Well, what an honor to be here. I thank you so much for inviting me today. One morning, about a month into our captivity, we were all packed and ready to mobile. That's the word they used when we would move out or be on the move. And we were new at this hostage thing. And we'd heard that morning that the military was nearby, so they told us to be ready to go. The leaders were all sitting around trying to decide exactly where we would go and they met for so long that some of the guys got impatient and they started setting their hammocks back up again. All of a sudden from across the field came soldiers running towards us with their guns blaring and we hit the ground and began to crawl. much like I'm sure you've seen Marines in training, crawling, trying to get away. And as the Obusoyov would fire at the military, we would get up and run. When the military would have a volley of gunfire our direction, we would drop and we would crawl. We got far enough away to head down a trail into a jungle-type area, and suddenly there was gunfire down that trail. So we changed direction and headed another way, and then there was gunfire in front of us there. We headed off that way, and there was gunfire there. A helicopter appeared from nowhere and began crisscrossing the field that we were in, and we realized we were surrounded. There would be gun battles, sporadic gun battles all day long in that field where we stayed. The sun beat down on us, there was no shade. We had several wounded that day and they patched them up as well as they could. and put them, you know, where else? Right beside Martin and me. One kid I was sure was dying. He was one of the ones who had been in his hammock when the gunfire started and he wasn't ready to run. And I reacted the way I would react many times after that during our year of captivity when we were running for our lives or we were in a tense situation. I got diarrhea. There was long grass in that field, and I kept making trips into the grass. A good thing happened that day. We got a backpack. A few guys died in that early morning gun battle, and they started passing out their belongings. And a backpack came down the row of guys where I was sitting, so I took it, and I put everything in there that we owned. There was a sheet that I had taken from a hospital several days before. There was our toothbrush that we were sharing, a couple of shirts, some underwear. And then when night fell, we just walked right out of there. And we were to learn that one of the unwritten rules between the Abu Sayyaf and the military was they never fought at night. Well, I still had the runs. And every time we would stop, I would go do what I needed to do. During one stop, I left my backpack beside Martin. He was sitting on a log, went off to go to the bathroom, and as I stepped back on the trail, the guys started saying, go, go, go, move. Well, I thought the military found us again, and I ran and got behind Martin, and we headed off down the trail. And I remember as I walked down the trail, I started thinking, boy, I just feel so light and free right now. I realized I'd left my backpack back by the log. So I turned around to get it. But a new guy had joined our group that very night. He was big. He was mean looking. I didn't know him. And as I turned around, he lowered his weapon and said, You go. And I said, Oh, no, no, no, I'm just going to get my backpack. It's right there. We could see it. And he said, No, you go. And I had to turn and follow Martin on down the trail. And I started to cry. I started to sob. I just fell apart. I said, Martin, I am so sorry. I have just lost everything we own. And Martin could see how upset I was. And he turned for just an instant and looked at me and said, Gracia, I forgive you. Now you need to forgive yourself. Many of you have said we were praying for you. We were watching the news. We were praying. God would wake us up at odd hours of the night and we knew we were supposed to pray for you. And I wonder how many of you were praying for us just when we needed it. Maybe you were praying for me right in that moment when I was trying to forgive myself for doing something so stupid. I call that my worst day followed by my best day because the next day we came to a little Muslim village And they killed a cow. So we had plenty to eat. And then a box made its way into that village from our New Tribes Mission headquarters some 600 miles away. And in that box was everything I had just left behind the night before. Plus letters from our children telling us they were okay. And I never want to pass up the opportunity to say thank you for praying. Every time you prayed, we needed it. And I just feel like I'm a living testimony of what prayer can do. People often ask me, what was the hardest thing about being a hostage? The hardest thing for me was I saw what I was really like. In one swift moment in time, everything I had, except Martin, was taken away from me. And when everything is gone, and you are in an uncomfortable position, you see what's really in your heart. I was born into a loving Christian family. I became a believer in Jesus at an early age. I married this terrific guy who just had an incredible gift of piloting airplanes, and we decided that we wanted to make a difference in the world, so we packed up and left the American dream and went to the Philippines, where Martin flew food and medicine and cargo and people into some of the most primitive places in the world, and I was a pretty good person. Thought I was anyway, but in the jungle, I came face to face with a Gratia that I did not want to see. A me that I didn't even want to believe existed. I saw a hateful Gratia. There were days I hated those Muslims for what they were doing to us, for the pain they were causing our family. I saw a despairing Gratia. Nobody cares about us anymore. This has gone on for so long. Everyone's forgotten us. I saw a faithless Gratia. Here is a little journal entry that I scribbled one day on some borrowed paper and a pen that I begged from one of the guys that barely worked. And this is not pretty. This was a very hard day for me. Why does God keep me here to suffer day after day? I got almost hysterical in the afternoon. Martin tells me not to give up. I've tried to be a good hostage and be patient. And where has it gotten me? Eight and a half months and still here. God is pleased to have me suffer, and I'm tired of it. Hebrews 4.12 says, God's Word is a discerner that looks at our hearts and exposes us for what we really are. Nothing in all creation can hide from Him. Everything is naked and exposed before His eyes, and we may look together on the outside, and we may have a whole lot of props that keep life going well for us, Here in America, we've got lots of props. Our homes, our nice families, our careers, our money. But God sees what we truly are. But God is good. And he knows our frame, and he remembers that we're dust. And he loves us, and he's on our side when we're weak and needy. And God didn't wait for me to get my act together there in the jungle. Even as I complained at him for keeping us there for so long, he started working in my heart. I asked Martin one day, where is the love, the joy, the peace, the contentment, you know, all those things that are supposed to characterize believers in Jesus? Where are those things? Because I look at myself, and I see the bad and the worse, and there is no good. And Martin said, love, joy, peace. Those aren't things that you can just drum up within yourself and make happen. Those are gifts from the Holy Spirit of God. Let's ask for them. Well, I had tried and failed to find those things within myself for months, so we started to pray and ask God to build good things in our hearts. It seems like we were either running for our lives from the military for days and nights on end, totally exhausted, or we were in what we thought was a safe place. You know, we were hiding out, we were laying low, totally bored. And every once in a while during those days and weeks of boredom, a magazine or something to read would come into camp and we really liked Reader's Digest. We would read those things till they fell apart. I would read them aloud to Martin, he would read them aloud to me, we would show the pictures to the guys. You know, they've never seen a picture of an elephant. Wow, that thing could feed a village for months. We really liked the jokes. And one day Martin read this one to me. It's called Writer's Block. Having encouraged her class of 11-year-olds to use descriptive language in the story she had just asked them to write, my wife was disappointed when one boy used the adjective big to describe a castle. She asked the boy to be a bit more creative and told him to rewrite the sentence. Minutes later, he was back at her desk. This time, the sentence read, I went into the castle, which was big. And when I say big, I mean big. Well, that's what we did. But a day or so later, Martin said, you know, Grace, I've been thinking about that joke and about something Jesus said. He said, If you want to be great in God's kingdom, be the servant of all. And I think when he said all, he meant all. He didn't mean all, but bad guys holding you hostage. And I watched Martin start to serve that group of terrorists. There was this one guy, 57. I'm sure that probably wasn't really his name, but that's what we called him, 57. His job was to carry the M57 through the jungle. And M57 is heavy weaponry. It's a five or six foot long metal tube. And during a gun battle, it had that three-pronged tripod thing that it would sit up on and they would point it at the enemy and put the mortar in the front and shoot it at the military. Well, 57 was always in a bad mood. I told Martin, I called him 57 because for 57 days in a row, he'd been in a bad mood. We were in a gun battle one day and we had some casualties and so did the military. The Abu Sayyaf killed a medic, a point man, and a radio man, which meant we gained a medical bag, a weapon, and a radio. Well, the next day when nobody was looking, Martin and I went through that medical bag And we listed some things that we thought we were going to need in the future. Some pain reliever, some antibiotics, some anti-diarrhea medicine for me. And we hid that away amongst our stuff. Well, we learned that 57 suffered from headaches. That's why he was always in a bad mood. And every time we would see him start to rub his temples, Martin would take him some of our stash of pain reliever. You know, that kid's attitude towards us changed totally. Not long after that, they sent 57 out on a striking force. A striking force is 10, 15, 20 guys who they would send to another area of the island we were on to wreak some havoc in order to keep the attention away from our group. And we never knew if we would see those guys alive again because, as you can well imagine, things didn't always go well for them. When 57 came back to camp several weeks later, he was all smiles when he saw Martin. He gave him that two-cheeked Muslim greeting. As we prayed, God began giving us the victories within ourselves that we desperately wanted to see. We started seeing them as the needy kids that they are. My hatred was replaced with concern and love for them. Contentment And even joy began to grow in my heart as I learned to start thanking God for the good things I saw Him doing for us every day, instead of dwelling on the bad. Hebrews 4.16 says, Let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There, we will receive His mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it. And your need today is not due to being held in the jungle, but your need is real. and your need is great, your first need is to have a Savior. That's what everyone in this world needs, is a Savior from their sin, and Jesus died so you have one. The other needs, they are as many as the people in this room. Come boldly to God with your need, with what's on your heart. He's promised to help us when we need it. One of the saddest conversations we had was one day with Nadim. Nadim was a young guy, 16, 18 years old maybe. He spoke enough English so we could communicate a little bit with him. One of the requirements of a Muslim is they are supposed to read their Koran every day. Now, when the Abu Sayyaf would read their Quran, they wouldn't read it silently to themselves like we would read something. They would read it aloud. But they didn't just read it. They would use this sing-song, minor key, up-and-down, mournful chant when they read. And one of them would start their Quran reading, and they would all think, oh, I haven't done my reading today. And they would all start in, you know, different chapters, different verses, different tunes. I called it choir practice. I thought if the military really wanted to find us, all they needed to do was open their ears during choir practice. One day after Nadim was finished reading, I asked him, what did you just read? And his eyes lit up. He said, oh, I just read my favorite song. I said, yeah? What does it say? And he said, I don't know. It's in Arabic, and I don't speak Arabic. And I was shocked. I said, Nadim, you're reading words you don't understand. The reason it was his favorite psalm is he'd read it so many times, he didn't have to think about it anymore. And I said, you know what you need to do? You need to get a Koran that's been translated into your dialect, and then you'll know what you're saying. And he said, oh, no, ma'am, then it would be corrupted. And I realized that Nadim is basing his whole life and eternity on a book he has never read and is not likely to read. And I have to wonder, in an audience this large, how many of us might be basing our lives and our eternities on a book we've never read? How is Nadim going to hear the Gospel without a preacher? You know that easy-to-reach places in the world have missionaries there already. It's the hard-to-reach places that are left. Maybe they're hard-to-reach because they're isolated. There are some 3,000 language groups who've never had anyone from the outside come into their world and tell them anything. Maybe they're hard-to-reach because of their ideology. They aren't going to be open to what you have to say, and it might not be a really safe place for you to live. But we need some people willing to go to the hard places. Several months ago, I heard a statistic. I had forgotten the numbers, but I thought I remembered the bottom line. It was for every unreached people group in the world, there are six evangelical churches. That is, there are six times more Bible-believing churches than there are unreached people groups. And I got excited about that, because you know what that means. Reaching the world with the gospel is a doable thing. I thought, growing up, that reaching the world with the gospel is something Jesus had told us to do. It couldn't really be done, but we were supposed to die trying. And I've been encouraging churches as I travel, if your church and five others that believe like you do would get together and reach an unreached people group, and everybody did that, we could reach the world. And then I ran into the man that I heard that statistic from, and he said, oh, Gracia, you heard that wrong. Well, I knew it. You know, it was too good to be true. And I've been saying it all over America. He said, For every unreached people group, there are 600 evangelical churches. I would like to think that it is this generation that's going to reach the world with the gospel. We're in a very unique position of having everything we need. We have the number of Christians we need. We have the wealth. I found an article on the internet the other day. It said, The truth is, I live in a country with a $10 trillion economy that's twice as large as its closest rival, which is Japan. In fact, the six next largest economies, if they were all combined together, would be smaller than ours. The state of California is now the fifth largest economy in the world. So money's not the problem. We have technology. We can network. This world is very small now, and this young generation of kids knows how to use the technology. And if your generation would get together and put your heads together, I think you could come up with some amazing ways of reaching these unreached people that our generation has never thought of. I have been so encouraged with this young generation. They think outside the box. As I travel, even at secular universities, I often run into kids. At one place in Arkansas, I had this group of guys come up and said, on Tuesday nights, we pray for Muslims. And we're learning Arabic, because we think we're going to need it. I think God's going to do something special with this young generation. I want to introduce you really quickly to the New Tribes Mission website, ntm.org. New Tribes Mission works with reaching unreached people groups, and every day two or three stories from what's happening in remote places around the world are posted on ntm.org, and you'll find incredible stories there. that you can read or you can email to someone that you think might be interested. Ideas about how you can pray or ways you can be involved in missions. That's npm.org. And there's a table at the back with literature. And today we have Erin and Kim Laney. They're staffing the table. I didn't know Kim and Erin until yesterday. I just called them and asked them if they would come help me this weekend. They are headed for Papua New Guinea with New Tribes Mission. Both of them grew up on the mission field. Kim was in Brazil. Aaron was in New Guinea, so they know what they're getting into. But this young couple is going to some of those hard to reach places. And they're going to need people praying for them. They're going to need people encouraging them. They're going to need people giving to them financially. Your family might want to pick them up for support. Send them $10 a month and then you'll be part of their ministry and you'll get updates from the field and you can pray for them. So please pick up their prayer card as you leave and just encourage them today. I'm so thankful that they came. While we're talking about statistics, could I give you one more? 75% of North Americans have never heard the gospel of Jesus in an understandable manner. Can that be true? Do you know what the gospel is? The word gospel means good news. Do you know what the good news is? Well, first, you kind of got to know the bad news, that we are dead in our trespasses and sins. And the gospel is that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again the third day. That's the good news. We're no longer dead to sin. We're alive to Christ, to God, because of what Christ did. And that's pretty simple. So how is it that 75% of North Americans don't know that? Maybe some of us aren't talking a whole lot about it. Just so you know, you don't have to go overseas to begin winning this world. Your unreached people group might be the folks that you sit across the table from at family reunion. It might be your neighbors or your street. It might be those people you work with at your part-time job. There are lots of opportunities to be involved in reaching the world if you're looking for them. Well, you've been very kind this morning. You've listened well. As I travel and speak, you know, I could really bomb and not say anything. And afterwards, everybody would come up and say, oh, that was so good. You know, because of what I've been through, they don't want to make me feel bad, right? When I was young, I was the daughter of a pastor. And at school, the kids weren't quite so kind. They would say to me, oh, Christianity, that's just a crutch. And I thought, well, let's see about crutches. On Friday night, one of the football stars gets hurt playing football and he comes to school on Monday on crutches. He doesn't pull himself along the hall on his hands and knees to get to class. And nobody sits and laughs at the football star because he's using crutches. They all understand that he needs something to help him. We are all needy. We're all ruined, and we're broken, and we need help. And we all have crutches. And we've talked about those already this morning. Those things that make you you. Maybe it's your pride in your career, your money, your good looks if you're young. I heard a very wealthy man say, well, I'll just tell you who it was, with Ted Turner. you know, multi-billionaire, CNN, Ted Turner, the one who owns sports teams and two million acres of land worldwide. He said not long ago, Christianity is for losers. And I thought, and your point is? Because that didn't offend me any. I'm a loser. Have you taken a good look at this world lately? If you think we're okay, You're not watching CNN. Look at the Sudan. It's been dubbed the new genocide. Tens of thousands of Sudanese are being killed daily by their own government or by government thugs that they hire so they'll stay in power. Look at the wars. People killing people for whatever reason, you know, self-preservation, greed, ideology. We're losing and we need help. You know, come to think of it, Christianity is not a crutch. It's a stretcher. You know, that last day in the jungle for me, we all kind of thought something was going to happen. We had this feeling. We called it the Gooney Goonies. We hadn't eaten in 10 days. I didn't know you couldn't eat for 10 days. And, you know, I thought you don't eat for three days and you drop dead, but you don't. We had salt, we had water, the guides knew which leaves to pick off the trees. We were weak and exhausted, and we were trying to get to that elusive village where we'd been told a ransom was waiting, but we didn't know where we were. And our guides had never been on that island before, that area, and we were wandering around lost. And what we didn't know was that the CIA had sewn a homing device into a backpack that they had sent into Sabaya a few days before. Sabaya was the leader of our group, and that backpack had come in from one of his friends on the outside. So the military was able to tell what area we were in, and they were closing in on us. One evening about sundown, we decided we should cross a logging road It'd been raining heavily every day like it always does in the tropics, and I knew the road would be muddy and we would leave lots of tracks if we crossed. And I told my guard to go talk to Sabaya and tell him, we don't want to cross this road because the military will see our tracks and they'll start following us and we'll have another gun battle. And of course they didn't listen to me. I was an American and I was a woman and that was a double whammy. So we crossed the road and We realized about nine in the morning that we were being followed. We heard the shouts of the soldiers in the distance. So we started off, we'd been resting, and we found food that morning. Some unripe fruit, nanka fruit growing, and we just gorged ourselves with it. And we kept moving, and I was so discouraged. And I told Martin, as I always did, I don't know how much longer I can do this. And Martin said, You know, I think we're going to get out of this. I just don't know when. So around noon maybe. It was threatening to rain. We had learned from our year in the jungle, one of the other unwritten rules between the Abu Sayyaf and the military. Remember, we never fought at night? Well, we never fought in the rain. And we thought we were safe and we stopped to wait out the rain and set up our hammocks and our toldas. A tolda is a little plastic sheeting that shed the water so it didn't get on us. And we laid down for a rest. Suddenly the gunfire started in. The military hadn't stopped for the rain. And they came over the ridge and just opened fire on us. And even before I could hit the ground, I was wounded and slid down the mountain because it was split from the rain and came to rest beside Martin. And I looked over him, at him, and he was bleeding from his chest. And I knew from past experience that sometimes a leg wound will heal, but chest wounds don't. And Martin laid there just breathing kind of loudly. He was almost snoring. And I was trying to do what he had always taught me to do in a gun battle. Keep your head, keep lay straight on the ground, flat, and don't do anything till someone tells you what to do. I was trying to look dead, because I thought, the worst thing that can happen now is they drag me off into the jungle, Martin's dead, and this nightmare continues. And when the gunfire started to die down, and I heard the shouts from the Abu Sayyaf as they were retreating down the river, and I heard the shouting of Tagalog from the soldiers up on top of the hill, I started to slowly move my hands around so they would know that I was alive. And they saw me moving and came down and dragged me to the top of a hill. And as they were dragging me away, I looked back at Martin and he was white. And that's when I knew he was dead. And they called a helicopter and when it arrived, they told me, we're going to move you now. We want you to close your eyes because the helicopter is going to be kicking up lots of debris." And I said, oh, no, I can make it on my own. I'm going to crawl to that helicopter. I don't need you. Did I say that? No. I closed my eyes and they carried me on a stretcher. And as they carried me, I thought, thank you, God. Thank you for sending me help. I'm going to get out of here and I'm going to be okay. And Christianity is not a crutch. It's a stretcher for those of us who are needy and broken and who can't get by without help. And everyone is trusting something and you can trust yourself if you want to. But I'm thinking that someday Ted Turner's going to run out of money or fame or power. And he's going to find himself in need. And scripture says, what good is it if you gain the whole world and you lose your own soul? People are trusting some really crazy things these days. Have you noticed that? Have you seen Oprah in the last month or two? She is weirding me out, you guys. I used to be a real fan of hers. Here's a quote from a lady that believes a whole lot like Oprah does, a friend of hers. Her name is Rhonda Byrne. She says, You are God. You are God in a physical body. You are spirit in the flesh. You are eternal life expressing itself in you. You are a cosmic being. All power, all wisdom, all intelligence, perfection, Magnificence. You are the creator. You are creating the creation of you on this planet. The Earth turns on its orbit for you. The birds sing for you. The sun rises and it sets for you. The stars come out for you. Take a look around. None of it can exist without you. No matter who you thought you were, now you know the truth of who you really are. You are the master of the universe. the heir to the kingdom, the perfection of life. And now, you know the secret. I knew it. There had to be some reason why I am so busy. I'm the master of the universe. No wonder I'm so tired. We're all trusting something. And I choose to trust Almighty God. And I choose to believe that Contrary to what Rhonda Beirne and Oprah say, I am not God. I am sinful man in great need of a savior. I believe that God provided a savior for me when he sent Jesus to die for me. I believe that God is sovereign in life, and he doesn't have to run his plans past me before he brings them about. And he didn't say, oops, when Martin and I were taken hostage. And he didn't wring his hands like we did for a year, wondering, what do I do now? God's plans are perfect, and they are good, whether we like them or not, because God is perfect, and he is good, and he's the one I'm trusting. In closing, people have called Martin a martyr. That has always bothered me. Elizabeth Elliot also faced that question. In the preface of her book, Shadow of the Almighty, she wrote this about her husband, Jim Elliot. He and the other men with whom he died were hailed as heroes, martyrs. I do not approve, nor would they have approved. Is the distinction between living for Christ and dying for him after all so great? is not the second, the logical conclusion of the first. Furthermore, to live for God is to die daily. As the Apostle Paul put it, it is to lose everything that we may gain Christ. It is in thus laying down our lives that we find them. Those who want to know him must walk the same path with him. These are the martyrs in the scriptural sense of the word, which means simply witnesses. In life, as well as in death, we are called to be witnesses, to bear the stamp of Christ. I believe that Jim Elliot was one of these. And I believe that Martin Burnham was one of these. And I think that many of you here today are one of these. You who are determined to live for God, when it isn't popular and it isn't easy, you who daily lay down your lives in order to find them, you who continue on, witnesses who bear the stamp of Christ. I thank you for having me. Let me have you stand on your feet for just a moment with your head bowed and your eyes closed.