Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Now, if you'd like to turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 61. We began last week to look at the servant songs—the songs or the passages of Scripture that talk about Jesus when He's going to come and, specifically, the part of His character that is the servant character of Christ, of the Messiah. And this, of course, is another messianic passage, and we'll see why we can say that in a minute as we match it with Luke chapter four. You can have a thumb or a big toe or something in Luke chapter four because we're going to read 61 and then go straight to the New Testament.

"The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor."

Then down to verse 10, the servant speaking: "I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels."

Now I want to talk about transformation. We're going to talk about the ministry of transformation, the message of transformation, and the miracle of transformation today because here the servant is talking about just that—of turning people's lives literally upside down. And, of course, He's still doing it today. Now, when Isaiah the prophet, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote these words, he was writing about what this God-man, this servant of Jehovah, would do when He eventually became a man Himself and the incarnation happened and He presence Himself with us—what He would do for the people that He met and for the people that He taught.

And if you turn to Luke's Gospel now in chapter four, verse 14. Jesus has had His baptism, the Spirit of God has come upon Him and dressed Him in a garment, as it were, so Isaiah tells us that He will dress Him in the garment of His Spirit, remember. And here He is, He's going to start His ministry. So He returns to Galilee from the desert having been tempted and overcome in the power of the Spirit, and news about Him immediately begins to spread throughout the whole countryside. He taught in the synagogues and everyone praised Him.

Now, no miracles yet—first miracle was in Cana of Galilee. But He comes out of the desert into the synagogues where the people are gathered and begins to do what He's been doing in Nazareth all His life, which is, as an adult member of that congregation, taking His turn in reading the Scriptures. When the rabbis give the scroll to Him, He's been in Nazareth attending a dead church, just being encouraged that the church that Jesus went to wasn't always quite what He wanted happened there and all the rest of it, but He went, as His habit was. He was found in the synagogue week by week. The rabbi would give the scroll to this man and that man, and Jesus would take His turn.

So He goes on this little preaching tour, and news about Him spread. "Have you heard Him preach? Have you heard the carpenter of Nazareth turned preacher? He's left His business. He's started to come around our little villages. You've got to hear Him." And by the time Jesus preached in one synagogue, they'd heard about Him in the next one. "He's going to be in that synagogue. You've got to go hear Him and take the kids." And so news of Him spread.

And so He comes back from that little preaching tour back home to His own home church. And He went to Nazareth where He'd been brought up, and on the Sabbath day He goes into the synagogue as was His custom. And as His custom was, He stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. Unrolling it, He found the place where it is written: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Then He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. And the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on Him. And He began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your ears." Now, all of them spoke well of Him and they were amazed at the gracious words—apparently He gave a little sermon at this point—that proceeded from His lips. And they began to say in the pews, "Isn't this Joseph's son?"

Jesus said to them, "Surely you will quote the proverb to me, 'Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we've heard that you did in Capernaum.' But I tell you the truth, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. And I assure you there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon—and she a Gentile," He could have added. "And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed, only Naaman the Syrian."

And all the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. And they got up and they drove Him out of the town, and they took Him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built in order to throw Him down the cliff. But He walked right through the crowd and went on His way.

I remember when our son David took his first preaching assignment was at an old people's home in the area. And he was nervous; he was probably 18 or 19 in the youth group here, and he went out to give a little talk to the old people. And he opened his mouth and started and suddenly a lady on the front row said, "Shut up!" Well, our son was very taken aback and looked aghast at this lady, and every two or three sentences the poor lady would say, "Shut up!" However, the nurse behind kept hissing, "Go on, she does that to everyone." It's funny what happens the first time you preach a sermon.

The first time—the first time—that Jesus preached in His own hometown, they took Him to a cliff and tried to throw Him over it. Well, it's nice to get a reaction. I was thinking back to when Pete preached, our youngest son, and what a joy it was to sit on that front pew and sit and listen and learn from your youngest. It's quite an experience. And I stopped being called the preacher's wife that day and began being called the preacher's mother. And that was great. Everybody kept coming up to me and saying, "Oh, that was wonderful. That was terrific."

What would have happened if he had had the reception that Jesus had in His own home church? It was the equivalent of taking Pete down to Lake Michigan and tying rocks on his ankles and throwing him in the lake at the end of his sermon. It must have been a shattering thing for Mary. It must have been a shattering thing for His brothers and His sisters sitting in the synagogue that day because here was their brother who had obviously gone out of his head, reading from the prophet Isaiah and saying, "Ta-da! I'm here. It's me. I've arrived." And I can imagine Mary thinking, "What? What is this?" Because at this point, Mary and the brothers weren't quite sure what was going to happen. In fact, just a little time later, they went and tried to bring Him home by force. They said, "He's out of His mind."

It all began that day when He came back to His own home church. People's eyes were fastened on Him. The word is "riveted," and wouldn't they have been? I mean, here He is saying, "I'm God. I'm God visiting this planet with a ministry of transformation. I've come to make the blind see. I've come to do something for the poor. I've come to do something for the prisoner. I've come to take people's lives that could be described as in ashes and give them beauty. And I've come to take people who have a spirit of despair and lift them up and give them joy. A ministry of transformation."

Now, it's obvious why it was hard for those people to accept. Familiarity breeds contempt. Familiarity breeds contempt, and we know this, don't we? Some of them said, "Isn't this Joseph's son?" And a woman in the pew, I'm sure, said, "He made my kitchen table!" And a man said, "He mended my stable door!" And another woman might have said, "He did a great job with the table, but it's a stretch to believe He made the world." This was the impact of this Jesus, carpenter of Nazareth, claiming that He was the man that they knew off by heart from the book of Isaiah had been promised to come and redeem the world.

So even though some were amazed at the gracious words that proceeded out of His mouth, they were then offended. "Who did He think He was? Blasphemy!" they said. Any man that claimed to be God was stoned to death. And when they took Him up to the top to the hill to throw Him off the cliff, that's what they were going to do. That's how they stoned people. They would take them to a high place. That's how Stephen was stoned. He was taken to the brow of a hill and they threw them over so that they were probably unconscious when they began to be stoned, but certainly halfway out of it. And then they would pick up stones and stone them in that pit or at the bottom of the cliff. So they took Jesus out to stone Him that day, not just to throw Him off the cliff. Why? Because that was the punishment for blasphemy, for claiming to be God. They did not even say the name of Jehovah; it was so holy. If anybody even said the name of Jehovah, of Yahweh, they were punished. And here was somebody saying, "Ta-da! It's me."

And yet, you know today we're trying to raise our kids, and there is a sense in which familiarity breeds contempt. It's easy for some of us that have been brought up in Christian backgrounds to say, "I can't really believe that He has come into my life, into my kingdom, if you like, to transform my heart." And I think it's especially hard for young people, for children. When Judy and I wrote *I Caught a Little Big Fish*, it's really fishing for faith in the heart of your child. But it's really how to help Christian children find reality. That's what the book's about. How to raise your children and not let familiarity breed contempt.

You know, maybe some of you have come to Christ as I came to Christ—from nothing to something—to have an incredible transformation in our lives, just to be turned on our heads from no religion to Christianity. But then you get married and perhaps your husband comes to Christ, or he is a believer already, and you begin to have children and you're going to raise them. And it's different for them than it is for you. As we did this book together, I just simply reached into the whole of our family—all our children and their spouses—and I said, "Write me a testimony." Every one of our children and their spouses came to Christ under the age of five. Every one of them.

And so they wrote me this little testimony of how that happened. And then later on in the book as we're talking about how to bring that to reality for themselves and not—not be like the people in the synagogue saying, "But He made my table. He mended my door. I've known about Him forever." So that it can become real and vital to them, I asked them to write me some more testimony. What was it that brought them to reality as they were raised in a Christian environment? And often when I'm talking with Judy, we talk about this, and she will say when she gives her testimony, "I was brought up in a Christian home." That always sounds funny when she says it to me somehow, but she's talking about my home. You know, yeah, good. She was brought up in a Christian home.

And she usually says something like this: "It was different for me than it was for my mom. My mom came to Christ and she was so excited and she's never come down. You know, she's just been like that up all her life. She's just so excited because she came from nothing into something. But I was brought up in a Christian home, and I've never been sort of excited," she said. "I don't love God any less than my mom, but," she said, "it wasn't the same for me. It wasn't the same for me." And she said, "My mom had to forgive me for finding God my way, and I had to forgive my mom for wanting me to find God her way. Because that's not going to happen."

And yet, Judy came to reality, to joy. And remember, joy is the infallible evidence of the spirit of the presence of God in your life. Joy is the infallible evidence of the Spirit of God in your life. She came to that sense of joy for herself and sense of ownership, her own way, even though familiarity bred contempt in a sense. And you're going to find that with your children. As you raise them through the teenage years particularly, if you've been Christians and raised them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, there will be a period in their lives when it'll be, you know, ho-hum. Just ho-hum. And don't panic about that. Just be excited about the way that God is going to bring them to the reality of what we're going to talk to today. Because there will be an internal revolution. There will be a moment when they fall in love with Jesus, and He will do it in surprising ways and ways that we can never engineer or manipulate or make happen. You cannot play God in that sense in your children's lives. You cannot make it real. Only God can make it real. But God will make it real. God will make it real in His time.

When Libby Hoff was a little tiny blonde girl running around the old Elmbrook Church, one of the original families—pretty well original families—that put Elmbrook Church together down on Calhoun Road. She was six years of age and their pastor resigned, and somebody got up and said, "We're going to have a new pastor from England. His name is Stuart Briscoe, and his wife's name is Jill, and they have three children. They have David—no, they just said they have three children; they did not give any details." And Libby, who was six, thought, "Oh, how fun!" because she asked—and she didn't ask what they were, what sort they were—she just said, "How old are they?" And she found out there was one her age. And for some reason, she just thought it was going to be a girl.

And she said to her mommy, apparently, "Do you think—do you think I could make friends and show her around the church and—and I would have an English friend? And isn't that fun?" And so she looked forward to the children coming. The children came, and here was Pete. And she was so disappointed, she cried. And she went home and said to her mommy, "It's a boy!" And so her mommy said, "Well, never mind."

And so Libby Hoff and Pete Briscoe grew up in girls' club and boys' club and then in God Squad. And they didn't really have too much to do with each other. They knew each other; they were very familiar with each other. And then one day they went to Snow Rodeo, which is a camp up in the Fort wilderness where our kids go to, you know. And they were coming down the snow run, and little Libby Briscoe by then 14 went down first and Peter came down second and his big boot hit her on the head and she was taken to hospital. So this is how they met—I mean, really met. She was not very pleased about this.

And so you could say that there was just nothing happening there, but there came a day when I walked into the fellowship hall when Libby Hoff had been to John Brown University and was now at Madison becoming a physician assistant, and Peter Briscoe came back from Bethel College. And I suddenly looked at these two people holding a Coke and talking. And you'll find this out: you just see the chemistry and I thought, "Oh, that's interesting." And Pete was living down in the basement—we'd made a big flat for him in the basement in those years—and that night when I went home, I heard these little voices down here. He had his own door at the back, you know. And Stuart said, "Who's down there?" and I said, "I think it's Libby Hoff." And it was Libby Hoff. It was Libby Hoff.

I told that story at their wedding. How she wanted him to be a girl. Now she was so glad he was a boy, and she'd forgiven him for knocking her unconscious and all of that. She knew him all her life, most of it, but one day she fell in love with him. And what we have to pray as Christian moms is that that'll happen to our children. Because there is a danger if he's been and she's been brought up in Nazareth, as it were, that it'll just be all so ho-hum. But there is a ministry of transformation that can take part in a Christian child's heart as thoroughly and totally as can take part in the heart of someone who's coming out of nothing into Christ. Be encouraged.

And you know, He promises beauty for ashes, the joy for mourning. He promises this garment of praise for the spirit of despair. And Christian children can go through all those things. Christian children can think they're ugly. I remember my daughter refusing to go to school at the age of 13 because she felt she was so ugly. Standing in front of the mirror, saying, "I can't go. Look at me. I'm so ugly. I'm so ugly," crying. She had a terrible self-image problem. Couldn't even get her into the bus. "I'm just so ugly." And I remember it wasn't until the day of Judy Briscoe's wedding that she looked in the mirror and said, "Today I feel good about myself. I don't look so bad today."

And God can take a child with a self-image like that where she just is sitting on an ash heap of self-deprecation and can give her beauty for ashes. And God can take someone who is mourning and in despair. And incidentally, the subject that junior high kids want to talk to the pastor about more than anything else is a spirit of despair and thoughts of suicide. Did you know that? Kids of that age talk more and think more about death than any other age group. Christian kids. And so kids can have this spirit of despair. And you know what we can say as Christian moms? That God, Christ—sent Christ as an agent of change, as a transformer. They can have an internal revolution.

And, of course, you see this in the Gospels. As He begins to work, remember Mary of Magdala. She needed beauty for ashes. She needed joy for mourning. She needed to be turned inside out, and Christ changed her from within to without. Now, John the Baptist was sitting in jail when all this was beginning, remember. He hadn't had a very good experience when he preached his first sermon in the palace. He didn't get taken to the cliff and thrown off; he just got put in jail. And he was telling Herod, "You shouldn't have your brother's wife," which was quite right, but his brother's wife didn't appreciate this, as you can imagine. And so she got him thrown in jail, and he was just kept there and brought out to preach little sermons because Herod liked to hear him speak. So he had his preacher down below in the dungeon and brought him up when he needed church.

And so John the Baptist got very depressed, very upset. Now he was in prison—ever thought of that? What did he know about Isaiah 61? That when the servant of the Lord came, He would set the prisoners free. John the Baptist was a literalist. He expected this to happen, but he wasn't set free. And maybe for that reason and for other reasons, he began to have doubts. It's hard when you're sitting in a dungeon in Herod's palace. And so he sent a messenger to Jesus and he said, "Are you the one that should come or should we look for another?" Even though he had baptized Him, even though he had seen the Spirit of God come down on His head. You see, familiarity bred contempt in a sense for John the Baptist; he was His cousin. And sitting there in that very, very difficult place, he began to have doubts about Jesus.

And Jesus said, "Go and tell him what's happening. Tell him the blind are being made to see and tell him that the poor are having the good news preached to them. Tell them those that are sick are being healed and the oppressed are being cared for. Tell him that Isaiah 61 is coming true, and even though I haven't set you free, I'm about to set you free." And, of course, he was set free and arrived in heaven in a hurry shortly afterwards. There are many ways of setting the prisoners free, and that was one of them.

And although Jesus didn't set, as we read in the Gospels, prisoners free, He did set them free as I say, like John the Baptist. For example, the thief on the cross who had been imprisoned, He set free. And He did set Barabbas free by taking his place. He did set Barabbas free by taking his place. So in His lifetime, as far as we can see, as we go through the Gospels, we don't see too many incidents when He set the prisoners free. But then when we get into Acts of the Apostles, you can think, can't you, of times when God literally set the prisoners free and fulfilled this prophecy.

What about Peter? Peter was in prison. He was very depressed; it wasn't very nice in that prison. Peter had a problem with sleeping when he should have been awake. He had it in Gethsemane; he fell asleep. And he had it on the rooftop; he fell asleep. You know, he was always falling asleep when he should have been awake. He was in prison, and he fell asleep. And the angel came and prodded him—maybe he had sleepy sickness or something, I don't know—but he prodded him, the angel with his staff because he couldn't get him awake. "Wake up!" And Peter woke up, didn't know where he was, and as in a dream, the angel said, "Come on, get your clothes and follow me." And the prison doors opened.

Literally, after Pentecost, there were many miracles that were recorded in extra-biblical literature as well as the biblical literature of people of God under persecution who God literally set free. Peter walked out of the prison and went to where they were praying, remember, and set—told them all about it. And then think of Paul and Silas. They go to Philippi to preach the Gospel for the first time in Europe, and they get put in jail. It's amazing what happens when people preach their first sermon in a place. There we go again. Paul and Silas preach the first time in Philippi and find themselves in jail.

And it says that at midnight they were singing praises. God gave them a spirit of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They counted themselves worthy to suffer for His sake, and so they were singing choruses, you know, "Majesty!" All these things. And their singing was about as bad as mine because, as Stuart said, it brought on an earthquake. Well, I don't know if it was the singing or what, but that's what happened, and the earthquake happened, remember. And what happened? Prison doors opened. Now, they didn't walk out because they saw the poor jailer come in and realized what had happened and thought they'd all gone, and so he was about to slit his throat and commit suicide and save the authorities the trouble when they found out all the prisoners were gone.

And Paul said, "Don't do that. Don't kill yourself. We're all here!" They hadn't walked out. But as a result of that miracle, the jailer and his family came to faith; they were baptized, became part of the church in Lydia's house, and after they had had their wounds washed, had a good meal in the jailer's house, they went back to Lydia's house and told them all that had happened. They walked out of the prison. So literally Jesus fulfilled that in the Gospels and also, of course, in the Acts of the Apostles.

And yet the sense of setting the prisoners free goes far beyond the literal opening of the prison doors. Those in bondage to greed—for example, Zacchaeus. He was in a prison of greed, wasn't he? This little man who was taking the money and was a vassal of the Romans and despised by his own people for collecting all those taxes. Jesus comes along, and there's Zacchaeus up a tree. Lots of people up a tree today. And why are they up a tree? Because of greed. He was a prisoner of greed. So was Matthew, one of the disciples, tax collector doing the same thing as a Jew.

And Jesus comes along and He's the transformer, and He transforms these people's lives. What a blessing. The ministry of transformation: the poor, the blind, the prisoner, and the oppressed. And, of course, Jesus did a lot to blind people—lots of blind people, really literally blind people, that He opened their eyes, isn't there, in the Gospels? And yet there is another sense that Christ as the transformer opens people's eyes, and that's spiritually. The God of this world has blinded the mind—the mind-eye. The God of this world has blinded the minds of those who don't believe. And the God of this world, of course, is Satan. So there is the poor, there are the blind, there is the prisoner, and there is the oppressed.

The oppressed. Who are the oppressed? Well, could be the alien. Notice in Jesus' first sermon, He gave a little illustration of Elisha and Elijah ministering to someone that wasn't a Jew. We don't really realize the prejudice of the Jews against somebody that was not of their race. But there was a great amount of racism, great need for reconciliation, and Jesus came for the lost sheep of the house of Israel, but also the lost sheep of the world. "Other sheep I have that are not of this fold," He said to the Pharisees. "Them also I must bring." So Jesus came to be shepherd to the sheep who were from Israel and also the sheep that were from without Israel.

And as He did this ministry, He says in 61:10, "I am overwhelmed with joy." Do you ever think of Jesus as a joyful person? Perhaps you think of Him as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and that He was. But do you ever think of Him as somebody who was overwhelmed with joy? I love this picture of Christ. There's another place where it tells us that when the disciples were sent out and they came back—the 70, remember, two by two—and they went and they came back and they said, "Oh, it was wonderful. This guy was healed, and everybody listened and became followers over here, and even the demons did what we told them because we told them in Your name." And as the disciples excitedly came back from that first going out to become agents of change and transformation themselves, it says Jesus was so full of joy and He praised God and said, "I thank Thee, God, that You've revealed this to babes and not to men."

And so Jesus is overwhelmed with joy. Every time Mary Magdalene is healed from the demons that are eating her up, and every time a blind man is healed, and every time a Zacchaeus comes down his tree and has Him in his house and his life's turned around and he gives his money to the poor, Jesus is overwhelmed because the servant of the Lord is overwhelmed with joy in the Lord His God. "He has dressed me with the clothing of salvation and draped me in a robe of righteousness. I am like a bridegroom in his wedding suit, or a bride with her jewels." I love the feminine image here. Many times in the Old Testament, God is given to us in feminine image. One of His names, El Shaddai, is the breast. One of the names of God. There is a feminine image as there is a male image in God. God is not male and God is not female; God is God. But He gives us pictures of Himself as a male, as a father, as a mother. "Oh, how I would have gathered you like a hen gathers its chicks." There are many, many images. And here's an image tucked away—a feminine image. "I want you to know that I feel like a bridegroom in my wedding suit. I'm ready to go to my wedding—or like a bride, ready for her wedding dressed in her jewels."

There is a special joy on your wedding day that has nothing to do with anything else in the rest of your life; there will never quite be that joy. And Jesus said, "When I am seeing lives transformed, that is what happens in My heart. It's this, 'Yes!' There's this—ah! There's this joy, this overwhelming joy."

You know, I was very spoiled growing up and I come from a rich, wealthy family, and my parents—what you want to do, do it. Want to take tennis lessons? Have them. Do you want to learn how to skate? Do it. Do you want to do this? Do you want to go abroad? Then there's some money. Do you want a car to go? I mean, I was just ruined stupid. And I want to tell you, I had a ball. You know, people say that when you have everything, you're miserable. Well, that came later. There is pleasure—there are the pleasures of sin, it says in the Bible. There are the pleasures of sin. Just nobody tells you it's only for a season; that's the problem. We can enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.

And I enjoyed the pleasures of sin, if you like, and all the trappings that went with a lot of money and privilege. As I was going around all of that, after I came to Christ and led my first person to the Lord—I remember that day very, very vividly leading a person in college, girl called Audrey, to Christ, the first person that I ever brought to Christ. And as I sat there with her, chattering and telling her all I knew, which was very little, but telling her what I did know—once I was blind, now I can see, you know, and this is what we have to do. And I think I know what this verse means. That there was a joy in being an agent of change in someone else's life. There was a joy in letting Christ in me transform somebody else and bring them to the Lord, that nothing that money could buy—and I'd had everything that money could buy—could ever compare to. And when He dresses you in the garments of salvation because as the Father has sent Him, so He is sending us, then you, too, will be overwhelmed with joy in the Lord your God. You will be feeling like a bride with her jewels. It says that people that come to Christ are like jewels. And one day in heaven there will be jewels in our crown of the people that we've led to Christ. Isn't that a lovely picture? And so we will be like a bride with the jewels and there will be joy in that.

So there are more ways than one of being physically blind and poor and prisoner or oppressed. There is the spiritual poverty of soul. There is the blindness of the mind to the fact that Jesus is Jesus, and He has truly come to have a ministry of transformation in our life. We can be prisoner to many things—don't have to be in a literal prison. We can be oppressed. We can have a spirit of despair. But Jesus Christ can make the difference, and our world needs to know it. Your kids need to know it, their friends need to know it, their friends' parents need to know it, PTA needs to know it—everybody needs to know it! The servant of the Lord came with a ministry of transformation.

He also came with a message of transformation. What was the message of transformation? Well, the message of transformation was, "This is the day of grace. Today is the day of the Lord's favor." What does this mean? Well, it means you only have today. It says in Hebrews, "Now is the accepted time. Now is the day of salvation." You do not have tomorrow, nor does anybody else. We only have today. Actually, we only have now. We only have our next breath. Says He holds our breath in His hand, so all He has to do is squeeze our little windpipe and that's it—we're gone. We're gone. And so "Now is the day of the Lord's favor" means now is the day of grace. He has come, instituted the church era which we are living in, and He wants us now in this period of time to come. We do not have the promise of tomorrow. We do not have the promise of tonight; we only have the promise of today.

There is a lady and my dear friend's prayer partner who's been at Elmbrook all her life. She had a husband and one day he was here, and the next day he wasn't. And he went to heaven as suddenly as anybody I've ever known go to heaven. And that in apparently total good health, but that was it. And we just do not have the luxury of thinking, "Well, next week I'll tell so-and-so." If we have the opportunity, we need to tell them this is the day of grace.

And He also talked about the day of judgment. The day of judgment. This is our job—is to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God. You know, it's easy to talk about a ministry of transformation. It's easy to tell people you need Jesus in your heart. It's harder to tell them there is a place called eternity and hell. As somebody once said to me, "We—we don't believe in hell in our subdivision." Well, that's very nice. But you know, maybe they don't believe in hell in your subdivision; I don't know. Whether they believe in it or not isn't the point. There is the day of vengeance of our God. What is God going to take vengeance on? Or who is God going to take vengeance on? Isn't He a God of love? Yes, but He is going to take vengeance on those that know not His Son. And there is that day coming, but until that day comes, we have this now. This wonderful now. And we have to have the sense of urgency of this. Paul, in 1 Corinthians chapter seven, said, "Listen, those that are married should live as those that are not." Have you ever seen that verse? Have you ever figured out what it means? If you're married, you should be living as if you're not in the sense of urgency of "This is the day. We're living in the last days. Jesus may come today. We may die today; somebody else may die today." If we don't have this sense of urgency, if life is so, well, daily-dayish, and we've got today and we've got this week and we've got next week and we've got this month—uh-uh. If the Lord will, we have today and tomorrow and the next day. And now is the day of grace.

And so the message of transformation is this: that there is a day of grace, but there is a day of judgment coming. And the miracle of transformation needs to be happening through our lives, through the servant of the servants. In John 20:21, in John 17:18, Jesus said, "As the Father has sent me, even so send I you." Now, I'm going to read you a little story. It's a story of a friend of mine. It's a wonderful story of a modern-day transformation. And I'm just going to tell you stories of the poor and the prisoner and the oppressed and show you how today this is in operation through the servants—us—of the servant of the Lord. For as the Father sent Him, so He is sending us to proclaim all of this, etc.

Now, this lady's name is Barbara Goodwin. In 1972, I became disenfranchised from my educational goal to complete my degree in music education at Illinois State University. It was the time to tune in and drop out, and that's exactly what I did. I was ready to leave central Illinois and head for the big city. And in October of '72, I moved to Chicago. I ended up working for Lyon & Healy Music Company on South Wabash Avenue. This was a huge music store—the Marshall Fields of music. It was a great job. I love commuting into downtown Chicago every day. And although I was satisfied with work, my personal life was misdirected and chaotic. I had every intention of making the most of every day by living it to the max. I had acquired a group of friends who were quite active in the social life and the use of recreational drugs. It was a daily occurrence to be high on something. And after several years of this, I began to wonder if there wasn't more to life than this big party scene.

And on one occasion, I took a hallucinogenic drug that turned into a very bad trip. A night of pure terror turned into a trip to the hospital the next day and ended me in a psychiatrist's office the next week. I really thought I was losing my mind. I was really desperate for help. And as I was leaving the psychiatrist's office, he gave me one last word of advice as he set up a series of group appointments. "Stay away from religion or anything to do with God or Jesus. A few of my patients get distracted by that. You'll only prolong your recovery if you go down that road." Well, he really startled me with that statement. I was startled because I had already begun to think that God may have some answers to my problems. And ironically, I started feeling drawn more to finding out about God. I somehow thought God could reach me and help me, and I didn't return for any of the follow-up appointments with the psychiatrist. Instead, I began to pursue God.

That year, 1975, Moody Bible Institute owned and operated a Moody bookstore that was located one block from where I worked. I walked by it every day. And I knew that this store sold Christian books, music, and Bibles. And I thought this would be a good place to start my search for God. So I ventured in on my lunch hour to look around. Now, I tried not to be too obvious because I was afraid one of my co-workers would pass by and see me in there. I spent more time looking at the salespeople than at the products. I wanted to know what these people were like. If I was going to get involved in all of this, I didn't want to become some weird, strange person. But much to my surprise, they were very helpful, polite, and left me alone when I wanted some space. They didn't seem weird at all. They helped me look at Bibles and they talked to me about them. And I left the store that day with a copy of the *Living Bible*.

I opened it and began reading it in the suggested order in the introduction—I was directed to the book of Mark. Then I encountered a God who was compassionate beyond comprehension. And the book describes story after story of how Jesus healed those who were sick and looked after the poor and set the prisoner free and cared for the oppressed. That was me. And I knew I needed Him. But what I soon discovered was that I needed healing for a very sick soul more than any physical or any emotional help. I was confronted; my sin was so overwhelming to me. And I struggled to understand and to resolve all this for weeks. I kept reading my Bible, and I kept trying to understand. And I tried very hard to save myself for about two weeks. My roommate actually became a Christian in this process, and I was very upset. She had found what I was looking for. I had started this whole thing, and now she had something I didn't have. She had such assurance of salvation. I wanted it, but I continued to struggle.

And finally, on my way to work on the subway in Chicago, I prayed a simple prayer with all my heart: "Lord, there is no good thing in me. If You want me, I'm Yours. Please come into my life." And I knew He answered my prayer that very moment. And I knew that a very sacred transaction had taken place, and I felt the burden had really lifted. And oh, the joy! And He promised to take away my sin, separated it from me, and He had done as He promised. And I finally took Him at His word. And I was so strongly aware all this was true; I mean really true. I will never forget walking out of that train a new person. I then became the best customer in the bookstore. I spent every lunch hour browsing, ending up with several new books and music.

Now, I worked for Lyon & Healy for two more years before joining MBI—Moody Bible Institute—in '78. She started in the campus bookstore. First woman VP of Moody Bible Institute, running that work. God has used her to transform more lives of people like herself than anybody else I know. She is now a servant of the servant who came and transformed her life. And she is like these people described in 61; she is like an oak of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor. For the Lord has planted them like strong and gracious oaks for His own glory. She is an oak tree, and she is doing in the year of the Lord's favor what Jesus did in the year of grace when He came.

So the miracle of transformation is taking place. Give you a few more stories. The poor. What is He doing to transform the poor? When Stuart and I were in Cambodia, we met a little lady who had been, as a little girl, taken to the killing fields outside Phnom Penh with her aunts and her uncles and her mom and dad and all her relatives—they had been killed. And they thought she was dead as well, and they just threw them all into the pit. But she was at the bottom of the pit and she wasn't dead. And My-Le waited till it was dark and somehow got out from among the bodies and crawled into the forest and ate berries for about—she didn't know how long. And then dared, because she was starving, to walk back to the edge of Phnom Penh. Somebody saw her, and it was a neighbor and recognized her and pulled her into the house and pretended that she was one of their children and protected her and brought her up as their child.

And so My-Le was saved. And she many years later came to know Christ, and God transformed her life. She still lives in the slums today, in the edge of the slums. But we in World Relief pay her a little wage, and so she has a job. And when Stuart and I were there, we were doing a film in her slum area and we went to her house. It was absolutely spotless in the middle of absolute filth and just—when you think of living somewhere for 30 years that's never had one garbage collection and they don't have toilets, so all that goes with it, you can imagine what it's like. And in the middle of this, there is a house where My-Le and her husband and her six or seven kids live. And we climbed up the little rope ladder, as it were, into her house and sat on the floor in their style and they told us about the churches they're planting—seven or eight they'd planted already. And how this house is full on Sunday for Sunday school, and she does the Sunday school and her husband goes out and does the preaching and all of this. And I just couldn't believe it. God reached down and gave her beauty for ashes and the oil of joy for mourning and a garment of praise for her spirit of heaviness. When you come down the little ladder and you look back at this house in the middle of all this squalor, there is a notice pinned up and it says, "Grace Church." Grace Church. Now, that's what God can do and what He is doing among the poor.

And then I think of the prisoner. What is He doing in our generation with the prisoner? I think of Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch lady that hid Jews, remember, and then, of course, she got caught, she got turned in by one of her own people. And her father died in the police station on the way, which was a mercy, on the way to the concentration camp. She and her sister Betsy were in this concentration camp; Betsy died in the camp. And the time came for all her hut to be asphyxiated by gas. They would strip them off and say they were going into the showers and then turn the showers on, but they weren't water; they were gas. And they would just go in there with a little bar of soap and that would be it. And that's what they were doing with the children.

And there were the adults, and the time came when the whole of her hut was to be eliminated. And by a computing error—they didn't have computers, but by a listing error—she was not included on the list even though she was in that hut. And so every single person in Corrie ten Boom's hut was taken and killed, except Corrie. And here she was in this empty hut. And they came along and took her out and gave her clothes back and just opened the gates. And Corrie ten Boom walked out of the gates, and God set His prisoner free to have a ministry of transformation that took her literally around the world. We had the privilege of having Corrie ten Boom in our home. And my kids said it was like having Jesus eating His cornflakes at the table. And she was so near Christ that she didn't know the difference of talking to us or talking to Him. And so she would be in the middle of this conversation and talking to Judy or David or Peter—they were only quite small at the time—and she'd be saying, "And so what you doing at school today?" and she had this wonderful smile, and David would tell her what he was going to do at school. And then she'd say, "Well, isn't that wonderful, Jesus? Don't You think it's marvelous what they do in schools today?" and then she'd—and we'd—but you know, it made the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. It was such a natural thing for Corrie ten Boom to talk to the Lord as thoroughly as to talk to us, for He was just as real as we were though we could see Him not. And a ministry of transformation had happened in that little girl's life years and years ago, and now God was using her as an agent of change in the lives of other people.

And you know, we don't need to be a Corrie ten Boom; we can be a Barbara Goodwin—just an ordinary woman, maybe feeling like a prisoner or poor or oppressed or blind. And Jesus Christ can transform our lives and use us as changers, as transforming other people. Pray with me.

Heavenly Father, thank You for the miracle of transformation, for the metamorphosis that You can bring to pass in our poor lives, opening our blind eyes, setting us free from bad self-image or shame or guilt—so many prisons, Lord, that we have—and You can do it. You can do it for us; You can do it for our husbands; You can do it for our children. Even though familiarity may breed contempt, as it did in Jesus' day in His hometown where they knew Him so well, Lord, there were some in that place—very few, but there were some—who came to believe in You, not least His own family. And we thank You for the message of transformation. It's a hard message, Lord, that there is a "now," there is a day of grace, but there also is a day of judgment to come. Help us to be faithful in giving the full message that now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation. This is the year of the Lord's favor. And, Lord, make us change agents. As You sent Jesus, so Jesus is sending us into the world to be the servants of the Lord, to proclaim the good news. Through us, Lord, touch the poor, physically, literally, and spiritually. Through us, Lord, help us to have a ministry to people who are blinded to the love and the light of Jesus. Through us, Lord, help us to set the prisoners free, perhaps literally, getting involved in prison ministries or going down to the Joy House where women are in prisons of their own or their men are in prisons. Lord, use us. And use us to help people with a spirit of despair to tell them there is a garment of joy, there is a way out, there is a way up, there is hope. Use us as agents of change. We ask it, asking for the courage, asking for the perseverance it's going to take to do Your work. And in Christ's name we pray. Amen.