Telling the Truth

Guest (Male): Today on Telling the Truth, Jill Briscoe teaches from her series Celebrating Marriage and Family with part one of her message, "Partners Together," about how we must make the decision to weather life's eventual problems together. You'll hear from Jill in just a moment, but first...

Guest (Female): The generosity of friends like you keeps broadcasts like this one going out around the world so you and others can experience life through the biblical teaching and resources of Telling the Truth.

Guest (Male): As thanks for your gift today, we'll send you Eight Things That Make a Marriage Work, an insightful four-message series from Jill Briscoe about how you can build a long-lasting and fulfilled marriage founded on God's Word. But this offer ends tomorrow, and we don't want you to miss it. So call today to request yours: 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388, or you can give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now, let's hear from Jill with today's message on Telling the Truth.

Jill Briscoe: "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." That was the verse that both of us came to individually about couple of months before we met each other. Both of us made that personal commitment to this: "As for me, and if ever I should marry, my house, we will serve the Lord." It was a wonderful surprise when we did actually meet and were able to share the fact that we had come to that verse together and shared our commitment to it.

I want to take this verse and look at the context, and I want to talk very seriously to you about what it really means to be partners together and to be able to say, "As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." So let's look at the context. We start in Joshua 24:15, which was the text, but let me tell you what was happening. Joshua was 110 years of age. How could he be that old? Well, he was. At 110 years of age, just before he died, his work was finished.

He had spent the last 50 years leading Israel into the Promised Land, vanquishing the enemies of God, dividing up the land, and assigning it to the tribes of Israel, the families of Israel. In fact, there had been a little period before this speech where peace and prosperity, for the very first time in most people's lives in Israel, pertained. During that little piece of peace and prosperity, something interesting happened. The gods that their forefathers had served the other side of the river, those gods began appearing in tent after tent after tent and took their place on the god shelf in the families that represented Israel of that time.

Now it's time for Joshua to die, and he has one great last sermon, one great last word for the people of Israel. He'd been a great leader. It says in the Bible that under Joshua, during his lifetime, the people had served the Lord. Now he begins to see them reneging on that initial promise that they'd made. So he gathers them together and says to them, "Long ago, your forefathers, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the river and worshipped other gods. But," says the Lord, "I took your father Abraham from the land beyond the river, and I led him throughout Canaan and gave him many descendants."

Then he says, "I gave you land on which you didn't toil and cities which you didn't build. You live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you didn't plant. Now fear the Lord, serve him with faithfulness, and throw away the gods your forefathers worshipped beyond the river in Egypt and serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose today who you're going to serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites to whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we're going to serve the Lord. We're going to serve the Lord."

They were beginning to drift away from the commitments and the choices that they'd made. What were those choices? Well, Joshua had been there right at the beginning. He'd been with Moses on the mountain. He'd been there when God with his finger wrote the Ten Commandments. Number one, thou shalt have no other gods before me. Number two, you shall not make any idols or graven images. Joshua, whether he was within sight of that incredible supernatural thing as God with his finger wrote those ten rules for the human race on tablets of stone or not, we know nothing.

But we do know that they came down together, Moses carrying the two tablets of stone, five of the Ten Commandments on one, five on the other. As they came down, eager to share what God had laid out on the top of the mountain, they heard sounds of merriment. For the people of Israel had got fed up waiting, and they said, "We don't know what's happened to that fellow that brought us out of Egypt. So, Aaron, make us a god. Make us a god like the Amorites have, make us a god like the Babylonians have."

And Aaron, incredibly, said, "Well, give me your jewelry." And all the women stripped themselves of their gold and silver, and he threw it in a fire, and out came a golden calf. The people went wild, and they were having a party and bowing down and, "This is now our god." And down comes Moses with the Ten Commandments in his hands. Number one, thou shalt have no other gods before me. Number two, you shall make no graven image like unto anything like a calf.

Moses lost his legendary temper and broke the Ten Commandments, literally, by throwing them down. You know what happened. God allowed the people to deal with the consequences, and he always does. He gives us freedom. We can worship any golden calf we want, but you cannot choose the consequences of your choices. The consequences were drastic. Read the story in Exodus. Joshua was there. Joshua was there when Moses, in the wilderness, set up a tent. It was called a tent of meeting.

Who was meeting? God and Moses. Moses and God. Face to face, it says, face to face, face to face. Imagine, face to face. And who else was there? Joshua. Joshua. He would stay outside the tent. Remember who else was? That cloud descended, that Shekinah glory, that emanation from the visible presence of God, basically. And there was Joshua. Can you imagine, as Moses met with God and listened to God, then Moses would come out of the tent of meeting and go into the camp and say, "This is what the Lord says." And it says Joshua stayed in the tent. Not surprising. He stayed reveling in the visible manifestation of the presence of God.

Joshua was there. Joshua was there. And then Moses dies, and God says, "Come on, Joshua, take the people into the Promised Land." And over years and years later, God gives them victory, and the Lord of hosts fights with them, and everybody is there. But here and there, they begin to drift away. Funny what prosperity does to all of us. Joshua gathers them together for his last message. Guess what it is? "Put away the idols and the gods and choose today who you're going to serve. But as for me and my house, we're going to serve the Lord. So choose."

The people say, "The Lord, he is God. We'll choose God." He tests them, and he says, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what's happening in your families. I know what's happening in your marriages. I know what's happening. A god here and a god there. So choose today who you're going to serve." My challenge to you would be to take that challenge to your own hearts. Who are you going to serve? The gods the other side of the river? The gods of the Amorites? The gods of the Babylonians? And you say, "Jill, we don't have gods of Amorites and Babylonians, don't we?" The idols, incidentally, are the same; they just wear new clothes.

Guest (Male): God promises us the resources we need to survive life's inevitable problems. That's what Jill Briscoe is talking about today on Telling the Truth. She'll be back in just a moment, but first, here's a note from a listener in the UK named Claire. She writes, "Thank you for your wonderful messages. So often I find the Word speaks into a particular circumstance I find myself in at just that time. I love that God speaks to me through you."

Guest (Female): Thank you for your kind words, Claire. That's the kind of encouragement your support today will bring to more people around the world as you help share the teaching and resources of Telling the Truth so others can experience life in Christ.

Guest (Male): We'd like to encourage you this month with a wonderful four-message series from Jill Briscoe called Eight Things That Make a Marriage Work, as well as a beautiful printed Bible verse about marriage. In her series, Jill Briscoe teaches eight biblical keys to a healthy, life-giving marriage and shares her own insights from her 60 years of marriage to Stuart. We'll send you Eight Things That Make a Marriage Work and the Bible verse print as thanks for your gift today to help more people experience life in Christ through the teaching resources of Telling the Truth.

The resource offer ends tomorrow, so request yours when you give. Your support enables countless people across the globe to stand strong in the unchanging truth of Scripture, and we're so grateful for friends like you. Request your copy of Eight Things That Make a Marriage Work when you call 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388, or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now, back to Jill on today's Telling the Truth.

Jill Briscoe: Joshua said, giving a ringing statement, "Choose. Choice time, choose." Number one, the choice was personal. This is where we begin. Let me ask you kindly and gently: Did you ever make that decision? "As for me, I will serve the Lord." Did you ever accept Christ? Did you walk forward at a crusade? Was it your water baptism? Was it your confirmation? Where were you when, as best you knew how, whether you were brought up as a believer or not, you said, "I want to serve Jesus. I want Christ to come into my heart, to forgive me my sin, and to invade my life." When was it that you chose to serve the Lord?

First and foremost, it has to be personal. It has to be personal. The personal choice of serving the Lord will affect every relationship in your life. It will affect your marriage, it will affect your children, it will affect your singleness, it will affect everything. Do you remember? Many of you remember. I remember. Eighteen years of age, lying in a hospital bed, a student at Cambridge without God, without Christ, without hope. The girl in the next bed to me said, "Have you ever heard of Jesus?" Well, yeah. "So? And the gospel?" It was explained to me.

God walked down the stairway of heaven with a baby in his arms, put him in a bale of hay, and set this world on fire. Never heard it, not like that. "Why?" I asked her. "Where was he going?" she said, when he left heaven. "Right to your heart." And right to my heart he came. I lay in a bed in Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge all those years ago, and I said, "As for me, I will serve the Lord."

Before I made that prayer commitment, she asked me a very important question. "Jill, don't make this commitment unless you're willing to stay unmarried." "What?" I said. "Don't Christians marry? Am I to become a nun? What's this about?" She said, "Well, it isn't that. It's just that in England at that present time, there were very, very few Christian men. Our churches were full of little old ladies, and they were being sold for stores and shops. That's the state of England when I grew up, spiritually."

So she said, "The Bible says you should not marry somebody that doesn't know the Lord. Did you know that? Young people, did you know that? Be not unequally yoked with an unbeliever, for what fellowship can you possibly have? It's like light and darkness. It will affect everything. Because the Bible says that, Jill, you see, there aren't any Christian men, very few who love the Lord. So by the law of averages, if you commit yourself to Christ, you're probably going to be single for the rest of your life. Do not become a Christian unless you're ready for that."

Would you have become a Christian if somebody had said that to you? Well, it took me about three days to figure it out and to decide. Then as best as I knew my heart, not understanding really what she was talking about, I said, "As for me, I will serve the Lord." So I came to Christ honestly believing I would never marry because I certainly wasn't going to marry anyone that didn't love the Lord, loved my Jesus.

So I went into my Christian life, went back to college, began to teach as a teacher in the back end of Liverpool. I found myself going back on that promise. How could I possibly live singly in a double world? I thought, "Yes, I said I was willing to stay single, but Lord, just in case, I'll make a list." So I made a list. I said, "If anywhere in the world there's someone like this, then I just want you to know." So I put: tall, dark, and handsome, Marine, play rugby, sporty, loves the Lord, wants to live for Christ and die for Christ. It was on the list.

Then I said, "Would you like to read my list?" He said, "Jill, I can see. Give me the list." "Oh no." "Just give me the list." Well, if I give you the list, I'd like to keep reminding you about the list if I give it to you. "Give me the list." I don't know how long I knelt there, a long time. In the end, I let the list fall on my bed where I was kneeling, into his nail-pierced hands, and it was done. It was done. Freedom! I was free from going there in case I met. I was free from being obsessed with it, even making ambitions and plans of what I'd do with my life or where I'd teach and all of that. I was free, free. "As for me, I will serve you whether I ever marry or not. I will serve you whether I stay single all my life in this double world."

Could God sustain me in that? Yes. I'm so glad I learned that lesson and had three or four years experiencing that because after my marriage, God asked me to stay single though married as Stuart traveled for up to nine months of the year for 10 years. I think I would have taken him out of the ministry if I hadn't learned how to be single and happy. "As for me," no conditions. "As for me if you give me a husband," "As for me if this," "As for me if that"—no ifs, no buts. "As for me, I will serve the Lord." That's a challenge to anybody that isn't married. It's not my challenge; it's God's challenge.

The girl that led me to the Lord took me to a passage of Scripture in Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 7. I recommend it to you. Paul in this instance is writing to the church at Corinth, which is in crisis. We don't know what the crisis was, probably persecution from Rome. Probably they were setting up little arenas in Corinth with wild beasts, and anybody that became a Christian in that city was thrown to the beasts for entertainment. That was probably the crisis Paul talks about. But he says, "Because of the present crisis, I suggest you put your marriages on hold. I suggest you fathers do not give your daughters in marriage for a period of time. I want to spare you, seeing them being thrown to the lions, basically. I want to spare you."

Then he talks about singleness. He says singleness is good. Singleness is great in this situation. Singleness is a gift. I remember thinking, "I don't need it, thank you. Don't want that gift." But it's a gift because the married person, says Paul in 1 Corinthians 7, the married person has a divided heart. They have the distraction of a husband and children, the married woman. But those who are single can attend upon the Lord without distraction, without this division, without being pulled in ten different directions. You can revel in God.

Then he says to the married people, "Those that are married, live as though you're not." Ever heard a sermon on that? It's all there. What does he mean? Ignore your wife, abuse your wife, leave your wife? No, no, no, no. He says in another place, "Love her like Christ loves the church, self-sacrificially." So he doesn't mean that. What does it mean? It means live single-mindedly whether you're married or not. How are you going to be single-minded? Focused on serving the Lord. Focused.

But it's harder for the married person. We've all these divisions; we've all these pulls at us. But if you're single, you can revel in God, he says. You can attend upon the Lord without distraction. You can plumb the depths of what it is to suddenly know him, acute awareness in your life, deep down in your heart. Joshua says, "As for me." It's where we start. "As for me." This is a continual choice. The word is in the continuum. I have chosen, I will choose, I did choose, I chose and chose and chose. This is the character of Joshua, isn't it? Is it your character? Is it my character? Yes, we can probably all look back to when we said, "I will, I'll be a Christian, I'll do it, I'll do it." But then daily, the dynamics of choice are daily, daily, daily. I will choose, I did choose, I will choose, I will choose tomorrow. I will choose and choose. Here he is at 110, still choosing. You're not going to get away from this, nor am I, until the day we die. There will be a daily choice to serve the Lord, to put him first. To decide, will this decision I'm making, will that decision I'm making be to his and the kingdom's advantage? Am I putting him first before myself? Is the family God? Am I worshipping the family, or is God the God of the family?

Guest (Male): This is Telling the Truth, and you've been listening to Jill Briscoe's message, "Partners Together." We'll hear her answers to a few questions about today's message in just a moment. But before we hear from Jill...

Guest (Female): Whether you're already married or plan to get married someday, you'll want to know how to build a marriage that's not only long-lasting but also joy-filled. That's why we'd love to send you Jill Briscoe's four-message series, Eight Things That Make a Marriage Work, as thanks for your gift of support this month.

Guest (Male): In it, Jill shares timeless truth on marriage from the Bible, along with practical, everyday advice from her own marriage to Stuart. You'll find that Jill's wit and wisdom make this series a fun and encouraging listen that's sure to encourage you at whatever stage of marriage you find yourself. As extra thanks for your gift, we'll also send you a beautifully printed Bible verse about marriage to encourage you each day.

Guest (Female): Through your generous gift today, you'll help more people experience abundant life in Christ through the unchanging truth of God's Word as you make it possible for Telling the Truth broadcasts like this one to continue going out across the globe.

Guest (Male): This pair of resources is available through tomorrow only, so request your copy of Eight Things That Make a Marriage Work and the Bible verse print when you give today. Call 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388, or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now, let's chat with Jill about some important points from today's message.

Jill, how does a couple keep God's little-g from invading their marriages? How have you and Stuart done it?

Jill Briscoe: Well, how are we doing it? You've never done it in marriage. It's amazing how it's never over, adjusting. That's because the greatest enemy of marriage is selfishness. That's what breaks marriages up. Seeing we are inherently selfish, it'll never be over till we're in heaven and we're not selfish anymore. So the problem with having gods in our life is selfishness at the core. Well, I want to do this, and I don't worship music, for example, but I just love it. So I want to spend all my spare time at the concert hall or whatever. And even though he doesn't like music and he doesn't, you know, I want to do this. And so again, you bring your selfishness to God every day—I do—and say, "Lord, I have no idea what it is to be selfless, but help me be that as much as possible today." And so then selfishness doesn't invade your marriage and spoil things. Just treat selfishness as a god, put a name on it, and then deal with it that way.

Guest (Male): Jill, you said today that singleness is a gift. Okay, I know a lot of single gals who don't exactly embrace that idea. So what would you say to them?

Jill Briscoe: Well, I didn't say that, Saint Paul said it in Corinthians. He said in the chapter that deals with singleness and marriage in a society that is in crisis—that's the context. "Because of this present crisis," Paul says, those that are married should live as those that are not, and those that are single should take advantage of their singleness—that they are not encumbered with family—in order to serve the Lord in this crisis situation. It's an amazing chapter, actually. Before he gets to the crisis part of it, he's talking about marriage as a gift, and he's talking about singleness as a gift. Each should be happy and relaxed and accepting of the gift they're given in their lives. It might not be a singleness gift forever, but it is at the moment. Instead of struggling with "I want to be married" and everything else takes second place, maximize the blessing of singleness. You can do things in this situation, in your country, for your God, that you couldn't do if you're married. So celebrate that. That's what that chapter's all about.

Guest (Male): Thanks so much, Jill. We hope today's message encouraged you. Before we go, remember that when you give today to help keep Telling the Truth broadcasts like this one going out around the world, we'll send you Eight Things That Make a Marriage Work, Jill's four-message series all about how you can build a strong, fulfilling marriage that stands the test of time. This offer ends tomorrow, so don't wait. Call today to give, and remember to request Eight Things That Make a Marriage Work along with the Bible verse print on marriage with our thanks. 1-800-889-5388. 1-800-889-5388, or you can give online at tellingthetruth.org. Tomorrow on Telling the Truth, it's part two of Jill's message, "Partners Together." Join us then and experience life.