Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Our family's had their share of attacks from the one who hates the Christian family with a perfect and total hatred, namely the devil. Through a world war, the recession that followed, post-war problems in the UK, and a life first in the business world and the classroom and then in mission and ministry, Stuart and I have sought together to fight for marriage and family, our own and extended one, as well as our other family, the family of God, the community of faith.

Stuart has been in the battle for over 60 years, and I, my husband having married a much younger woman than himself, in the fight over 55 years. We've certainly not won every battle that's been joined, but we've not lost all of them either. When the enemy has breached our walls, we've bent down, picked up a brick and sought to rebuild and fortify the battlements because we love each other, Him who died to save us and rose to live in us by the power of His Holy Spirit and are on His side in this conflict.

And as we promised each other on our wedding weekend, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. That was our wedding sermon. Stuart wasn't preaching it. A little pastor who was actually frightened out of his mind because the church was full of street kids and he didn't know what was going to happen. It was quite a wedding. Anyway, as my husband when asked what the secret of our long marriage is, he says, "Keep your promises and live a long time." That's it.

And so I'm so glad I can bring you an exhortation about family and marriage from the book of Nehemiah. I'm grateful in His grace. Nehemiah said, "Remember the Lord who's great and awe-inspiring and fight for your brothers, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your family." Nehemiah 4:14. That was the basis of this book. "So built we the wall," he says. Nehemiah says, "And all the wall was joined together to half of its height, for the people had a mind to work."

And the walls have fallen down around the family, not only the personal families that were represented, family by family by family, all around that wall, breaching the gap outside their own front door, brick by brick, day by day, night by night. But the family of God, the community of faith as well, the family in Jerusalem. In Nehemiah says in chapter one, "God put it in my heart." What had God put in his heart? Well, he had put in his heart what to do for Jerusalem, which was to rebuild the wall.

Now, what God will put in my heart and your heart will be different, but God wants to put something in everybody's heart, whether you have an intact family listening to this message or whether the walls have crumbled around your relationships in your family or your extended family. And at this point, I do not believe there's anyone listening to me who doesn't have in their extended family broken walls.

So what I have to say from this book, trustfully what God has to say from this book, takes in everybody in the sound of my voice. The walls have fallen around the family, and he says as the opposition strengthens, as they begin to build the walls. And if we begin to rebuild our broken relationships, then the opposition will stiffen and the opposition will grow as you see throughout this book. He says, "Don't be afraid of them. Remember the Lord who's great and awe-inspiring and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives and your homes."

The enemy is the devil. Make sure you get mad at the right person, will you? Make sure you get angry at the right person, and he's more than a person, he's a spirit. Make sure you get mad at the devil and not at the person who is being influenced by him. He hates your children and mine with satanic hatred. Yes, he does. He hates Christian families. He hates to see a father reading the ancient words at the table. He hates us.

The wolf is ever around the fold looking for the lambs, especially the lambs of the shepherd. Do you pray for your pastors? Do you pray for our kids, our grandkids? Do I? But not just the shepherds' families. He hates us all. And the enemy is not to be messed with. The devil is a hinderer. When the enemy heard the repairing of the walls went forward and the breaches began to be closed, they were very angry. He's mad. If you're doing anything right, if your kids have come to Jesus, if they just got baptized, I hope you're on your knees. I hope you've got your sword. I hope you're watching.

And all the enemies, because they were very angry, conspired all together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to hinder it. The devil is a hinderer with anything to do with the Lord, especially the family. Nevertheless, we made our prayer unto our God and we set a watch against them day and night because of them. Count me in, Lord. I'll fight for my family. Nevertheless, nevertheless this, nevertheless that, nevertheless the other. Count me in.

You know, I was suddenly searingly aware of you who are sitting in the rubble of a marriage. I know what you're saying. Wasn't my choice. I wanted to build a family. Takes two. Wasn't my choice, Jill. And I want to say something to you because the families around the wall all those years ago, all those years ago, were broken. There were three waves that came back to Jerusalem, and in between the first and the second, I believe there was a huge amount of years.

And each time a wave came back, they found foreign people in Jerusalem mixed with the remnant, the few people who had been left to look after the rubble. I believe the old and the sick, they left them behind, they took everybody else off to Babylon and Persia and everything. And when the first wave came back, they intermarried with the women from other religions, and there were many other religions, actually a couple of major ones that also lived in Jerusalem and around.

And God had lots to say about that as we'll see. But there were broken families. The people of God that came back to rebuild Jerusalem. You see, when you are displaced as a people, and I've worked with displaced people for World Relief, been sent to displaced people, you get disoriented with your heritage, with your beliefs, and you are unsure. You're open to taking a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and well, that's all right, and marrying into another faith. It's a very normal thing that happens.

And that's what had happened from the very first group that came back. So now you've got Nehemiah in the third group and it's been happening and happening and happening. And so there's a brokenness there. But did you know that there was a prophet during probably the first group that came back called Malachi? Now you say, "No, Jill. Malachi is just before Matthew and Nehemiah is back here." But you don't have this in chronological order. You know that.

You've got Genesis, if you had it in chronological order, it would be Job that came next. And Malachi, if you had it in chronological order, would be in the same era as the story of Nehemiah. And Malachi had been speaking for God into this situation of mixed marriages. And when you get to Nehemiah nine, it's all about that. In fact, the book finishes with what to do with the third wave and the second wave and the first wave, maybe if they were still—well, they wouldn't still be alive.

But what to do with intermarriage. And Nehemiah says in that chapter, "One of you men has even married the daughter of Sanballat, the chief enemy." And so Israel, the people of God that Nehemiah and Ezra the priest found to work among in the third wave, were worshipping Jehovah a bit and their wife's god a bit. And they'd forgotten their belief and certainly how to behave their belief among the people.

And Malachi speaks to this and had spoken to this before Nehemiah deals with it. And what did he say? He said, and had said, "A thing you do, you flood the Lord's altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask why? It is because the Lord is acting as a witness between you and the wife of your youth because you've broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant."

"Has not the Lord made them one in flesh and spirit? They are his. And why did I make them one? Because he, the Lord, was seeking godly children. Wow. So guard yourself in your spirit and do not break faith with the wife of your youth. I hate divorce, says the Lord. I hate a man's covering himself with violence. I hate divorce because of the violence that's associated with it." And in this instance for the women, "I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you," says the man and that's it.

And the woman would not be accepted even in her own home anymore and sometimes be turned to prostitution to survive. Now, how God hates that because of the violence associated with it. So guard yourself in your spirit. Do not break faith. Now, in this era, God had enabled Malachi to speak into that situation. Now fast forward and here comes Nehemiah, Ezra in the third wave and things haven't got better during that time.

And so you've got the community of the called-out people and they're disoriented and they don't know who they are. What do you mean we're people of God, called-out people of God? What do you mean in Abraham all the world will be blessed through us? What's all this about? And so the ancient words have come into disrepute again, or maybe they've never stopped being in disrepute in your and my lifetime. They're being mixed up, aren't they? What do you mean God says one man, one woman, marriage, children? What?

The walls are falling down. The walls have fallen down in many ways. There was a psychiatrist who wrote a book who devoted his lifetime studying emotional problems of family living, and I quote him, "I've pioneered in the field of family therapy. From where I sit, the picture of marriage and family in present-day society is a gloomy one. Family life seems to be cracking at the seams and no effective mortar can be found. It's nowhere available." He wrote that in 1958. Wow.

Began to crack in America, I guess. Certainly in the West. We're ahead of you in Western Europe. 1958. "No effective mortar." I don't know if this man was a believer or not. He was dealing with the crumbling walls. Yeah. This is the mortar. It's far more than the mortar, but this is the effective mortar. I know nothing else that can remake. Ancient words ever true, changing me, transforming me, bringing me back to my heritage, bringing me back to believe what I believe and remember that this is true. It's all true. Do you really believe that?

Have you said count on me? I'm going to learn how to use the mortar. I'm going to learn how to be a mason. There's a little verse I've never seen before as I reread Nehemiah this week where all the families outside their own front door, you start outside your own front door, you bend down, you look for a brick, the first brick. Right. Family by family by family. And when the man with the trumpet is aware that there's a gap and the enemy says there's a gap and they're coming, he tells you and the family next door helps the neighbor, right?

You bend down, help them with a brick. Maybe their rubble's worse than your rubble. Or maybe it's not. So what? You help each other. And what an amazing thing it is to be able to learn how to use the mortar as you help others to rebuild. And all of us need to do it. It says every single family needs to do it. And the verse I found was one family where it's naming everyone that was helping make the wall, and this guy's name and then and his daughters. It doesn't mention any sons. He didn't have any sons. His daughters. Hey, learning to be masons, learning how to use this in order to mend the family. Count me in. Have you said count me in?

And what about the children? We have to teach them to use the pain. Nobody can build walls high enough to stop the devil coming in. He'll find a way. It's impossible. Don Carson, professor at Trinity, wrote a book, "How Long, oh Lord." Excellent book. It's on suffering. Don Carson, he said, "I look at my children," he's talking about his own. "And I wish for them enough opposition to make them strong, enough insults to make them choose, enough hard decisions to make them see that following Jesus brings with it a cost, a cost eminently worth it, but still a cost."

"A church that is merely comfortable, that never evangelizes, never encourages its people to stand on the front line will never be strong, never be grateful, never be able to sort out profoundly Christian priorities. They'll never be able to build the walls. Right." So how do you use the pain? Well, you get out and find somebody else to help. It's amazing when you help somebody else build a wall how it diminishes your own pain. You can always find somebody with worse rubble than yours.

Chinese proverb says, "I was sorry when I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet." And in the privilege that Stuart and I have had of traveling this world to the worst places, I'm sort of always very ashamed to share anything of little hurt because I've met so many men that didn't have feet and women and children. But I've also found women and children and men with no feet who have taught me more than anything else. And even with no feet, they're building walls.

I've asked them, "Teach me how to do it." I remember standing in the killing fields of Cambodia for World Relief. We'd gone to make a film. Don't ask me why they wanted a film in the killing fields of Cambodia, but the little girl was my interpreter and she's standing there and we're in the middle—if you've ever visited Phnom Penh, every single town, there wasn't just a killing field outside Phnom Penh which is world infamous, but out of every town and village there was a killing field when the Khmer Rouge came and the genocide happened in Cambodia.

But this is the biggest one, and we were going to do a film in there about what was happening and who was building the walls in this slum camp and the killing fields are right in the middle, and they've left it. So you walk on bones. And you get to the middle of it and there's a glass monument with 3,000 skulls in it. And I was supposed to stand there and say something. And my interpreter is standing there just like this Cambodian girl, just like a statue, and I just looked at her. I said, "This is absolutely awful. Let's get out of here. I have no idea whose idea this is. Please let me take you out of here."

She said, "It's all right, it's just that the whole of my family's in there." I said, "Tell me about that." She said she was a little girl. Her father was a doctor, her mother was a teacher, and everybody with glasses was taken to the killing fields and they didn't bother with bullets. They just knocked us on the back of the head and put us in the hole and then covered us with earth. And so my daddy was a doctor and my mommy was a teacher and so the whole of our family, extended family, I was a little girl, I was six, were brought here and they put us in the hole but it was getting late and they didn't have the earthmover and so they didn't cover us up.

"I was at the bottom of the heap and when they'd gone, I crawled out from among the bodies into the forest and a Cambodian family found me and they hid me and they took me in and pretended I was their child and I survived." She was our World Relief worker. She was a Buddhist and she came to faith. And I said to her, "How did you ever come to faith? How could you ever believe in a God of love and grace when this had happened to you?" She said, "Well, let me just say something to you. You Christians in the West, you don't have a theology of suffering."

I said, "Tell me about that. Talk to me about that. Teach me about that." She said, "Well, you in the West as soon as trouble comes, say, 'Get this off my back now! Miracle! Kiss it better! Heal me!' We say, 'Strengthen my back to bear it.' We know when God says no." I said, "What?" She said, "Well, you know Paul. He prayed three times and God said no. Do you know when God says no?" I said, "No. Talk to me about that." I have sat at the feet of little Cambodian women like that and been so humbled.

And that woman took bricks from rubble you would never have thought would be able to be used again and built a wall. She built a wall. And she was just a child. I pray for my children: enough opposition to make them strong, enough insults to make them choose, etc., etc. Yeah. The Apostle John puts it rightly. As a parent or a spiritual parent, I want to apply this to both. If you're a Sunday school teacher, you have 10 spiritual children, right? Or as a parent, there's no greater joy, says the Apostle John, when my children walk in truth.

"No greater joy when my children walk in truth, no greater sorrow when they don't. No greater joy when they love the Lord I love, no greater heartbreak when they won't. No greater joy when persistent prayer is answered, no greater privilege to pray. No greater work as we fight the battle for them, trusting He will answer one great day. No greater joy when they tell us they are praying, reading the word and digging in. No greater news when they choose a godly lifestyle, no greater battle can they win. No greater wonder when we watch the Holy Spirit power and equip them for their days, and no greater joy when they stand with us in glory as we offer our Lord Jesus all our praise."

So there's no greater joy when my children walk in truth, no greater sorrow when they don't, no greater joy when they love the Lord I love, and no greater heartbreak when they won't. Isn't that true? And so parent or no parent, single or married, count me in. Count me in. And the burden of that should drive our lives, our spare time, what we do with our money, what we do with our days, dealing with the rubble.

And what are our weapons? The man with the trumpet, picture of the Holy Spirit. "Come over here! There's a breach! Come over here!" When you're on your knees in prayer and you don't know what to pray for, ask him where's a breach? Where do you want me? Because the Holy Spirit tells us what to pray for when we don't know what to pray for, it says in the New Testament. There's a breach all around the wall, not enough people coming to join on our knees, and remember you can go anywhere on your knees.

Are you in a prayer group? Are you in a prayer group for our missionaries that we have the privilege of sending where we would never go? Right. And so the watchers on the wall, the prayers, the Spirit, the man with the trumpet, the sword, the ancient words, the mortar that we need is ours for the using. When you get to the part of the gates, you're going to have a great time. It's fabulous. The Dung Gate: get rid of the garbage. The Valley Gate: check your priorities. The Sheep Gate: refuse to conform.

The Old Gate. There's an old gate. I like that because I'm old. Value the ancient. Ancient words ever true, changing me, changing you. Do we believe it? Ancient words. Do not forsake the ancient ways. Listen to the ancient words. Let them change you and change everyone around you. So where are you in the battle? I'm in the Old Gate. I'm in the autumn or winter of my life, but the whole family were on the walls, Grandma too and Grandpa. And so it must be.

And it's hard. You saw all the reasons that they stopped building the wall. They got tired. They ran out of strength. They got old. Well, Grandpa, Grandma, you just go sit and pray for us. No. And it was, I don't know, three or four years ago when I was in India that my husband and I happened to be going to a place called Orissa. But before we got there, just before, we were traveling towards this place when the militant Hindus decided to kill all the Christians there.

And so the whole town went up in flames. They took the pastor and his little boy and made the little boy at gunpoint go up the church steeple and tear down the Christian flag. And then they asked the pastor to recant his faith and said, "If you don't, we'll kill your wife in front of you." What would you have done? And they ended up, of course, killing him and her and the little boy.

That had just happened as we're going towards this place. And it happened at the end of a very wonderful but very enervating time, and I was at the end of my strength and I was tired, not just in body but in spirit. Have you ever had a period when your soul has sat down and never wanted to get up? I was there. Stuart was preaching to 600 of these young people. Instead of going to Orissa, they diverted us to a seminary that was training young people 18 to 25 to go to Orissa as first people into those Hindu militant villages, etc.

I was looking out at these gorgeous young people, and my mother heart went out to these young women particularly who I knew incredibly would walk into those situations for Jesus. And at the end, that last night, Stuart taught on taking up your cross and following Him. As we prayed, I had a funny experience. I don't call it a vision, but it was a picture I was not expecting as he's just preached this wonderful sermon, "I have decided to follow Jesus" sermon.

And Jesus said, "Take up your cross," not take up your crown and follow me. And I, "Yes, yes, yes," you see. And I bowed my head to pray and suddenly this picture, this vivid picture of my cross leaning against the wall was in my mind. And I was very startled and I began to have my God talk in my head space. Was I being tempted to lay it down at this point in my life? After all, surely others could come and teach in my place. I'm not indispensable, that's for sure.

Maybe I had done my part and was too old now to be running around the world like this. Maybe someone else would come along and carry my cross for me the rest of the way. And then I heard Him say, "But everyone must carry their own cross all the way to glory, Jill. Each must answer to the Lord at the end of the day what they did with the opportunities afforded to tell others the Gospel and encourage the body of Christ and build the walls, incidentally."

Was I expecting someone else to appear and offer to carry my cross for me as well as carrying their own? And I asked God to give me strength and joy, for the joy of the Lord is my strength, to carry my cross all the way home, power to deny myself the things I long for at this stage in my life and keep on following until He tells me to stop. It was a seminal moment for me. And I was able to say count me in. Count me in. Count me in. Can you say that? Pray with me.

Father God, You know my heart. You know every heart here. We're an open book. And so hear the prayers of Your people. Either I will or I won't. You hear them all. Show us the first brick. Deal with the fear and the discouragement. Help us to start and build. Amen.