Dan Henry – Walking with Jesus – Cape Town, South Africa – 2014 

Walking with Jesus on the trail, mile after mile of it. If you want to know your companion well, then just take the trail with him. I liked what one worker said when he wrote me a letter. He had been with us on the island of Martinique. He said that people had asked if we had been to the seminary of St Mary or somewhere to learn to preach and we said, “No.” But the fact is that the answer is, “Yes.” We read of Jesus walking with His disciples from here to there. Walking, walking, walking. So if they ask us again we can answer, “Yes,” mile after mile of it. That’s what we can say for this year isn’t it? Walking with Jesus and learning from Him.

Down in that country in South America, French Guyana there is this little capital on the sea, Cayenne. There were two poor little churches. When I was there, both my companion and I were very young. We didn’t know very much, I had just turned 24 and he was 25. After those gospel meetings we’d be walking home through that hot, steaming , tropical jungle. And walking through the streets of Cayenne.

All those little children who were at the meeting wanted to walk with us. So they’d be walking with us and chattering and holding our hands. Pouring out their little problems and we’d walk across the city and arrive at the batch. Then when we had reached the batch they said, “A drink of water. Drink of water, drink of water.” So we gave them water and said, “Okay, good bye, go home now. “No, worker (They used a French word for it). Walk back with us to the first corner.” So we’d get to the first corner. “Can’t we go another corner?” We’d get to another corner and they wanted yet another corner, so there was another corner and another and they would chat and talk. A beautiful time and then we would tell them to go ho­me and turn around and go back to the batch, and they would walk back with us. But that is the beauty of walking together. There is no ministry in this whole wide world where servants of God walk with people.

Anyway, this is what was on my mind, taking part in this last meeting, before we go home and walking with the Lord. The workers walking on with Jesus in this great school. I was thinking about Jesus walking, the times that He walked and we realize that He walked on water. That is in John chapter 6. But before He walked on water, what did He do? He spent the night on the mountain in prayer. Praying helps us to walk on water.

In the night, there was a storm and He had sent His disciples ahead and they were in this canoe and they were rowing and having a tough time facing the waves and the sea. Then here comes Jesus walking on the waves. Walking to them and saying, “Peace,” and there was peace. He entered into the boat with them and immediately they were at the other side. Do you realize that when Jesus is with us that this voyage is going to be short? Because it is so sweet. If Jesus is in the boat with us, no matter what comes our way, we’ll soon be at the other side.

But anyway, He walked on the waves. A wave is a mighty thing, it is a powerful thing. I have seen waves take away work that men did. The best French engineers, and it just took it away. Took it back and the sea took its place. This is the power of the waves. When you study waves, there is the crest, that is the top. Then they talk about a trough, that’s the bottom. Sometimes it can be a mighty, mighty wave standing up just like a wall. But in the Caribbean sea, I haven’t had a whole lot of time to play in the sea, but I have been out in the sea. When a wave hits you, sometimes it just bowls you over and in the wave, you really don’t know up from down. You have lost all sense of where you are or where you’re going. It’s the power of the wave and in life, there are waves like that.

When you are young, there are waves and they just hit us and they just seem to bowl us over and sometimes we hardly know up from down. How to get out of this and how to find our footing again. It’s a powerful thing, these waves. I’ve seen fishermen on the island of Martinique. Life-long fishermen, hardened. You watch them go down to the beach and everything is ready, their boats, motor and all. They stand there and they look out to sea and it all looks the same to me. I have watched them just turn their head and go home. They go home because they understand, “No, it’s not for me today.” They know so well the power of the sea and the waves.

So here we are, leaving convention and what we will actually be doing is walking on the waves. When people look at this ministry today, they say that this is impossible for men and women to live like that. They say that this is an impossible ministry and I just have to agree. It is absolutely true. It is impossible for men and women to go into the work, just as much as it is impossible for a man to walk on water.

Today, the God of heaven who caused His Son to have grace and strength and power over natural things, to walk on water, is enabling this ministry to live. It is like living in a fishbowl with everybody watching. We’re living like that because Jesus is still with us, holding our hand and walking these waves with us. He promised that. He said, “I’ll be with you till the end of the world.” For that reason, these workers can leave convention and go to their field and live this life.

It is just like Nicodemus said, he was a godly man, a spiritual man. Looking at Jesus, there is one thing he realized about this man. First of all, he realized that he was a teacher, he called him teacher and he respected Him as a teacher. Then he said, “You cannot do what You are doing unless God is with You.” That is why God is with this ministry. If this ministry was ordained in some other way, we’d have a list of workers to send to all the countries in Africa that don’t have workers yet. Because it is ordained the way it is, there are few, but at the same time it is living, infallible proof that God is doing it.

If it were some other way, that is the work of man. Men can do it, money can supply it, administration can guide it. But this ministry, every day that these workers are living the way they are living, is absolute proof that God is with them. They are walking on the water and God is with them until the end of the world.

It hasn’t gone, it hasn’t disappeared, it hasn’t faded for only one reason and that is that Jesus’ promises are true, because He said, “I will be with you until the end of the world.” That is all, but here we are, on this night, Jesus was walking on the water and came to His disciples. Where did He come from? He came from the mountain of prayer. And that is the important part.

When He got to the other side what happened? People, a crowd of people. A multitude of people were waiting and they were all chanting this slogan, “We are going to make You a king.” Why not? Why not have a government that just goes around and gives everybody bread. Here’s your bread, here’s your bread for today. That is all they saw. That Jesus had fed them and that He gave it so graciously, so completely, so nicely, so why not make Him king? Jesus realized that is what they had in mind, just to put Him on a pedestal, to make Him their king, that was their reason.

Was that a temptation for Jesus? No, that was not a temptation for Jesus to be their king. To have place and power. What was that wave really? Jesus showed us how to walk on the wave of popularity. The wave of popularity has destroyed more than one man and more than one woman. How did He conquer the wave of popularity? That is easy for us to see. From the mountain of prayer. Being alone with God. Tasting of the true love of God feeding His soul. God loved His Son. Basking in that eternal pure love, the false love of popularity seemed a very, very low thing. It would be easy to turn from it.

You know, for you and I, no matter what life offers, you might be at school, or college or a job or wherever it is. If men would like to sway you and bring you away from Christ by making you feel important, popular, lifting you up, if we pray, just pray. If you taste the pure love of God then nothing this world could offer, could ever compare. It just cannot compare. It is like looking down from Table Mountain to down below, it is just nothing if we grasp it and understand it. That is the way He conquered that wave and wouldn’t it be nice, if we could also.

There are other things that are like waves and we would ask, “How to walk on this? How to tread it and not to sink? Not to let it bowl me over. Not to let it destroy me?” If I could learn to walk with Jesus hand in hand.

You are leaving convention and maybe some of you know good and well what it is…loneliness. Have you ever had a wave of loneliness? I know what that is! Christ has helped me to this day to survive, to walk and to rise above that loneliness that would have caused me to make other choices so that I could have lost a real treasure in my life. Loneliness can be just like a wave and I think Jesus knew those moments. He prayed. He prayed. He was lonely for His Heavenly Father. He prayed and that strengthened Him.

Maybe some of you folks have special times and I know that some of you here are older and know about losing spouses. When I was young in the work and in these homes of our friends, where we were dwelling with older saints. Our grandparents too, we used to look at them and I remember, as a young person, feeling for them. How would I survive if I lost someone I loved so much? Walking the wave with Jesus, hand in hand, continuing, keeping on and the heart full of what we love together.

One time when I was young and in French Guyana, my mom always used to write to me, and my mom’s handwriting was the most beautiful handwriting I have ever seen to this day. I was so proud of it when I was a kid in school. She’d write a note to the teacher asking that I could be excused from school Wednesday afternoon, Thursday, and Friday, for the convention. That was at the end of the year and I was always so proud to take this note and show it to my teacher. My mom had nicer handwriting than any teacher.

Anyway that is beside the point. She always wrote to me, my dad never wrote to me. He was just 100% behind me in this, all the way in the work and wanting to know what I was doing. But it was mom that wrote the letters. So here down in French Guyana, so far away. I would go to the post office. The mail would come once in a week on a jet out of Miami. (A silence!) But this was Dad’s writing and I saw that he was writing from room 238! I couldn’t figure this out. Room 238. There were three letters and I read them backwards because they didn’t have the dates on them.

What spilled out of the letters was that my mother had cancer. She had already been through an operation and was in chemotherapy and radiation. (Another silence!) I went down to the ocean and there was a rock right where I used to go and sit and study French. I sat on that rock and I looked across the Atlantic. I could have looked straight across the Atlantic, just as straight as an arrow, to a little village in the heartland of America, to a little village (name missed) and I knew what it was to have a wave of loneliness.

When you look on these workers, all of them have been through those days when they walked it, and they walked it with Jesus. Jesus will walk with you and that is the promise and He will NEVER let you go, but will hold you, hand in hand.

There is the teaching in the Bible when you read about the veil. People, when approaching that veil in the tabernacle, and just beyond is eternity, the presence of God. On that veil, there were woven cherubims. They were woven in. So let me just say that from either side, from the inside or the outside, as you approached it, were images of angels. That is teaching us that on either side, it is just the same on this side as on that side. It loses none of its power whether on this side or that side.

The ministry of angels. We have seen it and have known it. What happened to the poor man Lazarus when he died? It says that angels bore him to Abraham’s bosom. Angels carried him through the veil into eternity, so he was never alone.

We had a sister on the island of Guadeloupe. She listened to the gospel when she was in her forties, she and her husband made a start and we saw so much progress in them. Growing and growing. Thirsty and hungering and now she didn’t have long to live and the night, it came to the middle of the night, and she asked for hymns to be sung by her bedside.

Her husband, an ex-alcoholic, was singing by her bedside and they sang this hymn and when they reached the third verse, she slipped away. The angels came and bore her soul into eternity. They finished the hymn on this side and then they chose another hymn. As far as I’m concerned, the angels finished the hymn on the other side.

That is the promise we have, that walking with Jesus over the waves of life you will NEVER, NEVER, EVER be alone. Not for one second will you ever be alone, and the one we need most of all will be with us on that day. When we approach that veil and as it says in the last verse in Hebrews 9, “So much as we see the day approaching.” It doesn’t finish it, but it probably means that so much as we see the day approaching, when we too shall pass through the veil, they will be ready and the angels will carry us to the other side. I just love to think of that.

There’s other things too, like doubt. Have you ever had a wave of doubt? When you really believed and you knew that this is true and knew that this was the Christ, but somehow there just comes this wave of doubt. This awful doubt that you couldn’t do it, you couldn’t walk. I think Peter had it on that wave. You remember when they were in the boat and Jesus came walking to them through the storm, through the night and the waves were rolling. The pounding, the froth, and the spume. All these waves on the ocean and the boat lifting and dropping. Lifting and dropping and all the waves and Jesus walking on the water. Peter said, “Bid me come.” That is how I felt about the work. I could see something and I felt something and I felt that if this is Jesus calling me to the work, just bid me come, and a voice said, “Come!” That’s what happened to Peter. Come, and Peter stepped out of the boat and he began to walk on the water. Walking on water! Then his eyes strayed and he looked at the waves and the winds that were boisterous and he began to sink. He cried out, “Lord save me!” That hand shot out and saved him. Jesus said, “Oh, thou of little faith.”

It is a tremendous faith to take a step like that, but it was little in this sense, “Just keep your eyes from looking around, keep looking at me. You can do it. You CAN do it!” Just doubting, doubting. Maybe it could be some personal impediment that would be perfectly legitimate. But then there was doubt and you know, sometimes we think it is doubt but really it is just unwillingness.

Sometimes deep down we know, it is just a matter of not wanting to hear. Unwillingness and maybe just a bit of dishonesty, saying, “I don’t hear this. I don’t see it,” and we just go on. I will tell you a little story about this. Like I was saying, I have these two older brothers. One is John and one is Fred, and I was the third one. After that we had one little sister, so really it was us three musketeers all the time and we were together all the time. Of course John was the oldest so he was the boss, and he still is. Well, John and Fred and myself. I was the little guy. Near where we were, there was this schoolhouse and when dad didn’t have us working, that was our dreamland. Behind the schoolhouse we’d be playing cowboys and Indians and all other kinds of things.

My dad had a whistle, I have never heard anyone who could whistle like him. He could whistle through his teeth and it could be heard all over town. That whistle meant, “Come home NOW!” Anyway we were behind the schoolhouse, and we were playing, and having a great day playing cowboys and Indians. We were having a great time and that whistle came. So my brother got us together and said, “We didn’t hear that!” So we went back playing and here it comes again, and John said again, “We didn’t hear that!” So we carried on, and then there was a third time and this time there was no pow wow, it was just one run for home.

Because I was the little guy, I was the last one, and Dad was standing in the doorway and he had a stick in his hand. We knew what that meant. John slipped by and Fred slipped by, and I said, “Dad we didn’t hear you the first two times!” (laughter) That is child’s play, but how would it be if we were playing with God? If we were saying we were doubting and we didn’t hear, we didn’t hear, and Jesus is calling you. Calling you and He will be with you and you can do it, you can walk on water. You can walk on every wave, because He will be with you and He will hold your hand. If you were to say, “I didn’t hear.” I couldn’t think of anything sadder than that, before God.

There are other waves in life. Waves of sorrow, waves of pride. Like Saul. One wave of pride when they began to sing different things about David and held him up. He forgot who he was, forgot who Samuel really was. Just a wave of pride and he was completely bowled over and he didn’t know up from down and the nightmare. He was a good man, there wasn’t a better man in Israel. God chose the best and it was just a wave of pride that led to rebellion and it led to God forsaking him. It’s a lesson to me and I pray God to help me to despise my own pride. I can tell you this. Do you know what helps me with my pride more than anything else? My pride! Why? Because it is so foolish. Nothing scares me more in life than my own pride.

It could be a wave of fear, do you know a wave of fear? One could get so afraid of this wave of fear. But at the same time, fear can be constructive and it can also be destructive. It can be very constructive, it can save us. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. But fear, the fear of man. Yes, that is one of the most destructive. If you are studying at school and here you are, you know your lessons and then with the final exams you just seem to freeze. That is a destructive fear, a paralyzing fear. That is like Satan, he would just like to freeze you, paralyze you with fear to do God’s will. Then there is a constructive fear. The man that broke the sound barrier the first time, he was a famous American test pilot. He broke more records in the beginning than any other person. They asked him, “How did you do so well?” His answer was, “I was so afraid to die.” That is constructive fear, to be afraid to die with your soul being lost. I think I can say this again and again and again, realizing how close we can be to death and not lose our soul.

There is a fear we have to conquer, we have to walk on it. What can help us to rise above it and to walk on it? There is something. There IS something. Take the example of a man in the New Testament whose name was Joseph. He came from the town called Arimathea. Joseph of Arimathea. It says that he was a disciple of Jesus. He believed and he was learning from Him. He was following but in secret. But why was it in secret? It was for the fear of his own countrymen, the fear of man. He was afraid of losing place, he was afraid of losing prestige and he was afraid of being excommunicated from his own church. The leaders of his church had already had an assembly and in their council they had passed a law that anybody who was seen with Jesus, following Jesus, would be excommunicated. It says, “Put out of the synagogue.” They would be put out, that would be the same as being excommunicated.

So Joseph had every reason to take this seriously. So it says that he was a disciple of Jesus but in secret, for the fear of the Jews. What helped him to rise above it and walk on the water? Do you know what helped him? What was his victory? It was when he saw Jesus dying. He saw Jesus dying on the cross before him and he saw perfect love. He saw in Jesus’ eyes perfect love for his soul. Dying for me, dying in my place. Ridiculed, beaten, spat on, spoken against, people shaking their heads, putting out their tongues, mimicking Jesus when He was in agony. This whole crowd of people. In John’s first letter, he says, “Perfect love casteth out fear.” There is no fear in perfect love.

Here it was, the fear of losing place, the fear of losing prestige, honor of men, was gone forever. Gone, it just disappeared. Perfect love cast out his fear. If you’re sitting in the meeting today and you have a nagging fear of losing something. We have known men and women that have had to make a choice between Christ and a spouse and that is huge. Christ and a career. Christ and a whole family. Christ and death and they had to choose.

Men and women who had a clear revelation of Jesus dying for them. Of Calvary. It was when Joseph of Arimathea stood at the foot of the cross and hearing His words and feeling His spirit, something flowed from the cross into his soul and he had the grace to walk on the wave, to walk on water. Before all these men, his colleagues. He was part of this prestigious council and he was apparently a member of that and he knew that, “Tomorrow I am out of a job. Tomorrow I am no longer a councilor and tomorrow I cannot even put my foot in the synagogue nor the temple. I am separated forever. I’m scorned. I am out of it. Lost everything, all my life, my career, all my honor.” He just laid it down and he went over to the foot of the cross and begged for permission to take Jesus down.

Making a clear declaration before everyone. “He is my master, He is my first love. I believe in Him. He is the truth, the way and the life.” He wrapped Him up with a man beside him who was helping him and who was that? Nicodemus.

Nicodemus sat on the same council, if you read in John chapter 7. He tried to defend Jesus one time. It is like we have heard, that the Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven. Jesus said that it rises till it affects the whole lump. That leaven was rising in Nicodemus and he was understanding and feeling and seeing more and more.

He was in that council and they were speaking against Jesus and he finished it with, “Do we judge a man before we have heard him?” He had to go to Jesus by night, not to be seen perhaps, but in that visit he heard. Now he was in the council just as before and they said, “Go and look at the scripture and see if any prophet cometh from Galilee.” Jesus was born in Bethlehem like the scripture foretold but he grew up partly in Galilee. They couldn’t even go and ask the question, “Where were you born?” He would have answered that so easily but instead they preferred darkness instead of the light. They chose that. So here is Nicodemus and coming to the foot of the cross and begging, “Let me help you.” Those two men, before all who were looking on, walking on water. They left everything, they lost everything. Perfect love cast out every fear. With joy and gladness and tenderness in their hearts they were doing what they were doing.

There is another wave and the time is up. There is a wave of Passion. You would say, “Now Dan, you are going too far, you are a worker, what do you know about that?” I am a man and I was also young. I don’t forget my teen years, my early years and it is very natural and it is very real. A wave of passion and passion is not all wrong if it is spent in the right way. If we could have more passion for our Lord Jesus Christ, for this truth, for this family, for this ministry, for this way, for this Gospel. If we could have passion for this love that could burn every other foolish thing because this love will dwell forever, throughout all eternity.

I am not good at quoting poetry but I will just finish this meeting with this little poem. I don’t believe that it was someone professing that wrote it but there are powerful words in it that can say something I can’t say when it comes to love and love being manifested even among God’s servants and God’s people. This is what it says:

It takes great love to stir the human heart,

To lift beyond the others and part;

A love that is not shallow, is not small,

Is not for one or two, but for them all.

Love that can wound love for its higher need,

Love that can leave love, though the heart may bleed;

Love that can lose love of family and friend,

Yet steadfastly live, loving to the end.

Love that knows no answer, that can live,

Moved by one deathless force to live.

Our convention is over.

We could sing a hymn.

Number 403, “Impelled by Love”