Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: A lot of things I'd like to pick out, but time is at a premium. Let me just say the thought of letting a child go to the mission field, or let me take it one step back, leaving somebody behind to go to the mission field, like an aged parent, is something that touched me. I can't even remember which of you were addressing this, but my mind was going back to me telling my mother that I was going to come here as a missionary. That might sound really weird to you, but that's what it was.

The call here, even though America and England are so similar, was in a sense a change of mission for us. The stepping stone to the world was the call to the mission field, and that was the hardest thing I ever did in my life was to tell my unbelieving mom, "I'm going to leave you." She did not understand, and her first reaction was, "How could you leave me?" That's what triggered it. Who was it—which one of you said? "How could you leave me?"

I felt torn in 10 different directions. My husband was never home, and they didn't have a daddy, and I needed to be with him, and I needed to have him with the children. And yet, here was my very recently widowed mom, and Stuart's very recently widowed mother, who didn't understand at all—and she was a believer—and she said a lot more than "How could you leave me?" But I tell you, it was the hardest thing I ever did. I will never, ever forget driving down the freeway to tell my mother.

It took forever, and yet it was too quick. I got there too quick. I went through the whole visit, three hours without being able to tell her. In the end, walking up and down the kitchen, thinking, "I've got to tell her, I've got to tell her." In the end, I just said, "Mom, I've got something to tell you." I told her that we were going to leave, and she said, "You know I'll never come." I said, "Yes, I know you'll never come." And she never came because I knew she could never get on an airplane.

That was for me the price of coming. And yet, God promised, "Jill, in you a well, and out of you rivers." And that has been my experience. The well of water, which is another beautiful picture of the Holy Spirit, is that from which we drink. It is that from which the incredible supply of ability to tell somebody that you love to distraction that you might not see them ever again, or they might not see their grandchildren ever again. It's got to be a power greater than our human resource.

Our human resource is the Holy Spirit. "In you a well," Jesus said to another woman on another day sitting on a well, using it as a graphic illustration of the fact that any woman that's thirsty—and you can be thirsty for love, and you can be thirsty for family, and you can be thirsty for this and thirsty for that—where are you going to get a drink, folks? Are you going to drink your relationships dry, or isn't there going to be anybody there to drink from?

You've got to have something more than human resources, whether you're asked to leave your family or whether you're asked to stay with them. For some people, to stay with their family is just as hard as leaving their family, and they're going to need to drink from the well. Jesus said, "I've got some information for you." And the information I have got is this: you don't need that old bucket. What you need to know is to know me. That's what Jesus said to a woman that was so thirsty she didn't know where to go next.

She'd been drinking at the well of men all her life. She'd had five husbands, and none of them had satisfied her. So she hadn't bothered getting married the sixth time, and she was drinking from the well of men. Jesus Christ, a man, came along and asked her for a drink. She thought that was a bit strange, seeing he was a Jew, but she didn't think it was strange seeing he was a man. She was used to men asking her for things. But this man was different. He wasn't asking her for the usual thing. She must have been a very beautiful woman.

He said, "Oh, little girl, you're thirsty. If you only knew the gift of God and who it is that says to you, 'Give me to drink,' you would have asked of me, and I would have given you living water, and you'd never need to come back to this well." There is a well that we can drink from, and she didn't have this information. That's what mission is all about. Do they know that? What about the world of women? That is our mission field. It's your mission field, and it's my mission field in this Bible study.

I would like to think that whenever we see a woman in the supermarket, or going into her car, or going into the house next door because she's our neighbor, we ask ourselves a question: Does she know? What did Jesus say? "If you knew." He wants us to ask that question. Ask yourself as you see women's faces: Do they know the gift of God and who it is that could give them this inner satisfaction welling up until it fills your life, however hard it is to do the hard things?

"In you a well, in you a well." That was the phrase that hit me that day that I had to tell my mom I was leaving. In us a well. The hardest thing, I think, where my mom was concerned, was she didn't have a well. What was she going to do? How was she going to draw? If she only knew the gift of God, the Holy Spirit, and who it is that could give her that well, but she never knew it. She could never draw till the day she died—two days before she died.

Even when it's hard, there's a drink. When you're so thirsty that somebody else would know, that's a thirst. It's a strange thing. You can be thirsty for one thing, thirsty that the souls of men might drink, and yet be drinking yourself because there are resources there. This little woman by the well needed to know, like my mom needed to know and never did, she needed to know that she could simply ask. Ask yourself when you look into the faces of women: Do they know the gift of God? Secondly, do they know how to receive it?

Jesus said, "You would have asked of me, and I would have given you." This was a personal thing. When you look at women, say, "Do they know?" You might say, "Yes, I know they know. They go to church. They read a book. They've been to meetings. I've brought them to things. They can turn on the television. I know they watch whoever on the television. I know they've heard. I know they know." But do they know how to get? Do they know how to drink? Do they know how to ask?

Why don't you encourage them next time you have a cup of coffee with them to use the words Jesus gave us to use, the way this woman asked him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't go thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw." If you don't know how to help somebody to take a drink, use the scriptures. Have a cup of coffee. Explain what they need. When you say to them, "Would you like Christ to come into your life?" and they say, "Yes, but I don't know how," say, "Let's use a Bible verse. Read this as a prayer: Sir, Jesus, give me this water so that I won't go thirsty anymore."

It's as simple as that. Now you know and you've heard. How did you come to know? Revelation 22:17 says there's all sorts of ways that the spirit of God is drawing people to the well so they can drink. "The spirit and the bride say, 'Come.' And he that hears says, 'Come.' So let all that are thirsty come, and let them take the free gift of the water of life." There it is in Revelation 22:17. I would wager a guess that all of us here listening to me have come one of those ways.

The spirit has said "Come." There was nobody there. It happened. You were lying on your bed or you were sitting in your room. You had the television on or you had the television off, whatever. But you came because the spirit called you. I remember at the age of 14, the spirit beginning to work in my life, telling me to open a Bible, and I didn't. A little struggle began in my heart, absolutely silently, after a tennis tournament that I'd just won. At the height of my happiness, the spirit of God came to me. In other times, at the depths of my lowness, the spirit has spoken to me.

I did not come only because the spirit was drawing me, as many of you might have come. I came because a member of the bride, the church, said, "Come." That member was one who had heard the spirit call her personally without anybody else involved. She then went, as Revelation 22:17 tells us, and she had come to Christ, so she called me. That's the way I came, in a hospital. Somebody that had heard told me how to get a drink.

When I didn't know what to say, she said, "I'll help you." She didn't use scripture, she used a little prayer. It doesn't really matter as long as you take a drink, as long as you make sure in you there is the well of the Holy Spirit. The symbol, of course, is water—soul-refreshing water. You know when Christ puts that Holy Spirit in, when we have come to him and asked for the spirit to take up residence in our life—and incidentally, make sure he is not just resident but president of your life—then the well of water becomes the most satisfying thing you could ever imagine.

Look what Jesus said in verse 13 of John 4: "You'll never thirst." He who believes in me will never thirst. Out of his innermost being, this well that springs up—this wellspring—will flow out of our life as a river of living water. He that goes on trusting, goes on believing, will never thirst. You say, "What do you mean never thirst? I've thirsted. I've been a Christian and there have been dry places in my life." We'll talk about that in a minute. You never need to thirst. We thirst because we are not continually, moment by moment, appropriating the well.

The water is there, but some wells run dry. Why is that? It could be the mechanics. There's something technologically going wrong with the mechanics of getting the water out of the well that's in you. It might be that you don't really understand faith and appropriation, or it might be that you're lacking in some theological input and you need to get yourself into some Bible study at a deeper level. It might be all sorts of technical things: the bucket, the rope, the mechanics of getting the water of the Holy Spirit welling up inside your life.

On another plane, it might be that there are blockages. This can happen because as we draw the water up, sometimes it's hard to get to the water. There's a marvelous illustration in Genesis 26:12. Isaac is known in the scriptures as the well-digger. He went around this world digging wells. There came a point when he was in the Philistine country, and he became very prosperous. God blessed him there, and he got lots of herds of cattle. He became very wealthy, and the Philistines became very jealous and envious.

They did the dirty thing that you would expect a good old Philistine to do. They came along and they said, "We know what we'll do to this guy. There's one thing his hoards of cows and sheep and cattle need, and that's water. And this man is a well-digger. What we'll do is just go around and bung up all his wells." That's what they did. They went around, they took a lot of dirt, and they put the dirt in the wells. The water couldn't spring up, and the rivers couldn't flow out. After a little while, Isaac got some of these things sorted out.

It took him forever, but he did it with his servants. They went around every single well, and they got down the well, and they got rid of the dirt. Then it says the wells were running again, and the rivers flowed out into the desert. You know what happens is the well is there, but some old Philistine has come along and bunged up your well and bunged up my well. Ask God, ask yourself, or maybe you know already: at what point and who was it, and what was it that caused this blockage in my well? In me a well, oh yes, but out of me no rivers, and within my life no freshness.

Maybe it's a good old Philistine that's been having a ball somewhere along the line. Your responsibility, like Isaac, is to clean out the well. Your responsibility is to repent of the sin, to put right what can be put right, to write the letter, to make the phone call, to see the person, to confront, to apologize, to forgive. Whatever it is that's blocked the well has to be dealt with, and you have to initiate that. Yours the responsibility to clean out the well. You be the Isaac, and God will do his thing, and the water will fill your life again.

Now then, let's talk about God's river of life. "In you a well," secondly, "out of you rivers." In John chapter 7, Jesus stood up at a great day of the feast. Choosing his most dramatic moment when the man was walking across with the big jar of water on his shoulder at an appropriate ritualistic place, Jesus positioned himself right, seeing the whole place was packed with thirsty people, Jews coming to the feast who had hewn them out cisterns that didn't hold any water at all. Water just goes right through those things.

When the man walked across and everybody was hushed in expectancy and began to pour out of the jar the precious water, bringing to mind the assembled people the water from the rock in the desert when the people had been dying of thirst and God had said to Moses, "I will stand on the rock at Horeb. You will come there with all the people and strike the rock, and out of the rock that is struck will come rivers of living water for the people." A marvelous picture that is used in the New Testament to explain the smitten rock—Jesus Christ himself, who was to be smitten on the cross.

Out of his innermost being might flow for you and for I rivers of living water. As soon as this began to happen, Jesus Christ stood up and cried with a loud voice. Let's just read those verses in John chapter 7, verse 37: "On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, 'If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me'—and that is in the present continuous tense—whoever goes on drawing up water, whoever goes on appropriating the well of water, whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."

By this he meant the spirit, the Holy Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time, the spirit had not been given since Jesus had not yet been glorified. Now Jesus has now been glorified, and the spirit of Pentecost was given. You and I are living in the good of this verse that those people heard about that day. Out of our innermost being will flow rivers of living water. Will flow how and when? As we go on believing, trusting, relying, appropriating, calling for, drawing up from the wellspring of our soul the river of living water.

That's the background of this picture in the Bible of water, God's river of life. The Jewish feast, the smitten rock, the river of life. In Revelation 22, we read about the river of life coming out from the throne of God in heaven. John sees this vision: the door of heaven is opened. In picturesque language, a picture of what? Just a glimmer of something that is better than the picture. Maybe you often have pictures. I have family pictures all over my house.

But oh, how much better than a picture is to put my arms around Danny. I have thousands of pictures of my grandchild, but I can't hug them. What better thing but to have my grandchild there in person? These are the pictures of the Bible. They're wonderful pictures. One day we won't need the pictures. Out of the throne will come a mighty river. Down the sides of it are trees with strange leaves and fruits on that come every month—a different fruit every month. We don't have any trees like that. Our trees are just the same old apples.

These trees taste differently and have different properties to keep us perhaps alive forever, who knows? The leaves, the Bible says, are for the healing of the nations. It's a picture of the reality which is even better. Ezekiel in 47 gives us the same picture. Although he talks about the same river and the same symbols, he saw the same thing hundreds of years before John ever saw it. Both saw the door of heaven open. But the river that Ezekiel saw involved him. He found himself paddling around in it, and then up to his knees in it.

He found himself up to his waist in it, and then he found himself over his head in it. Rivers to swim in. He got caught up with the force of it and the course of it. That's what I want to talk about in these closing moments because God promises that we shall be caught up in the force of the river of life if we will allow ourselves, if we will not resist the spirit. But enough to say that you have to decide where you are today. Maybe in you there is a well, and as far as you know, you're dealing with the muck and the wellspring of the waters are filling your life.

In what measure are other people feeling the impact of that? It will depend on whether you're paddling in the spirit, whether it's up to your knees, up to your waist, or whether you're over your head in it. What I mean is if you're going with the flow, if you've just given it to God and he is president and not just resident. If you've said, "You put your Holy Spirit within me not just so I could have a drink, but so the world could have a drink." That's the thing. All that water isn't for you to have a bath in. All that water will bless you as it flows in and out of you.

The big blessing is seeing other people blessed, isn't it? Oh, the thrill of my own conversion. Yes, Jesus, I remember that, thank you for it. But oh, the thrill of seeing my mother come to Christ two days before she died. I tell you, that was a bigger thrill for me than finding Jesus for myself. That had been a desert for a long, long time. But when the rivers flowed over my poor old mom in the last stages of terrible cancer, oh, the joy of that!

The force of it! You know that could not have happened if I'd still got my little toe in all of this Christianity. It couldn't have happened if I'd just allowed it up to my waist. Had to swim. Had to say, "God, okay, take me to America, even if it means telling my mom she'll probably never see her grandkids again, and maybe I'll never see her again." Oh, how I'm glad that I swam in the river of life because it meant in me a well but out of me rivers in the end.

I don't think that God could have ever used me in those last days unless I had learned the lessons of swimming in the river of God. The force of that, the course of that, is something else. Every time I go to a big meeting, somebody asks me for a life verse. Where do you start and where do you finish? It's Isaiah 58:11: "And the Lord will continually guide you, and satisfy your desire in a scorched land, and give strength to your bones and you, Jill, will be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters never fail."

That's a pretty good life verse. May I suggest that if you don't have one, I'll share it with you. I would love to think that you would all take it. In you a well, out of you rivers. What do you want? Come on, what do you want for the rest of your life? Do you want to go back to the mundanity—a little bit of water down there and bunged up with good things and bad things and nobody getting blessed and parched deserts? Where are you in Ezekiel's river? Got your toe in it? Up to your knees? Or over your head?

That's what it's going to take. Jesus, take it all, and whatever it means to me and my family and those I love. I want for me a well of water springing up to eternal life, and out of me rivers. That's what I want. If you'll only say that to him, oh, the blessing. Let's pray. I would just like an absolutely quiet moment. I really do believe the Holy Spirit has been speaking here today in an unusual way. I just want you to answer him. Whatever he's saying to you, you know how to do that. Let's be quiet before the Lord.