Telling the Truth

Guest (Male): Families are struggling. Every time you try to repair a relationship, the evil one works to tear it back down. So where do you find the strength to keep repairing the damage? Jill Briscoe opens the book of Nehemiah today on Telling the Truth to find the answer. That's coming up in her message, "Fight for the Family."

But first, in their two-message series, Worry Less, Stuart and Jill Briscoe help you break free from worry and experience the joy and peace God wants for you. We'll send you a copy of this resource, plus Jill's booklet, Me Worry?, as thanks for your gift today to help others experience life in Christ.

So call today to request your copy of Worry Less and Me Worry? at 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: Our family has had its share of attacks from the one who hates the Christian family with a perfect and total hatred, namely the devil. Through a World War, the recession that followed, post-war problems in the UK, and a life first in the business world and the classroom, and then in mission and ministry, Stuart and I have sought together to fight for marriage and family, our own and extended one, as well as our other family, the family of God, the community of faith.

Stuart has been in the battle for over 60 years and I, my husband having married a much younger woman than himself, in the fight over 55 years. We've certainly not won every battle that's been joined, but we've not lost all of them either. When the enemy has breached our walls, we've bent down, picked up a brick, and sought to rebuild and fortify the battlements because we love each other, Him who died to save us and rose to live in us by the power of His Holy Spirit and are on His side in this conflict.

And as we promised each other on our wedding weekend, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. That was our wedding sermon. Stuart wasn't preaching it. A little pastor who was actually frightened out of his mind because the church was full of street kids and he didn't know what was going to happen. It was quite a wedding. Anyway, as my husband once asked what the secret of our long marriage is, he says, "Keep your promises and live a long time." That's it.

And so I'm so glad I can bring you an exhortation about family and marriage from the book of Nehemiah. I'm grateful in His grace. Nehemiah said, "Remember the Lord, who's great and awe-inspiring, and fight for your brothers, your sons, and your daughters, your wives, and your family." Nehemiah 4:14. That was the basis of this book.

"So built we the wall," he says. Nehemiah says, "And all the wall was joined together to half of its height, for the people had a mind to work." And the walls have fallen down around the family, not only the personal families that were represented, family by family by family, all around that wall, breaching the gap outside their own front door, brick by brick, day by day, night by night, but the family, the community of faith, as well as the family in Jerusalem.

Nehemiah says in Chapter 1, "God put it in my heart." What had God put in his heart? Well, he had put in his heart what to do for Jerusalem, if you remember, which was to rebuild the wall. Now, what God will put in my heart and your heart will be different, but God wants to put something in everybody's heart, whether you have an intact family listening to this message or whether the walls have crumbled around your relationships in your family or your extended family.

And at this point, I do not believe there's anyone listening to me who doesn't have in their extended family broken walls. So what I have to say from this book, trustfully what God has to say from this book, takes in everybody in the sound of my voice. The walls have fallen around the family, and he says, as the opposition strengthens as they begin to build the walls.

And if we begin to rebuild our broken relationships, then the opposition will stiffen and the opposition will grow as you see throughout this book. He says, "Don't be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awe-inspiring, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes."

The enemy is the devil. Make sure you get mad at the right person, will you? Make sure you get angry at the right person. And he's more than a person, he's a spirit. Make sure you get mad at the devil and not at the person who is being influenced by him. He hates your children and mine with satanic hatred. Yes, he does. He hates Christian families. He hates to see a father reading the ancient Word at the table. He hates us.

The wolf is ever around the fold looking for the lambs, especially the lambs of the shepherd. Do you pray for your pastors? Do you pray for our kids, our grandkids? Do I? But not just the shepherds' families. He hates us all. And the enemy is not to be messed with. The devil is a hinderer. When the enemy heard the repairing of the walls went forward and the breaches began to be closed, they were very angry. He's mad.

If you're doing anything right, if your kids have come to Jesus, if they just got baptized, I hope you're on your knees. I hope you've got your sword. I hope you're watching. And all the enemies, because they were very angry, conspired all together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to hinder it. The devil is a hinderer with anything to do with the Lord, especially the family.

Nevertheless, we made our prayer unto our God, and we set a watch against them day and night because of them. Count me in, Lord. I'll fight for my family. Nevertheless, nevertheless, nevertheless this, nevertheless that, nevertheless the other, count me in.

Guest (Male): We must fight for our families. And that's what Jill Briscoe is talking about today on Telling the Truth. She'll be right back in just a moment. But first, anxiety, fear, and worry can keep you in a painful state of uneasiness and limit you from truly experiencing the incredible joy and peace God wants you to have.

We want to help you break free from worry and embrace God's abundant peace with Stuart and Jill Briscoe's encouraging two-message series, Worry Less. This powerful series shines a critical light on the root cause of worry and gives you practical guidance on how to rule your anxieties instead of having them rule you.

It's fresh encouragement straight from God's Word to help you overcome the stresses of life, whatever they may be, so you can start living with more joy. We'll send you the Worry Less series, as well as Jill's booklet, Me Worry?, as our thanks for your gift today to help you share the healing truth of God's love with people around the world through the resources and teaching of Telling the Truth.

So call today to request your copy of these resources when you give, 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388. Or you can give online when you visit tellingthetruth.org. Use your phone to make a spiritual connection with the free Telling the Truth mobile app. Listen to daily programs, read and comment on devotions and relevant study plans, and share your thoughts and prayers on the community wall.

Get the Telling the Truth app through your App Store today. And remember you can give to support Telling the Truth right on our mobile app. Now back to Jill on Telling the Truth.

Jill Briscoe: You know, I was suddenly searingly aware of you who are sitting in the rubble of a marriage. I know what you're saying. "It wasn't my choice. I wanted to build a family. It takes two. It wasn't my choice, Jill." And I want to say something to you because the families around the wall all those years ago, all those years ago, were broken. There were three waves that came back to Jerusalem. And in between the first and the second, I believe there was a huge amount of years.

And each time a wave came back, they found foreign people in Jerusalem mixed with the remnant, the few people who had been left to look after the rubble. I believe the old and the sick, they left them behind. They took everybody else off to Babylon and Persia and everything. And when the first wave came back, they intermarried with the women from other religions. And there were many other religions, actually a couple of major ones that also lived in Jerusalem and around.

And God had lots to say about that, as we'll see. But there were broken families. The people of God that came back to rebuild Jerusalem. You see, when you are displaced as a people, and I've worked with displaced people, for World Relief, been sent to displaced people, you get disorientated with your heritage, with your beliefs, and you are unsure. You're open to taking a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and well, that's all right, and marrying into another faith.

It's a very normal thing that happens. And that's what had happened from the very first group that came back. So now you've got Nehemiah in the third group, and it's been happening and happening and happening. And so there's a brokenness there. But did you know that there was a prophet during probably the first group that came back called Malachi? Now, you say, "No, Jill, Malachi is just before Matthew, and Nehemiah is back here." But you don't have this in chronological order. You know that.

You've got Genesis, if you had it in chronological order, it would be Job that came next. And Malachi, if you had it in chronological order, would be in the same era as the story of Nehemiah. And Malachi had been speaking for God into this situation of mixed marriages. And when you get to Nehemiah 9, it's all about that. In fact, the book finishes with what to do with the third wave and the second wave and the first wave, maybe if they were still alive. They wouldn't still be alive.

But what to do with intermarriage. And Nehemiah says in that chapter, "One of you men has even married the daughter of Sanballat, the chief enemy." And so Israel, the people of God that Nehemiah and Ezra the priest found to work among in the third wave, were worshiping Jehovah a bit and their wives' god a bit, and they'd forgotten their belief and certainly how to behave their belief among the people.

And Malachi speaks to this and had spoken to this before Nehemiah deals with it. And what did he say? He said, and had said, "Another thing you do: you flood the Lord's altar with tears. You weep and wail because He no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask, 'Why?' It is because the Lord is acting as a witness between you and the wife of your youth because you've broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant."

"Has not the Lord made them one in flesh and spirit? They are His. And why did He make them one? Because He, the Lord, was seeking godly children. Wow. So guard yourself in your spirit and do not break faith with the wife of your youth. I hate divorce," says the Lord. "I hate a man's covering himself with violence." I hate divorce because of the violence that's associated with it. And in this instance, for the women. "I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you," says the man, and that's it.

And the woman would not be acceptable even in her own home anymore and sometimes be turned to prostitution to survive. You know how God hates that because of the violence associated with it. So guard yourself in your spirit. Do not break faith. The apostle John puts it rightly as a parent or a spiritual parent. I want to apply this to both. If you're a Sunday School teacher, you have 10 spiritual children, right? Or as a parent, there's no greater joy, says the apostle John, when my children walk in truth. Isn't that true?

And so parent or no parent, single or married, count me in. Count me in. And the burden of that should drive our lives, our spare time, what we do with our money, what we do with our days, dealing with the rubble. What are our weapons? The man with the trumpet, picture of the Holy Spirit. "Come over here. There's a breach. Come over here."

When you're on your knees in prayer and you don't know what to pray for, ask Him, "Where's a breach? Where do you want me?" Because the Holy Spirit tells us what to pray for when we don't know what to pray for, it says in the New Testament. There's a breach all around the wall. Not enough people coming to join on our knees. And remember, you can go anywhere on your knees.

So where are you in the battle? I'm in the old gate. I'm in the autumn or winter of my life. But the whole family were on the walls, Grandma too and Grandpa. And so it must be. And it's hard. You saw all the reasons that they stopped building the wall. They got tired. They ran out of strength. They got old. Grandpa and Grandma, you just go sit and pray for us. No.

And it was, I don't know, three or four years ago when I was in India that my husband and I happened to be going to a place called Orissa. But before we got there, just before we were traveling towards this place when the militant Hindus decided to kill all the Christians there. And so the whole town went up in flames. They took the pastor and his little boy and made the little boy at gunpoint go up the church steeple and tear down the Christian flag.

And then they asked the pastor to recant his faith and said, "If you don't, we'll kill your wife in front of you." What would you have done? And they ended up, of course, killing him and her and the little boy. That had just happened as we're going towards this place. And it happened at the end of a very wonderful but very enervating time. And I was at the end of my strength and I was tired, not just in body but in spirit.

Have you ever had a period when your soul has sat down and never wanted to get up? I was there. Stuart was preaching to 600 of these young people. Instead of going to Orissa, they diverted us to a seminary that was training young people, 18 to 25, to go to Orissa. First people into those Hindu militant villages, etc. I was looking out at these gorgeous young people and my mother heart went out to these young women particularly, who I knew incredibly would walk into those situations for Jesus.

And at the end of that last night, Stuart taught on taking up your cross and following Him. As we prayed, I had a funny experience. I don't call it a vision, but it was a picture I was not expecting. As he's just preached this wonderful sermon, "I have decided to follow Jesus" sermon, and Jesus said take up your cross, not take up your crown and follow Me. And I, yes, yes, yes, you see.

And I bowed my head to pray and suddenly this picture, this vivid picture of my cross leaning against the wall was in my mind. And I was very startled and I began to have my God-talk in my headspace. Was I being tempted to lay it down at this point in my life? After all, surely others could come and teach in my place. I'm not indispensable, that's for sure. Maybe I had done my part and was too old now to be running around the world like this.

Maybe someone else would come along and carry my cross for me the rest of the way. And then I heard Him say, "But everyone must carry their own cross all the way to glory, Jill." Each must answer to the Lord at the end of the day what they did with the opportunities afforded to tell others the Gospel and encourage the body of Christ and build the walls, incidentally.

Was I expecting someone else to appear and offer to carry my cross for me as well as carrying their own? And I asked God to give me strength and joy, for the joy of the Lord is my strength, to carry my cross all the way home. Power to deny myself the things I long for at this stage of my life and keep on following until He tells me to stop. It was a seminal moment for me. I was able to say, "Count me in. Count me in. Count me in." Can you say that?

Pray with me. Father God, You know my heart. You know every heart here. We're an open book. And so hear the prayers of Your people. Either I will or I won't. You hear them all. Show us the first brick. Deal with the fear and the discouragement. Help us to start build. Amen.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Jill's message, "Fight for the Family." She'll answer some questions about today's teaching in just a moment. But before we hear from Jill, life is full of stressful situations. So it's no surprise that so many of us these days struggle with things like anxiety, fear, and worry.

That's why Stuart and Jill Briscoe created their two-message series, Worry Less, to help you take hold of the peace and joy God intends for your life. It's our thanks for your gift of support today. These encouraging messages uncover the root cause of worry and give you practical guidance straight from God's Word on how to overcome worry so that it doesn't overwhelm you.

Plus when you give today, we'll also include Jill's booklet, Me Worry?, as an extra thank you. Generous friends like you keep broadcasts like this one going, reaching others with God's healing love so they can experience God's peace and the joy of life in Christ. So if you haven't given before, consider a gift today to help keep God's Word going out around the world to you and many others.

And remember to request your copy of Worry Less and Me Worry? when you call and give. Just call 1-800-889-5388, 1-800-889-5388, or you can give online when you visit tellingthetruth.org. Now let's hear from Jill about some important points from today's message.

Jill Briscoe: Jill, how do we act on what God has put into our hearts? I mean, where do we begin? Well, it depends what He's put on your heart. Maybe it will be a command to obey, maybe it will be a promise to claim, maybe it will be a warning to heed, maybe it will be a very direct something you need to do today. I don't know what it will be.

After you're reading with an open heart and mind, you'll know where to begin. I'm not going to tell you where to begin. The Holy Spirit will tell you where to begin. Say, "Where do I begin, Lord?" Go back to the Scripture, the answer will be there, and the Spirit will show you.

Jill, would you pray for our families? I would love to just pray for your families, for my family, for our families, instead of talking about it. Father God, You are the Father of this great family after whom we are named. You invited us into Your family, the family of God. We pray for our families, Lord. Some of us know You and some of us don't within the circle of our physical family.

We pray for those that do not, that they will come to a knowledge of You. Lord, we would love to see it, to know it, but give us faith to believe it will happen whether we see it or know it. And Lord, we do pray for people that are not yet forgiven of their sin and who will not be joining us in heaven unless they are. We bring them to You in our mind and we ask You to save them.

Bring somebody across their path at work, at play, or even in the home or family. And we pray, dear Lord, soon, in order that they may encourage, be encouraged by the things that they can still do for You, however old they are. We pray, dear Lord, for the sick in our families. We pray for healing: healing of mind, soul, spirit, or final healing as You release us from the diminishing we have experienced in our body and to take us to heaven.

Guest (Male): Thanks so much, Jill. Before we go, just a reminder that when you give to support Telling the Truth broadcasts like this one, we'll send you the Briscoes' two-message series, Worry Less, and Jill's booklet, Me Worry?. These encouraging resources will help you start to worry less and live with more joy.

So please request your resources when you call 1-800-889-5388, 1-800-889-5388, or you can give online when you visit tellingthetruth.org. Join us next time to hear more transformational truth straight from God's Word. Tune in and experience life next time on Telling the Truth.