Telling the Truth

Guest (Male): On today's Telling the Truth, Jill Briscoe teaches how God turns up when you feel absolutely on your own and life isn't turning out as you'd hoped. That's coming up in the continuation of Jill's message, "Wrestling with God."

Right now is one of the most important times of the year for Telling the Truth. As we approach December 31st, generous friends have stepped forward with a special matching grant that will double your gift to help more people experience life in Christ. That means your support will go twice as far to help share God's word around the world through Stuart and Jill's biblical teaching, digital broadcasts, and global partnerships.

Every day, lives are being transformed as people discover the peace and purpose that only Jesus gives, and your year-end gift makes that possible. So don't miss this powerful opportunity to make an even greater impact before midnight, December 31st, while your gift will be doubled through this special matching grant. Call 262-788-4648. That's 262-788-4648, or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now, let's hear from Jill.

Jill Briscoe: After every heritage story, I always managed to add to it some sort of story about how God brought us to America or something that He did. Surely, God was in this place, and we knew it not on the airport. Even in the car wash, God was there, I think.

After all the fun stuff and the crazy adventures, I just talk about the plan of God and how wonderful it is and how He's with us in the ordinary things of life. He has a plan for everybody's life. Think about Jacob's bedtime, will you? Think about Isaac.

Jacob's favorite story was the one about the day his father, Isaac, was shaken awake before dawn to go camping with his grandfather, Abraham. They'd be making a sacrifice to the Lord at Mount Moriah while they were there. As they walked along, his father, Isaac, asked a question, "Father, here's the fire and the wood, but where's the lamb for the burnt offering?"

Jacob's grandfather replied quietly, "God himself will provide a lamb for the burnt offering, my son." They get to Mount Moriah, and Isaac said his father began behaving in the strangest way. He took a rope and he tied Isaac's hands together, and then he picked him up and he laid him on the pyre of wood they'd built. "Why didn't you struggle?" Jacob would ask over and over again. "Because it was my father, whom I knew loved me and I trusted him," was always the quiet reply.

Jacob's eyes would widen in wonder as Isaac would tell the story. "I was very frightened, Jacob. My father raised the long knife and I realized it was actually going to happen. He was going to sacrifice me. God had not provided another animal. I, his beloved son, was to be the sacrificial lamb." There would be a long pause as Isaac remembered. "How could you ever forget? How could God ask such a thing of your father?" Jacob would whisper again and again.

Isaac, wrapped in his memories, would with difficulty say, "Jacob, I looked up to heaven expecting an angel to save me, but all I saw was the flash of the blade, my father's face contorted in anguish, and tears streamed down his cheeks. And then," Jacob would prompt, even though he had heard the story, "Then came a voice from heaven, a voice such as I'd never heard before, a voice that sounded like many waters: 'Abraham, Abraham, do not lay a hand on the boy. Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God because you have not withheld from me your only son.'"

Just nearby there was a ram caught in a thicket. My father, trembling greatly, cut the ropes around my wrists and I was saved. The ram was sacrificed. It was my substitute. Surely, God was in that place and I knew it not. Surely, my son, Isaac would reply. Surely.

I wonder, as Jacob lay by the brook and had his dream, if he remembered that story. Surely, God was in that place when my father was on the altar and they knew it not until His voice came from heaven and provided the substitute, saved them both: Abraham from sacrificing his son, and his son from being sacrificed.

As Jacob went on in his life, he struggled spiritually with all these things. What was it all about? What was that lamb all about? He began to realize that God wanted to catch him up into the purposes of God, even though he was second-born, even though he was nobody, even though the birth order said he had no significance whatsoever. His significance could lie in wrestling through to saying, "I am going to be involved in what God is all about. Yes, I am. Yes, I am."

All of us have been born with a Jacob heart, and all of us have to come to that point and say, "This heart of mine wants my own way. This heart of mine wants all the wrong things. This heart of mine is self, self, self, and I give you permission to wrestle the Jacob out of me." That's where it begins.

He wrestled with life and God began to overcome him. Then he wrestled with love. This is a wonderful story. I just want to show you one verse here. Near the chapter that I read you in Genesis 28, he goes on, he meets his uncle, he settles in, he begins to farm for him, he gives him good wages, and he has two beautiful daughters. He has Leah, who is weak-eyed—it means she has a squint—and he has Rachel, who is gorgeous.

Guess which one Jacob falls in love with? He falls in love with beauty and he asks for her hand. He says, "I'll work seven years for her," because he has no dowry. He has nothing to bring to this. It wasn't just a whim. He had to work for seven years to enable him to have enough gift money for Laban to accept Jacob as a son-in-law.

Remember, if he'd been the firstborn, he would have had all that cash with him, but he had nothing. He arrived with nothing, absolutely nothing. He worked for seven years for Rachel, and the time came and he said, "Now give me my wife because I've worked this seven years for you." It seemed only a few days because of the love that he had for her. That's what love does.

Now remember, he was 77 when he arrived, so now he's in his 80s, about 84, and it's time to get married. They do it a little slower in that culture. Jacob is in the habit of getting what he wants however he has to do it. Well, this is what the Bible says. Jacob says to Laban, "Give me my wife. My time is completed. I want to lie with her."

Laban brought together all the people and they give a feast. When evening came, he took his daughter Leah and he gave her to Jacob, and Jacob lay with her. Laban gave his servant girl Zilpah to his daughter as her maidservant. When morning came, there was Leah. Will you explain that to me? Think about it.

I think that's one of the most extraordinary verses in the Bible. When morning came, there was Leah. I don't get it. He didn't know. Laban, who's a better twister and liar and cheat than Jacob, must have been laughing all the way up his sleeve and to the bank because it meant that he had to serve another seven years. Not until he got Rachel—he got Rachel after the first week—that was Leah's week, as their custom was. He married Rachel a week later, but did he ever have married trouble?

Maybe you can't relate to this, and maybe you can. Maybe you've married Rachel, and one morning you woke up and there was Leah. You never saw the woman in the woman until you got married, and the huge disappointment and shock is what you're dealing with and wrestling with. There was Leah. I have counseled many, many people that say, or told me, "I married this man or I married this woman, and I really thought they were a beautiful Christian. He said he was a Christian, he acted like a Christian, came to church with me. But on my honeymoon, he said, 'I'm not a Christian. I need you to know that. I just said all that so that I could get you to marry me.'"

There was Leah. Now, that's a dramatic thing. It doesn't need to be that dramatic. You can be disappointed in the person that you married because they're not the person they appeared to be. Jacob wrestled with life. In his youth there was Esau, in his work there was Laban, in his bed there was Leah. God is moving on this man and the shadow is still there. Nothing's gone wrong, although nothing's going right, it appears, but God is working His purposes out.

What happens is Jacob goes on doing his swindling bit until he's got all Laban's flocks, and Laban doesn't have too many anymore even though he'd been very wealthy. Laban's face is not toward him as it used to be, quite understandably. Laban is beginning to console himself with the idea of killing Jacob, so here we are again.

Jacob calls his wives out to the field and he says to them, "Listen, your father's face is not toward me as it was before. He's changed my wages 10 times. We've been wrestling in this work deal all these years, and God appeared to me last night and told me to get myself home. I have absolutely no idea if I'm going back and Esau is still intending to kill me. I have no idea what I'm asking you to come with me into, but this is the scene. Do you want to stay with your father, do you want to come with me?"

The women said, "We'll go with you. Our father's cheated us, our father's manipulated us, our father has done all these things with us as well as with you." They flee one more time and they come to this place, Jabbok. Jacob, in true fashion, sets the women and the children in order: Leah first, poor Leah, with her kids, to meet Esau who is coming to meet him with 400 men. At the back, Rachel and her children.

How do you think Leah felt about that? She was a sacrificial lamb, if you wish. Presents—he sent presents. Let's buy him off. He's still Jacob. He's left alone by this brook, and suddenly, there was God. Surely, God is in this place and I knew it not. God's hands are all over his life, and this is showtime.

God says, "If I do not wrestle that Jacob heart out of you, you're done. You're in your 90s now, Jacob. It's all over, and you and I have to have this thing where you surrender everything to me." They wrestled and they wrestled and they wrestled and they wrestled. In the end, the Angel of the Lord, capital A, second person of the Trinity, God himself, put out Jacob's hip and he submitted.

He submitted. God said, "You've prevailed with me, Jacob. At last you're laying hold of what I want you to lay hold of: my blessing. I won't let you go unless you bless me. I won't let you go." Good, Jacob, you're getting there. Okay, I will bless you if you will submit everything to me, become obedient.

There by the brook, God changed this man. He wrestled the Jacob out of him, and God is still wanting to wrestle the Jacob out of us just like He did in the story. So what do we do then? We go back to Bethel, like he did. We go back to the place where we began, as it were, and we began to review our life and say, "You know, I've wrestled with this and I've lost. I've lost to my selfishness, I've lost to my sinfulness."

I go back to my marriage, and I go back to my family, and I'm thinking, "What a mess. What a mess I've made of it. Here's Leah, here's Rachel, here's this fighting, here's this mess, and it's all my doing. I didn't do it right, and if I'd done it this, and half of it isn't my doing, and yet that's what life is like." We're very down and we're very hurt.

What we have to do is we have to get alone with God. We have to intentionally put ourselves into the presence of God and give Him a chance to get His hands all over our life. That can happen in your bedroom, that can happen here in church, that can happen in your car on the way home. I don't care where it happens. What I do care is that it happens.

There has to come a moment alone with God when we let Him hurt us, as it were, put our nose out of joint, put our hip out of joint. We have to accept the hurt He has allowed because of His sovereign permissive will and realize it's all part of the plan to bring us to submission, and to bring us to the realization that we're sick of being Jacob and we want to be Israel. We want to be a prince with God.

We want God to turn us upside down. We want to live upside down or right side up so that we can do the same for our world. That requires surrender. We have to let Him hurt us, we have to let Him heal us of our grudges and our gripes, the bitterness, and what we feel about Esau. We have to try and make amends and we have to try and reconcile with God, and then we have to let Him help us.

Say, "I will not let you go. I will not stop this prayer time until you put your hands on me and bless me and change me." When we do that, God will. God will. God will, and you will become a blessing to your world. I always think of Jacob at the age of 120 in Egypt. He thought he'd lost Joseph, remember the story? Joseph turns up, assistant to Pharaoh, saves the whole of Egypt from famine. Wonderful story.

The brothers come and don't know that he's the brother they put in the pit and sold as a slave. Then it's all found out and it's all forgiven. Joseph, assistant to Pharaoh, says, "Bring my father. I'll care for him in the famine. I'll give him the best land." There's this reconciliation in the desert. "Oh, my son, my son," says Jacob. "Now I can die. Now I can die in peace. I thought you were dead and now you're alive."

Joseph presents Jacob to Pharaoh. Remember that? Pharaoh's had a problem, for Pharaoh's life was a terminal disease, like it is for everybody, but it sort of was a quicker terminal disease than it was for everybody else. Most Pharaohs only lived about 30 years. Most Egyptians, they said, only lived between 30 and 40 years. That was their lifespan.

That's why when they're digging all these Pharaohs up, they're finding these boy Pharaohs, because the whole population, the lifespan was so small. When this Pharaoh saw Jacob at 120 years, he said, first thing he said, "How old are you? How old are you?" I'm sure he'd never seen a man 120 years old.

Jacob said, "You think I'm old? Let me tell you about my father, Isaac, and my grandfather, and the people before them. I'm just a kid." And then it says, Jacob blessed Pharaoh. I love that picture. I mean, he was Pharaoh. He was the ruler of the world at that moment. God took this man that He'd wrestled to the ground and wrestled the selfishness out of him, wrestled the Jacob out of him, and He made him a prince.

He sent him out to his world, and he took him to the throne room of the authority of the world at that time. Jacob blesses this man. Jacob speaks to this man for God. What more would you want for your life? Don't you just live your life and play tennis and go shopping? Fine. But what you really want, what you really want, you want to turn your world upside down. Well, there's only a way if God turns you upside down or right side up at Bethel.

Guest (Female): Jill, you talked today about heritage stories and sharing them with your children. Well, how can parents and grandparents share these stories in a real and impacting way? How have you done it?

Jill Briscoe: Taking every chance to share the past, especially at get-togethers—your Easter, your Christmas, your holiday times. If they're around a season in the year, in Britain there used to be a lot more church holidays like Whitsuntide, the giving of the Holy Spirit, and things like that, not national holidays. When the spiritual opportunity comes up, certainly Christmas, Easter, even Mother's Day, things like that, I've been able to give a book or use a family meal to be thankful for whatever we are celebrating in the Christian calendar, that sort of thing.

I've written a lot to my grandchildren. I've emailed a lot. I learned to text as a grandparent. Go find if you do not learn to text. Kids don't even use their email anymore, or certainly never listen to their phone messages. But they all text at the moment; there'll be something else coming up. Old grandparents, we don't just say "I can't do it." Go take a class in something that's going to connect you with your grandchildren. That's what I've had to do. Actually, what I did is I got my grandchildren to teach me how to text, etc. Any way you can, certainly pray for them and tell them you're praying for them. I tell my children all the time that I'm praying for them and my grandchildren as well.

Guest (Female): What would you say to someone who's struggling and needs to know God remains with them no matter what they're wrestling with?

Jill Briscoe: Well, I would certainly find out what the struggle's about if they'll share it with me. I would certainly try and find out if they are a believing person, a Christian, and that's where I would start. I would just share, "Look, I've got as much struggle as anybody else, but I have somebody that helps me with them. My Christianity helps me with them, what I believe." One thing I believe is that God can come and live within me to help me from inside out, not just outside in. See if you can find something in your testimony or the way that God has helped you to share with them that He can also help them that way.

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us today. We hope today's message has encouraged you to know Christ more deeply and live in the joy of His truth. We want to share what a listener named Barry recently wrote: "I'm now 68 and have been following Jesus for 45 years. My first experience of Stuart's teaching was a series of studies on cassette tapes on the book of Ephesians. I was hooked. Stuart was a great help to me in my spiritual growth as a young Christian through the books he had written. Through the years, many other men and women have contributed to my spiritual growth, but I fondly remember those early years. Today, he and Jill continue to teach me through the daily program. Thank you for finishing well."

Right now is one of the most important times of the year for Telling the Truth. As we approach December 31st, generous friends have stepped forward with a special matching grant that will double your gift to help more people experience life in Christ. That means your support will go twice as far to help share God's word around the world through Stuart and Jill's biblical teaching, digital broadcasts, and global partnerships.

So don't miss this powerful opportunity to make an even greater impact before midnight, December 31st, while your gift will be doubled through this special matching grant. Call 262-788-4648. That's 262-788-4648, or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Thanks again for listening and for helping share the timeless truth of Jesus with people everywhere. Thanks for being with us today. Tomorrow Stuart shares a powerful message on the barrenness of busyness. Don't miss it. Experience life next time on Telling the Truth with Stuart and Jill Briscoe.