Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Winning the worry war. I don't know if you're a worrier; Joshua was. And when I think of him going round and round and round and round Jericho, to me that is a wonderful picture. I work in pictures and think in pictures of what I have done all of my life. A Jericho appears, and I go round and round and round and round and don't seem to be able to stop. How do we win this worry war? Well, that's what we're going to talk about today.

Now, as I've just mentioned, I am a worry woman. When I was a little girl, I was worried I would never be a big girl. And then I did; I grew up. And then I worried I'd never get married, and I did. I remember going on the way to the wedding, worrying I'd have a crash and never get there. And I got married, and then I worried I'd never have children. I didn't worry very long; in 10 months, David appeared. But I did remember worrying. And then, of course, once I had children, I worried they'd fall into the washing machine and drown.

I'm blessed or cursed with a very vivid imagination, and it can be a blessing or a curse. Well, they didn't; they grew up. I did worry they wouldn't grow up and be big children and big people. I did worry they wouldn't get married, and on the way to their weddings, I worried that they would have a crash and wouldn't get there. Then I worried they'd never have children, and I didn't need to worry about that either.

However, it's never over. And, of course, the older you get, the more you have to worry about. I'm really worried I'm running out of time to worry. My time is shortening all the time, and worry time is running out on me. Some of us, of course, are worriers by nature. I'm a worrier by nature. My husband is not a worrier by nature, and it's good to try and marry one of those if you're a worrier, I think. He says I do enough worrying for the whole family, so why should he bother?

Even today, I woke up very early in the morning because I probably have more to worry about at this point of my life than I have ever, ever had to worry about. In fact, I have. But among my personal worries, I was worried that my car didn't have enough gas to get here, which it didn't. However, I didn't have time to stop, but I took time to stop, and then I worried I'd be late, which I was. I was worried about this talk that I hadn't had enough time to shake it down and get it into shape.

I remember once, and I've always worried about every talk I've given, saying to Stuart, "I'm worried about this talk." "Well, what are you worried about?" "Well, the Devil's telling me it's not very interesting." "How do you know it's the Devil?" he said. Thanks. I was worried about my grandson's birthday because I had managed to go to the older brother's birthday and I hadn't gone to his. I talked to him in the morning. He's only four, and he said, "Why you not coming to my birthday?" So I was worried about hurting him and that he would grow up with a complex.

I'm worried about a 300-page book I have to write before May, and I haven't started it yet. I'm worried about the meetings I go to. I'm just a worrier. Now I know I'm not alone. Whether you're a big worrier or a little worrier, I know that we have a world of worriers out here. But the thing is, worry and fear are sisters. What I see the Devil doing is the worry begins and he jumps on the back of it and turns it into terror, paralyzing fear.

And that's a very common thing. So we are to fight our fears, win the worry war, and these are battle terms: fighting our fears. There is a battle going on, and the Devil wants us to worry. The Devil wants to terrify us. God has not given you the spirit of fear, the Bible says. So if you have a spirit of fear, if you're obsessed by worry, who's given it to you? And since when did you receive gifts from the Devil? God has not given you this obsession, this fear, this terror. Somebody else has given it to you, and we are not to receive the gifts of the evil one.

God says that we will win this Jericho if we fight it His way. Now Joshua, facing this Jericho, was worrying. I'm sure he was worrying about the past. I mean, think of it: 40 years, and they'd never won a battle. They didn't have a very good track record. And now he's facing the biggest battle that they've faced in 40 years. So he's looking to the past, a lot of failure, and he's saying, "How can I win the present battle?"

He's worrying about things he can do nothing about. He can't go back and win the battle. Don't you often think about that? "If only I could go back and do it differently." You can't do that; you only have today. You do not have tomorrow, and you do not have yesterday. So I've not a doubt that he was thinking about the 40 years of failure, but God can break the cycle. There can be a point where you take Jericho even though you've failed and failed and failed and failed and failed in the past.

When I'm talking to people who are adult children of alcoholics, I always say that. God can break the cycle; that's the difference. I'm a worrier, as much of a worrier today as I was when I was a little girl without Christ. But the difference now is I have Christ, and He never worries. For this, I have Jesus. And the difference for the Christian isn't that He is going to change your character and suddenly you're going to become somebody that never worries.

He will not change your personality. I remember my daughter crying for two days when a psychologist told her that because she is a worrier. "Thank you, Mother; you gave it to me," she says. And I'm sure I did, and a bit more of her own. But when she was told she would always be who she was, a worrier, she had to accept that. That was the turning point for her. Now Christ would help her with her personality. Now Christ would help her cope with that obsession, that eating disorder, but she would never be like anyone else.

She would never be like her brothers, who never worried—her younger brother, anyway. "Why can't I be like Pete? Why can't I be like somebody else? Why does it matter so much to me that I always get an A, that I'm always perfect?" Why? Can't I be like somebody else? No. But now you have Jesus. And He will take the destructive part of worry and help you to shape it into constructive concern. Worry's not going to disappear, but what you do with them is going to change.

God is the potter, and He's going to shape your worries into prayers. He's going to shape your worries into another shape, and when you look at them after He's finished with them, they will look different. And they will always look smaller. One thing the divine potter does with our worries: He always crushes them up and gets them into perspective for us. So Joshua, looking back, was told by God in Joshua chapter one, if you would turn to it, and that will be our main text today.

Verse 6: "Be strong and courageous." Verse 7: "Be strong and very courageous." Verse 8: "Be careful to do everything that's written in the law." "Have not," verse 9, "I commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified. Do not be disgorged of courage—discouraged." That's what the word means. "For the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go."

And the Devil's desire is to take the heart out of us. Paul talks in the New Testament about losing heart, discouragement. And there are many, many people who are discouraged, discouraged. Many, many people whose hearts are failing them with fear. Many, many people looking at Jericho saying, "What a mess is in my past, what fears are in my future, how can I ever today go round to Jericho?"

But you see, we're only called to deal with the fears of today. When Jesus was talking about fear and discouragement and worry in Matthew chapter six, which is a classic passage where He's talking about "Don't worry about clothes" and "Don't worry about food" and "Don't worry about this" and "Don't worry about that," He comes to the end of the passage and He says, "Sufficient for today are the worries."

You have got enough worries; I have measured them out. And there is no way you can cope with the worries that you're worrying about in tomorrow. All you've got to do is worry about the worries in today. Now when worries appear in front of me, I think of them as grandchildren, two-year-old grandchildren who are tantruming. And when you get a two-year-old who is tantruming, all your attention is on this little thing.

Now what do you do with a child that tantrums? Well, there are various things you can do. You can ignore them and wait until it's over. You can try and control it. You can try and interject something that will help the child get through it or stop the tantrum. You can do all sorts of things. What happens to me when my worries are tantruming, just demanding I'm obsessed and my attention and everything is on it? Then I ask it a question: "Do you belong in today, or do you belong in tomorrow?"

And if that tantrum, that worry, belongs in tomorrow, I say, "I'm sorry; I have to ignore you. I cannot attend to you. Jesus said, 'Do not worry about tomorrow.'" Now then, the child might answer me, "I belong in today." Then I am allowed to address it. I'm allowed to worry about it God's way. I am allowed to react, respond, to let the potter take that child, that worry, that tantrum, and mold it into a shape that I can understand and cope with and respond to and turn the destructive worry into constructive concern.

Paul said, "I am concerned about all the churches," and the same word is used. The word that is used in the Bible for anxiety is merimnao, and it means an anxiety that obsesses so you can't think about anything else. The same word is used when it's used about healthy concern. And yet it has been changed; God has done something for it. He commends us to be concerned about the needs of the world. He tells us to be worried about people that are in need, for example, or that are lost.

There is a healthy concern. It's when it becomes obsessive and when you cannot function and when nobody else, you can't see anybody else. What happens to me when I am not handling worry properly is I can't function. I just can't think about anything else, I can't pray about anything else, I wake up with it and I go round and round and round Jericho and I can't stop. And God says that has to be stopped.

Now it has to be stopped for obvious reasons; it has to be stopped for our sake. When Martha was anxious and worried about many things, she was obsessed with the soup. It's incredible to me what you can be worried about. It really is. Actually, it doesn't matter whether the worry is little or the worry is big; Devil doesn't care. He just wants to distract you. Distract you from what? From God and from who God wants you to be. And He wants you not to be free from worry, but to turn your worries into prayers.

Something struck me and does strike me that there's one thing common to man, and that's temptation. And there is a temptation to worry, to be anxious. And if we fall into that temptation, then we sin. Worry is sin. Worry is universal; secondly, worry is sin. And that has really always helped me. "Martha, Martha, you're distracted and worried about many things. One thing is needful; Mary has chosen that." What is that? It's attending to the things of God; it's putting Him first.

Let me define worry for you quickly: a feeling of unease, apprehension, or dread. And it's often related to negative thinking about the future. Worry superimposes the future on the present. It also empties today of its strength because seeing you've superimposed the future on the present, you are now worrying about it and you're spending all this energy worrying about something that you've taken out of the future and brought into the present. Something that might never happen because 90% of what you're worrying about never happens, we're told.

Now I'll talk about the 10% that does in a minute, but the 90% of what we worry about never happens. I remember when my daughter was a teenager, worrying about the whole dating thing because I just arrived from England and I didn't understand the system. Only America has the dating system, and I didn't know how it worked. I didn't know anything. When you're out in your culture, you don't know anything. Like I'd ring a friend and say, "Is it safe that Judy gets on a bike and goes from this point to that point?" I didn't know if it was safe.

I would have known at home if I could have let her ride a bike and so on, but I didn't know here. So then when we hit the dating thing and this young man appears at 15—and I have just led him to Christ and know exactly what he's like—and now I see that he only has eyes for my 13-year-old daughter. I panic. I start to worry. I start to go round and round and round Jericho, and I wake up with it and I go to bed with it.

So what am I going to do with this worry? Well, I superimpose the future on the present: what might happen. Right. And because I have a good imagination, that can be a blessing and a curse. And so, of course, I've had the funeral by now. Oh dear. And I remember Judy sitting me down and saying, "Mother, we have to talk. Why don't we pray that all my mistakes will be small ones?" That was wisdom for a 15-year-old by now.

She was two years later. I had slapped a 15 thing on her. My youth pastor, I called my youth pastor up and said, "What do I do? I have this daughter that wants to date. She's 13, he's 15. He's not the sort of boy I want her dating." She said, "Oh, just slap a 15 on her. You can't date till you're 15." So I slapped the 15 on her. And on her 15th birthday, there he was on the doorstep with a bunch of flowers saying, "Mrs. Briscoe, you said when she was 15 I could date her."

So I'd had two years to go round and round and round Jericho by now. So this was difficult. This was tough. And at this point, she went to a dance. Now in England, you don't dance if you're a Christian. I used to dance every night before I was a believer, but when I was saved, that was it; I never danced again. And that's just one of those cultural Christian things. But here, you go to these school dances. And what's more, the parents go and watch the beginning of the dance.

I drag my husband along, and here was my daughter with this boy. And suddenly they do this slow dance, and all the girls' heads go down on their shoulders. I couldn't stand it! Here was this boy with his arms around my daughter and her head obediently on his—it was just like this thing. And at the end of the dance, they all come up. I am in shock! Absolute shock. I can't handle this.

And of course, I have superimposed the future on the present, and there is more than a head on a shoulder. I've already got her pregnant, and what are we going to do with the baby and all of that. Round and round and round Jericho. I remember the first time after that she went out on a date, I was behind the door and I said, "Take me with you, Judy! Take me with you!" "Oh, Mother!" Her best word in those years was "embarrassing." "It's so embarrassing, so embarrassing, embarrassing!"

Well, she wouldn't take me with her. And that's the essence of worry: you're out of control. That's the essence of worry. You cannot control. You can try. You cannot be God. God is omniscient; He knows everything. God is omnipotent; He's got the power to do everything. God is omnipresent; He's everywhere. And mothers try to be God! They want to know everything. "Who's on the phone? What's this letter about?"

They want to be everywhere. "Take me with you!" You can't be in the car, you can't be on the date, you can't be at the party, you can't be at the movie theater. And we want to control; we want to have the power to control. And yet parenting is about giving control to the child, helping them make their own good choices that all their mistakes may be small ones. But it doesn't eradicate the worrying.

And I remember going at this point to a conference in Michigan called Winning Women, where I was the guest speaker and I had to talk about faith. And I was busy worrying, but of course I was supposed to stand up and tell everybody how not to do it. And I went into the prayer room at that conference where there was a wonderful prayer ministry and a woman called Margaret, who became a lifelong friend that day.

And I said, "I don't think I can teach one thing because I am so worried about my daughter. She's going to another of these dances where she puts her head on his shoulder." And I'm here, and I'm going round and round Jericho. And she said, "Tell me about your daughter." And I gave her a photograph of Judy, and she became my daughter's prayer partner. And she wrote to me and I had shared a little picture that God had given me from the scripture.

You know when Joshua went round and round and round Jericho, he took the ark with him. He took the word of God, and that's what you've got to do when you're going round and round your problem. "Lord, I'm taking the ark with me; what do you say to me?" And that day, God had said to me from Exodus: Moses' mother, desperately worried about Moses, the baby. Couldn't hide him any longer. She put him in the ark and let him go along among the crocodiles.

And I said to Margaret, "That's what I feel like. I feel that I've got to let her go. And I feel all these nice little boys I thought were so cute at church are like crocodiles! They've turned into these crocodiles, and she's out there. These nice little deacons' children all look like crocodiles!" And she said, "Well, you've put her in the ark. Put her in Christ. You've got to let her go. But," she said, "I'll be Miriam. I'll stand on the bank, and I'll watch your daughter." She said, "You're no use; you can't pray in this state."

Right! Where was Moses' mother? It was Miriam, it was the sister that stood on the bank. We can do that for each other. And it was about two weeks later that I got a little present through the mail from Margaret. It was a little rubber crocodile with its mouth tied up! And on the ribbon, it just said, "I'm praying, I'm praying."

Now I was so worried about Judy, and I didn't need to be. I wasted all that time going round and round and round and round Jericho. And what happened? Well, she did all right. She did all right. And I think one of the biggest fears we have are for our children. Will they love God? Will they make it? Will they choose right, et cetera, et cetera? But they do all right. And I want to encourage you mothers: they'll be all right. All things being equal, they'll be all right. It doesn't mean that everything will be all right for them, but they'll be all right.

And what we have to do is not waste our energy going round and round Jericho, but shape our worries into the right shape. Let Him shape our worries into prayers. Doesn't eradicate the problem. Jericho is still there; Jericho still has to be faced. You still have to walk round Jericho, but you're not to fret or worry; instead of worry, pray.

Now let me read to you from The Message from Philippians 4: "Celebrate God all day every day. Don't fret or worry. Instead of worry, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. And before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down."

It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. That is one of the best paraphrases of Philippians 4, "Rejoice in the Lord always," et cetera, that I have ever read. Let me read it to you again: "Celebrate God all day every day. I mean, revel in Him. Don't fret or worry; instead of worry, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. And before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down."

It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center, the core of your life. Christ displaces worry at the core of your life. Doesn't mean Jericho's not there. It just means you look at Jericho in a whole other way. So shape your worries into prayers. Make a worry list if it helps you, and then worry your way through it; you're allowed to do it.

You know, it's amazing to me as I took my ark round a particular Jericho I have in my life at the moment, one more time, about a year ago, going round and round and round this problem. I was preparing this message or this series, and I asked God about it. And He said, "Well, don't be terrified, don't worry; that's a command. Don't sin by worrying; trust me." And I read the story of them going round once a day.

And the Lord said to me, "That's what you're allowed to do; only once a day. Go round once, then you go back to camp and you get on with your life." Because what happens if you go round and round and round and round and round? You never get back to camp and attend to what you need to be doing. All those other children that are doing all right. Once a day, it's a command.

It's a bit like when you're struggling with infertility and you're in this Resolve group, which is a very good group if that's a problem. Those of you that have been through that know about this support group. It's not a Christian group, but it's a very good support group. And they have a 20-minute rule. They say worry about it and think about it for 20 minutes every day, and then discipline your mind. Same thing: one trip round Jericho.

And I started to put that principle into action a year ago, and I haven't always managed to do it. I mean, there have been some days when at the end of the day, I'm still tramping round the place and I'm exhausted. Of course you will be exhausted; you only have enough strength to go round it once. And there are other people in my life; you have to get on with living. You have to attend to the ministry that God has given you. And you have to function.

And so once a day. Make your worry list, go round it once, and then tear it up and put it in the wastepaper basket. So what do we do? We need a supply of courage. Now at the beginning of the chapter in Joshua, after God has told him, "Don't worry, don't be terrified, don't be frightened," we come down and Joshua, after talking to God about all this, orders the officers of the people in verse 10: "Go through the camp and tell the people, 'Get your supplies ready.'"

Now I just saw that two days ago. Get your supplies ready, and I thought, that's what we need. Joshua needed supplies. I mean, he needed swords and he needed uniforms—I don't know what he needed, but if you're going to fight a battle like they did, you need supplies. But what he needed more than any of the other physical supplies that he needed was a supply of courage. Where do you get this supply of courage?

Well, first of all, we have to ask: what is courage? What is courage? And the only way I can answer that for you is to talk about what it isn't first. Courage isn't a feeling. Courage isn't a feeling; courage is resolve. First and foremost, courage is resolve, determination, will. That's what courage is. And all of us, therefore, have a supply of it. Everybody has a will.

You say, "No, my kids have a won't." Everybody has a will. You don't need to go looking for it; you don't need to say, "Well, I don't have any courage." Courage is will: the will to do what is right, the determination, the resolve, whatever you feel like. For courage is not a feeling. And if we wait for a feeling of courage to do what is right, to say what is right, to address a problem, to go up against our Jericho, we can wait until you're dead because the feeling will probably never come.

I'm not saying that courage isn't always devoid of feeling; sometimes courage is a feeling, courage is there. But the courage needs to be a resolve first and foremost, and don't wait for the feeling. I've often told the story in our youth ministry how I'm a very fearful person. As well as being a worrier, I'm wrecked with fears of everything.

And I was very frightened of the young people that we were working among. I loved them, but I was frightened of them because they were, well, I was due to be frightened. I mean, I was right to be frightened of them; they were tough, tough kids. There was a particularly very incredible place called the Floral Hall in a seaside place called Morecambe, and we were trying to do some what we called raw evangelism: just go out, meet kids, try and get to know them, try and talk to them on the streets and these places.

What we did is we put a great big map up of our environment and the youth group and we started to pray over this map. And then we sent them out for three months, these kids, just to go out when they were free at night. And they're not really free at night in England because they do homework; they do three hours' homework every night, Monday to Friday.

But when they could do it, they were to go out on the weekends or whenever and find where the kids were and what they were doing in that part of the map. So we divided the kids up into teams, we divided the map up into teams. And then after three months, we came back and we kept putting little things on the map. "Well, there's a place here; it's a house. Some parents are always away, and every Saturday night there is a sex party here and there's probably about 20 or 30 kids go here, and that's in my section."

"And there's also a coffee bar, and of course I'm also on the beach here." So this is my territory. And then everybody else was doing the same. And then we had a strategy meeting: how then can we forcefully go out to where these kids are, into these places, maybe to the house, to the party, or wherever it is, if that's your territory? And what do we do when we get there? Can we use music? Can we just turn up? Can we use preaching, teaching, drama, mime, juggling, magic?

There's a wonderful in Europe they have Christian magic that is being used in evangelism; we saw that at this conference we've just come back from. What can we use to physically put ourselves in that situation? And so that's the sort of work we were doing. And in my territory with my team, there was this place with a thousand kids dancing and getting drunk, and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Herman's Hermits and Pretty Things, all these groups. 17, 18 years of age were playing; we didn't know who they were.

Nobody knew who they were in those days, but that's what was happening. And the kids would, when their idols who would come on the stage to sing—it was concrete floor—and you're standing there with a thousand kids would beat their heads on the floor in ecstasy and they'd have blood all over their faces. These groups would come and let them touch a little bit of them, and it was idol worship; it was incredible atmosphere in there. Now this was in my territory.

And when I'd been in there and as I realized that I had to get myself in there and do something, I freaked out. I'm a very fearful person. And so I prayed for courage. "God, give me the courage." And it didn't come. It was four weeks I stood there praying for courage until it dawned on me that God was saying to me, "Jill, will you go in there for me without the courage because it's the right thing to do? Without the feeling. Courage is doing without the courage for Jesus."

And when, I mean, I knew it in principle; I'd forgotten it in my crisis or my terror. And so courage is resolve. I resolved to go in. Courage is willpower; I said to my feet, "Move!" And I got myself in without the feelings, I assure you. And once after obedience, doing what I knew to be right because He said go into all the world and that was my world and my responsibility and God will hold me accountable for making sure those people have heard that they don't need to go to Hell and they can go to Heaven.

I arrived on the other side of the door and I heard myself say, "Take me to the manager." And I thought, "Who said that?" I knew what to do, I knew what to say, I did it, I said it, he gave me his stage, I led him to Christ eventually. The whole thing is just one of those stories. But what happened, the thing that had to happen to me was this terror, this fear, this worry: what will happen when I get in there? Superimposing the future on the present and letting it paralyze me had to be dealt with.

And God used prayer. You cannot pray and worry at the same time; it's impossible. I tried it this morning! So I started to pray about what I was worrying about and I had to stop praying to worry. So of course the thing to do is to keep praying all day, every day. Celebrate God, revel in Him, shape your worries into prayers; let him do that. And then the peace of God that passes all understanding will garrison your heart and mind. That's put little soldiers, little angels around your heart and your mind. Yes, he will.

Courage is resolve, courage is not only a feeling. Courage is certainly a command: "Do not be terrified." And to disobey it is sin. Confess it! Know what to do with sin: confess it and ask God for the power to overcome, to be strong, to be what you should be, to do, to say what you should do and say. So if we're going to win the worry war and fight our fears, then we have to know that courage is resolve, courage is a command, and lastly, courage is fear that has said its prayers. Courage is fear that has said its prayers.

And you know the story I'm going to share with you in closing, some of you. Stuart and I were invited down to Wycliffe Loma Linda base, where it is surrounded by gorillas. And just six months previously to our invitation to go for Wycliffe's field conference, they had kidnapped Ray Rising. He happened to be a veteran missionary who is in charge of security. So they kidnapped the security man, which wasn't very encouraging! It was an impossible task anyway, but he had broken his own rules: you're not supposed to go out if there's only one of you, and he had gone on his motorbike to get supplies from the village where he had worked all his life, known all his life, loved all his life by the folks out there. And coming back, at the gate of Loma Linda, they took him, and that was it.

We stayed in his house, and they had the Christmas star lit even though it was not Christmas. And they said, "It's not going out until he's back." And this was the site that Wycliffe hierarchy chose for their entire conference for all the Americas, all the South Americas. And so we were excited to go down there. We have been to many situations like this, not quite so volatile as this, but general danger. And then we got a letter from the people that the missionary societies are asked to use by the government to investigate whether it's safe to do these things.

And we got a letter from them saying, "We have had a look at this. We have intelligence that tells us that you and Stuart are targeted for kidnapping. So you're not to come, and the conference must not be held because not only are you and Stuart in personal danger, but the head of Wycliffe was going and all the hierarchy, all the big brass from the whole of the organization was due to be there and they were sent this same letter because they were under the same duress."

So I remember saying to Stuart, "Oh, what a shame we won't be going." And I remember him looking at me saying, "Huh?" And I thought, "He's going to go. I know he's going to go." I mean, it's like a red rag to a bull to my husband, something like this. "Where the gorillas?" You know, I just see him almost as if he's the fighter of the bull and he's got his thing out waving it in the bull's face. I knew he'd go. But the question was: would I?

And I knew that he didn't want me to go, but I also knew that he wasn't going to tell me not to go. And he said, "No, I'm not going to do that; you'll have to decide. You'll have to find out and you let me know." And so we started to pray, we fasted, we asked advice. This went on for months. And we got up to one week away, and I still could not make up my mind. I was obsessed. I was going round and round and round and round Jericho.

What was faith and what was stupidity, what was being sensible, what about our responsibilities here? You know, just this whole thing. And of course, with my imagination, I was already sitting in a hut in the jungle, starving, chained to a guard. You know, I mean, I superimposed the future onto the present. I was having a wonderful time because I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat. And Stuart said, "Jill, I have to put a deadline on you: Christmas Day."

That was one week away. "We have to let them know whether we're going or not." Incidentally, Wycliffe has said we do not give in to gorillas; we still want you to come. That was the situation, and so we're still going to have the conference. "And we need you to come. We are hanging on by our fingernails, these missionaries. We need our conference more than we've ever needed it in our life. The last five pastors have canceled on us because of the situation. Please come."

So here we were. And so Christmas Day, he comes off to preach—it was on a Sunday—and I knew I couldn't, I had to tell him. And I went upstairs to his study, and he was he was doing the Family Book of Christian Values, where there's a great big section on faithfulness and love. All these things we had to decide what goes in the book; they were in piles all over the study.

And there was a pile on courage. And I thought, "Well, I'll just start and read some of this; maybe I'll get a clue." And of course it didn't help; it was all about martyrs and things like that! But right at the bottom of the pile, there was a quote, a little quote. And on the top, Stuart had scribbled a note: "Give this to Jill." And he had forgotten to give it to me. And it was the little poem, and the last two lines say something about "courage is fear that has said its prayers."

And all these incidents I've shared with you came running back: the Floral Hall and everything. Yes, yes, yes. And I knew what was right because we had prayed and sought God's guidance. I knew that I should go. I knew that I should go. And I knew that my fear was not a good reason to stay. And so I said my prayers, and I came to church.

And I remember sending Stuart a little note in between the first and second service. He'd just preached a wonderful sermon about Jesus coming to Earth, knowing what would happen to Him. He still came. Sure, he didn't want to come, but he did because it was the right thing to do. And I said, "He came for us; let's go for Him." And so we went. And I went frightened, and I stayed frightened. But I was not obsessed, and I functioned.

And God enabled me to encourage and to minister. We are still getting letters from those people: "Thank you for coming. I can't believe you came; it was such a blessing." And of course they were such a blessing to us. But courage is doing without the courage. Courage is doing it scared. Courage is doing it when you don't feel like doing it because it's the right thing to do. And the incredible thing is, then the power to do what you're doing is there.

It comes after you get yourself inside the Floral Hall. You know what to do, you know what to say. And you find the adrenaline is there, and you find the anointing is there. And that's a powerful combination. And God comes through. That's what you do with worry. There is a supply of courage; you have it already. God has given you the will to do His will. Now then, will you do it? That's the question. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for Joshua. Thank you that he went one trip round Jericho; he did what he was told. Took many, many times round Jericho before the problem was solved, but he did what he was told. He was obedient to your word. Help us to take the ark with us. Help us to take your word in our hearts and in our hands around our problem once a day.

Help us to discipline our hearts and minds. Help us to do what we should do, to say what we should say, to be who we should be, to resolve to do that. That's courage. And help us when the feelings aren't there to do it anyway and to do it for you. And help us to realize that as soon as we take a step towards Jericho, the forces of Heaven—God and all His angels—are on our side.

And it will be done. And there will be strength, and there will be power, and there will be peace and even joy in the midst of it all. Help us to put these very practical things into practice, Lord. Change our world and change our life because of this. We ask it for Christ's sake, Amen.