Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: The God of grace gave us a day of grace. This period called life after the fall is the day of grace. That's what the scripture calls it. He has given us time; we don't know how much. He is coming again. He came once as a baby; he is coming next in triumph. The angels told the disciples watching Jesus ascend into heaven, "What are you doing staring into heaven? This same Jesus that you are seeing going into heaven will come in the same manner as you've seen him go."

The first time he came as a baby. The second time he will come in the same manner as they saw him go. He will come with clouds; he will come with angels. He will come at what the Bible talks about as the second coming of Christ. And then it will be too late. That's the day the door will shut. That's the day that people who are marrying and having a good time as they were in the days of Noah, as they're just getting on with their ordinary daily days, that's the day that they'll suddenly realize they knew or they could have known. It was available.

We live in a country where there is a Bible and there's a possibility that we can walk into a church on the corner or down the street and hear the truth. And then people will say, "Well, why didn't I ever go? I knew I should." And it will be too late. So the God of grace gives us a day of grace, and this is it. This might be the last chance you might ever have to know what saving grace is all about.

As we live life outside the garden among the thorns and thistles, because if you remember, after man sinned, God said, "Cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground since from it you were taken. Dust you are, and to dust you will return."

I often say that we're just little dust people wearing dust clothes and eating dust food and swallowing dust pills and lying in dust beds. We're dust, just dust, but dust dignified with divinity, for Christ indwells this dust body and dignifies it with himself. That's the possibility; that's what a Christian is. He clothes himself with our humanity; he enters our person, our spirit, the place within us that God made capable of receiving the Christ of God.

Here we are living in this garden among the thorns and the thistles. The God of grace who gave us this day of grace has given us a word of grace, spoken in the garden, birthed at Bethlehem, crucified at Calvary, raised outside Jerusalem. The God of grace in this day of grace has sent the spirit of grace into the world to convict us of our sin, to convince us Jesus is the answer, and to convert us to Christ.

That's called the work of regeneration. We have been born once; we need to be born spiritually. We need to be born twice, and the work of regeneration is the work of the spirit of God. He is around and about in this world doing this work. He is approaching our spirit. There are no barriers that can stop him doing this. We can be locked in our room, and he comes to us. We can be lying in bed and these thoughts begin; where do they come from?

The spirit of God is working, convicting us of our sin, convincing us Jesus is the answer, and converting us to Christ. The spirit of God offers himself to us, and as we receive the Holy Spirit, he makes real to us our salvation, what it means. He brings eternal life into our hearts. Listen: he that has the son has eternal life. He that has not the son does not have life. Some of you have eternal life, the life of the eternal one, and some of you don't.

Some of you are forgiven, and some of you are unforgiven. Some of you will sleep tonight forgiven sinners, and some of you will sleep tonight unforgiven sinners. The difference is those who have received Jesus into their lives as best they understand it and know how. This is the day of grace, and the word of grace was made a baby and grew up to be a man. The spirit of grace he sent forth after his ascension can come into our hearts and change us and give us saving grace.

We're still living outside the garden, outside the front door, and life among the thorns in the garden can be hard. Sometimes, if you're a gardener and you're busy in the garden, you suddenly realize you've got a bramble and you've got a thorn in the flesh. Sometimes you get two or three of those thorns, and they're throbbing and they need getting out before they cause problems in the rest of your body. When God allows the thorn in the flesh, then we will need sufficient grace.

For the God who is God enough offers us sufficient grace for all our thorns in the flesh in this period called the day of grace, as we live life in the garden of sin or the life outside the garden of paradise, in between Eden and heaven. That's where we are today. The Bible talks about this as the means of grace or the sufficient grace that we're going to need to live this life in the garden. I'm here to tell you that there is sufficient grace for all your thorns. I don't care what they are.

There is sufficient grace, and I want to talk about how that works so we can get a handle on it. Now if we start back in Genesis, let me remind you there were no thorns in paradise. As soon as sin entered this universe through the temptation of the snake and the fall of Adam and Eve, thorns and thistles sprang up. Thorns and thistles among the animals: a lion ripped apart a lamb. Nature went wild; the environment fell.

The whole creation is groaning, waiting for its redemption, a writer in the New Testament tells us. The fall of man affected the whole universe. Did you realize that? That's what the Bible teaches. So the animals were affected, and the ground and the environment were affected outside the garden. Relationships were affected. Adam said, "The woman you gave me, she made me do this." The blame game began, and the woman said, "No, the snake made me do it."

God said, "You both did it, and now it's done. It's going to take me to pay the price to put it right." Something went terribly wrong. Do you ever doubt it? I remember my daughter in school; she hated music. So did my son, and I couldn't figure it out. They were in a little one-room schoolroom in a rural situation in England where we worked and lived for 14 years. There were three classes in this very old ancient building that was very picturesque and absolutely useless as a schoolhouse.

You had three teachers in one big room trying to teach all at the same time; you can imagine. Then when music time came, that was just a dead loss. There was no way that the music teacher could teach music with everybody in the same room. So it was a difficult class; they put everybody together from the top age group to the four-year-olds and they'd have a music lesson. Well, that's one reason our kids didn't like music.

My little girl at four went to school; she went to big school in England. You start big school at four years of age. Her big brother, who she adored and worshipped, David, he was in the class and he was two years ahead of her. The only thing she liked about music was she could get to sit next to him. So here's this little girl attending school, trying to adjust, and a pretty old-fashioned British schoolmarm was their teacher here.

The music lesson came one day and the teacher asked a rhetorical question which you know is not to be answered. She said to the class, "Who doesn't want to sing today?" David put up his hand and said, "I don't." She said, "Go and stand in the corner with your face to the wall." My four-year-old stood up with tears streaming down her face and said, "That's no fair; you asked him!"

Well, she didn't get put in the other corner, but my son stood in the corner for the entire lesson with his face to the wall. This huge sense of injustice enveloped my four-year-old. It took me two days; she would not go back to school the next day. In fact, they had to tear her out of my arms for a week after that and drag her into school because it was no fair.

I remember sitting on my knee and trying to comfort her and saying, "Life isn't fair, darling; life isn't fair. It's no fair." Life outside the garden is no fair. It's no fair today, no fair in a little girl's life, little boy's life, no fair in a big girl's life or a big boy's life. People do such terrible things to people. Kids blow friends up with guns in our high schools.

I talked to a grandmother two weeks ago. She said, "I have two grandchildren." I said, "How wonderful; how old are they?" She said, "Four and two." I said, "Do they live nearby?" She said, "Yes, very near." And I said, "Well, that's wonderful; you can see them all the time." She said, "My daughter-in-law allows me to see the children twice a year for two hours, and my son stands by and does nothing about it." That's pain. That's pain.

I met a man, a deacon of a church. I noticed his face as I spoke. Afterward, I just went up to him and said, "Can I pray for you? I see that something is deeply troubling you." Tears running down his face, he said, "My daughter has fallen in love with a girl, and they moved in together. My heart is broken. I can hardly breathe." This is life outside the garden.

Come with me to the third and fourth world, the back end of India. Have a look around; find these millions of people who will never in their lifetime have access ever to one doctor or medicine or pill. Five percent of the population have access to medicine. Come to Bosnia or Kosovo or Rwanda. I remember seeing the Time Magazine that said, "Where have all the demons gone? They've gone to Rwanda."

Look into the faces of people who've seen their husband's throat slit or their daughters raped. This is life outside the garden. As we move into this life, this pain, we have a lot of questions if we're thinking. We have a lot of questions. The God of grace wants us to know there is sufficient grace for life outside the garden, life among the thorns. Yes, there is. God says look up. See the rainbow?

When the clouds came over the earth, he put a bow in them. For some of you, the clouds have come over the earth. What we need to do is to look up and remember the promise. When the clouds come, there's a bow, there's a promise. Remember what it is: salvation, grace, green for the earth, red for redemption. He will redeem the mess; that's why he came. He knows all about our lives. I often think about what he knows, and I don't know how he can stand it.

God can hear every thought every person in the world is thinking, and he hears it at the same time. God can see into every mucky little corner and see what people are doing with their bodies, billions of them at the same time. His heart is filled with pain. So he came. That's grace. Why didn't he just scrunch the whole thing up and make another world, throw it out into space? He can do it; make another universe.

He did it because he wanted to give us a chance of existence, of living eternally, and a choice to know what grace and salvation is all about. So this is the day of grace, and he's waiting for us to come to him. The garden of thorns. There's a verse in the Bible that says God was in Christ reconciling, bringing the world back to himself. Christmas is always a challenge for me, always a challenge.

Divinity wrapped in a blanket, laid in the arms of the race, slept while his father kept silence, watching with tears on his face. The godhead resides in a body so weak and incredibly small, while angels bereft of their treasure try to make sense of it all. Divinity wrapped in a baby, how simple yet simply profound. Like the kings and the shepherds, I worship and bow myself down to the ground.

Infinity chose to be finite. Omniscience made himself known. Omnipotence laid down his power. Emmanuel made my heart home. Unspeakable gift softly spoken, unimaginable love made so clear, immeasurable grace of the father, bringing salvation so near. Divinity wrapped in a blanket, eternity visiting time, stopped all the clocks in the heavens as God chose to make himself mine. Christmas.

Have you ever had a baby? Have you ever seen a baby born? He did that for you; he did that for me. He did that for all the people that couldn't care less and never will. That's grace. So we live in a garden of thorns in a day of grace. The next time we come across this picture of thorns, it's to look at a cross and see our savior wearing a crown of thorns.

It says in the Bible that they beat him and they tortured him. Then they put a cross on his back and they took him to Calvary. They took him as he was, as they played with him. As the soldiers played games with Jesus, they took him as he was. He had this purple robe, which was a parody of his kingship. He had a reed in his hand as a parody for a staff of power or a scepter. He had a crown on his head, but not a crown crown; he had a crown of thorns on his head.

And those are the thorns I want to think about for a minute because they represent our sin and they represent our suffering because of sin. He wore our crown. If you ever doubt you've been loved by God, look at the cross and look at the crown. Every Easter we have a play and we have a crown of thorns. I don't know where our wonderful person got this; it's certainly legitimate, probably in America. It is a horrible crown of thorns; you can see them all around.

It always grieves me to see the depiction of Christ. I suppose that's the picture I have in my mind as we tried to put up there on stage. How can you do this? But you do your best. The cross and Jesus' agony on it. It wasn't until I went to the Holy Land that we were standing outside Jerusalem and our guide said, as a side remark as we were going around the holy sites, "Oh, by the way, you're standing under a thorn tree."

We all sort of looked to what we hadn't been seeing, and sure enough, there was this huge great tree. It wasn't like an oak tree, but it was a big enough tree for a lot of us to gather underneath it. She said, "This is the sort of tree that grew around the place the soldiers would have plucked off the pieces of thorn to make the crown of thorns." Somebody on that trip reached up and took a piece of it, and this is the piece.

That was the crown of thorns, and he did this for me because this was my crown, this was your crown. He wore my crown. So much he loves me; so much he loves you. This was my crown; this is what I should have worn. You bore my cross, you bore my father's frown. Tears on his face, his judgment took you down. Now it's my turn, now it's my turn to wear the thorny crown.

You bore my cross, so you died my death. You gave your life for me, laid in my tomb of sin, set me free. Because you loved this girl who hurt you terribly, you died my death. So teach me, Lord Jesus, teach me to love what once I so despised. Live for your smile, the love light in your eyes. Ignite a flame of love that never dies for you wore my thorns, Jesus; you wore my thorns.

That's what he did for me, and apparently it was the only way to take my punishment. Have you ever said thank you for that? I mean personally. Have you ever said, "Jesus, thank you"? It's the least we can do, isn't it? The least we can do. So we live in a garden of thorns, but he came in Christ and he wore my crown of thorns to redeem me, to take my punishment so I don't need to take it, so I can go to heaven. That's grace: undeserved favor.

The next time we look at a thorn, it's in the life of Paul. Paul, walking along the road to Damascus. A light shines, and the risen Christ appears to him. Paul, who's breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the early church, believing that Jesus is a heretic and is decimating the Jewish faith, and so he's hauling Christians off to jail. He's torturing them and he's killing them. This is his testimony in the Acts of the Apostles and in the epistles.

He says, "I persecuted the church," and Jesus appears to him and he falls to the ground and he says, "Who are you, Lord?" and he says, "I'm Jesus, who you're persecuting." Can you imagine Paul at that point? Can you imagine the shock, the horror that he's been wrong and they've been right? And he was converted. Actually, he was led, blinded by that light of heaven, to a room in the very city he had been going towards to torture and take away the Christians.

So he's here, blind and shattered and reduced to nothing, desperately, incredibly convicted of what he's done. God says to Ananias, "Go and lay your hands on that guy and give him his sight back because I'm going to tell him how many great things he must suffer for my sake." Ananias, very bravely, goes in, seeing he was intended to be one of Paul's victims. There's a wonderful story of obedience. He knocks on the door and he says, "Is a man called Saul here?"

They say, "Yeah, he's in the back room. I don't know what's happened to that guy, but he seems to be blind." So Ananias walks in and says incredibly, "Brother Saul, brother Saul." He lays his hands on him, and he receives his sight, and scales fall from his eyes. Ananias delivers his message: "I've come to tell you what great things you must suffer for his sake." Paul receives his call to Christ and to ministry. He receives the Holy Spirit, and he rises and is baptized.

He becomes a believer and perhaps the most important pivotal point in the early church's history. This man, this giant of a man, the apostle Paul who'd been Saul of Tarsus, is converted, changed, given another name and begins to make waves for the kingdom of God that we're feeling even today. One day something happens, and Paul finds himself wrestling with a thorn in the flesh. We don't know what it is; the Bible doesn't tell us.

I'm glad the Bible doesn't tell us, because if it said he had an eye problem, which a lot of people think it was, then only those of us with eye problems would be helped by the way he was helped. But it doesn't tell us, so all of us with a thorn in the flesh can turn to what he said about it. As we turn to what he said about it, we can learn from him that there is grace for all our thorns, whatever they are. Whatever they are.

I think about the call to Peter: "Peter, do you love me? Peter, will you die for me?" I think of this call to Paul the apostle: "I'm going to show you how many thorns you're going to have to bear for my sake. I'm going to show you how much you're going to suffer for my sake." I think we have a failure of nerve in telling people what it means to be a christian, that they take up their cross and they follow him, whatever that may mean.

I was reading a missionary magazine, and I saw a quote by Elizabeth Elliot. Elizabeth Elliot said in the lighthouses along our coast, there is a motto for the lifemen, for the lifeguards, and it's this: you must go out; you don't have to come back. Wow. You must go out; you don't have to come back. That's the job. God says to people, "You'll have to wear my crown."

And there might be a thorn in the flesh that I ask you to bear, but I'll never ask you to bear it without supplying the grace to bear it. I'll never ask you to do anything without supplying the grace to do it. I'll be faithful; great is my faithfulness for all your thorns. You must go out, but you don't have to come back. There is a cost to Christianity. If you're not ready for the cost, then don't wear the crown and don't commit yourself to Christ and get on with living your life outside the front door.

But don't expect God to wait forever. So he calls him. This is what Paul says, and I'm reading from The Message, a contemporary version: "Because of the extravagance of the revelations that God was giving me, so I wouldn't get a big head, I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Satan's angel did his best to get me down; what in fact he did was push me to my knees. No danger then of walking around high and mighty."

"At first, I didn't think of it as a gift, and I begged God to remove it. Three times I did this, and then he told me, 'My grace is sufficient for you. My strength comes into its own in your weakness.' Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap; I began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ and his strength moving in on my weakness."

"Now I take limitations in my stride and with good cheer: these limitations that cut me down to size. Abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over, so the weaker I am, the stronger I become." It was a good thorn. Is there such a thing as a good thorn? I think there's a thing called the thorn of grace. I really believe it, because what it does is push you to your knees.

When you're on your knees, you find the grace. One of the means of grace is prayer. And as the thorn in your flesh is allowed to remain for however long God deems fit in his sovereign purposes and will, you ask him to remove it, and you should. You ask him to remove it, and you ask him to remove it three times or 30. But when and if you hear God's voice say, "What part of no do you not understand?", then you say, "Okay, I'll wear your crown."

"I'll bear the thorn, and I'll do it for you." There is a man called Larry, 40 years of age, who was a machine operator in a factory. His sleeve got caught in the machine; it sucked him into the machine, threw him over it, and he broke his neck and he's now a quadriplegic. He bears a badge in the hospital as he is in his wheelchair. He has a ministry.

It looks as though this very big thorn in Larry's flesh is going to remain, maybe until he gets to heaven. Then like Joni Eareckson, he's going to dance. But until that day in Everland, where there is no pain and no tears and no one's ever sick and no one ever dies, he's going to be our representative in that hospital for Jesus. What it did was push Larry to his knees, metaphorically.

The weaker he has become and the stronger he has become, he has a ministry giving out Bibles to people in that hospital. Larry has known what sufficient grace is. Your grace is sufficient for me; for your strength is made perfect in my weakness. I wonder who's here and God is saying to you, "What part of no do you not understand?" There's a difference between persevering in prayer and pestering in prayer. You know something? I think you know the difference.

Sometimes when we are asking and asking, and Jesus says be importunate: ask, ask, ask. But when I say no, accept it, and then receive the grace I give you for this period of time, however long it may be, to bear the thorn and to bear it well. So that one day you can even say, it's an incredible thing, "This is a good thorn. This is a good thorn." I was thinking about that as I was wrestling with a particular thorn in my flesh.

Thorns can be anything: they can be physical, they can be emotional, they can be relational, they can be a person, they can be a situation. I wrote this: "It's hard to think of my thorn as a gift, Lord. Why would you, a good God, give me such a present? Yet all your gifts are good like you, and so I'm beginning to understand this splinter that's always needling me is a good irritant, never letting me forget you're here, waiting to move in on my weakness."

"So I'm going to let Christ take over, take it from here to there, in fact to anywhere he wants to take it and me. I'm his, thorn and all. I'm his. So help me, Lord Jesus, to stop focusing on the handicap and start appreciating the gift you gave me. Thank you, Lord, for my very own thorn." Is this possible? Yes, I tell you, it's possible. Not only does it keep me in touch with my limitations, it cuts me severely down to size.

Satan tried to use it to push me over, but he only succeeded in pushing me down on my knees. Mistake, wherever you are. This is such a good thorn, Lord, because the weaker I am, the mightier you can be for me and through me for others. When it's hard, and it is hard, Lord, living with this splinter, throbbing, hurting, swelling, remind me it's a far, far better thing than being giftless, useless, thornless. Don't let me forget it, Lord. Thank you for my thorn.

I have found in the little thorns he has privileged me to wear that his grace has been sufficient for me. His grace has been sufficient for me. In prayer, I boldly approach the throne of grace. The throne of grace in the day of grace when the spirit of grace comes into my life to help me and cope with the thorn. I boldly approach the throne of grace where Jesus sits ever-living to pray for me.

When I have had it with my thorn, and I don't want to get out of bed in the morning, and I can hardly breathe because of the pain, but I get up anyway, somehow, and dress myself and face the day, and I find my spirit lifting, lifting, lifting until it's tap-dancing. I say, "Somebody's praying for me," and a little voice says, "Yes, I am." And Jesus is praying for you, and the spirit is upholding you and enabling you.

The word of grace is strengthening you, and the body of grace, our sisters and our brothers—that's what church is, not somewhere you go but something you are—is supporting you. You'll get around to saying, "You know, it's a good thorn. I never thought I'd say that, but it's driving me to you." I met somebody who survived the massacre in Korea, when the North came into the South and put all the Christians in church and gave them a choice.

Anyone that wants to blaspheme Jesus can come out the door; everybody else can stay in the pew, and then we're going to set fire to you all and burn you all up and you'll all go to heaven. So they put a great big portrait of Jesus on the floor, and they lined up the deacons, and they lined up the elders, and they lined up the members. One by one, was invited, pulled, pushed onto that picture, and they said, "Spit on him!" Many of them spat.

Then came a little girl, 19 years of age. She stood on the picture and then she stood to the side. She picked the picture up and she wiped the spittle off the picture and she put it against her chest and said, "Don't do that to my Jesus! I'll wear the crown; I'll wear the crown. Kill me!" One of the communists said, "Oh no, we won't kill you; you'll make a good communist. You've got conviction."

They let her live. She became a leader of the underground church. Incredible story. She wore the crown. That stuff's going on today outside our nice safe little world that we gripe and whine so much about. There are people all over this world that are bearing the crown of thorns in the worst way. In the worst way.

I don't know whether you need grace to go on in a difficult marriage, or grace to stay single because it's the right thing to do, or grace to bear insults for Jesus' sake, or grace to bear with the thorn in the flesh. I don't know, but I do know this, and listen carefully: you will never have sufficient grace until you have experienced saving grace. Do you get that? You will never have sufficient grace to bear the thorn in the flesh unless you have experienced the saving grace of God in salvation.

Forget everybody else for a minute and imagine yourself here alone. Are you sure you have invited the spirit of God into your life to forgive your sin? Are you sure? Have you experienced the saving grace you have heard about? Secondly, if you're sure, what are the thorns? Thorns that you are dying with, that you can hardly breathe because in the strange sovereign will of God he has allowed the thorn in the flesh, and he is saying to you, "What part of no do you not understand?"

Then there is something you haven't got hold of that releases that sufficient grace into your heart and life so you may wear his crown. It may be that you have not surrendered your life to him. It may be all sorts of things. But in this quiet moment, as we go into this holy time, for we are standing on holy ground, I am going to pray two prayers. The first prayer I'm going to pray is for saving grace, just to make sure, if you're not sure.

And the second prayer I'm going to pray is for sufficient grace for those of you who are dying and can hardly breathe. God has been saying to you, and you know he has, "This particular thorn is a thorn I need you to bear at this particular time." Pray with me, if you will. First, I want to pray a prayer that you can borrow and make your own for saving faith, a faith placed in the grace of God.

You only need a little tiny bit of faith. It's the object of your faith that matters. You can have a lot of faith in thin ice and get very wet, or you can have a little tiny bit of faith in very thick ice and stay very safe. So you might only have a little tiny bit of faith. That's all right. Jesus said one day, "She did what she could." He's not asking you to do what you can't.

And so even if there's any doubt in your heart, I want you to follow me and make this prayer your own. Dear Jesus, I believe. I look at that crown of thorns, that horrible thing in my hand, and I realize anew, or I realize for the first time: you did this for me. You wore my crown. Amen.