Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: We live on a small lake and in the winter time it's frozen over. My husband usually goes down before the grandchildren arrive with their skates and their broomball equipment and tests the ice. He'll walk out on it and he'll try to make sure that they don't go through it. When he knows it's safe, then the broomball begins.

The kids come down and go straight on the ice. They know that their grandfather has tested it and that it's all right. The amount of faith they have is incredible. They have faith in his word that the ice will hold them. It isn't the amount of faith that you have that really matters. It's the fact that the object of your faith is supportive, that the object of your faith is absolutely reliable.

The ice would hold them because it was very thick and their grandfather had made sure that it was very safe. Some people think you've got to have a lot of faith to know God, you've got to have a lot of faith to go to heaven. It's not so. It's not the amount of faith you have; it's the object of your faith. You can have a lot of faith in very thin ice and drown by faith and get very wet. Or you can have a little tiny bit of faith in very thick ice and stay very dry.

I want to talk about faith. Everybody has enough faith to put into an object that will keep them safe. And that object is God. He's obviously more than an object; He's a person. He's an other person than us, He's not like us. But if we have a little tiny bit of faith and put it in a great big reliable God, we will stay very, very safe. In fact, we will stay eternally safe. And that's what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about two men. I want to talk about Jeremiah and I want to talk about Baruch. Baruch was his amanuensis, his secretary, or his scribe. He wrote the words that God gave to Jeremiah and he put them on a scroll. These two men were a team. You don't have the book of Jeremiah without Baruch. You don't have Baruch without Jeremiah.

I want to talk about their faith. They had enough faith in a great big reliable God to help them finish strong. And they had terrible things happen to them. We'll talk about some of those things as we go through their story from the book of Jeremiah. If you have a Bible, why don't you open to the book of Jeremiah and let me begin with the heart of Jeremiah, and it's found in Lamentations. Jeremiah is sitting on a hillside watching his dreams dissipate. He's watching the sack of Jerusalem, and that's a terrible thing. This is the lowest point of Israel's history.

What we see here in the book of Jeremiah is that the first part of Lamentations, of his lament over what has happened to Jerusalem, is all about his disbelief. He can't believe this is happening. He had honestly believed that the people would turn back to God and God would relent and repent of what He had said would happen if they didn't turn back to Him. Here he's seeing that the people never listened, and the people after 40 years of strong preaching wouldn't listen to him. Now Nebuchadnezzar is running all over their lives and the whole city is in shambles.

For the first part of Lamentations, he's lamenting about this. He's getting God and life mixed up. He's saying, "God, You did this. You did the other. You destroyed Jerusalem." But halfway through chapter 3, he gets God and life unmixed. This is what he says: "I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, my soul is downcast within me. But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is Thy faithfulness."

Jeremiah comes to remind himself that the object of his faith—God, who is loving, compassionate, sure, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent—He's still there. He's still the same. He doesn't change. God can't change. If God changed, it would mean He got better. He can't get better because He's perfect goodness. If God changed, it meant He might get worse, and He can't because He's perfect goodness. God never changes.

Jeremiah's faith had been wavering—his little bit of faith that he had left—but he reaffirms his faith and he says, "I am going to put my faith in this solid, sure conviction that God is God enough and God is big enough." Even though I'm watching the sack of Jerusalem, even though I'm watching all my dreams crash around me, God is still there, God is still the same, God is still love, and God is still faithful. God is. And he reaffirms his faith in the object of his faith.

Before we go back to the first chapter of Jeremiah and look at the elements of that faith—of what keeps your faith strong even when everything is falling apart in your life—I want to ask you a very serious question. Do you have a little tiny bit of faith? Will you put it in a great big strong God who can keep you safe eternally and take you home to heaven? Do you know how to do that? You simply say, "God, I need You. God, I want You. Thank You for sending Your Son to die for me, to make it possible for me to go to heaven." Then you invite Him into your life in simple words: "Lord, come into my life."

If you do that, He will come into your life and He will begin to assure your heart that it is faith in the right object, that the tiny little bit of faith you have left in God is surely sure if you put it in Him and trust what He says. Now come back with me to the beginning of the book of Jeremiah. The words of Jeremiah begin with a statement. He is testifying, and in verse 4 he says, "The word of the Lord came to me." That's an interesting little phrase. It means "happened to me." It includes the idea of dynamic, of something in this Bible or in this word of God that comes from God to man that is so dynamic it changes the person it comes to. Came to, happened to.

That's what's supposed to happen every time you open the Bible. Once you have accepted the Holy Spirit and He has come into your heart and life, and you're forgiven, and you're putting your faith in what God has done to get you to heaven, then the word of the Lord is where you live. Day by day as you read a little bit of this word, it's supposed to happen to you. Do you ever open your Bible and read it and nothing happens? And you think, "That was a waste of time. I could have been doing something else."

You're supposed to hang your heart over it and say, "Happen to me, God." As you read His word, which Jeremiah describes as a fire or as a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces, the word of God will be active in your life and you'll find something happens to you. You are changed, you are strengthened, you are comforted, you are assured. The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah. "The word of the Lord came to me saying, Before I formed you in the womb I knew you. Before you were born I set you apart. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."

Jeremiah was 18 years of age at this point. He lived in a little village called Anathoth, where all the priests and their families lived. It was a little way away from Jerusalem. I have to just paint in a little bit of the background for you so you know the times in which he lived. When he was 18, God began to move in his life. But he had grown up in a period where the priests and the temple were in disarray.

There was a king on the throne that had decided to trust himself instead of God. He was a bad king, and he was in a line of bad kings. In fact, he was so bad that he had allowed unmentionable things happening in the temple. There were other gods worshipped in the temple, not just Israel's God. There were sacrifices made to other gods in the temple of the Lord, and the priests had gone along with this.

Even though he lived in a city of priests, and maybe his family were still adhering to the worship and the belief in Jehovah, the one true God, everybody around him was in apostasy. Apostasy is the word we use. It means falling away. They were falling away from the faith of their fathers. This kid grew up in a home where people were saying, "Were we right or were we wrong? This God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, maybe it was all just a fairy tale. Maybe we ought to listen to the new gods instead." People's faith in the one true God, in Jehovah, is really shaken.

In the palace, a little boy is born to a king called Amon. Amon is worse than his father was, who was a bad lot—there was nothing much to choose between him and Hitler and Attila the Hun, put it that way. Here's Amon, his son, who's worse than his father. He has a little boy eventually called Josiah. Shortly after this, Amon is assassinated, which is probably a good thing for Israel. He's only reigned four years and he's out of the picture.

Little Josiah is eight years of age, and he grows up in this incredible period of time as the new king in waiting. While this child is growing up, you've got Nebuchadnezzar and the whole of Babylon coming towards Jerusalem to besiege it and wipe Israel off the face of the map. Away in another area of the world, you've got Egypt's Pharaoh Necho, who's also looking at Jerusalem and saying, "I think I'm going to beat Nebuchadnezzar to the punch here. I'm going to capture Jerusalem and take all the trophies from their gods in the temple and take all the gold and the silver."

Little Jerusalem is very beleaguered at this point, and Anathoth is near Jerusalem. Here's a little boy king growing up in this whole political turmoil and religious apostasy. Somewhere along the line, the word of the Lord came to him. Same words: "came to Josiah." When he was 16 years of age, the Bible says he began to seek after the Lord his God. Here you've got Jeremiah at 18 with the word of God happening to him and changing him and giving him a call on his life. Here you've got in the palace a teenager 16 years of age, and the word of the Lord comes to him.

Two teenagers. God says, "Now let's see what we can do with these two young men." He doesn't choose the mighty, and He doesn't choose the great. He chooses two kids. My husband and I used to work with teenagers in Europe. We did that for years and years before we came to pastor this church in Milwaukee. I always used to be reminded about the potential of young people as I saw them put their faith in God in a good solid object. Little tiny bit of faith in a great big extraordinary God.

I saw their lives changed and I saw them take the Bible and I saw the word of God happen to them and the whole direction of their lives were changed. The potential of a young person is absolutely incredible. God honors that, and He chooses two teenagers to turn the course of history around, to get something written down that would encourage and bring back a remnant of the people of God to Himself. Little Josiah at the age of 16 seeks after the Lord God of his father David—his great-great-great-grandfather David—and he begins to turn things around.

He begins to reform Israel and get into the temple and get all those gods out and make some changes. Jeremiah over here in Anathoth is so excited. I'm sure that he sent a message to the young king: "I'm praying for you. I'm with you. God is giving me messages just like He's giving you. Let's see what we can do to bring Israel back to Jehovah, the one true God." That's the political scene, and that's the religious scene.

God leans down and He says, "Jeremiah, before I even formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were you to know, I chose you. Before you were you to choose, I called you." Jeremiah, I'm sure, didn't quite understand all of that, but it was an incredible statement. God said, "Before I even formed you in the womb, I knew all about you. I've got something I want you to do. And I've got someone I want you to know—that's Me." God called Jeremiah to Himself.

He still does that today. This isn't about a mighty prophet. This is about you and me and everybody in this wild world in which we live. This is God's world, but He wants it back. He's intent on bringing this world back to Himself. We lost God somewhere along the line. The Bible says that all happened in Eden. But God loves this world and He wants it back. So He sent His Son to make that possible. Before His Son came, He showed men here on this earth what He was about, what history meant, what had happened before them, what was happening now and the meaning of it, and what would happen in the future.

Jeremiah is one of those people. The word of the Lord comes to people today just like it came to Josiah and Jeremiah, and it changes them. Suddenly you find a sense of calling: "I'm called to belong to someone. I'm called to connect. That's what I was made to do." I remember at the age of 18 as a student at Cambridge in England, thinking, "What am I here on this world for?" There was something inside me that was saying, "Who am I? Why am I? Where am I spiritually? Am I spiritually anywhere?"

It wasn't until somebody explained the gospel to me that I figured it out. I was made to know God. Before I was me to know, He chose me. He called me. He had something in mind for me to do. When a human being comes to God, when they come into a relationship with Him, then all those things get filled up inside—those empty places, those empty spaces. That's what happened to Jeremiah, that's what happened to Baruch, and that's what happened to Josiah. And that's what happened to me. Has it happened to you?

After it happens to us, we might respond or react as Jeremiah did: "Ah, Sovereign Lord, I don't know how to speak. I'm only a child." Have you ever felt, "Well, if I did come to God, I wouldn't be able to do the job He asked me to do"? I talked to a woman not too long ago and she said, "I would become a Christian, but I would be so afraid of letting God down. I don't think I could do it. I don't think I could be it. I couldn't be good enough. I couldn't do all the things that I think a Christian could do."

That's what Jeremiah felt. He said, "Ah, Sovereign Lord, I don't know how to speak." You know what God said to him? "The Lord said to me, Don't say, I'm only a child. You must go to everyone I send you to, and you must say everything I tell you to." Then what did He say? "Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you, declares the Lord."

In other words, God had something for him to do. He wanted him to go to everyone He sent him to and tell them everything He told them to. He had work for him to do. God said to Jeremiah, "My plan in your life," and then He said, "and My work in your hand." God has work for us to do. It might not be speaking as a prophet to the nations; that was his work. He'll have work for you to do, He'll have work for me to do. Every single work that He has for us to do is different, but He has work for us to do.

We will probably respond as he did: "Ah, Sovereign Lord, I can't do that. I'm not clever enough. I'm not good enough with whatever I need to do to do it for You." We will feel very inadequate, like he felt. But then God says, "See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms." This is all the plan. This is the big plan. This is what I created you for. Years ago, I remember coming to Christ and thinking, "What next? How do I be the Christian that I have just become? And how do I do this Christianity?"

As I began to share my faith with my friends, I began to realize that was part of what God wanted me to do, and He'd gifted me to do it. That's what He says to Jeremiah: "I have put My words in your mouth." God says, "I've put My plan in your life. I've put My work in your hands. And I've put My words in your mouth." God is always the enabling of all the demands that He puts on us. He demands of Jeremiah, "Go do what you've been created and chosen to do."

Jeremiah says, "I can't do that," and God says, "I will also give you the power to do what I'm telling you to do." Faithful is He who calls you, who also will do it. This call of God on his life, this call of God on our lives as we come to know God, has to override all major decisions of our lives. It did for Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 16, it says that God said to him, "Don't get married." Why would God ever say that to anyone? He explains this in chapter 16, because God knew what was going to happen when the people did not repent and Nebuchadnezzar was allowed to come in and sack the city.

He knew what would happen to the women, that they would be raped and tortured and maybe killed or taken away as slaves. He knew what would happen to the children. We read about that in some of the Psalms, how the Babylonians picked up the little children and bashed out their heads on the stones and killed them. It was going to be a holocaust in Jerusalem. God knew this and He said, "Jeremiah, I would spare you. I don't want you to have to watch your wife and children killed. So don't get married."

Responding to the call of God could mean that the major decisions of our life might be affected, like marriage. I remember figuring it out that God would give me permission to get married or He might not give me permission to get married. That was a major decision of my life. It was a decision that God had in His mind for me. If I was going to be His disciple and follow Him, I had to let Him make that decision for me.

The call of God overrides all the major decisions of our life. For Jeremiah too, it meant that prosperity—a major decision, what he did with his life, his career—that was going to be on hold. God had something for him. In Lamentations he says, "I have forgotten what prosperity is for." God says to him, "You might have to forget about prosperity if you respond to the call of God on your life." If you're My disciple, like He said—Jesus said to His disciples, God in Christ when God visited this planet and borrowed a body, a Jewish body, and lived in it for 33 years—Jesus Christ said to His disciples, "You might have to leave your families. But don't worry about it. In the world to come, you'll have mothers and fathers and great big forever family."

The call of God and following Christ means that those decisions that we make have to override all the major decisions of our lives. Jeremiah responds to God. God chooses us, but we have to choose to be chosen. We have to respond. We have free will. God says, "I know what I've got in mind for you. It's the very best thing. I know the work I've got in mind for you. It's the very best work, just fits all the gifts that I've given you, that you're made to do this." But we still have the ability to say yay or nay to God. Isn't that incredible?

God doesn't want puppets. He could have made us without a free will and just jerked us and said, "Serve Me and do My work." That wouldn't have brought God any satisfaction at all. Those of you that have children, you tell them to do something or you ask them to do something. If you made them do it against their will, that wouldn't give you any satisfaction at all as a parent. God gives us free will and has chosen to limit Himself to our yay or nay. Here Jeremiah says, after all his inadequacy, "All right, I'll do it." God says, "Don't be afraid. I'm going to be with you and I'm going to help you to do it."

God says, "I've put My plan in your life. I've put My work in your hands. And I've put My words in your mouth." I well remember standing in front of a huge group of refugees. I was over in Croatia at the height of the Bosnian-Croatian crisis. At night, we would, after giving out clothes and registering everybody that was flooding across the border—at that point about a thousand refugees were coming over from Bosnia into Osijek, the border town between Croatia and Bosnia—we would receive them and help them and give them clothes and food and shelter and register them.

At night in the great big church that stood on that border, Dr. Peter Kuzmic, who was in charge of the relief organization over there—he is a professor, a Christian man—would speak to the refugees. He'd bring them into the church and they'd have a service. He'd try to minister Christ's comfort and help and encouragement and hope to them. One night he couldn't do it and he said to me, "I want you to talk to the refugees, Jill." Now can you imagine? Here I am a laywoman, I'm over there helping as best I can to alleviate some of the suffering, to put my little drop in the bucket because if everybody puts their drop in the bucket, the bucket will one day get full. Even though it was only a little tiny drop that I was able to do, I was there.

I was not expecting to talk to about 800 refugees. My mind just went blank. I felt very much like Jeremiah: "Oh, Lord God, I can't speak. I'm a child." I felt I was totally inadequate because I'd never been a refugee. What right did I have to say to anything to them? I had no right. But God wanted to use me to speak to them. I heard in that moment of time because I was studying this material, "I've put My words in your mouth. Don't be afraid. You must go to everyone I send you to and tell them everything I tell you to."

I remember with fear and trepidation getting up in that big pulpit in that church and looking out on that sea of faces who had seen unspeakable things happen to their loved ones. Some of them were blank, some of them were worried, some of them were in fear, some of them were in disbelief, some of them were just dull. They'd lost hope. I don't know how they got themselves there. Some of them were cradling the only child they had left. Some of them were not cradling any child because they didn't have any children left. What would you have said to them?

I got up in that pulpit and I said, "If I ever need Your words in my mouth, it's now, Lord." He began to bring things to my mind that would be a help to those people. I was superconscious, absolutely superconscious that it was just as if my humanity was hanging on His divinity, which is what a Christian really is. He is within us. Christ by His Spirit lives within us and He's clothed with our humanity. He will from within bring things to our remembrance when we need them.

That's what He did for me. He will do it. "I will put My words," He said, "in your mouth." He was dwelling within me, and He helped me by His Spirit to say comforting, helpful things to those people. You say, "Jill, I'm never going to be up in front of a thousand refugees. What has this to do with me?" Back in the States, I remember facing some very disturbed young teenagers. Somebody they loved had just committed suicide. They surrounded me—junior high kids.

They said to me, "Can you explain why good people do bad things or why bad things happen to good people? Can you explain to me if this person who committed suicide because he'd done some terrible things, if he is in heaven?" I needed just as much wisdom and just as much help from the Christ who lives within me, that He would put His words in my mouth in that moment facing five junior high kids, as I needed standing up in front of all those hundreds of refugees.

Maybe this brings it nearer to you. Do you ever face a teenager who says, "Why did you and Dad get divorced?" Do you need His words in your mouth? Yes, you do. Do you ever face a spouse and you're seeking to reconcile? And it seems absolutely impossible. Do you ever need His words in your mouth? Yes, you do. We go out into life, just ordinary life. Sometimes our dreams fall apart just like they did Jeremiah.

What we need is a consciousness that His plan is in our life, whatever happens to us. His work is in our hands, whatever circumstances pertain. His words will be in our mouth for any given situation. Jeremiah needed the right word at the wrong times in his life. He lived in wrong times. Everything happened to this man. Very seldom was he up in front of an entire crowd. It was the king or the leader or the high priest who was in apostasy, or the people in his town, or a little group here or there, or one man that he needed to encourage, like his amanuensis or the young king in the palace.

These things are beyond us. But when we know God and He's in our heart and life, He promises: "Open your mouth wide and I will fill it." I have experienced that over and over again. When your faith is in the right person, in the right object, and the Holy Spirit comes into your heart and life and the word of God begins to happen to you on a daily basis, you will find all that you need. You must go to everyone He sends you to, and you must say everything He tells you to. You'll find that He will be all that He promises to be. "I will put My words," He says, "in your mouth."

What's the secret of staying in touch? Turn with me to Jeremiah chapter 17 for a moment. As I was studying this book to write a book about it—Faith Enough to Finish—I came across chapter 17 right in the middle because I was seeking for the man's secret. How did Jeremiah survive the torture he went through? The ridicule he went through. At one point they put him in stocks—that's where you get the word laughingstocks. Everybody came by and laughed. Here was Jeremiah with his ankles held in the stock, sitting in a busy marketplace and everybody had to step over him, laugh at him.

He had terrible things happen to him. How did he have faith enough to get up and go on? How did he have faith enough to finish? When I got to chapter 17, I found his heart. I found his secret. He's teaching and he talks about a little tree and a little bush. He's using a parable. A parable is a little story that has a heavenly meaning. It's an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. There aren't just parables in the New Testament; there are parables in the Old Testament as well. Let me just read it to you quickly.

"Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord. He will be like a bush in the wastelands. He won't see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives." He's bringing this little picture to us in his parable: this little tiny scrub bush. It's all shriveled up, it's brittle.

The reason is there's no water. It doesn't have any roots, it's rootless and it's fruitless. It's in the big sun, and it's sitting on salt flats and it's just shimmering with heat. It's miserable. You would be and I would be if I was this little scrub bush. Then he tells us why, and he uses it as a picture of spirituality. He says you can be like a little scrub bush. You can be all shriveled up and brittle because you don't have any roots. If you did, there's no water to put them in, you're just on the salt flats. You're in the heat and the heat's on. Maybe the heat's on in your life.

He gives us reasons. "Cursed is the one who trusts in man." If we trust in our wife, our children, our boss, our job, our own ability, we're trusting in man, we're not trusting in God, we're not having confidence in God. That means you'll shrivel up and die eventually. "Who depends on flesh for his strength." Flesh means self. If you're a self-made woman or a self-made man and you think, "I've got it! I can do this! I can do this without any help, thank you very much. God helps those who help themselves"—isn't that in the Bible? No, actually, it isn't. Don't know who started that rumor.

If you trust in your own self-effort, you'll end up like the little scrub bush. "And whose heart turns away from the Lord." Maybe you believed in God. Maybe you went to Sunday school. Maybe your parents brought you up to really believe in the Lord. Something happened. Maybe you got disappointed with church, or some Christians didn't act the way that they should have acted, and you got disillusioned. Your heart turned away from the Lord. You got people and God mixed up, you got God and life mixed up. It wasn't disillusionment with God actually, it was disillusionment with those people, wasn't it? But you got the thing mixed up and so you became like a little scrub bush on the salt flats. Maybe that describes you.

Listen to this. Here's where the parable changes. "But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. He will be like a tree planted by the streams that puts out its roots into the water. It doesn't fear when the heat comes, its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit." What a picture of two people. One like a little scrub bush, and the other like a tree with its leaves evergreen and its roots in the river.

Are your roots in the river? Water and the river are wonderful pictures in the Bible. They're pictures of the Spirit of God. Water is used as a symbol of the Spirit of God. Here's the picture of the river of God, flowing from the throne of God. Other people saw this vision, this picture that Jeremiah puts into his little parable. John the apostle in the book of Revelation saw the river coming out of the throne of God and the trees on each side with their branches laden with fruit and their leaves evergreen and their leaves for the healing of the nations. Ezekiel saw the same picture.

Symbols of power and refreshment—the water of life. The secret of this man Jeremiah—the man who had faith enough to finish against all odds—his secret was having his roots in the river of God, in the Spirit of God. The tree put out its roots by the stream. You and I have to put out our roots into that stream. That's our job. God's job is to let the water of life, the Spirit of life, fill the tree and refresh us, no matter how hot it is. Did you notice that? It never fears when the heat comes. Heat? Sun?

Same sun that is shriveling up the little scrub bush is falling on the tree. But the tree isn't shriveling because its roots are in the river. You've got to stay connected. Got to put your roots down into the Spirit of God. You've got to let the word of God happen to you. As that happens to you, then fruit will appear on your life. Fruit is another symbol. We read in the New Testament of the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, kindness, meekness, self-control. These are fruits or evidences of the inner life, the inner life of Christ. He was all these things.

If our lives are going to be fruitful and our leaves are going to be evergreen and for the healing of the nations, people need to come to our lives, to your life and to mine. They need to find refreshment, they need to find nourishment. They need to be able to pluck the fruit of our lives and find themselves comforted, find themselves helped. Our words need to bring healing and help to a hurt family or to a hurt friend. They need to come to our life and find healing. Does it happen? Even when the heat's on. Even though, as it says here, you're in a year of drought.

This tree has no worries in a year of drought. Absolutely no worries in a year of drought. Isn't that something? Have you had a year of drought? Maybe you've had a year of drought because your job dried up, or a relationship dried up, or your hopes and dreams dried up. You say, "Yes, Jill, I've had a year of drought. I'm in trouble, I'm in debt. I've had a year of drought in my bank balance." If your roots are in the river, you won't have any worries, you won't have any fears, because your life will still be fresh and you'll still be producing the things that really matter.

In the end, the best things in life are free. The best things in life are character and peace and joy and goodness and kindness and self-control. That's the heart of the man. That's the heart of Jeremiah. That's why as he goes around from one disaster to another, he is fine because inside he's together even though outside everything's falling apart. That's the Christian life.

The water of life spoken about in the Old Testament flows from the river of God, the source is God, into our lives, filling our lives. In the New Testament, Jesus talked about it to the woman of the well: "The water I will give you will be in you a well springing up into everlasting life." Then out of you—in your well, out of you—rivers, He says in John chapter 7. Jesus talked about it, it's pictured here in this parable, people saw the vision of it in heaven. That's the water that's going to keep us fresh and faithful to the end.

As Jeremiah found the secret of being connected with the river, of putting out his roots moment by moment and day by day, crisis by crisis, he found that the river was enough. There was enough faithfulness, even when he was faithless. God's faithfulness through His Spirit would take over. Even when he ran out of patience, God's patience—His life, and God is patient, He's longsuffering God—that would take over. Jeremiah drew on the Spirit of God for every crisis in his life.

Never more than when he was faced with having to say something. I'm just wondering as we come to the end of this talk, I'm just wondering if you're facing having to say something to someone and you're saying, "What am I going to do? Where am I going to find the words? How am I going to convince this person that they need the Lord? How am I going to deal with this teenager because they're living in a way that is not honoring to God and is deceptive and detrimental to them? Where am I going to find the words?"

If your roots are in the river, you'll know what to say. He will give you: "I'll put My words in your mouth." This Bible is an incredible thing. Jeremiah says in one of these chapters, "His word is like a fire." At one point, he got fed up of being beaten up every time he preached. That was hard. At one point he says, "I'm not going to do it anymore. I've had enough of this. I can do without it."

Then he says, "I tried to keep my lips zippered, I tried to keep my mouth shut, but Your word was in my heart like a fire. And I couldn't shut up. I couldn't keep it in. It was so burning in me I had to let it out." Then at another point he says, "Your word is my joy, and I can't wait to feed on Your word and it makes me so happy and so healthy and so incredibly content." Incredibly content.

In another place he says, "And Your word is like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces." Sometimes maybe we have to come to God and our heart is hard and we don't want to do the work that He's given us to do. We don't want to fulfill the call that we know He has on our lives. We harden our hearts, our heart turns away from the Lord. Perhaps we come to be like this little scrub bush in the heat, in the year of drought, with nowhere to go and brittle and twisting our little branches together and breaking them because we're so brittle. Is that a picture of you?

The word of God is like a hammer and it comes and it hammers the rock in pieces. God's word speaks to us. It won't let us away with things that we shouldn't be let away with. I remember struggling about my husband being on the road a lot. He was an evangelist years ago. I remember coming to the word of God saying, "Speak to me, Lord." And the word of the Lord came like a hammer and broke my resentment and broke the hardness of my anger against God and the mission that we were serving. Why was God allowing my husband to have to do this job that he had to be away from home to do? I couldn't understand it, my heart was getting hard and I was becoming very like this little scrub bush.

I knew better than to stop reading this book. With a hard heart, I began to read the book and I was in the New Testament and I came across a word where Jesus is telling the parable. Jesus says to a whole lot of workers, "I'll hire half of you at the beginning of the day," and He hires half of them, and then halfway through the day He hires the other half—this owner of this vineyard. At the end of the day, He pays them all the same. Half of them grumble and say, "We worked all day and we get the same as these guys who only worked half a day? That's not fair."

God says to them, "Isn't it permissible for Me to do what I will with My own? It's My money. I'm the boss, you're the workers. I can do what I like with My own." God spoke to me. He used that little story like a hammer that broke my heart—my hardened heart—and made it soft and pliable again about my situation. I knew we were where we should be, I knew we were doing what we should be doing, but I had become hard and resentful like that little scrub bush. God's word hammered my heart and made it soft and pliable again.

God said to me, "Is it not permissible for Me to do what I will with My own, Jill? And if I ask Stuart, your husband, to go over here and work for Me over here, and I ask you to work for Me there, you're Mine. I created you, and then I died for you, I bought you, you're twice Mine. I redeemed you. And you committed yourself to Me to do the work that I've called both of you to do." I knew He was right. "Is it not permissible for Me to do what I will with My own? Stuart's Mine, he's My own. You're Mine, you're My own."

I submitted to that. It was through this word that my heart became soft and pliable and, listen, joyful again, even in my circumstances. I put my roots back in the river, and the Spirit of God filled my life and the fruit began to grow again. My leaves became helpful with healing for the kids that I was working with—the street kids that we were involved with with that mission. There's the secret: you keep your roots in the river.

Where are you in this talk? Is God's plan in your life? Do you know Him? What's His plan? To know Him. Have you ever put your faith in Him for your salvation? Trusted Him? He is trustworthy, the object of your faith is trustworthy: God Himself. His plan in your life, His work in your hands. Have you ever found what God wants you to do? Have you ever said, "Yes, this is why I was created, I'm doing this job! Might be a secular job, but this is what God wants me to do, this is the task He thought about before I was me to know"?

Is it words you need? What you need to say to God is, "I need to get into this word and let it happen to me, and then I need to let it happen through me to other people. I need Your words in my mouth. I need Your words in my mouth." Put your roots in the river and God will do the rest. Pray with me. Heavenly Father, we pray that You would hear our prayer. Some of us feel like that little scrub bush, and we're brittle and the heat's on and we're in a year of drought in our lives. We need to get back to the source of all blessings and put our roots in the river.

We do that right now. We ask that You would reconnect us with the source of life. So however hard it is, however hot it's getting, it won't make any difference. There will be fruit on our branches and our leaves will be for the healing of the nations. We ask it for Christ's sake, Amen.