Prayer Mission 80 — George Verwer

First Aid for Spiritual Emergency

First aid for spiritual emergency. Now, in the midst of your mission, or the term in general, you're liable to have some spiritual emergency with other people. An injury will occur. People will get hurt.

And I found this in a little pamphlet and wrote it down. I have my quotation book. It's a really red hot quotation. I try to copy it from this little book, which is beginning to fall apart. Let me read this little quotation, because many, many people have been greatly helped by this.

In the event of injury inflicted by a brother or sister in Christ, follow this procedure. Number one, keep calm. Still your soul before God at the moment of impact. Be still and know that I am God. Rushing about trying to correct the injury usually causes greater damage.

Number two, apply direct pressure of understanding to the wound. What caused the incident? Could you have prevented it? Negligent? How does the offending party feel? What if things were reversed? Then what?

Three, wash the wound thoroughly with kindness to remove all harshness and vindictiveness. Number four, coat liberally with the ointment of love. This will protect from the infections of resentment and bitterness.

Five, bandage the injury with forgiveness. This will keep it out of sight until the wound is healed. Six, don't pick the scab off by bringing up the subject and opening your wound. Serious danger from the infection in number four still exists, and this could be fatal spiritually.

Seven, beware of self-pity, which is painful and touchy. This is often referred to as withdrawal pains evidenced by the injured one withdrawing from others, especially the one inflicting the injury. Remedy, accept apologies.

Number eight, prescription. Take a generous dose of antibiotics from the word of God several times daily, using prayer each time. This has a soothing effect and is definitely a very good painkiller. And number nine, stay in close contact with a great physician at all times.

Depend upon his strength, joy, and peace to help you in your convalescence. And ten, evidence of full recovery is noticed when the patient is in full fellowship and harmony, especially with the offending party.

Handling Theological and Interpersonal Differences

You know, in Operation Mobilization we had some very unpleasant experiences at times. People of different backgrounds and different theologies. It happens also at Bible schools. One Bible school in this country, a strong-minded puritanical Calvinist met with an Arminian in the loo, and they exchanged words and actually ended up exchanging blows.

I don't know who swung first, the Calvinist or the Arminian, but I think in either case God didn't get much glory in that particular situation. And as we move together, an interdenominational group, as you are in the Christian Union, which is one of the most beautiful things about it all, at times things get said, people get hurt, one of your theological corns gets tread upon, or one of your favorite doctrines gets thumped, or something even worse than that, like your own ego.

And that little first aid for spiritual emergency may be of some help. I'd like to just mention one other book. I've mentioned books this morning, so we'll not go into further detail about that. I'd like to mention just Operation Whirl.

How many of you already have this book? That is really encouraging. Now I don't know why the rest of you don't have a copy, but I want to encourage you, thinking of the verse, the first shall be last, because you don't have a copy, you are going to get a better deal than the brothers and sisters next to you.

You are going to get a hardback copy of this book, if you want, for lower than the price of the paperback, at least the present price. Somehow we printed too many of these hardbacks, and there wasn't a great market for them.

We're hoping some people will put them in their church library. Now we don't agree with everything that's stated in this book. It's one man's production, and it's quite a tremendous work considering that.

The new edition has a few of the strong, some of the right-wing political statements, just tone them down a little bit. We got a Cambridge graduate to do that, and we're encouraged by that. Patrick Johnson is a real man of God, and he was again the speaker at our conference, spent a year on OM recently, is now the research secretary of WEC, and he's the one who put this book together, and I just want to just commend it as an outstanding book.

It has prayer requests on almost every nation in the world. Someone said to me they felt it's the most valuable book they had next to their bible for prayer, which is the topic you have asked me to speak on.

So I commend this book, and we're giving it for £1 .50, and in order to encourage you, we're giving you a free cassette with the book, and many groups sell those things for £2, so that's a pretty good deal for selling them for a pound, or three for £2.

Now if you already bought one of these this morning, go back and just take your cassette. They won't be there that long, unless I can leave them with someone, but I hope you'll be encouraged to get Operation World and a cassette, preferably the one on maintaining balance, and that also will be a good follow-up on some of the things I'd like to say.

Prayer, Matthew 9, and the Call for Laborers

Let's pray together. Lord, we look to you now in this limited time, as we think about this vast subject of prayer, that it will be profitable, and that we will have something from your word. We thank you for the way you answer prayer.

We thank you for the mystery of prayer, and we believe that this mission and the battle of this mission will be won upon our knees. We look to you now to guide us in Jesus' name. Amen. Matthew chapter 9, one of my favorite passages on the subject of prayer.

It would help me in my speaking to know how many of you have not heard me speak before. I'm relatively new to you. That would help, about 70 percent, because I feel it would be good if I could just give my own testimony, linking it with this whole subject of prayer, because as far as I can see it, I was literally prayed into the kingdom by a praying woman of God.

Matthew chapter 9, starting at verse 35, and Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.

But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they were faint and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd. Then said he unto his disciples, the harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few.

Just think, this is the word of the Lord Jesus. Two thousand years ago, the harvest truly is plenteous, the laborers are few. And then that command, pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth workers or laborers into his harvest.

Jesus as a Man of Action and Compassion

So clear, isn't it? First, a picture of the Lord Jesus, a man of action, going from town to town and village to village. A few months ago I was going through Israel, visiting our teams. Our work in Nazareth among Arabs is led by a young dynamic carpenter from Nazareth named George Khalil.

And I was in Nazareth ministering at that little assembly there, and then traveling along the plain of Megiddo, and thinking of some of the things that took place there years ago. Jesus Christ was a man of action.

You know, there's a subtle philosophy around England that sort of basically says, if as a young Christian you do anything, it's probably youthful zeal. And I have seen more and more young people get into this passivity cult.

Not that it's an organized cult, but it's there. What happens? They launch out in some evangelistic thing. There's problems, they make mistakes, which is quite normal. And then someone comes along with a little super spiritual message saying, this is why you've had so much difficulty, you're in the flesh.

And if we're sensitive young people, we see our mistakes, we feel bad about some of the things we've done wrong. We easily fall for this line that we have sort of been in the flesh. And so we start backing off from activity, and we start withdrawing and getting into some kind of spiritual circle in which we mainly emphasize our own spiritual life.

I believe this is a subtle pitfall from the enemy, because I don't think we can emphasize our spiritual life without witness. Spirituality does not take place and does not grow in a vacuum. And I do not believe that because we make mistakes as young people, and I made plenty in my teens and twenties, and still do, that doesn't mean we're in the flesh.

Being in the spirit doesn't mean you don't make mistakes. It's not all black and white. Isn't that one of the greatest problems in our spiritual thinking? That we're all in the spirit, we're all in the flesh, and we don't know how to handle therefore our basic humanity factor or our limitations.

One of the greatest problems in my Christian life was a failure to accept my limitations and to live in the light of them. Having a definite program for spiritual growth and yet not copping out from facing the reality of my own weaknesses, limitations, and humanity.

And it almost got me in a lot of trouble. So Jesus gives the example and is the perfect picture of balance. As a man who knew the Father, spent whole nights in prayer, gave us the Sermon on the Mount and so much more, and yet is found going from village to village and place to place, healing and preaching and teaching.

And most of his disciples, if not all of them, were doing the same thing almost immediately after his death. Certainly not long after Pentecost. What an exciting challenge the Book of Acts is. I read the Book of Acts every year, sometimes two or three times a year, because without an understanding of the Book of Acts, we do not know anything really about the Church.

And it's a very important book, not as a theological textbook, but as an example of how God was working. And I appreciated one of the things stated by one of the speakers at Keswick this summer, who emphasized that there is no one pattern in the Book of Acts for Church life.

And this is one of the reasons I'm so strongly convinced that the Christian Union is biblical. It's true, the exact structure of the Christian Union is not found in the Book of Acts. Neither is the Sunday School, neither is the China in the Mission, neither is so many of the greatest things that God has ever used, including the structure that was found in the Welsh Revival.

But the basic principles, the mentality, the attitude, the reality is found. Donald MacGovern, that great Church leader and former missionary, had just come from Korea, where he was at a meeting of two million people, Christians, meeting in a gigantic airport on the runways.

What a man, close to 80 years of age. He ministered at an OM conference last month, and it was exciting. And he showed us from the Book of Acts that it was not the Church in Antioch that sent out the first missionaries.

If you study it carefully, you'll find that it was five men who fasted and prayed from that Church who sent out the missionaries. Now, I don't send them out, but here's a man who knows a lot more about the Word than we do, comes along and drops this little bomb on us, which we didn't mind because basically we see that the Holy Spirit works in different ways.

Just as we saw this morning, be filled with the Spirit, Ephesians, Colossians, the Holy Spirit isn't even mentioned. And there's a danger that one Christian union in Britain will try to copy another Christian union.

And sometimes we hear, oh, this is happening at the Christian union and so and so. This happened and that happened. Oh, if this only happened in our Christian union, how much more blessing we would have.

Now, over here in Wales, you're all a little more conservative, which is helpful. Tozer says that in the present religious scene, it's good to develop a little bit of reverent skepticism, not to believe everything that comes across the borders from England, just to have a little reverent skepticism.

And I am convinced that is basic for survival in the 20th century. So we see the Lord Jesus, a man of action. We see him a man of compassion. Verse 36, he saw the multitudes. He was moved with compassion.

Testimony: Prayed into the Kingdom

One of the great changes took place in my life when I first went to a foreign country. I'm a very ordinary person, I can assure you. I don't have a high IQ. I am nobody special until Jesus Christ came into me, just one in a million typical, loud mouth, extrovert, aggressive, hostile, lustful Americans.

But God found me. And in his providence, he found me because one woman had a burden to pray for me. And she prayed for me for three years. She had been praying for the school that I was attending. For 15 years, not only that people would be converted, but that they would be saved and sent.

Now, I'm not from a Christian background. I didn't know what the gospel was. If someone said, are you saved? I would have thought in terms of a flood or, you know, something in terms of water, as I was studying life saving.

Believe me, that wasn't easy for a skinny little character like me to rescue these gigantic fat people out of the swimming pool. But that's another message. My grandfather was from the Netherlands. He was an atheist.

My other grandfather was a more, a little more calm character. He was from Glasgow. He was a drunk. And my parents also didn't know Christ. My father went from the Netherlands. He was born over here to the States to find the good life.

And he was a materialist. And at 16, in many ways, I was a confirmed materialist. I had three businesses. I had learned how to lie. I learned how to cheat. I spent most of my weekends in the nightclubs of New York City.

And I'm not proud of any of it. And somehow, in God's mercy, this woman began to pray for me. And then she sent me a gospel of John through the post. And I began to read this little book in my spare time, sometimes only a verse.

I came home from a nightclub three in the morning. I was a total neurotic on dancing. If I couldn't find women to dance with, I'd dance with chairs, brooms, curtains, anything I could move with. My mother thought I had been vaccinated with a phonograph needle when I was a baby.

And to this day, music seems to do things to me. And it's difficult to discern the difference between what's Christian and what's non-Christian in the present music scene. But in any case, she prayed for me.

She sent me this gospel of John. And I began to read this, and it worked in my heart. Then Billy Graham came to New York City. I didn't know what an evangelist was. But somehow, I saw that he played sports.

I read a magazine article about him. I saw that he had a wife, played sports. So I thought he must be at least half normal. I went in to hear Billy Graham. I sat way in the back. To my surprise, I just had a letter, by the way, last week.

The girl who was with me, one of my closest friends who accepted Christ that night and then backslid, 41 years of age, just shriveled up, just like that, and died of cancer. The heavy piece of news as I was praying and hoping she would come back to the Lord.

But both of us, this girl and myself, sat there and we heard the gospel. You know, I'm a great believer in the sovereignty of God, probably the strongest biblical anchor in my whole theology. And I believe so much in the sovereignty of God, that even if the preacher is not perfect, and even if you feel his theology isn't perfect, and even if you don't like the invitation he gives, or something else about him, God is so great, and Wales needs this message, that he can still save souls.

God's Sovereignty and the Gospel of Grace

Would you spread that message around Wales for me, since I don't get here much? Because I'll tell you, there's some people over here, and in England, that feel unless everything is just so, and the theology is just so, and the historical foundation is just so, and everything is just so, God can't work.

And then they claim they believe in the sovereignty of God. They turn him into a midget on one hand, cut off his legs, cut off his arms, and then go around and say they believe in God's sovereignty. I will tell you, some of the greatest conversions in the world have taken place through very weak preaching.

I believe in preaching the gospel to include repentance. I even believe in preaching the gospel to include discipleship, because Jesus said to the multitude, unless you deny self, take up the cross, and follow me, you can't be my disciple.

And the disciple is not a super saint, he's just a follower of Jesus Christ. It's a very basic term for all believers in the book of Acts, and in the gospels especially. And I am just so convinced, that though on one hand we have our ideals, you know, and we're very much against easy believism.

We believe that we should not push people to make decisions for Christ, because we're not after decisions, we're after disciples. And we have a lot of other strong principles. We want to be the first ones to acknowledge that God uses others who we don't even agree with, and whose methodology may seem more superficial, and whose theology may not seem to be all that we would like.

The practical reality of God's sovereignty. The practical reality of the gospel of grace. And if you want a good picture of that, then read the Life, Volume 2, especially of George Whitefield. I'm in the midst of it.

A man who is very strong on working together with people, even when you did not totally agree, and yet stands as one of the greatest reformed Christian evangelists of all times, and always. And you know, often your strongest opposition comes from your own house.

And the greater divisions in England often come from within people of more or less the same theology. Often they're not even in contact with people from other theology, so they can't have any great big bust up with them.

It comes right from within their own house. This is why ultimately the way of the cross is a way of love. The way of the cross is a way in which we acknowledge the greatness of God, even when we ourselves feel so weak.

Compassion, Prayer, and Evangelism

And when we see the Lord Jesus looking at the multitudes, and then move with compassion. We long for this kind of experience, you know. When I went back to my high school after my conversion, that meeting with Billy Graham, my heart just broke.

All these secondary school students, third of them drunk on the weekend. I had a mission field. The mission field is always right where you are. I started right there in my secondary school, and we started nights of prayer.

We didn't know how to pray. You know, it's a wonderful thing. You can start to pray without knowing how to pray. You just say, Abba, Father, and you open your heart. And we had prayer meetings in the school, and there were prayer meetings in the gymnasium, and God moved in sovereign power through sometimes very weak preaching.

Some of it my own. All I did was read four things God wants you to know from a little tract I found. And when I asked people if they wanted to repent of sin, and drunkenness, and immorality, to meet in the school cafeteria in one of those meetings, 125 students, many of them broken, weeping, went to the cafeteria to trust the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior.

That was the birth of what today is known as Operation Mobilization. 15 years of prevailing prayer by one woman, and God broke in to one of New York City's suburban areas, roughest high schools or secondary schools.

By the time Billy Graham came back to New York, two years later, we were hiring buses out of liberal church parking lots, running people into the meetings. My own father, who made some kind of commitment to Christ in that meeting I just referred to, went to the Billy Graham meeting and got even a more sure faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Before God was done with that secondary school, over 200 had surrendered their lives to Christ. About a year later, three of us went to Mexico, again with this one great conviction, God answers prayer.

From our teenage years, because I went to Mexico when I was only 19, we had this overwhelming conviction, God answers prayer. That was the cornerstone of our whole movement. And I come to you 25 years later to say the same thing, God answers prayer.

God answers prayer. And as you pray for the Lord to work in your coming mission, you are going to see God work. It may not be exactly in the way that you expect, because God is a God of surprises, and his will is always bigger than you think.

Prayer, Missions, and God's Surprising Provision

Never did we dream when we started to pray for one ship in that converted pub in that funny little prayer meeting where some of us were laughing the laugh of faith, could God give us an ocean-going liner for world evangelism?

Did we ever dream that so many years later now would we only have one ship, but we have a second ship, two to three times the size of the first one? Not as a gimmick, because we've never had much publicity about this.

No one even knew we had this project. But as a practical way to carry people, because missions are spending a fortune flying their people to the field. And to be able to move 300 people in a training program and in a missionary invasion to work with the churches, to distribute millions and millions of books, 30 million pieces of literature from the small ship alone in 10 years, is just a down-to-earth way of getting the job done in an enormous world of 4 ,000 million.

How strange it is that on one hand we say God is great, sovereign, all-powerful, mighty, prayer -answering, omnipotent. And on the other hand, we practically speaking don't live any different than the atheists down the road.

And I feel very strongly about that. Practical theology. I had a lecture for six days at the continent's most conservative theological seminary in Switzerland. This was an event of last year. George Verwer, who has no degrees, I got too impatient and quit university to go to Bible college, and that Bible college didn't give any degrees except the third degree when you broke a rule.

And here I am lecturing in the theological seminary where these students spend four years learning Hebrew and Greek and everything else. To my utter amazement, the head of the seminary, after listening to me for six days, offered me the job of teaching in the seminary.

I don't think my OM leaders were overly excited about me leaving OM to teach in the seminary. But I say this because I think even our seminaries see the great need for dynamic practical theology. I have found that our seminaries, and I preached in many of them, are almost bankrupt when it comes to prayer, praise, worship, practical theology.

There's almost no training for ministers on what to do when they get married. And many a great preacher is an absolute flunky when it comes to handling his wife or his children. And the generation of reprobate children of ministers and missionaries is probably the greatest scandal in the 20th century church.

No wonder John White has written this tremendous book, Parents in Pain, which many of us as parents need to read. I believe with all my heart that unless the church again renews the emphasis on prayer, we are doomed to be orthodox in the head and heterodox in the heart.

Any church that neglects the prayer meeting is asking for trouble. They may be able to keep up the scaffolding, but the reality will soon disappear. Tozer said the great danger is that if the Holy Spirit left the average church, no changes would be made whatsoever.

Things would go on as usual. It frightens me because I know that can happen in O .M. It could happen to our ships if we don't walk closely with God and spend much time waiting on God. Andrew Murray, one of God's great men in years gone by whose books I strongly recommend, wrote a book called Waiting Upon God.

How we need this in our jittery generation. And before you go into this mission, you need times of waiting upon God, not just corporately, but individually. Wales is certainly one of the more beautiful parts of the British Isles.

Waiting Upon God and the Discipline of Prayer

You have no excuse for not getting out into the countryside for a half day of waiting upon God with an open Bible, with an open heart. It's been the practice of my life since I was 17 to spend a day or a half day as often as possible just waiting upon God, going into the mountains, finding a cave and just spending that time alone with God.

When I first moved to Spain, Spain was closed. Everything we were attempting in Spain was impossible. The opposition was great. And I went alone out into the woods of Madrid and waited upon God in a day of prayer and fasting.

And it was there often that God gave me the next move, the next plan for what he was leading me into. Oh, it wasn't all victory. Most victory is mixed with some failure. Like the time I went out for this great day and night of prayer.

I was going to fast. I've always found fasting hard. I don't have much excess. And one day fasting, I can barely stand. And for a while I was very extreme on fasting. And I thought I'm going out for this day of prayer and fasting.

And I took one piece of bread with me. I thought I'll need this after the fast to get back. And I was going to pray on into the night. And it was Spain, the weather changes. I didn't realize that it changes very quickly from the day the sun is out to night.

And I must have fallen asleep somewhere around nine o 'clock. I've always been very good at sleeping. I'm in some ways naturally lazy and always love the sack. Alan Redpath said the greatest spiritual problem in Britain or one of them is blanket victory.

You know, just get the blanket off in the morning and get up and get in the word. Anyway, I fell asleep and it got cold around midnight or one. So I woke up and I woke up. I grabbed for my breath. God, I'm all alone.

Who stole my bread? Obviously some animal had come in the night during my intensive prayer that had turned to intensive sleep and had stolen my resources. Then the worst ordeal came when I attempted to make my way back home and ran into a pack of about 15 dogs.

That was a great, courageous Christian claiming all the verses of Timothy. I can assure you I am scared to death of dogs. But somehow I made it home. Yes, failure is is often there when we attempt to have a day in prayer or half day.

Why is it that we understand that a doctor will take maybe six, seven, eight years before he's a master surgeon? But we think that we're going to learn the art of prayer in a couple of weeks or one term or a few messages and a few attempts.

Don't be discouraged in your praying. Whether you've fallen asleep or your mind has wandered or you found your prayer was not answered, don't be discouraged in your praying because God will have to test you.

As he allowed Job to be tested, so he will test you. One of my favorite books is The Mystery of Providence, one of those old Puritan books that needs to be re-read in this day in which we all want instant everything, instant holiness, instant victory at Cardiff University, instant revival or at least near instant revival and all the rest.

I don't find that in my Bible. I find the battle, the struggle, persevering prayer. I remember Dr. Francis Schaeffer has always been one of our closest associates in Europe. Dear man, very seriously ill with cancer.

I remember him answering questions at the World Congress on Evangelism and answering questions about prayer and pointing out that going to God in prayer is not like going to one of these little machines in the railway station where you put in your right coin, you pull the lever and out comes your little chocolate bar.

God works with us as human beings and therefore into every transaction with God comes many different human factors and that will include suffering. Edith Schaeffer, I believe, has written a classic book on the subject of affliction.

I was re-reading part of it again this week about her experience with a dentist. Have you ever had any really good, glorious dentist experience? You know, we can be so brave when we're singing our hymns on Sunday.

Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war and on Monday we're scared stiff even to march into the dentist's office. He's only going to check your teeth. He's not going to take your mouth away. But sometimes things go wrong and with Edith Schaeffer it all went wrong and she went through two-year nightmare with her impacted dose of reality in this very superficial day in which we live and I would commend it together perhaps with smaller books like No Easy Answers.

Every Mission Must Begin in Prayer

The Lord Jesus Christ saw the multitudes. He was moved with compassion and then he told us to go. No, that came later. He told us to pray. Every real mission has to be born in the prayer meeting. Every real mission has to be born both in the prayer closet of those in the mission and the prayer closet of those who maybe are not there but they're involved in one way or the other.

If we don't take more time in prayer, it's just a practical problem, we just cannot possibly pray for all these things. I've often had people say to me when they know that OM is very strong on extended prayer meetings, we have a night of prayer on Tuesday, we have a full day of prayer on Thursday and that doesn't make us more spiritual and maybe because we're weaker.

If you can do in one hour what it takes us to do in a day, praise the Lord, move forward into battle, we will follow in your smoke. But most human beings, it takes them an hour just to get their hearts softened up.

They're so frostbitten from the present day evangelical scene, waiting upon God, worshiping God, confession, then as we discern the will of God, moving into the frontline attack of the ministry of intercessory prayer as we're taught in the word of God.

And people say, well what do you do all night in a night of prayer? First of all, a night of prayer for us usually ends at one or two or three in the morning, doesn't mean we go through every time to six in the morning.

Our Indian brothers sometimes do that, they're a little stronger than we are. But you see, we're burdened for the whole world and we believe in specific prayer. We have prayed for specific things about China that have just been fulfilled.

I have just a few months ago come from China. We've had teams in China for the last three or four months. I can't even tell you what some of those teams have been able to do. And now very top government officials are asking us to bring the ship Lagos to communist China.

I don't want that in print anywhere, but you can pray about it. And God and his sovereignty has linked us with the churches in Singapore and Malaysia. If we could ever get a linking with churches in Wales like we have in Singapore, I tell you, we'd have a thousand Welshmen on the move for God in the next three years.

That would be the greatest missionary miracle in the history of Wales. But the church in Singapore and Malaysia is alive. They want to be involved in world missions. They are encouraging their people to move out.

They are supporting them all as they move out. And we have many of them, you know, I have over a hundred, and many of them speak Mandarin Chinese. And they're on their way to mainland China in the next couple of years.

There is a complete open door in China today for overseas Chinese people. Malaysians, of course, can't go because of their government restriction, depending, of course, on their conscience. But I believe with all my heart, God is going to do something in China.

And that is because of prayer, years of prayer. And we believe other nations also can be invaded firstly by prayer. And that's the way we're going to see the victories. When we first went to Mexico, and I was back a little while ago about to share that experience when I went to a foreign country, I went out to a rubbish tip.

Global Mission and Compassion for the Suffering

We call it in America a garbage dump. And people were living in this place. People, little children were eating garbage soup, soup made from just what people threw away. I had never seen such poverty.

I have always been from a sort of middle-class bourgeois background, but because of various reasons, been incredibly sensitive to poverty. Even when I went back to my hometown, Patterson, New Jersey, which is now a very poverty-stricken place, it's just overwhelming.

And when I walked through that rubbish tip, that awful place, and saw people living, little babies with 50 flies walking all over their bodies and in their mouths, I just couldn't believe it. I thought, where have I been?

What strange place have I been confined to for 19 years of my life that I haven't realized other people are suffering so much? As I walked away from that place, I recommitted my life to the Lord Jesus.