Biblical Comfort for Weary Christians

Hi, my name is Roy Daniel, and I'm going to bring a sermon today by God's grace and His mercy on the topic of weariness, Christian weariness. And if we could open up our Bibles to Job 10 verse 1, I'd appreciate that. But in the meantime, I'd just like to mention, years back when I was going from town to town in a certain province of South Africa, and our mission would send us to schools and to old age homes and to nursing homes and to orphanages and prisons and so on, and churches to preach the gospel and spiritual growth and so on. We also would visit Christians, and I came to this one nursing home, and there was a lady on the list of Christians that we could go and encourage, and I went to her, and I sat down next to her bed, and she started to talk after I asked her how she got saved and so on. She started to talk about how she was wonderfully saved when she was younger, how God had mercy, led her to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, how she loved prayer meetings, how she used to love to witness the souls about Jesus, and souls would get saved, how God would answer her prayers. Then she talked about a harder time she went through in her life where her husband became sick and she had to leave most of the work, and just until late at night she was looking after her husband, helping him to the toilet, doing all those things, basically caring for her husband in his old age. And then she said she, after that, became all to herself and sickly, and she was lying there in bed. And she said, Roy, I used to ask God for grace to speak to many souls about Jesus. I used to ask God for grace to pray for hours, and to walk for God in my workplace. She said, but I've come to the stage in my old age where I ask God for grace each day, for the strength to read one Bible verse, and say a short prayer, because I've got so little strength. Now she obviously explained her life in short sentences too, but at the end of the day, godly people can be weary, and that's the verse we're going to read. We're going to read of the godliest person at that time in the Old Testament, God called him the godliest person, Job. And this person had been rich, and he had children, and he had happiness and respect and ministry. But then he lost his wealth, and he lost his health, and he lost his children, and he lost the respect of his wife. Even when he begged her, she wouldn't, her breath was far from him, it says in the scripture. He lost, he couldn't feel God, he couldn't perceive God, the Hebrew word means he could not feel God. And little children despised him, his servants, when he called for them, didn't come. He couldn't even get encouragement from sleep, because when he went to sleep, he had terrifying dreams. Unlike Jeremiah, who, at least through the hard times he went, he said, my sleep is sweetened to me, because God in visions of the night encouraged him. And he said these words in Job 10 verse 1, the godliest man in the world, my soul is weary of my life. I will leave my complaint upon myself, I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. The other godliest man in the world said, I am weary, weary. And so my prayer for this sermon today is Isaiah 50 verse 4, we will read, the Lord God has given me the tongue of the lamb, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary. He wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth my ear to hear as the learner. So God, he has a prayer of a person, he said, the Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learner, that I should know how to speak a word in season. That's my prayer today, this verse, Isaiah 50 verse 4, to have the tongue of the learner to speak a word in season. Something that really helps someone out there who is a Christian, who loves Jesus, and who is weary. And right off the bat I'd like to bring a, well not a contradiction, the scripture has no contradictions, but I'd like to bring what seems to be a contradiction and bring a blessing out of it. Revelation 13 verse 7 says these words, and it was given unto him to make war with the saints, that's the antichrist, you've got the antichrist, the false prophet, and the beast, the false trinity. And to overcome them, and power was given him over all kindred, and tongues, and nations. Now this is interesting, because it says here, he has a man who will make war with the saints, or a person who will make war with the saints, and he will overcome them. And the seeming contradiction is because of 1 John 2 verse 14, where it says, I have written unto you fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning, I have written unto you young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and listen to these words, and ye have overcome the wicked one. So the bible says that as young Christians we can, through Christ, overcome the wicked one. And yet there's a person controlled by satan who is going to overcome the saints. So how can we overcome satan, and satan overcomes us at the same time, and I think the answer is in Daniel 7 verse 25, and he shall speak great words against the most high, and shall wear out the saints of the most high, and think to change times and laws, and they shall be given unto his hand until the time and times, and the dividing of times. He has a picture of the end times, where the saints of the most high are going to be wearied, worn out by satan, and by the world system. And that's something we have to understand, when it comes to wearing out, in Christ, as long as we obey God, and surrender to God, and our source of life is Jesus, and we rest in him, the satan cannot through any person, means, in any way, touch our souls. We are safe in the righteousness that is Jesus Christ. But, although he cannot touch our souls, as long as we obey God and rest in God, and don't give ground to satan, like Ephesians talks about, let not the sun go down in your wrath, giving place to satan, giving ground, jurisdiction to satan, and your soul to him. If we don't give ground to satan, then we are safe in Jesus, but our bodies, and we are torn apart, can be given to lions, can become sick, can be tired, can be weary, and in that sense, we can be overcome, in spite of being godly, and we can be worn out, and we're going to, many Christians through history, and especially in the end times, it's going to happen, there's going to be a wearing out of the saints, and there is biblical answers to this, and I'd like to joyfully look into that, but first of all, I'd like to mention a godly man that I, I meet many godly men in different continents of the world, that I go to many times, and some of them have been used to God, and many souls have been saved, self-righteous people have been radically saved, drunkards have been saved, druggies have been saved through these people, and it's wonderful to meet them and see their love for the Scripture, but once, I knew this man for many years, but once I drove in a car with a man that I had huge respect for, he prayed a lot each day, he read a lot of the Bible, he was humble, God used him, and he understood the Scriptures and loved them, but as I drove around this person, I realized this guy is extra tired, and it was late at night, and he almost crashed a few times, or wrecked the car, and I realized this guy doesn't need to go home and pray about his tiredness, he doesn't need to go and read the Bible more, he needs rest, he needs a bit of sleep, and that's not sinning, he needed to get to bed, and take a rest, and do a little exercise. Now George Whitfield, who you know, was a friend of John Wesleyan, used mightily in America in the Great Awakenings in the old days, George Whitfield, who God used so mightily in Revival, before he got saved, he wanted to get saved, and he thought he had to chastise himself, so for about 30 days, he literally would starve himself, fast, wear little clothing in the cold, hurt his body, and he wore himself out, and at the very end of this, suddenly it just came to the point where he realized that just like Moses in the Bible, God said to him, stand still and see the salvation of God, so in one moment he realized God has to do the work, based on what the finished work of Calvary, based on what Jesus did when he died in his place for his sins, and rose again, and ascended up to heaven, sitting on the right hand of power, and in one moment he looked at Jesus, and in one moment without any of his works counting towards this, he was saved, and he was changed, but what's interesting is even though inside he was totally changed by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, on the outside his body was tied from all the chastisement, he didn't suddenly have a body that wasn't tied, because he got saved, and interestingly, he had to take a few weeks off before he could start preaching, before he could start witnessing, just to rest, though God intended to use him so wonderfully. Now Samuel Logan Brangall, who was the last, some people call him the last great preacher of the Salvation Army, Samuel Logan Brangall said that you can't blame God, you must not blame God if you break the law of your body and health. In other words, there's a lot of people out there who wear themselves out, they choose when they don't need to, some of them, to work longer hours than is good for their body, they choose when they don't need to, to put themselves through stress and work that they don't have to, and that's not God's fault, and our choices lead us to be weary, but at the same time, sometimes life just hits you, and it hits you over a long time, and it wears you out, and it's not your choice, you could have made a choice here and there that might have made it slightly better, but basically over time, you're weary because like Job, your children are taken away from you, because you are left with little support, and you've lost everything, and your body is tired from sickness, and there can be many reasons for this, but these are things that come upon the child of God, in which we are weary and still have to look to Jesus in faith. So I'd like to mention here a revival, 300 years in Britain, and I'd love to look, and if you ever have a chance, look up William Chalmers Burns, and Robert Murray McShane, and so on in Scotland, and the many revivalists that were in Scotland at that time, but there was a revivalist, and God used him wisely, and they prayed through the nights for a long time, and suddenly God came, and it was wonderful, but God was so present and tangible in those meetings, that people stayed up till late, confessing their sins, seeking God, bringing other people in, praying for those who hadn't yet come in and been saved, and so what happened was the people started to get tired, after two weeks of literally not sleeping, except two hours a day, because they had evening work in the day time, the revivalist preachers were actually practical, and they realized, listen, these guys, they're going to actually get hurt physically, so we've been here for two weeks, let's go to the next town, and they went to the next town, and the revival broke out there too, but I like the fact that they were practical. Now I'd just like to mention also, years back, in our mission and other missions, if you listen to the old tapes, there's amazing sermons of these old preachers from 50, 60, 70 years back, and you'll meet people, old people in town, so they said when these preachers came, they prayed through the nights, they prayed for days, weeks at times, sometimes three weeks, and then they'd preach, and as they preached, God would come, and drunkards would get saved, and the whole town, much of the town would come together that normally wouldn't be seeking God, that was against the message of the new birth, of being born again, like John chapter 3 says, and yet when they came together, God would work in a mighty way, yes, but interestingly, listening to these old preachers who prayed for many hours, who read the Bible for many hours, who witnessed that God is mighty, they were not Jesus, they were not the Bible, and they made mistakes too, and so one of the mistakes that they made, was many of them believed that it was a swear word to say you're tired, that you're weary, and of course you go to Proverbs, and you see that God is against laziness very much, but they were also going to verses like Isaiah 5 verse 27, None shall be weary, nor stumble among them, none shall slumber, nor sleep, neither shall the girdle of their loins be loose, nor the latch of their shoes be broken, Isaiah 40 verse 30, even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fail, Isaiah 40 verse 31, but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles, and they shall, basically it goes on to say that they will have amazing strength, and you know, at the end of the day, these type of verses are wonderful, but you cannot take verses in isolation and run away with them like a steam train, you can't take verses where it says rejoice in the Lord always, and say well that means if you ever cry or weep that you are sinful, because the Bible says in Romans in the New Testament, the same Paul who wrote rejoice in the Lord always, he wrote weep with them that weep, and we're going to have our tears wiped away one day, in Revelation twice it says this by Jesus Christ, and how can there be sorrows ceasing and tears wiped away if we didn't have any tears and any sorrows on earth, and it's the same with these verses, it's true that God gives us amazing strength, but it does not mean that the godly cannot be weary, and there's a balance in Scripture, Scripture is an amazingly balanced book, 66 books of the canon of Scripture, it's not sin to sleep, Ecclesiastes 5 verse 12 says the sleep of a laboring man is sweet, because you know, you've not been lazy, you've worked hard and you've deserved the sleep that you get, in a sense, you could always say sleep is your super power, now there are verses and proverbs that talk about, consider ways and be wise, oversee your ruler, provide him the meat in the summer and so on, but how God made us is that we need the night time to sleep, he even gave us one day of the week to rest, and there's a reason for this, because our bodies need deep sleep, in fact if we have less than a certain amount of hours of deep sleep each night, which many people choose to do unfortunately, or because we are mentally unstable and can't sleep very well at night, there's certain parts of your body after the second or third day of sleeping less than six hours a night or whatever, depending on the person in your body, that there's parts of your brain, scientists have found that shut down, and don't function during the day, that they find out through scans and so on, now I joke that sleep is so powerful that you can get a wife by sleeping, there's two examples in scripture of people who slept and the next day they were married or got a wife, the one of course everybody knows, that's Adam, he slept and he woke up and he got Eve, but Joseph in the Bible is the other one, in Matthew 1 verse 24, then Joseph being aroused from his sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took to him his wife, so he woke up and he took Mary to be his wife, two people in the Bible slept and got a wife, very very powerful thing to sleep, you might just get a wife when you wake up, anyway, on a serious note, it's so true that even though we can be lazy, and this is wrong, on the other side we can put ourselves through things by choice that makes us weary, the godly, life can sometimes come at us over a prolonged period of time and we can be emotionally, mentally, physically and even spiritually weary, we can be emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually weary, what I'd like to say, well I'd like to give an example, there's a man in South Africa, a godly man that I love, that I respect, and I just remember many years back he had such a joy in Christ, and he still has a joy in Christ, although it's a sacrifice at times, but he used to go out and try to witness, arrange day conventions, he gave up his entire business to become a missionary, and then things started to wear him, and it wasn't so much that he was in a bad financial situation and other things and had accidents where parts of his body would be cut off, he had to be in hospital for many months, the thing that weared him the most was other Christians, and interestingly he once came to my dad and he said, if they'd just give me a little break, if they'd just give me a little break so that I could just encourage myself and just take a little rest from their continuous attacks, he said, but they don't give you one little break, it's like one wave comes past and the next wave hits you while you're catching your breath, and Job went through this, he said to his friends, he said, if you could just leave or be quiet for a little while, then I could comfort myself, Job longed for three things to escape, he longed for his friends to keep quiet, he longed to be able to sleep, and he longed for death, and many Christians find this true, there are so-called Christians out there, and sometimes people don't even know what they're doing to other Christians, continuously backbiting and attacking. Anyway, I'd like to mention, oh yeah, sorry, as well, I've got another friend, he's a neighbor, and I love this guy, but through the years he would have been such a servant, such an amazing example in many ways, and literally he'd take his jacket off his back in the cold to give it to someone else, to give it to me, and when he had hardly any money, the equivalent of $20 or 200 Rand, he would rather let me have gas or petrol in the car than himself, and he literally was like this, and he was an absolutely amazing servant, but there came a time, he'd been through a lot, and about two years back I remember him not being so much of a servant, being a little bit irritated, and for a while, for a month or so, and I came to him and I asked, brother are you tired, and he looked at me with literal tears in his eyes, and he said, you know, I'm so, so tired, I don't know how to take it, because of things that he'd been through in life that had wearied him. Now I'd like to mention a few things that have wearied me, and I don't have any right to complain about anything, but I'd like to give some personal examples. I can't complain compared to someone who has died of cancer, or been in a prison for being a Christian in Iran, or North Korea, or anything like that, but these are just a few little examples from my life, starting off with years back, and I really thought about this, you know, I'd been in the ministry for 15 years full time, and around about 15 years back, I remember you would go through the year, each year would be a cycle, and they'd send you out two by two, and two young pilgrims together, not as a cult or anything like that, just for accountability, it's good when you go into people's houses, there's someone else to pray with, someone else to read the Bible with, someone else to yell when you're preaching, that you're not saying strange stuff, and at any rate, we would go to towns, and we would go to schools, like I said, and orphanages, and prisons, and nursing homes, and all those homes, and churches, and so on, and hostels, and on the streets, and to the slums, and at the beginning of the year, you're praying through the night, you're reading your Bible for hours, you're witnessing to people on the streets all over, you're heading up tracks everywhere, you're riding your own tracks, it's wonderful, it's exciting to go out, and to talk about Jesus Christ to a lost world, and to Christians, about what they can experience of the riches of Jesus Christ, but having said that, towards the end of the year, and this happened for a few years in a row, I remember, at the beginning of the year, you're praying through the night, towards the end of the year, you're basically trying to stay awake, because you've been driving from town, to town, to town, and after all these towns, you're just tired, and weary, and I remember praying, and not feeling anything, and reading my Bible, and not feeling much at all, and getting a bit encouraged here and there through some verses, but just so wearisome, until the holiday came at the end of the year, and then you were refreshed for the next year again, but in that time, God taught me something, He gave me a sermon called Faith and Feelings, and through that sermon, so many people have been saved in the middle of that sermon, druggies have been saved, that they became the leader of their house, and good to their children, and Bible studies, love of the Word of God, and so many people have been changed through that sermon, and God taught me that through weary times that we had then. Now, going a bit further on, a few years into the 17 or so years that I've been in full-time service after Bible college, I got a sickness in South Africa, and I was so sick that for months, I would literally, well at the beginning, I would sleep till 3 o'clock in the afternoon, be awake for half an hour, and feel so drenched, and tired, and exhausted, and feverish, that I'd go straight back to sleep, and sleep till the next afternoon at 3 o'clock, and with this fever that I had, before I was saved, before I was a Christian, I did pretty well at school, and they offered me the Rhodes Scholarship, and two scholarships actually, and they offered me any university in South Africa for free, a Rhodes Scholarship was hundreds of thousands of pounds to go to become a professor in Europe, I'm so glad that I didn't go to Oxford, because then I would have, I don't think I would have been saved. I got saved at Bible college, and I had a wonderful influence from my dad growing up, it was there that I faced myself and saw that I, with all my good works, all my reading the Bible, was not saved. So I'm glad I didn't go, but having said that, I won best speaker awards, and a whole lot of things, and I was pretty good at science and maths, and I got a lot of awards for that, I did university level stuff while I was still at school, subjects and so on, but since I got this sickness that wearied me, even though I was right with God through Jesus Christ, I never since then could do what I used to do analytically with maths and science, and even public speaking. I never had the same abilities that I used to have before. It was taken away from me, and God chose to do that. Then I went through eight months, this is a little letter of sickness, where my body started to give in, and I couldn't, I would stand up to preach, and after ten minutes of preaching to 300 people at a time in some large churches, I'd say, I'm sorry, I have to go, and I would, my body would literally be giving in, and I was, my head was in a spin, and my whole body was shaking, and my heart was palpitating, and I'd go down to the bathroom, and go on the ground and beg God for mercy to help me to get back up to the pulpit. And then my health was going so down for those eight months, I couldn't handle conversations, I couldn't speak to people without my body seeming to give in, I couldn't run ten yards without being out for several hours. I used to love jogging when I was younger, and eventually I found an answer. I went to a specialist in America, and they found out that I wasn't digesting food properly, and a whole lot of things with PH level, etc., and I got my health back to a great degree. But having said that, in those eight months it was so revealing to speak with Christians, because I would be with Christians who would read their Bible for hours, and pray for hours, and witness to souls all over, and they would be cross with me because they think there's something spiritually wrong, I needed to pray more, I needed to read my Bible more, I needed to be sanctified, or something. And they didn't realize that my body was extremely weary and I couldn't handle things. And I found that very typical of many, I would say godly Christians, God uses mightily, but have a blind spot in this area when it comes to people who are not physically as able as them. At any rate, another thing that wearied me, shall we say, is to do with my wife's visa. In South Africa, they say people with missionaries who go to Brazil and so on, say it's about ten times worse than America, paperwork there occasionally, than competency, let's say. But in South Africa, they say it's a hundred times worse than Brazil. And that's absolutely true. They lose thousands of applications, after months and months and months, several hundred dollars of costs, they will just lose the paperwork. And this has happened quite a lot in South Africa. When you go to Home Affairs, which is in South Africa to apply for certain things, you sometimes have to go there at four o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning, and wait in the dark to hope that you'll, within about three or four hours, get stuff there. But anyway, long story short, with my wife's visa, one time when we had a child, one of our four children was born, we waited several hours in a place to get to the front to be able to apply for a birth certificate, otherwise we wouldn't be able to get passports or anything like that. And there were fistfights, people were so cross with each other. And I almost felt like getting involved in the fistfights for one stage. I didn't, don't worry. But we got to the front and the person looked at us, this lady, and she said, this government worker, she said, you are a criminal, pointing at my wife and pointing at the baby. She said, there's no baby, no baby was born, your wife is out of the country. And she gave us 30 seconds, I said, but yeah, in our passport was the proof that we entered the country. They said, no, not on computer, go talk to your lawyers. So we had to talk to lawyers and it took about three weeks to get the baby born again. And I think it's the only baby that I know of that was born again after three weeks. I don't know how that sounds theologically, but it's interesting. At any rate, with visas in South Africa, you go through a lot. So there was a time when we were staying in a little flat and they had to sell the flat and we had to leave. So we were basically chucked out of our flat. And we moved down to this one little room. And in this room at a time called Pennington, my wife and all my children were there. At that stage, this is about five, six years back. And I used to joke because we had the fridge and the stove and the bed. And so literally we had to, I said to my wife, if I get out of bed and I burn my hand in the stove, I can put it in the fridge to cool down, which was quite fun. But anyway, so we were applying for a visa extension from my wife at that stage and they changed all the laws and required more things than before. And suddenly they said, we reject you. This is after sleeping on airports through the nights. I would sleep on airports waiting to get an answer from them, flying across the country to get paperwork they required. They wouldn't give us the paperwork and they blamed us for not giving us the paperwork. And anyway, it's all fine, praise the Lord. But we were accused at that time by Christians of things that weren't true. And they basically rejected us and said, we have to leave the country. If you don't leave the country, you're going to be banned for ten years. Now I didn't like the idea of leaving my wife for ten years. So we had to get out of the country and apply again from overseas. And when we did this, we needed a huge amount of money, like $3,000, $4,000 at that stage, and nobody was willing to help that we knew of. And God at the very last moment literally laid upon somebody's heart that never gave to us to give that amount basically and we were just overjoyed. But we left the country and we had to now apply for a visa again and we had very little money. And I remember staying at my aunt's house applying for the visa. Then we had to travel across the country to get to the other side, to where our other family was. And I remember we borrowed a car from my aunt and we drove. It was a 30-hour drive and we didn't have any money, but my uncle and aunt gave us some gas money to get across, several hundred dollars, to get three days across the country and we drove. And excited and after about five hours the car blew up. And after it blew up, well, the guy charged us $300 to get it towed in and then told us it was irreparable. So we were stuck at the border of three states. And there was this little town called Needles. Now Needles does not have any airport. It has a train station, but it has not one taxi company, because all the taxi companies are over the border in the big cities of the two other states that join together at this point where these three states meet, in the middle of the desert. There's a river as well. At any rate, there was a lot of weird guys there, so we had enough money to stay in a hotel for two days basically. So I paid for staying in a hotel. I asked them, what do you do when you run out of money? They said, well, you leave. We tried to get to the airport to hire a car and it was 30 minutes away, but they charged us $90 there in fact, taxi drivers. Eventually some people found out about it and they said, we'll help you. We'll get you out. We'll fly you out. We have too much stuff to go on airplanes for a start. And they said they'll pay for the ticket on a train. And the only problem is, we phoned taxi company after taxi company and about 20 taxi companies said they would not take us to the train station, even if we paid. And I asked them, why? And about the 19th one said, because we legally don't, we're allowed to take you to the airport over the border to our state, but we're not allowed to take you to the train station in your state because you don't have a license to take people just in the state somewhere. We don't have a license for your state. So the next taxi company I phoned, number 20, I said, can you take us over the border five minutes and then five minutes back? It's only 10 minutes away to the drive to the train station. And they said, why do you do that? I said, because I want to get to the train station. So they said, okay, we can legally do that. We can take you over the bridge to our state, turn right and go back to the train station. Anyway, we eventually got to the train and it was very nice. But in the hotel, before anybody helped us, about the second night when I had no more money, I was in the middle of a desert. I didn't have money for food for my children. I didn't have money for water even. I thought we could have walked to the river probably. I remember after being thrown out of our flat, living in that little room, being chucked out of our country, not having the money to fly, the car blowing up, running out of money in the desert, not having enough food, not having a place to stay, it overwhelmed me. I didn't know where to turn. My wife was down as well. My children were down. I crawled. I went on my knees and I crawled to the bathroom. At this stage, I got a text message from South Africa and there was a couple, that wonderful, lovely, godly couple, but there had been a misunderstanding. They thought that I was against them for some reason and they were the only people in South Africa at that stage who supported us in our mission. They stopped. They said, we don't want to give you any more. Just about when I ran out of, they gave the equivalent of $150 a month, but they stopped. So here I am. I went on my knees. I went to the bathroom. I didn't have any person to turn to for encouragement at that time. I didn't have any circumstances to turn to for encouragement. But I did what the Bible says of, the Bible talks of, in Psalms, often, and this is something we as Christians can learn from very deeply, it's a powerful concept, is that David, so often in the Psalms, would not know where to turn. He'd say, I'm overwhelmed. I'm desolate. It's like my heart is dry. And then he'd say, I'm overwhelmed within me. But then he'd turn to who God is. He'd turn from his circumstances, from his feelings, from his self and his inability that overwhelmed him. And he'd turn to, not just the fact that a greater being exists, but if you read the Psalms, you'll see that he turned to specific attributes of God. But thou art gracious, but thou art good, but thou art true, but thou art perfect, and thou art sovereign. And it goes through all these, the self-sufficient, the all-sufficient, everywhere, seeing all things, knowing all things. The fact that God is justice, that He's equal, that He's good, that He's never changing, eternal and infinite, life and truth, reality. The fact that He's creator, the fact that He owns everything. All these attributes David would turn to, away from his circumstances, away from himself, and he'd turn to God there. But it wouldn't just be theology and doctrine. He'd turn to the God who is, who He says He is. When we go through hard times, we go through good times. So he'd turn to who God is. And down there on my knees, I found out again that God is who He says He is. And He encouraged me in my heart in a very special way. And so I'd like to read to you this verse right now. It's amazing. It says here, Isaiah 28 verse 12. To whom He said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest. And this is the refreshing. And then these sad words, yet they were not here. A few chapters later, it explains it a bit deeper. Isaiah 32 verse 2. And a man shall be in a hiding place from the wind, and a covet from the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place. And listen to these words, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. There's a man, and this man is going to be a hiding place. And this man is going to, from the wind, and a covet from the tempest, and rivers of water in a dry place, and shadows of rock in a weary land, where you need rest, and you need shade from what the sun is doing to you. You know who that man is? That man is Jesus. That man is Jesus. The one thing that never changes, your circumstances can change, your feelings can change, and your relationships with people can change. Even you can change. And you can change, health-wise, etc. But God never changes. And Jesus Christ, yesterday, today, forever, Jesus is the same. And He is that hiding place. He is that river in the desert. He is that rock in the storm. He is everything that He says He is. And we can turn to Him. And when I think of that old song, Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus, O soul, are you worried and troubled? No light in the darkness you see. There is light for a look at the Saviour, and life more abundant and free. So turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look fuller in His wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace. Jesus said, Jeremiah 31 verse 25, For I have saturated the weary soul, I have replenished every sorrowful soul. Now, in Psalm 32, we read that David understood this. He said to God in verse 7, Thou art my hiding place, thou shalt preserve me from trouble. Thou art my hiding place. And there is someone we can go to in life storms when we are weary. And that person is not going to take a hammer out and say, you evil for being weary. You are unspiritual. You should read your Bible more. That person is a hiding place. And He is there for the weary. And His name is Jesus. Now, two and a half years back, I went through about five things that led me to the point where, I won't say I went off my head, but I started having panic attacks. And I had many years of health. But there were five crises I went through that led me to basically being bedridden for a while. The first one was I had a loved one, someone that I loved very much. I would say it was amazing. We used to travel several hours to look after other people through the nights when they were sick. He used to be so kind to people. But he worked 14 hours a day for about 10 years, traveled to about 150 countries a year, and overworked and snapped. And I had to fly down and help this person who would scream at me to get him to a doctor. And I loved this person. And it was hard. And so instead of getting rest in between preaching two weeks at a time, I would be trying to help this guy. And so before I went on an international tour two and a half years back, I also got no rest. Normally I would take a few days off so I could be rested before you preach all over the places. And I got no rest. And I went there and the same time my granny started to die. Now she had cancer. And my grandfather, when he died of cancer, we were all around him. It wasn't the most painful death. It was very sad because he got thin and he was weak. But we were all there for him. Now my granny was a lot different. My granny, she died of throat cancer. And so she choked to death without being able to eat over three or four weeks. And you know, through life she was the most amazing person. I've mentioned before many of the things that they went through, the fact that they used to be rich farmers, had three farms, and yet because of sting from Monsanto they sprayed every second tree and every second tree died. So they almost went bankrupt. And eventually they were in this little house that was hired for them. They had no car at one stage. This wasn't always, but they came to a stage where they had no car, they had no electricity at stages, they had no candles, and they had no telephone at stages. And in a sense they had to go to other farmers. I remember going with my grandfather to other farmers before he died to get some food from them. And my grandfather through all of that was a prayer warrior and he used to witness to people while he was losing everything and telling them about Jesus. Amazing, all the things he did. But when my granny came to the inn, through the years when I used to visit her driving past when she was away from the farm and Grandpa was dead, she was at a nursing home. I used to come and stop there on the way and she said, you're not leaving, you're not leaving soon, you're going to stay for a long time. Because she hated being alone. And when my granny died, my aunt and my mother and the three sisters basically flew down from America, from Georgia and from wherever my mother was at that stage, and visited my granny in the last week believing that she would die in that time. And they had to leave because they couldn't afford another airplane ticket. And so all three of them left. My granny was alone. And when I realized my granny was alone, that she was going to die, I wept and I wept and I wept and I wept. I walked down the street just weeping. And you know, an amazing thing happened. God doesn't have to do this. There are many godly Christians who die alone in a sense. But my mommy managed to get back just before she died. And she wasn't alone. But you know, even if my mother wasn't there, she wouldn't have been alone. Because there's a hiding place, there's a person who never leaves us, never forsakes us. When our feelings forsake us, when our circumstances change, God is still there. At any rate, through all these five crises that happened in that year, culminating in this, I suddenly found my health going down. And I would be afraid of fans. But I love fans. I love air conditioners to this day. But I was afraid of these fans. And I was afraid. I mean, I don't know about fear, but my body would get in if I was near a fridge. And I would go to malls and people I just couldn't handle. I couldn't speak to people for more than three minutes and I was out for several hours. I couldn't speak to my neighbor for a few minutes and I was out. And I remember having these panic attacks. I felt like I was fainting. I'd have heart palpitations. I mean, everybody gets heart palpitations sometimes, but this is severe. And my whole body would give in. I'd have pains all over my head and all over my body. It was just terrifying. I couldn't read more than two verses of the Bible. I hope I don't sound like an old person in a nursing home complaining about all their things. But I felt like I was dying. Not that I knew what that felt like. And I remember with my four little children, I felt so incapable of anything that I walked past my little child and I just wept and wept thinking, if I do die, who's going to teach this child about Jesus? I know my wife is godly and she will, but I mean, how is she going to survive and teach them about Jesus? At any rate, I went to a chiropractor and I thought, perhaps there's something wrong with my back. I was so cross with that chiropractor because they had an air conditioner and this air conditioner was making my body feel terrible. And I was like, get to my back. And he's like, I'm not touching your back. There's something very wrong with you as you saw me sitting in front of him. He took me over to a Christian doctor who said, listen, you are depressed. And I'm like, I'm not depressed. I don't get depressed. At any rate, he found out, he tested me and my blood and so on. He wasn't the one that wanted to get me addicted to pills and stuff like that, luckily. But he found out that my testosterone level was the lowest of any man that he'd ever tested at my age, ever. It was about one-fifth of what a woman should have and about literally one-fiftieth of the level that a man should be. And that's not just for weird stuff. Testosterone, God made your body that you needed to concentrate, that you needed to handle stress. If it's very low, you will have panic attacks and you will have depression and a whole lot of stuff. A lot of symptoms of bad symptoms come out of very low testosterone levels. At any rate, I was put on an exercise regime and took some natural supplements and slowly recovered. Other people have told me that they had similar experiences, that they took three years to recover. I was preaching with them two months. It wasn't easy, but I was doing serious meetings again, in God's mercy. At any rate, I was worn out. But in this time, something interesting happened. I met one person and another person who heard of another person. These two people's lives were totally utterly changed. They were in a horrible situation, both of them, of what their spouses had done to them. At the end of the day, there was a little book that I wrote on forgiveness. While I could not speak to people, while I could hardly read three verses of the Bible, these people came to me and said their lives were totally changed. That just showed me that you might be bound, but God's Word is not bound. Your body might be bound through sickness. Another thing that's important is your identity. It's not your feeling, it's not your business. If you're a man, that's very important to know. It's not your family, even though it's important to be what you should be towards your family. If you're a woman, that's also important to know. Your identity is not a sickness, it's not your business, it's not your family, it's not your church, it's not how weary you feel. Your identity and your worth to come before God and to face the world is Jesus Christ. Now, one of the things that can weary us is finances. There's a guy in South Africa, he would work. In America, I noticed they actually pay you when you work, when people work. But this guy, like with many people, they would work for other people and then those people would pay some of their debt but not pay you for working for two, three months. One friend of mine, he used to go from work to work in so many other workplaces, would underpay him, half pay him, promise to pay him, didn't pay him. There's a verse in the Bible that says the heart deferred maketh the heart sick. My one friend, when I came down to Pennington in Natal, I didn't realize how bad it was there for my friend. He'd been elected for a while. It was basically a campground from which he would go to schools and slums and old age homes. It was his mission base. But the campground was not paying for itself, so it was an extra cost. I came down there and basically the showers had a few inch thick green fungus growing in it that gave people toe fungus. The roofs were falling apart. Water was dripping through it. There were no lights outside. It was overgrown in a sense. Everything was falling apart basically. People would come there. I was down there for that month or two before I had to leave for America. In that time I realized people would come, half the people, the few people who wanted to hire the camp so that a lower cost could be paid, they would arrive and they'd leave within five minutes when they see how terrifying it was. At any rate, this man who was there, my neighbor, he was a very godly person, but he'd inherited this problem and he had hardly any money. I remember one person came down to the bottom to hide the place, just one room, a little family. They called me and they said, you know that guy at the top, he says we have to move rooms because there's no light bulb. So I went up to this guy and I said, you can't do that to someone hiring a room. If there's a room to be hired, you have to have light bulbs. He looked at me with tears in his face and he said, Roy, I can't afford one light bulb. I was very clever by the way. Instead of moving rooms, I said, hey, I went to the other room, got a light bulb out and put it in the room that he was in. At least in Africa I'm clever. I won't say internationally. But this neighbor, I went to him once, a hardworking, diligent, sacrificial, and I said, can I see your fridge? He had five homeschooling children. He said, I don't want to show you my fridge. He said, my wife will kill me. I said, show me your fridge. I don't know why, I just thought I had to see his fridge. He said, okay, and eventually he took me through the fridge and there was one potato in the fridge. I said to him, how much money do you have in the bank? He said, 20 rand, that's equivalent to about $1.50 and food in South Africa is about as expensive as America. There was a guy, five children, one potato, working for God. You know, this guy who worked for the United Nations came there and fixed up a few things, but he was so proud. He looked at my neighbor and he just said, you're pathetic, you're running this place badly. Now, when I came down there, we fasted, we prayed, God started to work, some money started to come in, we actually fixed some of the roofs, we fixed some of the bathrooms, we painted some of the place. It's ten times, I would even say a hundred times better than when I first came down there. But, this guy came into the situation not knowing the sacrifice, not knowing that this guy would rather pay electricity or something for the camp than sometimes have food on the table because that's just to keep the place going initially. He looked at him and said, you are pathetic. I felt like being angry with that guy when I heard about that because he was discouraging a godly man who was weary. You know, the Bible says in Isaiah 42, verse 3, a bruised reed shall he not break, and a smoking flax shall he not quench. He shall bring forth judgment of the truth. God will not quench the smoking flax. John Bunyan said clearly in the Scriptures, sorry, not in the Scriptures, in the Pilgrim's Progress, the 6th most sold book in the history of time, the 2nd most sold book in the history of Christianity. He talked to the interpreter's house and there Christian was taken by the hand and he was shown this fire in a room and on the one side the devil is putting water on, buckets of water and it goes low, but the more water he put on, the more eventually the fire would go up. He didn't understand this and so Christian was taken by the interpreter to the back and there was a person putting oil into the fire. So the devil didn't know this and couldn't see this and couldn't understand this and even the Christian doesn't understand this, but as life pours water upon us and we become weary and we feel like our fire is going to totally go out, the Holy Spirit is putting oil on the other side because He loves us. God will not allow the smoky flax to be quenched. Now I could go through a lot of illustrations here, but my time is out for this online session. Some people are weary of getting saved, they even blame God for it. Some people are weary of so many different things, of themselves being saved, of other people getting saved, of loved ones getting saved, of various things in life, especially Christians and what Christians do to them. But I'd just like to end off here with a little song, with a thought and a song. The first is, when you look at Psalm 23, when you look at Psalm 23 you see these words, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. You know it doesn't say the Lord is my shepherd and He has awesome followers who are so easily to restore, to lead and protect, who never are scared in and of themselves. No, it says, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He leadeth me by the green pastures, the living waters. I'm not going to fear through the valley of the shadow of death because of Him, not because of me. I have this treasure, Jesus Christ, the New Testament says, in earthen vessels. This body is weak. Job himself said that he used to fear. When God called him perfect, looking back, he said, that which I greatly fear hath come upon me. In other words, when God called him perfect, he was fearing that bad things would happen one day, like him losing his children, etc. He was a human being, but he was a godly, God-fearing human being, who needed to go through the fire to come forth his gold, but who was godly and precious in the sight of God. The Lord is my shepherd. It's not that I'm wonderful and this perfect sheep, who never gets weak, who never gets tired, who never gets weary. It's He is wonderful and therefore I'm going to be restored and led to green pastures and living waters. My dad used to sing me different songs as I fell asleep. One of them I'll never forget. Many of you know this. It's Who Made the Mountains. I can't sing. I don't want to wear you with singing, but it went, Who made the mountains? Who made the trees? Who made the rivers that flow to the seas? Who made the moon in the starry sky? Somebody bigger than you or I? Then he'd talk about us children. Who made Noel? Who made Roy? Who made Samuel a bundle of joy? Who made mummy and daddy too? God who is bigger than you or I? Then he had a third verse, which many of you will not know. When you are weary, filled with despair, who gives you courage to go on from there? Who gives you faith that will never fail? God who is bigger than you or I? Amen. Please come back to the other messages. My mum later on, my dad, and two Saturdays a month for the next three months. Pray for us and go to KeithDaniel.info for more information on these meetings. Dear Father, bless and encourage and lift up those that are weary. In Jesus Christ's name, Amen.