enough money to, you know." The mindset is incredible and somehow he's got enough money to buy the wrong things. And a third world person would look at that and say, "He's rich, man. He is rich." So it's all relative. And yet there is something in each of us that's never satisfied with having our needs met. We want our wants met too, don't we?

And if our wants are going to be met, we need more than the enough that meets our needs. In fact, the more we get, the more we want. Now we call that the greed need. The money trap. Remember the mousetrap? And what the devil does, he baits that money trap with greed cheese. And we have this greed need, we're born with it. We never have enough, and the more we get, the more we want because it doesn't fill some great big hole inside of us somehow.

So I went back to Webster to look up the word greed. An excessive desire for getting or having, especially wealth, not necessarily money. Just getting, accumulating something. A desire for more than one needs or deserves. Wanting or taking all that one can get with no thought of others' needs, more than one deserves. Greed is a getting obsession. Greed is a religion leading to idolatry. And part of each and every heart here has part of that greed need inside them. We're born with a greedy heart.

I've spent this wonderful month with my daughter as she had her second baby and Drew, who's provided me with at least a year's worth of illustrations while I was there, poor little guy. And I was putting him to bed one night actually when his mommy had just disappeared into hospital to produce Jordan. And I really felt sorry looking at that little guy. I mean, he had no idea what was just about to hit him.

And Chuck Swindoll says that when the new baby comes home, it's like the husband bringing a new wife home and saying to the old wife, "Now this is the new wife, and I really love her very much and I want you to share your toys with her." Just this whole concept of who is this little thing that's coming into my life when I was king of my castle. Well, Jordan hadn't even arrived home, but just in his natural greedy little two-year-old way that all of us have been through, because we're born with a greedy heart, I was taking him up to bed and he said he wanted to take his toys with him.

And I said, "Which toys?" And he started to gather up as many toys as he could and he just had them and they kept dropping. It took us half an hour to get up the stairs because of all the stuff he wanted to take and I kept saying, "Why do you want to take this?" And he said, "Because Jordan's coming," that's Jordan the new baby, "and he might get my toys." So he had he got the idea. He knew what was going to hit him. And so he managed to gather up as many as he could to take to bed to guard with his life while he slept.

So all of us are born with this little greedy heart. A greedy heart that says, "I want it all for myself and I don't want anybody else to share it. And the more I get, the more I want." I don't know about this modern having babies and things. I mean, it's a different era from my day and age. But when the baby came home, everybody that came to see it brought a present for the baby and a present for Drew, so he wouldn't feel bad seeing Jordan get a present.

And I don't know about that. I'm still thinking about it. At some point in his young life, he has got to work at being glad that Jordan gets something he doesn't, right? But the whole of our philosophy in this country is this getting, not giving, right? Right from the earliest days. Put to death whatever belongs to your earthly nature, says Paul: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry.

Now the Aramaic term for wealth is mammon, and Jesus condemns it as a rival god. No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one or love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. Devoted means totally given over, set apart to do nothing else but accumulate. You cannot serve God and mammon. So if greed is our god, we'll do what greed tells us to do and we end up craving things we neither need nor enjoy.

Arthur Gish in a book called Beyond the Rat Race says this, and it is an incredible quote: "We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like." Now, isn't that a quote? And isn't it true? We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not even like. We crave what we do not even want when we've got it.

And of course, impress them we do. Greed attracts its own. A greedy person finds greedy companions. Remember the story of the prodigal son? The boy that had everything he wanted and he took all the money and he took off and he wasted his substance with rebellious living and there were plenty of people to help him waste all his money. And when he'd run out and the famine came, where were his friends? He's left sitting all alone in his pigsty. And the friends disappear.

I have a friend in America who, oh, two years ago, were probably among the most wealthy young money in the country. And the bottom fell out of their lives and their business and their marriage. And they went into bankruptcy. And I was talking actually to a relative of hers today and I was asking how things were going. And she said, "Well, today she sold the last things the IRS asked for and that was her wedding ring and her engagement ring and she has one little piece of jewelry they let her keep. And yesterday they went into her incredibly beautiful home and took everything: the crystal, the china, her clothes and the closets, everything."

And that's hard. And all her friends, and she had hundreds, aren't to be seen. No man gave unto him. And no man or woman is giving unto my friend. Greed attracts its own, but oh, let the bottom fall out of it and where are the friends? Ecclesiastes 5:11: "As goods increase, so do those who consume them." Fair-weather friends, though.

So greed becomes a demanding taskmaster, producing an addiction, an addiction to acquiring things. An addiction to acquiring things like shopping at outlets. I don't care where. And I know women that are addicted. They cannot go into a shopping mall without buying something, accumulating. And you're really in the money trap when having acquired the need to get, you get, and then you go one step further because the whole of your life then revolves around keeping that which you have bought, possessing it.

Then the real headache begins: panic attacks, anxiety fits. Can you see that little boy going up the stairs with all his objects in his arms, absolutely terrified somebody will take them off him? That's what we are like at this point. The abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep. I have seen, said the richest man in the world, Solomon, a grievous evil: wealth is hoarded to the harm of its owner. Because then the hoarding begins. We've got to spend all our time and money and energy on protecting and keeping what we have.

And that attitude is very destructive. Greed hoards. And in James, which is the theme, another of the themes I'm lifting up for you, you will get into chapter 5, verses 1 to 6, where James castigates the rich man, "Howl for all your misery and wealth," because he says that they're doing their workmen out of their wages. They are not handling as a good steward the wonderful resources that God makes freely available to us. Money isn't wrong, the love of money is the root of all evil. It doesn't say money is the root of all evil. But to handle it properly, you've got to be a pretty godly person. You're going to need the Lord to help you.

Greed hoards. There's a selfishness and an oppressiveness and it leaves you a bankrupt person. Paul addresses this. And he said, "I know what it is to have all the money in the world." He came from a privileged Roman family. "And I know what it is to have nothing. I know what it is to be abased and I know what it is to abound. I know what it is to possess everything and I know what it is to possess absolutely nothing."

And oh, for the maturity to know what it is to possess it or not to have it, and yet to realize that what really matters cannot be taken away from you. And that's what my friend said to me, the one that was now in bankruptcy. "There's a lot of things people cannot take away from me. The IRS cannot take it away from me. My husband cannot take it away from me. The things that are the best things in life that are free: the love of my children, my health, my heart happiness, my relationship with God. Nobody can take that away from me."

So there's this sense, as Paul says, of being able to come to the point of buying something as if it were not yours to keep. Okay? Those who use the things of the world, nothing wrong with the things of the world, don't be engrossed in them. Don't drown in them. Don't be obsessed by them. For this world in its present form is passing away. Then whose will those things be, says Solomon? Spend all your life accumulating everything, you can't take it with you.

I don't think I've ever been more conscious of that than when I saw my father. When somebody dies in England, we don't dress them up as if they never did. We leave them as they are, which brings home the reality of death a lot quicker. And that's done in the home, not in the funeral parlor. And as the people were readying my father for the casket, I came from my little home to the family home and my mother said, "If you want to see your father, you can go up now."

And I went up and they had not finished, my mother didn't know they hadn't finished dressing him, and he was lying naked on the bed. And as I looked at my father, that verse of scripture came flashing into my mind: "Naked came I from thee and naked I shall return, for it is certain I brought nothing into this world and it is very certain I carry nothing out." And I stood in that beautiful English home, for I come from wealth, and I looked around at all the beautiful things that surrounded my father's body on that bed. And I thought, "How true. Dust we are, and to dust we return." Then whose will these things be that he'd spent the whole of his life accumulating? Death wonderfully focuses the attention, have you noticed?

So the money trap is saying what is material is permanent, and not saying what is permanent is immaterial. It's a money trap. Now Jesus said, "Watch out, be on your guard against all kinds of greed." Luke 12. And He told a little story about a man. It's a parable. He said this rich fool, and He called him that, said, "I many years to do all I want. I'll pull down my barns and build greater and I've got many years to go and many pleasures and and I'll say to my soul, 'Soul, eat, drink and be merry.'"

Now I don't know where that quote comes: "eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die," because it isn't biblical. The man in the Bible said, "Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow I live." That's presumption. And God leaned out of heaven and said, "You fool, this night your soul will be required of thee. Come home, soul." And then who is there that's ever been born or ever will be that can keep himself alive? This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?

In England, they publish the names of people that die and what they leave. And it's always a very interesting thing, especially if you know people, to put your eye down that column and see: what did they leave? And I was with my in-laws one night when somebody had died that we all knew quite not on not closely, but a quite big wealthy family and the father had died and my mother-in-law shouted through to Pop, to Stuart's father, "Oh, that's interesting. How much did he leave?" And Pop said, "Everything." Which is true. This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but isn't rich toward God, said Jesus. This is how it will be.

So there is material wealth and there is spiritual wealth. And it takes a big person to be trusted by the big God with a big bank balance. And God does trust many of us. Remember, it's all relative with a lot of money compared to the rest of the world. We in this country are rich beyond measure. Rich beyond measure. And God has trusted us with that stewardship. It's a huge responsibility. And remember, it's He that gives us power to get wealth.

So the antidote to greed is generosity. A willingness to share. That's why giving is so important. Not tithing, I'm not even talking about that, I'm talking about over-tithing. The offerings that come after the tithe. The tithe isn't ours to keep anyway, that's God's money, we mustn't spend His money. But the offerings that come after the tithe are the antidote to greed.

There's a wonderful few verses in Timothy that complement the passage in James. 1 Timothy 6:17 to 19 says this: "Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way, they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life."

Now at this point, I want to throw out a whole lot of practical ideas to you. First of all, we need to develop the habit of giving things away. Okay? We need to develop the habit of giving things away. Whenever you develop an attachment to a possession, consider giving it to someone else who needs it. Now these are real hard things I'm throwing out, but I want you to think about them. Maybe you want to capture one of these you feel God is really underlining for you.

For example, Christmas next year. Instead of buying, instead of making, consider giving something that means a lot to you away: piece of furniture, silver dish, piece of jewelry, a ring, your watch. We need to develop the habit of giving things away. One thing that strikes me about Billy Graham whenever I've had the privilege of being in his company, I can't remember one time I haven't seen him give something away. Fellow walked up to him when we were at a meeting once and admired his tie. Took it off his neck and gave it him. He has developed the habit of giving things away. It's beautiful.

At least once a year, give something best away. Don't clear out your closets because you do that anyway. Something best. My kids taught me this lesson. Boy, did they teach me a lesson. They were in seminary. Somebody challenged them with these sort of thoughts. And they went home to their little seminary flat and they had a talk. My youngest son is called Peter and he's got a wife called Libby. She was working extremely hard to put him through seminary so he could do it quickly and get out and they didn't have any money really. It's how it was, very expensive now to go to seminary.

And so they had been challenged to give something best away. And after a long talk, they decided to go through their closets, one closet was in one room that was Pete's and the other was in another room, and choose something that really meant their favorite piece of clothing. And they were telling me this story a couple of weeks after. They said, "You have no idea how hard that was, Mother." And he said, "I could hear," Pete said, "I could hear Libby going through all the hangers, you know, and then silence, and then all the hangers again, silence."

And he said, "I was doing the same in my closet all the way down." And he said, "In the end, she said, 'Pete,' and he said, 'Yes,' and she said, 'Do you think it's our leather jackets?'" And he said, "I think so." And then he said, "making sure it wasn't something else." What was their favorite piece of clothing? Their leather jackets they'd bought that matched. Beautiful jackets. They'd bought them at the outlet down there, but they were expensive and they were beautiful. Bought them before they went to sem. And that's what they gave.

I want to tell you, I was hugely challenged. It's not a question of getting rid of your old clothes. That's not going to do anything to that nature of yours that needs teaching some lessons. Once a year, give something best away. I was really moved when I was in Holland a couple of years ago staying with a girl who is related to the royal family. Now she's in Christian work now and she lives in a very nice little house on her own, but she's just around the corner from the Queen's house in Holland.

But she told me a story. She said when Queen Juliana had her children and they were growing up, once a year she took them into their beautiful toy room with everything there and she asked them to select a toy at Christmas for a poor child. And this friend of mine, Noor her name was, knew these children, she grew up with them. And she said, "You know, they told me the story of how they would select a very nice toy that they liked very much and take it to their mother and she'd say, 'Oh no, you don't really like that very much. That's not the toy. Go back and find a better toy.'"

And she said, "It used to take all morning before those children could," she said, "it was so hard for them and they were children that had everything. They wouldn't have missed it." And then she said this, Queen Juliana said, "It's got to be a toy that can't be replaced." Because our sinful, horrible little hearts say, "Well, I'll give that, I can just buy it again, you know, I'll replace it next year, huh?" We are so devious. A heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

God is the model. When the first Christmas came around, He didn't buy the human race a present, He gave the human race a gift. And He walked down the stairway of heaven with a baby in His arms. That's generosity and He's our model. He gave us something that meant an awful lot to Him and something He couldn't replace.

When you look at Jesus and the Bible says, "You know the grace of our Lord Jesus, that though He was rich yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich." You get the idea. The rich man who became poor voluntarily for us. And yet what does our culture tell us? Our culture says you've got to be a poor man that voluntarily becomes rich. And we've got the whole thing upside down.

So we need to model after Christ. Don't be trapped with the greed cheese. God doesn't call us to poverty, but to appropriate and balanced lifestyles. And there is balance in this. And this is my favorite verse from this whole study that I got out, I got an awful lot out of this study as I hung my heart over the scriptures and I want you to know I certainly did that before I would dare to come and talk to you about it. "Give me neither poverty nor riches, but feed me with food convenient for me. Give me only my daily bread. Give me neither poverty nor riches, but feed me with food convenient for me, suitable for me."

God knows each of us, what we can be trusted with. And what we need to pray is, "Trust me with what you can trust me with and I will accept that and I will be content to live at that particular level." That's all right with me. And we need to learn to reject anything that produces an addiction in us. We need to buy things for their usefulness rather than for their status. Think about that.

My sister, who doesn't count herself an evangelical believer, has some of the most beautiful antiques that I've ever seen in my life. Every single one of them has a reason for being in her house because she said, "I refuse to buy things for status. I'm going to buy it if I'm going to use it. I've got to buy a piece of furniture, if I'm going to buy a chest to store my blankets and stuff in, then I'm going to buy an antique chest. But I'm not going to buy a chest to stand there so that my friends can come in and say, 'Oh look at that,' gives her status." Buy things for their usefulness rather than for their status.

And this is the thing that has helped me more than anything else: de-accumulate. De-accumulate. Masses of things that are not needed complicate life. Most of us could get rid of half our possessions without any serious sacrifice at all. And remember, it's He that gives us power to get the wealth in the first place. That's the key. That's the key. If you focus on God and His kingdom first, then when riches increase, you will not set your heart upon them.

Another practical thought: get involved with missions personally. You can get to know one of those missionary families and say, when you give your gift, "I would like my gift to go towards such-and-such." And this gives you a personal link, and that's very important. Because when the kid that's over in Africa needs to get some schooling instead of being taught by her mother out in the boondocks because there's no other way, then maybe you can help to pay the school fees. And when the older kid comes back to Wheaton, then maybe you can help to send her to camp or have her in your home so that she's not sitting in a dorm room all alone, which many of those missionary kids are every single holiday. And if you get involved, personally involved with the mission, that's a wonderful way of making sure that you don't fall into the money trap and you start and channel your money that way.

Another thing that's very helpful is ask what you do have a great deal of, and that will be different for each of you. And match it with a need. Let me give you a practical example. Obviously we tithe, obviously Stuart and I give offerings. But there are some things we can give that you can't give, just like there are some things you can give that I can't give. Something that's specifically us, like books.

And what Stuart and I do is say, "What do we have a large amount of?" Well, we have a large amount of books that we can buy really cheaply because we've written them from the publisher. And so we have a little storage shed and whenever one goes out of print, which happens quite a lot, or they they do a new run, they'll call us and say as the authors would you like to have a thousand of these books at 40% off or whatever because we have to buy our own books, but we get them cheaper, you see. Then we buy them up and we fill that little shed out there because this is something we can do that perhaps you couldn't do.

And then we pray, "Lord, what can we do with these books?" Now most of them we sell through a thing called Briscoe Ministries so that when we go abroad, people can't afford to take us like we're going to South Africa, we're going to Poland, we're going to Asia this year alone. Now mission people can't afford to take us there, then the sales of those books pay our way so nobody else needs to pay our way. That's one way we can give ourselves. The Bible says first give yourselves.

But there's something else specifically, those books matched a need. Operation Mobilization have a big boat and they pile books on it and they take it all over the world and they get into countries that no one else can get to. And if they sell books, they eat. And if they don't sell books, they don't, it's their income. When we were with OM on the boat in Russia, before the whole thing opened up, 40,000 people came on board that boat and bought all the books. Many of them were ours. We've been able to give thousands, literally thousands and thousands of our books, give them to OM.

And you know what joy that is? That's something we can do that you couldn't do. But what do you have that you? And if you got down on your knees and said, "Lord, because of our work or because of whatever, because of an inheritance in a specific thing, land, I don't know, we have something nobody else has. Now there's a need in the world that you need, some of your children maybe need it, or it's to be given for evangelism."

Or like somebody, if you go onto most of the Christian colleges today and ask them how they got that incredible property, you'll hear the same story over and over again: somebody gave it us. Somebody gave it us way back in so-and-so, somebody gave us this prime property in Dallas. Dallas Seminary sits on it. Biola College, the whole land was given, it was orchards. Somebody gave it. Great way to go. Then you'll be gold in faith. Then you'll find you're sending up treasure in heaven.

There's a little story of St. Peter welcoming some people into heaven and when they got there, he said, "Let me show you your house." And he showed this very rich, wealthy man that just arrived in heaven a little tiny hut. The man was very distressed. He said, "I've lived in a mansion down there, I don't want to live in a little tiny hut." And Peter said, "Well, we did best with the material you sent up." Right? We did the best with the material you sent up. Remember that wealth is worthless in the day of wrath. Wealth is worthless in the day of wrath.

And finally decide before God to do what Thoreau said, simplify, simplify. Decide to live a simpler lifestyle, not a simple because who can define that? When we went to Lausanne, they asked us to sign the Lausanne Covenant years ago that we would commit ourselves to living a simple lifestyle. Stuart said, "I don't think I can sign that, because what does it mean? Certainly it has to do with the clothes you wear and the cars you drive, all of that. But what's simpler? What's simple to one isn't simple to," you know I mean where do you go with that? He said, "What I like better is the thought that together," and both Stuart and I made that covenant, "that we would live a simpler lifestyle each year, somehow, some way."

And that's a way to start an attack, the greed need that's in each of our hearts. So, crucify the old greedy nature. Dead men don't need to spend money. Dead men don't try to impress others. Dead men don't care about possessing things. And we're supposed to be crucified with Christ. I hope you're not going to fall into the money trap. All of us are vulnerable because we have a greedy, greedy heart here. Can you see yourself as that little two-year-old with your arms around all your possessions in case Jordan gets them? May we come instead to God and say, "I give myself first. Nothing that I have is mine."

The biggest lesson to me was when we came to America and Elmbrook Church asked us to just sell up everything and come. They would provide a beautiful home, which they did in Brookfield. And there wouldn't be a cupboard we'd open that everything we needed, everything to eat off which we had, wasn't china, it was plastic, but it was all we needed. Everything we needed was in that home. All I had to do, because Stuart was on the road, was sell it up back home. Well, I gave what I could away and I sold what I could and I still had a house full of junk. You try sometime. I mean just try and give everything or sell everything you've got. It's hard. You wouldn't think it is, but it is.

Your wedding presents? We had two suitcases apiece, one for clothes and one for toys or for the children, we didn't have toys. Our other suitcase was for anything that we really wanted to choose to bring, something very special. And I remember my Judy putting all her dolls out on the bed. She didn't know I was there, talking to Wendy her favorite one: "Well you'll go in the suitcase, but Abigail you'll have to stay because you just won't fit in the suitcase, but I'll find a good home for you." It was hard for that little girl. It was hard for this big girl.

And I was a missionary. And I thought I had things, but things had me. And I never knew it until God asked me for them. There I sat, my hands like this, and I heard God's voice say, "Jill, hold it lightly, don't hold it tightly, because at any time I might ask you for those things." Now, in case any of you should be sorry for me, I've got a house full of junk this side of the Atlantic now instead of the other. But it was a test. This is a test, this is only a test. Sometimes God comes to us and says, "You say all these things, but do you really mean it?" It's at times like that that we discover what really matters and what really lasts. Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, thank You for Your word and thank You that James wrote to a bunch of people, some were rich and some were poor, all of them envying the other. The rich envying those that were richer than them, the poor envying the rich. And all of that causes such problems and dissensions and jealousies and factions in the church, Lord.

And I ask that we may be saved from the greed need, saved from the money trap. That we may indeed count ourselves blessed. You gave us the greatest gift, the richest gift of heaven to our hearts, Jesus Christ. We are indeed of all men most blessed. And we thank You for that incredible heavenly wealth, our relationship with You. And help us to guard it and help us to be on our guard against the money trap.

Lord, in a culture where obsession is worshipped, obsession with things, accumulating things, may we be different. May our heroes be different. May the way we live and handle the resources you've trusted to us be different. May they be so different that people around us are put on inquiry and ask us why. We ask it that we may have an opportunity to tell them that Jesus is our most precious possession, for Christ's sake, amen.