Do Not Suppress Your God-Given Emotions

I want to say this. It’s personal. I find it hard to say it, but I’m saying it not for my benefit, but for yours. When the Lord took Ruth, it’s the hardest thing that’s ever happened in my life.

And I made up my mind, I’m not going to be a slave of the stiff upper lip. If I want to cry, I’m going to cry. People don’t like it, that’s their problem. But I’m not going to suppress God-given emotions because my culture doesn’t agree with it. And you know what I think?

You know what I’ve observed? My family was a good family. They really were good people. But that stiff upper lip produces stunted, deformed personalities. They never really learn to express themselves. And something that’s not expressed is something that’s suppressed. So I’ve made up my mind, let people enjoy it or dislike it, but if I want to weep, I’m going to weep. I don’t want to weep, but if I feel like weeping, I’ll weep.

And if I feel like dancing, I’ll dance. The problem with me with dancing is, I used to be a great dancer, believe me. I’ve led lots of congregations in dancing, but now at this age, my feet just don’t obey me. So I stand there and tap my feet, but I can’t really let myself go. Anyhow,

then another very common place where rejection starts is at school. I was sent off to a boarding school in Westgate-on-Sea, in Kent, at the age of nine. My family has a photograph of me ready to go to school. I was attired in a three-piece suit, and I had a bowler hat on. That was my culture.

And when I got there, there were several other little boys of the same. And I remember one boy, he was uninhibited. He just started to cry. He said, “I want my mummy! I want my mummy! I want my mummy!” He didn’t get his mummy.

It was a hard life. British life has often been hard. You know that. I don’t have to tell some of you that. We’ve imprisoned ourselves in our own culture. I mean, you can understand. Every male relative I’ve ever known in my life was an officer in the British Army. Was educated at Eton and went on to Cambridge. If anybody was inculcated with the stiff upper lip, it was me. But I rebelled. I just said that I’m not going to be enslaved.

If I want to dance, I’ll dance. And if I feel like crying, I’ll cry. You know, I’ve got a very good example. You know who he is? Jesus. Have you ever read this the account of the death of Lazarus? Jesus arrived four days late. And when he went to the tomb, it says, the shortest verse in the whole Bible, two words,

“Jesus wept.”

He wasn’t weeping for Lazarus, because he knew he was going to raise him up. He was sharing the grief of Mary and Martha. And you know one thing about grief? It helps to have it shared. Oh, I’ve been so blessed since God took Ruth home. I can’t count the number of people that have shared their love with me.

My family has been wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. Three of my daughters came one after another to Jerusalem to look after me. First, my African daughter, Jessica. How many of you met Jessica? Few. Then my Arab daughter, who’s here tonight. Here’s And finally, my Jewish, one of my seven Jewish daughters, Anna, who’s here tonight, took me into her home.

And she and her husband, David, gave me half the upper floor of their house to live in. I tell you, I’m proud of my family. And when I think how that family began, my first wife, Lydia, in 1928, took in one little dying Jewish baby girl. And everybody, all the missionaries criticized her. “What’s the good of that? Why isn’t she preaching the gospel?”

Well, there’s different ways of preaching the gospel. You can do it in word, and you can do it in deed. But if you don’t do it in deed, it’s not much good doing it in word. And out of that one little deathly sick Jewish baby, whom God raised up, there has grown up a family of more than 150 persons tonight.

I’m not If I’m boasting, I’m not boasting about myself. I’m boasting about God. See, so many people want a big, impressive ministry. But I think most big things start small. I was ignorant. I mean, I’d just been saved. I didn’t know that the gospel was to the Jew first. But my first congregation was Jewish. It wasn’t large, and it wasn’t old, but it was Jewish. And then the Bible says,

“Pure and undefiled religion before God is this.”

What is it? How many of you can tell me?

“To care for the orphans and widows, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”

So I cared. I started by caring for the orphans and widows. I wasn’t spiritual. God just thrust me into it. It’s the last thing I would ever have planned. But I’m oh so glad I did it.