Session 3: Women's Q & a (Couples Conference) — Stuart Briscoe

I just seem so far away from you up here, but that's the way it is, this smaller session. There's just about half an hour here, and what I want to do with this session is to have some talk about what you want to talk about, come back, but first, I just did a brief application worksheet for you, and I want you, just for ten minutes, to just find someone to talk to, two or three of you is fine, don't leave anyone out, and if you wouldn't mind giving those worksheets out, if you could rush up and down furiously and get them out, I should have thought of this ahead of time.

Revisiting Marriage Through Scripture

And I just want you to find someone to talk with, and start through this worksheet. I don't want you to bother with praying for people, you can take this home and do it again full time, but I just want to take ten minutes, and I'd like you to do the first one, discuss if marriage matters to anyone anymore, and read Malachi 2, 15, that little passage I gave you, together.

And then, I want you to do number A, apart from the praying part, and probably that's as far as we'll get, you can take the worksheet home and go over it again as couples, maybe you want to share it with your husband, he won't have this in there, and it's really just revisiting, reapplying, rethinking about what we've been talking about, so just find someone to talk to now, introduce yourself, make sure you know each other, not too big groups, three is fine, and make sure everyone's involved.

Put your hand up if you don't have one still, over this side, sorry, okay, I'm going to stop you, very irritating, I know, but it does occur to me that we can continue this, those of you that belong to this church, because I think we're going to have split, I'm going to do Sunday School tomorrow, because Stuart's preaching here, but we can continue on that, they want to be more of a question and answer time, but I think I'd like to just come off where you're up to, some of you I was hearing are right down to how can we keep the well clean, some of you are still on number one, discuss if marriage matters anymore, and everything else in between, which is fine.

Maybe you'd like to take this sheet though home and do it as a couple, just to revisit what we've talked about, and it's always good if you're in school or college or anywhere else to revise and to go over it, did we get it, and what else did we think about, and they should have brought this up, and what do you think about that, so I would encourage you to take those sheets home.

And what I'd like you to do is to just open up and let's talk, if you'd like to ask questions, or investigate a little bit, or have something clarified, then this is the time to do that now, and if there aren't any questions then I'll put you back into the worksheet, and you can just continue it.

Spiritual Habits for Newlyweds

So do any of you have any questions, yes, a wonderful question, any advice that you could give to a newlywed, right, I think I would instead of just giving you a text, a proof text is to say establish habits if you haven't already, it's never too late to start, where you keep your individual time with God, as well as a combined time with God.

I think one of the biggest things that is going to help you is not swapping your devotional disciplines for a combined one, now that you are one, and there's so much fun in putting all that together in a new context, but you need to nourish your own relationship with God, that has not stopped because you happen to suddenly get married, your husband is not your Holy Spirit, and I think the thing that you can do best for your marriage and husband is to keep on growing individually yourself.

And so the best advice I could give you is what are you doing to plan and to stretch the sides of your soul individually for yourself, because the better you can know God, the better your husband's going to love you, and you're going to be able to love him, and the better you can grow spiritually, individually, then the better the combined effect will be.

And I think it's hard to put that devotional time together, a lot of people struggle with it, I edit a magazine called Just Between Us for pastor's wives and ministry wives, serving women, and I don't know the percentage, it's too high, of women, pastor's wives, missionary wives, that tell me I never have a personal devotional time, and actually they never have a very good devotional time with their husband either, and their husband many times finds it very difficult to pray with his wife, that's an endemic problem, a Christian husband finds it very, very hard to pray with his wife, and so you're going to struggle in your combined devotional time, and the stronger you are as you continue to grow in your personal time with God, the better it will be to sort out those growing problems, so that would be my immediate reaction.

Yes, right, I think if possible, and this I think is not too unrealistic a goal, pray with each other every day, I don't care when, where, how, but make sure even for a minute that you are together in the throne room.

There's nothing that will strengthen your marriage better than to start and develop together that interaction with God, I mean how could it not enhance and bless your relationship. Reading together can happen over breakfast, just start and get something that's in your schedule.

Capturing Spiritual Insights in Daily Life

I always remember years ago being privileged to be in Ruth Bell Graham's house, Billy Graham's wife's house, and on the traffic, you know everybody has a traffic pattern where everybody dumps things when you come in, and she had a little black book and a Bible open and a pencil, and this was years, this must be nearly 40 years ago I saw this, and I said, what's this, and she said, well as I'm a busy mother and I whiz through the kitchen with my arms full of laundry and I've been listening to something or thinking of something or meditating on something or I see an illustration, I jot it down in this little book here, just catch it with half a sentence or a word, then at night I've got nearly a little page full, just a little black book, and as I go to bed I look through those captured moments and find one and either chase it down in scripture or pray about it or pray it for someone else or take my pencil and make it a paragraph and then just put a little heading, faithfulness, prayer, family, mission, you know, just something to capture it.

And in Ruth Graham's house, they've got a long, long corridor, beautiful home up in the mountains, made out of wood collected from the mountains, old logs and beams, beautiful. She has these little shelves with hundreds of these little black books and that's the heritage she's going to be able to take and give to her children, but also it's where she goes to write her books to capture a memory because we forget so easily.

And so I was fortunate to see that modelled for me all those years ago and I began that practice myself. So get a little book and get a Bible because you're so busy but by the end of the day you would be surprised what's in that little book and then share it with your husband at the end of the day.

So you're capturing scriptural thoughts, applications, and maybe before you go to bed at night, read a devotional something, piece of scripture, put your head on the promise of a pillow, a pillow of scripture before you go to bed.

I think it's harder sometimes, it depends who you are, we combine personalities, for some it's harder to read together and talk about it and for some it's harder to pray together and talk about it. But you have to try and start and do both.

The family that prays together stays together. It's not just a cliché. And so I would suggest that. The other thing that Stuart and I do, we read a classic something every month and he'll read one and I'll read it after him or we'll read bites of it if we happen to be together over a meal.

But within the month we finish a classic devotional book, for example S .D. Gordon's Quiet Talks on Prayer or The Pursuit of God by A .W. Towser or something from Spurgeon or something from the Anglican Prayer Book, I don't know.

But something that is devotional in nature and we both read it. We might not read it together because we are not together very much. So I'll read it on a plane and he'll read it here. But by the end of the month we've both read it and then we share, I scribble all over it, I mark all my books I read, not just my Bible.

And I've got one of those with me today and Stuart just picked it up last night and began to read it and he said, oh this is terrific, this is marvellous, how rich. Well I've nearly finished it and by the end of the month both of us will finish it and then we'll share that.

So there's lots of things that you can do. You don't need to be together physically in one place to be thinking and growing and reading and everything. But at some point you need to come together and share that or do it together.

So read a classic book every month, certainly be systematically in the scriptures, individually and together. We do scripturian notes, Bible reading notes, and that's what we do together, when we're together.

And usually sitting down for a meal before we eat or after we've eaten. And you can capture, snatch little moments. It doesn't have to be at 7 o 'clock in the morning or at night. So those sort of things you can help yourself with.

The Wife's Role as a Disciple

Yes, what time do we have? Would you please define, the question is, the wife's role in a godly marriage. Well a wife actually is a disciple disguised as a wife. And so a disciple who happens to be a wife or happens to be a husband lives out their discipleship as a wife or as a husband.

So everything that goes into being a Jesus lover and a glory giver, that's what I am as a woman and as a wife and as a mother and as a grandmother. And for those instructions I need to go to my discipleship manual.

And as I obey what God says as a good disciple in here, that is I am being a good woman disguised as a wife or whatever my role is at that particular time and my function. So it will look different for everybody in this room because everybody in this room is different.

We're all at different stages and ages. Some have empty nests. Some have no nest. I have a moving nest. Some have children. Some have children who have come home again. Some are beginning on the second generation raising our grandchildren because there's been a broken marriage and one has come home and the grandparents begin all over again.

So we're so different in so many ways. Being a godly wife will look different in every single household represented here. But it's just basically getting up each morning and saying, what is first today?

For me, I'm defining it for myself. What is first today might not be what was first yesterday or what is going to be first tomorrow. For example, he might say, look after your own children today. That's what is first today.

Priority. First the kingdom, first the king. What does the king say is first today? Look after your own children. Tomorrow he might say, you know, what is first on my agenda for you today as my disciple, as a wife and mother and whatever, and as a good neighbour, is to look after your neighbour's children today.

She's a single parent, she's sick, take her kids off her hands and get somebody to look after your children while you do it. That might be what he says is first tomorrow. And the whole secret of priorities is asking, what is first today?

And that releases you from other people's hierarchy of priorities. God first, church, family, family, God, church. You know what I mean? You can't do that for other people. And so what I do, or try to do every day of my life, is say, if Jesus is first, I'll know what's next.

Jesus, you are first in my life today. What do you wish me to do? Who do you wish me to serve? That's my morning question. Who do I serve today? Do I serve my children, my husband, my world, my whoever?

Who is it Lord? And as I'm in prayer, I try to organise those priorities as I try to figure that out according to my responsibilities and what's happening in my life. And then I just try to be obedient to the priorities he dictates.

And sometimes it's fuzzy, and sometimes I don't know, and sometimes I'm sure I do it wrong, and sometimes I do it right. But he knows my heart, I want to do what he wants me to do first and foremost today.

And so your question is really, the role of a godly woman is, what is a priority as a disciple who happens to be a wife and mother today, today? Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it isn't. And it's very, very hard because people criticise or have expectations on what your role should be as a wife and as a mother.

And the most important expectations are God, his expectations. What does he want you to do today in your particular context? And then be brave enough to take the criticism and say, I really believe this is what we should be doing.

And together with your husband, you work those things out. But you don't need to work it out every day with your husband, it's just a given. We will both individually do what God wants us to do today.

And as that is an honest desire, it sort of happens and there's no friction and things go along and it just works. So that would be my best shot at a very hard and good question. The woman who is married to a beloved unbeliever as I call them, well, she might be the only Christian in her family.

Winning an Unbelieving Family Through Conduct

In fact I've had many people, many people, most places I go say I'm the only one. I don't have a Christian husband, my kids are Christians, etc, etc. And I always start and say, don't say I'm the only one, say I'm the first one.

Okay? You're the first one. Now, how are you going to win your family? That's the big thing. Because that's one of your privileges as the only Christian in this family, whether you were converted after your marriage or before, sort of irrelevant, that's what you are now.

How are we going to win that man of yours? How are we going to win those kids and those mothers and relatives? Right? And try and help people to figure that out. The woman married to an unbeliever, you can't really just take one piece of three and transport it into 2 ,000 in the USA because there's so much.

Where Peter says, win him without the word. You know, if you're married to an unbeliever, shut up and live it, basically. We can try and apply some of those principles now, but you see, in Peter's day when he said that to a woman in that situation, she could die for saying to her husband, I've become a Christian because the husband chose the religion of the household.

The woman had no right. She was his property. And along with that, the children, slaves, and women took the religion of the father. Now, people were getting saved in that situation. And Peter said, let him see it.

Let him be glad he's married to you. I counseled a woman the other day, and she said, my husband said to me, I don't know you. She'd been saved since her marriage. And if I had known you as this woman that is here now, I wouldn't have married you.

And I find myself married to a woman I didn't marry. Don't you understand my dilemma? So that woman's job is not for him to say, I'm finding myself married to a woman I didn't marry, and I don't like her, and I wouldn't have chosen her, but I am finding myself married to a woman I didn't marry, and have I fallen on my feet?

Wow, I like her. And I like her a lot better than the woman I married. That's her job. However she does that, God will give her ideas and help to do it. So she might win him without argument. But what Peter was addressing was the thing that a husband had the right to put his wife to death, his child to death, or his slave to death, if they displeased him in that culture at that point.

And so you can't say, well Peter says this is what we're to do, because our situation is not the same. However the principles are the same. You're the only Bible he's going to read. What's he read today?

And that's the challenge for an unbelieving spouse. But we have so much freedom in this country and things are different, we can open our mouths to, and at the appropriate time, seek to explain the difference in our life and what we'd wish and hope for.

I come from an unbelieving family, and the same principles pertain I think of winning my family back home in England. And every one of them are beloved unbelievers to me. Godly, ungodly people. Godly, ungodly.

Godly, ungodly. You know what I mean? Nicer than a whole lot of believers, to tell you the truth. Live more morally than a lot of believers. I mean they are wonderful, great people. And it's been extremely difficult to win, it's hard to win a good person to Christ.

Just, you know, as good as you can get. Jesus said to a man one day, he looked in him and loved him and said, you are just about perfect. I love that about you. And I look at my beloved unbelievers, and I could honestly say that, you are the greatest people.

Then sometimes if a woman is married to a man like that, it's very, very hard. Very, very hard to win him to the Lord. If he's an absolute scoundrel and rascal, then I think it's sometimes easier. Because you can just show him the difference and make him glad that he's married to you.

But I do not have that experience of being married to an unbeliever, and I think it's hard. We have a group in our women's ministry called Beloved Unbelievers. And that is a group that meets and prays for the husbands and the unbelievers in their family.

They've seen incredible answers to prayer. And they all go after two or three at a time. They choose this woman's husband and everybody, yes, they go on praying for their own. But everybody concentrates.

And you see them coming into this room the next week. Anything happened? No, we've been praying. And you just see them being affected. It's a wonderful thing. So make sure you support those people married to unbelievers.

There's a book, it's called Beloved Unbeliever by Joe Berry, wrote the best book I've ever read on winning a spouse or a family member to Christ. Yes, yes. Well, I think we need to take responsibility for the way we look at the opposite sex.

Purity, Appearance, and Boundaries

And we know, we're women, we know how. You know, it interests me because we do so much work where women are covered except their eyes. Boy, eyes can talk. And men in their societies always say that the eyes are the sexiest part of a woman.

And they have had to learn to use their eyes in ways we would never have to use our eyes. We have the rest of our body language. But I think we need to ask God to guard us against our body language. And specifically, we know how to do it.

We know how to relay something to a member of the opposite sex. So often the eyes are the culprit. The eyes are also the window of the soul. And so I think how we dress, our body language, whether we choose to put ourselves in situations that make it hard for people.

I know on our staff, our Jesuits, rules for the men and the women who are counselling opposite members of the sex. You always counsel with your door wide open. There's windows put into every single pastoral door, which is a safeguard for the staff.

Because we did have a terrible situation of a woman coming out of a young pastor's room and started to scream and say, oh, he made a pass at me, which he didn't. And it was awful. How can he prove? And so unfortunately, even in the church, we have to help each other and help ourselves and always counsel in a group or where there are people and that sort of thing.

So I think we can just be sensible and not put yourself into a compromising position if possible. Watch the way you dress, watch the way you look, and guard your heart and be honest. And I think that's what we need to do.

We need to teach our kids how all those things affect other people too. Yes. Yes. I think we should be able to look men, in our culture, we should be able to look men right in the eye and ask God to give us that so that they know, Lord help them to know, there is nothing here except purity and holiness and interest, common courtesy and interest in my eye contact.

And reading your Bible on a plane or a train, if you want to really isolate yourselves, a great idea. And that's absolutely true. I was on a plane not too long ago and I was in the middle of two guys going on a seventeen hour trip on this plane.

And you know, this isn't anything to do with eye contact or sexuality at all, but I just got my Bible out to do some work and immediately one went to sleep. I mean, he wasn't tired, I assure you, he just got on the plane.

And the other one got out his newspaper. And it is quite amazing what that sort of thing, if you really want a little bit of space and isolation. Try it. Anything else? Yes. Well, we have two families, you know, we've got the church family and we've got our own family.

The Church's Role in Teaching Sexuality

And both families should be doing everything families do to help the young people to be godly and live godly and look godly and be godly. And so I think the church has a huge role, especially with the breakdown of parental help in these dimensions in the home.

And we give our youth pastors every single support. If they want to do as much sex education as Christians do, we are delighted. It doesn't mean that the families stop doing it, it means you've got some reinforcement.

With models, the pastors, the youth pastors are people that the kids look up to, have a huge, probably more say than you do, in the teenage years. And we were always affirming our youth pastors in anything they wanted to do in that regard.

And reinforce it at home. I think the church has a huge part to play in this. One of our junior high retreats is just on sexuality. It's a whole weekend. We can never get all the kids in that want to come.

But they take a whole weekend together away with their pastoral team and their adult youth leaders and just address it from the scriptures and get them in small groups and hear them out and have forums and try and show them a way through the wilderness of the mess that they're in, you know, in the middle.

Five of our grandchildren have been on that youth weekend, and it's been hugely, hugely helpful. And they've come home and said, boy, that gave us some real good ideas. Like one of our youth pastors gave us, our kids one, he had a rule, and it was just between him and his kids.

And so now, I've been in youth work, and so it began to irritate me to death that my kids didn't tell me what this rule was. And so they've come home from having their sex talk by Bob, and I'd say, well, what did he say to you about sexuality?

We don't have to tell you, Mum, it's just between our pastor and us. And it was very helpful, and we don't have to tell you. So, of course, I go on this journey to find out. And my eldest, I never got a wink out of Dave.

And Judy, not a thing. No, I wasn't going to hear. But Pete was more vulnerable. He was 13, he'd grown his 6 foot 6 inches at that, so he was a great big tall, lanky boy in a man's body, and he had this session in our youth group.

And so he came home, and I sang goodnight, and I tried to get hold of him and kiss him. It was a thing we had at that moment. No, Mum, Mums don't kiss 13-year-old boys. And so we began to fun and wrestle.

He said, no, you're not going to kiss me goodnight. So we were literally, but he was so big. And I just sort of tried to get a kiss and missed him and hit his neck. And he said, oh, you broke Bob's rule.

And I said, oh, what's that? And without, poor thing, realizing he was being led along, he said, don't lie down, nothing below the neck, and don't take anything off. That was it. I said, is that all? He said, that's it.

So my kids grew up and got married, and on Pete's wedding day, we got a telegram from Bob, he's moved on. Forget the rule. Judy told me not long ago, our daughter, you know, it saved me many a time, Mum.

Very simple, very specific. Don't lie down, never take anything off, and nothing below the neck. And you know, maybe that's not enough for some of us, and maybe it's too much for others. Whatever. They do need some specific spelt out, so that you don't just say, be good.

What does that mean? It means give the boy what he wants, because you need to be good to him, he's been good to you. That's what they would say. So that's not enough. We need to sit down, have heart-to-hearts, we need to have good communication with our teenagers, so that they're going to allow us in to those discussions and want to talk about it, and try and give them some help for when and if they find themselves in those situations.

Teaching Children Without a Husband's Support

Yes. Well, you do what you can do. And if he's not doing it, what on earth is the sense of you not doing it? I think you have to go to Proverbs, where again and again, the writer of Proverbs, a man, is saying, son, he's talking to his son, listen to your father's precepts and your mother's teaching.

And he never says, listen to your father's precepts. It's never without and your mother's teaching. And in the Old Testament, it was the woman who taught the family at home. The feasts, which were absolutely scripture, everything had a meaning, and as the kids and the mother were getting the feast things ready, she'd say, this is unleavened bread, this is what it means.

And the whole of the teaching of the godly everything was the mother's job, while the father, as the priest of the home, was doing his precepts and his law and his, all those ordinances and everything the Proverbs talks about, of the philosophy of the whole of the Israelite people and their covenant with God.

And so both parents were absolutely full bore teaching and instructing, listen to your father's instruction and your mother's teaching, listen to your father's ordinances and your mother's teaching. And so, please God, he will be coming one day soon to be able to be putting his weight in and doing what he should be doing, but you should be doing what you should be doing.

And there is absolutely no sense in my mind at all to say, well, if he's not doing it, you have to be quiet and wait until he gets around. What happens if he never gets around to it? I mean, just think about that.

And so I have no compunction at all to helping Christian women in those situations of saying, how can you do your job twice as hard without him doing his, but do everything you can to help your children know and love the Lord in that particular situation.

Persevering in Prayer for an Unbelieving Husband

Yes. Well, the best thing you can do is don't stop growing yourself. You know, I've had people say to me, well, if the women would just wait till their husband catches up to them. No, no, no, no. Again, the logic of this, the holier you can be and the more like Jesus you can be and the more you can grow, the better you will know how to help your husband come to the point that we long to see the husband come to.

And so the first, I would just encourage you, just use the time, the hard time when you long to see him come and share with you in this partnership and lead you and all of this and lead the family. Use the time to be faithful to what you're supposed to be doing as a parent and as a mother in that situation.

I think, sorry, what was the second part of that question? What can we do? Well, I think your biggest tool is prayer. You get down on your knees and you say, I'm not going to let you go, God, until you bless him.

And we learn effective prayer. That is the biggest tool you have. I don't think it often works leaving appropriate books in the bathroom around the house where he'll trip over. Sometimes it does. I just heard a testimony of the manager of the Brewers baseball team.

Incredible. I heard it through my husband. He was speaking at a men's breakfast and this fellow had given his testimony. And for years his godly, believing wife tried to win him to Christ. And she put a book on Christian marriage in his backpack as he travelled all over with the team.

And he would get it out and lie it with his clothes and sometimes put clothes over it. And he got to the point where he was actually gingerly taking, never read it, taking it out and putting it there.

He didn't have the heart to leave it anywhere. He put it back. And this went on literally for years. And their marriage began to come apart. And in the end, I don't know where he was, on tour, he looked at this book on the bed and he opened the front cover and there was a letter from his wife in it, written seven years previously.

And it was 13 pages of how she absolutely loved him, longed for spiritual intimacy with him, longed that they should share the most important thing. It was just on. But how she loved him, how she wanted to be his friend.

And she said, we're not even friends anymore. And that was seven years previously, so the marriage was just about gone. And he started to cry and he opened the book, he didn't go to sleep all night, and he read this book on Christian marriage and he came to faith.

Now that is a wonderful story. I just heard it last week through Stuart at the men's breakfast. And so, yes, anything we can do, would you like to come to the men's, whatever it is, please, or get somebody, you know, do whatever you can, get a buddy, somebody who respects you.

What about inviting him to something? So you do everything that you can, but in the end, only God can do it. And so where does that work get done? On your knees. That's where it gets done. And so I would, it's not the last resort, it's the first resort.

I think the whole problem in all sorts of areas is we don't know how to pray effectively. I think that's the bottom line. Expectantly, hopefully, triumphantly, we don't know what binding and loosing is all about.

What is all that? That God will bind in heaven and bind on earth what we want bound from somebody we love's mind, for example. And that God will loose in heaven and loose in their mind, loose on earth, what we desire for them.

What is all that about? And so we have to do our homework and say, I don't know what else I'm going to do, but I'm going this year to learn to pray to move the hand of God and change my husband or change my church or change whatever it is.

And I know that sounds a pious get-out answer, but I'm coming more and more to the conclusion it's where it's at. The better I know how to pray, the better I will be a blessing to the people around me.

Physical Stewardship and Godly Appearance

Yes. Well, how do we treat ourselves physically? Is it something we don't need to do if we're Christian women? How important is it to keep ourselves nice for our husbands? I think of the Proverbs 31 woman who fortunately didn't exist, save in the imagination of the guy that wrote about her.

But she was the perfect bionic Christian lady. And it never says anything about her appearance, actually. So we don't know if she had a face like the back of a bus, do we? I mean, we have no idea. Maybe the beauty was of a quiet spirit and it was all inward.

I don't know. But I do think that if God has given us a temple, we keep it. We don't let the temple get overgrown with ruins and whatnot. We keep our temple as nicely as we can keep it. For me personally, I would draw the line, for example, at going to extensive surgery to keep myself young.

I'm finding that my wrinkles are a huge advantage in what I'm doing at the moment. I'm serious. Especially out of the country, especially in Asia. In Vietnam, they greet you, not with your name. They greet you, they bow, and you bow, and they say, how old are you?

That's the first question. And so you answer them. And with that information, they bow again and they call you Mother, Daughter, Grandmother, Great Grandmother. And that's your name. There's no names used.

And if you are Mother, or Grandmother, or Great Grandmother, there is huge respect for apparently they believe your wisdom. And they will listen to you. So, come on wrinkles as far as I'm concerned. I am hugely enjoying the open heart and ear I have for Christ simply because of my age.

And so I want to be the best 69-year-old I can be for Jesus. And I certainly would like to keep myself the best 69-year-old I can be for my husband, as well, because I love him. But I need to forget myself.

I need to do the best I can with myself and then forget myself. My mother used to teach me that. She said, Jill, make the best of what you've got and then just forget yourself. Because a woman that's so conscious of herself and her looks, it's not a very pretty thing.

And it's not something that men like. So you need to be unselfconscious. Do the best you can with what God has given you. And then just forget it. Forget yourself and invest yourself in other people. I think there was a lady, just last question.

Finding Joy in God's Will Amid Separation

Oh, sorry, up in there. Did you have a question? Yes. Well, I had to get it sorted out in my head first before it got down to here when I was struggling with it. I figured like this. You can only be happy in the will of God, number one.

I believed with all my heart he was in the will of God and I was in the will of God in that mission situation, which was very unusual. It's only a model of the unusual, very unusual, where he was on the road for eight, nine months of the year, for ten years.

Very unusual. And God does not ask but few people to do that. But he does ask a few people to do that if the ends of the earth are going to be reached. So that's the situation. So I argued like this. You can only be happy in the will of God.