Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Well, I have a wonderful opportunity to be a living example of what I've come to talk about. For totally overwhelmed, I remember I'm overshadowed. Remember when Mary was confronted with the angel and he said, "I've come to ruin your life"? Remember that? She thought she was going to get married and settle down with Joseph and have a little family and all of that. He said, "No, you're going to be the mother of the Messiah."

She didn't say, "Why me? Go find some other little Jewish girl." She said, "How?" She was overwhelmed. But he said, "Don't worry, you're overshadowed." Remember his answer? "The Holy Ghost. That's how. The Holy Spirit will come upon you." When you're overwhelmed, will you remember you're overshadowed? It's a wonderful thought.

That's how we face things that are overwhelming. Of course, it's overwhelming for me to stand here and teach you anything. Many of you are Bible study scholars yourselves and you've got your own Bible studies. If I believe in the infilling of the Spirit, if I believe in the anointing of the Spirit, if I believe in the choosing of the Spirit, of the sending of the Spirit, the power of the Spirit—which I do—then I'm looking forward to this as much as I sense you are, as together we find out what the Bible says about the Holy Spirit.

Let me start by just giving you two stories. Some of you might have heard one of them before, but it's in a little book I wrote called *The Holy Who?*. That comes from when I was a little girl in an air-raid shelter where I lived half the war years and not in my little pink bedroom in my bed in Liverpool, England. My dad was in the Air Force training pilots, and so he was away for those six years. He'd come home here and there to visit on leave. It was at the height of the Second World War, in case you were wondering which one.

Here I was in this little shelter and panicked. When you're underground, the noise is the most frightening thing because you can't see anything; it's pitch black. Even if you might have a candle, which we did down there in our little dugout, it's the bangs, the noises, and the screams of whoever is being buried under the bombs that you hear. I was sitting between my mother and my sister, just the three of us. We all had our arms around each other and we were all shaking.

I began to pray. I didn't know who to pray to; I had not a clue. I didn't go to church; we were unchurched. But in school every day we had said the Apostles' Creed because that by law must be said in all British schools in my day. I'm so thankful for that because it was the only theology I knew, and it was pretty good theology. Looking for a prayer, I took the Apostles' Creed, which I'd learned off by heart because I said it every day, and I began to pray through it.

I prayed to God the Father, I prayed to God the Son, and I prayed to God the Holy Ghost. My mind stopped, and I thought, "Who's the Holy Ghost? Do I believe in the Holy Ghost? Does my mother believe in the Holy Ghost?" There was another bomb, and so I continued hastily. I prayed to the holy Catholic church and I prayed to the communion of saints. I just prayed everyone I could find in that little statement of faith, which I know now it was. Then I began all over again.

When I came the second time to "I believe in the Holy Ghost," I stopped and I said, "Holy Ghost, please stop the bombs falling all over my life." He didn't stop the bombs, but inside he stopped the beating of my heart. It was so physical, the peace, that I sat up and looked around. I was absolutely sure someone had come. But my mom and sister were still like this and crying, and I thought, "It'll be alright." Then, as many of you know, I walked out of that little dugout at the bottom of our garden and looked eagerly towards our house. It had been very badly damaged; a bomb had sliced through there.

I remember standing there looking up at heaven saying, "Well, you're either not there, or you don't care, and you're not fair." That's how I began my search for the Holy Ghost, for God himself. That was the first time I experienced it very definitely, and I was so confused because I knew he'd come. Therefore, when I'd said, "Don't let the bombs damage the house," and I started praying and asking him to keep us safe, because I had sensed his entry into that dugout, his coming alongside to help—which is one of the Holy Spirit's names—I couldn't understand why he hadn't answered my prayer.

Very confused, I grew up in post-war Britain and had an opportunity to go to a prestigious university; I went to Cambridge. When I got there, it was post-war intellectual chaos. Everyone was talking about the discovery of the Nazi camps and "Who are the Jews? Well, they're God's people." I remember thinking, "Glad I'm not one of them if that's how he looks after his own." All of us were wrestling in our heads with good and evil and God or no God.

I got sick and I went into hospital just two days after the second time I was confronted by the Holy Ghost. It was Christmas, and we were surprised with our "big sister"—it was a girls' college in those days, the one I was in. I was a freshman, first year we called it. They woke their little sister up at midnight. We'd all gone to bed about 11:00, I suppose, and we were asleep. They all came knocking on our door with candles. In those days—and this is how old I am—we all wore long white nighties, like some prehistoric movie.

So there we were in our nighties and our little candles in this incredibly old building, a gorgeous building. We began to wind and collect the next girl and a little sister and the next girl and a little sister until we wound our way around and we all sang carols. I didn't know too many. I knew "Holy Night" because everybody sang that, and "O Little Town of Bethlehem." We got to the part "so God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His heaven. No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin, where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in."

Walking in those ancient corridors with my little candle, I was aware of somebody joining me, coming alongside me, and it was the Holy Ghost because I recognized, all those years ago, the sense of his very presence. I thought, "I know something about this. When did this happen to me before?" The last verse says, "O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray. Cast out our sin and enter in; be born in us today." I was so wrestling with these words by now I just wanted to stop. I didn't want to go on walking so I could concentrate.

"We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell. Oh come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel." God used those words and a great "Oh!" ascended from my heart. If only someone would tell me. If only someone—what is this? I want to know what it is, or who it is, or who is the Holy Ghost, God? Of course, he always hears that prayer. "It's me," he said. "It's me."

It was just two weeks later that I went into hospital, and the girl who was a nurse—sick in the next bed to me—told me the gospel. She frightened me to death first; that was not very nice. "Well, you know Jill, you could die." "Yes, yes." "And if you did, where would you go?" I said, "I have absolutely no idea." Then she told me about the Holy Ghost. I said, "I know about the Holy Ghost." She said, "How do you know about the Holy Ghost?" I told her my two stories, and she said, "Oh yeah, that'd be the Holy Ghost."

I said, "What do I do with it? Can you tell me about that?" "Oh yes," she said. She told me, and that and a book by C.S. Lewis did the trick. He happened to be a professor at Cambridge when I was there. I came to Christ, and I opened my eyes and my arms and the Holy Ghost came in. The Holy Ghost is busy. God the Father created the earth and rested. He sent the Son who saved the world, returned to the Father, and sat down at his right hand. And they sent the Holy Spirit, and he is the one with whom you and I have to do.

I was very fortunate. I was brought to Christ by quite a young Christian who was in Dr. John Stott's church, and she began to follow me up. I'd no idea that's what she was doing. She took full advantage of all my ignorance, gave me ten books, and said, "Now you read these, write a little report, I'll meet with you. Here are 25 Bible verses just for this week; learn them and where they come from." I said, "Do all the converts do this?" She said, "Oh yes, yes." So we were off and running.

One of the first things I wanted to know about was the Holy Ghost. She said, "Well, I think that's good. We'll start a Bible study." I do remember she said, "He's your teacher. He's come in to be your teacher." Of course, it says that if you turn in your Bible to John 14. It tells us in John 14 and 15, which is the Upper Room Discourse, that the Holy Spirit, the Counselor, the one who comes alongside to help—our Helper—"another one just like me," said Jesus, describing him. It says that he's our teacher.

I said to her, "Oh good, will he save me from error?" Suddenly I was surrounded by a whole world of people I didn't know existed. How can it be that you're going along on this one track, and on this other track there's a whole world of people that know all about Jesus? For 18 years I didn't know a thing and hadn't met one of them. How can it be that we're just this far apart? There were all sorts of people at Cambridge telling me all sorts of things about the Holy Spirit, and I'd never opened my Bible. I never had a Bible.

I suddenly became aware of how I would know what was right and what was wrong doctrinally. She said, "Well, don't worry about that; he's come, you'll know." I remember kneeling down in my little room at Cambridge praying this prayer: "Save me from error as I learn about you." Into my mind came this answer: "That's what I'm here to do. I will lead you into all truth," it says here. The Holy Spirit, when he comes into our lives, is the one who will be our teacher, our helper, whether we know nothing or whether we know too much, or whether we don't know anything at all.

When you're confused, incidentally, if people are telling you this and that and the other, get on your knees and just say, "Save me from error, oh teacher of my heart, and show me what is the truth, because that's why you came into my life." Now, the Upper Room Discourse is where we're going to begin. That is a name for the time Jesus had with his disciples before he went to the cross. There are a few chapters in the Gospel of John where he talks to his disciples.

It's his last chance. Think about it: he'd been with them three years. That was practically nothing with all he wanted them to learn. They weren't very good at learning at this point; they were distracted by many things. He was leaving them in a very little time, and he began to tell them about the most important things so that they'd remember. He'd just told them in John 14, "Don't let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust in me." He talks about the Father's house with many rooms—the word is rooms. "In my Father's house there are many rooms. I'm going to prepare a room for you," etcetera.

"I'm going to go and you're staying." The shock had just rippled through that room. Remember, they'd given up absolutely everything, and suddenly out of the blue, even though he'd been hinting at it and telling them for a few weeks, he's leaving. Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Philip says to him, "Well, if you'd just show us the Father, then that would be enough. Jesus, you talk about your Father all the time; would you just get him to come, or could we have a look at him? Show us the Father."

Jesus says, "You're looking at him." Philip had never noticed he had his Father's eyes. "You're looking at him. You've been living with him; now you're looking at him because it's the Father in me that does the works. I do nothing without the Father," etcetera. "I am God," says Christ. Anyway, probably because they were in shock, they just didn't get it. Immediately, the first thing he does after he's told them he's going and they're staying and they're overwhelmed, he tells them they're overshadowed.

First thing he does, and he promises the Holy Spirit. Let's read this from 15: "If you love me, you'll obey what I command, and I will ask the Father and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever. He is the Spirit of truth. The world can't accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him for he lives with you—you're looking at him, Philip—and will be in you. I won't leave you like orphans; I will come to you. My other self, one exactly the same as me." He begins to teach them about the Holy Spirit, who he is and when he's coming and all of this.

"Before long, the world won't see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you will also live. On that day you will realize I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you." Now, this is new doctrine. This has not been necessary until now because they've had the personal company of Jesus Christ himself in a body. That body is now going to go. Trying to grasp all this, of course, must have been—we're looking back at familiar stuff with us, but think of it if you were hearing this for the first time and you were in that upper room and Christ has just told you he's leaving.

"Because I live, you'll also live. In that day you'll realize I'm in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you." Then he goes on about whoever obeys my commandments, he's the one that loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him. Look at verse 25: "All this I've spoken while still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have said to you."

He's our reminder. Anybody need a reminder? The older you get, you need about ten reminders. He's our reminder. We have to do the remembering, the work, the discipline of remembering his words and what he said. Part of his work is to remind us of what we've remembered. He will not and cannot remind us of what we haven't remembered. He's not going to do our homework for us. We're going to do our homework; we're going to take those little verses or memory patterns or whatever you're doing to memorize scripture—and I hope all of you are—and then he'll remind you of it.

Even though you might think you've forgotten it, it's the Holy Spirit's job to remind you. As I got up here, I just said, "Oh Reminder, remind me of what I've remembered." I will never forget being without my Bible on 9/11 sitting on a plane. As we were taken to Gander, Newfoundland, my immediate response on hearing the pilot tell us what he knew—which was nothing—was "I've got to get you down at Gander and there's a national emergency." That's all he told us, and he didn't know because they hadn't told him until he got us down.

My heart was going like this, and my immediate thought was "Remind me. Holy Spirit, remind me of all the scripture. What is it you want to remind me of this moment, in this seat, at this time, on this day, in this airplane? Remind me." Immediately, into my mind came a verse that I had not forgotten, but I hadn't thought about it for years. But you see, I'd memorized it; it was there. The Holy Spirit picked it out from all the other things he could have used and brought it to my mind.

It was Psalm 139:16. I even remembered the reference because that's how I learned scripture, with the reference attached to it. Of course, it's talking about every day ordained for us is written in his book before one of them comes to be. Every day ordained for you and me is written in a book somewhere, one of God's heavenly library books, before it ever happens. What has he written in it? What must happen to us? No. He knows what will happen to us because God is here where I am, and this is the line of time.

He sees you born, he sees what you'll do with your life and if you'll accept or reject him, and he sees you here. So God is here. Every day ordained for us because he sees it all is written in his book. There's a page on 9/11 with Jill Briscoe across the top of it somewhere in God's library, and he has already written something on it. Has he written on it "this airplane will crash" or "this airplane will be saved"? No. He has written on it what he wants me to do and to be for him at that moment. That's what's written on the pages of our lives.

"I want for Jill..." For the next six days, I discovered what he'd written for me. Every day ordained for you is written in my book before one of them comes to be. I remember writing in my little piece of paper here because I didn't have my Bible; it was up and we weren't allowed to get up. I wrote down: "Nothing will happen to the child of God outside the will of God," because that's what that's all about. Nothing can happen to a child of God outside the will of God.

Therefore, I was in exactly the right place on 9/11, up in the air, trying to get back to Chicago, landing at Gander for six exciting days ahead of me that, of course, I did not know. On each of those six days, he had written what he hoped for me, what he dreamed for me, how he could use me, how he could make me a blessing, how I could love people, and how I could show them the fruit of the Spirit so that they'd want it too. All of that stuff. I knew what he'd written for me. I didn't know some of what he'd written for me, but I knew a lot of what he'd written for me, and it was the Holy Spirit brought that to my mind. That's why we do our work and God does his.

"All this I've spoken while still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I've said to you." Okay? "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you." Yes, he does. Yes, he will, always. "You heard me say 'I'm going away and I'm coming back.' If you loved me, you'd be glad that I'm going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. I've told you now before it happens. I won't speak with you much longer for the prince of this world is coming. He's no hold on me, but the world must learn that I love the Father and I do exactly what the Father has commanded me."

And so, he begins to tell them about the Counselor. Now, the word Counselor is actually "Comforter" in our English; it's to do with coming up by you so you know he's there. Have you ever had somebody come up behind you and you haven't heard them but you know they're there? It's that spiritual sense of "He's here." I have heard so many people in our travels in dangerous places and in dire situations who have testified to that, of coming alongside to help, to comfort, to sustain, to give us a sense of what's written on that page for us to do in crisis, in trouble, in pain, etcetera.

"I won't leave you orphans," he says. "I won't leave you orphans." Terrible thing to be fatherless. Helmut Thielicke, writing on the Lord's Prayer at the end of the Second World War in Stuttgart—the city leveled, his beautiful church that held 3,000 people packed, he's the only Lutheran pastor still out of prison, Bonhoeffer has just been killed, they're coming for him, and the allies begin a blitz that levels the city and ends the war. At the end of seven weeks, he's left standing in rags in the choir stalls of his beautiful Hospitalkirche with 35 people left alive and 3,000 Christians in heaven.

He teaches on the Lord's Prayer. If you ever get hold of that book, you'll have to search for it; it's in German and a few English copies. It's called *The Prayer That Spans the World*. It is the most incredible book on the Lord's Prayer that I've certainly ever read. He starts the book by saying the human race is like a child lost in a forest crying out, "Father, are you there?" The human race is like a child lost in a forest crying out, "Father, are you there?" And he says God is always there.

He begins to tell story after story of people being buried by a bomb in the shelters and all of that, and how the comfort of the Holy Spirit... and he talks about the Father who sent the Holy Spirit. He's always there in the presence of the Holy Spirit. However dark the forest, however weird sounds you're hearing, however that wretched creature hooves, tails and all, and whatever he's doing—God is always there. He'll come behind you; he'll come alongside you. That's what the Holy Spirit does.

Now, I want to talk about chapter 15, which follows chapter 14, because Jesus then uses a motive or a metaphor or a picture. I love metaphors and motives and pictures. He uses the picture of a vine. I want to talk about what the people he was talking to knew about the vine. Remember, the people Jesus was talking to only had the Old Testament because he's not finished with the New Testament yet, so there isn't a New Testament. Okay. The Bible of Peter, James, and John and all these people was the Old Testament. I mean, that's obvious; forgive me for mentioning it here.

He only has the Old Testament to use. And so he goes to something that is totally familiar with the Jewish people, and that is the motive or picture of the vine. I just want to show you because it lights up this whole chapter 15 so wonderfully. Motives or metaphors or similes or pictures are like windows in a talk. I think all of us like illustrations, right? If you're building a talk house, I always think of it as building a house, and I ask the question, "Who's going to live in my house when I've finished this talk house?"

If it's young people, then I'll probably do three or four stories; if it's old people, I might just do one story. It depends on who's going to live in my house, who's going to listen to this. Then I work on all the different levels, maybe three floors, three points or two points or whatever it is. Then I put the windows in each floor. There are the illustrations. That's the simile; that's the motive. Okay. Jesus is going to give this wonderful talk about himself being the vine, us being the branches, and the Spirit being the life. Okay.

And so he goes to his Bible to get his talk. As I got into this, it was a real blessing to me; I've been digging into this hugely. Vineyards were as much a part of village life in Jesus' day as a hamburger to the American, a cup of tea to the British, or a sausage to the Pole, somebody has said. So it's not surprising to find a motive of a vine right from Genesis days. They were as much a part of village life as anything else. Stuart and I saw the oldest vine purportedly in the world in England, actually, at a huge country house, and it's 300 years old.

It still produces tons and tons of grapes, and they sell them in this Hampton Court Palace. It just produces the most gorgeous, gorgeous grapes. Noah found them gorgeous too; unfortunately, he drank a little bit too much and he was full of another sort of spirit. Remember? That wasn't very good. But we do get a situation back in Genesis where vineyards were one of the first things that people planted and dug and protected and looked after. The gardener always did that and produced this fruit.

Then you go on to 1 Kings 4:25, and it talks about living safely in the shade of the vine. There are so many verses in the Old Testament if you follow all those references through. Do get a good reference Bible if you don't have one; references are like little pointers. So you're looking at something and it points to another verse, and you go there and you get more information. You can build your own layman's library, and I hope you're all going to do this. You say, "Well, these are expensive." Just ask for your birthday and Christmas this whole year. Okay? That's a good idea. Tell people what you want for your birthday and Christmas and anniversary.

Stuart did—I remember Stuart years ago saying, "I've got a wonderful present for you, Jill. It's called *Romance Verse by Verse*." Well, actually, it was *Romans Verse by Verse*. He was teaching Romans, you see. I don't need to do that. But the Life Application Study Bible has got everything. It's got your concordance, it's got your notes, it's got your maps, it's got information that I'll be giving you that I couldn't have found anywhere else. It talks about how they would use vines to live under as shelters, and the vines would be above your heads. We use vines for decoration like that, don't we, on our patios and things?

Listen to this: "Every man will sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree and no one will make them afraid." In the Maccabees, in the Book of Maccabees, it says—when that's between the Old Testament and the New Testament, the Book of Maccabees—it's history. Wonderful history throws light on what happened. You ever wonder what happened from the end of the Old Testament until the birth of Jesus? Well, the Book of Maccabees will tell you. These were days when every enemy vanished from the land; they had no one to fear. God gave his protection to the poor, and the law was brought back to the country, and they rid the country of lawless and wicked men, and every man sat under his vine, etcetera. It was a recurring theme. It talks about safety; it talks about security. It talks about the protection of God, and that's the picture of the vine in the Old Testament.

Then you come into the Abraham days, and of course, I'm sure you can remember the promise of Abraham's seed, the fruit of his body. It's the same word: Abraham's children, Abraham's lineage, that in some of his line, some of his children's great-great-ever-on grandchildren, that the whole world would be blessed. The fruit of his body would bring that blessing. The fruit of the fig tree, the fruit of the vine, the fruit of the olive tree all was spoke of prosperity, of safety, of security, of blessing. Read the book of Deuteronomy, and over and over again: "If you obey me, if you follow me, if only you would do that, then there will be blessing and there will be prosperity and there will be safety and security," which are all the things that were absolutely totally necessary for them and for us.

Then you come into the Psalms. David—I love this one. "Thy wife"—this is old King James—"thy wife shall be like a fruitful vine by the side of the house, and thy children like olive plants around thy table." I have this picture in my mind of the wife climbing the walls, because it says she will be climbing up the side of the house. But it's a picture of the vine. Okay. It's a picture of fruitfulness; it's a picture of blessing. "Thy wife shall be like a fruitful vine by the side of the wall and the children like olive plants around thy table." A blessing, safety, etcetera.

The psalmist David has a lot more to do with the vine and fruitfulness, and all the images and pictures and lessons Jesus teaches in John 15, you'll find them all in the Old Testament already. Particularly Asaph—he's the fellow when you're reading the Psalms you come across "David, David, David," and sometimes there isn't who wrote it. Then you come across this man Asaph, A-S-A-P-H. He wrote an immense amount of Psalms. He says, "You have brought—you, God—have brought a vine out of Egypt. You've cast out the heathen, you've planted it, you cleared the ground for it, it took root and filled the land." That's prophetic.

The vine being Israel at this point. The vine being Israel. "You've brought the vine out of Egypt, out of bondage," etcetera. Cast out the heathen, planted it in the Promised Land, cleared the ground for it, it took root and it filled the land. Israel sent out her boughs unto the sea and her branches to the river. There are prophecies about this vine that God planted—the people of Israel—that talk about exactly where the roots' tendrils went, and it names literally the Euphrates River round the corner from Lebanon, etcetera, about six or seven countries.

If you look back in history, that's exactly where Israel finished up, and that was a long, long time before they got there and the boughs reached the prophetic end. I love prophecy; it's history written in advance. Anybody can write history looking back, right? Who can write history written in advance and it all comes true? Well, only the inspired writers, we believe, of the word of God. This is homework for you, but read Psalm 80 by Asaph, and it talks about Israel, the vine of God properly fenced to preserve it from its enemies so nobody will steal the fruit, and bears and foxes won't get in and spoil the vines. Solomon talks about that.

None of their enemies can molest them. Then Psalm 80 is a history of Israel. It talks about how God allowed the barriers around his vineyard and his vine to be broken down because the vine rebelled. The vine would not remain under God's orders, etcetera. "Why have you broken down her hedge?" Asaph asks. Then he talks about restoration. "Oh, visit this vine, visit Israel." Now, at this point, Israel is in a mess. Okay. So he's singing about this. "The vineyard which thy right hand hath planted." And then incredibly, "and the branch thou hast made strong for thyself."

Suddenly, he begins to talk about Jesus Christ, the Messiah, and how God has rejected unbelieving Israel, and there will be a vine, the root from David. There's all sorts of prophecies in there. "It's burned with fire, it's cut down, it's perished." And listen to this: "the branch you made strong for yourself"—the branch being, at this point, from the root, Christ—"upon the Son whom you has strengthened for yourself." If you dig into all of that Psalm, you will find it says, "Bless the King Messiah, the vine, the new vine, Christ himself, whom thou hast strengthened for themselves." Actually, in the Syriac and the Vulgate and all these old, old documents we have where this was first translated, this Psalm 80, it says "the Son of Man." First time you get the name of the Son of Man connected with the vine.

So, the other parable that is very dramatic is in Isaiah because we come now into the prophets. Isaiah or Isaiah—you don't say Jerem-eye-ah or May-eye-ah, so it's Is-eye-ah. Okay. So, in Isaiah 5 there is a little song. Apparently, Isaiah got his teaching over in song as well as in words. "I will sing for the one I love"—this is 5 of Isaiah—"a song about his vineyard. My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up, he cleared it of stones, he planted it with the choicest vines, he built a watchtower in it, he cut out a winepress as well, and then he looked for a crop of good grapes but it yielded only sour grapes." The word is sour grapes. Bad fruit.

"Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? Now I'll tell you what I'm going to do to my vineyard. I'm going to take away its hedge and it will be destroyed. I'm going to break down its wall and it will be trampled. I'll make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated. Briers and thorns will grow there, and I will command the clouds not to rain on it. For the vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the house of Israel." He then interprets his song or his prophecy. "And the men of Judah are the garden of his delight. He looked for justice but saw bloodshed, for righteousness but heard cries of distress."

You come with me into John 15, and Jesus says, "I am the true vine," as opposed to the false one. His audience understood immediately because they had been taught all those prophecies of the vine being Israel, and then in Isaiah's prophecy and also in Jeremiah's prophecy, they have learned that this will not be forever. It fascinates me that what Jesus was able to do was to take everything that spoke prophetically of him and use this picture of the vine and then look at his disciples and say, "I am the true vine. I'm the true vine. My Father's the gardener, and you now, you disciples, are the branches." And they understood immediately what he meant.

In Isaiah 43:1, it says, "The Lord that created thee and formed thee has redeemed thee, I've called you by your name, you are mine." Now, that is speaking of Israel. Shortly after that, there are two prophecies about the Son who is to come, who will be for the world what Israel was meant to be for the world. That's you and me, folks. We are his. We're his. I had a story about a little boy that sailed a little boat up a river. He'd made the little boat all by himself; he created it. He lost it.

Somebody found it and sold it to a toy shop or something, and the little boy walked along the street and saw his boat. He went in and said, "That's my boat! I lost it." The guy said, "Well, you can buy it back if you like." "But it's my boat! I made it; I created it!" "Well, sorry. If you want what you say is your boat, you have to pay for it." So the little boy went and saved up and he paid for the boat and he walked out. As he walked out of the door, he was heard to say, "Twice mine. You're twice mine. I created you, and I bought you. You're twice mine." And he created us and he bought us and we're twice his. This vineyard we live in of the Lord, with the Father our vinedresser, we are twice his. God wants us to do our part, and that is produce fruit.

Jesus is the choicest vine, says in that parable. God planted Israel, a choice vine, but Jesus now for us—for Jew and Gentile, for black and white, for male and female, for the whole world—is the vine. We who love him and follow him and profess to, we are the branches that allow the life of Christ to fill us. We can't produce the fruit which is the likeness of Christ. You can't live the Christian life without Christ. Does that make sense? But we try. There are people who are religious all over the place; they look like a branch, they sing like a branch, they work like a branch, but there's no life flowing through them, right? There's no fruit.

What is this fruit? It's the life of Jesus. "I'm going, the Spirit will come, and he's the one that will help you be who you never can and do what you never will." You can try; you can try and help yourself, but it's better to do it with the Helper, with his life, with his power, rather than the best you can do, right? And so some of you—maybe all of you—would say, "I accepted Christ by his Spirit when I was a little girl, or when I was a teenager, or when I was an older person, and his life is in me. I'm going great guns. There's nothing wrong; I just need a little bit of help here and a little up there. I have him living in me."

But there are some of you I know who have done that, and yet there is something going on that isn't gelling. It's such an effort, it's such a chore, it's such a push. What you guys need to do is to listen to all the things we're going to throw at you and find within it a solution, a reason for the fact that this isn't working. You know him, you know the Holy Spirit's in you, but sometimes you wish he wasn't because he sort of spoils your fun. But you're not having fun even though you have him. There's no peace, there's no joy, there's no patience; there's nothing of the character of Christ helping you when you need patience, peace, and joy and all of that, which we'll talk about of course in the coming weeks.

I was with Stuart in India and found an old book. That's something else you need to put on your bookshelf that you're going to start and ask people for for your birthday, remember? When you buy a new book, always buy an old book or find one. That's a good rule of thumb. Go to the old bookstores and rummage for an old one. Treasures, absolute treasures that you can find. We were at a seminary in India, and this is what he said when we haven't figured out how the Christian life works, how Christ's life in us fuels us to do what we cannot do, etcetera.

There was this little piece of a doctor of divinity who said, "There was a time in my life when there was a reluctance in my obedience, there was a frown on my homage, my benevolence—that's the desire to do good, charitable feeling—my benevolence is graceless, there's no charm in my holiness or my piety," he used the word. In other words, he came across as holier than thou. True holiness, wholeness, never comes across as priggish or holier than thou. "There's no charm in my piety, and there is no rapture in my praise." What a sentence! What a description so often of people who have Christ by his Spirit living in them.

He is their Savior and Lord. There's a reluctance in our obedience, there's a frown on our homage, our benevolence is graceless, there's no charm in my piety, and there's no rapture in my praise. That is an experience of all of us at some point or another. We are Christians. So? And I would hope many of you have come here because that's what it's like with you, because you have come to say, "This can't be right. Where's the joy?" You read chapter 15 all the way through, and you'll read about joy and love, the two fruits of the Spirit Jesus mentions over and over again. Joy and love, love and joy. I wonder if those things are in your life.

Jesus looks at his disciples after talking about "I am the vine, you are the branches. If you don't abide in me as I am abiding in you, there will be no fruit. Remain in me, abide in me, dwell in me, rest in me." You never see a branch of a vine twisting itself and forcing itself and struggling to be a branch. You be the branch and let him be who he is. Right? No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. "I'm the vine, you're the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit."

Later he says that is to do with converts. "I am sending you to go and bear much fruit and that your fruit shall remain." Two things about fruit: one is character, who you are—like Jesus, Christlikeness, Godlikeness—and the other is converts. That's what will happen. That's what happened to me because I found somebody full of the Holy Spirit here. I didn't know what it was, but "from her eyes he beckoned me and from her tongue she told me the truth"—I can't remember how the poem goes—until I lost sight of her and saw the Christ instead.

Something about this girl in a lot of pain who was going in for back surgery caught my attention. Of course, I was looking at some fruit; I was looking at Christ. I didn't know that until later. I remember doing street work for years in Britain when we were with youth, and I remember having a team of Bible students out with some pretty rough kids. I heard one of the kids say to one of the teenagers, "Are you all on something?" He assured the kid they weren't all on drugs, which is what he meant. He said, "Yeah, yeah, you're all on something. Look at your eyes!" He said, "What's wrong with her eyes?" "I don't know, but look at your eyes!"

Well, they're the windows of the soul, right? And that's what I saw in Jenny. What was this? "From her eyes he beckoned me and from her tongue she told me the truth, and I lost sight of her and saw the Christ instead." Why wouldn't there be that sense of God? Think about it: if all of God—you haven't got a bit of him, you've got all of him. You don't get a bit of a person; the Holy Spirit's a person. So when you received him, you've got all you're going to get. He hasn't got all of you; that takes a lifetime. But you've got all of him.

And if the Holy Spirit is God, which he is, third person of the Trinity, and he has his way with you, and you are allowing his life to manifest and show itself, that means you're living like he lived. You're doing what he did. He was compassionate; that's what you're doing, etcetera. You're watching him through the Gospels, you're following his sandals, you're saying, "Oh, that's how you do. That's how you're like Jesus." You stand up for somebody's rights, you give your life away, you look after your friends, you even die for your friends. Oh, that's what Christ's like. Well, we can't do that, but he did it; he can, and he's living in us.

Now we've got to connect. We've got to remain. We've got to figure out what's this remaining about. What does he mean? We're connected. We have to dig into that and find out what that is all about. And that's what's going to take me the rest of my four or five times with you. If you're going to produce much Christlikeness, there's going to be pruning. Knife hurts; pruning hurts. But he does it in order that there should be much fruit. What's pruning? Well, you can put your own name to it. Health problems, loss, a child who isn't following Christ—that's pruning.

A wife or a husband who doesn't believe in Jesus. I was talking to teenagers the other day and they were saying they were dating non-believers. They said, "Is that alright?" I said, "Fine." I said, "Do you think you might ever end up marrying them?" "Well, we might." I said, "Well, just make sure if you're going to marry somebody they're a believer." They said, "Well, why?" I said, "Well, how long do you want to live with them?" They said, "What do you mean?" I said, "Well, wouldn't you want to live with them for eternity?" "Well, yes, obviously." I said, "Then don't marry an unbeliever." Made them very thoughtful.

But think about it. Think about it. Nothing harder than being married to somebody you love dearly and they don't know the Lord. And you know something? That can be pruning. It can produce in you fruit that it never would any other way: patience, kindness, love that lays itself down, prayer that works. Jesus, when you read this chapter all the way through, talks about fruit and then mixes it up with prayer. Prayer has a part of it because when you know what produces the fruit of the Spirit in you that glorifies God and makes him smile, then that is the fruit that produces in others the longing for it.

You sort of submit to the knife, and it's sort of bittersweet; well, at least I know at the end of this I'll be more like Jesus, right? And if we're really good Christians, that should mean something. If we're not, we scream and say, "I don't care if I'm like Jesus, I just want this to go away." But prayer has part of it, and if we are resting in the vine and God's Spirit is telling us what to do and we're obedient to him, then we'll look back on the pruning and see that we are more like him afterwards.

Then there's burning. Now, I just need to throw this out so that you can dig into this for yourself. "Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers. Such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned." Now then, what's this all about? Dead wood is going to be burned. If each branch that doesn't continue to abide in the vine is removed, it will be removed from the vine, right? Now, that book, as I dug into it and got some explanation from experts, said, "If a man is not truly united to him by faith and does not live with a continual sense of his dependence on him, this doubtless refers to those who are professors of religion—professors not like professor teacher, but who profess religion—but who have never known anything of true and real connection with him."

There are three interpretations of this verse. Who are the branches that are burned? Does this mean you can lose your salvation? Does this mean if I don't stay in touch with God, he's going to throw me into the fire of hell, etcetera? For one of these interpretations, it says these dead branches might represent those who are true believers but who have turned away from God and therefore lost their salvation. However, you need—put it down—to look at Romans 11:20 to 22 and Hebrews 6:8. Those are verses that lead people to that point of view that you can lose your salvation.

The result of believing that, those that believe that, means they're in a constant state of turmoil and doubt and are always trying to please God and do good things and penance because that might reverse the verdict, right? That's one traditional belief in what that verse means. Secondly, they believe these burned branches are Christians who will lose rewards, but not salvation, on the day of judgment. You need to look at 1 Corinthians 3:15 where it talks about that: wood, hay, stubble. It's that passage.

Number three: for still others, these burned branches refer to those professing to be Christians who look like a Christian, etcetera, like Judas Iscariot. Looks like a disciple, etcetera. Seem like a branch but do not really believe. We'll see how Jesus speaks to the Pharisees, for example, as people like that. Therefore, Judas was cut off and his fate was like that of a dead branch. Now then, there's your homework; go and figure that. Look up John 3:16 and then pray about it. Ask the teacher—remember who's the teacher? The Holy Spirit. Invite him to interpret his own word to you. Do get yourself into the library if you don't want to buy books or you haven't got them.

I believe it means the third one: the people who just look like everybody else in church but have either never had a chance to investigate the true gospel and understand and appropriate it and receive the Holy Spirit, or never bothered to put their mind to it if you wish. It's like the sheep and the goats; it's like the wheat and the tares. I think for me, that's where I came to, but you can look at that for yourself. So, the idea is that Christ's life will produce his image in your life.

The fruit of his Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, meekness, self-control. And if that which is contrary to all I am as a person, all those things—if that is beginning to manifest itself in you when one of your children say, "Mom, I don't know what happened to you; you're really patient these days and you used to lose your temper every time," fruit of the Spirit! Yeah! Takes a lifetime, takes cooperation, takes the word of God, takes being obedient.

Above all, it takes loving. Jesus finishes this passage by saying, "If you want to know what real loving looks like, greater love has no man than this, than a man lays down his life for his friends." That's what love looks like. He said that's the biggest sacrifice you can make, to give your life for someone else. I was looking for an illustration of that, and this is another of my books on my bookshelf. On your layman's bookshelf, I hope you have a piece for missionary books.

This is what Jenny did for me the first three months; she got me going on this. She said, "Here's a pile of ten books: three of them are missionary books, two of them are doctrine, one of them is a devotional, one is the history of the church, one is..." you know. She just started me off collecting my own layman's library. I'm homeschooled, folks! And so should you be. You homeschool yourself; you don't wait for somebody else to do it. And so that's what this is all about.

In my large, now, library of missionary books, I was given this three days ago by one of our missionaries. It is an incredible book, a hard book to read. It's called *Total Abandon* and it's by Gary Witherall. I had not heard of him; I'd heard of the incident, but I had not heard of him. It's talking about total surrender to God's calling. His wife Bonnie and he traded the comfort and security of life in the US for danger and uncertainty in the war-torn city of Sidon where Jesus walked along the shore in Lebanon.

They served and loved the Palestinian people, sharing with them the gospel of Christ. But Bonnie paid a high price for this high calling: her own life, taken by a terrorist gunman at the door of the clinic where she served. I'm just going to read you a little bit of it because if you want to know an example of the fruit of the Spirit, the ultimate fruit, love, out of which all the other graces come, then this is an example. Absolute surrender, that's what it's talking about.

Andrew Murray says, "Come out for God, say, 'Lord, anything for thee.' If you say that with prayer and speak that into God's ear, he will accept it and he will teach you what that means." Okay. That was Bonnie's inscription in her Bible. These are the friends they went to find that Bonnie was going to lay down her life for. They were prisoners, prostitutes, street kids, refugee migration people, women victims of female circumcision, AIDS, children, elderly people, poverty people, homelessness, and they were their friends.

Bonnie set up this little clinic, and she talked about the plight of women: "They've only two functions: to have children and to make their husbands happy. They serve no other purpose. They're not cherished, supported or loved. But when they come to our clinic, they receive something of the love of Jesus. We touch them, we hug them, we kiss them. We serve them coffee while they wait to see the doctor. We talk to them about their lives, about the good things, the bad things, about their favorite foods. We let them talk about themselves. We try in any way possible to display to them the character of God and the fruit of the Spirit."

And so, they began their ministry there, and they loved the people and they were Jesus to the people. On the day she died, she wrote, "Lord, I want to commit myself to you once again. Thank you for loving me unconditionally. Thank you for sending your Son Jesus into the world to forgive us and to give us hope. Thank you for this beautiful morning, Lord. Thank you for meeting all of our needs." Her husband was sleeping in that morning. She went to the clinic, and he got the phone call.

He came running, and as he came into the clinic, there were police and government people and everyone was screaming and running around. "I stood in the center of the room where the soldiers had pushed me. Water spilled at my feet, the white plastic cups still rolling along the edge of the floor. 'What's happening? What's happening?' I yelled again. 'Where's Bonnie?' Allison, part of the clinic team, spoke up. 'Bonnie is dead,' she said, barely able to get the words out. 'She's been killed.'"

"Suddenly, I was wrenched into a place I could never have imagined. An hour earlier, I had been happy to sleep in, peaceful and thankful for all that God had given us in life, our life. Now, I was forced to fall and fall and fall into the abyss of grief. I was not ready for this. I was not given time to prepare for the loss of one person who lit up my world. Boom, there I was, forced into a world of agony. Broken by the news hitting me, I fell to the floor. I didn't know I could cry so hard or feel so alone."

"I'm a happy, contented person by nature. I love life and all the great challenges waiting out there. Now I, like Bonnie, lay on that floor. I thought maybe the gunman was waiting for me, waiting to rush in and shoot me dead too, and I buried my face in the floor and wondered what I when I would get it. My body began to shake, and I could feel myself falling into shock. Lying there as I tried to process all that was happening, I felt the Lord say to me, 'There has been a seed planted in your heart. It is a seed that will grow from anger to hatred, or from forgiveness to love. It's a choice, and you need to make it now.'"

"'You're right, Lord,' I told him. 'Either way, it would be a decision people would understand, but how could I forgive this? It was impossible.' And I felt as if the Lord was taking me to the cross, and it was as if I was looking through his eyes as he hung there, his blood falling with tears as he cried out in his suffering, 'Father, forgive them; they don't know what they're doing.' And I knew I was the one who'd helped him to that cross, all the garbage of my life, my failings and sin. It was as if I was one of those soldiers mocking him."

"It was I who needed the forgiveness of so much sin, and he was able in the front of the world on television to forgive the man that killed Bonnie." The end of the book—and I don't want to spoil it all, it's such rich reading—he said this: the questions he gets to this day, "Why Lebanon? Why the Middle East? Why would you put yourselves at such risk?" "I have heard these questions over and over again. After Bonnie was killed, a little more than a year after jets flew into the Twin Towers and the world became aware of a new evil arising out of the Islamic world, people wanted to know if I regretted our decision to minister in Lebanon."

"The question deserves a thoughtful response, and the simplest answer is this: Bonnie and I were two people who loved Jesus, longed to live for him completely, and had a passion to share his love with a hurting and dying world. We went where he sent us, dangerous or not. He didn't call us to a place; he called us to himself." Wow. He didn't call us to a place; he called us to himself. "We had known we wanted to live fully and we both did. A thought occurring to me as I reflect on these questions, and this is a wonderful phrase: if it's not worth dying for, is it worth living for? If it's not worth dying for, is it worth living for?"

This young man full of the Holy Spirit is turning his world upside down with his testimony when he was totally overwhelmed, he found himself overshadowed. And so we begin to think, how could I ever live a life like this? Only if you remain, if you abide, if you rest in the power of God and you allow his life to fill you. Pray with me. Heavenly Father, I read books like this and I am again just overwhelmed. I pray for Gary Witherall and a ministry he never asked for and never dreamt of, to minister to people suffering incredible loss.

We feel so small, so little—I certainly do—in the face of people who have been pruned to this extent. But oh, the fruit! For you have chosen all of us to go and produce fruit and that our fruit will remain, that we would reproduce, see reproduced in others the life of Christ. Jesus, please would you help us to explain how it works. What does it mean to be connected? What does it mean to be remaining? And how does actually that power that God has given us in himself living within, how is it appropriated?

And how do we produce the fruit of prayer that works? Because that goes along with hearing your word and obeying it and finding the power to do what you call us to do and that we're chosen to do. You chose us, Lord, to go and produce much fruit and that our fruit would remain. And Lord God I pray with all my heart: teach us. Oh Teacher, interpret to us your dynamic word. Help us to put it all together, to take the time of day to figure it out.

And Lord, in this stillness where you live, teach us to reach up to you, to know you deeper, deeper, deeper every day. Teach us what it is to get down on our knees and never want to get up. Help us to do our part, to do the remembering so your Spirit can remind us of what we've remembered. Bring it to our remembrance moment by moment and day by day, and above all, on the page of tomorrow where your heavenly writing is already dry, may we be all you want us to be, do all that you want us to do even tomorrow. We ask it for Christ's sake, Amen.