CHAT ROOM - Peter McGrath (testimony & story)

Jono McGrath presents Peter McGrath's amazing testimony of scally to Seaman's Mission pastor to Christian Ministry including Trusteeship of Flame Radio.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_02 0:02

And now is the time on the playoffs to take a look behind the studio's green door to find out who is in today's morning until the morning comes green door. And now are you listening?

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Hello, this is John, who welcoming you to another chat room here on Flames EasyR. I promise you it's a good one. It's a family affair behind the green door this week as I'm introducing the testimony of Peter McGraw, who just happens to be my dad. I grew up in and around church, as you'll find out from the testimony. My dad's a pastor, and he tells a story about when he was in Broome mission that used to be in Exmith Street in Burkenhead. He'd look up from preaching, and me and my brother would be at the back pointing to the clock saying, Dad, Dad, you're going over time, it's time to go home. So I promised that to be none of that at this time. It was through my dad that I met Norman here in the Flame. I remember coming down to the studio for an open day back in 2010. And I said to Norman, What's going on? And his reply was, We're on in 20 minutes. And that was the first time I broadcasted with the Flame as a guest in this enchant room. So it was a real pleasure after four years and a mountload of work to be back where I started, but on the other side of the microphone, so to speak. And so onto the testimony of his wrong my dad. In all the years I was in church and all the years I was away from the church, I'd never heard my dad give us a testimony until now. And it's a challenge to listen to in places not just because of the life that my dad led, but the family history and the extended family history he talks about, which fills in a lot of things I didn't know. Anyway, I'll talk about that later. But for now, I'll leave you in the capable hands of Peter McGraw speaking at Waterside Church in Everton in February 2014.

SPEAKER_03 1:59

I want to read you just a few verses from Paul as he writes to the church at Philippi. And Paul never lost an opportunity to give his testimony. He was saved on the Damascus Road, and then a little later on in the book of Acts, twice, he gives his testimony and talks about the sun, the light, that's shone. And then again, when he's writing to the Romans, he mentions a little word of his testimony in chapter 7, and again when he's writing to the Galatians, he gives a word of testimony again. And then when he's writing from prison to the church at Philippi, then again he gives a word of testimony. And this is the final time, as far as I can see, he testifies. And he tells them what he was like. If somebody would have said to Paul, Paul, if you were to die tonight and stand before God and God were to say to you, Why should I let you into heaven? Paul would have said, Well, this is what I would have said before the Damascus Road expeditions, before I met the Lord Jesus Christ. So in chapter 3, this is what he would have said. This is my life before I met with the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. He said in verse 5, I was circumcised the eighth day, I was of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touching the Lord, a Pharisee, concerning zeal, persecuting the church, touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But what things were gained to me, those I counted loss for Christ. You see, he talked about his ritual, he'd been circumcised, he talked about his race, he was a Jew, he talked about his religion, he was a Pharisee, and he talked about his righteousness. Nobody could point the finger at Paul and say, Paul, you've done this wrong or that wrong, because Paul could say, I hadn't, and I could stand up to this. How I wish I'd been like Paul. Some years ago, many years ago now, I suppose, I had to see a psychiatrist, and I sat before this psychiatrist. He was only a young man, and he asked me what I thought were a lot of daft questions, and I answered what I thought were a lot of daft answers. But when we finished, he put down that on his report. I read this afterwards. The report said, and this was his assessment of me this man is aimless, dreamy, doesn't know where he's going. Now I took offence at that. I couldn't do a great deal because I was in Wormwood Scrubs, and he was this prison psychiatrist who questioned me who did this. Aimless! Uh yeah, uh well, I didn't think it was. Dreamy. Oh, I I had a great dream, didn't know where it was going. I really thought it was going places. I was born in Birkinhead, born right outside Camillaad's Gate, and uh we live in a block of flats, a tenement block, which I suppose today you look back and say it's a sort of ghetto kind of area. It was an area where the police patrol continually, it was an area where almost every family in the two blocks of flats had trouble with the police. The local newspaper, Birkenhead News, as it was in those days, I was sure that it was only kept going by reported crime from the people who were around this particular area. And we used to tell the time, I would we lived on the third landing and we would look over the river, and I could tell the time, you know, if we wanted all the time, we'd look at the live buildings. Our bullspot, we were born near Liverpool, the most Liverpoolans were on the other side of the river. My dad was a docker. There were ten, there were five boys and five girls, and my dad and mum, twelve of us in the family, we lived in a three-bedroom flat. And my dad was a docker, and I hesitate to say my dad worked on the docks, it would be true to say that my dad attended the docks, because in those days one of the grey's perks was that the dockers used to take a lot of stuff from the hatches, and my dad was a thief. Because we lived fairly close to the docks, he would come home maybe a couple of times a day with maybe 15, 20, 25 yards of cloth wrapped around his body underneath his clothes, and I used to sell his cloth for him as a 12, 13 year old. I used to take this stuff and sell it for him. I was his runner. My dad was a drinker, he was a violent man when he was drunk. My mum, there was not an awful lot of her, she was only a small lady. But when my dad was drunk, he was violent. At that time, it wasn't unusual for me mum to when my dad was particularly violent, she would take the baby of the time, the youngest one of the time, and she would disappear for a few days, she'd go and stay with her sister, the Nancy, and she stayed there till my dad had calmed down, and then when he calmed down, he'd go and he'd bring her back again with with all kinds of promises that he wouldn't do it again, but within a very short time it was I never knew what this verse meant, but looking back, there's a verse in the Bible that says, There'll be wars and rumours of wars. That was our house. In that my dad was violent. He'd been in prison a couple of times, but not for big crimes. He'd been in prison for some petty crime. He was a con man, my dad. And although I didn't like his violence and I didn't like the things he got up to, his drink and what he was into, I admired the fact that he was a con man. He could sort of talk his way out of anything at all. I left school at 15 with no sort of standards to live by. The only standard that he really lived by was don't get caught. I only ever saw my dad angry with me once, it was when I got caught, or angry with my brother, because he got caught and did a short time in prison. I left school at 15 on my 15th birthday, and the headmaster in the school got me a job working for W. H. Smith's and the warehouse I was working in, the wholesale side of it, I was working, and I found that the people were very, very gullible, and I found that in a very short time I was able to steal a lot of stuff from there. I started to drink when I was 15. The wages were very, very low, but I was making more stealing on the side and selling stuff in the area where I was. I lasted about 18 months before I was eventually caught, and I was taken to court, and in the course I was fined because of the offence I'd committed. They could only fine me for the last offence. I was fined, although I'd stolen hundreds of pounds, possibly thousands of pounds worth of goods from Smiths, I was fined five pounds. And I came out of the course as a 16-year-old laughing, because had anybody said to me in those days that crime didn't pay? Crime paid admirably. It was a mugs game going out to work. And so I decided that there was no way I would work again for a living, and with a couple of lads in the area, decided I would become a burglar, decided I would thieve for a living, because I was drinking fairly heavily at the time. So we became burglars, and fortunately we were not very, very good at thieving or robbing and that. It was just ale money more than anything else. But during the 12 months that I acted as a burglar, worked as a burglar, as a thief, as a con man, during that time I was arrested on a number of occasions and I was taken to courts and I was fined and I was given probation and I was given various warnings and that. And the fines I owed so much in money I would never get out of debt. The system was that if you were fined, you would always have to judge time to pay because we never had any money, all the money we had went on beer, on ale. And uh the system was that if you were fined and you had time to pay, whatever it was you had to pay each week, you had to pay by Saturday lunchtime. If you didn't pay by Saturday lunchtime, you were arrested. And so Friday night, along with a couple of mates, we'd be breaking into somebody's house or factory or a shop, trying to get enough money to pay the fine off on the Saturday. I was caught and I was taken for the final time, 17 and a half, I was taken to court. During that year, I'd say I'd been probation. I'd done a couple of short terms in prison on remand, in Liverpool prison on remand, and then arrested, and then at 17 and a half I was sent to Borsel training. The Borsel was down in St. Knates. I went into Wormwood Scrubs and spent three months in Wormwood Scrubs, spent Christmas in Wormwood Scrubs, and then from Wormwood Scrubs into the Borsel, which was in Huntingdonshire, Clovery area. And uh the place I was in, it was an ex-army camp. They were niching huts, and it was a place that during the war it was a spy school. They trained, some of the older ones will know of Odette Churchill. They had trained her, she was spent her time in France and Germany. I think the Germans eventually uh killed her as a spy. And during the time we were there, there were 120 Borstel boys, I suppose. And the system was we were waking up very early in the morning, we were living in these niche huts with bunks down the side. There was about 20 Borstel boys in each of the niche huts, and there were about 120 altogether. In the morning, they'd wake us up fairly early, and uh we would go out and do PE, we would run down the compound and do physical jerks and that, and then during the day we would work, they were doing different courses. The idea was that they were training us to become better citizens, and there were different courses, most of mechanics, gardening, bricklaying, painting and decorating. Uh I did a painting and decorating course, thought that was the easiest course to do. And uh then in the evening we spent our time in evening classes being taught different things. During the weekend, a Saturday was sports afternoon, we had to do some kind of sport, although I wasn't very, very sporty, I would much prefer to lie on my bed. And then on a Sunday, Sunday morning, Sunday morning was church parade. They divided the camp, half the camp was, I suppose half the camp was Roman Catholic, and the other half, the way the officers worked it out, if you're not Roman Catholic, then you must be Church of England. And there was a mixed bag there, there was all kinds of there were Buddhists, there were Muslims, there were non-Christians, people who were Protestants in a sense, people who had no religion at all. But on a Sunday morning, because the officers in the camp they were all ex-army, what they would do, all the Roman Catholics would go in the transport that the Borstel provided, and because their church was a little further away than ours, they would go down in style, but we would have to march down, probably about two or three mile march. And so we would march down to this huge Anglican church and we would fill it. Maybe two or three local people in there, very small village. We would fill the church with Borstel boys, and then to a man, almost everybody would go asleep. The minister would rave on for a while, at the end of the service, they would wake us up, and we would march back again to the camp to the boastel. And on that basis, when anybody spoke to me afterwards about church or God, I used to say, I've been to church. It's dead. There is nothing, there's no life at all in the church. There's nothing there.

SPEAKER_08 13:32

For my sinful heart was when I search him at his work for him even of me.

SPEAKER_03 13:48

From the feel of dead before the state of the day, and uh during the evenings, when the evening classes were finished in the bottle, we would sit round the Nation Hustle, had a couple of fires, stoves at either end, and we would sit down there and discuss crime because that was what we knew. Everybody was in there for the different crimes, every kind of crime, and we discussed crime. As I said before, everybody believed that crime did pay, and although the officers told us that they were we were there in order to become better citizens, we believed that we were there to become better burglars. We believed that as we discussed around the fires how to break a window without making a noise, how to start a car without a key, all that kind of thing like that. During the time I was there, I was called off the army. National service was just coming to an end, and shortly before I was released, I had to go and have a medical. And the lads and a lot of uh ex-army men in the bostel. They suggested that a good job for me in the army would be driving. It was a driver's job, it was a good job. And they suggested they told me how I should fill the former when I went for the medical. Whatever you want to do in the army, you never put it first, you always put it second. And so I put down what I wanted to do second, and sure enough, when eventually I came out of the Borsel, six days later I was in the army in Aldershot, I was in the service car and I got a driver's job. And so for the next two years I was driving a lorry. I spent two years in Germany driving a three-ton lorry, and uh not into a fair amount of trouble because the lads I was mixing with were all ex-prisoners, ex whatever it was, while I was in the Borstel. During the time I was there, one of the lads I was in the Borstel with, he was a Geordie, came from Newcastle, and we got on very, very well together. And uh after about 12 months in the army, I wrote to him. He was still inside when I got out. I wrote to him and he wrote a couple of letters back, and his sister started to write. And so his sister and I became pen pals. She had pen pals all over the world. But we became pen pals, and and uh I wrote a lot to her and she wrote a lot to me, and uh at this time, during this time, my mother had got up the courage and she'd taken my dad to court. And in those days, if a couple were fighting, if there were problems in a home when the police came around, it was called a domestic. And so they didn't do anything at all about the fact that the man was beating a woman or the woman was it was doing whatever it was. But time came in where my mother took my dad to court and uh he was found guilty of beating my mother, and he was told he couldn't live with her anymore, and she got the keys and she got the red book, and it meant that you know she could keep him out. It didn't keep him out when he was drunk, he still came round, didn't make any difference in that sense. But I was writing to this girl in Newcastle and I came in one night, and I don't know whether I'd been drinking or not, but I sat down and and wrote a long letter, and in the letter I proposed to her, and by return post, she accepted my proposal. We'd never mess, we never even had a photograph of each other. I was working on this theory that I liked her brother so she couldn't be all that bad. And he put a good word in for me at the other end. I thought he tried to put it off actually, but uh I thought he put a good word in for me. Uh the outcome was that when eventually I came out of the boastel, I got a job on the docks, working at docks, and uh while I was there on the docks, this young lady came down from Newcastle, she was a couple of years younger than me, came down from Newcastle, and we sort of fell in love unofficially, and we decided we would get married, but it caused a lot of problems with my family. See, my family regarded themselves as orange. Orange meaning that on July the 12th they went to Southport and got very, very drunk. Well, I can't even remember seeing the lodge. But on this basis, my mum used to say, We're Protestants. Now, none of us went to church, none of the family went anywhere near a church. My mum went on New Year's Eve because she thought it was lucky to start the year in church. And I don't know where she got this from, lucky because my dad still used to hammer the life out of me, you know. So there's nothing lucky in that at all. But the thought of me, a Protestant, marrying a Catholic, and this girl I was to marry was a very good Catholic. She'd been convent educated, she had an old level in religion, and she never missed Mass and she never missed confession. She went to church, she was, I would have called, a good Catholic. Well the outcome was that Third World War broke out with my family. My sisters didn't like this girl I was going to marry, my brothers were fairly indifferent to her, my mum didn't like her very much, and the outcome was that after she was in Birkenhead for a couple of months changing her dress every couple of weeks because my sisters caused so many problems where she lived. We eventually got married on one very miserable Thursday afternoon on special license. I invited my mother about an hour before the wedding, and uh we got married and tried to settle into this married bliss. But this girl I'd married, this young girl had come down from Newcastle, and she was living in a very foreign environment, and she was living in an environment which was fairly violent as far as she could see. She didn't have any friends, didn't really know anybody, so she clung to me as much as she could, and I found she was too clingy, and I was working on the docks, and like my dad, I was stealing from the docks, and she complained and she cried and she moaned about the fact that I was stealing because she was scared that I would be re-arrested and I would end up in prison again. And it was on the cards that that probably would have happened. But she got a job at a local publisher's in Birkinhead, and while she was there, there were a couple of girls in the office where she worked. And I came home from work one night, and uh the marriage wasn't going too well at all. And uh my wife told me that she'd been talking to a couple of girls, and these girls were Christians. And I tried to put my wife off. I mean, I'd been to church, I'd been to the you know in the Boston, I'd been to the church in the scrubs, I'd been to the church while I was in the army, you know, I'd always forced to do this. There was nothing there. If there was a god, he was a god. He was outside of everything, he wasn't interested personally in anybody at all. But my wife insisted, and each night when I came home from work, she would tell me a new tale or tell me this latest instalment of talking to these girls. And one night I came home from work and I got quite disturbed because my wife said to me when I came in, I'm stopping going to church. Now she was a very good Catholic, and I said to her, you know, quite concerned, why are you stopping going to church? You see, for me, had anybody said to me, Do you believe in God or do you believe in heaven? I would have said yes, but my wife is so religious, I'll get in on her ticket. She was my insurance, if you like. Stupid way of thinking. But she said, This was the reason, and looking back, it was an excellent reason. She said, I'm stopping going to church because I don't know what I believe. And she said, When these girls talk about God, they know him personally. When they talk about Jesus, he's a friend. When they pray, God answers their prayers. She said, When I pray, I don't even know if God hears me. And so she said, I'm stopping going to church until I know what I believe, until I sort myself out with God. Well, I tried to dissuade her, but I carried on working on the docks, and then one evening, maybe a week or so later, we were invited up to go and talk with one of these girls' husbands, this couple we were invited for a cup of coffee. And I went along under protest going to keep my wife happy, but I felt sure because I'd met these people who believed the Bible before, these religious people, and sure as ever I thought they're going to tell me how good they are and how bad I am. And I knew how bad I was, I didn't really need them to tell me. But I went up under protest, and when we got to the man's house, uh we had a cup of coffee. They were a very nice couple, as it turned out. We had a cup of coffee, and uh he asked us, did we know anything at all about the Bible? No, we didn't know anything. And so he asked, Did we know anything about Bible prophecy? No, we didn't know anything about Bible prophecy, didn't know anything about the Bible. And so for the next hour or the next hour and a half, maybe a little longer, he just opened the Bible to us and he showed us from the scriptures things that were happening today that the Lord has spoken about 2,000, 3,000 years ago. So much so that at the end of the evening I was reluctant to come home. But when we came out, my head was going round, and I felt there is a God. And God knows what's going on. And he showed us how the Bible was more up to date than somebody's newspaper. And we got home and my wife was just the same, her head was going round as well, and we sat down, we were living in this furnished flat. And we sat down, and my wife said to me, Sheila, she said to me, Do you think we should pray? I really didn't know how to pray. How do you address God? And I'm getting hold of a hand, and because she was a religious one, I was waiting for her to pray, and she said, Well, you're the man you should pray. And I just remember saying, God, if you're there and you can hear us, show us what you want us to do.

SPEAKER_10 25:12

When I wonder the world's I hands have made, I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, thy power throughout the universe display, then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee, how great thou art, how great thou art then seems my soul my Savior God to thee, how great thou art, how great thou art when Christ shall come with shall nation and take me home what joy shall fill my heart then I shall bow in humoration and their proclaim my God, how great thou art then sings my soul, my savior God to think how great thou art, how great thou art it sings my soul must say God to thee, how great thou, how great thou great thou great thou I carried on working on the docks and I felt that somehow this God who had been distant before was now sort of looking over my shoulders.

SPEAKER_03 28:34

He was like Big Brother looking down on me, and decided that I'd stop thieving and I'd stop swearing and I'd cut down on the drink, and the things that I knew were not right with my life, I decided I'd sort them out, but couldn't do it. For about a week I'd look back at the end of the day and say, Well, if God was watching you today, Peter, he wouldn't have been happy with that performance. One of the lads I worked with, he was Dougie, I think Dougie was 47, but he'd already done 19 years in prison. And he was my best mate, and if anybody said the loading, whatever it was, down number three hats, cigarettes, whatever, we'd be there before the doctors got there. But this trying to give up doing it, I couldn't do it, got angry with myself because had anybody asked me, was I in charge of my life, I would have said yes, of course I was. But I wasn't, and I recognised I wasn't. There's so many things I couldn't do, and I blame my environment and I blamed all kinds of things. But fortunately, this man and his wife invited us back again for another cup of coffee, and I went back this time willingly, hoping he would talk about Bible prophecy. I had all kinds of questions I wanted to ask him and things that I wanted to clarify. And we went back and he talked for a little while, and then he said, he said, you know, I believe you've prayed. My wife had told his wife this, you've prayed and you've asked God to do something for you, or to show you what he wants you to do. And God hasn't done it. And I said, No, I don't think God will because I'm not good enough. He said, Listen, Peter, he said, nobody's good enough. We're all sinners. The Bible said we've all sinned and come short of the glory of God. What God expects of us, what God desires of us, we come far short of that. He said, look at it this way. He said, we've all sinned and each sin we've committed is like a brick in a wall. And he said, Each sin has built this wall higher and higher. And he said, When you pray, he said, your prayers hit the wall. God's on one side, you're on this side. When you pray, your prayers hit the wall and bounce off here. God wants to hear you, but he can't, because your sin is the barrier between you and him. And I'm frustrated now, and I said, Well, how do we get rid of the wall? He said, That's what Jesus came to do. He said, if you want to get right with God, if you want to become a Christian, he said, Go talk with an evangelical minister. Now, I didn't know what an evangelical minister was. I thought all ministers were the same. And I said, I'll do that. I didn't want to show my ignorance. I came out and my wife came down and her head was going on the same as mine. And a few days later I started again trying to behave myself on the docks. A few nights later, my wife had had a letter from home from Newcastle. Her dad was very much the same as my dad. Her mother was almost blind, and her dad, when he was drunk, he was violent. And she'd had a letter from home saying things weren't too good there, and she wanted to write and she wanted a bit of quiet on her own. So I left home and I said I'll go down and have a pint, or I'll go down and see my mum. But on the way down to see my mum, there was a little mission, same size as this room here, outside the tunnel in Birkenhead. We used to go in when we were kids. If it was cold, we'd go in there. We'd just go in and sing the choruses and uh just make a noise to see if we could get thrown out first, and a sort of thing like that. Those kids we do like that. And this little mission was over, and I went down and uh I went in. Don't know why I went in, but I went into the mission. Sat down at the back, and an old lady got hold of my arm and said, Come on, we're all friends here, and took me down and sat me in the front. And my greatest fear was some of the local kids would have opened the door and seen me and gone home and told the dads. A piece of my growers in the mission, and that was my fear. But what I didn't know was the old lady, because she thought kids would come in, she'd locked the door. Now I wasn't sure where it was to keep the kids out, so it was to keep me in. But they were doing a Bible study on the book of Levisicus, the Levisicus offering. I never understood a single word of what was going on. But at the end of the service, as I got up to come out the pastor, an old man came up and shook hands with me and asked me what my name was, and I told him Peter McGraw. And quite amazed, he said, Are you from the McGraws around the back? Because the McGraws had a terrible reputation. The dad and three of the sons and two of the girls had been in prison. We had this just awful, awful reputation. And I said, Yes. And he said to me, Peter, are you a Christian? And I said, No. He said, Do you want to become a Christian? And I said, Yes. So he said to the people, pray for this young man. So they sat down, only half a dozen. They sat down and they prayed quietly. And the pastor took me back to the front and thumbed through his Bible. He said, We have to lay down some ground rules. He said, The Bible says you're a sinner. Now, first thing you've got to understand is the Bible is the word of God. The Bible is God's word. He said, It's a letter from God to you. All that God wants you to know is there in the Bible. He said, The Bible says you're a sinner. He said, Do you believe that? And I said, Yes. He said, Well, let me show you this. He said, The Bible says if you confess your sins to Jesus Christ, he'll forgive you and cleanse you. And he said, Tell the Lord you're a sinner. He said, You're not telling the Lord anything he doesn't know. He said, but you're just humbly taking your place as a hopeless sinner before him. And I knelt down and said, Lord, I am a sinner. I've broken every commandment in the book. Would you please forgive me? Then the pastor said, Peter, he said, the Bible says, if you confess that's your part, he will forgive. That's his part. He said, I've heard you do your part. You haven't confessed to me, you've confessed to God. He said, I've heard you do your part. Do you believe that the Lord has done his part? Do you believe you're forgiven? And I said, Well, yes, I believe the Bible. He said, Okay, he said, Whatever you've done in the past has been dealt with. He said, But if you leave here now the way you are, you'll be doing the things that you did before. There'll be no change. He said, What you need is Jesus Christ in your life. He said, To as many as received him, says John, to as many as received him, them are the ones who gave the authority to become sons of God. He said, The Bible says Jesus said, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and suffer with him and he with me. He said, Now you've asked him to forgive you. Now ask him to come into your life and make you a Christian and change your life. And kneeling down again, I said, Lord, I believe you've forgiven me. Would you please come into my life? And as I was kneeling down, Jesus Christ came in. There was an instant assurance. I knew I was right with God. I knew that. I'm being a little facetious here, I suppose, but I knew that because this mission was outside the tunnel, if I'd have walked out of that door and got knocked down by a lorry or a bus, I would have gone right to heaven. Not on my ticket, not on my wife's ticket, but on the ticket that Jesus bought at Calvary. He died in my place for my sin, my sin bearer. And I trusted him as my Saviour. I went home and told my wife what had happened. And she sat down and cried because I couldn't understand. She cried because she said, I'm the goody and you're the baddie. But you're saved and I'm not. And I couldn't understand. I knew I had a peace that I'd never known before in my life. And I took her down to the mission to that was a Monday night on the Thursday night and took her down to the mission to the prayer meeting. Didn't what a prayer meeting was. But we went in and we sat and we listened and we watched what the other people were doing, and while we were there, my wife knelt down and she told the Lord that she was a religious sinner. And she asked the Lord to forgive her and come into her life. And the same peace that filled my life on the Monday night filled her life on the Thursday. She was saved. And we got home, we realized that the Lord was now our Saviour. And for me, it was this cause. And the lovely thing was I found that because of the boast and because of the army, I couldn't get past six o'clock in the morning. I was wide awake at six o'clock. So I could spend a couple of hours in the Bible, studying and reading the word and praying and finding that guy. Went to the docks and working on the docks found that. Whereas before I'd struggled and tried to be better, I could say to the Lord first thing the more, Lord, here's a day I haven't made a mess of yet. Would you live your life in me and through me and get me through the day? And at the end of the day, I could look back and say, Thank you, Lord. Whereas before I was thieving, I didn't want to think. Started taking stuff back to the docks. Not harder to get stuff into the docks than I was to get stuff out of the docks. But nevertheless, the Lord blessed in so many ways in those days. The Lord was constantly teaching us. We threw our loss in with this little mission. I took a Sunday school on, and the kids knew more in the Sunday school than I did. They were teaching me. Nevertheless, the Lord took us on. So let me jump a few years and stuff like that. And some of the ways the Lord answered prayer for us, and the way the Lord led and guided us there. We made up with my family and and uh we made sure that there was nothing between us and all was fine. And uh one of the things that troubled my wife dearly was that we were married a number of years but she couldn't have any children. And my sisters all had children, all my sisters had children. My wife, she worked in the hospital by this time, and and uh from time to time she would get pregnant and she'd carry for maybe a month or two months at the most, and then uh she would miscarry. And because she was in the hospital she was getting the best of attention. And uh one day the doctor called her and said, Sheila, you just can't carry children. You'll keep messing, you'll never ever have children. And it upset my wife, this. It didn't bother me too much at the time, I suppose, but it upset her. And uh before we went to bed at night, we used to read through the scriptures together, we were reading portions together, and this particular night we were reading through the Psalms and came across Psalm 128. And Psalm 128, one of the verses says, Your wife shall be a fruitful vine, and your children shall be like olive plants round about your table.

SPEAKER_05 37:56

Blessed are love who fear the Lord, and walk in his ways. Blessed are all who fear the Lord, and walk in his ways, for you will eat the fruit of your labor. You'll be blessed for prosperity. Blessed are all to fear the Lord and walk in his way, fetter all the feel the Lord, and walk in his way. You wipe for the light of fruitful vine, within your heart, you wipe for the like a fruitful vine, with the heart, your stones will be wrath around your table. Oh, put it out, fear the law, and walk in this way, put it out, feel the law, and walk in this way. All the days of the door, that's good, all the days of the door, the table, that's the beat of the day.

SPEAKER_00 40:13

Blessed is every one that favoureth of the Lord, that walketh in his ways. Happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee. Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house, and thy children like all of the land around about thy table. Behold, shall the man be blessed in the favour of the Lord. The Lord shall bless the house of his eye, and thou shalt see the Lord of Jerusalem with all the days of thy life. Yea, and thou shalt see thy children and children, and peace upon Israel.

SPEAKER_03 41:05

Now we read through that a couple of times, and I said to Sheila, Well, the doctor said you won't, you can't carry it so you can't have children. The Bible says you will, the Lord has said, Your children shall be like olive plants round about your table. We didn't know what that meant, but it was enough that the Lord had said, Your children. So I ask a friend of mine who was up in the scriptures, and he said, The only thing I can tell you is that in Israel, olive plants come to fruition in November. So I just almost said to my wife, Sheila, you're going to have a baby in November. Well, it was July and she wasn't even pregnant. Now that would have been a miracle, yeah. But the following November she had a girl, and three Novembers after that she had a boy. When the third one came along, Adam, it was a June baby. She wasn't well, she saw the doctor, and the doctor said, You're pregnant, and she canceled up. She said to the doctor, I can't be, it's not November. So she had to explain to the doctor what that was about. The Lord answered. We studied, and the pastor in the chair took me on as his son, and he taught me the scriptures, or he showed me and directed me. Then I I left the docks to work at Vauxhalls and spent some very, very miserable years in Vauxhalls. The whole spirit of the place was against me, but spent seven years there. But while I was there feeling pretty miserable myself, one morning as I was reading through the scriptures, I came across David wanted to build a house for the Lord. Nathan the prophet said to King David, Go and do all that is in your heart, the Lord is with you. And I saw this as a word from the Lord to me. And I thought, what would I like to do? What was in my heart? I said to the Lord, I'd like to be in full-time service for you, doing anything for you, not just to get out of Vauxhalls, but just to do anything to serve you in any way I could. But you see, I had no O levels and uh nobody would take me without education. But through various direction and and various uh advice from various friends, ministers in the Lord, Christians in the Lord, the outcome was that I left Vauxhalls and I went into Bible college and spent three years in Emmanuel Bible College, Birkenhead, Clawton Road. And we would go to Emmanuel Church, we we'd been had a lot of friends in Emmanuel Church, and for three years we lived by faith. Our income was at the time family allowance. The first term I was in there, we discovered we were having our third child. But the income was family allowance, which is £1.50. But the Lord had said he would provide for us, and the Lord provided. We had a season where we had a letter from the council, we were living in the council after this are some of the ways the Lord provided what I was in. We had a letter from the council to say that the rent was going up from £5 a week to seven pounds a week. Well, we were on one pound fifty, and uh the Lord was providing for us week by week, day by day. But with this letter, it said there's a form here that if you've got a low income, fill the foreman and send it off. And my wife did it nil nil, no no nom non one pound fifty and sent it off. And a few days later I had a letter from the council asking me to go down and explain this for him. And I went down and told him that we were living by faith, that we were trusting the Lord. And he didn't understand it, those were crackers. But at the end, on the way out, he said. He said, You probably will get a rebase. He said to me, Are you getting a rate rebase? We didn't know what a rate rebate was. So he said, You sign the form and I'll fill it in. A few days later, the rent man knocked at the door and said to my wife, Your rent has gone down from £7 a week to £75p. He said, But you've also had a rate rebate. We owe you £46. And before that, £46 had gone, we had another rate rebate. The outcome was we lived in the house rent-free for two years. And we saw this as the Lord's provision. Came out of the Bible College and joined the Liverpool City Mission. Actually, this particular church. For the first six months in the City Mission, they were building this church. And I spent six months going around all these houses, knocking on doors to see where the Christians were in this area. So there's a sense in which I'm coming home here. I've gone on at length here. But the Lord has blessed, and the Lord has undertaken, and the Lord has carried us and moved us on in the most marvellous way. Let me say as a finish, because that's enough for that there. Aimless, probably. The Lord took my wife, Sheila, just four years ago now, in March. She wasn't well, she was a diabetic, and she's carrying a lot of weight, and uh I got bowel cancer, and part of the cure for the bowel cancer was it's gone now, it's completely gone. But part of the cure was saltwater baths, and I get in the bath and I practically die in the bath. I love a long, long bath. And this particular ice had got into the bath, and when I came down, she'd gone, she's sadly there, she'd just gone. The Lord had just taken her, which is a marvelous way to go. It was heartbreaking, but nevertheless, the Lord had taken her. But you see, aimless, if you just talk to Sheila, yes, aimless, you know. Dreamy, oh I'm still there. I have my dreams and doesn't know where he's going. Oh no, I would take offence at that. I know where I'm going. I'm going to heaven because Jesus has forgiven all my sins, all my past, all my wrongs. The Lord Jesus Christ bore my sin there upon the cross. Whatever there was between me and him, it's gone. Buried in the deepest sea, never ever to be remembered anymore. The Lord didn't say I'll forget, he said, I'll never remember them anymore. I forget and then I remembered. The Lord said, I'll never remember them. They've all gone, they've all been dealt with. All my past. And because of that, and because of him, if I stand before God tonight and God were to say to me, Why should I let you into heaven? I can say, because the Lord Jesus Christ died for me. Because the Lord Jesus Christ was my sin bearer, my substitute, because Jesus has forgiven me and he's promised me heaven for eternity. Where do you stand? Are you right with God? This glorious, wonderful God that we've been singing about and been talking about. Do you know him? Have you allowed the Lord Jesus Christ to deal with your sin? Have you allowed him to come into your life? Do you have an assurance that one day you'll be forever with the Lord? It's simple faith that will do it. Repentance, simple faith and trust. Let's pray. Father Lord, we thank you for so great a salvation. We thank you, Lord, that your word tells us that Christ loved us. He loved me. And he gave himself for us. Lord, if there is anybody here who is yes, I've not seen their need of a Saviour, we would ask that in your mercy and in your kindness and by your grace, you will continue with them till they turn their eyes upon Jesus. And for those of us, Lord, who know you, we would ask that you'll take us on with yourself to the end that we might give you all the praise and all the glory and all the honor with our lives and in our lives. Our Father, we ask this in His precious name.

SPEAKER_00 52:12

But in other ways, really inspiring and uplifting. If you look at it and think, Well, the Lord can do this much in this man's life, then clearly he can do something in mine, in yours, in everybody's life. So if I may, let me just add a few things to what you've just heard. My dad talks about his extended family and being one of ten brothers and sisters. Well, here and now in 2014, there are five of the brothers and sisters still alive, and four of them are born-again Christians. So the Lord's influence on the McGraw family didn't begin and end with my dad alone. And then he talks about my mum, Sheila, his penhal from Newcastle. My mum went to be with the Lord in March 2010, and she died just a couple of weeks around my mum and dad's fifty-second wedding anniversary. So from the things my dad said about a troubled start of the marriage, it was certainly blessed by the Lord and lasted a long, long time. I'm thinking of my mum now, I miss her every day. And even though it was a big shock when she died, a lot of good things came from it, which is difficult to say, difficult to admit at this time. I've also three kids, and myself and my brother have been away from church for a long time, a long, long time. And certainly for me, when my mum died and I came back to Birkenhead and spent more time here than the usual home visit, it was the first time in twenty-five years or more that I'd been surrounded by Christian people again, all offering their love and support in the time of grief and mourning, and that made me realise I need this in my life. I need to get back to church. I need to get back to being right with God. And I think in his own way my brother felt the same. So the good news is that four years down the line, my brother's back in church. I'm back in church where I live in East London and also here at St. Paul's Road Mission. But also a direct result of coming to St. Paul's Road Mission is that I got to know Norman here at Flame. And as I said in another programme, working for Flame is an area of my professional life where I can reconcile being an actor or a director or a filmmaker or whatever with actively serving the Lord. I mean, I can witness at work, but at Flame, all the elements seem to be already in place for me. I can talk about that at length, but but that's a different programme. If you listen to the Flame website, wwwflameradio.org, listen to the podcast of the making of Pilgrim's Progress, and I talk about that in much more depth. As for the other olive vines my dad mentioned, or I was a kid, the psalm we talked about, Psalm 128. My older sister always wanted to be a doctor, and she's now a consultant orthopedic surgeon, married to a surgeon and living in Sheffield. My younger brother lives with my dad here in Birkenhead, and he works with me as my first assistant director when I'm making films, and sometimes as the cameraman or still photographer. If you saw the photo in the World Globe of the Mayor at Flame on our last open day, that was one of my brother's pages. And you can see more of his stuff and my stuff in the Work of Flame video, and more of both our work. If you go to YouTube and type in the Flame C C R and open the Flame channel, there's all kinds of good stuff on there for you to enjoy. I must just mention the music I've chosen here too. He lifted me the Jim Spencer and Ryan Byrd version that you heard. This is my dad's favourite hymn. Almost is the fault hymn when he's preaching, but I'm sure he won't mind me saying that. Then How Great Thou Art, this version is by Alan Jackson. This is Britain's favourite hymn. But this one reminds me of my mum playing the piano when we were kids or even older. Just the house filled with the sound of her rehearsing, ready to play in church. Then Judy Collins' version of Amazing Grace. I thought that was an appropriate end to the testimony. All the things that my dad talked about came about through God's grace. And there's plenty more that he could have said. All the subsequent years of preaching and his work with the same mission. But that's all for another chapter. So today I'll leave you with a sample and a change gonna come. In verse 2, he says he's afraid to die because he doesn't know what's out there beyond the sky. Well, if this testimony teaches anything, it's that we do know what's out there, and there's no need to be afraid. A change is gonna come. Just make sure you're ready. God bless.

SPEAKER_06 56:32

Oh, and just like the river I've been running ever since it's been a long a long time coming, but I know a change gon come. Oh yes it will. It's been too hard living, but I'm afraid to die. Beyond the sky, it's been a long time coming, but I'm looking for yes it will. I go to the movie Somebody keep telling me no. Hello now, it's been a long time coming, but I know a change gon come. Oh, yes, it will then I go to my brother, and I say, brother, help me please for it. It's been a long a long time coming, but I'm changing all come. Oh, yes, we will.

SPEAKER_02 59:24

We've closed the chat room door, but please tune in next time to Flame C C R on 1521 Medium Wave for more from Green Door Studios Chatroom.

SPEAKER_01 59:34

Green Door!

SPEAKER_02 59:46

We hope you enjoyed this program, which is under the copyright of Burrow Christian Media Limited. Details of the Flame CTR broadcast and webcast are on our website www.flameradio.org. Thank you for listening.