Telling the Truth

Guest (Male): How are you pouring into those younger than yourself? What kind of legacy are you building to leave your children? Today on Telling the Truth, Jill Briscoe opens the book of Proverbs for her message, Empowering the Next Generation. You'll hear from her in just a moment. But first, we have a very special offer for you as our thanks for your support of Telling the Truth. It's Jill Briscoe's book, Fight for the Family. We'd love to send you this powerful resource as our thanks for your gift to not only keep this program coming to you each day, but to help Telling the Truth reach even more people so they can experience the abundant life found in Jesus.

So thank you for giving today, and make sure to request your copy when you give. Call 262-788-4648. That's 262-788-4648, or you can give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now here's Jill with today's message on Telling the Truth.

Jill Briscoe: I'm going to talk from a rather unusual passage of scripture, and it might be unusual because you know the other passage very, very well. And I want to talk from Proverbs 31, but I'm not going to touch this bionic Christian woman that lurks in these pages. If you're a lady, you're just sick to death of Proverbs 31 usually after a bit because we always get taught it, and this is this wonderful lady who's perfect and everything else. But I'm not going to use those verses. I'm going to use the verses that precede them in Proverbs 31.

And the reason is it's advice written down by one generation for another, by a woman, a queen, who is instructing her son on how to be a king and how to be in his generation a mover and a shaker and an influence for good and for God. And then after she's given all this advice in verses 1 to 9, we start with verse 16 on the woman of noble character that we know so well. But it might be of interest for you to know that the woman who is in Proverbs 31 that we know so well, who just seems to do everything right, never existed.

Save in the imagination of the person who wrote about her, and we're not quite sure who wrote about her. I have a theory. It's the same man that wrote the first nine verses, but we're not sure. However, the woman that wrote the first nine verses was real, flesh and blood. She actually existed, and so did her son, King Lemuel. Now let me just read those nine verses to you. These are the sayings of King Lemuel, an oracle his mother taught him. Oh my son, oh son of my womb, oh son of my vows, do not spend your strength on women, your vigor on those who ruin kings.

It's not for kings, oh Lemuel, not for kings to drink wine, not for rulers to crave beer, lest they drink and forget what the Lord decrees and deprive all the oppressed of their rights. Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish. Let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more. Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly. Defend the rights of the poor and needy. Now then, that was not written by a woman.

That was written by a man. That was written by a man about his mother, about his mother's advice. Now there are enough of you here to be raising teenagers or to be involved with teenagers as a youth leader or Sunday school teacher. Did it ever enter your mind, certainly in junior high years, that those kids might one day sit down write a book about your advice? You wish, right? Never in a thousand years. I remember back to those days, and I remember thinking if we get through this and if they get through this and by the skin of our teeth, that will do me fine.

But the idea of them ever writing a book about my advice would never have entered my head. I just wouldn't believe I could be so lucky. Here's a king, and he's writing a document, and he said, my mom did some things that I want to tell you about because she passed on her faith. She passed on influence to me, and I'm the next generation. And she empowered me to be the king that I am. Stewart's mom was a grand old lady. She was a grand middle-aged lady and a grand young lady as well. But she was a fearsome lady, and I was really frightened of my mother-in-law.

She was very, very strong, very opinionated, very powerful, very wonderful, a Jesus lover, glory giver. But she casts a long shadow. She has been dead a long time, but there isn't a day that Stewart and I do not quote her. Not one day. I can't think of a day this month we haven't quoted Mother Briscoe. She casts a long, long shadow. And you know something? It's all good. And here we are getting up to where she was when she died. And I'm thinking, I wonder if my kids will be like this. I wonder if my kids there'll never be a day that goes by when they don't quote me.

I wish. Who will know? One of the things she used to say is well, she used to say a lot of things and our kids used to say, our children about their grandmother when they've done something wrong, what would grandma say? What would grandma say? And so even in their lives, she reached over two generations and poured out her influence, empowering them to live for God and for good. Now one of God's purposes is that everybody that claims to be a Christian does the same thing, that we find somebody somewhere, whether they like it or not, and pass on our faith and pass on what we believe.

Especially grandparents. I don't know if you know if you've watched the statistics, how many incredibly thousands of people are living with the grandparents who are bringing up that generation. The marriages are fallen apart in the sandwich generation. The single parent has come back home, and the grandparents find themselves housing the single parent, their own child who's come back. And then the child has to go out to work, and they are bringing up that generation as well. There is incredible social results and repercussions to all of that. But what an incredible advantage and privilege and opportunity it is as well.

I don't know if you know that little poem. In the dim and distant past when life's temper wasn't fast, grandma used to sit and knit, crochet, tat, and babysit. When the kids were ever in a jam, you could always count on gram. In a day of gracious living, grandma was the gal for giving. Verse two. Grandma now is at the gym exercising to keep slim. She's out touring with a bunch, taking clients out to lunch. Nothing seems to stop or block her now that grandma's off her rocker. One of the problems with grandma when she starts getting to this age, she loses it in front of hundreds of people all the time.

It is a day and age when we have the energy and we have the ability to live longer apparently. That's a lot more years to give the influence that we want to to the next generation. You know something? I have discovered the gift doesn't age. Now what do I mean about that? Spiritual gift. The ability to be a teacher, to be an instructor, to be a trainer, to take your son and somebody else's son and somebody else's grandson and do what this woman did and just lay it out in such a way that not only did he never forget it, but I believe he put it into practice and wrote it down for his generation and the next generation.

Guest (Male): More powerful teaching from the Briscoes is headed your way, so don't go anywhere. We've made a wide array of resources and content available to you online for free at tellingthetruth.org and on the Telling the Truth app. There you can listen, read, and watch powerful teaching from Stewart and Jill on relevant topics like the sovereignty of God, the importance of the church, and how to grow closer with Jesus Christ. You can also request this month's featured resource as thanks for your gift of support to help share the abundant life Jesus offers with more people around the world.

Visit us online or download the app today and experience life with Telling the Truth. Now here's more from Jill.

Jill Briscoe: Stewart and I were asked to go to Europe to speak to a youth convention, and there were thousands and thousands of European kids. Eastern Europe had just opened up, and so all of those young people came from those countries as well as Western Europe. You could only come to that conference if you were heading out for missions. If you're going to give your life to career missions, you had to state that or you couldn't come. And here we stood up to speak to thousands and thousands and thousands of European kids, and I remember thinking it's in good hands.

This next generation is in good hands. Anyway, Stewart and I were certainly the only gray hairs there, and the people that were teaching them looked like junior high kids to me, you know. The the youth leaders of Europe are wonderful, and they're very young. They're in their 20s, high 20s I would say, the ones that are really making waves. And here was Stewart and I hobbling around the place, and I said, you know, I don't think we should have come. This is the time to let the next generation teach the next generation. What are we here for?

Plus I was a little out of practice. I was rusty. I hadn't spoken to kids for a long time. Well, also you're talking through an interpreter which halves your material and doubles your frustration. Anyway, I had to go first in the evening session, and the first 20 minutes it was like pushing smoke uphill. It was so frustrating, and I just felt I wasn't getting anywhere. It was I just wasn't doing it. And I began to panic inside. And suddenly something happened. It was it was a bit like I used to skate. I skated sort of semi-professionally, ice skating.

And then then I didn't for 25, 30 years, and then I came here and one day with the youth group, I used to run the youth group here, I got on the ice down at Mayfair when they used to have um a skating rink there. You wouldn't have known I'd ever been on skates. I was hanging on to the barrier for about 20 minutes. And then suddenly it all began to come back. And at the end of the night, I was doing it. And it was like that up there in the pulpit, and the wind came into my sails, and a little voice, a still small voice of God said in a very clear sentence, Jill, gift doesn't age.

Spiritual gift doesn't age. I've always had a heart for kids. That's where my training is. I'm a teacher by trade. 13 years in youth mission in Europe, in the streets doing evangelism. Gift doesn't age. And it was a huge thrill to get hold of that, and I would like to encourage you all to people, gift doesn't age. Spiritual gift doesn't age. And so this mother, I don't know how she was, she believed that, and she just got on with it. And gifts aren't gendered. That's the second thing I'd like to say. Spiritual gifts are not gendered.

Both men and women can teach the next generation and can pass on what we need to. This is for us to do in partnership, men and women together. So if gift doesn't age and gifts aren't gendered, what are we supposed to be doing? Proverbs 1:8 says, Listen, my son, to your father's instruction. Do not forsake your mother's teaching. There'll be a garland to brace your head and a chain to adorn your neck. And as I looked for this scriptural example if you wish and found this woman, I found that she did three things. And the son tells us, the son speaking of his mother says, Number one, she loved me.

Now all of us can do that. There isn't one of us here that can't go out and love some kids, love the next generation, love the kid next door whose parents don't love him anymore, or the kid over the street, the teenager whose father almost loves him. That's our job. And if we know Christ, we can go out into the world and just start to love people. Just start to love them. Count them as our own. She loved me. She called him Lemuel. Do you know what that means? Literally, for God. He's for God. That's why I called him Lemuel.

And she vowed a vow. She had this dedication where she gave her son to God. This child she was determined was loved of God and loved by his mother, much loved child. And she dedicated him to the Lord. Oh my son, oh son of my womb, oh son of my vows. Three hours. Repetition is an emphatic expression of anxious love here. The way it's written. Oh, oh, oh, where's where's the O? Oh, where's the O? And of all people, believers in Christ ought to be running around their world finding someone to love. Not so hard with a great big O inside of us.

C. S. Lewis says, Love anything in your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. Those of us that have been hurt because we've loved, been betrayed or deserted or rejected, find it very hard to love again. And your heart, if you've given it away, is very easy to be broken. But if you keep it to try and keep it safe and don't put it out there again, it will become hard and cold and brittle. Lewis says the only safe place to prevent you ever getting hurt again is hell, whether there's no love. And so you take the risk.

You go out on a limb and you love and you love and you love, and you get this O going inside of you, and you say to God, Break my heart for the things that break the heart of God, which is people and which I believe is the next generation. And this young king says, She loved me. He wrote it down, wrote a book about it. Is that what people that we've influenced are going to say about us? All of us can love if we have Jesus. For this you need Jesus. But for this I trust you have Jesus.

He is love. I just finished a book yesterday on 1 Corinthians 13 on love. So for this we need Jesus, but for this we have Jesus. She loved me. Secondly, she prayed for me. He was the son of her vows, a vow of dedication. There is a hint of the Nazarite vow here. Hannah came to the temple and said, If you give me a son and lend him to me for a little while, I'll give him back to you. He'll be for God. She called him Samuel, not Lemuel, but it has a similar meaning. When mom Briscoe, there she is again, had her babies in the cot in the bedroom, she would go with her husband and they would pray over the empty cot before the child was ever born.

And they would pray, God, make this child an influence, a change agent for you in the world. And so to me it's no surprise that both Stewart and Bernice Briscoe have spent their lives roaming the world, loving it back to God. Why? I don't think it's too much to do with them. I think it's to do with their mother. The power of a mother's prayers. Incredible. The best thing we can do is on our knees. Most powerful thing, and it's something the next generation can do nothing about. I like that thought. Sometimes when my beloved unbelievers get together and they are the most wonderful, wonderful, wonderful people in the world, they don't know the Lord.

I used to get very discouraged until I realized I could sit there and I could begin to pray. Yes, I was continuing to talk and interact, but I just went person by person by person. And I remember once getting a a real neat feeling. I thought, they can't do a thing about this. They cannot stop me praying. They can't stop me praying. They can reject what I say, but they're helpless against my prayers. And I believe that. And so prayer isn't isn't something you do. Prayer is somewhere you go. It's the waiting room where God waits for you to wait and me to wait.

It's been waiting a long time for some of us maybe. And we intentionally put ourselves into that waiting room, and we find we've got company. We've got the Lord Jesus there who's also praying for those we love. And all I can go on when you're interacting with people and you can pray for them. Try it next time you have a family get-together. And this king said, She prayed for me. My mother loved me, and my mother prayed for me. This queen said to the king, There are destructive forces, oh Lemuel, around you. There are those who ruin kings.

Now we are trying to raise up a generation of royalty, of spiritual royalty for God and for good. And there are destructive forces. We've got a lot against us. The counseling that I'm doing on the Christian College campuses would blow your mind, absolutely blow your mind. How can I ask my girlfriend to have an AIDS test? Those sort of questions on our Christian campuses. It is it's heavy to be there. It really is. And these are some of the most wonderful colleges and college professors and leaders, and they are pulling their hair out at the moment with what they are trying to cope with on the college campus.

And they're saying, These are the kings, and these are the queens of the next generation. These are redemption's royalty, young people. How can we love them? How can we pray for them? How can we train them? And that's the third thing she did. Now here's Jill to wrap up today's message. Jill, what would you say is the most important thing a grandmother can pass on to the next generation?

Jill Briscoe: I think if a grandmother hasn't acquired wisdom of life, certainly of God, um a family, just general wisdom. By the time we're in our grandmothering or grandfathering stage, then there must be a lot of regret in our heart. I've I've got a lot of regret. Oh, why didn't I? Or why I I should have written, I should have said, etc., etc. But I think wisdom gained through aging uh needs to be passed on to the next generation. I don't know if my life verse has been quoted here, but Psalm 71:16-18, Even when I'm old and gray, do not forsake me, oh Lord, until I have declared your power and might to the next generation.

And uh that is the biggest thing that we need to pass on to the next generation, our God knowledge, the wisdom that we have learned through hard things and good things in life.

Guest (Male): What would happen, Jill, if we truly started counting the next generation as our own and showered them with love?

Jill Briscoe: Well, I would hope what would happen would be that the child who isn't our child, who lives next door, who perhaps has never been prayed for by a grandparent because they haven't had the privilege of being raised in a church or Christian home, I would hope that we would count them our own in the sense of responsibility to pray for them. And in any way we can influence them and pass on some God wisdom to the next generation. I think we're too inward looking, and we need to lift up our eyes around our neighborhood and look for other people's grandchildren that haven't had the chance perhaps of godly grandparenting or Christian background, and just bring them into our prayer circle of love in our own hearts and add them to our prayer list.

And I think if we truly started praying for the next generation just between our own two feet, just in our own neighborhood, who knows how our neighborhood would be chosen, uh would be changed in the future uh for God.

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us on Telling the Truth today. We're so glad you've tuned in, and we pray today's message has encouraged you to experience life in Jesus Christ. We have a very special offer for you as our thanks for your support of Telling the Truth. It's Jill Briscoe's book, Fight for the Family. Drawing from Nehemiah's example, Jill shares biblical encouragement and practical wisdom to help you stand strong, rebuild what's been broken, and build spiritual walls of protection and prayer around your home. We'd love to send you this powerful resource as our thanks for your gift to not only keep this program coming to you each day, but to help Telling the Truth reach even more people so they can experience the abundant life found in Jesus.

So thank you for giving today, and make sure to request your copy when you give. Call 262-788-4648. That's 262-788-4648, or you can give online at tellingthetruth.org. So glad you joined us today. Come back again as the Briscoes share more powerful truth from God's word. Experience life next time on Telling the Truth.