The Face of God in Crisis and Death

Thank you.

It's great to be here at uh Gateway.

I highly value my friendship with Robert and with Tom and with John.

And uh I'm I'm here today to continue uh Robert's series, face to face.

And I want to talk to you today about a subject that most of us would rather avoid.

It would be the subject of crisis and death, the face of God in crisis and death.

The psalmist would say in Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

Though he leads me, though he leads me in this place of dark valleys with shadows, the valley of the shadow of death.

I will fear no evil.

For you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

I have a question.

Have you ever wondered if in life, when you arrive in the valley of the shadow of death, if that's true?

And if God is really there, is it just a doctrine?

Is it just a verse?

Is it kind of hypothetically true?

Is it is it actually true?

Is he really there?

Father Kolby was a Polish priest during the time when the Nazis invaded Poland.

And they set up the Oswich, the infamous Oswich prison camp.

And uh the horrific treatment of the prisoners who were at that camp are something that uh all of us who have read any kind of history would be aware of.

One of the practices of the camp was that if a prisoner escaped, they would take uh ten prisoners from that specific portion of the prison.

And they they would take those ten prisoners, they would put them in a place they called the starvation bunker, and they would leave them there without food or water until all of them starved to death.

And if you want to read history, you can read what takes place when you do that to living human beings.

Well, a prisoner had escaped.

Father Colby had been taken to the prison.

He is a prisoner in Oswich, and it happens to be from his part of the prison.

Father Colby was known for ministering to the men that were there and uh ministering to them spiritually and doing anything that he could to help them in these times.

And so they brought all of the prisoners out of that particular part of the camp, and the commandant came and he randomly went down the line and said, You and you and you and you and you and you, until he reached the number 10.

And one of the ones that he pointed to was a man that when the man stepped forward, uh, out of his lips came an anguished cry.

And it was my my children and my wife, who will take care of them?

And when Father Colby heard that, Father Colby stepped forward to face the commandant, which was something you never did.

And he said to the commandant, I want to take his place.

And no one knows why.

The commandant agreed, but they but he did.

And so the man that was condemned to death, he stepped back in line, and Father Colby stepped in to take his place and marched off with the nine others to the starvation bunker and there gave his life.

Is God present in the distressing times of life, of crisis and death?

Peter and John are on their way to the temple in the third chapter of Acts, and uh they come by a man who is lame.

He's sitting there at the temple gate.

And he asks them for money, and Peter looks at him, and Peter says, We don't have any money, but what we do have we'll give you.

In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.

And the Bible says, immediately his feet and his ankle bones receive strength, and he jumps up and he begins to leap and cause quite a stir as he praises God openly.

Well, you would think that everybody would be happy that this lame man is healed and rejoice in that.

But unfortunately, uh people weren't happy.

The authorities didn't like it.

And so they call Peter and John in and they question them thoroughly, and then they begin to threaten them.

I mean, Father Colby is one thing.

How about threats?

What would happen if you and I were threatened for our Christian faith?

And the threats came and said, uh if you espouse your Christian faith, here's and fill in the rest of the sentence.

And they were threatened.

Don't ever preach in Jesus, don't ever do any of that again.

I wonder how many of us, let's just say we were John, and maybe the scripture would be written differently on that day if when they began to threaten, John would have looked at Peter and said, and then looked at the authorities and said, I never liked that guy anyway.

He's always had a big mouth.

And I told him not to talk to the lame guy there and cause a stir like that.

I'd never wanted to be a part of this anyway.

I wonder what it would take to silence us.

Because the valley of the shadow of death can look differently.

It can be like Father Colby, it can be whatever distressing time of life that comes, in which there comes confusion or things happen that seem the opposite of what we would expect.

My middle name is not Thomas, but it might have been a good name for me because I'm really not a doubter, but I always would like to know why.

Do you?

How many like to know why?

And uh so uh when I was a kid growing up in church, uh we used to sing this hymn called Trust and Obey.

Here's how it went Trust and obey, uh, trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.

Well, I have my own verse to that hymn.

My verse is trust and verify, trust and verify, for there's no other way to be sure it's the truth except to trust and verify.

I have uh I've pastored for 40 years as a senior pastor in two communities.

30 years at uh at Grace in Houston, and 10 years in uh the San Francisco Bay Area, East Bay, in a town called Livermore that houses the Livermore Laboratory and Sandia Laboratories.

Uh a town of about 50,000, in which there are more scientists and people of that ilk than you care to know about.

And then 30 years, where our main campus in Houston is right there at the Space Center.

And so in those communities, uh you ask questions.

I often wondered why God sent me to those communities, and then I realized that the questions they ask are the ones I asked.

Uh, if you tell me something, I say, uh, how do you know?

Why?

If you said to me, uh, this is true, I might say to you, how do you know it's true?

Because I mean, you know, if you're gonna fly the, if you're gonna put the space shuttle up, you I mean, you have to and ask the questions, every question.

You gotta make sure.

Two members of the uh Columbia, the commander and the payload commander, when the Columbia disintegrated over Texas.

We're members of our church.

But it doesn't have to be tragedy like that.

It doesn't have to be Father Colby, it doesn't have to be a lame man at a temple gate.

It can just be the curveballs that life throws you.

Shadows of the valley.

Because death doesn't have to be what puts you in a hole in the ground, it will eventually at the end of life.

But death times can come when dreams die and hopes die.

Something happens you didn't count on.

And here's the great question.

In those times, is God there?

And if he is, how do you know?

Because the question isn't just, is the Bible true and is God true, and is Jesus true?

I mean, those are real questions, and you have to settle those for yourself.

But there is a second question.

The second question is, does it work?

Do the claims of the scripture work?

When the psalmist said, Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, not because I'm brave and bold, but because you are with me.

Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

The question is, not only is it true, but will it work for me when I walk through those times?

It was 1978, and Becky and I were um uh in our twenties.

We had uh just uh started the church in Livermore a few uh years uh before that time, and uh we were getting ready to go overseas for our very first uh missions trip.

We were going over for six weeks to the Philippine Islands and doing a variety of ministries.

Some friends of ours had gone as missionaries, and uh so we were going over to spend the time with them.

And I uh I was asking God some questions.

And this, incidentally, the message is not about whether you ought to ask God questions when you get to the end here.

But I was asking God some questions.

And about miracles.

It seems like uh things are a little different today than they were in the Bible.

And why would that be?

And here in North America uh, you know, uh, why do we not see miracles like the scripture or other parts of the world?

So when we went, I I said, Lord, while I'm gone on this trip, I really would like to see, I would really would like to see miracles happen.

I had no idea that I would ask God to see miracles and that on this trip I would become one.

No idea.

So we went to the there we did ministry in a number of places, and then we went to New Bilibad Prison in Montan Lupa, which is right outside of Manila.

It's like a federal penitentiary, except it's in the uh third world nation, and so the conditions are radically different than here.

And uh when we went in, we would go to various parts of the prison and hold service in each part, and the the prison was divided by uh like what more what we would not cells, but by barracks where maybe they're 40 feet wide, maybe 80 feet long, and in there there's uh as many men as they can cram in to that particular part, and at night they have a little mat they roll out, they lay on the floor, and that's where they sleep.

During the day they roll it up and they live right there.

And then it's surrounded by a wall, and over uh on the other side of that wall there's another one just like that, and and the guards actually stand at the entrances into those little compounds with automatic weapons or submachine guns, and that's how they keep order.

And so we we were walking out of uh the fourth service.

And as we walked out the door of the little barracks building into the pathway that would lead out of that part of the prison, I saw this blur out of the corner of my eye, and the next thing I knew, a prisoner had his arm around my neck and had a knife to my throat, and he was dragging me up against this embankment.

And I heard Becky scream out, and a prisoner had her, and my friend Paul Adams, uh, a prisoner had grabbed him, and they dragged, they drug us up against this wall and crouched down behind us.

There were four prisoners.

They tied ropes around our neck and tied those ropes to their waist, and the guards began to shoot uh guns in the air, and prisoners began to scatter, and it was a very tense moment.

And if the guards tried to move close, the prisoner that had Becky would take his knife and he would come down on her arm with his knife, and so she has knife cuts up and down her arm where to make us to make a statement or a point, uh he would take his knife and cut her arm like that.

And the the guards began to negotiate, and and uh the lady missionary that was there and was not taken hostage, she began to say, These are these are uh these are people of God, these are ministers, and let them go and and uh uh don't hurt them and and all of the things to negotiate.

And at first I thought, well, they'll uh you know they'll uh they'll work this out and uh and there'll be some resolution to this and we'll and we'll get out of this.

And the more that uh it went on, I realized that we weren't gonna get out.

That things weren't gonna turn out and and come to some kind of end.

People have said to me, Well, Steve, what happened when what went through your mind?

It was amazing what uh each of us did.

I heard my friend Paul uh start to pray, Lord help us, and and things like that.

I heard Becky, I couldn't see her, but I could hear her just whispering the name of Jesus.

And I didn't even make a choice to what to do.

I just began to sing out, I love you, Lord, I praise you, Lord, I bless you, Lord.

And reflecting back over that, I realized that in the crisis times, what's in you comes out.

You don't decide what you're going to do in a crisis.

The crisis reveals you, it reveals what's in you.

And uh I realized that back over all of the years, uh from the time I was a little kid and in the children's ministry time when uh when people would get us to memorize a verse or would put the word of God into us, even though I really had not much interest in hearing that.

I was a I was a preacher's kid, and I'm positive all the things I got in trouble for were the deacon's kids' faults, because they're the ones that always made me get in trouble.

But I I would rather throw spitwads at the teacher than listen to the lesson.

But somehow that word got in me.

And when I came to this great crisis time, the ver the scriptures, the verses that I had learned as a little kid growing up, those verses began to come out of me.

They they began to become real to me in the middle of the crisis.

The uh the woman missionary that was there, she had a somebody had given her a new van and they had it in the prison, and some of the prisoners were painting scriptures on it.

One of them was, prepare to meet thy God.

And so the prisoners called for that van.

They wanted to get out, and the guards wouldn't bring it, and so they negotiated back and forth, threatening to kill us and all of that.

And finally they brought the van.

They took the ropes off of my neck, off of Paul's neck, and left the rope on Becky's neck, and and her prisoner loaded her in the back of the van.

And then they took Paul and I very carefully, put us in the van, and put us up next to the windows, and then they crouched in behind us, and we were their shields from the guards.

And they they made the the woman missionary there get in the van and drive the van because none of them could drive.

And so she drove the van over to the gate of the prison, but they wouldn't open the gate, and so she would she would bang on the gate with the van, but they wouldn't open it.

And so increasingly uh things became very, very tense inside the van.

Uh the weather there is a lot like Houston, so it was very hot and humid, there was no air conditioning in the van, and so you can imagine how stifling it was in there just by way of the heat and everything, and then on top of that, the the intensity of the moment because of the drama that's being lived out.

The uh so now they begin to do a countdown.

Uh two minutes, open the gate, two minutes, or we'll kill them and we'll commit suicide.

And the longer the thing went on, the more I realized that the chance of getting out of this is probably uh there's no chance at all of getting out of this.

They finally opened that gate, and when they opened the gate and uh Olga drove the van through, uh instead of getting out of the security part of the prison, it there were two gates actually, and when they opened the first gate, it led us into uh a little place where now we had come through one gate, and there's a gate on the other end of this, and it's not very wide, and now the van is completely concealed within this place, and the guards surround the van, and the guards are are no further away than the folks that are sitting right here on the front row.

And they're staring with their with their weapons, they're staring intently into the van, looking at every move.

I mean, it's very, very serious.

The prisoners are extremely tense.

And uh to make a point, at one time they ripped open my shirt and he put his knife right by my heart so the guards would know that he knew exactly where my heart was.

Um time I tried to uh talk to Becky and ask her if she was okay, and one of the guards began to double his fist up and began to hit me in the mouth.

It's a very, very tense time.

And in that in the time there, between those gates, when everything is is uh is taking place in the prisoners trying to get the van out and the guards trying to do whatever they're going to do to try to get us out.

Uh somebody said, in that kind of time, your whole life passes before your face.

I don't know if that's the case for everyone.

I can tell you what happened to me.

In that time, I'm not gonna just hit the highlights here because I don't have time to tell you all the details.

Enough, I'm gonna tell you enough of the story that at the end of my time I want to make a point for you, right where you are and where you live.

Um I had Becky and I had two little girls, one six years old, one eight.

And I said, Lord, what what about my girls?

If something happens to me, who's gonna raise my kids?

And uh how how could they go through life without a mom and a dad?

And uh I I can't I really can't explain this, except to tell you that I didn't hear an audible voice, but I but I heard God speak deep into my spirit to tell me that if if the worst happened and Becky and I lost our lives, that he would take care of our kids.

And I it was in such a compelling way that it answered my question.

Uh the Bible says that there is an incredible kind of peace that God gives that passes every kind of human understanding, human reason.

In other words, you try to figure it out, you try to explain it, and it doesn't make any sense.

You can't.

I experienced that.

That it wasn't, it wasn't like I was there and it's no big deal, oh well, no big deal, I'm just here as calm as I can be.

It wasn't that.

But there was no panic from Becky, from Paul, from me.

It wasn't that we didn't understand the dis the distress that we were in or the gravity of the moment, we did.

But God gave us an incredible peace in the middle of that moment.

I um I said, Lord, what what what if if they let uh if they open the gate and let this van out?

What's gonna happen to Becky when these men get her outside of this prison?

I remember saying, uh Lord, you know, we're uh we we have all these dreams and hopes for life.

How could it be that our life would end before virtually before it begins?

We've only been married a few years.

We're pursuing what we feel like you've called us to our calling.

And again, I felt the Lord really speak into my spirit to say, if I call the day, then you will have lived.

You will have filled, you will have fulfilled your purpose on the earth.

That life wouldn't be measured in the uh in the amount of time, but in how I lived whatever time I had on this earth.

The negotiations in that little area grew extremely intense.

And the prisoners became increasingly hyper.

And then that final gate opened.

And one of the prisoners jumped up on the woman missionary, Olga.

No one had ever gotten near her, and made her drive out as fast as they could.

And when they went through that gate, the prisoners screamed this hideous scream, a demonic scream.

And it was the it was a scream of that they had, they were out, they had finally made it.

And the van sped away and went down a little corner on the prison grounds.

And there the police and the guards had blocked, completely blocked the road.

And we were on that blockade so quickly that just turning the corner and you were right there.

That there wasn't any way to stop the van and back up or do anything else.

Right on it.

And as we came right to the blockade, uh Olga pulled the brake on, opened the door, and she jumped out.

And when she jumped out, the van skidded to a halt, and the prisoner that was on her, he jumped back through the van with his knife raised and he stabbed me right here in my shoulder.

When he jumped back through the van, the guards yelled for them to surrender.

And when he stabbed me in the shoulder, the guards opened fire.

And they began, they had ringed the van and they began to shoot into the van.

And you could hear bullets hitting everywhere, windows being blown out, and uh the van virtually being destroyed by the gunfire.

Sounded like World War II in a firefight that was good that was taking place there.

When the guy stabbed me in the shoulder, he pulled his knife out and he stabbed me right here by my heart.

The prisoner that was behind me stabbed me five times in the back.

And uh a ricochet bullet hit Becky right here in her leg and blew out four inches of her femur bone.

It looked like someone took a big meat cleaver and whacked out about that much of her leg.

You could see, you could actually see down inside her leg the bone was sticking out, and she actually reached in and pushed the bone back in her leg.

The bullets somehow miraculously outside of the one that hit Becky, even though we were the shields, missed us, and the prisoners were screaming as they were dying.

Paul's prisoner uh uh he had had a hand amputated at some time in life, so he only had one hand and and he had the knife in that hand on Paul, and Paul grabbed his hand and and hit his hand on the seat, and the guy dropped his knife, and Paul jumped out of the van.

And when he when Paul jumped out of the van, uh a guard ran over and just riddled his the prisoner that was there with bullets.

Paul ran around the van and he noticed that Becky was uh was uh kind of half-laying, sitting in the floor, uh getting as far away from the prisoner as she could, but the rope was still around her neck, tied to this prisoner.

He had been shot, but he had revived, and uh, though he was dying, he was going to do everything he could to kill Becky, and so he had his knife and he was trying to stab her in the head uh with his uh with his last strength that he had, and he was missing her head by this much.

And Paul reached in through the broken window and grabbed the hand with the knife, and uh and a guard saw that, and when a guard saw that, a guard raised his rifle and he he uh actually blew the side of the guy's face off.

Now, listen, I'm not telling you this just to be graphic.

I'm telling you this because it really happened.

And as a matter of fact, if I told you all the details, it's far more graphic than the picture I'm painting you today.

I'm not in any way embellishing this.

And I'm gonna show you some pictures that are graphic.

They're just a few shots.

The prison officials took them, they were part of the official prison record of that day, so you know that the story I've just told you, because I want to make a couple of points in closing.

And I want you to see uh the nature of what took place on that day by watching these pictures.

When the guy stabbed me, it felt like a truck was laying on my chest.

I couldn't breathe.

And uh my lungs, my lung cavity had been punctured, and so blood and fluid were filling up my lungs, and I was drowning in my own blood.

And Paul dragged me out and put me on the ground and pulled Becky out of the van, and they took us to a little village Barrio Clinic, and they they just took bandages and wrapped around us and took wide tape and put them over my cuts, and they said that's all we can do.

And uh from there we we managed to make it into uh and I'm gonna fast forward on this journey, we managed to make it into Makati, to Makati Medical Center.

And when they took us into the emergency room, uh they took me over and put me on a gurney, and the doctor came over, he examined me.

I'm really gasping for breath, and uh uh the doctor had a little thing in his hand, it looked like another knife, and he said to me, I have to, I have to run this up into your lung cavity uh to release all of the fluid and blood that's there, and he said, but if but he said, You're uh you're if I give you any anesthetic at all, you're gonna die.

So he said, I want you to hang on to the side of this gurney.

And when I did, I grabbed the side of the gurney and he took that thing and he ran it up between my ribs on this side, and then he took it and he ran it up between my ribs on this side.

I went into emergency surgery.

Uh they took out my spleen and did a lot of other uh work in me.

Uh they wanted to cut Becky's leg off, and we said no to that.

And so they just cleaned her leg as best they could.

They put her in a body cast.

And uh uh uh I was in the hospital uh 18 days, and in those 18 days, I just didn't seem to get any better.

I was still bleeding internally, uh, they couldn't get uh some of my uh uh organs to function properly.

And uh so I'm gonna fast forward through that time because I want to tell you the end.

Uh on that on that last night, uh something uh incredibly different took place.

We had prayed regularly all through this, Becky and I had.

I was I had all kinds of hoses and tubes hooked every place you could have one, and then up some places they made openings for to put those tubes in.

And on that night, the prayer we prayed wasn't much different than any other time.

We stretched our hand across that little distance that was between our beds, and we I said uh and Becky prayed and I prayed, and we said, Lord, would you come in healing power?

My hemoglobin count was 6.1, normal is 13.

And I'd never been out of bed at all, not to walk, not to do anything.

And uh, Lord, would you come in healing power?

And I that night I slept all night for the very first time.

And they had taken some blood that night just to check and see where things were.

We prayed that night.

And when I woke up the next morning, I felt, I just felt totally different.

I can't even explain it.

I it wasn't like I jumped up and ran around, but I did get up.

I got out of bed for the very first time with no help, walked over, got my clothes, dressed myself.

And when the doctor came in that morning and he called in, got the chart, uh, and brought the chart in, and he brought the chart over and stood by my bed and he said, There's this is absolutely a miracle.

There's no way medically this could ever happen.

He said, From last night till this morning, your your uh hemoglobin count has gone from 6.1 to 13, perfectly normal.

Now, uh, how in the world does all of that happen?

I I don't know exactly.

Except that this God is the God who said, Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff, they come from me.

Now let me finish the story.

I would walk out of the hospital on my own power, climb two flights of stairs to get on the airplane.

They didn't have jetways then.

I'd fly 24 hours back to San Francisco, and I was stronger when I got to San Francisco than when I left Manila.

Never went back to a hospital.

Becky would spend nine months in a body cast in a hospital bed in our living room with five major surgeries.

And she would spend another nine months learning how to walk again.

And the reason I wanted you to hear both of those is to say to all of you who are in this room today that when you come to what seems the end, a death time, it doesn't have to be as dramatic as ours.

As I said earlier, it can be the dashing of your hopes and dreams.

Things happen you have no control over.

And you wonder, what about here in life when you can't see, you don't know what's going on around you?

I'm here to tell you in this day, to all of you who are in this room, to give you a word of hope.

And from someone who has been there.

That when you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, there is this one thing that you can be confident of that even when you can't see him, God is there with his rod to let you know in the darkness by tapping you that he is there to take care of you in those dark times.

This plaque is one of my most valuable possessions.

It's not worth any money.

It was made by a prisoner who was there and who watched everything happen.

And he sent this plaque to the hospital.

And it isn't the artistic work that he did, it's the message he wrote on the back.

I want to read it to you and then pray.

Dear Becky, Steve, and Paul, the courage of Christians, our martyrs, as well as your great faith in God Jesus, challenge the men, even the unbelievers, as you calmly face death, very composed and whispering your prayers while blood streaming down your bodies.

The inmates and guards alike were moved to tears and considered the incident as personal tragedy.

It's God's will to show the world in this hardened place that men and women know how to die for the Lord.

Here's a little keepsake from our brigade 3D to remember us of the men for whom you almost lay down your lives for his glory.

And so, Lord, for people in this room who may in fact at this moment be walking through the shadows of a valley that seemed like death.

As you met me in that hospital room, as you carried Becky and me those many, many months in which we sensed your hand just as powerfully in that time, would you come today for people in this room that they may know, as you said in Psalm 46, you in fact are our refuge, our very present help in the day of our trouble.

Amen.