Accident in Spain - 14-4-82 (Zaventem 23-4-82) — George Verwer

Our Father, we thank you that you give grace, and when the burden grows greater, the grace grows equivalent and even greater. And as we've visited with Jonathan, we've seen just what your grace can do.

And the reality of your ministry, in moments of crisis, people, most people, would be in utter despair. You, because of the reality of your Holy Spirit, give hope and grace and expectation. Lord, we believe that you want to speak to us individually.

We believe you want to speak to us as a movement. I don't think we are, perhaps, as a movement, slow of heart to hear, but we sometimes seem to be a little slow to obey. We ask, Lord, that you'd help us to, in our own lives, know what you want us to do in these moments and these days ahead.

We pray for Marguite, and she's visiting with Jonathan now, that you'd minister through her the grace. Thank you, Lord, for all the little pieces in this unusual puzzle of life that you have put together.

And we know that there are things we can't understand here, but that we will understand all so wonderfully someday. Guide us, Lord, now, as we just consider something from your Word and as we think toward the future.

We ask in Jesus' name, Amen. Amen. Well, I think this is a very special time in the history of OM. And this particular tape will probably be listened to by a high percentage of OMers all over the world.

The Accident in Spain and the Need for Prayer

So, it's good to have a few people who are actually here, that I can just share these thoughts that have come to my mind as a result of the accident in Spain, in which our brother Pedro Arbolet has been injured, broken arm and a broken leg.

I'm saying some of these things because some people hearing this tape won't even know about this until the moment they hear this tape. And he was driving a vehicle coming home from Portugal, and Jonathan and Trevor were in the back of that vehicle.

Trevor Allen, who has serious injuries to his ribs, splintered vertebrae, needs to lie in the same place. He's gone home now, near Barcelona, in Barcelona. He has to stay in the same place for about six weeks, so we want to remember him and write to him.

I'm sure Jonathan will be getting a flood of letters. He's already getting many, but some of those other brothers are not as well-known and their injury is not as serious. But we know they will need our encouragement as well, down there in Spain.

Pray for their wives, Trevor's wife Manoli, Pedro's wife Antonia. And then in the same accident, our brother Jonathan, as many of you know from the telexes, had a break in his, they call a complete break in his spinal cord between vertebrae six and seven, which means that doctors, including one of Spain's specialists, a man that we were in an amazing way able to get to visit Jonathan all the way from Barcelona.

He even, with the permission of his patient, postponed surgery on this patient in order to take that whole day and fly to Guadalajara. And give us a second opinion, a very important opinion, on Jonathan's position, whether he could be moved, and a number of other things.

We praise the Lord for many, many answers to prayer in connection with everything that's happened in the last few days, to give Jonathan the best care, to get prayer mobilized, and to determine just what was the best course of action.

I've just come from visiting Jonathan. I tried to go immediately after the accident. Very seldom in 25 years since I've had a passport have I ever been hindered. I can't ever remember being hindered going anywhere for losing my passport, once I was delayed and had to run around and get it.

But I just could not find my passport. We've had major, major searches. We never did find it. And I think that was in the providence of God, because there were dozens and dozens and dozens of communications and phone calls that needed to be made, in connection with all that was taking place.

Some of the initial communication, the facts weren't even straight. You may have heard, initially thought it was a curved road. It wasn't a curved road. Of course, with OM, it's just a network of people across the whole world.

Everybody immediately wants to know. It's just unbelievable, the complexity of communicating just to our own people. But the Lord worked it out. On Monday morning, first thing, got to the embassy, new passport, tried again.

I had my luggage checked in, just about going to the barrier, get on the plane, decided to phone my wife, found out the doctor had already seen him, and wanted him moved immediately. I actually ended up going down into the bowels of Gatwick Airport, hunting for my suitcase.

And I got it back, got my ticket back, and went back home and made the necessary phone calls to get this Swiss Air Rescue Service and the other things set up for Jonathan to be brought back. They thought he'd come back actually a day later than we were able to get him back here, so we were thankful for that.

And then I didn't feel I could come over to see him when he first landed here because I didn't think he'd be able to see anybody. I decided to take my meetings there. Anywhere I move, I have to cancel meetings, except today.

I had meetings in Cornwall last night, came through the night from there by train, fly out tomorrow through Minneapolis. So I'm sorry I won't be here very long. I think we really do have a lot to thank God for.

If Jonathan is thanking the Lord, I don't think anybody else around has any excuse for not engaging in thanksgiving and praise, even though we know, some of us know all too well what's involved. In some ways, the Lord has prepared me for this.

Christian Reflection on Suffering and Healing

For the last couple of years, I've been very much wrestling with the subject of suffering more than any other subject in the Scriptures. If you've heard any of my messages, you know how this occupies my mind.

I just finished speaking on the doulos, giving a very, well, a different message than I'd ever given before, about the basic suffering that often comes upon us as human beings. Not necessarily suffering for the Gospel's sake, but other kinds of suffering.

It's a whole list of things. The Lord led me, some years ago, to a quadriplegic person who went to the same college I studied at. It was his sister, Prita, the leader of our work in Thailand. He was only a volunteer leader.

He's with the Lord now, died of cancer. I visited his sister, total quadriplegic. Quadriplegic means no movement of the four limbs. Jonathan is a paraplegic, means he has no movement of his legs. There this woman was, back of Prita's house in Thailand, on one of these strange kind of beds.

Everything totally paralyzed from here, right from here, nothing. Then all of us, of course, have in some way been prepared by the film Johnny. Jonathan has seen that film. I haven't seen the film. I read parts of the book, read part of the second book and ministered together with her in Chicago and heard her testimony.

Then lately, in England, we've been greatly exposed to a man named Max Sinclair. His book has just come off the press. Valgary, the chairman of our board, had just finished reading the book the morning that I phoned him to tell him about Jonathan.

Max Sinclair had a similar kind of accident. He was really in bad shape. He never thought he would ever, ever walk again. Through prayer and through the best medical care in the world, Stoke-Montgomery Hospital, the hospital in England that specializes in paraplegic people, this man is walking.

It's been years, a couple of years. They found out that his spinal cord was not totally severed, but was just extremely pinched. Of course, Christians lead mainly through prayer. All the medical people, they sometimes have different explanations.

I talked to the man who was responsible for Max Sinclair. We were in consultation with specialists in about four or five countries in order that we might understand and make the best possible decision in regard to Jonathan.

Now, we know the Lord could choose to raise Jonathan up. There are not too many cases in history of people with his same situation, if the diagnosis is correct, that have ever been raised up. But we know that God could raise him up.

I don't think Jonathan has any doubt that God could do that. But he may have some doubt as to what God chooses to do in this particular situation. Now, this is where, in IM, of course, you could get into some controversy.

One sister that was with Peter Maiden and I when this first happened, she just couldn't believe that we weren't just all immediately claiming immediate, instant, total healing. And it was somewhat a rebuke to us that we had prayed for total healing.

I think most of us pray that at least some time or other. And then we can walk around with a guilt complex the rest of our life that in our heart we didn't quite believe in or weren't even quite sure what it was to believe.

And the more you read on the subject, if you read widely, as I've read on the subject of healing for 27 years, sometimes the more complex it gets. But we're still praying. Maybe the Lord wants it to be an inch-by-inch battle.

We like to battle in prayer for his fingers. We saw him exercising his arms today. It's quite amazing. When we first told the specialists in England about his arms, they were very encouraged by that he would have so much movement in his arms.

Sometimes the world is a rebuke to us. And I think I was rebuked this afternoon as this Pakistani Air Force pilot came wheeling in. And I think he had even been in a plane crash and never been hurt. But in a car crash, he was declared, I think, almost quadriplegic.

I don't know what he said. He only had the eyeballs. Everything was paralyzed but his eyeballs. He came wheeling in to meet Jonathan. Bright, chirpy character, making all kinds of jokes from the horror.

And just shared a little bit about life in that hospital. I'm sure Jonathan's going to have quite a ministry in that hospital once he gets a little more mobile. You have to mainly talk to Jonathan through the mirrors.

Otherwise, you're looking down on him. So you sit and relax. And I gave him a brand new stereo and left him with a half an hour of Mantavani. It looked like he was really going into orbit. And the Holy Testament on tapes and the Psalms and a few other psalms and hymns and music.

He might get some encouragement out of that. I'm sure he will. So we want to be praying. And you're going to have the privilege of visiting him. It has to be very slow and present. And I really didn't even stay there very long.

I was in there and this lady came in to do all kinds of things to him. So I went out and we came back and gave Jonathan some ice cream. That was the case as I did. And then somebody else came in and gave him his exercises.

I met Margit briefly and she was feeding him. Isn't it amazing that this hospital, one of the best hospitals for this kind of accident case, is a walking distance from Margit's, from their house. I mean, this is amazing.

Some people have to move their entire family in order to get the right treatment. Because it's very important that your family be with you or around you during this treatment. Doctors even say it's important that the person, that John is not taken away from.

Now the main thing that Jonathan asked are his heart, his tongue and his brain. And all three of those are in absolute top condition. And maybe he's going to be forced to delegate more under his new ministry or new operational base.

He's always had a little difficulty delegating some things. He likes to run around. We just don't know what the Lord has. The Lord is going to maybe surprise us. Maybe surprise some people there in the hospital.

But we want to pray. And we want to maintain our own spiritual life in the midst of this crisis. Because there's no way that we're going to continue in this task of evangelizing the world with 1 ,600 people.

Some people want a lot more. I actually am trying to keep the numbers down. With hundreds of vehicles and two ships. There's no way that we're going to go forward without having further crises. You know, just before this crisis, my close friend Roger Foster got a phone call that his son, 15 years of age, was in a hospital with cancer.

He cancelled all of his meetings. Spring Harvest and flew back to London. They mobilized tremendous prayer. They gave him this chemotherapy treatment. They thought all his hair would fall out and all kinds of things would happen.

And that hasn't happened. And they've just taken a further check and there's no sign of this cancer in his lung. Whether they totally have it yet, I can't say. It's hard to keep up with all that's happened.

But we know that as we go forward in this tremendous work, there are going to be crises. He's going to be suffering. Jonathan was sharing with me today. He's not always an optimist, but he seems to be quite optimistic right now.

And he was just sharing how he hasn't had really too much pain. What he meant by that, I don't know. But he doesn't seem to be in a lot of pain right now. He's had a hard night. He didn't sleep much last night.

We can pray about that. Later on, from what I understand of the treatment, he will be getting there. They turn him right upside down on this bed. This Pakistani pilot said that was... He didn't go for that.

He was a pilot. They used to go upside down. I don't know how Jonathan will handle the upside down treatment. But it certainly is something, regardless of any human factors involved in the accident, that obviously God has allowed.

I think some of us are a little slow to say we believe God caused it. I heard a wonderful message by Dr. David Siemens, the teacher and preacher at Asbury, at the church at Asbury, where a lot of the students go.

Once giving a beautiful explanation about the permissive will of God. I'm afraid I can't explain it as well as he did. But God does allow things. We are his children. We are his children. He does protect us, but he allows things.

It's amazing how one of the main books being read in the last couple of years is Destined for the Throne. Don't Waste Your Sorrow. Maybe it's time to reread that. Another major book that we've been pushing all over the world, we've brought out the whole edition, is Affliction.

And the Lord knows how we have felt very strongly that we needed to communicate balanced truths on this subject. Another book we've been pushing a lot is Where is God When It Hurts? And books that bring a balanced teaching about suffering.

Some of you know the Malcolm Muggeridge quotation about the dignity of suffering. That one really blew me away when I first read it. And you know the tremendous argument that as evangelical Christians we have against euthanasia.

Suffering, Compassion, and the Dignity of Life

What about all these old people? Some of them have lived for weeks, have weeks in pain, in continual pain. They don't die. Sometimes people even start praying they'll die and they don't die. Marilyn Sears' father has been in and out of the intensive care so much, she hasn't been able to return to the work.

I don't know how much pain he's having in that. Certainly the emotional pain alone is very, very great. And maybe, in God's sovereign purposes, he is going to help O .M., through this experience, to grow up a little more, to become a little more mature, a little less naive.

You know, you can preach about balance until your eyeballs fall out. But God has to allow things into people's lives to bring them into balance. It was crises in my home with my children, with my wife, with myself, that taught me more about balance than any of the books I read on the subject.

And, of course, I'm still learning. But let's look at a scripture that the Lord used in my own heart during this time. I think there's a place for sorrow. I don't think we all are going to run around, you know, with, ha ha, this has happened.

There's a place for sorrow. I've had seven days of tears bottled up. I think I left them all on the floor by Jonathan's bed. I hope he knows how to swim. But, you know, we're all human beings. And if I get through this paper without a few tears, that will be great.

That's probably why the Lord left me in London. If I'm a little bit away from something, I can objectively attack it. But when I get near, I just, you know, there's something in me that just starts to come apart.

And I think most of us are going to have our great struggle over this when Jonathan's wheeling down the driveway in some electronic wheelchair. Especially those of you that may be hoping rather than praying, as all of us would in one sense, that he would be able to walk.

I think you need to understand if treatment goes at a normal pace, he'll be many months before he'll be ready even for the wheelchair. In some cases, he may be ready earlier than that. But this is a very serious thing.

And I think you realize that years ago, this happened to people. I mean, he has broken his neck. I mean, years ago, if you talk about a man breaking his neck, I mean, that was it. You didn't expect to see him around anymore.

But somehow today, medical care, things are different. Well, let's look at this scripture in 2 Samuel chapter 12. Now, any comparison we may have with a modern situation, a contemporary situation like Jonathan, and something from the Word of God, the situation may not be identical.

And this situation is not identical, what I'm going to read here. But there's something I believe we can learn from this passage, even though the situation is not identical. Nathan has just rebuked David, and David is now praying for the child.

Verse 15. After Nathan had gone home, the Lord struck the child. The Lord struck the child, that Uriah's wife had borne to David, and he was ill. Now, David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted, he went into his house, and he spent nights lying on the ground.

The elders of his household stood beside him to keep him up from the ground. But he refused. He would not eat any food with him. On the seventh day, the child died. After all that prayer, fasting, the child died.

David's servants were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they thought while the child was still living, we spoke to David, and he would not listen to us. How can we tell him the child is dead?

He may do something desperate. David noticed that his servants were whispering among themselves, and he realized that the child was dead. Is the child dead, he asked. Yes, they replied, he is dead. Then David got up from the ground.

After he washed, he put on lotions, changed his clothes, went into the house of the Lord, and worshipped. Let's read that again. Then David got up, after he heard the child was dead, from the ground. After he had washed and put on lotions and changed his clothes, he went into the house of the Lord and worshipped.

Then he went to his own house, and at his request, they served him food, and he ate. His servants asked him, why are you acting in this way? While the child was alive, you fasted and wept, but now that the child is dead, you get up and eat.

He answered, while the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, who knows, the Lord may be gracious to me, and let the child live. But now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again?

I will go to him, and he will not return to me. It's very easy when something like this happens, for subtle forms of regret to come in. It can come in, especially to the people that might have been in the accident.

And I think always the one who's driving the car, regardless of what the circumstances of the accident are, that person always has a little bit of an extra battle. And I know that in different trials that I've faced in life, regret has stuck its ugly head up in a very, very ferocious way.

And I just was again reading a book the other day, a book about leadership or something along that line, and it just pointed out the absolute drain that regret is, even on our emotions. And just as David seemingly in this situation was not bitter with God, and was not filled with malice or regret or some other emotion, so I think in this accident, and in this situation, the Lord doesn't want us to get involved in some form of regret trip.

If only we had done that, or if only we had done this. That doesn't mean we can't learn on a practical level from some of these experiences, and that is something separate that has to be dealt with down the line.

But I believe that it's such a beautiful picture for us to gain something from at this moment. God wants us to worship. God wants us to lift our hearts in thanksgiving for all in his mercy. 23 ,000 people have been on Operation Mobilization in 25 years.

And in those early days, I will tell you, it wasn't as safe as it was today. With the many improvements we've been able to make, and a lot of other things that we do. In 1962, I was the only truck driver, apart from one other Australian man in the whole work, and I wasn't a truck driver, I can assure you.

I just happened to have a little more experience than the rest. There was no mechanic at all in 1962. And we distributed 25 million pieces of literature covering, I mean, I can't even tell you how many miles, figured out all over Italy, all over Austria, Germany, Holland.

People driving vehicles. I mean, I remember Dale Roton for years was telling me he didn't believe in glasses. He was reading books, sight without glasses, squinting, trying to figure out what it was saying.

And I don't remember if he was wearing his glasses by then or not. But he had one of those very, very big lorries, big furniture lorry, and he was driving all over Eastern France. We could have so easily, at any stage of this work, I remember crossing the Alps absolute petrified.

25 people in the back of this old lorry. At any stage down through these years, we could have wiped out whole truckloads of people. When I was in Nepal recently, the very road we were traveling on, a bus just right over the edge, they're all wiped out.

God has been very, very gracious to us on the highway. And yet somehow, in God's purposes, he's allowed even the one who always teaches the, gives the exhortations on driving safety and all that kind of warning to be in this kind of terrible accident.

And I think that we need to. As we've been praying, many have prayed the Lord would raise him right up out of the bed in Madrid. It hasn't happened. I think we need to specialize now in worship, thanksgiving, and praise, waiting upon God.

I think there's some subtle ways the enemy can try to use this. You know, in any work like OM, the enemy isn't sitting still. Far more subtle things the enemy can work than, let's say, getting us into a car crash.

That isn't his major method. It certainly seems to be an unusual thing. The number of missionaries killed in car crashes is phenomenal. It's hard to believe that sometimes there's something sinister going on.

I don't know. I don't know. One of the best up-and-coming young preachers in America, a young man named Dahan, somehow got the inspiration eight months ago to learn how to fly a small plane, something we never got along with in LA.

He took it up and he never came down. He's dead. And his wife's first husband was killed also in a small plane. Five missionary leaders were all killed in Alaska just recently in a small plane. This morning in Brown, they showed a Super 8 teaching tape that I made about two years ago.

I don't know if it's ever been shown here, but I open up by giving the illustration of that Whitcliffe mechanic who, for a moment, turned away when he was tightening a bolt on the small plane. He turned away to do something.

He forgot to tighten the bolt, and he saw the plane explode in midair, killing seven people, and he knew, for one reason only, they were all killed. He'd forgotten to tighten that bolt. And he got, after agony and despair and suffering and lying, God gave him the victory, and he wrote that article.

I like it. I read it to use it in my message. We know God tests us. When we're in his work, he tests us to the very core of our being. Preparation for things that perhaps we'll never understand. I think one of the dangers when something like this happens is that we can all get into little mini and sometimes maxi guilt trips, and we can all feel we can all feel that the problems we have now are meaningless.

You know, the big thing in Brown is Jerry Davey's knee. We're all praying for Jerry Davey's knee. And really, it's quite serious, a lot of pain. The operation hasn't gone very well. He's on crutches. When we get this, it's Jerry Davey's knee.

What's Jerry Davey's knee? And more than that, I mean, I find that some of the things I'm doing, I just feel ridiculous. My crisis, the other day, just before I went up to speak, I think it was the night of prayer, my crisis was wrestling with a broken dog leash.

My son, Daniel, in a moment of inspiration, this dog didn't cost my daughter anything. It's her dog. I told her I wouldn't spend a penny on a bloody cat that I have on this dog. So she's got this dog, and it's won its way to my heart and everybody's heart.

My son, Daniel, goes out and spends 11 pounds on an automatic springback dog leash. I tell you, it was the grace of God that kept my mouth shut when he walked into the house with that thing. But I've learned with my son.

And lo and behold, my wife and I took it that night to show it to a friend, and the dog bit through it. And I didn't know how to explain this to Daniel. He's sometimes sensitive about some of my weak points.

So Benji and I tied a knot, and I took the dog out, and the dog chased another dog, and as he went, the knot just disintegrated. I was trying to fix this dog leash. I was thinking about Jonathan, and I'm trying to fix this dog leash.

And I thought, this world, we're living in an absurd world. Here I am, resting. I was actually, I think I was actually starting to pray for help for the dog leash. It was 11 pounds. I don't know where you live, but in my family, 11 pounds is a lot of bread.

Of course, my son paid for it. He's got more money now. He works at McDonald's when he's not at university. Anyway, when the leash broke, the thing popped back inside this container. So the only way to get it was to open the container.

So I carefully opened the container, and a spring popped out, and another spring popped out. And I will tell you, this was some, I'm not technically mindful. Anyway, I managed to fix it. I was really praising the Lord about that.

You know, and I was just thinking that night, isn't it wonderful that our God is so great, that he can minister grace in a massive crisis, as Jonathan's situation. For us, it is a massive crisis. It's a big thing.

And he can still have enough grace left over to take care of whatever little hassle you may be having here, even in Sodom. And you don't have to feel guilty about it. You don't have to feel guilty about it.

You don't have to feel, well, I'm selfish. I can't come to God and talk about my problems when Jonathan's got that problem, or when someone else has got some big problem. No. God doesn't operate that way.

If you've got some problem, no matter how big, no matter how small, you can bring it to the Lord. Now, if you magnify it, if you get preoccupied with it, if you overemphasize it, yeah, that's wrong. Asking every care upon Him, He cares for you.

But to take it to the Lord, to cry a little over it, or to share it with someone, you may feel for the next some weeks with this crisis in Sodom, you know, you can't share any of your problems here now.

I mean, the leaders are likely to say, how can you share this problem when we've got this bigger problem? And, oh, and for a couple of weeks, worldwide, could become the most uptight missionary work in Europe.

With everybody preoccupied for this, thinking how big it is, thinking how is He going to face life in this way, and therefore unwilling to talk about our own situation, some of the things that are hurting us.

You may have two good legs and be a paraplegic spiritually. And I think Jonathan will be the first to say, that would be our greater concern. In fact, it's amazing, the illustration God put on my heart in England was the same one the Lord put on his heart.

I think it's on the French tape. I wasn't sure which tape it was on. And I thought, what a far greater crisis when some dear exile ever, or maybe you know ever, that hasn't happened much, suddenly their marriage just disintegrates or their life disintegrates.

I think it's a greater trial on the physical level when people's minds disintegrate. That is still a mystery that sometimes just baffles me. Some things have come across my desk lately. One was the suicide of the son of a Christian leader.

The other was something similar and I just you know, I just fall down. You know, it's wonderful when we're totally overwhelmed. We can fall at the feet of Jesus just as David and worship. There must have been a sense here when David was just overwhelmed.

All the emotion of the past experience, the failure, the dead baby, he must have been overwhelmed and he fell down and he just worshiped. I think this is God's God's way that when we feel so overwhelmed, so gripped by fear.

Some are gripped by fear through this accident. I talk to someone and say, I don't want to go any cars. I don't want to go any cars anymore. I've had a stage in my life where I never want to walk in an airplane again.

Through all the accidents I've read about, all the small planes especially. And I think of that verse, God has not given us this fear of fear. What are we going to do? Go out there and burn all of our vehicles?

You know, get down there and this is it, isn't it? This is where they all come from. We can really get guilty around here, man. We can chew our fingernails right down to the nuts. But somehow God has called us to world evangelism.

Somehow we know the greatest crisis is a lost soul going out into eternity without God. That makes even Jonathan's crisis in one sense look small. And I believe one of the reasons that Jonathan is rejoicing the doctor warned him he was going to go into total despair.

Jonathan said, well, it hasn't happened yet. He might have to battle through some of that. That won't be abnormal to go through times of despair and depression. I know quite a few people that had that without getting into that kind of situation.

But I am convinced that if there was ever a time when we want to take Ephesians 6 literally and put on the shield of faith, it's now. We're plunging very rapidly toward a summer crusade. What should we do?

Call it off? Think of the danger of all these cars, much younger drivers. They've never driven Europe in their life. They don't even know what the signs mean. Here's a sign that says don't curb your dog.

And they think it says curb your car. They don't know what they're doing. A lot of these people driving around Europe. We've had, I don't know, several more accidents in England in the past couple of months.

Now I think in England we're going to somehow make some changes. We're going to put people to driving school, British driving school, even if it costs us a few pounds because we're dealing with a different side of the road and I think we've learned some things the hard way there.

And then other parts of the work, maybe there are things that we need to change, we need to do. But one thing for sure, God doesn't want us to be gripped by fear. God doesn't want us sitting in cars trembling because you can't live life that way.

We had someone die right in this building or just down the road in the shower. That was a tremendous blow to all who lived here, that dear sister. And we cannot allow fear to grip our hearts. We must stand courageously, even though some of us are maybe fearful types.

Some mornings I don't want to get out of bed. What in the world is going to happen today? People said to me a number of times, hey, what do you think's next? Turkey man dies in his sleep. The next month, a massive fire and a quarter of a million dollars worth of damage.

The next month, a truck in Sudan. In fact, Jonathan administered along those lines in Portugal. He just told me today. Saying, you know, what were we going to expect for April? What about May? But you know, if you start living that way, you could end up losing your mind.

And that's worse than losing your legs. And God, I believe, is wanting to say to us, now, as he said to Joshua, be thou courageous. This is a time for us to be courageous in what we're doing. Life is filled with risks.

Think of the risks the British Isles are taking right now as they've sent these submarines and this entire fleet down to an island that hardly anyone in Britain even knew what it was four weeks ago. Now we may spill the blood of a thousand or two thousand British young men on the beaches of an island that has less than two thousand citizens.

As Russia begins to think of backing Argentina and as America seems to be more committed to Britain, who knows what's going to happen in the world in the next couple of weeks or months. This is not a time for fear.

This is not a time for retreat. This is not a time for regret. This is a time to recommit our hearts to be God's people. Courageous in the midst of the battle. Courageous in the midst of suffering. Refusing to turn back even though something in us says, run man, run.