“Coming to Jesus for Rest”
The lives
of people are so complicated today that they defy any easy solution. The
problems of men simply gnaw at their hearts until sudden sickness or even death
overtake them. Highly educated men too have not learnt to overcome these
emotions and passions, which run away with their better sense and ruin their
families.
Has God got
a solution for our problems or is He only a sentimental emblem, a picture to
hang on your wall? The Living God has categorically told us: “Come unto Me and
I will give you rest.” This is a promise to you and to me. Either this promise
is true, or it is one of the greatest falsehoods ever uttered. But let’s be
careful now, for He who uttered these words, the Lord Jesus, is the One in whom
there is no shadow of turning. The Bible says of Jesus, “who did no sin,
neither was guile found in His mouth” (1 Peter 2:22). So it’s He, the Saviour,
the sinless One, who spoke these words of invitation and promise: “Come unto
Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
Within my
own personal knowledge, I have seen and met thousands and thousands of people
who tested these words of the Lord Jesus and found them true. They went to
Jesus when all seemed lost, when their little world was blown to bits, when
they knew there was no hope for them, and they found Him to be true and He gave
them rest.
Among this
number of men and women, young and old, who had found peace, rest and
forgiveness in Jesus, were men whom their loved ones had given up as
incorrigible, irretrievably lost and even those who had been on the verge of
suicide.
Come unto
Me, all ye that suffer under your heavy load of sin and guilt, and I will give
you rest. The call is to all who are sorrowful and shaken by repeated shocks,
the nervously exhausted, the weak in body and mind and the despairing. “Come
unto Me,” the Saviour is calling you.
Once a
college student wrote to me, “I have committed every conceivable sin, is there
hope for me?” He had indulged in sexual perversions, which had left him weak
and distraught. He seemed to despair that he was too far gone. I wrote, “Yes,
there is hope for you, when you repent.” The Lord Jesus touched this boy and
peace and forgiveness of sins were given to him.
I
begin to wonder if some people are really serious in undertaking pilgrimages to
all sorts of places. Some go to Bethlehem for Christmas. A place, however sacred,
cannot meet your deepest soul-needs. It’s “a Person” you need—the Saviour
Jesus, who beckons you, saying, “Come unto Me”.
People want
a formula, a sentence or two of magical words, which will do the trick and bring
relief, or they ask for a charm, a relic or talisman, which they may wear round
their arm or neck, to give them a sense of security. They are prepared in their
distress to make costly offerings, to win the favour of some mythical person or
even some self-styled god-man. They are even prepared to join a church, as they
would a club, in the fond hope that that may solve their problems.
No, my
friend, it’s to a Person you must go, you must go to the Saviour who loves you
and welcomes you, saying, “Come unto Me.”
Some time ago,
I received a letter from a young man, who wrote saying that he had divorced his
wife and was looking round to find a suitable girl to marry. His marriage broke
down completely. His wife seemed to have no room at all for Jesus. From the
continual tension, both of them had suffered nervous breakdowns too. I wrote to him,
“No, God is able to bring your wife back to you. The Lord Jesus does not want
any man to marry, when his wife is still alive, it amounts to adultery. Keep the
door open for your wife to come back.” He paid heed to my words. He began to
seek cleansing and deliverance from his sins and the powers of darkness and
also to rebuild his broken home.
The Lord
heard our prayer. This week it was such a joy to me to hear from that young man
that he had married again the wife he had divorced, and that they were now
living together. This family is living in the heart of Europe, where marriage
bonds have become very weak and where the flesh seems to reign supreme. Now he
wants me to go and preach in some of the towns in his area.
It’s the
Lord Jesus who has built the home of these young people, who had become nervous
wrecks by not making Jesus the centre of their home. The words of Jesus are not
vain words, “Come unto Me and I will give you rest.” How true are these words!
No one can
give rest to a man deep in his soul, not even your father or mother, but only
Jesus. He has the power to give you that deep settled rest, as He has the power
to forgive your sins.
Without
your knowing it, there is a guilt complex in you. The unforgiven sins in your
life set up a disturbance and restlessness in your sub-conscious mind. Guilt in
the sub-conscious mind soon produces disease and such diseases overwhelm you;
doctor and psychiatrist cannot help.
“Come unto
Me and I will give you rest” is no smooth, soothing formula, which just sounds
religiously refreshing at a distance. You need this rest and so do I. In fact
life without this sweet rest and peace is not worth living. It is a hollow,
painful, boring existence.
“I will
give you rest” is a promise which does appear to be too good to be true, but
notwithstanding it is real. Millions have tasted this peace and rest, which
Jesus gives, and you too my dear listener must taste Him.
—Joshua Daniel
“Out there I found my God”
One Sunday
in 1942, a bomber plane was rocking gently above the South Pacific Ocean. On
board were five men of the US Army Air Corps, Transport Command, soon to enter a
most gruelling adventure. One of them later recounted it in his book We Thought We Heard the Angels Sing: “On
that sunny afternoon,” he wrote, “I was being sped at 200 miles an hour towards
the greatest adventure any man can have.” That adventure, he observed, is that in
which a man finds his God.
Into the ocean
The five
men on board the plane were Bill Cherry (the commander and pilot), James
Whittaker (co-pilot and author of the ordeal), John J. DeAngelis, James W.
Reynolds, and John Bartek. In Hawaii, the men received a mission to fly the
famous WW1 hero Captain Eddie Rickenbacker and his military aide Adamson on a
secret mission for the US War Department. Another engineer, Alex, recently
discharged from hospital, also joined the team.
A serious
problem began when the men missed their destination island, possibly due to a
damaged instrument. Reynolds managed to contact a station that could help the
lost plane, but it was about 1000 miles away. The plane did not have enough
fuel to cover that journey. After three hours, Bill began the descent to sea. He
would have to make an emergency landing.
“Do you
fellows mind,” DeAngelis asked, “if I pray?”
Cherry
snapped at him. Whittaker felt irritated; what a time to talk about praying!
How often he later remembered those brash thoughts with shame in the coming
days.
“Five
feet!” Rickenbacker shouted. “Three feet!... One foot!”
“Cut it!”
yelled Cherry.
Whittaker
pulled the mainline switch, killing every electrical connection in the plane.
The waves rolled around them. The shock and pressure of the landing were almost
indescribable. Whittaker yanked the rip cord to free one of the two rubber
rafts, and two others shoved up a tiny raft through the escape hatch.
The men had
to get out fast.
“Out there”
Three small
rafts were soon strung together in the shark-infested Pacific waters. They bore
eight men equipped with air pumps, knives, pistols, flares, oars, fish hooks,
fishing lines, life jackets, some personal items—and four oranges.
In one
raft, two men kept their arms around each other to keep from falling out; in
the tiniest, two had to sit with their legs over the other’s shoulders.
On the following
day, each man received one segment of a little orange for breakfast.
When Johnny
Bartek sat reading a New Testament, something kept Whittaker from heckling him.
The men
baked in the sun that day; during the night, their teeth chattered. Weakened,
sunburnt, and stung by salt spray, the agony of hunger and thirst increased. There
had been no sign of ship or plane, and no reaction to their flares.
A small
miracle happened on the fourth day when a sea swallow landed on Rickenbacker’s
head. Swiftly caught, it served not only as bait for a catch of fish but food
too.
On day five,
enough minnows were scooped up for a snack. At length the rafts were pulled
together for a prayer meeting and the men repeated the Lord’s prayer—or what
they knew of it.
Adamson was
reading aloud from the New Testament when suddenly Cherry stopped him: “What
was that last, Colonel? Where is that from?”
“It is from
the Gospel According to Matthew,” came the reply, “Do you like it?”
“It’s the
best thing I’ve heard yet. Read it again, Colonel.”
“Therefore,
take ye no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or What shall we drink? or,
Wherewithal shall we be clothed? For
these are things the heathen seeketh. For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye
have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His
righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall
take thought for the things of itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
Whittaker
was somewhat impressed but finally dismissed the words with the decision that
he would believe when he saw the food and drink. He was to see something “startlingly
like proof” the following night.
When
the cool of evening came on the sixth day, it was a while before the men could
summon the energy to assemble the rafts and open the prayer service. Whittaker
passively joined in the prayers; it appeared ridiculous to him that men as
practical and “hardboiled” as them could expect a mumbling voice out on that
waste of water to summon help for them. Cherry repeated his favourite passage
about food and drink on the morrow.
“Always
tomorrow,” thought Whittaker bitterly, “What is this, a come-on game?”
After
finishing his verse from Matthew, Cherry’s voice went on, now praying, reverently
addressing the Lord as “Old Master”, simply, directly, and in earnest.
“Old
Master, we know this isn’t a guarantee that we’ll eat in the morning. But we’re
in an awful fix, as You know. We sure are counting on a little something by day
after tomorrow, at least. See what You can do for us, Old Master.”
That
was how they all came to talk to God, simply, no “thees” and “thous”.
When Cherry
had finished, he fired off their evening flare hoping that something might
happen—and the unexpected did.
The
flare’s propulsion charge was faulty and the flaming ball rose high into the
air before falling back. It hissed and zigzagged around the water, illuminating
the ocean. Two fishes, possibly attracted by the glare and scared by barracuda,
broke the water and plumped into a raft. Breakfast was provided for day seven.
Yet the
men had still not drunk any water since landing; their thirst was intense by
now, and their mental state grew lower.
Water
supply became a focus for prayer. Whittaker joined more wholeheartedly than
ever before in one of the prayer sessions, perhaps because of his terrible need
or because of a growing conviction that no human agency acting alone could save
them. Cherry addressed the Lord: “Old Master, we called on You for food and You
delivered. We ask You now for water. We’ve done the best we could. If You don’t
make up Your mind to help us pretty soon, I guess that’s all there’ll be to it.
It looks like the next move is up to You, Old Master.”
The men
prayed the Lord’s Prayer again. While the rafts rolled on the ocean, Whittaker
was thinking that this was God’s chance to make a believer of him.
After a
while, Whittaker looked to the left. A cloud that had been fleecy and white was
darkening. Then a bluish curtain unrolled from the cloud to the sea: rain.
“Here she is!” Cherry shouted, “Thanks, Old Master!” Soon the rain was
splashing into their parched mouths, washing over their burning, stinging
bodies. The men saturated their shirts with water, wrung the rain into their
mouth. They also deposited the water into their life jackets. The rain lashed
down for nearly an hour.
On the
tenth day, Cherry handed out the last of the water. He led the Lord’s prayer
too that evening, and each fellow prayed individually. There were promises made
to God to lead new lives if he would spare them. There were open confessions of
past sins. Whittaker made resolutions too. He would later make up with his
brother whom he hadn’t spoken to in 15 years.
Throughout
the late watches of the chilling night, Whittaker sat sleeplessly thinking over
their condition and the state of his soul. “I can tell you now,” he would later
write, “that there can be no atheists in rubber rafts amid whitecaps and sharks
in the equatorial Pacific.”
“I was
finding my God in those watery wastes and we were meeting as strangers. ... We
might have remained strangers, had it not been for Him. He soon was to send the
two divine miracles that twice more were to save my life and change the way of
it about as completely as a life can be changed.”
“Two miracles”
On the
thirteenth day, a blue curtain of rain moved towards the men across the sea.
They prayed for it to reach them. Yet when it was less than a quarter of a mile
away, a wind blew it away.
Somehow
Whittaker’s faith did not die. For the first time he found himself leading the
others in prayer. He did not know how to address God properly so talked to Him
as to a parent or friend.
“God,”
he prayed, “You know what that water means to us. The wind had blown it away.
It is in Your power, God, to send back that rain. It’s nothing to You, but it
means life to us. God, the wind is Yours. You own it. Order it to blow back
that rain to us who will die without it.”
The
wind did not change—yet the receding curtain of rain stopped where it was, and
then, ever so slowly, started back toward the men, against the wind! The squall
moved back “with majestic deliberation”, as if a great, omnipotent hand was
guiding it across the water.
The men
could again collect a water supply and relish the cool deluge. Many of them had
shed skin three or four times by then, and had raw spots and ulcers.
The coming
days were the worst yet. Alex had died shortly before the miracle, clothing was
disintegrating, and the men were suffering from pain, heat, weakness, delirium,
and blinding light.
On the
eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth days, the men were dealt such crushing
blows that had it not been for the fortitude built up in the hours of prayer,
Whittaker later believed that they all would have abandoned hope. He was sure that his newly found faith in God
sustained him. A plane was spotted on
the evening of the 18th—yet it droned by. On the 19th,
the plane came twice. On the 20th, the rafts separated to increase
the chances of being spotted.
On the
21st, the second miracle happened for Whittaker after some palm trees
were spotted on the horizon and he began to row to shore. Less than 250 yards
from shore, however, the boat went out of control. Racing back out to sea, a
wild current held them. Whittaker remembered the miracle of the rain on the 13th day, other answers to prayer, and his God! He cried out for strength, lifted
the oars, and rowed.
Whittaker’s
final prayer then was “God! Don’t quit me now!” Strength surged back into his arms
and shoulders; he slashed at man-eating sharks around the raft, and rowed. As
the raft rolled steadily through the foam, hands other than Whittaker’s guided
the oars. Through the treacherous surface, amid the sharks, and in the face of
a buffeting rain squall, they moved forward. On 11 November 1942, the men in
Whittaker’s raft reached a small island.
All seven men were rescued. Whittaker lived to tell the story of
the rafts, how during those blazing days out in the ocean he found his God.
—See James Whittaker, We
Thought We Heard the Angels Sing