Does Jesus Care

You know, God made it so obvious that he wanted to speak to us that he gave us 66 books full of words, heaped up wisdom. And we're going to read this morning, we're going to read Mark chapter 4 verse 38. And there in Mark chapter 4 verse 38 we read of a storm and Jesus was with all his apostles or disciples on a boat and the storm came and they were getting a bit scared and Jesus was asleep. We read, and he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow, and they awake him and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish? Basically they were asking Jesus, don't you care about what we're going through? Now, generally when people ask a question like that, it's not on a sunny day when everything is going well and everything is provided for, it's on a stormy day when things are going wrong and specifically when it feels like someone is not doing something about the situation when they can do something. And this is how the disciples felt at this moment, they felt that Jesus did not care with what they were going through in life. A lot of Christians feel this way throughout history and in the Bible. And I'd like to give a few examples from the Bible of people who felt like God had forgotten about them and had cut himself off from them. One would be David in Psalm 22 verse 1. Jesus quoted from this portion of scripture in the Psalms where David said there was a time in his life where he felt like God had forsaken him and he said, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And there was someone in Psalm 43 verse 2 that said these words, for thou art the God of my strength, why dost thou cast me off? Why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? And so we find in scripture there's various portions where people felt like Jesus had forgotten them, Jesus had cut out, God had cut himself off from them and that God was not thinking of them. And it's not only in scripture that we find godly people going through hard times that feel like God has forgotten them, but we find that many times the enemy will say this to us too. For instance, in the Psalms we find in Psalm 71 verse 11 that the enemies of one of God's servants said, saying, God hath forsaken him, persecute and take him for there is none to deliver him. And then in Psalm 42 verse 10, an enemy of God says to one of his people, and as with the sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me, while they say daily unto me, where is thy God? Where is thy God? Now I'd like to say something this morning. If you study the scripture and you go to the Psalms and you go to many other portions of the Old Testament, you'll find that there are two things that the enemies of God say about God not knowing and God not seeing. And the two things that the enemies of God again and again in the Old Testament say about God not knowing and God not seeing is that God does not know the sin that I do in the dark, and God does not know when you go through trouble. God does not know the sin that I do in the dark, and God does not know the trouble that you are going through as a man of God. He doesn't care. He does not know. He does not see. Charles Spurgeon said that the greatest faith is the faith that when a Christian, a saint, a person who is born again stands before a window where he calls out to God in the darkness of a storm of life and his troubles, and he looks up to that window where he longs for God to do something about it, and there's no face that comes to that window, and yet that person trusts God anyway. That Charles Spurgeon said was the greatest faith, when God does not seem to care and you trust Him anyway. And then perhaps a verse that is one of the most amazing verses in Scripture, you might not think so when you first read it, but to me it has become amazing when I talk to many Christians, and it's Psalm 31 verse 22, a Psalm that Jesus Christ also quotes from on the cross, and there this person who Jesus quoted from earlier on in verse 5 says, For I said in my haste I am cut off from before thine eyes, nevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplications when I cried unto thee. Now I know different families across the world, and I get phone calls sometimes, and I remember this year someone phoned me, and I wept after they phoned me because these people had, through so many trials and so many darknesses and so many storms of life, had been such an encouragement to so many people, and yet on the phone one of these people said to me, Roy, I think that God has forsaken us, and I cried because I thought, how can it be that someone that so stood for God, so trusted God, so encouraged other people in the darkness even though they went through so many storms in life, how could they come to a point after so many years that they said, I think God has forsaken me. And I said I'm going to send you a verse, so I took out my computer and I sent this verse to them, I said, this word in Psalm 31 verse 22, For I said in my haste I am cut off from before thine eyes, and yet God did hear me, and it was pretty soon evident that God had not cut him off. But it's possible for a Christian, someone who is following God, to say in their haste because you look around you and you see the storms and you've been through it many times but something just happens that's too much at that moment, the emotion, and you think to yourself and believe it, God has forsaken me. As this person in the psalm said, who Jesus quoted from on the cross in verse 5. I'd like to give a few examples from life quickly. One would be our neighboring country Rhodesia which became Zimbabwe and many years back what happened there, what happened in 1949 in China, and happened in other countries too at different times with the communists, they decided to take away a lot of the people's land and when they did this, when they took away the people's lands, inflation went up to about 2000% per day, the price of bread changed three times a day, it used to be the second largest economy in the southern half of Africa, there were a lot of rich people there doing quite well for themselves and out of the, I don't know, about six to eight million people that were living there, quite a few millions left that country because they were starving and many in the country till today are starving in a country that was once thriving. But I met many people who fled from that country and came down to South Africa when they lost their lands and the government took it over. And I remember an old guy that I met and he sat in front of me and he'd lost everything basically and he said to me, Roy, when they started talking about doing these things in that land, we got together as Christians across the land and we started to pray and we started to seek God and we got peace in our hearts that God would stop this. You know, David Brainerd got peace that the Indians would not do something that he thought they would do and they did it anyway. And he said, Roy, I've got a question, he said, why didn't God answer our prayers, we prayed across our country, we prayed and said, God, let them not take away the land and they did it anyway. I cannot trust in God anymore because he didn't do anything when we needed him. R.A. Torrey was the friend of Dale Moody, he was the principal of Moody Bible College, he was what became after Moody's death, the Moody church there in Chicago, he was the pastor of that church at one stage and he was used more than any other person who followed Moody at that time across the world in preaching and so on. R.A. Torrey had a little daughter and he loved this daughter and this daughter got very sick in the late 1800s if I remember right and it got so sick that he realized the daughter would probably die but then as the doctors were there, the sickness turned and this little daughter looked like it was going to get well and there was a medicine that the doctor had to give to the child if it was not getting well for it to get well and the doctor said, I'm not going to give this medicine to the child because it's obvious that this child is recovering and R.A. Torrey said that's great and he wrote a letter to Dale Moody and he said and a few other people, the child is getting well, thank you, you don't have to pray anymore. That night they were sitting at the table and they were eating food and a nurse upstairs that was looking after the child called them, screaming and they ran upstairs and R.A. Torrey saw his daughter heaving, breathing heavily on the bed and then as he knelt down before he could say a word to ask God to help him, the child was dead and he blamed himself. He said to himself, why didn't I force that doctor to take his hands and take the medicine and just put it in the child's mouth and then I would have my child still. Christians can sometimes be tempted to hate themselves for the things they think that were in their hands. You wonder why God didn't just give them the wisdom to do that. Because of the nature of the sickness when this child died, they were not allowed to have anybody at the funeral. They took a little casket and it was broken and one other person was allowed to go with and as they walked down to where they would bury their child, there was a thunderstorm and there were holes in the casket and the body of their little child with no one there to mourn with them except one person was filled with water drenching over the hair of the little child in front of them in the clothes. And they put that little child on the ground and Oratory had to go and lecture at Moody Bible College afterwards and as he was walking down the street of Chicago to get to that Moody Bible College, he fell down on the ground in public and he just howled out to God in anguish and at that moment God did something in his heart to encourage him. But he felt like God could have done so much at that moment. Jacob in the Bible, I don't know if you notice it, but the second time that he went to Bethel, God asked him where he was to build an altar there and when he did, he put aside, he asked his family to put aside all their gods that they had. He had been compromising before that and allowing his family to have heathen gods. They put it all aside and he made this altar to God to dedicate himself unto God and often when you dedicate yourself unto God, you start to go through things that do not make sense. Very soon after that, as he traveled down from Bethel, his wife died that he loved, Rachel. After that, he thought a time later, a few years later, that his son had died and then he went through a famine and it seemed like God was not giving him food and he must have wondered through these storms that he was going through, where is God, especially in light of the fact that his father had had a famine and God said to his father, Isaac, do not go down to Egypt and Isaac sowed seed and it brought forth in this famine with very little rain a hundredfold, the Bible says. God provided for my father in the famine, why are we almost starving? Genesis 26 verse 12. The question comes, does Jesus care? And the answer, of course, is yes, he cares, even when it seems like he could do something and he's doing absolutely nothing, it seems to you he's actually doing some things you don't know, he cares. The Bible says in Exodus 3 verse 7, these words, the Lord said, this is Moses, I have surely seen to Moses the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, I've heard their cry and it says, I know their sorrows. After God said that he would give them the land of Canaan and they went through at one stage generations of slavery and in that time they must have felt while they were in the slavery and being whipped and forced to work that God had forgotten them, that God did not care because God was not doing something to stop the storm that they were going through, but God said he had done three things, I have seen, I have heard and I know their sorrows. He knows your sorrows, Exodus 3 verse 7. He has a bottle for your tears, Psalm 56 verse 8. When it seems like he's asleep in a boat, Mark 4 verse 38, he's keeping the whole universe afloat, Colossians 1 verse 17. There's a little hymn which many of you know, does Jesus care when my heart is pained too deeply for mirth or song, as the burdens press and the cares distress and the way grows dreary and long, weary and long, oh yes he cares, I know he cares, his heart is touched with my grief, when the ways are weary, the long night dreary, I know my savior cares. I remember when my wife and I went through some things years back that made us cry a lot through the nights, how that song meant so much to us, that Jesus cared, because the scripture says he does, if I know it's true, no matter what life tells you. In the Bible it says in Isaiah 63 verse 9, in all their affliction, he was afflicted. When you as a Christian, as a child of God, as a follower of the Lamb are afflicted, when you go through hard times, he is afflicted, the Bible says. He feels it when you go through hard times. And it's interesting in the Old Testament to go to the places like I mentioned earlier where Jesus Christ, where Jesus quoted from on the cross, where he said, into thy hands I commend my spirit, where he said, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Because the people that he took it from were going through times that they thought like God had forsaken them. And when they went through that, they often encouraged themselves, as I mentioned yesterday, in some aspect of who God is. In Psalm 22 where David says, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He turns from this feeling of God forsaken him because of life, and he turns to who God is, and he says in verse 3, but thou art holy because of the holiness of God. He could trust in God, different than anything else in life. And so we find in Psalm 31, which I quoted earlier, I said, in my haste I am cut off from God. In verse 5, we find the verse that Jesus quoted when he said, into thy hands I commend my spirit. This person that Jesus quoted from was the one who said, I trust you with my spirit. I trust you if you kill me. I can trust you. You are trustworthy. But there was a time looking back before that in verse 31, sorry, verse 22, we look back to a time where he said, I said in my haste that I am cut off from before thine eyes, but I wasn't. And he could say into thy hand, I commend my spirit. Jesus Christ looked to a person who felt like he was cut off from God, and he quoted from him. Luke 23, verse 46, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. The Bible says that Jesus cares for us on many occasions, through the hard times. He's a friend that loves in all time, like Proverbs 17, verse 17 says, not just the good times, also the bad times. The Bible says in Psalm 62, verse 8, trust in him at all times, you people, pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us. God is a refuge at all times. You can trust him at all times, and you can pour out your heart to him at all times. That's what God wants. He cares for you. And when he says all times, it means all times. Not just when he's feeding 5,000 people, but when you're in a storm, and it feels like he's asleep in the boat, and he doesn't care. He does care. And because he cares, he wants you to pour out your heart to God. If you look at the Psalms, you'll see that David often acted like a, I won't call it a woman, but acting like an emotional wreck, because that's who he was. But he still came to God, and he poured out his heart as he called himself overwhelmed. As he said that the life was a terror and dread to him, and he could not understand what he was going through, and he didn't know which way to look, and he had fears. He poured out those hearts, anguish, and emotions to God who cared. Psalm 71, verse 3 says, Be thou my strong habitation, whereunto I may continually resort. That means all the time, not just through the good times, but also through the bad times. Psalm 55, verse 22, Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee. The Bible says you're supposed to cast it upon him, that which feels like a burden to you. 1 Peter 5, verse 7, Casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you. And you'll find throughout the Psalms that there will be people who respond to God, who says, Cast your cares upon him. And they'll say, I pour out my heart before thee, like in Psalm 142, verse 2. God wants you to know that he cares, even when it seems like he's doing absolutely nothing in the storms of life. God also wants you to know that he's in control, and this never changes, even when life changes. You know something that's amazing about Scripture? It says that the floods fear God. Have you ever noticed that? Psalm 93, verse 3 and 4, The floods have lifted up, O Lord. The floods have lifted up their voice. The floods lift up their waves. The Lord on high, listen to these words, is mightier, is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea. God's voice is mightier than the floods that lift up their voice in our life. And in Psalm 77, verse 16, 20 chapters beforehand almost, it says, The waters saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee. They were afraid. The depths also were troubled. We fear the floods. The floods fear God. That's what the Scripture says. And in Jericho and in the life of Gideon and other parts of the Scripture, you'll see that when the people of God heard of the fear of the enemy, it inspired faith in their hearts. And it should in us too. Satan fears and trembles, believes and trembles. Not only do the floods fear God, but the storms are still by God. He can, in any moment, still any storm that you're going through. The Bible says this, Psalm 65, verse 7, He is in control. He's the one, the God, it says there, which stilleth the noise of the seas and the noise of the waves and the tumult of the people. God can still storms. And Psalm 107, verse 21 repeats this concept and says, He maketh the storm a calm so that the waves thereof are still. When it seems like God is not caring about what you're going through and life is out of control, God could, if He wanted to, at any moment, stop that storm. And we have in Scripture three examples, at least. There's several storms in the Bible, but there's at least three examples of where God stilled storms. One of them would be in the life of Jonah, Jonah 1, verse 5, 15, sorry, and 16, when they had thrown Jonah into the sea and the whale swallowed her up. Basically, we read, the sea ceased from her raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord. Another example would be in the New Testament when Jesus Christ was sleeping in the ship. We find this in Mark 4 and other passages there, verse 35, 36, 37, 38, and 9, so on. He said, let us pass over to the other side. They got into the ship, and there were other little ships, and verse 37, there arose a great storm, a great storm of wind. The waves beat into the ship so that it was now full. He was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow. They asked him, Master, carest thou not that we perish? He arose and rebuked the wind and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. The wind ceased, and there was a great calm. Then there was another time when Jesus was, he rebuked them first and said, O ye of little faith. They asked, what manner of man is this that even the wind and sea obey him? There was another time when Jesus was walking on the water, and all of his apostles and disciples were in the ship. We know that the wind was boisterous. It says in verse 30, Peter walked in water toward Jesus after Jesus said he could. And I'm not going to tell you the whole story, but it's another time that Jesus said, O thou of little faith, after he got into the boat, and when he got into the boat, the wind ceased in one moment. Three examples from Scripture where two of the psalms are fulfilled, that God can stop the storms. He is in control. Job had boils all over his body, and in one moment, God turned the captivity of Job. That storm that Job was in, when it felt like God was not doing anything, God was in perfect control. But there's something that people say to me from time to time when it comes to God being in control. They say, I can understand when I'm in a storm and there's lots of waves around me and wind and all that kind of stuff. I can understand when my finances go bad. I can understand when my health is down, that God is in control and he could in one moment turn that storm. But what about when people are involved? People have a will. Well, I read a verse to you earlier. Maybe you missed it, but in Psalm 65 verse 7, one of the two verses that I mentioned about still in the storm, it says these words, which stilleth the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and then it says, and the tumult of the people, not just the waves, the physical waves, but people. God is still in control in those storms. Pilate said to Jesus, I am in control of your life, basically. John 19 verse 10, I have the power to crucify thee and the power for you not to die, basically. And Jesus answered, thou canst have no power except it had been given thee from above. Someone looked at Jesus and said, I have power over your life to kill you. And Jesus said, no, you don't. God's in control still, sorry. That's how it is. Jesus understood this concept that people are not in control of your life, even when it seems like it. Joseph, when he was thrown into a pit and he was sold as a slave and he went to Egypt and they destroyed his name and he was eventually thrown into a prison, sorry, into the prison, he must have thought at times that God could have done something to help him out in those storms that he passed through. And there were people, his brothers, that were doing these things to him. But God all that time was in control. It says in Genesis 50 verse 20, ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good. When people are involved, it does not change the fact that God is in control. And God wants us to know that. He wants us to know that he cares when you go through times that it feels like he's doing nothing. And he wants to know that you can pour out your heart unto him. And he wants you to know that he's in control. And also, God expects certain things of us through the storms. I would like to testify for a few hours, which I don't have all the failures of my life through storms. So you can know that I'm a very, not just a human person, but a very horrible person sometimes. But we'll come to that later. But it's very easy to talk of the victories, by the way. It's not so easy to talk about the failures. But God wants to teach us some things through the storms. He wants to expect certain things of us through the storms. And one of the things he wants to teach us is he wants to teach us faith. You see, storms are not there to show you that God is unfaithful or that he does not love you. Storms are there to teach you faith. He said, O thou of little faith. He wanted them to learn faith through the storms. And at this point in the sermon, you have to understand something very simple. And that is when it felt like Jesus was doing nothing, sitting in the bottom of the boat, lying down there asleep, that he'd already done something. He'd done something. The Bible says in Mark chapter 4, verse 35, before they got into that boat to pass to the other side, that Jesus said unto them, let us pass over unto the other side. Jesus gave them his word. He told them the final destination. It's not in the middle of the lake at the bottom of the sea. And then he went to sleep. You see, when it feels like God has done nothing, but he's given you his word already, he's done something already when you go through storms. So many Christians in the Bible and in history forget this. God has done something. He has given you his word. He's told you the final destination. You're going to get to the other side, my child. David, before David went through several years of storms where he felt overwhelmed, the Bible says, and he felt in darkness at times, and he didn't know which way to look because he was fleeing from Saul. He didn't always have food. And he didn't always have a place to stay. And he felt like he was being killed almost every day. Before David went through that storm, God told him you'd get through it because he said you're going to be king. This is not the end. Before Joseph was thrown into a pit and sold as a slave and sent off to Egypt and landed up in prison, God told him that's not the end. Your brothers will bow down to you one day. Before Paul suffered shipwreck, we read in 2 Corinthians 11 verse 25. He suffered shipwreck three times. He was given God's word that he'd get to the other side because he was told not only by an angel in Acts 27 verse 23 that you're going to stand before Caesar. That angel was just repeating a concept that was already given to him before he got on the ship. Because in Acts 23 verse 11, God says, be of good cheer, Paul, for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness of me in Rome. And he hadn't reached Rome yet. So even when he was in that storm and it was repeated by the angel on the ship, he had God's word to tell him it wasn't the final destination. So many people don't realize that God has done something already. He's told you while he's asleep in the ship, you're going to get to the other side. God wants to teach us faith in his word and the person behind the word. God also wants to teach us obedience. I often say, and I fail in this area at times, but how can you love your enemy if you never have one? There are certain things in Scripture which you can only obey. Jesus Christ learned obedience to the things which he suffered. It's impossible to obey certain commands of Christ unless you're in a storm. And one of them would be, if you don't have an enemy, how can you love him? How can you bless him? Isaiah 24, sorry, verse 15 says, glorify ye the Lord in the fires. The one thing that glorifies God more than anything in the fires is when you obey him and do what he wants you to do in those fires. You might know Eric Liddell, the guy who refused to run on Sunday. He became a missionary to China and his wife came back to North America and so on. But he, or wherever she was, sorry, eventually. And he stayed on there for a while. And in that time he was put in a Japanese concentration camp. And they had very little food. And those little children then, business people and missionaries that were together in this compound. And the Japanese were very bad to them at times. And he didn't have shoes towards the end. But they had these Bible studies. And in these Bible studies, Eric Liddell would lead of these Bible studies. And they'd go and look at the Sermon on the Mount and they'd read those verses where you're supposed to love your enemies. And some of the people sitting there would say, but does God mean that we should love the Japanese? And they were serious, by the way. And Eric Liddell, in his love, would say, you know, it doesn't seem like we're going to have to do this in heaven. It seems like we have got to do it down here. And there was a little boy. This little boy was sitting there next to the group. And he was looking up at these missionaries. And he really struggled with these Japanese. Because these Japanese were horrible. And he had hardly any food and stuff like that. But when he heard Eric Liddell do that and he realized that he meant it, he trusted God to forgive and to love the Japanese. And when he left that compound, many years later, that Eric Liddell died in that compound of brain cancer. He went as a missionary to Japan, to the people that did that to him in that compound because of the life of Eric Liddell. Eric Liddell believed in the word surrender. And he said what he meant by that was that you can't change everything in life and you can change some things. If you're in a workplace and it's terrible and your boss is terrifying and it's stressful on your wife and you've got no time for your wife because it's such a long work and you can go to another work, go to another work. He said but sometimes you cannot change your situation. And while you're waiting for your situation to change, while you cannot change it, you've got to surrender. And surrender means to obey what God expects of you attitude-wise in that situation. And the very last words on his lips before he died, as he died, was surrender. The Bible says of Job that when he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold. I mentioned yesterday that some people go through the fires and the storms because they've sinned, like it says in Peter. Some go through the fires because of their stupidity and some go through the fires because they're precious. Gold goes through the fires because God wants it to come out more pure on the other side. The Bible says in Isaiah 48 verse 10, I've chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. But now finally, we have a problem. I have a problem, you have a problem. Maybe you've noticed this problem since you were born and even since you were born again if those of you are born again. The problem we have is called self. I've got that. I look at the mirror in the morning. I see myself and you've got that. Many of the revivalists said the greatest hindrance to Christ's likeness is self. It's not anybody out there. None of your enemies and nothing you go through. It's just you. And I find that in my life many times. The greatest hindrance for Christ shining forth towards others in so many situations is just me. Nobody else. Francis Asbury was the greatest convert of John Wesley. He went to America. He preached to thousands of people on his little horseback and many, many people got saved and revival broke out in many places and drunkards got saved and religious people got saved and he was radically used to God. But he had a problem. And his problem was that he sometimes they would come and the people hated him for his preaching would take stones and fire and they destroy his entire, the houses that he would stay in. They would destroy his property. They would take everything from him and they would hurt him physically too. But after all this, he would stand there and he would just have love. He said love would just ooze out of his heart for these people as God just filled his heart with love for them. And he said it was absolutely amazing how he could love his enemies and bless them as they stoned and destroyed the buildings that he owned or that he was in of his friends. But he said it was so strange because he would go from there and a few days later someone would do something very small, and I can testify to this, and he would get irritated. Had something very small. I mean, they could beat him up. They could smash his windows and he had love for them, but something very small and he would be unchrist-like and he would feel depressed by this. And then the next day God would use him to save drunkards and save religious people. You see Philippians 3 verse 12 says, not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect, but I follow after if that I may apprehend that for which I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Paul did not claim to be perfect. He was wanting, striving more and more to have more of Jesus and less of self, like John the Baptist said. I sometimes say to people when they chastise themselves, okay, sure, if you are lying, stealing, committing adultery, go to your knees and get over it. But if there's sometimes a little irritation in your life and other things like that, you can listen to the Pineapple Stories, you can yield your rights, you can go through Bill Gothard's or whatever, 11 hours of anger control management, I call it, or whatever you want to do. But listen, give yourself a break and give yourself time to grow because the fact that you're not yet already attained to perfection means that at times it's going to show. That's just a fact. It's no excuse, but it's a fact. Paul, in Acts 15, verse 39, reads that the contention was so sharp between him and Barnabas that they departed the subtler one from another, and Barnabas took Mark and sailed him to Cyprus. That was Paul. He had a big fight with a big guy, and it's recorded in Scripture. By the way, I did not tell you that you should go out fighting now. Please don't. Self is a horrible thing, and God wants us to love. You know, in my own life, I remember years back, and I still sometimes find this, but I was driving down the road, and I went through a storm in life, and it felt too much for me, and it affected a lot of people. And I was shaking because I was so afraid of so many people that could get hurt in a very bad way. And I started to pray, and I prayed and prayed. I said, God, you have to get us out of this. You've got to sort out the situation. God, please, please, please pray without ceasing. As I'm driving down the road, God, God, get us out of this. God, help. God, please help. God, God, help. God, help us out of this situation. Please, please, God, do this, do this, do this. As I'm praying to God, I suddenly realized something. I'm not praying for anybody else. This thing is so big to me, and it's so horrible, and I can't face it because it can destroy so many people that I feel I have to get this answered, and I'm becoming selfish in this storm. That's what happens to Christians when they go through storms so many times. It becomes about me, me, me. And it was hard. I didn't feel like it, but I said, God, there's a lady there. Her son is rebellious. I want to pray for that person. There's a person there, a mystery. I know their finances are down. It's horrible. And I started to pray for other people, and often that is when God starts to answer your prayers, when you pray for others. God wants us to love. And the question is, when you've lost everything, what do you do? Jesus Christ on the cross. When Jesus was on the cross, and he had no finances, he had no physical health, he had no great ministry as he was standing up there on the cross. He, in essence, had lost everything and was going through the worst storm that any person could ever go through in the history of time. He was not selfish. He prayed for his enemies, for God to forgive them. He had time to witness to the person hanging next to him, and he took time to provide for his mother, a son to look after him. You know, the most beautiful moment in your life is when you echo Christ and not self. When the storms of life are taking everything away from you. In South Africa, they used to have 30 years back these camps, and they had thousands, up to 3,000 people were staying in tents. God was so working on these farm tent meetings that people would come from all over. You were not allowed to bathe for three weeks. I don't know how many Americans would go in their thousands to camps where you're not allowed to bathe. Some people admitted they snuck down in the middle of the night when no one could see down to the river and took a quick little bath. But most of them did not bathe for three weeks because God was working and souls were getting saved and the Holy Spirit was there and they were praying through the night and the word was being preached. But there were farmers who made that possible. Rich farmers in South Africa, they gave their farms, they gave the food, they gave the land, and they made those meetings possible. And I know of those farmers and their sons, old people now. And of them that backed those meetings, of the main people that backed those meetings but God came in literal revival and swept through there that affected the whole of South Africa different places later. There was a drought. And in that drought, which happened for a few years, the rain obviously didn't fall and they started to lose money and the next year the rain didn't fall and the next year the rain didn't fall and eventually all of them went bankrupt. In spite of God using their resources, they had nothing. They were on the street basically. And that's quite something in South Africa. You know, my granny and grandpa, they used to be rich farmers. My granny and grandpa used to take their money and support missionaries all over South Africa. And then there was a company from America that told them on their, a very multi-billion dollar company, one of the biggest in the world, I won't mention their names right now, they told them to take, it says on the package of poison that you put on their trees that hundreds of thousands of trees that they used to harvest. And it said there on every tree above five years old you can spray them. So they went to every second tree and they sprayed every second tree and every second tree died. There were many, many farmers who went bankrupt because of that. My grandfather lost many of his farms and eventually he sat in a little house and he had no electricity. My granny had cancer of the spine and she couldn't walk and they had to go and get food from other farmers. They had no car and often they had no money. And I remember one of the things that my granny so struggled with and my grandpa too, they said, my granny said, I so want to give to the missionaries but I can't like I used to. And I came to my granny's house and I remember going to her room. She had this little envelope and there was the equivalent of about $15 in there. And I was told later that was her food money that someone gave her. I'm sorry. It was so precious when she had nothing she was like Jesus on the cross. She cared about others. I know you know probably that story about the person who, the lady who burnt her arms to save a little child. And the little child later asked in life, but mommy why are your arms so ugly? And the mother said, told her the story of how she went into the fire to save her. And after that, that little child said, I don't even know the story's true but it made me cry the first time I read it. That little child said, mom your arms are the most beautiful arms in the whole world. And I asked her a question, do you have beautiful, beautiful hands, beautiful feet? You might fail at times, I fail at times. There was a girl in South Africa. She went to camp. She was saved before I was, long before I was and she was a cripple. She had a disease that would eat up her body and she was told that she would die before the age of 50. I remember at camp she used to, she would walk very strangely and she was an amazing Christian. Her Bible was falling apart. She loved God. She was born again. She said to me, Roy, I'm afraid to pray because I know that God answers my prayers. What I pray. She longed to be a missionary. She was told she would die. And as a 12 year old, she wrote into the Bible college to ask them, can't I go to Bible college? The Bible says in Romans 10 verse 15, and how shall they preach except they be sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things. Something I ask myself a lot. Now, I don't every place I go to talk about Jesus, but do your hands. Many times I go on a hill. What? I can take my feet and I can go up on a hill. I can take my feet and go into a shop. I can take my feet and go to Mount Vernon. I can take my feet and go to Springfield. I can take my feet and go to my the business that I'm not working, but working for a business every day. I can take my feet and go all of the places. I can get in the car and drive to the other side of America and take my feet and walk. But unless my mouth speaks about Jesus. My hands, how do I handle a tract? My feet are not beautiful. Are your hands beautiful? Are your hands making your feet beautiful? Is your mouth making your feet beautiful? Jesus was on the cross. He had nothing left and he witnessed or he helped the person next to him find salvation through himself. When you go through the storms, are you selfish every time? Or is there something of an echo of who Jesus is on the cross? I say to my wife, if a wall is falling down on a baby, I drop everything and I go get the baby before the wall falls down. Sometimes in South Africa I sit there and so many lives of people are suddenly falling apart. And I said to my wife, listen, I can't handle this emotionally. I feel terrifying, but I've got to get on the phone and I've got to save a few lives. I shouldn't be, but that's what I have to do right now. But in the long run, after the walls fall down and you're going through a time of storms, do you become selfish or are you an echo of Christ?