 Well hello everyone. Thanks for coming. I'm very impressed with what you're doing with the women here. It's wonderful. And pray we could all in all our churches have a women's ministry. That if you want to get some ideas make sure you get to know this committee and take it back to your own church. It's great. So I am going to speak from something totally different than I have just been introduced to do. It isn't different. It's just a different place. I'm coming to the subject of the verse that was given. And all roads lead to Rome. You'll get the idea when I tell you. If I bend down and get it I might not be able to get up again. Yes. So pray with me for a minute. Give my words wings lord. May they fly high enough to touch the mighty. Low enough to breathe the breath of sweet encouragement upon the downcast soul. Give my words wings lord. May they fly swift and far winning the race with the words of the worldly wise to the hearts of men. Give my words wings lord. See them nesting down at thy feet. Silence tend to ecstasy. Home at last. Teach us to pray. Teach us to love you with all our heart and mind and strength. We love you lord. Amen. I'd like you to turn to a very well-known Psalm, Psalm 23. And those of you that came to hear something quote sort of new and different tough. And I'm doing this for a reason, actually, because I found myself in my Bible reading coming to very familiar pastures and thinking, I need something new. I know this. If you go to a lot of funerals, you'll know it. And that's shame because it's not for funerals. It's for life. All the days of my life, all the days of my life, all the days of my life, all the way through. And one verse about the valley of the shadow of death. And yes, it's a great one for funerals, but it's a better one for life. And having said that, there are some passages of scripture that all of us will be our favorite or help. And sometimes you come and think like the little sheep that we're going to talk about. You graze that pasture dry and you think, you know, I just need new, different. And you go to Malachi or something like that. Try and find it in your Bible. It was on such a day that I had that experience. It wasn't this passage of scripture. It was a passage of scripture from Kings that I had grazed dry. I had written a little book about it. I did a play about it. I mean, I knew it inside out, upside down. I had been ministering somewhere I can't remember where. I can never remember where, actually. Stuart says, I'm like Christopher Columbus who goes out not knowing where he was going. He gets there. He doesn't know where he is. He gets back and doesn't know where he's been. And it was on one of those days. And the plane was delayed and I get back at midnight and Stuart's somewhere else in another town or whatever and I'm home. But I come across a little note that's been left for me and it says, Mrs. Hext is dying and she has asked to see you. Now Mrs. Hext lived right the other side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Probably an hour to get there. And I just stood there and said, I'm done, Lord. I'll ring the pastor I know near there. And I knew that wasn't going to work. And so I turned obediently as I do in such cases. Okay, Lord, you tell me. Let me see where my evening reading is for tonight. And it was again a passage of scripture that I knew inside out. It was the woman with the little pot of oil, to remember. That I'm speaking to you, presuming you know your Bibles, because that's the crowd I have in front of me. I'm aware of that. But a little woman who joined a Bible school, Lysha's Bible school and she brought, the husband brought her and three kids and then he dropped dead, which must have been an incredible shock. They'd left everything near Jericho to go to the Bible school. Elijah had gone to heaven in his fiery chariot. How else would he go? Right. And now it was Elijah's turn and Jezebel had been dealt with and it was time for the prophets to come out of hiding and join in little Bible schools again to be trained to be prophets of the Lord. This little family leaves, Jericho comes with the little family and everything is fine. Fancy having a Bible school with Elijah as your president and God's blessing on you and on we go for God after a terrible period under Ahab and Jezebel and then her husband dies just like that. We ever had a situation in your life or your family's life where everything is just absolutely fine and then out of the blue, something like this. So she goes rushing out of the house and says to Elijah that my husband's just died and we're burying him and all of this and about a month later she goes back to Elijah and she says, the creditor is coming to take my children as slaves. I've sold everything in the house and it's all over and then very accusingly and you know he's served God. In other words, where were you God? Were you standing in the corner of my life with your hands in your pockets? Have you ever been there? I have. How could you leaving everything? Probably a nice little business in Jericho that's where they came from and coming to serve the Lord and be trained as his prophets. Now we have a chance and then he drops dead. What is this? But the bigger thing was she didn't have any money. Everybody had taken all their goods, lived in community and everyone was poor and she was poorer and so the system was that you could give your children to the creditor and in Leviticus it says if that was the case you help the widow by training them in a craft or a business and in the year of Jubilee giving me kids if they're old enough, 12 up, back to the widow so they can take her and be reunited but they'd just forgotten about giving the children back had Israel at this point in Israel's history and so the creditor, though he be an Israelite was coming and saying well if you can't pay me anything give me the kids and not I'll train them and give you them back in seven years to look after you. They're done and the creditor's coming to take my kids and Elisha says what have you got in the house? Nothing. No, come on, what have you got? I've sold it all, I've sold it all, I've sold it all. Think, okay, I've got a little pot of oil, will that do? And they are very little today. If I had thought I was going to do this, which I hadn't I would have brought one to show you from Israel. Just very tiny little oil lamp. And that's all I've got Mr. Elijah so what are we going to do with that? And he said go and get the kids to go and collect all the stuff, all the buckets and baths from the village and bring them into the house and then he said to the widow and then pours out. Crazy, but she sensed a miracle and if I'd been here I would have said come with me you're the miracle man, I'm just a little widow. I mean I'm just a little widow. Your prayers are so powerful. No, our prayers aren't powerful, it's who we pray to. Don't get this idea if I could figure out how to say a marvelous prayer and claim God's whatever. No, it's nothing to do with that. It's who we pray to that makes the difference. And so she did what she was told and I can see her in my mind's eye standing there and the kids and the buckets and mum's gone crazy. Must be because dad's died, what is all of this about and what she doing standing there? And I don't know how long she stood. I would guess she thought this isn't going to work. They're going to lose faith in the God that they thought was going to do us a miracle. This is ridiculous. Often the ridiculous is turned by God into the miraculous and so it happened and she turned it up and the oil flowed and flowed. You know the story until, bring me another, bring me another until every single one. And out she went. Elisha, Elisha. And Elisha's great love. Yes, Lord, yes, Lord. Now then that's your bank balance. You can live for the rest of your life off that oil. Let's get on with serving the Lord. So I love the story, but when I ask God for something out of the scriptures that night to tell me either to get myself over to Mrs. Hex's funeral, I came in my reading that I follow to this story and I said, Lord, I could tell you this story and, you know, there's nothing in it. I know it inside out. It's not telling me whether to go to Mrs. Hex's or not. And the spirit said to me, yes it is. And I went back to a little verse, a little piece of grass the shepherd had grown overnight for me. God's grass grows overnight for just the time you come to however familiar a scripture you have. And there it was. She kept pouring. Come on, Jill, pour out. I'm all poured out. As you go, he pours in after obedience. You go. But I'm exhausted. Take the first step out the front door and you have enough. You don't have all. You don't need all. You just need enough. In America, why do we need all? Jill, I could never do what you do. I need seven hours sleep or eight hours sleep. Or just do it tired. What's the matter with us? What is this? She knew to be perfectly ready physically to serve Jesus. So anyway, I went. When I got there, the whole family was there. Mrs. Hex lived actually into her 90s. She was our first neighbor when we immigrated to America in 1970 with our three kids to the church there. And she in her 70s and her sweet husband came to the Lord. And he had died. That was one of the first funerals we ever did in America at our church. And now here, all these years later in her high 90s, Mrs. Hex was dying. And she had sent that little note if Jill could come. And apparently what she wanted to happen, if Jill did. When I walked in, her daughter was standing there. She said, oh, you came. You came. She brought me. In her hand, she was deeply unconscious. But she squeezed my hand. Whenever I have learned as a pastor's wife in 40 years, I've been one and working much in hospice and that place, I have learned never think if they're unconscious, they can't hear you. And so I just stood there and said to her daughter, why did your mom want me to come? And she said, when I'm dying and the whole of my family is there, call for Jill and ask Jill to tell my family what happened in 1970 when you came to meet your neighbors and you led me to Jesus. Tell them. So I did. And I nearly missed it. What would I have missed? The grace of God and that miracle that happened at that deathbed. And I swear I felt her squeeze my hand. Yeah. I'll be there soon. We'll have great time. You can tell me about all your family. So God's cross grows overnight. That's the whole point of this story. And my husband had a phrase as he sent everyone out of our church after Sunday, never put your head on the pillow at night unless your nose has been in the book during the day. And so if I hadn't had that exhortation from my husband and struggled to do it, whatever I felt like at night, I would have missed something that was a huge blessing to me and a lesson. So little sheep, let's go through this psalm and learn some lessons that perhaps a piece of nourishment you'd never seen because we've never grazed that particular verse. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. The Lord, we know God's names declare who he is. This is the personal name of God, L-O-R-D, capital L every time you see that. God is not an impersonal God. He didn't throw the universe into space and go off and make mothers and forget about us. His name himself, God in Christ. He said, that's my world. Father, talking to the Son in heaven, that's my world. I want it back. Go get it. And Jesus said, I will. And we know the rest of the story. And so the Lord means that he loved the world. He didn't like the world. He hated the world, but he loved it. He hated what Satan had done so that he looked down and said, I'm sorry I ever made it. There's a verse in Genesis 6 just before the Noah stories where he said, I'm going to wipe them all out and start again. I'm sorry I ever made them. Have you ever read that verse? But Noah, when you go to heaven, find him, that's the reason we're here and we're going to heaven. Otherwise, all of us and another world and another universe. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Thank you, Noah. So the Lord is, we can know he is. Those of us in evangelical worlds have been helped to believe that. We can know he is our personal Lord. We have an evangelistic home friend in England and in the old fashioned way, the little group of believers my husband was brought up with, the Plymouth Brethren, where all the men ministered and they didn't have a pastor. It's a bit like the Mennonites and that sort of group. They only ever hired not a pastor but an evangelist. An evangelist was always hired because the men were doing the ministry and the teaching and everything like that. Usually a children's evangelist and in the summer they put a little tent up in the villages and gather all the children in their place. This was in ancient days. Look at me, I'm very old. I'm 82, I think. Yeah, afraid so. This was years ago in England and I don't know if they still do this and hire an evangelist. It's not a bad idea actually to have one on staff and leading the outreach. He got a call, little village in Scotland from a man right up at the tip of Scotland. England's tiny. It's as big as Tennessee. That's how big my country is. The middle, England. Then there's Ireland and Scotland. Very little bigger. And it was coming in winter to the worst. Six foot of snow stuff. And it was a pastor from a church there, a Presbyterian pastor, and he said we've had some terrible tragedies. You've probably read about them in the paper. And our children are part of that tragedy that's been killed with this storm and all of this. Can you come now? I know it's summer stuff, but we need to gather all the villages at the tip of Scotland for our children's sake and have a children's crusade. And he said, I never even get there. The snow's coming, he said, come, he went. As he's coming into the village, he sees a little shepherd boy, sheep and goats. And he winds the window and he says, can you get somebody to look after them and come? I'm going to talk on the Psalm 23. It's about shepherds and sheep. And the young man managed to come, he's about 13. And he told us this story. He said, I had five days. The Lord is my shepherd. And each time he, the Lord of lords, the God of gods, the king of kings, Lord, and he explained the personal nature of God and how he loves and cares and gave for us because he loves us. The Lord God is, we can know. Have you ever known? And basically, he gave a little gospel presentation of that or used Revelation 3.20, whatever. Jesus is knocking at your heart's door. You invite him in. The Lord is my. And when he said my, he said, if you want that to happen now and you've never really, even though you've been in church, invited the Holy Spirit, Jesus without his body, if you wish, God himself into your heart, then get hold of that finger and pray with me. And he prayed a little prayer. Jesus come into my heart, et cetera. And then the last two days, actually, he dealt with shepherd and explained what that meant, all your life. This is what the shepherd's going to do and this is what you need to do as a good little sheep. And he went home. That night, the snow began and one of the worst blizzards started. And two days later, the pastor rang him and said, thank you for coming. And it was very well orchestrated by God because we just had a terrible snowstorm, as you know. And it started the blizzard in the middle of the night. And you remember the little shepherd boy? He could hear the sheep bleating and he ran out and it was totally dark. He didn't have any way to find them. They were trying to find the sheep and he then couldn't find his way back to the fold. And we found his little frozen body the next morning. But that's not why I've called while it is one reason. There's something really strange we didn't understand but when we found him, he was like this. Oh, said our friend. He's in the heavenly fold. He's home. He's home. Have you done this? Do you know? My daughter would say we worked together, wrote together and travelled together for a bit when she was 21. She's now 50s. She would say you give your testimony, mom. It's dramatic. Mine is so sort of ordinary. I was brought up in a Christian home, you know. And she'd actually, mom, I've struggled because your conversion was so dramatic and I wished I had one like that because you've never come down from finding Jesus and I can't remember when I didn't know him, you know. Christian kids, they struggle with this. Have I, have I? And I remember saying to her as a child of nine when she came to me on this and she said, I don't know, I did, but I don't know. Mom, there's no difference. And I remember taking her by the hand saying, well, make sure. Come on, let's go make sure. And helping her to make sure. Ask your children if they've been brought up in church and Christian home. Are you sure? Do you know? Or are you living in my testimony? Are you, you know, et cetera, et cetera. We can know the Lord, the Holy Spirit says, we'll speak to our spirit and tell us things. When you don't know what to pray for as you are, ask the Holy Spirit and then trust the ideas to pray for our His and pray for them. So the Lord is, do you know as you sit here today that He's yours? You don't have a dramatic story. My husband doesn't have a dramatic story. He came to the Lord as a little boy in that wonderful Christian home. And his mother led him to the Lord at four or five. But he said, my conversion was like a bird opening gradually to the sun. And he said, Jill, yours was, you know, the whole package, boom. Some plants do grow like that. There's some orchids that, you know, there's nothing and then suddenly boom, boom, boom. Non-lessor or more than the other. The thing is to know the Lord is my shepherd. And He leads me, does He? He leads me out. We are not to spend our time in the fold for the rest of our life. Okay. In and out, in and out, in and out. And in those days, and in these days today in Israel and places like that that still have the ancient shepherds doing what they did when this was written. In those days, they still lead them out. Lead them out. Western shepherds drive the sheep in front of them. Eastern shepherds lead their sheep and they know His voice. Have you ever thought, what do you mean, lead them from a bunch of sheep? Surely the best way is to get behind them and say, move. How are they going to follow you? How are they going to know? They know the shepherd's voice. And they will follow you, et cetera, et cetera. So how do we hear the shepherd's voice? This is the shepherd's voice, okay? And you have to know how to hang your heart over the word of God. And you have to find the way you have a method of not sticking to your favorite passages and you get through the whole Bible. And in our day and age, there are many, many ways of help for you to do that. Find the way you learn, not the way somebody else does. Have a look. I'm afraid the Christian bookstores accept yours well done. Keep your Christian bookstore going. All the rest are gone in the country. And I can't remember when the last time was I came to a meeting and the church actually had a Christian bookstore. We had the largest Christian bookstore in Wisconsin when our church was middle aged and older now. And it was a drinking, eating place for the whole. And then we added a study center where people could come and study and we did a library, like a seminary library. And people came from all over. Catholic priests came. Everybody came that wanted to just come to that quite beautiful building that we made, Christian library. So provide ways to help people know how. You've got to know how. And I was very helped with that. I came to Christ from absolutely nothing at Cambridge. Child of the Second World War. I had many, many questions about God. How could it have been that evil nearly took us over the edge into oblivion? How could that be that evil nearly won the world? And how could it be that the good guys won and what's behind it, et cetera, et cetera? And then when I went up to Cambridge I met Christians for the very first time. And they told me how it was. And it was totally new to me. And there in hospital actually, I got sick. I was in hospital, Admiral's Hospital. The nurse who was sick in the next bed to me in that hospital led me to the Lord. And she led me thoroughly, totally irrevocably to Christ. I was fortunate to have a seminary at Cambridge. C.S. Lewis had just got saved at Oxford. He came to Cambridge in my last year. But I never heard him in person. But his influence had begun four or five years before that to intervarsity in all the universities, including Harvard and Yale. By then it was just not as easy to get all this out. Then there wasn't the internet. But people were listening to a man who had been an atheist and then an agnostic, then a deist. And then on Glorious Day on British History Channel where he would speak about medieval history, which is what he was, a medieval prof, medieval history. One day he said, he used to be an atheist. I didn't believe there was a God. And then I thought I'd have to know everything there was to know, to know there wasn't a God and I don't. So I'm an agnostic. I don't know if there's a God. And he'd throw it into his lectures. And then the third lecture I believe it was, I was told. And of course there's books written about it now. He said, I'm a professor of medieval history and that's why actually I am an agnostic. I was an atheist because do you want to know what the church was doing in medieval times? And of course the church in Europe was at its lowest before the Reformation. And so he said, who would be a Christian with that going on in the church? And then he'd go on with his lectures. And then he would come back a time or two and say, you know I used to be an agnostic but now I'm a deist. I believe there's a God but I believe he's unknowable. And then he'd go on with his, and that was a glorious day. I am now a convinced Christian. And England listening, writing in. Questions, not about medieval history anymore and the history channel. What do you mean Professor Lewis? You mean about heaven and hell? And they began writing these things down. And it was standing in the lunch line in my college. Homerton College, Cambridge. Somebody put it in my hand. I was messing up and telling silly stories. I turned around and there was this scribble thing to this day. I'll know in heaven who had scribbled that down and put it in my hand. And it was the answers to Lewis. Surely you don't believe in heaven and hell. Which is now in his book Weight of Glory if you're a Lewis collector. And I took that to my room and read it and told the women, I think last night this, I knelt down and I didn't kneel down. I didn't address it to God. I didn't know about him at that point. And I, like Lewis, I had been bombed all my life and had bad war experiences. And though I did believe in God, I didn't like him very much in his words. And suddenly has this man answering my two big questions. Who is God? Is God? And if he is, who is he? Is he good or is he bad? Is he indifferent? Is he laughing at us? Saying, get on with it. You did this. Is it true? These Christians I was meeting for the first time in my life. And they introduced me to the shepherd or Jenny introduced me to the shepherd. And then she gave me this and she said, now eat it for the rest of your life basically. And I said, how do I do that? And she began to show me. And I began to follow the shepherd this little with my wool just recently washed white. And I was certainly the little black sheep. And she showed me how to take the resting, lying down in the green pastures. You know, a sheep never lies down till its stomach's full. We served the Lord with a youth mission for 11 years before we came to America. And it was in the English Lake District in a big castle. I've spent my life in castles, actually. And I remember we were trying to make money to survive as a ministry to German, ex-German youth, ex-Nazi youth. That's how it started, an English mission to ex-Nazi youth after the war. And then we added Europeans and then lastly we added British. And when we went to run that mission so major could go all over the world and plant it in 26 countries where it is now, they bought a stupid thing to do. They bought four dozen sheep so that we could make a bit of money to survive the mission. Nobody knew what to do with them. Certainly not the staff, but I could write books about stupid sheep and stupid shepherds. And so Psalm 23 became pretty, pretty important to us. So what do we do with these sheep? And how do we become good shepherds and all of that? And so I learned about Moe Shepherd in practical ways for 11 years at Cape and Ray Missionary Fellowship there. And I realized that you had to make sure that there was enough grass in the field before you opened the gate and let them in a new field. Green pastures. I had to understand with the hundreds of teenagers we would have in the summer in camp how to take them to a grassy field and how to help them feed and learn by doing, basically. And the still waters which really speak of refreshing. How do you help people to refresh themselves in the Spirit of God, in the Word of God? Do you know how to do that? Do you know how to do it yourself? You can't refresh somebody else unless you're being refreshed yourself and you know how to drink deeply. You know how to keep fresh. And I don't need to explain that to you. You know what I mean. You get stale. Then drink. The Shepherd will show you. Shepherd, I don't understand what you mean. How do I get refreshed? Through the Word, by the Spirit. You know, this is the thing. This is the secret. Look at Psalm 119. You say that's the longest Psalm and it keeps saying the same thing. No, it doesn't. Every verse is different. It's about the same thing. It's about the Word of God. It's the longest thing in the Bible. It goes on and on and on. And Stuart and I, between us, taught, I think it was 12 weeks on Psalm, between us, Psalm 119. And it describes the Word of God. It's like a sword. It's like water. It's like a fire. And then beautiful little similes and pictures. And then you find a place in the Bible where, yeah, you're right. That happened. And this book is the secret, not only to your life, for your life, but for your life with God and what he wants you to do. I don't know what God wants me to do. I hear it all over the world. Well, ask him. Well, I have, but nothing's come. How do I hear the voice of God, Jill? I get asked all over the world on every continent. That's what people want to know. How do you hear it? Is it a voice in your head? I am gifted with creativity. I don't trust the voices in my head. I have no idea. I have ideas every day. All my best friends run from me at church when they see me coming. I've had an idea because they know it's work. It's true, isn't it, Jackie? I'm full. It's one of my gifts and one of my burdens is creativity and ideas and all of that stuff. But I don't know where they come from. It's obvious where some of them do, and it's obvious even if they sound scriptural, how did the devil tempt Jesus with Scripture? Jesus heard a voice in his head using Scripture three times, but it was Scripture out of context. And Jesus answered with Scripture in context. It doesn't mean that. It means this. It doesn't mean that. It means this three times. So I don't even trust a voice in my head sounding scriptural. This is what you've got to trust. This is what you've got to trust. And the shepherd will lead you to green pastures if you say, let me start the great adventure, opening my heart over this book and saying, speak to me, Lord. And then do the homework you need to do to get it right, to get the context right. Who is he talking to? What did it mean in that day to these people? And then after a long time, what does it mean to me? Most women I talk to say, no, what does it mean to me? That's it. And you can't do that until you have correctly understood the passage that you're speaking to. Green pastures, still waters. But Jill, what about the dark valleys? Is the shepherd there? It's not totally dark. The valley of the shadow of death isn't totally dark. It's the shadow of death. And where there's a shadow, there's always light. It is never totally dark. However dark the situation, however terrible the situation you're going through, however ghastly it might be, he is there, the shepherd with you. And he will either help you to endure it or help you to escape. That's up to him. And you'll never know till you're in the valley. But he will be there. His presence will be enough. His presence will be enough to do the right thing in the dark valley. Let me take one quick illustration. When we were working at this castle, we had Bible school for 18 to 21 year olds in the before college in the winter and then camps and outreach to disadvantaged advantage street kids in the summer. And we were out in the street kid thing, which was my thing I love to do. It shows you that I really had a conversion. I was a little rich snob when I found Christ. And if I'd seen a gang of kids coming towards me, I would have certainly walked over the other side of the road to get out of their way. Now I found my feet turning and going and interacting with them. That's conversion. And so did I do it saying, Yay, I love this. I want to be persecuted. Yes. Oh, yeah, there's a gang. You know, let's go talk to them. And yeah, they've got razor blades and they've got all this stuff. It doesn't work like that. And it certainly doesn't from a very fearful. I was born fearful. I think the war and the bombs had something to do with that. I was very fearful. And my eldest child's first words were, Oh, dear. Word he heard that, I wonder, was only him and me at that point. So worried, stressed, and I've never got over fear. But I learned my lesson to follow the shepherd into the dark valley. And I want to tell you, it's very unpleasant. But after obedience, you'll find the courage you need waiting. If you stand there and say, which I used to, give me courage, or if you expect me to get in that place, then the least you can do is to give me, but what is courage? I stood there thinking, is it a oomph or a push? No, courage has to do with your will. And if it's the right thing to do, do it without the courage. Feeling, okay. The feeling will be waiting after obedience when you get yourself in there. And even then, it won't be, oh, it won't be all feeling, but it will be enough feeling. It is a question of saying to your feet, move, leaving your emotions outside, getting yourself in. I can do that. And remember God's saying to me, Jill, will you do it without the courage for me? Will you do it frightened out of your mind for me? I could do that. But I'd stood outside those places waiting for God to give me feeling, and it never happened. And I remember that particular night after the courage. No feeling, but I took my will by the hand and Will and I went in and left my emotions outside. And there's a great big, it was Beatles' era, it was Rolling Stones' era, nobody knew who they'd be, there were a thousand kids bashing their heads against the concrete and trying to reach them. It was the start of the Beatles' era. And chaos in there. And I get in and there's a big bouncer there and he says, who are you? Are you from the social services of the police? And I said, no, I'm a teacher in the area. I'm just concerned about these kids. And then I heard myself say, take me to the manager. And I said, Lord, why do I want to go to the manager? Seemed the thing to say. But I had enough to do that. Well, he needs enough. But this is America. No, unless I have everything, I won't do it, right? No, enough. And so I met Alan and he said, what do you want? And I thought I'd make sure he didn't let me do it. And I said, what happens when this den stops on the platform? Nothing happens. And I heard myself say, can I have the platform for five minutes? And I prayed, oh, let him say no. And he said no. And I thought, good, can I go home, Lord? He said, until. What do you want it for? So I thought, I'd really make him sure to say no. And I said, I want to tell him as a God, there's a God in heaven, Jesus to take them there, power to get off drugs. I've been life turned around. And he said, young woman, I was in my 20s at the time. If you can explain that to me, you can have my platform. I said, I've waited all my life. I've run a place like this. I've never been to church. But I've had these questions. It took seven weeks that Alan came to Jesus. And Bible school students would go in and we'd have five minutes, five times when they had a break on the platform. And it was enough. And then we'd get down and work with these kids. And so you do it frightened. You're willing to do it frightened for Jesus? You'll have enough. Just do it frightened. And this isn't this dramatic stuff. We have a divorce in our family. I have a daughter-in-law who left my son in his first church and took our four kids and disappeared. And I need as much courage when I come face to face with her. Then I need to go into that place. And enough fear that I'll do or say or react in the wrong way, or the right way. And so this is ordinary, ordinary stuff. So all the way home. All the way home, all the way home. I'll tell you that this is a magazine for women just between us. You can look it up yourself and take advantage of it. It's for women who love and serve Jesus like you, lay people, and pastors' wives and missionary wives. And it's full of stories which I've told this one in this magazine. That's why I just remembered it to tell you about it. India. One of the hardest things I ever went through in our world once around the world pretty well the last 17 years a year. Hard places, no glamour. Third world, fourth world. There's a fourth world now. Third world, one cup of rice per day per person. Fourth world, no cup of rice per day per person. And it's in those places the visions and dreams are being given. I am Jesus. This is my book. Someone will come and tell you. That's it. Same dream. Millions of people are having in those areas. And nobody's going. Somebody will come and tell us. Jesus came. We've got to get ourselves out there. I don't care who we are. How's your missions program in your church? Short-term missions. Long-term missions. Go in prayer. Learn to be formidable on your knees for Jesus. And tell them who Jesus is. Well, Stuart and I had a very dramatic and very, very difficult Indian tour. And it was when the Hindus began to kill the Muslims. The Muslims began to kill the Hindus. That conflict and the Christians got caught in the middle. And we were in a seminary, an Indian seminary with 800 young 18 to 21-year-olds training to walk into those villages and take Christ to very, very dangerous, difficult situations. And there was a town nearby called Larissa. And it all broke out there where their parents were, most of those young people. And they sent police around the seminary to keep us safe. And the thing just spiraled out of. They didn't know if their mom and dad were dead, if they'd been killed, because they turned on the Christians in the end, both of those groups. And we had had two weeks there teaching, as it was. Very innovating work with the Dalits, the Untouchables for about a month. And I was done. It had been a very, very difficult, very hard trip. And then this happened, the end. And the people said, well, let's pray all morning or all night, and then Jill and Stuart join the teachers and let's teach. We're not just going to sit here and wait to see what happens. And it was five days before the police came and said to us, I think we can get you out tomorrow. And I was so glad and grateful. And I'm sitting there and Stuart's preaching about taking up your cross. He's the life of Peter. Peter, will you follow me? Peter, do you love me? Peter, will you die for me? And wonderful last talk. And I'm sitting there and I shut my eyes as he prays, and all I'm thinking about is I'm done. I'm out of here. I'm so glad, Lord. I just want to go home. And I don't get visions, but sometimes pictures come to mind. And suddenly there was a picture in the way I put it. The conversation began sitting on the steps of my soul in the deep place where nobody goes. I said, what do you see? And I said, a wall with a cross against it. Is that your cross, Jill? Yes. Are you done? Yes. It's on my bit. Bless their hearts. And I want to go home. And then I say I don't have a voice in my head. One of the clearest God voices. Who do you expect to carry it home for you? I didn't know. On my way home, I gathered my talk with the Lord in a poem. Let me read it to you. Shake and drain, discourage sickly, tired and troubled and depressed. Glad the time of serving over. Now I could go home and rest. Hot and humid was the weather. Sad and needy was our crowd. Feeling I had done my duty and the time of rest allowed. Soon I could return to family. Yes, tomorrow I'd be gone. Sitting in the last meeting, I tuned in to what went on. Listened to my husband's preaching. It was a great last talk. All about the call of Jesus. All about our life's faith walk. Stuart opened up the scriptures. Talked of Jesus, pain and loss. How he who was our great sin bearer bore our guilt upon his cross. What a great word for the students. Hope they'd listened. They were young. Their lives before them. Now their turn to do their part. Time for prayers of dedication. I was tired so late at night. Shut my eyes and wished it over when a picture sprang to light. Saw a cross alone discarded, lain at rest against a wall. Who'd lain down such holy symbol? Who'd abandoned life's faith call? Then a voice so dear, familiar, asked a question pierced me through. Who did I expect to lift it, carry it to heaven's door? Jesus, Jesus, please forgive me. Carry it there, your cross for me. All the way to hell to save me. Help me carry mine for thee. I'm no hero, special woman, just a lady old and gray. But my cross, Lord, I will carry home, Lord, home, Lord, all the way. Spoke his voice so quiet but clearly then. All the way home, Jill. All the way home. All the way home. All the way home. All the way home. All the way home. Pray with me. Oh, dear shepherd, all the way home. Four or five times in this Psalm. All the way home. All the way home. All the way home. Thank you, Jesus. You carried our cross all the way to hell to save us. We haven't forgotten we just forget where we put our cross down sometimes. We haven't abandoned life's faith call. We just wanted out. Forgive us. And I pray that this little visit and this little place on this little swinging planet, for all of us in this room, perhaps would be a time in this quietness when we hear you ask the question, is that your cross remind us, you called us to follow you all the way home. And one day no more tears, no more cancer, no more divorce, no more abuse, no more, no more, no more, but not yet, not yet. You have left us here for one reason in this terrible, stricken, sinful world. Frightening world to be your disciples, Lord. And to tell a world that doesn't want to know what they need to know. Because among them there will be little black sheep waiting, had a dream. Jesus said someone would come. Oh, Lord, what's the book? Forgive us, Lord, and help us start here in this place in America, for the mission field is between our own two feet at any given time. And let us look for the little sheep that don't even know the Savior we know and are headed in the wrong direction. And so I with my sisters here would say again, Lord, forgive us and help us whatever it takes, whatever it means to follow you all the way home. Lord, I pray for your power, your strength and a renewal in our heart. As we go back perhaps to graze green pastures again, fresh grass waiting for us the next time we have our time with you. Fresh prayers that need praying. Fresh tasks we need to say, yes, Lord, whether we're frightened, whether we're young, whether we're old, yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes.