Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Does your happiness depend on your happenings happening to happen the way you happen to want your happenings to happen? I've been practicing that. I want to talk about what happens when you run out. You just run out. You run out of faith. Some of you have run out of hope. Some of you have run out of joy.

Maybe you look back at a time when you first asked Jesus into your heart or came to faith, or whatever phrase your particular background lends you to talk about. You say, "You know, when I first came to Christ, it was so different than it is now." Just earth above was sweeter blue and grass was greener green and all of that. "Something gleams in every hue Christ-less eyes have never seen," as the hymn goes. And now it's hum-drum.

I can even have my quiet time, somebody said the other day, my time with God, my devotional time, and quite honestly, Jill, I need not have bothered, for I come out of it just the way I went into it. And I've lost my joy. So, I want to talk about that.

The devil is a killjoy. Jesus said he's a murderer from the beginning. He's a thief, so he wants to steal your joy. He wants to kill your joy. And he will do it in all sorts of ways. He will use the world, the flesh, and sometimes right in your face. Read the temptations of Jesus. And one of the things he has to do if he's going to win his war, his battle, is to get you to cooperate by grieving the Holy Spirit, resisting the Holy Spirit, quenching the Holy Spirit, or insulting the Holy Spirit.

All those four things are spoken of in the New Testament. We can grieve the Holy Spirit. We can resist the Holy Spirit. We can quench the fire of the Holy Spirit. And we can insult the Holy Spirit. How do you insult the Holy Spirit? How do I know if I'm guilty of such a terrible, terrible thing? I mean, when I said that, you think, "I don't know about that. What's that?"

Well, he is the Spirit of grace. So if you think lightly of the cross, you're insulting the Spirit of grace. If you can't or forget the size of what it took for Jesus to come and die for you, and the cross becomes little or of no consequence in your life because of familiarity perhaps over the years, or for whatever reason.

Or the fact that you are grieving the Spirit. How do you grieve the Spirit? If he is the Spirit of joy, which he is, and that spiritual joy is quite different from human happinesses, only God can give you God-joy. If you don't have God, you don't know what joy is about. It's spiritual. Joy, spiritual joy, has to do with God coming into your life so that it's sort of like divinity clothed in humanity. We're his suit of clothes, if you wish.

All of God is in all of us. I first heard the gospel or the good news of Jesus when I was a student at Cambridge. I'd grown up in a wonderful home. Everything I learned about mothering, I learned from my mom. Everything I learned about marriage, I learned from their wonderful marriage. Everything I learned about everything but God, because they didn't know him themselves, and if they had, they would have told me about him.

But I was a child with many questions, having slept in an air-raid shelter, and I can't remember sleeping in a bed in Liverpool during those six years of the war. And even as a little girl, I had questions in my little girl mind. Who was he? Where was he? And if he was, what was he like? Was he unable to stop the bombs falling all over my life? Was he unwilling to hear my prayers? If he was, where he was, why he was? All the things that most people in the world that have never heard the gospel ask.

I was forced into asking it in my extremity in Liverpool as a child. But by the time I got to Cambridge, I was totally confused about many things. And I remember meeting people for the very first time in my life that were full of joy. There was an element about their life, actually physically even about their eyes. I remember meeting Christians—I didn't know that's who they were—and thinking they look high on something. Look at their eyes, they're all sort of glistening or something.

The eyes are the windows of the soul, I suppose. In fact, when the girl in the next bed to me in Addenbrooke's Hospital, where I was rushed into one night, introduced herself to me—she was a nurse who was sick in the bed next to me—her eyes looked like those girls' eyes. And I literally said to her a couple of days later, "You know, have you got a sister at Homerton College?" I literally asked that question. She said, "No." I said, "It's not that you're physically like them, but something about your eyes." She said, "Well, that's interesting."

And it was Jesus. Of course. Think about it. How could God in all his God-ness in his Spirit come into my humanness and people not sense or see? It isn't a little bit of the Spirit. He isn't an "it"; he is a "he." It is God the Father, not God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. All God. The Holy Spirit is God in all his God-ness, even as Jesus was God in all his God-ness, three in one.

And so when you say the little prayer, "I'm sorry for my sin that put you on that cross. Forgive me, Lord. Cleanse me, Lord. Come into my life, Lord Jesus. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me. Come into my heart," you are inviting God in all his God-ness into your life. Now ask a question: why would that not show?

Well, he's the Spirit of joy. Jesus said, "My joy," to his disciples, "I give to you." Jesus' joy, God in Galilean cloth making my heart smile. Hey! Well, the only reason you won't know spiritual joy is if you're grieving him, and he doesn't feel very happy. Makes sense. How do you grieve the Spirit? He's the Holy Spirit. So every time you or I are unholy, we make him unhappy. Now, he doesn't just walk out of our life, although I'm sure he'd like to many times, because he promised he wouldn't.

So we're making him very uncomfortable by being unholy, by watching pornography, by doing the big stuff and the small stuff. And incidentally, there is no small stuff. No small stuff. I was thinking about this, and actually, the children's music is wonderful. They have a song about apples, about an orchard, about seeds. I didn't know that, but it's a perfect song because two days ago I wrote this:

The tree stood still in the garden where it had always been, there from the beginning, you know, where it had been planted by him who is the maker of trees and rivers and everything growing. I looked guiltily in its direction and I wondered greatly how the branch I had taken the small apple from seemed to be so obviously minus the fruit.

I mean, there were big rosy apples all around it. How could the little space it had left be so noticeable? It was such a very small apple. No small apples, Jill. His tangible presence, surely. You know, one minute silence, and the next, the air around me alive, and sounds beyond music. Somehow you find yourself beneath the praise of angels.

The conversation continued in my headspace. "Well, it was just a little lie, Lord," I protested petulantly. "Hardly fully a lie at all. Like a half-truth, or even a quarter-truth, or well, actually really just like an exaggeration. It did have a bit of truth in it." "What was the intent of the exaggeration, Jill?" I didn't like the way the conversation was going. "Uh, deception?" He asked quietly. "To make you look good?" And then, "All apples are apples."

Oh. I knew some big apples were off limits—the big juicy ones like "thou shalt not kill, steal, commit adultery, murder your mom or your dad, take someone else's wife," things like this. I mean, big whopping apples. Reading my thoughts, he said, "They were all little apples to start with. Coveting grew into killing. Dishonoring your parents naturally grew into dishonoring me, taking my name in vain."

"Uh," I said, trying to change the subject, "how stupid is that? How did you know I ate it?" "Teeth marks," he said. "They always show." The snake sniggered, coiling himself around the tree and enjoying the conversation. "Lots of fuss about nothing," he hissed. The light brightened and he uncoiled his horrid self hastily and vanished for a while.

"He said it wouldn't matter," I whispered. "He was in my headspace, Lord." "Yes, why didn't you tell him to go?" "Oh, I don't know, I didn't think you'd notice. It was just—" "No small apples." There was silence, terrible silence, and my heart sank. The snake was back in a minute. "You offended him," he said. "He's touchy, you know, pouting." Well, the snake always oversteps the mark and I said loudly, "Go away in the name of Jesus and go where he tells you to go right here, right now." And of course he did. He has to, you know, he can't stand the name.

I ran around the silence looking for a sight of him, listening, waiting for that silent touch on my cheek. And I saw the small apple for what it was: forbidden fruit, full-blown sin. No small apple. If you grieve the Spirit, if you quench the Spirit's fire, if you resist the obediences he is asking of you, then there'll be no joy. So if you've lost your joy, start there. Start there.

Holy Spirit wants to enlighten our minds. All sorts of symbols in the Bible of the Spirit. The Spirit is like wind, Jesus said. You don't know where the wind goes, but you see the effect of it. So all who are born of the Spirit, Jesus explains to Nicodemus, the teacher of the Jews, all who are born of the Spirit, who receive his life. You can't see the Spirit, but you can see what the Spirit does to the person that receives him: transformation.

You can see the trees bend in the wind, but you can't see the wind. You can see what the wind does. And so breath and wind are a symbol of the Holy Spirit in the scriptures. And water is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, isn't it? What did Jesus say to the woman at the well, the thirsty of soul woman at the well who'd had five husbands and still needed her thirst quenched because husbands will never quench the thirst of the Spirit? She was looking for satisfaction in the wrong place. He said, "If you only ask me, ask me, ask me, I'll be in your life like a well of water springing up into eternal life and out of you rivers." This spoke he of the Spirit, John 7 tells us. In you a well, out of you rivers.

So the symbols, the pictures of the Holy Spirit in the Bible are so precious. When I came to the Lord Jesus that incredible day in hospital all those years ago, I remember Jenny, who led me to Christ, telling me that my Father God would now lift me up and put him on his knee and open his picture book and point out the pictures.

And I said, "What are you talking about?" She said, "Jill, you're a visual person, and the symbols of the Bible will probably be a great way for you to start and study the scriptures. So start with the Old Testament." And she was right. I am a visual learner. I am a visual teacher. That's how God has made me.

And it was just as if God the Father lifted me up—Jill Briscoe, put this child on his knee and opened his word—"And the pictures, look Jill," you know how you do to a little child, "look this picture, this picture. Let me tell you about my Spirit. My Spirit is like a fire, Pentecost. Not real fire, like fire, it says, a symbol of the power of the Spirit. And if you go into the Old Testament, fire is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. That's why we mustn't quench the Holy Spirit, right?

Fire, wind, water, dove, all sorts of pictures that tell us about the nature of God the Holy Spirit. And oil. Oil! Oil that lights the house. I brought some little oil lamps back from Israel from a dig. They're two to three thousand years old. And they're like the ones that would be in the houses of the story we're going to look at quickly.

Lighting the house. Oil in the Old Testament and the New actually is a symbol of light, enlightenment. Oil is a symbol of medicine and healing. Oil would be used by the shepherd with the sheep. If the sheep was bruised or hurt, he would rub oil on the hurting part. Oil was a symbol of anointing, of power given to a mere man who was asked to explain the word of God—the priest, the prophet, the king.

Oil was a symbol of joy. God says to Israel that was mourning its sin and its situation, "I will give you the oil of joy for your mourning, the Spirit of joy for your spirit of heaviness." Oil of joy for mourning. Wow. Oil, a symbol of joy. And so this very, very simple little story, which actually I used in a little book called *A Little Pot of Oil* when a publisher asked me to write about the Holy Spirit. I used this little story in 2 Kings 4.

The wife of the man from the company of the prophets cried out to Elisha, "Your servant my husband is dead. You know that he revered the Lord, now his creditor is coming to take my two boys as his slaves." She was running out, running out of a husband, running out of a relationship, running out of love, running out of hope, running out of furniture, running out of clothes, running out of jewelry, if she had any.

She was living in community with Elisha the prophet, and they were learning to be prophets. They were running out of things to sell. She was, to keep her children. What's that all about? You have to go back to Leviticus. It says that if somebody in Israel, a woman, is left a widow, then another Israelite family should take the children and bring them up and teach them a trade so that at the year of Jubilee they can be given back to the widow and look after her.

It's a way of looking after widows. It was God's good idea. But by the time you get here in Israel's history, they've forgotten to give the children back and they've just become slaves to the creditor, and it doesn't work anymore. And she knows if her boys walk out the door because she cannot pay her bills and they've come to take the children in lieu, she'll never get them back.

So she's lost her husband and she's lost her children and she's angry and she's mad at God and she wants an explanation. And that's the first thing we always do: "I want an explanation! We gave up everything to serve you. We came here, my husband went up and died. Not on my agenda, God, and I don't understand. I want you to explain that to me."

Do you ever do that? Be careful. He has absolutely no obligation to explain himself to us. He has absolutely no obligation to explain why he apparently has not answered our prayers. No obligation at all. Read the book of Job. Job was asking questions, those sort of Job questions, all the way through the book, and in the end, God appears in a storm and says, "Little man, can you do this? Do you make the lightning? You make the animals? Who do you think you are asking me? Let me ask you these questions."

But it's hard. "Lord, why have my kids turned away from you? Lord, why did my husband or my wife leave? Or why is he running around on me and hasn't left? And why is he doing pornography? And where do I go with this? And why am I out of a job, and why am I out of money, and why have I run out and out and out? Why am I out? I want an explanation!"

And Elisha, this man of God, he's got his problems. Think. He's sort of apart, do you think, leaders in the church? Do you think pastors and missionaries are sort of some different race who don't miss having to leave everybody behind and go where God has told them to go? Do you think they somehow love snakes? Funny. Do you think they don't ask questions? "Why did you let this happen, Lord?"

I have a wonderful friend, her name is Mimi. She lived in Jordan, and we met out there. Stuart and I met them out there as we were ministering in the Middle East. She lived and grew up in the forest, the Atura forest in South America. Her mother, Ellie, is a legend—well, both her parents, although the husband died and Ellie stayed out there for years afterwards, 52 years in the heart of the forest.

And now she has Alzheimer's, and Mimi comes home from Jordan—I was actually with her just before she did this—and she sent me this little incident as she took her mother. And the doctor said, "You need to get her a first-class seat so we can get her up there. She needs to get in a nice big seat. She is physically needing help as well."

So she gets her in the assigned seating in the first-class section, and the passengers were filing past her, and Mom's gentle eyes greeted each person with warmth. Didn't seem to matter to her; most of her life was filled with strangers since Alzheimer's disease had distanced her from her known world.

I sensed that the others in the first class were becoming uneasy about this person who didn't seem to fit. It was true, Ella didn't look like them. Her clean hair was pinned back in a less than fashionable style, but it was the winter coat that seemed weird and out of place. But you see, she'd lived 52 years in the heart of the forest, and when the temperature dropped to below 80, she always put on a heavy winter coat.

It was summer. I was in turmoil as I considered how I might explain to the first-class passengers the apparent difference between who she really was and what she appeared to be. I can see her doing this. After a moment of reflection, I stood and announced to the first-class cabin that normally they didn't have the privilege of traveling with a saint, but that today this joy had been granted to them. "My mother," she said, "is a saint," and sat down. Wonderful.

When the meal came, I stood to feed Mom, who could be tricky. She would allow you to put one bite in her mouth uncontested, but the second had to be explained. She would first ask you, "Have you eaten?" and then assure you there was always plenty of food, and at that point, she would start dividing her food so you could eat with her, which she began to do in the first-class cabin.

How often I had seen her take food from our own table to the patients sitting in the dirt at the hospital hoping for medicine. This part of her work seemed to give her so much joy. Joy! It was natural for her to make sure those around her had enough to eat.

Over the years, many people have asked me why a loving God would allow my mother to suffer with Alzheimer's disease when she'd served him so faithfully for so many years. And sometimes my heart has dared to question God's wisdom in this, too. But as I watched her doze off, I realized she was still doing the will of her heavenly Father.

You should have seen her eyes. I may never know the interaction that was going on deep in Mom's soul as her God assured her she was still loved and inhabited by him. She seemed to be content with the unexplained. Wow. Just then, a stewardess brought us a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie. I started to stand up to feed Mom, but her seatmate stopped me and in a tender tone, she asked if she could have the privilege of feeding my mother the cookie.

As Mother was being fed, my seatmate began to explain that just seeing my mother and her eyes and sensing what she knew not, she, who was very successful in her work, began to wonder if this all life had to offer. Why would not the fullness of the Holy Spirit show? Do people beat a path to our door and say, "What is that? I need it. I want it." Well, it's joy. Joy is an evangelist, folks. Did you know that? Joy is an evangelist.

And so here's this woman. She's run out of all these resources, and she runs to the prophet, and praise God she has an Elisha in her life. Do you have an Elisha in your life? That's what church is. There is one church. It meets in different buildings, it sings in different ways, it has different traditions, but there's one church and Christ the head. One church and Christ the head.

And people in every one of the churches who are like Elisha. Yes, there are. We need to be an Elisha. We need to be the sort of person who is accessible, available, likable. I mean, you don't listen to people you don't like. I don't, do you? If you don't like people, do you listen to them? Think back to school. Which of the teachers you couldn't stand, did you ever listen to them? What makes you likable so somebody's going to listen to you so you can tell them about the Lord? Jesus. Nothing likable about me, well, you know, there's this and that, but hey, if they can see him in my actions, in my words, in my countenance, in my eyes. What is it Mother Teresa says? Kindness in your eyes, kindness in your face, kindness in your demeanor, kindness in your hands, kindness in your feet. Is that what they see?

So she goes to the prophet and says, "I'm out. I don't want to be kind. I want out. But I can't even get out. I'm going to be destitute, and maybe the community will help me, but I've run out." And he reminds her of what she's forgotten. And if you're an Elisha, that's what you need to do. If I'm an Elisha, which I should be—everybody that knows Jesus should be an Elisha and be pouring out into people's lives—he reminded her of what she'd forgotten in her extremity. And what she'd forgotten was the little pot of oil. She'd forgotten this.

"Well, I've sold everything." "Oh, there's just a little pot of oil." And that's what happens when we're in extremity, when we're destitute, when death has snatched away all our joy and we are grieving deeply, deeply, deeply. When we're worried, "did they know the Lord?" for example. Or when a child, particularly a child, has turned their back and their back on faith and God. That's the thing that robs my joy more than anything. Do you know the verse that says, "I have no greater joy than to know my children walk in truth"?

Paul speaking about Timothy actually, his spiritual child, but that verse has always been a huge challenge to me. "I have no greater joy than to know my children walk in truth." And my heart goes out, and I spend an immense amount of time every time Stuart and I are here just helping parents in our family, our church family, whose children have turned away from the Lord. I have no greater joy when my children walk in truth and no greater sorrow when they don't.

And it can obsess you so that you cease being an Elisha to the world because you're absolutely concentrated on it. "No greater joy when my children walk in truth and no greater sorrow when they don't. No greater joy when they love the Lord I love, no greater sorrow when they won't. No greater joy when persistent prayer is answered, no greater privilege to pray. No greater joy as we fight the battle for them. No greater joy, come what may."

And I remember hundreds of years ago raising David and Judy and Peter and they were all in that 12-to-15 age range and I was going insane. And one of the things I was worried sick about was would they make it spiritually. You know, they're 13 and they go to bed perfectly amenable, wonderful children, and they get up in the morning and you don't know who it is, right? And it happens overnight.

I remember Judy coming down the stairs and she had just written an award-winning little essay on "I want to please my parents." Oh, it was so cute, it was wonderful. It was marvelous. I'd, you know, I thought I'd frame it and all of this. It was two weeks later she comes down. I think, who came into my house? What happened? Who is this? She's 13, that's all. She became 13. Now I had to forgive her for being 13, and then 14, and then 15, right?

But my biggest fear was they would not make it spiritually. And I know mothers and fathers, that's our biggest fear. That's our biggest fear. And I became obsessed with that. And other people's children didn't have the time of day because my children needed prayer and my children needed work and my children needed me and my children needed this, that, and the other.

And there came a point where God said to me, "What about other people's children? What about the child next door that nobody's probably ever prayed for once? What about pouring out into them, Jill?" And I remember kneeling down and saying, "They may or may not make it, Lord, but I will. Whether they make it or not, I love you. I'll serve you. Yes, I will."

And God has been so good to Stuart and me with my shepherd son David, my professor of theology Judy, psychologist, and my Peter in Dallas who ministers to me. To be ministered by your husband is one thing, but to be ministered to by your children—there is no greater joy. Thank you, Lord. Right.

But it doesn't come without tears. And I want to tell you in all honesty, and God is hearing me here and it's true, if they hadn't made it, I would because you have to take responsibility for your own life, not their choices. You cannot do anything about their choices, but you can choose to pour out into other people's lives.

And so that's what she did. Elisha said, "Go in, shut the door. Pour out." And she took the little pot of oil and the boys' wondering eyes watched her as she—how could this possibly work? But it did, until all the vessels were full and God worked the miracle and the boys became part of it as they saw their mother pouring out.

You forget you have the Holy Spirit. I was reminded by my senior missionary when I ran out as a missionary. I wanted out of everything. I was living a very stressful, difficult time of my life particularly, Stuart's and my life. And I went to my Elisha and she said, "You've forgotten the little pot of oil. The resource that you have in your extremity, Jill. You never run out of God." I'll always remember her saying that to me and it clicked. You never run out of God! Right? How could you run out of God?

And it was that night I went back on the street. I hadn't been out for about two months because I was out. I was done. Nothing left to give and I'd forgotten in my extremity I had all that I needed, all of God in all of me. And that night was a turning point. I would not be here and Stuart would not be here if I had not gone on the streets that night and said, "Okay, I'll do it. Everything else against me. I'll serve you, I love you, I'll pour out."

And as I poured out, God poured in. It goes that way. We think we hang around when we're empty and when God fills us up, then we'll do something. No, it doesn't work like that. In obedience, you get on with your life, the Jesus-life God wants you to live. And as I poured out that night on the streets of Morecambe, God began to pour in until I was full because of course you never run out of God.

Pray with me. Heavenly Father, thank you that it's all true. Thank you for putting this priceless truth in your book so that we can tell others about it. Thank you for deigning to come and live in my heart and put your work in my grubby little hands. How could this be? And I pray personally: don't let me grieve you, don't let me resist you, don't let me quench the Spirit's fire, and help me to pour out to my last breath for I have all that I need in the Holy Spirit. Thank you, Jesus. Amen.