Telling the Truth

Guest (Female): God can see the potential in your life even if no one else can. That's what Jill Briscoe talks about on today's Telling the Truth, coming up in just a moment. But first.

Guest (Male): When life's storms suddenly come your way, how do you respond? Do you doubt God's presence, questioning His concern for you? Or do you see storms as part of God's plan for your life and rest assured He cares for you and is in control of all things?

We want to help you trust in God's care and control in all the storms you face by sending you Jill Briscoe's message, Weathering the Storms of Life, as well as a set of 12 beautifully designed scripture cards to encourage you in troubled times. In Weathering the Storms of Life, Jill teaches from the Gospel of Mark, examining the disciples' experience in a sudden storm to address the issues of suffering and faith, challenging you to examine your belief in God in the midst of trouble.

Her teaching and the scripture cards will encourage you as you discover how you can be sure of God's love for you and His control over every circumstance, no matter how sudden, severe, or unexpected. Weathering the Storms of Life and the set of 12 scripture cards are our thanks for your gift to help more people experience life through the teaching and resources of Telling the Truth.

So request your copy when you give today. 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388 or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now, let's hear from Jill with her message, How to Start All Over Again.

Jill Briscoe: Now we're going to talk about Rahab today. We've been doing some pretty interesting investigations into the lives of Eve, Sarah, and Miriam up to now. Now we move on to a very different type of lady: Rahab. Interesting lady. Her story is in chapter two of Joshua, and for the sake of time, I'm going to tell you a little bit and we'll read a few verses because her story spans a lot of scripture and we like to get on to the application.

Her story actually goes all the way from chapter two to chapter six and ends up in James in the New Testament. So she's around the Bible quite a lot. She is indeed a woman who changed her world, her own world, her immediate world in a very dramatic fashion. She lived in Jericho, so she still had Jordan between her and a quarter of a million people that were busy mopping up the towns in between the Red Sea and Jericho, which was the first town the other side of Jordan.

Jordan was no Red Sea, but it was deep and it was difficult to cross. There weren't any bridges. There were no spans like we have in our days when you can just walk over the place and nobody had done anything like that. And so people would have to wait until the Jordan more or less dried up, and at this point, it was flood time. And when it was flood time in the Jordan, the rivers overflowed its banks and it was very deep and very wide. So at least there was a natural barrier between all this horde of people and Rahab's city called Jericho.

So Joshua sent some spies out. Somehow they got over Jordan and they managed to get up to Jericho even though it was a very big walled city. And there was a house on the wall; the houses were built into the walls of Jericho that belonged to Rahab. And the two spies made straight for her house. Why? We will not ask questions, but they did. And whether she was an innkeeper and whether it was a brothel, who knows? But that's where they ended up, in Rahab's house.

The king heard that they were there. He sent soldiers to the door, and she had to make a choice. What was she going to do? She could very easily have delivered the spies, but she happened to believe what the spies had been telling her. So she took them up to the roof of the house, she covered them with a whole lot of flax that was drying up there, and when the soldiers came to get the spies, she said, "Well, they heard you coming and they went that-a-way," pointing in the opposite direction to the Jordan where the rest of the children of Israel were.

Which was rather stupid of the soldiers to listen to her, so she must have been a pretty good liar, managed to convince them that what she was saying was the truth. Brought out the men, let them down through her window, which happened to be on the wall of Jericho, with a rope, not before she had said to them, "Now then, when your God gives you our land, think kindly of me as I have dealt kindly with you."

And the spies promised her that everybody she brought into her house would be safe. Anybody—her father, her mother, her relatives—that dared to step outside the house would not be safe, and that would be their problem. And so they said, "Now just to make sure that we remember this promise, hang a scarlet thread in the window of the house." And so when she'd let them down, she hung the scarlet thread in the window of her house and they went their way.

So now there was nothing left but to take the land and they walked round and round and round the city. You know the story: they blew on the trumpets and the walls fell flat. Now remember, Rahab's house was in the wall. It doesn't mean every bit of every wall fell flat. Enough of the walls fell down for the army to go in and take the city.

And so I can imagine Rahab gathered with her family. With all the vibration of the people walking round it and the blast of the trumpet, you can imagine God, knowing all these things since He makes dust and clay and things like that, caused the walls to fall down and God in triumph took the city. Everybody was exterminated except Rahab and the people in her house. Why? Because she had hung a scarlet thread in the window.

Now Rahab was an outside-inside person. Now let me define that for you. What was outside was not what was going on inside. The person Rahab was on the outside would never have convinced anybody that she had one godly thought, one God-ward thought. Her lifestyle, the sort of thing she was doing with her life, the house she kept, her occupation—everything. It just wasn't feasible that this woman would have any God-ward thoughts at all.

An outside-inside person is a hapless person. A hapless person is somebody that happenings have happened to and they couldn't help them happening. Now, it didn't mean that she was spineless. She was fighting for her existence. She was unscrupulous. She entered into a conspiracy to bring the ruin of her entire city down.

And Jericho was a very high-walled city, one of the highest-walled cities and safest cities that there was. There was a good reason to believe that perhaps Jericho could withstand the army of Israel. And yet she sold them out. She sold them out. So there was a lot going on in the inside.

And why did she do that? Because believe it or not, she was seeking after God. She realized and recognized that the Israelites were God's people. And you see, God comes into this here. God is looking down at our world and He's looking at outside-inside people, at people that are saying things on the outside that aren't at all true about the person who lives on the inside.

God looks down and He says, "I feel your feelings. You might feel valueless. You might feel worthless, but you're worth me coming to save. You're worth me sending the spies to your house because I look at the heart and I don't look at the outside." God understood the feelings. He also understood the desires of Rahab's heart—the very feelings and desires and aspirations.

And of course, He does. He understands the woman that says, "Listen, what I am on the outside is nothing at all to do with who I really want to be on the inside." Rahab was not a very pretty woman, a very nice woman on the inside. She was a very pretty woman on the outside, but she was not a very pretty woman on the inside. But God saw her desire to be a very pretty woman on the inside.

God sees the motives of our hearts. He saw the fact that that little girl of ten hadn't had much of a chance or an opportunity to accept the God of Israel. Billy Graham said after he'd been to London, the youth of England have not rejected Christ; they haven't had a chance to receive Him. And Rahab had not rejected the God of Israel; she had not had a chance to receive Him.

So what some women are on the outside has nothing to do with who they really want to be on the inside. God sees the desires. God sees the Rahabs of our world. God sees the outside-inside people. He sees their potential. He sees their potential. Here was a woman who could change her world, her own personal world, her family's world. And He saw the potential in this woman, just as He always sees the potential.

And if we are believers, we must look at people with those sort of eyes—God's eyes—and say, whatever they are on the outside, I'm going to believe there's a Rahab somewhere there inside. And even if they're as unpleasant on the inside as they appear on the outside, only God knows the desires of what they'd really love to be if they had a chance. I have no idea about their past or their present or what has gone into making them behave like this and act like this. One thing I know: God sees where I cannot.

And we must realize that God wants to use us like He used the spies. We are not to judge by appearances. I would not be teaching you here as your Bible teacher today if the girl in the next bed in that hospital when I was 19 years of age had judged me by my appearance. If there was anyone that was an outside-inside person, it was me. There was absolutely nothing that was out of place on the outside of my life. And when people looked at me, they said, "That girl's got it all together. She's got it all together."

But you see, God looked at the empty, lonely, desperate heart. He saw how valueless I felt inside, how worthless I felt inside. And He saw the seeds of faith that had been planted there through one way and another. He saw that I believed that God was, even though it was very tenuous belief. I did believe that God was somehow in heaven and on earth. God. And that's all I did believe, but it was enough, just as it was enough for Rahab.

We must not demand so much belief before we tell somebody the Christian gospel. We must not presume that they will not understand, for we must never shortchange what the Holy Spirit has done before we arrive on the scene. And the Holy Spirit had done a lot in Rahab's life.

And sometimes we look at what happened in Joshua 6. We read about the incredible extermination of this whole city, and they'd already done it on the other side of Jordan. They were already going to do it again and again. Why? Because God told them to do it and we struggle with this. Hebrews 11 gives us a clue because Rahab is mentioned in the heroes of that chapter, the heroes of the faith.

And it says that she alone was saved from perishing when the judgment was coming on the city because those that she lived among were disobedient. And the word means knowingly disobedient. They were not Rahabs. And we can know that if God brings such incredible destruction that is very difficult to understand, He has been there walking up and down the streets beforehand.

And we believe, incredible though it is, that God saw only Rahab and gave her the chance to escape the ruin by redemption, by hanging the thread in her life. So Rahab, being an outside-inside person and God seeing the inside, was changed, was saved. The spies came in chapter six and they carried the trumpets and everything happened as I've explained to you.

Verse 24, "They burned the whole city and everything in it, but they put the silver and gold and articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the Lord's house. But Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute with her family and all who belonged to her because she hid the men Joshua had sent as spies to Jericho. And she lives among the Israelites to this day."

So she became an inside-out person. You with me? What was inside after God had changed her started to appear and manifest itself outside. And that's because God turned her inside out, right? And that's what happens after He delivers us from Jericho. We become an inside-out person. The real desires of our heart for who we want to be, what we want to do.

Don't you ever sometimes think, "Why did I say that?" or "Why did I do that?" or "Why can't I be like that?" God can make you all of those things. He lends His power to us that we might be the women that He has created and designed us to be, matches us up with what He has created and designed us to be and enables us to do it. For God never calls without equipping.

He changes us inside. He begins to help us to see the desires of our heart for ourselves come to fruition. He turns us inside out, and that new inside begins to show itself outside. Only God can do this. He deposited her in a whole new wonderful world. And He gave her a new future. And He gave her a new family. A new family He gave her: God's family, the forever family.

And you know the neat thing about being a believer is that that's what He does for you and that's what He does for me when we hang the scarlet thread in our lives. And I hope you're getting that picture. When we do the only thing that's left to do in front of a holy God as a sinful person and say, "I apply the life given for me at Calvary to my death, to my nothingness, to my worthlessness, to my valuelessness. I'm a Rahab. I cast myself on Your mercy. I am totally at Your mercy. I am out of control. I cannot make You, God, do what I would like You to do with my soul. It's Your soul. You gave it me. Now I throw myself on Your mercy."

And as we do that, He ties that scarlet ribbon all over our lives. And He takes us into a whole new world because you see, our salvation is really in two parts. Our salvation is our salvation and our sanctification. It doesn't mean you get saved first and then further down the line, 20 years on, you start and get sanctified. Sanctification is simply making you like Christ, and that can begin the moment you become a Christian.

Sanctification actually means setting you apart, totally apart, like the children of Israel were supposed to be set apart. God's people for Him, to work for Him and to show Him and to manifest Him and to preach Him and to teach Him and to share Him and to teach our children about Him. Sanctification means a whole new life in a whole new world with a whole new family. Christian believers are our family.

Jesus looked around one day and He said, "Who are my brothers and mother and sisters and brothers? You are," He said to the crowd, the disciples, the people that were following Him. There are new relationships to be found in this wonderful, forever family that God has brought us into. And that's the marvelous thing, because God enables us to be so changed within that we are knit together with these new people. And then you begin to behave what you believe.

Incidentally, everybody behaves what they believe, if you think about that. Sort of rather shattering, but it's true. Everybody behaves what they really believe, which brings up the question: do you really believe what you say you believe? What is inside will surely show outside if you really believe it. Because belief is a whole lot more than head knowledge. Belief is trust. Belief is committing yourself to a philosophy of life that you so believe, you've so bought into, that you must live it out. That's belief.

And everybody behaves what they believe. We live the God life. Want to be a wise woman? Then you've got to be a woman of the word. And how can you be a woman of the word if you don't involve yourself somewhere in the activities of the church, be it in this building or outside this building? We must behave what we believe. We do behave what we believe, which makes me wonder: what do we believe? Well, we know what Rahab believed, don't we? And we see that she was saved. And she became an inside-out person. So, little exercise for you to do. Are you an outside-inside person, or are you an inside-out person? Or are you an outside-outside person? And you say, what's that? And I'm not going to tell you; you can figure that one out.

Guest (Male): Now let's hear from Jill with some final thoughts on today's message.

Guest (Female): Jill, you said today that God sees the motives of our hearts. He sees the outside and the inside. Shouldn't that give us hope?

Jill Briscoe: Yes, it should give us hope. It should also give us pause. It's sort of scary to think that I'm like an opaque beehive. God sees the thoughts going in and out of my mind as if my mind is opaque; He can see straight through it. And so He can see my thoughts, He can see my very motives just a glance in my direction.

And that gives me pause about what I'm thinking. It gives me pause about what I'm going to do about what I'm thinking. And it just gives me caution. What on earth am I thinking of doing, or where on earth am I thinking of going? It should give us a curb on doing things we shouldn't be doing, going places we shouldn't be going. And so it's a caution for me. I think it gives me more caution and warning.

Guest (Female): Jill, how does God lend us the power to be what He created and designed for us to be?

Jill Briscoe: Well, He lends us Himself in the person of the Holy Spirit. That's how it works. He knows I cannot be what He created and designed me to be without God help. And so He steps inside our life by His Spirit to be that help so that we can be what He called us to be, we can do what He called us to do, we can say what He calls us to say.

And so He gives us Himself. He walks into our life and He wants to feel at home in our life. And He wants to direct us from within. He wants to give us thoughts to think. He wants to give us nudges, taps on the shoulder—shouldn't be doing that. He wants to prompt us by His Spirit. He wants to direct us by bringing His word to mind.

And of course, He can't do that unless we put it into our minds in the first place so He can bring it back to our minds. So how does God lend us the power to be what He created and designed us to be? He steps inside us and He says, "I'm here. Make me at home. Make me Lord. And let's go."

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us today here on Telling the Truth. We pray today's message has helped you to experience life in all its fullness through Jesus Christ.

Guest (Female): When you give to keep the teaching you love from Telling the Truth on air and online, you make it possible for people like Dean to get the encouragement they need from God's word. Recently, Dean got in touch to share with us: "I thank and praise God for you. I searched for truth, and that's when I first stumbled upon Telling the Truth's ministry. I have consumed your programs. I listen daily when I run, sometimes twice, even three times."

Guest (Male): When life's storms suddenly come your way, how do you respond? Do you doubt God's presence, questioning His concern for you? Or do you see storms as part of God's plan for your life and rest assured He cares for you and is in control of all things? We want to help you trust in God's care and control in all the storms you face by sending you Jill Briscoe's message, Weathering the Storms of Life, as well as a set of 12 beautifully designed scripture cards to encourage you in troubled times.

Weathering the Storms of Life and the set of 12 scripture cards are our thanks for your gift to help more people experience life through the teaching and resources of Telling the Truth. So request your copy when you give today. 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388 or give online at tellingthetruth.org.

Come back tomorrow to hear Jill's message, How to Fight Your Battles, about the important part you play in the battle against evil. Listen in and experience life next time on Telling the Truth.