Praying Women — G.W. North

The Jerusalem Council and Salvation by Grace

If you have your Bibles open, and having read the story, I want to approach this from a different way than Jane, but nevertheless, something which God showed to me many years ago. Now, if you go back into the 15th chapter, you will remember that this is the 16th chapter, you will find that the church in chapter 15 had come to a great crisis in the history of the church.

One of the great decisive times arose in verse 1 of chapter 15 like this, The certain men which came down from Judea taught the brethren and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, you cannot be saved.

When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas and certain other of them should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question.

Being brought on their way by the church, they passed through Phoenicia and Samaria, declaring the conversion of the Gentiles, and they caused great joy unto all the brethren. And when they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the church and of the apostles and elders, and they declared all things that God had done with them.

But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying that it was needful to circumcise them and to command them to keep the law of Moses. The apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter.

And when there had been much disputing, Peter wrote up and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel and believe.

And God which knoweth the hearts, bear them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us, and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. Now therefore, why tempt ye God to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?

But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they. I'll go on reading, I think, because it'll bring us to the core of it. Then all the multitude kept silence and gave audience to Barnabas and Paul, declaring what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them.

But after they had held their peace, James answered, saying, Men and brethren, hearken unto me, Simeon, that's Simon Peter. You will know that the word Simon, I don't know whether you have any sons, brothers, uncles, cousins, I nearly said aunts, and grandfathers, whose name was Simon.

It's really a derivation from the tribe of Simeon, Simon. It doesn't mean to say that they're Israelites, but that's where it comes from. Simon or Simeon Peter is just saying the tribal name, Simon. You've named your son with the name of a tribe.

Well, all right, we'll leave it at that. And on we go, and we read that Simeon has declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles to take out of them a people for his name, and to this agree the words of the prophets.

As it is written, after this I will return and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down, and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up, that the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things.

Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world. Wherefore, my sentence is that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God, but that we write unto them that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.

For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day. Then pleased it the apostles and elders with the whole church to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, namely Judas, surnamed Barsippus, and Silas, chief men among the brethren.

And they wrote letters by them after this manner. The apostles and elders and brethren send greeting unto the brethren which are of the Gentiles in Antioch, and Syria, and Cilicia. For as much as we have heard that certain which went out from us have troubled you with words, subverting your soul, saying, ye must be circumcised and keep the law, to whom we gave no such commandment, it seemed good unto us being assembled with one accord to send chosen men unto you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, we have sent therefore Judas and Silas, who shall also tell you the same things by mouth.

For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things that ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication, from which if ye keep yourselves ye shall do well, fare ye well.

All right. I'd like to read down to the end of the chapter. I suppose you're like me, when you really start reading the Bible you have a job to leave off. I don't understand the people who say they don't understand the Bible, but there it is.

If they read it enough they would. You didn't understand algebra when you first read it, but now I guess you read it and now you understand it. That's the way it goes. You didn't understand a cooking recipe you laid it when you first read them.

You might have read them when you were about 10 or 9 or 8, but you do now, so you don't need to read them. But if you'd have made the excuse, I can never cook because I don't understand this recipe, your poor husbands, brothers, fathers, would all have starved to death unless they'd lived at McDonald's.

Women’s Prayer and the Course of the Early Church

But here then is the great and wonderful truth for our hearts to lay hold of. Our minds have been drawn to that prayer meeting which was held every Sabbath day, verse 13 of chapter 16, by a riverside.

Prayer was wont to be made there, and that was a tremendous thing. It was a woman's prayer meeting. All right. It was a precious thing, too. For, although you may not have thought this before, those women influenced what those men in chapter 15 did.

And they influenced entirely by prayer. They had no say in the matter. It was the elders and the brethren and with the apostles who came together, and they made the great decisions. As a matter of fact, if you'd been to a Bible school or college or something like that, they would have told you this 15th chapter was a great dividing point in Scripture, because at that time, you know, the church, and especially Peter, who was the leader of the church in those days, in the earliest days, the great speaker, they could not conceive that God would save the Gentiles.

That was their first thing. You can read about that in chapter 10. And they thought, they really thought that Jesus Christ was only the Messiah for the Jews. They didn't think anything else but that. And it was a big pill for Peter to swallow, that the gospel should go to the Gentiles.

It really was. It just shows you that in the minds of an apostle, there can be tremendous prejudice. And you will know how much this has built up in some minds over the years. And when the Gentiles began to respond, as we read, then they tried to push upon the Gentiles the rights of the ancient Israelites.

You will remember the great problem of circumcision. But I want you to notice in verse 24 of chapter 15, certain which went out from us have troubled you with words, you see. We gave them no such commandment, he said, and you must always remember that there's a difference between those that go out from you and those who are sent out from you.

That's the thing. John is very clear about this in his first epistle. You know, he said, they went out from us, but they were no part of us. For if they had been, they would have continued with us. And when people go out, often in the sense of, we're going to quit here and we're going off, we don't agree with what's being taught here.

Off they went and they began to teach. They perverted the truth and they began to say, no, you've got to be circumcised, you've got to keep Moses' law, you've got to do this, you've got to do the other.

But they were never sent. That's what they were very keen to say. Now look, we didn't send these people, they just went out from us. They might have been using our name. They might as well say, well, we've come from the great church in Antioch, you know, which rapidly was becoming the foremost church in those days.

And it was true in that sense. They had gone out, but they hadn't been sent out as from the central authority to preach the same glorious truth. All right, and it was a great big decision that the early church made.

And it meant that we haven't been brought under the bondage of the old covenant ideas. We've been liberated. And of course in this, as you know, Paul was the great protagonist. He was a great fighter for truth and for reality.

Paul’s Mission to Macedonia

Well, that's lovely. Now, if you read down into chapter 16 now, yes, chapter 16, you find Paul for the first time coming across young Timothy. That's in verse 1. All sorts of things happened. And then they went out, and as they went to the cities, verse 4, they delivered them the decrees.

That is what had been decided on at this great big meeting. They delivered them the decrees for the keep and were ordained of the apostles and elders which were at Jerusalem. So were the churches established in the faith and increase in number daily.

Now, when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia, after they would come to Mycenae, they assayed to go into Bithynia, but the spirit suffered them not.

And they, passing by Mycenae, came down to Troas, and a vision appeared to Paul in the night. There stood a man of Macedonia and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia and help us. And after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavored to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them.

Therefore, loosing from Troas, we came with a straight course to Samothracea, and the next day to Neapolis, and from thence to Philippi, which is the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and a colony.

And we were in that city abiding certain days. And that's the introduction to this group of women. Now, have you ever thought of this? That group of women there in Philippi that used to meet for prayer changed the course of the entire early church.

I want to impress upon you what you precious sisters can do if you will gather together in real prayer with your heart after God. You see, here's this great apostle Paul. It says in verse 6, say, when they went throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, the Holy Ghost forbade them.

Now listen, you are not to preach here, Paul. I suppose Paul must have thought, well, I wonder what this is all about, you know. Why can't we preach here? The Spirit of God would not let them preach here.

And you know, if the Spirit of God won't let you preach, you can't preach the Word of God. You could preach a sermon, but that's not always the same. In fact, in many cases, distinctly different. And then so they had another go.

And they came to Mysia, and they tried to go to Bithynia, where they would have preached. And the Spirit of God said, no, wouldn't let them go there either. And I guess those great men of the church, metaphorically, scratched their heads and said, I wonder what this is all about.

This is the first time that this has ever happened to us. What's the cause of this? Why can't we do this? Why can't we do that? And they came to Troas in verse 8. And there a vision appeared to Paul, a man of Macedonia praying them to go over.

And they assuredly gathered. When they heard that someone in Macedonia needed help, they didn't say, well, we better go and start a hospital there, I guess, or establish a school. We can't let them go uneducated.

They gathered that God wanted them to go and preach the gospel to them. Priority number one. What a tremendous thing then was happening. And he still didn't know why. It's an amazing thing, isn't it, that the women were praying, and in the vision, God sent a man to go and ask them, to tell them to come over.

And it just shows you what power women have behind men. You understand this. You women, you have a tremendous power, if you only knew this, what you can do. It's a tremendous thing to be a husband, as I know, and a father and a grandfather.

But I guess it must be much more tremendous to be a woman and a wife and a mother. I know men that are so influenced by their women folk that they're useless in the church because their wives don't want them to be all out.

Their wives demand they stay at home and change their napkins and do something. I've heard some women say, well, I've had him all day, now you have him. Give me a break, you see. That sort of thing. I want to thank God that I had a wife that let me go.

I wouldn't be here today talking to you if not. That's a tremendous and a glorious thing. God sent a man in the vision. That's right, come over and help us, he said. And I guess ultimately, Paul came to this conclusion, but it's the conclusion that I've come to, that those women had prayed and God was answering their prayer, you see.

God was answering their prayer. They said, we'll go here to preach. And they said, no, you don't. Well, we'll go here. And God says, no, you don't. And they said, well, what's this? We don't understand this.

It was because those women were praying and they got hold of God. Hallelujah. And God did what they said. I don't suppose they were saying, Lord, send us Paul. Probably they'd never heard of him. As has been pointed out to us, this was the great movement of God there in that part of the Gentile world.

And what a thing was happening, beloved. I hope the significance of this gets onto your heart. Lord, we're crying unto thee, crying unto thee. As I say, the 15th chapter is regarded, if you went to a Bible college, as one of the great things.

They make a great fuss about the edict and all this business that went on at Jerusalem and so on and so on. I'll fill your heads up with that, but none of them will tell you about what the women did in chapter 16.

They won't tell you that. Oh, you'll hear a sermon about it, hear it too. But it won't be taught to you if you go to a Bible college where they consult the mere academic side of it. But here's power. They got hold of God.

They cried unto God from the depths of their need. Hmm. And I guess when Paul got to that woman's prayer meeting that Sabbath day, and he sat down among them, and he saw them, I guess he said, well, this is the reason then.

This is the reason. These women came together to pray. You wouldn't have thought that prayer would have turned a ship away from somewhere else, would you? You wouldn't have thought that a prayer had bound up an apostle so that he couldn't go somewhere.

You wouldn't have thought that, would you? No. But it did. It changed the course of the church. The church would have taken another course. It would have gone through, here it is, we can read it. It would have gone through Asia, but they were forbidden to preach the word in Asia, verse 6.

Nicaea, no. Bithynia, no. Troas, no. And these were men who were prepared to go anywhere. They'd already, as you know, hazarded their lives for Christ. They didn't care. They were prepared to die for the gospel.

They went everywhere, and they preached, and that was it. But God said, no, that's shut to you. That's shut to you. That's shut to you. Hmm. What a tremendous thing. Have you ever seen this? Your power, the things that you can do.

You know, there are groups of women that pray. They're called Lydia groups. I suppose you must have heard that name. You haven't got to link up with anything like that necessarily. The great thing is, though, to see the potential that you have.

Amen. I covet this for you. I covet it. What's the old saying that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of? Faithful women are going to lay hold of God. They can't dictate to God and say, send us Paul, because they didn't know of Paul.

It was an entirely heathen city. But there's this you need to know too, that it doesn't mean to say that heathen, because they're heathen, aren't seeking God. They are. Lots of them are really seeking God.

They don't know anything different. They don't know that their idols aren't God, but they know beyond all this sort of heathen worship they've been brought up in, they know they're unsatisfied. They know they haven't really found God.

They may want to swear on it that they have, but they know they haven't, because only God can satisfy the heart. And you don't find God through idols. Idolatry is sin. So you can't find God by continuing in sin.

What a glorious truth it is for us to know. They spoke to the women. And you remember we read this verse in chapter 15. All right? Verse 18 of chapter 15. Known unto God are all his works from the foundation, from the beginning of the world.

That's it then. Known unto God. Now God in his great foreknowledge, foresight, he foresaw a group of women that were going to gather by a riverside. He foresaw it all. No, Paul, you're not to do that.

No, you're not to go there, Barnabas either. You're not to do anything like this. And we might feel what a shame that the door was shut to the gospel. You see? We may feel that. It wasn't. It spread through there later.

But God didn't want it to take that course. He wanted it to take this course. Isn't it a wonderful thing to pray into the will of God? You know, what you must not do is come together and pray into your own mind.

Pray into your own soul this or something that. It's coming together to let the Spirit of God get hold of you. And you know, these people were absolutely in earnest. Couldn't have been easy for these women to gather for prayer.

They had some knowledge of the Lord. Verse 14 of chapter 16. This woman was a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God. Worship. There are lots of people, you know, who worship God in some way or another.

Salvation Rather Than Mere Religious Worship

You do know, of course, don't you, that the distinctive thing about the gospel comes out very markedly here. You know, as you know, most of you know, anyway, I travel in other lands, and I see temples, mosques.

I see all kinds of places where people gather to worship. If you were born in a heathen nation, you would have been trained to worship. If you were Chinese, for instance, having lately come back from preaching to Chinese, if you were Chinese, you would have been brought up in Taoism to worship your ancestors.

This is why you always find the Chinese people most polite. You'll never find the Chinese people anything else but polite. They are polite to their elders. It comes in their religion. I wish the politeness was here in Christianity, but here is the thing.

So, from infancy, they would have been trained to go along to the temple, and they would have been taught to worship, worship, worship. It doesn't matter where you go, you'll find all these nations have worship.

They worship the Buddha. They worship all kinds of grotesque things in Hinduism. They worship their ancestors in Taoism and in Confucianism, and all these other things. They worship in Sikhism. You can go through them all.

Everybody is trained to worship. Now, the distinctive feature of the Gospel is that it doesn't teach an alternative form of worship. It preaches salvation. That's it. That's the thing you've got to get hold of.

This is the thing that makes it different from everything else, you see. They can go to ashrams. They can squat in the lotus leaf position and try to find worship and peace, but they don't find salvation.

The distinctive thing is salvation. Amen. You must be saved, not just taught to worship. Worship will come after that, when you're saved. You know, there is a sort of sense in what Karl Marx said. He said, of course, that man is a religious animal.

Of course, he's all wrong, of course. But there's something in what he said. We must worship something, something, something. People say they don't worship anything. They don't know what worship is. That's why.

They mean we don't get together in a crowd, call it a church or something like that and say prayers and sing hymns. Everybody has to worship something. You do know that, don't you? Yeah. Yeah. Something which is greater than self.

What a tremendous thing it is. It may be based on all kinds of wrong reasons and manifest itself in wrong practices, but nevertheless, it's the truth. They were meeting and worshipping. She was worshipping and wasn't a Christian.

That's the thing. She was worshipping in the limited sense in which people worship. Until you're radically saved, you always worship in a limited sense. Always. You know, one of the great things about worship, one of the words is to kiss the hand.

And another word is to kiss the hand toward. This is the meaning of the Greek word. You know, you go to somebody and you pick up their hand and you kiss it. Or you kiss the hand toward. You know, it's rather like this.

There are lots of people like that. I hope you're not like that. Even if you're intending in your mind and thought at the time to worship the one true and living God, I hope you're not like that. All the heathen were like this, you know, in the early world.

They still are. You remember Paul went, in a later chapter it records, he went to Athens. And he saw that the place was absolutely full of idols. And you know, some wonderful things can come from idolaters and people that do worship.

You know that, don't you? I mean, all the groundwork of all philosophy is based on the great Greek philosophers. They worshipped God in their way. They worshipped their idols in their way. The great profound sayings of philosophy, they aren't all modern.

They're still based on the old platonic school. Plato, before Christ, they were worshipping. Let's get it in our hearts. And some of you people that have to handle younger people, young children, you must teach them that they've got to be saved from sin.

Not just try bring them into worship. You must understand that. You've got to teach them salvation. No better way to teach it than be saved yourselves. Oh, Paul said, we knew when we saw this vision that we've got to go and preach the gospel to them.

He didn't say, no, let me take you by the hand and teach you a better way of worshipping. This woman, as we read in verse 14, this certain woman, it says of her, she worshipped God, but she heard us and then the Lord opened her heart.

People are worshipping the Lord with a closed heart. You know what you do? A closed up heart of you, it's all closed. And you do such words as, I can't get free. And you look at somebody else who perhaps you think is free or supposed to be free and you have a sort of a slight envy inside, if not a very, very big one.

I mean, I've heard people say, I hated you. You represented all I haven't got and all I wanted. It's amazing how hatred can spring up between a closed heart and a heart that's open. Jealousy, envy, hatred.

Well, if you listen to God, if you will first open your heart, you must do the first part, and listen to God. And say, oh God, what you say to me, I'll receive. I'll not fight you. I'll not deny it. I was at a meeting not so long ago, preaching, and after I'd finished, a young girl, I don't know how old she would be and when I ought to stop calling women girls, but I'm old enough to do that to most of you in this room, I guess.

She came up to me afterwards, where would she be? She'd probably be in her late teens, possibly early twenties. She said, I didn't accept a word you said. I'd been preaching for an hour and a half, so she'd gone on for an hour and a half's unacceptance.

All right. And the reason was that I'd preached stuff that she didn't believe, you see. She was among a group where you can just sort of do as you like. You just believe in Jesus, and oh, you'll go to heaven, you see, and all this.

And up came the hardness. You're a hard preacher, she said. Well, that's rather surprising because most people tell me I'm not. But that's what she said. Because her heart was closed against it, you know, and you can close your heart, see, and it's like me throwing my Bible up against this wall, it'll bounce off.

Whose heart? The Lord opened. Hallelujah, what a marvellous thing. And he'll open your heart by the power of the Spirit as you listen to the Word. If you come listening right, that's the way it happens.

You know, people, they're not right in the way they go to meetings, even. They just aren't right. And they aren't right in the way they believe, you see. Because the most endemic in the word believe in Scripture is this.

Coming Hungry to the Bread of Life

You can take the exchange words. Turn with me for a moment. Keep your finger in there because we're coming back. Turn with me to John chapter 6. I think you see this very clearly. It's the feeding of the 5 ,000, do you remember?

And after the Lord had fed the 5 ,000, he speaks to some people about it. And this is what he said. Verse 35 of chapter 6. Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

So you say, well there it is. He said if you believe, it's okay. If you come, but you see, you've got to come to Jesus as the bread of life. You've got to come hungry. So when it says, come unto me, you've got to come as a hungry person that must eat to live.

It's got to be a vital thing with you. It's got to be something that says, I must. Not, I'll just go along and meet him. Or something like that. Or if you believe on me, you'll never thirst. That means you've got to come, and believing in you, you've got to come unto him as the living waters.

And you're coming to drink because you're driven by a tremendous thirst. Believing other than that is a waste of time. It's just a mental exercise. It's got to be, ah me, I'm dying of hunger. Ah, I'm dying of thirst.

Jesus, I come to you. That's the way it's got to be. That is innate in the fact of believing. But we've pulled it down to just, well yeah, I believe that. I believe that. Like I believe there's a north pole and a south pole.

But if I went there, I wouldn't see the pole. So whatever are they talking about? But when you come to Jesus, you don't go academically or merely scientifically. You go because you're in desperate need.

Unless you can never believe right. That's the answer. It's the simple answer. Go back into Act 16. Everybody by that woman's, by that riverside, was a believer. But if you'd said, who do you believe?

And they'd say, well we believe in God. Ah, we believe we must, we must, we should worship God. And if you say then, well what else do you believe? They say, well we believe in prayer. You see, that's what they would have said.

But if you ask a heathen, they'll say that. We believe in God. We believe we should worship. We believe we should pray. God opened her heart. God opened her heart. When she was baptized, now there's no talk about baptism.

Paul didn't say, no, you've got to be baptized. And her household. She was sort of saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and abide there. And she constrained us.

Amen. If you judge me to be faithful. You know, that is what God's requiring of each one of you. God is requiring that you'll be faithful. Look, they met. They didn't know the true God. They didn't know him.

They met to pray. They met to worship. They met to do all sorts of things. And God had been faithful to them. He'd been faithful to them. He'd said, no, not there, not there, not there. There's this group of women here.

They're praying. And you ought to go to them, Paul. He'd been faithful to them. Now God is expecting you to be faithful to him. That's what he's expecting. To be faithful. You won't need me to expand on the word faithful.

Paul, you know what it means to be faithful. Isn't it a tragedy that you'll hear this word sometimes spoken about dogs. You know, he's a faithful old dog. And you can think back, and sometimes you might say, and perhaps there may be some bitterness, and you might say, more faithful than this man or this woman.

What a tragedy that the sort of thing that men call faithfulness can be in an animal. And men and women, unfaithful, you know where that attaches in human relationships, don't you? You don't need me to expand the thought.

Now God is wanting you to be faithful to him. If he's being faithful to you, how about you being faithful to him? Above all other relationships, faithful to him. Surely if he's God, that's what it's all about, isn't it?

Being faithful to him. If God has opened your heart to come to a knowledge of himself, if he has been faithful to you, to tell you the truth, Lord, I want to be faithful to thee. That's it. It's what he wants.

Are you faithful to him? Now she judged faithfulness to him. Well, that hadn't been mentioned. She was saying, well, here we are. We're right by the river. Baptize me, Paul. She counted that to be part of her faithfulness.

No holding back. No messing about. Here's the river. I wish I'd been in on that meeting. I guess I would have used the river as an illustration of what I wanted to say. And you all know that Paul never missed an opportunity.

So I guess perhaps he did. I'll ask him one day when I see him. I'm going to see him, you know. I don't know where you're going when you die, but I know where I'm going. I'm going amongst these spirits of just men made perfect that you read about in the Bible.

In turn, it's going to be marvellous. I mean, you can start asking way back with Abraham. You can have eternity of pass-by, you know. You'll never get bored, and you won't need a television or anything like that.

Because why? Why would you need that? And perhaps you could start with Abraham and ask him all about what happened. You can go on to Isaac and Jacob, and you can go to Moses, and you can keep on conversations.

Faithfulness to God and Hospitality

Don't lose the art of conversation, will you, by being gummed to a television set. Lots of people, conversations dropped out of their hole. They can't converse. They always listen to what some, I nearly said idiot, excuse me, is saying on a screen.

So they gradually become dumb. Oh, what a tremendous thing it is. I'm going to ask Paul. Lots of people, conversations dropped out of their hole. They can't converse. They always listen to what some, I nearly said idiot, excuse me, is saying on a screen.

So they gradually become dumb. Oh, what a tremendous thing it is. I'm going to ask Paul. Whether he used this river as an illustration, because I'm sure I would have done. You know, you drink of this river.

Now God wants you to drink of him. His spirit is flowing like a river. You know, you've seen the chorus, don't you? Love is flowing like a river, and peace is flowing like a river, and joy is flowing like a river.

I guess he did. I would have done. But here is the marvelous thing. I want to be baptized, Paul. Do you judge me to be faithful? Can't be much more faithful than that in the beginning, that you receive with open heart, and you move with instantaneous faith.

You'll always know when your heart is really open, you'll move with faith. It's the open heart that moves with faith. But when the heart's all shut up, it can't move with faith. It's crippled. It's confined.

It can't move. Oh, Lord. She moved right in, and God met her, and then she did the thing that she could do, offered hospitality. Amen. It's a great virtue amongst women to offer hospitality. I know too many women who only want me, my husband, and my little family, and we're going to shut the rest of the world out, and let the rest of the world go by, or something like that.

And their home becomes a sort of a little island in the sea of humanity. There is that which is right about the proper home, but she opened up straight away. She said, you come right in here. You come right in here.

You know, I can remember right back to my youth, in the little chapel that I used to go to in Kent. The leader was a very fine artist, and he used to paint models, pictures of models, long before this sort of flannel craft thing came into view, into line.

And he used to take his children's meetings, I was still a candidate child, I suppose, and I can remember him doing his models and pictures on the walls. It was a great impression. And one of the impressions he made on me, he spoke about this Lydia one, and he said that Lydia, being an artist, you know, he said, you know, she sold purple.