Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Remember that we are in the book of Isaiah, and we’re thinking about God being a shelter from the wind, from the storms of life. Last time we talked about God being like a father. We talked about him being like a doctor. We talked about him being like a faithful husband dealing with an unfaithful wife. All these pictures keep falling out of the scriptures.

I remember a boy saying to me in the streets of Europe once when I was working with street kids. I was teaching him to read so he could read the Bible. He was 18, a member of a street gang, and he found the Lord. That was the incentive for him to humble himself and ask me, who was a teacher, "Would you, miss, teach me how to read?" I always remember this great big hulking gang leader with hair down to here in different colors, his leather jacket and chains on his back. He came to me and just put his pride away to come and ask me. At the age of 18, he couldn’t read. He was illiterate.

"Teach me to read, miss," he said. I said, "Why do you want me to teach you to read, Trevor?" He said, "Because I want to read the Bible. I want to read the Bible." That was the incentive. He learned very quickly. He actually could read; he just didn't know he could at that point. He learned very, very quickly. It was very easy. He and a whole gang of kids started these classes.

Then we began to help them with the scriptures. We only had the Living Bible then, in paraphrase. King James was just too much for kids learning to read at the age of 18. As we began to read, he began to avidly read the stories that he'd never read or never heard in his life.

He said to me one day about a year later—he'd become one of the leaders of the youth group at that point—he said, "I don't know what you're doing, Jill, next time you're going to teach us a series, but take us into the Old Testament." He said, "It's like a big dark house, and I want to go inside." He said, "Switch the light on for me."

What a joy it was as a youth leader, as a Sunday school teacher, as a leader of young people, to take that bright mind and that heart that had been humbled before God, that life that had been transformed and changed from unbelievable blackness and darkness and was now molding this young man in Christian leadership.

What a joy it was to take him into the Old Testament, introduce him to the characters, and introduce him to the stories. You just have to grasp this. When nobody has ever heard of Samson or Delilah, or David and Goliath, and nobody has an idea that there is an Old Testament and a New Testament, it is such a joy because it's all like treading on sand that nobody has ever trod in before. There's a footprint and you say, "Oh, there's a footprint!" You've never seen anything like that before. You catch that when you're teaching somebody else. It's much harder to deal with kids here who are bored with Christianity than it is to deal with unchurched, unreached people who are coming to the scriptures for the first time.

I do remember Trevor specifically loving this story in Isaiah 6. I remember him saying, "It's as if he's opened the door of heaven, isn't it? He's letting us look over his shoulder and see what he's seeing." I said, "That's right. That's what a vision is. That's how these people showed us what God was like." God gave them a vision, and as best they could, they described it in our words, which was very hard to do. No man has seen God at any time. In a sense, they saw something. They saw symbols, they saw light, they saw shape, they saw things they could somehow relate to. Then they had to try and put it down in our words.

Then our translators have to take those words from a foreign language and put them in our words. Our poverty-stricken English is one of the most poverty-stricken languages there are. We only have one word for a lot of things, instead of having 10 words to choose from like in other languages. So, what we have here is the very, very best that bright minds, brilliant minds, have been able to do to try and show us that God opened the door of heaven. A man like you and I looked through the door of heaven and saw God sitting on a throne.

There's all sorts of things we can learn about who God is when we look at this vision. If we're going to know God, especially in times that are tough and times that are difficult, this is one of the ways you can get to know him. There are many, many ways you can get to know God. I heard about the little boy that wanted to draw a picture, so he tried to draw a picture of God. His teacher said, "What are you drawing?" He said, "I'm drawing a picture of God." He worked away and worked away. She said, "But nobody knows what God looks like." He said, "They will now."

I like that. He was quite sure what God looked like and he'd drawn a picture, so now everybody would know if they didn't know before. He had an idea in his mind, this little boy, of what God looks like. In fact, you'll be amused at this. A little boy came up to my husband and said, "Are you God?" Stuart said, "No, I'm not God." He said, "Well, my mummy is always saying we're going to God's house. This is your house. This is your church. So, are you God?" He got the emphasis here. It is amazing who people think God is. Absolutely amazing.

So, who is God and what is he like? He's shown himself to us. When trouble happens, if we can only keep sane by not figuring out what he's doing, or what isn't he doing, or why doesn't he work, or why doesn't he answer my prayers, or why doesn't he change the situation, or why doesn't he change this person, or my marriage, or this, that, and the other. If we would only ask the question, "What is he like?" Not what he's doing, but what is he like?

If you can't praise God for what he's allowing to happen, praise God for who he is in the middle of what he's allowing to happen. As you start to praise him for who he is, that will help you cope with what's happening or what isn't happening. More to be exact, that's the tougher thing to happen, isn't it? Prayers that aren't answered.

I remember Leighton Ford's son dying, Sandy. He was only 19, a brilliant, beautiful young Christian leader on his campus down in the South. He was in track and field and nobody knew that he had a heart condition. His parents didn't know, his coaches didn't know, nobody knew. As he ran a very grueling race, he collapsed at the finishing tape and they rushed him to hospital.

Jeanie and Leighton happened to be in town, which was a miracle. They weren't the other side of the world. Leighton Ford is a world evangelist, a Presbyterian minister, and travels the world. But he happened to be at home. They called them and they rushed through the evening hours when they heard and they got hold of them to the hospital. On the way, as Leighton tells this story, he said to Jeanie, "Pray, Jeanie, pray. Maybe God will be good and Sandy will live." Jeanie said, "If Sandy dies, isn't God good?"

Think about that. "Maybe God will be good and Sandy will live." Jeanie's response or question was, "If he dies, does that mean God isn't good?" Yes, God is good whether Sandy lives or dies. It's who he is. Not, "Are you going to keep him alive?" or "Is he going to die?" or "What's going to happen?" or "Why didn't this happen?" or "Why weren't we there?" or "Why didn't we know?"

Those are "why" questions. You can ask them, but you probably won't get an answer. But if you can start and concentrate when trouble hits you on who he is, you're going to be able to function in that difficult situation. You're going to have answers. Not the answers perhaps that you're looking for, but you're going to have other answers.

As we look at this vision, we meet Isaiah hurting. This man is hurting. This man's in trouble. King Uzziah has died, and he happened to be a relative of Isaiah the prophet. Isaiah was a popular prophet because Uzziah the king had protected him, had made his ministry easy in a country that was not pro-God at the time. In fact, it was in decline. At the end or in the middle of Isaiah's reign, they were all going to be carted off to Babylon. Jerusalem was going to be destroyed. The temple was going to be decimated. Everything was going to go.

As they were heading towards this dire thing that was going to happen, the prophets who happened to be around—Zechariah was around, Isaiah was a contemporary—were telling the people, "This is going to happen. Why don't you repent? Why don't you get it together?" King Uzziah, a godly king in a line of a whole lot of bad lots, all these dreadful kings that had been on the throne and doing all this terrible stuff, along comes a good one here and a good one there. Uzziah was one of the good ones.

He comes along, tries to pull the thing back together, gives Isaiah full rein, gets his money and his wealth and his influence behind him. Just as people are beginning to listen to the message of Isaiah, he dies. This is an incredibly difficult time politically, spiritually, and personally for Isaiah the prophet. In fact, if you read on from chapter six, the whole thing's downhill. Isaiah never knew a convert. He never saw anything happen. He ended up a martyr. Tradition says he was put in a log and sawn in two. That's how he died.

He never saw any fruit, which is an incredible thing when you think of this marvelous, marvelous book and what it's meant to people down the ages. Now, of course, he must know that because he's in heaven, but he never knew it when he was on Earth. As Isaiah comes to this point, he does not spend time saying, "Why this? Why that? Why does the good guy die?"

One of our world relief workers was visiting a little boy that was dying in Haiti and said to him, "What can I do for you? What can I do for you, little guy?" He said, "I don't know. I want this, that, and the other." So, our relief worker said, "Do you pray?" He said, "Oh, yes." He said, "Well, who do you pray to?" He said, "I have been praying so hard to Superman. I have been praying, 'Superman, Superman, come and save me. Come and heal me.' But Superman hasn't come." That's all he knew. Exported from us was the man who saves you is Superman in the comics. Superman didn't come.

What a wonderful thing it was for our world relief worker to say, "Let me tell you about Super God. There is a Super God, and he will come. He will save you. He will either take you to heaven or leave you here for a little while, but he will save you forever for himself." Then he began to talk about heaven to this little boy.

Omnipotent, all-powerful, potent, all potency, if you like, is Super God. He is God of gods. It's one of God's names. Super God. There isn't a God who is more superior or super than God himself as he's revealed in scripture. The word actually means he holds everything together.

Stuart and I were walking around the lake once where we used to live, and we'd been asked to write some little books for children. We started to say, "Why can't we put the incommunicable attributes of God? Let's write them for two-to-five-year-olds." That was a challenge. The things you can't communicate, let's try and do it in pictures. For example, omnipotence. How do you teach a two-to-five-year-old that God is all-powerful?

We thought about what that meant, and of course, there is one word in the scriptures that describes this all-powerful God: "that by him all things consist." "Stick together" is the word. He sticks everything together. So, we started this little book. When I got home, I scribbled some sketches with the world and everybody flying off it—people and dogs and trees and things. Then the next page is God sticking it all together and keeping everybody on the world upside down. Because God sticks everything together. He holds everything together. Everything falls apart if God wasn't omnipotent, if he wasn't sticking everything together, then everything would fall apart. God is all-powerful. He sticks us back together again. He keeps us by physical laws, like gravity, in place. By him, all things consist.

Isaiah, in his trouble, had a great desire to see God. "I want to see God." When you're in trouble, that's the first thing you've got to do, is say, "God, give me a great desire to see you, to understand who you are." This spiritual vision can be given to you in many ways. You can just kneel down and say, "God, bring to my mind, as I am still before you, a picture of Jesus or something that reminds me about what I know of the scriptures that's going to show me what you're like. I need to be reminded of something."

You can open the Bible to Isaiah 6. If you've got a reference Bible, it'll give you other references to other visions. Start and read. John the Apostle had a vision. Daniel had a vision. Abraham had a vision of God. All these people had visions of God. Just take an hour and read them all. Guess what? You will have been looking over the shoulder of people that actually had a vision of God. It's one way to see God.

If you do that, incidentally, you will be amazed at the similarities of what they saw, whether they lived in Genesis or Revelation, whether they'd read each other's writings or not, because they all saw the same thing. You can see God through the scriptures in that way. You can see God in Jesus. When I'm in trouble, I stay in the Gospels when I'm reading, because I want to see God in Jesus. What did he say to this woman when she was in trouble? Well, maybe that's what I need to hear he's saying to me. How did he help people when they were in trouble? Follow him through the Gospels. Just get in your little sandals and off you go through the story of the Gospels, and you will see God. You will understand what he's like.

Yes, he cares about people in trouble. Look at this. He's weeping at the tomb. He cares when somebody I love dies. He's been there. He's stood in that place. So, you can see him in scripture in those ways. Look over the shoulder of somebody that's seen him. Watch Jesus, for he said, "Look at me and you're looking at God." Remember? Philip said, "If you'd only show us God." He said, "You're looking at him. You're looking at him, Philip. Look. Look at me. You're looking at him."

So, look at him and you'll figure it out. As you're in trouble and you look at him and have this great desire well up in your heart to see him, then you'll find some aspect of his character that will comfort you and that will help you. So, buy a Bible if you haven't got one and get into the scriptures in that way.

One of the things you'll see in symbol or in action will be this mighty all-powerfulness, whether he's raising the dead in the Gospels or whether he's holding back the sea for the Israelites to pass through. I don't know what he's doing. Whatever he's doing, you'll start and see he can do anything. He can do anything. The miracle of the Christian gospel is he is living in me, and he is living in you. You don't have a little bit of God. You have all of God in all of you. There's nothing else to have. There's nothing more to get. When you receive Christ, you receive all you're going to get.

The same God that raised Christ from the dead, in all his entirety, lives in you. In all his power, "He that raised up Christ from the dead lives in you." That's Christianity. Christ in you. How come you say that I'm so powerless? Well, that's another story. Maybe all of God does live in all of you, but he doesn't have all of you. He comes into the door. Does he have all the rooms? Has he got free access? That takes a lifetime, perhaps, to happen.

God is all-powerful. You can see Christ in him in Christ in the Gospels. You can see God in history. You can see God in vision. You can see God in suffering. Uzziah dies, but God is in control. There's a throne up there!

When my husband was young, he used to sing a little chorus. I don't know if you know this one: "God is still on the throne, and he will remember his own. Though trials press us and burdens distress us, he never will leave us alone. God is still on the throne, God is still on the throne." He got it wrong all his life. He used to sing, "God is still on the phone." After a while, he grew up and he heard it one day, and he thought, "Oh, I've got that wrong all my life." But then he realized it didn't really matter because God is still on the phone. He's got a throne phone, you know, or whatever it is. He is connected and you never get a busy signal and all of that. So that was good.

But God is still on the throne. What do all these people see? A throne. What do the scriptures say about God? He is going to be there on a throne when we get there. When we think of God in heaven, what do we think of? We think of him on the throne. I do, anyway. It is a symbol. We know what a throne means down here. It means authority, it means majesty, it means glory, it means power, it means rule. It means all sorts of things, doesn't it?

When these men look through heaven, they all saw this throne, this golden throne. Sometimes it's talked about as a glass. They're trying to find words. It looks gold, but it's glass. It's see-through gold, one of them said. But there is a throne there, and his train filled the temple. There wasn't a place in the temple that the presence didn't touch. He filled heaven, and of course, the scripture says that he fills Earth as well.

There is no place that he isn't. He is not only omnipotent, all-powerful, there is a throne there, but he is all-present, omnipresent. I remember chasing one of my grandchildren, Drew. Judy was going out to teach, and I was babysitting for the day. As she rushed out the door, I said, "Well, give me my list." Grandmas have to have lists. I do, anyway. I have to know exactly what she wants me to do and when. If I haven't got a list, I'm lost.

She said, "Oh, I didn't have time to make it, mother. You know, just keep on him. Just keep on him." He was at that stage. I said, "Well, I suppose I know how to do that." I tried to keep up with this two-year-old or three-year-old or whatever he was. By 10:30, I was done. I was ready for bed.

So, I sat down and made myself an English cup of tea, which is what you do in times of crisis, and was lulled into a strange complacency because everything was sort of nice and quiet and then it was one of those quiet spells that becomes loud. Do you know what I mean? Nothing's happening and suddenly it's deafening because you realize there's no sound going on.

I leap up and start and look for him. "Drew, Drew, where are you?" The little imp wouldn't tell me where he was, so I was rushing here and rushing there trying to find him. I thought, "Oh, boy, do I ever know that when I find him, he's going to be in something that he shouldn't be." And he was. I found him. "Drew! What are you doing? Stop doing that at once!"

He looked up—there was no guilt, there was absolutely nothing—in amazement at me. He said to me, "You’re everywhere, Grandma!" He was amazed that Grandma was everywhere. There was nowhere Grandma wasn't. She was here, she was there. He couldn't turn around, he couldn't get away. I would appear, right? That's omnipresent.

Omnipresent Grandma. Have you got it? That's God. Okay, what's God like? Grandma? No, it's not quite like that, but it's omnipresent. It's being everywhere all at once. Now, only God can do that. It was fun for Stuart and me to try and capture that concept in a book for two-to-five-year-olds. Omnipresent. God is all over the place.

I remember years ago when my mom was dying, and I thought, "Well, this is the year that my King Uzziah is dying." There was going to be a death. It was obvious, but I didn't know when. I lived here; she lived in England. How was I going to gauge this? I called the doctor long distance and they don't do things quite the same in Europe. First of all, they never tell the patient they're dying. It's not done that way. In fact, you're told not to tell them that they're dying. Then they don't prognose as much as we do here.

I couldn't get anything out of them. "Well, when do you think is going to be her last? I want to visit. So when should I come?" Well, they couldn't tell me and this, that, and the other. So I said to Stuart in the end, "Let me go while she's well. I can't gauge this. How do I know? Let me go while we can still enjoy each other."

So, I took three weeks and I went home. When I got there, I went to see the doctor. He said, "Well, she's probably got six months more or so." I thought, "Okay." As I walked into the house, the caregiver, who was a little nurse, was there. She drew me aside and she said, "Mrs. Briscoe, your mother is dying."

I said, "No, no, I've just been to see the doctor. She's got six months to live." She said, "I work with dying people. I know I'm only a caregiver, but your mother is dying." Then she said, "I know you're religious because I've seen you've got a Bible in your bedroom." She said, "We need to tell your mother she's dying."

I said, "Well, I don't think I can really do this without the doctor, and the doctor isn't into telling her that she's going to die," and all the rest. So, she said, "Well," she said, "I'm Catholic." She was Irish. She had a beautiful Irish accent. "I'm Catholic," she said. "Whether you're going to do anything or not, I know she's dying, so I'm going to do something."

To my amazement, she produced all these candles and started plunking them all around my mother's bedroom and lighting them. I thought the whole place was going to go up in flames. We had candles here and candles there. My mother, who was lying back against the pillows and was still well in her mind, looked around and said to me, "Am I dying?"

Well, I didn't know whether she was dying or not. I had this woman telling me she was and the doctor telling me she wasn't. But I had a sense that that little nurse knew exactly what she was talking about. Indeed, this was the time my mom was dying. So, I sat by her bedside and I started to think of all the things I had prayed and waited to say to her for 40 years. A mother who I don't know whether ever read any of my books, never heard me speak, never heard Stuart preach. A mother I had absolutely really no idea where she stood with God.

This was my chance. I didn't do any of the things I'd prayed for 40 years I wanted to do. The little nurse did. I sat on a chair and watched 40 years of prayer answered. It was the little nurse that took a Bible and opened it and explained to my mother that she had better confess. That's what they did in the Catholic Church. She needed to confess and get her sins sorted out and walked her through the gospel.

Then we were prayed together and I was able to pray with my mom, and the next day she went to be with the Lord. It was as if God said to me, "Now Jill, you were in America and you heard about your mom and you decided to go and see her. I'm in control. I'm on the throne. I'm above the situation. I could see exactly what was going to happen. I brought you here, not to do what you thought you were going to do, but to sit there and watch 40 years of prayers answered. Whether you'd been here or not, this would have happened. I want you to tell everybody that isn't there, God's going to answer their prayers. They’ve just to believe it."

I realized that God was on the throne and his train filled the temple, and he's everywhere. He was in America and he was in that little room as my mother went to heaven. What a wonderful, wonderful thing it was. God is on the throne; he's in control. Ever since then, I've never doubted it when I've had bad news and I can't be there or can't get there. I'm not, but he is. It's far better he is than I am. Even when I was there, I didn't do anything, but he did.

He isn't limited. He doesn't only do things if we're there to take control and charge. Let me tell you, he's got it all sorted out. He knew exactly how he would alert my mother. He knew exactly what caregiver to put in her home. He's not limited by anything like that. Jesus' connections are absolutely incredible.

As I put that funeral together and watched incredible things happen so unexpectedly to me, I believe that God was still on the throne and his train filled the temple. He is omnipotent, he is omniscient, and he knows what we can never know. We can trust him. We see that he is there. We see he's on the throne. We see the holiness, the aura, the glory of God.

The angels calling, "Holy, holy, holy," and the threshold moving at the sound of the angels' voices. I used to read this and think, "Well, of course, God's speaking and heaven's shaking. Why not? I expect that to happen, don't you, when you go to heaven and God speaks? Don't you expect the floor to shake?" Isaiah looked through and you know something? It wasn't God speaking. It was the angels. As the angels cried, "Holy, holy, holy," the threshold shook.

I ask myself a question about the holiness of God. If that's what happens at the voice of angels, what will happen at the voice of God? Sometimes I think in our prayers, maybe even in our singing, we just get too friendly and we diminish the power and the majesty and the glory of God. I tell you, we talk about going and standing in front of God and seeing his face. I hope we're shaking when we think about that, for the threshold shook at the voice of an angel. God hadn't even begun speaking.

God is omnipotent. What I pray for us, what I pray for myself, is a great desire to see God, a great hunger to be gnawing away at my inner spirit continually, never to stop, to grow and grow. I would have to say that each year as I come to my goals, my personal goals, that's one of them every year: may I have this great hunger, this great desire to grow and stretch because your soul has no sides. You never get to the capacity where you know enough. "Oh, well, I know this. I've been this. I've done this course." That's impossible because there is all of God to get to know.

God is all-powerful. This great desire to see him and to know him brings you to yourself. "Woe to me," said Isaiah. "Woe to me." The way to stop saying "Woe is me" is "Woe is me." The thing that keeps you humble is seeing God, seeing his size. Then you see yourself reflected. "Oh, my lips," he said. "My lips!" What a strange thing, because I would have thought Isaiah's lips were the best thing about him. This was his thing. I don't know another golden-lipped prophet like Isaiah. This was the best thing he did. Words were weapons he used, words he loved. Poetry, history, he moved people. He changed a nation. He rebuked them. He kept them alive when they were in Babylon with words. His lips!

But when he saw God, the very best thing he did became something he felt defiled, inadequate. "Oh, my lips." I want to tell you as a speaker that I don't think a time I speak goes by when afterwards I don't say that. "Oh, my lips. Why didn't I say this? Why didn't I do that? Why didn't I get it more balanced? Why didn't I do my homework better? Oh, my lips, oh, my lips."

The thing when you're worshipping, God will reduce you and God will bring you back and there will be confession and there will be contrition and you will say, "Lord, I'm sorry. Let me have another go. Be merciful to me. I'll do it better next time. Train me, use me, help me to work at my craft. Help me to use words for your kingdom and for yourself."

He will send an angel with a coal from the altar and he will touch your lips. He will cleanse that part of your life that you become conscious of that's inadequate. You'll have the original hot lips of the Bible! The original hot lips because from then on, he began pouring out messages and they were burning, absolutely burning.

Those of you that speak and those of you that lead groups and those of you that teach Sunday school, those of you that are discipling, remember this passage of scripture. Every time you're talking to someone, pray this prayer: "Send that coal, touch my lips, make them burn God's message. Let it get through the barriers." Many a time I'm praying or talking to somebody, maybe on a plane or arguing with someone. I'm not getting anywhere. I just internally began to pray, "Lord, I don't know what it is, but give me that one thought, that idea, that concept, that story, that illustration. Give me hot lips. Give me hot lips." They're the sort of messages that people cannot resist. Great desire to be holy, conviction, contrition, confession, cleansing.

Then a great desire to prove useful. He hears this voice, voice of the Trinity: "Who will go for us?" Did you notice that? "Who will go for us?" Who's speaking? Trinity are having this conversation. Well, who's going to go for us? Jesus says, "Well, I'm going to go for you, but not yet. I'm going to go to Bethlehem, yes, but not yet." So who will go for us? Who will go to Israel and get them to come back to God? Who's going to deal with these obdurate people of God?

Isaiah listening says, "Here am I, send me." Immediately God says, "Go." He says, "I’ll tell you immediately, go and tell this people. Be ever hearing but never understanding, be ever seeing but never perceiving. Make the heart of this people callous, make their ears dull, close their eyes, otherwise they may see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn and be healed."

He has this incredible vision. He's just come out of this mourning period. He doesn't know what's going to happen. Uzziah's flipped and gone, and now he's not going to be popular anymore. He's not going to have the chance that he had. Israel's on the decline and he's all depressed. Then he goes and has his prayer time. He sees God on the throne. God's in control. I must remember that. God's everywhere. He's working it all out. He's got all the angels. He's all-powerful. He knows it all, he knows and understands.

He gets all wound up and cleansed, and then he says, "Here am I, send me." Then he hears them say, "Go and tell this people." Then God describes them. He said, "Well, I know this lot. This is my Sunday school class. I know this lot. This is Israel. I know this lot. I've been preaching to them for six chapters and they haven't turned a hair. Nobody's come back." He says, "Oh, Lord, how long? How long do you expect me to go on telling this particular people?"

This passage is very, very special to me because it pinpoints a time in my life when I was a young mother on a mission station in England. I had struggled through some hard things and God had taken me through this passage of scripture. I had been on my knees and seeing God and come to this wonderful point: "Here am I, send me."

God said to me, "Go and tell this people." I had a suspicion who "this people" was. "This people," I had a suspicion, were my neighbors. I lived in a little house, the gatehouse of a castle, which was a youth center. I was separated from all the things that were going on up at the youth center, which were kids, which is where my heart was. I was down raising three kids. My husband was on the road.

My neighbors were little old ladies. I was 23 and I didn't feel into little old ladies. I didn't like little old ladies very much. I didn't like ladies. I didn't like women. I didn't want to work with women; I wanted to work with kids. As I went through this transition in my spiritual life and got ready to say, "Here am I, send me," I was conscious God was going to send me to somebody. I got all excited. I thought it was the kids up at the youth center.

But then I started noticing out of my window all these little rose-colored cottages and these little old ladies in wheelchairs hobbling around. I thought, "Oh, no, he doesn't mean this is my 'this people,' does he?" So, just to find out and hoping nobody would say they'd come, I went knocked on 25 doors, took my kids in the prams and knocked on the doors.

We had some wonderful adventures. I remember David was about five, the others were in the pram. I knocked on this little old lady's door, and I saw this look of horror come over her face as I invited her to this Bible study. I thought, "Well, it's not that frightening, is it?" Then I realized that David had wanted to help, and she had these beautiful tulips planted six inches apart all the way around like they do in English gardens. He had collected them all, picked them all, and handed them to her and said, "Nice flowers for the nice lady." He was trying to help mummy in evangelism. Well, she didn't come, actually.

But I had the courage to go back and ask her next week. After three or four weeks visiting, because nobody came for three weeks running—have you ever put on a meeting and nobody's come? I talked to one of our pastors' wives that did that. Worked and prayed and we planned, invited quite a big group of people. Nobody came. It's hard.

Eventually, three turned up. One was blind, one was deaf, and one had heart trouble. I really couldn't believe it because I went back to this passage, and sure enough, "seeing they won't see and hearing they won't hear and their hearts are hardened." "This is 'this people.' Oh, yes. Go and tell this people, Jill." "Oh, not this people." "Yes, this people."

Little old ladies, Lord, and I'm 23 and I want to work with kids. "Go and tell this people." So, long story short, I started working with these three little people, all over 75. One deaf, one blind, one had heart trouble. She died shortly afterwards. I hope she went to heaven. She departed, so that was two left. The blind lady said she wouldn't come out at night. I never understood that. What difference did it make when you think about it?

However, that left me with the deaf one, which was not encouraging. So, I screamed Bible verses into her ear for about five weeks and felt that this was all a big waste of time. "Is this the reason we'd left and I left my teaching and all my training?" I went through all this. I just kept thinking, "Well, here am I, send me. I'll do it."

One day she looked at me and she saw something. She turned her good ear to me and she heard something. I saw her alertness and I realized we were on holy ground. That night she came to Christ. The next week she brought a friend, and the next week she brought a friend. I ended up with 80 little old ladies. Had to put everything out of the house. I remember Stuart coming home once and everything was in the garden—all the furniture—because there was no room for the little old ladies.

I said to him, "We're giving a cake to the oldest lady." He’d just come off a plane, he'd been away three months, walks into the house and there's 80 little old ladies all sitting. I say to him, "Will you present the cake?" He said, "I'd love to present the cake. Who to?" I said, "The oldest lady." He said, "How are we going to find out?" I said, "I don't know."

So he got them all up on their feet and he said, "Everybody 30 and under sit down, 40 and under sit down." In the end, this little old lady was left and Stuart presented her the cake. She looked very startled because she wasn't the oldest; she was stone deaf. That was why she received the cake. Then all the other little old ladies were mad and, you know, it wasn't very good. I decided not to involve my husband in little old ladies anymore, that he didn't know what he was doing.

One day those little old ladies said to me, "We wish our kids could hear you, Jill." So I said, "Well, bring them along." We moved out of my house into this little church. They brought their kids, and their kids were between the ages of 55 and 70! So we were working in the right direction. I had to go through the whole thing again. "Well, I don't like middle-aged ladies, Lord." "Well, here am I, send me." You know, see God is in control, the whole thing. "Yes, I'm willing and ready." "Well, go and tell this people."

I came to love middle-aged ladies, took a little while. We filled the chapel. Now we had old ladies and middle-aged ladies. It was three and a half years later that one of those middle-aged ladies, Mrs. Frobisher, said to me, "Wish our kids could hear you, Jill. Wish our grandkids could hear you, Jill." I said, "Bring them along." God gave me my kids. But not until I'd been faithful with one little deaf lady.

When you have a vision of God and a vision of yourself, and it results in saying, "Here am I, send me," he will send you to some people. I don't know who it'll be. Might be a little old deaf lady. It might be one neighbor. It might be one child in your own home who belongs to you. I don't know who it's going to be. You've got to be willing. You’ve got to be willing to do it in his power. Stick with it. Commit to it. Pray for them. Love them into the kingdom. From that obedience will come a people, a remnant, a believing group God will bless.

"Here am I, send me." Can we say that? Pray with me.

Dear Lord, I pray that as trouble comes to us, it would not stop us from serving you but be the environment where service can happen. Help us to have a great desire to see you, to understand an aspect of your character that we could never understand if we were living on a beach in the sunshine.

When the storm comes, Lord, teach us that you are all-powerful. Help us to see God in scripture, in Christ in the Gospels, in history, in the visions of men. Help us to see you too in our suffering, that there is something you are doing—not the thing we've asked you to do, perhaps—but you are busy, for you are everywhere. You are busy answering prayers that we prayed 25 years ago and forgotten all about, for nothing drops to the ground where you're concerned.

So give us this great desire to see God and give us this great desire to be holy. To come to you and say, "Well, I need so much work doing in my life. Cleanse me. Woe is me. Oh, my lips, oh, my hands, oh, my heart, oh, my what, I don't know, but cleanse me." Give me a message, a message that burns in my heart first and foremost and burns on my lips for this people.

Send us, Lord. Give us a great desire to be useful and go with us, for you are all-present. You're there already; you don't even need to go with us. You're there before we get there. You were there in that cottage that day that I knocked on the door and that first little old lady said, "Yes, I would love to come." You'd been waiting for me to go, waiting because you love that little old lady and you wanted her to live with you forever.

Lord, I often wonder what would have happened if I had not said, "Here am I, send me." If I had chosen my ministry, if I had not been willing to say anywhere, any place, any time, I'm yours. Lord, I pray that we would have this great desire to serve you and to be useful. Help us to go home and read this passage of scripture with new eyes and show each of us who is "this people" as far as we are concerned. We ask it for your kingdom's sake, for your name's sake, for Jesus' sake. Amen.