Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: There's a war going on. Have you noticed? David noticed. "The battle is the Lord's," he said. Paul noticed. Paul uses battle language in the letter to the Ephesians. He says, "Be strong in the Lord and the power of His might. Put on all God's armor so you'll be able to stand firm against all the strategies of the devil."

He tells us we're not fighting against flesh and blood, but against the unseen powers in the heavenly places. The message has this to say: "A life and death fight to the finish against the devil and his angels." That's what this battle is all about. There are unseen forces. There are unseen forces that are influencing people and they don't know. David noticed. Paul noticed. We're supposed to notice. We're in a battle with unseen forces: evil and good. There are badies and there are goodies. We are on the winning side, and the battle, we're told, is the Lord's.

We have a formidable foe. The devil is far too big for us, but he's not too big for God. Within every believer, there is a God who can cope with the giants in His strength and in His name. Some of us are here today and we're thinking, "What's this to do with me?" Don't you have a giant dilemma somewhere in your life? If you don't, wait a while. Around the corner of next week, you might be facing a giant.

It might be in the area of religion. Some of you are facing the giant of doubt. Maybe the Bible isn't true after all. Or maybe it's in the area of your relationships. Some of you are facing a giant called disintegration. The giant has walked into your family. Perhaps you're in the middle of a divorce, or you've just had a divorce, or you're facing a divorce. That's a giant.

Some of you kids just found out your mom doesn't love your dad anymore. That's a giant. Your dad doesn't love your mom anymore. It’s huge. What are you going to do with that? Maybe your parents have moved you the other side of town because they had to or they needed to, and they didn't ask you. It just meant you lost all your friends, and now you're sort of lonely and you've got a whole lot of intimidating situations behind you. That's a giant.

All of us have giants. Even in real life, it might be the giant of depression. It might be the giant of death. Some of us have faced that old giant even this week. Life is an incurable disease, we find out. Maybe it's the giant of destruction, AIDS, poverty.

In the face of all these Goliaths, sometimes you feel sort of dwarfed and small and helpless. I know I do. But God is bigger than all my giants. I have living within me someone who is bigger than he that is in the world. Jesus promised me, "He that's in you is bigger than he that is in the world." We do have a formidable foe, but we have an invincible captain of the Lord of hosts. We have an invisible reality called God and His angels and the forces of good on our side, and the battle is the Lord's.

David represents for us the Lord's army. David represents for us the good side. David represents for us God's representative here on earth. The giant Goliath, of course, represents to us the other side, the evil side, the side that we're told will not win in the end, for we know the end of the story. Israel is supposed to know they're on the winning side.

The time that we come into the story, they have decided to take matters into their own hands. From the beginning of Genesis onwards, God had decided how to show the world that Israel was different. They were going to have a king who was invisible. This was the big difference. This was going to mark them out from the generic pack of the human race.

The human race needed a king, a real-life, flesh-and-blood king, a king they could dress up, a king that they could build a palace for, a king that they could worship almost, but a human king. God said, "I'll tell you what. Everybody in the world's going to notice you because you have an invisible king. He's just as real, in fact, realer in many ways than your earthly king. He is just as real. They will know it because I will talk to my prophets, and my prophets will tell you what I want you to do and who you are supposed to be and what you're supposed to be doing. The priests will pray for you, and the whole theocracy will be a wonder to the world."

You don't need a visible, tangible, touchable king. You've got a greater reality than that. You have the God of the universe, the God of glory, the invisible God. Up to Samuel, after the history of Israel, Israel had done without a physical king. That point, Samuel was their prophet. He was a wonderful, wonderful man, one of the best prophets. You know the story of Samuel. He had been God's representative to Israel.

The Philistines came along, and the battle wasn't going very well. They came to Samuel and said, "We want a king. We're done with this invisible thing. It's not working. Philistines are just running all over us. Give us a king." Samuel was heartbroken. He went to God.

God said, "Don't take it personally, Samuel. They haven't rejected you; they've rejected me. Give them a king, but warn them what the king will do. If they have a king like all the other kings, he's going to take your women. He's going to take your children. He's going to make you serfs. You're not going to like it."

Samuel told them, and they said, "We want a king anyway." So they looked for a king, and they found a giant, a giant almost to match Goliath. It says in the Bible four or five times that Saul was head and shoulders above everyone in Israel. He was Israel's answer to the giant of Gath and the Philistines.

The problem with Saul was he didn't want to be king because he was a pygmy inside. He didn't have a big heart. He was scared and he didn't want to lead Israel as the very first king. They presumed upon him, and Samuel anointed him. He turned up for his anointing in front of the whole of Israel and to be made king. When they got there and the ceremony was about to begin, they looked around and they said, "Well, where's our king?" They couldn't find him. He'd disappeared.

They began to hunt for him. There's a prose bit of scripture in 1 Samuel chapter 10. It says the son of Kish was chosen, but when they looked for him, he'd disappeared. So they asked the Lord—I always think this is not really fair—they asked the Lord, "Where is he?" The Lord said, "He's hiding among the baggage." He told on him! He's hiding among the baggage. They went and looked among the baggage, and there was Saul hiding on his coronation day. What sort of a man is this?

He's not a man after God's own heart, but he was the chosen king. He was eventually anointed reluctantly. God's spirit came on him and for a while he did quite well, but then he "played the fool," the Bible says. He disobeyed God blatantly. He was disobedient and God rejected Saul as king. He didn't reject him as a man, but He rejected him as king.

God said to Samuel, "Now we need another king. Go to Bethlehem." You've heard of Bethlehem. Bethlehem. There's a big family there, the family of Jesse. He's got eight sons, and I've chosen one of them. You won't know until you get there, Samuel, but when you get there, I'll tell you which one.

He gets here. Of course, the whole of Bethlehem knows Samuel's come. Something exciting's happened and we don't really know what it is. Of course, nobody did find out what it was because Saul would have killed Samuel if he'd found out he'd gone to anoint another king. He was still king. The spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul big time. He was in big trouble with God and with everything else, but he was still king.

In secret, Samuel gets this feast going in this home, and the sons of Jesse begin to pass in front of him. Samuel hasn't a clue which one is to be king, but the first one comes. His name is Eliab. The three main eldest sons of Jesse were fighting with Saul in the army when the Philistines would come, and then they'd come back in between and do their work at home in Bethlehem, and then they'd go back to fight if the Philistines came again.

The three main sons came in front of Samuel. When Eliab came, Samuel said, "That's the Lord's anointed. Look at him." It said he was a giant. He wasn't as big a giant as Saul, and he wasn't as big a giant as Goliath, but it says he was head and shoulders above all his brothers. He was huge, and he was handsome.

Samuel's heart leapt. "Look at him, God. This must be your anointed." God looked right through to his heart. He said, "No, it's not my man. Look at his heart. Don't look at his height. Look at his heart, not his height." You see, we look at the outside, but God looks at the heart. I want to tell you something. God is looking right at your heart and right at my heart at this moment. I don't care what you look like on the outside. I don't care if you're a giant. I don't care if you're handsome. I don't care if you're beautiful. Nor does God, because He doesn't look at your height and He doesn't look at your image. He doesn't look on the outside. He looks at our hearts.

He says, "I'm looking for boys and girls and men and women with a heart after me, with a heart that won't quit until it goes deeper and deeper and loves me with all its heart, mind, soul, and strength. That's what I'm looking for because unless you do that, you'll never kill a giant. You'll never kill a giant."

All the sons of Samuel came and went. "Isn't there another?" says Samuel. "Oh yes, but he's only a boy." Five times in this story, he's only a boy. God looked at the boy and said, "He's my boy. That's what I'm looking for. He's a man after my own heart." Only a boy in the eyes of the king, but a king in the eyes of his God. Only a boy, and God didn't look at the outside; He looked at the heart. What's happening in your heart? What's happening in your heart?

Before he was 20, David killed a giant. Before he was 20, David killed a bear. Before he was 20, David killed a lion. There were other giants in his life before he was 20. He was left out of everything all his life. He was the runt of the litter. He was the last child. Birth order has something to do with this. Can you imagine being number eight? Some of you perhaps are in that position.

I remember our two eldest children marching number three. David was number one, Judy was number two, and Pete was number three. Number one and number two marched Pete, number three, into me and said, "There's something wrong with Pete." They had an arm each. I looked at this small child and thought, "What's he done?" I said, "What's the matter?" Judy said, "He thinks he's as important as we are."

I said, "Well, of course he's as important as you are." "How can he be? David's number one, I'm number number two, he's number three." Can you imagine being number eight? He's left out. He didn't get asked to the feast. Can you imagine Samuel coming to dinner? Can you imagine? Where's David? He's left out. He's not invited. He's put down. He's left out.

When God puts you up, you don't feel put down. When God includes you in His heart and in His plans, you don't feel left out. David was fine about it. I want to look at those building blocks out of which came those smooth stones. David had building blocks in his life. This is like the chip off the old block in a sense. What David became, he could not have become unless things had been built into his life.

This is a huge challenge, this message, for you parents and for you grandparents who are doing the parenting job for all sorts of reasons. Huge, huge challenge. What should we be building into our children's lives? What should we try to make happen and cause the environment so that it does happen that our kids may be kids after God's own heart? Well, you've got to be a parent after God's own heart to begin with, of course.

Let's have a look at them. First of all, he learned to be alone. That was it. Kids, think about this. Do you like being alone? "No," says a kid. "Feels sort of lonely." There's a difference between being lonely and being alone. If you really know God, you'll never feel lonely. I can tell you that, and I'm a very old lady. I have been discovering that for years and years and years because there have been times in my life when I've been alone, but I've never been lonely.

I remember when Pastor Briscoe was an evangelist and he was away for months on end, 10 months of the year for about 10 years. He wasn't ever around. I could have felt very lonely, and I did at first. But I learned God. I began to wait with anticipation from seven o'clock to eleven o'clock when I could sit alone and knit or do some handiwork, and we'd talk. It was absolutely incredible.

God gave me that gift as a building block for what I'd need. He taught me about silence, and He taught me about solitude, and He taught me to put myself into the presence of God and sit on the steps of my soul and wait until He came and joined me, and wait until He talked to me, and then I'd talk back. It was the most incredible experience. You've got to learn to be alone. If you don't learn to be alone with God and know God, you'll never be a giant killer.

David was alone all his childhood, all his teenage years. Can you imagine? No cell phone. Couldn't IM his friends. No iPod and all the rest of the pods and everything else. As a grandmother of 13, I've learned to leave a box outside my door. Leave your cell phone here if you're coming in my house. I want to talk to them. I want them to listen to me, not to some friend.

I said to one of my kids last year, "What are you doing? We're sitting watching this thing on television," and they're talking to somebody on the phone meanwhile, of course, IMing and texting and everything. I said, "What are you doing?" "Well, I'm talking to my friend." "Why?" "I want to know what they're doing." "Why? Do you want to know what they're doing every minute of the day?" Well, they do.

But you know what we've done? We aren't much better. We have made sure that we never hear the voice of God. A thousand other people's voices and sounds and music, but we haven't taught our children silence. How do you do that practically? Let me give you a hint. If you have family devotions, take five minutes every time you meet as a family and be quiet. Shut up. Stop praying at your children. Bring them into the throne room around the table. Let them hear the seraphs sing. Invite them in. Help them to know what it is to hear God's spirit speak to them. They'll never be the same, and you'll be producing a child who's a giant killer.

David learned God sitting on the hills night after night. He was alone not only in the day; he was alone at night. How did God speak to him? Did he hear a voice like your voice and my voice or Father's voice? We don't know. Sometimes, perhaps. But he learned God as he looked at nature. He watched God's finger work, it says in one of David's Psalms: "When I look at your finger work, the work of your fingers, what is man? What am I that you care about me? You're so big. You're so great. You're so incredible. I feel so little and small when I look at you."

God spoke to David through nature. That's one way we can help. We can go into nature and let God speak to us through His creation. When I was 14 years of age after the Second World War, my father took us to the Alps in a little tiny Austin car, probably the first people ever to go on a holiday after the war, I would guess. There was no hotels, there was no bed and breakfast. We slept in the car, and we had an incredible time just looking at France and Austria and Italy in the mountains.

One day I couldn't sleep. It was just before dawn and I got out and I sat on a rock, 14 years of age, without God, without Christ, without hope, never being in a church, God-ignorant, God-careless, as if no Christ had shed His precious blood, as if I owed no homage to my God. That's who I was: Jill Ryder. I sat on a stone and I watched the sunrise.

Do you know what it says? David said, "In heaven he pitched a tent for the sun." It's like a bridegroom coming out. "Where's my bride? It's my wedding day." That's how he described the dawn. That's what I saw at the age of 14. I was mesmerized. Then I was overwhelmed. Then I began to cry. I watched God's finger work paint me a picture of grace. I saw His glory, and then I saw my unglory.

I saw His holiness. The invisible things of God are revealed in the things He's made, it says in Hebrews. That's what I was watching. I wasn't reading my Bible; I was reading God. I went back to the car and I got a piece of paper and I got a pencil and I wrote my first bit of poetry, bad poetry. It said something like this: "The dawn breaks softly filling me with awe. It seems the other side of heaven's door. That God forgives my sin to me is plain. Today, spite of my sin, the sun did rise again. And the angels said in heaven, 'She's coming home.'"

My first step towards home and Christ and God and redemption happened on a rock looking at the heavens and His finger work. It was so glorious and so wonderful that it gave me this sense of sin and of shame, and yet, in spite of my sin, another sunrise. What was I seeing? Grace!

What did David see? Grace, majesty, glory, power, God! That's how he learned God. That's how he learned God. If I'm going to be a giant killer, and I want to be, I've got to go on learning God. I've got to get on my knees and not want to get up. I've got to go deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. And so have you.

Secondly, he believed he was right. He believed he was right. He believed his God was the only God. Isaiah had said, "I, only I, am God. Without me, there's no savior." David believed that. Now, of course, the Psalms hadn't been written. David only had this much of his Bible. But in this much of his Bible, he had prophets who had talked about God being the only God. The revelation was in His word and in His name.

When I say David, his name, what do you think? Some of you think David the musician, David the psalmist, David the poet, David the warrior, David the giant killer. David was all of that. When you say the name God, God is many things and His names show you the different aspects of His character. When David came at Goliath, he came in the name or the person in the power, trusting in God Almighty, Jehovah.

He uses three names of God. Jehovah's the personal name of God. "I come at you in God, and he's my God. The Lord is my shepherd. And I come at you in God Almighty, the one who's able to hold all the world and all the universes and make them all go in the right way at the right time so they never bump into each other. That God! I come to you in the name of God of the Lord of hosts, of unseen realities, of angels and chariots of fire like the ones that Elisha saw and the ones that his servant saw when they were in trouble facing many giants. I come to you in the name of God."

He believed this is the only book that tells the truth. It's very unfashionable to stand in a pulpit these days or to talk at school or college or among your friends or in the marketplace and say, "I'm sorry, but I believe I'm right. Would you like to hear about it?"

"How dare you believe you're right? How do you say this is your holy book and it's holier than others? How dare you say you go to the right church? Which church do you go to?" A kid said to me on the streets once when I was doing street evangelism, "What abomination do you belong to, miss?" I don't believe denominations are abominations, of course I don't.

It isn't a church that's right; it's a book that's right. How do we know it's right? One reason: prophecy, history written in advance. Anybody can write history looking back. This reads history in advance. People wrote about Jesus thousands of years before He appeared, and it all was right. Couldn't happen by chance. There's too many things. They told us in advance about Jesus, where He'd be born, what family He'd come from. How did He arrange that? How He'd die. How did He arrange His crucifixion?

All these things came true. That's what makes, or one of the things that makes this unique: history written in advance. The spirit of God said, "I know everything. I know the back and I know the front. I know what's going to happen. So I'll tell my prophets and they'll write it down, and then you'll know that this is true."

We'll never kill the giant of ignorance, we'll never kill the giant of doubt, we'll never kill the giant of untruth until we believe that God is God. Beside Him, there's no savior, and this is true. We don't coerce, but we give people a chance to hear so they can choose to believe it's true, too. Don't we? Well, sometimes, and sometimes not. Do you believe it's true?

Another building block: He played by the rules of this book, and I'll be dealing with that when we talk about David and Bathsheba. He was obedient. He was honest before God. He said, "I can't know God with dirty hands. Got to have clean hands. Don't have to be a big vessel; you have to be a clean vessel for God to use you and make you a giant killer."

He knew he was loved. How does that make you a giant killer? Do you know what you need? You need to know you're loved. If you are loved, you can kill the giant. You can take the world. That's what people need to know. I just need to know I'm loved. Did David know he was loved by his family? Five times, "he's only a boy, he's only a boy." He didn't know he was loved by his family, but he knew he was loved by God.

Read Psalm 139. It's one of my favorites. Talks about how God made David, wove him together, the words embroidered him, in his mother's womb. In such a little studio, dark, did the potter create the pot? How clever! God's so clever! He made us. He took such trouble making you. That shows He loves you! He took so much trouble knowing you and watching you and planning for you.

He said, "If you arise to the heavens, I'll be there. If you go to hell, I'll be there. If you take the wings of the morning and you go to the uttermost parts of the sea, even there will my right hand hold you. Even there will my right hand hold you fast."

I remember sitting on a plane on 9/11, hearing the pilot tell us we're going to make this emergency landing. The giant fear buckling himself into the seat next to me. Intimidation was on my other side. Immediately, Psalm 139 sprang to my mind: "Every day ordained for you, Jill Briscoe, is written in my book before one of them comes to be, and nothing can happen to you outside the will of God. Nothing can happen to you, to a child of God, outside the will of God. You are in exactly the right plane seat on the right day at the right time. I have plans for you. It's all right. Even there will your right hand hold me."

Even there your hand shall hold me. Even when I'm all alone, even when I'm tired or frightened, even there you're on the throne. Even there on 9/11, in the air, in brief alarm, there with open Bible ready, there you read to me your Psalm. Every day I've planned your pathway. Even here I'll calm your fears. Even here you'll find me present, as I've held you down the years. Even where your love is present, holding heart free from despair, peace of mind and joy aplenty, thank you, Jesus, even there.

Even there, even there, even there. Seven continents, years of travel, even there, even in India when the plague broke out and I happened to be in the place it broke out. I'm always in the wrong place at the right time. Even there his hand shall hold me. Even there. What's your "even there"? Are you conscious of being held? It's your birthright. Makes you a giant killer. People want to know how come you can function in the situation you're in. You can tell them about the God who is bigger than the giant.

Know you're loved. Know you're planned for. Know He said it's all right. "Even there, I'll be with you." And know that if you'll take risks for Him, He'll kill the giant. Are you willing to take risks? Hudson Taylor, a very famous missionary—he should know—said, "Unless there's an element of risk in your exploits for God, there's no need for faith."

Think about that. Let me say it again. "Unless there's an element of risk in your exploits for God, there's no need for faith." I mean, unless you get out of the boat to walk on the water, you don't need faith. Stay in the boat.

David didn't need to fight the lion. Nobody was watching. Nobody said, "I'll pay you to fight that lion so you can write a book about it, make a lot of money." David didn't need to fight the bear. David didn't need to fight Goliath, but he did. There was this exuberant faith and passion. Passion! That's the word I want.

Are we passionate? You'll never kill the giant unless you're passionate about the cause of God, about the kingdom of God, about your part and what you can do to kill the giant. Your giants aren't mine; mine aren't yours. You're responsible to kill your giant. I'm responsible to kill mine. It's the way we get His honor. It's the way we get His glory going. So what exploits are you and I doing? It's going to mean risk. Personal safety will not be the first thing in your life anymore. Personal aggrandizement will not matter anymore. Personal nothing! It's all about God, not about us. We hear that, but is it true? Or is it all about us and not about God?

For David, it was all about God, all about God, all about God. That's what I want for my life. That's what'll make me a woman after the heart of God. It's what'll make you a man or a woman or a boy or a girl. Are you willing to go out on a limb? Are you willing to give up a career? Are you willing to be a marketplace Christian, whatever that means, and kill the giants that face you in your family or your business or your home or your tennis club or whatever? It's going to mean risk. You might risk your job, you might risk your family. Are you willing to take the risk?

I don't know what your giant is. I think one of my major giants that has come at me all my life with his big spear is the giant of fear. I don't know whether it's because I lived in an air raid shelter for six years during the Second World War and was bombed every night. Maybe that's where he comes from. I don't know, but I'm a fearful woman. I've always been a fearful person, always been intimidated. On the streets in street evangelism, I used to be absolutely petrified.

But there was one incident since we came to Elmbrook where I had to get out and fight that giant. It was when we were invited to go to Colombia, South America during the time that two of our missionaries, three of New Tribes missionaries, were kidnapped by guerrillas and were in the jungle around a place called Loma Linda where the Wycliffe center is.

Stuart and I were asked to go and do a conference there. It was surrounded by the guerrillas. The only way in was a small plane. We've been in danger a lot of times, not that many times, but we have. When the letter came, we looked at it and we thought, "How can we send our missionaries into places like that and not go ourselves to encourage them?" How dare we think about that? So we said, "Yes, thank you for the privilege, we will come."

Then came a letter. It came from authorities that said, "We have found out that the head of Wycliffe, who is also going, and Jill and Stuart Briscoe are well-known in the United States and they are being targeted for kidnapping. Don't come." Well, Wycliffe looked at this very seriously and they said, "We don't give in to intimidation, and we need to have this conference. Will you still come?"

I freaked out. I absolutely freaked out. I think it was seeing my name actually there. I looked at Stuart and he said, "Well, I'm going." Well, I knew he would. It's like a red rag to a bull, you know, let's get going. Then my husband said to me what he's said all my life: "I'm not going to tell you what to do, Jill. Ask God. You ask God."

Well, I asked God, and I don't know whether I didn't want to hear the answer, but I said, "I don't know the answer." Up to a week before, I could not say, "I'll go." In the end, I found a little poem that simply said, "Courage is fear that has said its prayers." Yeah, of course.

I got on my knees in our study and I said, "I'm sorry. I forgot it. I'll go." I was waiting for the courage to come. I was waiting for the fear to go. I was waiting for somebody to kill the giant of intimidation for me. I was Saul sitting in the tent! I realized it was my giant, and I had within my hands the stone I needed: the stone of faith, the stone of courage. Courage isn't waiting till the courage comes and you don't feel frightened. Courage is doing the right thing that you know you should do without the courage. I'd forgotten.

Taking the risk. Living my life as if there's something I'm willing to die for and live for. Isn't that what I preach? Isn't that what I write about? Yes, but do I do it? So I went. I went scared, but I went. I stayed scared, very scared, walking along those paths, no security, wondering if Mark Rich and his compatriots were within an arm's length. What was happening to them? Were they dead? Were they alive?

They gave us two of the kids from the school in that compound, wonderful kids, 18-year-olds. They were our guards. They were on little motorbikes and they would come, and they gave us code names and they had little walkie-talkies. They gave us names: Abraham and Sarah. We've got Abraham and Sarah, we've just picked them up, we're walking along the path all the way until we got to the meeting. It was scary stuff, but I have thanked God every single day that I went and I killed my giant in the name of the Lord.

For the battle is the Lord's. It's not mine! I could never fight that giant of fear and intimidation, but He can. He can. He can.

Pray with me.

Lord God, I have absolutely no idea who this message is for and I don't need to know. But You look into the hearts of these people. You don't look at their height; You look at their heart. I am well aware there are giants of all sorts and sizes facing every man, woman, and child, and I pray they'll get hold of one thing: that in Your mighty name, in who You are, there is all the power they need, the courage they need to do the right thing at the right time in the right way, directed by the right word of Your revelation.

Lord, we want our world to know we have an invisible king, captain of the hosts of heaven, bigger, greater, mightier than all the giants on earth. The battle is the Lord's. We ask you to forgive us for our lack of faith. We ask you to forgive us for our mediocre Christianity. There's a war going on; we've noticed. We ask you to make us men and women and boys and girls after Your own heart. We ask this for Your name and for Your glory and for Your kingdom's sake, in Jesus' precious, precious name. Amen.