Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Planting Churches in the Sahara with Cash and Ann Godbold – Part 3:
Welcome to Truth About Muslims podcast. My name is Trevor. And this is Howard. And we are completing our 3 part series of of Cash and Anne Godbold who spent, you know, 50 years or so working among nomadic peoples in North Africa. Something amazing like that.
Yeah. So before we get into our final episode, let’s just do a brief summary of episode 1 and 2 for those of you that haven’t listened. So you’re kind of brought up to speed, but we’re not gonna tell you much. Right. Because you need to listen to it.
You need to go back and listen. And if you don’t, you can just start right here and I hope it makes sense. So episode 1 is essentially a little bit about the Godbolds, kind of their background, how they got into missions, how they heard about the Touareg, how they ended up in North Africa. Right. Episode 2?
In episode 2, we start to go into some of the things that had happened God had been doing and then finally leading to the baptisms there. Yeah. So if you’re interested at all in church planning ideas about contextualization, episode 2 for you. Is where it’s at. And if you’re interested about what does it take to get from Columbia, South Carolina over to North Africa in 1960, episode 1 is for you.
So part 3, we’re actually gonna be dealing with hardship. Right. We are thoroughly convinced that when there is a great movement of God, it often comes with opposition from the enemy, and so that’s where we’re gonna start this week. So we asked Cas specifically, how does he deal with hardship? And this is what he says.
When I see that Satan has set up an ambush where he has put, things all around me that I can’t win. It’s a it’s a no win situation. Then I go back to the scriptural principle which says, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Now that that’s the, the ambush and the discouragement altogether is, sufficient under the day is the evil thereof. And that is limited to 24 hours, sufficient unto the day, one day.
And so for one day, I say His mercies are new every morning and I am going to not give up for 24 hours. And I just say to the Lord, I’m not gonna give up for 24 hours. I don’t have to promise what’ll happen tomorrow because tomorrow isn’t here yet. And I keep going today trying to find a way to witness, to build people up, to disciple people, and to keep moving in the right direction for Jesus Christ. That one day, tomorrow morning when I wake up, I say, alright, Lord, I’m not going to give up today.
And so I keep going one day at a time, one day at a time until God says, alright, Satan. That’s enough. Get off his back. Okay. So when Cash says this idea of, you know, only 24 hours, I I didn’t know what he was come where he was coming from and then we went and looked up the passage.
Howard, you have the ESV. Right? Yeah. So this is Matthew 634. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.
Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. And Howard and I just kinda concluded and we were talking about this. We’ve heard this advice before. Yeah. And it came from a Navy Seal.
Which is not really where we think of theological, like, responses to his passage. But go ahead. Tell us, Trevor. Yeah. I was talking to, my father-in-law, Jeff, who was on SEAL Team 6 and one of the questions that I often bring up with him is like, so how did you get through really difficult things, like the really difficult times?
And he talks about how you can’t think about tomorrow, you can’t think about next week, you can’t even think about an hour from now. You need to be thinking in increments of like 60 seconds or you need to be thinking of I can’t run to the finish line but I can run to that tree right there. And then when you get to that tree, you think about the next tree. And so I recently heard another Navy SEAL discussing about a 3 foot radius about don’t worry about the things that are outside of your 3 foot radius. If you’re on the side of a mountain, don’t be thinking at the top of the mountain or the bottom of the mountain.
Think 3 foot radius. What can I do within my range of possibility? And then it occurs to me, this is what Jesus is talking about. Don’t worry about tomorrow. Don’t worry about next week.
Don’t worry about all these things. There’s enough to worry about right here and now and Cash uses this in North Africa. And I’m I’m an anxious person. Like, that’s my thing. Like, I worry about, what’s gonna happen.
I worry about what people think about me. I have all of these kind of troubles that I kinda carry. And I think that it’s really prevented me from doing a lot of things that, I would have liked to have done. But I really like what Cash is talking about. He’s, like, even with this spiritual ambush, you know, 24 hour period, man, the mercies are new and I think that’s super encouraging for for for someone like me that struggles with the things that I do.
Right. And I think all of us have different struggles. It’s kind of weird though when you think about struggles that you have on the Sahara. They’re just not exactly the same kind of struggles that you and I deal with daily here. Right.
Like, I run out of creamer for my coffee. Yeah. It looks a little bit different in the Sahara. That’s not an ambush. I don’t I don’t maybe.
I mean, I don’t know. See, there are times when the well would break, and you couldn’t get any water. My wife was unhappy because she couldn’t wash poopy diapers. And the evangelist was unhappy because he couldn’t get any water for his wife to cook supper. And all of these people around me are unhappy because of the fact that the well is broken.
The pump. The pump in the well. And I can’t fix it because I’ve got malaria. And I can’t do anything because the truck has a broken part. So I can’t go anywhere, and all of those things are an ambush because you can’t do any of them because every one of them is stopping you from any one of them.
And so I keep going at what I can do for the kingdom of the Lord Jesus. Until the Lord says, alright, Satan. Get off his back. Leave him alone. You’ve had your day.
And I am able to get the well fixed and water starts pumping. My wife is happy. The evangelist is happy. The people are happy. And we start on down the path, you know, of working again.
But don’t let an ambush, just blow you out of the water. Hey, ladies. I’m from, truth about Muslims podcast. Have you heard of it? Yeah.
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If I’m being honest, Howard Yeah. It it’s hard for me to resonate with the I don’t know, my western mind. Right? The cause and effect. The well’s broken, so of course you can’t get water.
Of course you can’t do those things. And in my western mind, I don’t attribute these things to sort of an ambush of the enemy. Yeah. But as I hear cash, I really do I really do think to myself, what’s wrong with me? Yeah.
And I remember a time where you kinda had some events happening in your life, and they were kind of, like, all bunched together, like, there was a bunch of these issues happening in your life and I remember you even asking, do you think this is a spiritual attack? Okay. You may not remember this, Howard, but when I was asking you is this a spiritual attack, I was asking you because of a chain of events that was happening. Mhmm. And then we interviewed Cash Godbold same day.
And he brought up this topic and that’s what was so bizarre for me was what Cash was clearly pointing out as, hey, this is an ambush of the enemy and I thought what’s wrong with me? Why don’t I see these things as spiritual? Why do I just always see cause and effect? Right. You know, I’m modern.
But cash is really operating out of a pre modern, some might even say a biblical worldview. Right. And and it’s interesting because it only takes one thing, a broken well, and all of a sudden he sees an ambush. But for you, like, it had been, like, 4 or 5 crazy it was crazy. 9.
Okay. Wow. Nine things that had happened in a row that would just felt like spiritual attack. Right? And then Cash has a broken well.
He’s, like, spiritual attack. It’s an ambush. But, of course, we don’t wanna think that way because we don’t wanna be accused of looking for a devil under every bush. Right? Yeah.
And we don’t wanna look foolish. And that’s I think that’s it’s kind of gotten a bad rap. And I think about, like, you know, old Pentecostal type, theology where people were, like, oh, well, they saw demons everywhere. But cash doesn’t seem to have a problem with it. No.
And I think the big thing that we can learn from this whole concept is that there is a theory that in missiology is called the, the excluded middle. Right. Right? You have the physical world. You have the spiritual world.
And we Westerners, we rarely see those 2 overlap. The rest of the world sees those 2 overlapping all the time. Right. There is no separation, but for us there’s a clear separation between spiritual and physical. Right.
And they have they’re totally comfortable with it. I remember there was a time I went to Thailand and I was asking some people over there. I was, like, hey, so have you guys ever seen demons? And they were like, yeah. Yeah, of course.
And, like, it wasn’t just like one person. They were like in a group. They’re like, oh, yeah. We see those, you know, like evil spirits all the time. I’m like, are you kidding me?
And they were just, like, totally relaxed, like, this is normal. Yeah. It’s so not normal for us. We actually have to make movies about it. Yeah.
And it scares us. So I think we gotta add in the show notes here. There’s an article written by Paul Hebert called the excluded middle. And if you wanna learn more about this concept of the physical world and spiritual world and the overlap, one of the things that we he points out in the article is that ultimately, Jesus, the cross, is the middle. Yeah.
That’s genius. Because he transcends the physical, the spiritual into the physical and, that’s where we meet him. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, regardless of where you stand on, you know, the the physical and whether or not there are spiritual reasons for what’s happening in the physical world, I think we can all agree what the Godbolds are about to walk through certainly has spiritual implications and is just evil.
Now to give you some context, the Godbolds have been serving as missionaries for 48 years in some of the hardest places on Earth. And, this is not something that they could ever be prepared for. They are tough cookies, but I don’t think anyone is ever prepared to have their child kidnapped. Now granted, their son is an adult at this point, but still, it’s your child. And Cash and Anne have to deal with the fact that their child has just been kidnapped by rebels in Chad.
And no one knows the number of dead so far, only that 1,000 have fled west into Cameroon. Chad’s government says these rebels are aided by their neighbors, Sudan. 2,000 of them seen here reached the capital on Saturday. President Idris Debbie is propped up in part by the formal colonial power France, who have 1400 troops and air power here, neutral until now, but 3 hours ago given a green light They thought that they would get money. Ransom.
In Chad, it it’s a means of income to take somebody captive or to That’s a good way of putting it. Or to steal someone’s vehicle and then sell it. It it’s it’s commerce. And this is a different tribe from the Tuaregs. This is the Toubu.
The Toubu are are the or the Teta, two names for them, are highly respected by the Tuaregs. So you can understand how fierce they are too. And when they found out that it is a worldwide principle that you never give ransom for missionaries We are soft targets. We are soft targets. But other countries don’t necessarily feel that way.
If they capture a German, tourist, Germany will ransom. Germany will ransom that person. And so they get money from these people that they take captive, except missionaries. Okay. So speaking of this worldwide principle of not paying ransom for missionaries, I don’t know if that’s true anymore.
Yeah. The concept was we’re soft targets meaning, missionaries are out working among people and if people get the idea that, hey, we can kidnap them and then make a lot of money, then we put a lot of missionaries in danger. And so the Godbolds were saying paying a ransom for a missionary is never an option. But here recently, it’s become more and more of an option. The one that I think about is the Koreans in Afghanistan in 2007.
So there was a bunch of Koreans that went over as a medical team to Afghanistan. They were captured by the Taliban. And even though the details aren’t all revealed, we do know it’s it was a sum of a huge sum of money, to release those. And, the Korean government agreed not to send missionaries anymore. And we know this is hugely controversial and I’m just gonna be completely honest.
I don’t know what I would do in that situation. I mean, if your own kid is imprisoned, like, what do you do? I I’m reminded of Dan Baumann, the guy who was imprisoned in Iran. He was a YHWH missionary that Howard and I knew a long time ago. He essentially sat in prison and knew that no one was coming for him because his family would be the type that would be just praying that whatever you have in there for, Lord, use him in that setting.
Yeah. He even said that his mother actually prayed that. So he said, I’m gonna ask the Lord to have other people pray for me besides my mother. And so that’s that’s the kind of, you know, family that he came from. But in this case, you know, like, what would what would I do if my son who wants to become a missionary, gets captured?
How would I act? And this is the situation that Cash and Anne were in. Right. And it’s not an easy thing. I think when you look in the scriptures you see a lot of different examples.
You see moments where Paul appeals to his, citizenship with Rome, and then you see moments where Paul is lowered down in a basket and then you see examples in scripture where they say you’re not supposed to be prepared for what you’re gonna say to governments and authorities when you’re brought before them but trust that God will give you the words through the holy Spirit. I mean, I don’t know that scripture is thoroughly clear on this topic, but it’s a tough one. So, the bottom line is there’s a lot of opinions about this these days, but when Cash and Anne were missionaries, it was pretty clear. Ransom wasn’t an option. So Cash comes up with another idea.
Cash offered to trade places with Steve, which is very cultural. My cultural offer was not acceptable in the western world of mine, and you you struggle with this constantly in missions, is the power is with Western world figures. But the culture, the people themselves, their culture is far more important to them to So you have a tension between the 2, and you have to, try to work around it if it’s possible. Okay. I I I thought it was a good idea.
What? No. Seriously. Wouldn’t you wanna do that? Well, I mean, it’s it’s very, you know, messianic where it’s like, you know, hey, I’ll take your place.
But at the same time, it’s just kind of like bizarre to even think that they would even accept him. But he knew the culture and he knew that what he was asking was reasonable. And I think in his mind, he thought they probably would take them but his request never reached the leadership. And I kinda get what he’s saying because for me I was thinking this is preposterous. I would not even consider it.
Why would we replace it’s not doing anything better. But to Cash as a dad, right, just to see something happen, some movement, is better than than just him sitting. Right. And as a father, I think, in your mind, I can handle this. I don’t know that my son can, but reality was looking backwards, Cash realizes that his son was actually more prepared for this than he was.
Do you know Elizabeth, our daughter? Mhmm. Okay. One day one day she was talking to me about it while he was in captivity And, she said, dad, they’ve got our best cowboy. And it was really a good expression that we had the best man we had to represent us there with them.
And, if anybody was gonna be able to take it, he would. Because there are just a lot of people who just couldn’t have stood 9 months of captivity in a little cornstalk hut. That’s all. But Steve could and that was a consolation. He was in the paratroopers.
82nd airborne? 82nd airborne. And he had trained to live in, severe situations. And he had grown up in the desert, and he had all these things going for him. And so we we had a sense of we got a chance.
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Looking at, Steve’s credentials, they look pretty good. Right. Cash says, I think we might have a chance. Yeah. I mean, he grew up, you know, in the desert, the region that they were in and a paratrooper.
Yeah. Special Forces training and MK in the Sahara Desert. Right. So If you got a chance. So I was no longer thinking, oh no.
You know, I’m thinking, oh well, yeah. What but that’s because I’m a guy. Right. And that’s actually what gives Cash comfort. Right?
Knowing that his son is trained. But what gives Anne comfort for a mother is totally different. If it had to happen, it it couldn’t have happened to a more prepared person because the terrain looks the same as where he where he grew up. But this would not be nearly as Traumatic. Traumatic for Steve as for someone who had not grown up like he did.
And that comforted me. It comforted me that I had had lived there in Chad, in that oasis, in those surroundings that that I could it was not unknown. I wasn’t trying to imagine what what it was like for him because I had known that that did that comforted me. Okay. So when I heard Anne’s words, I just thought of my own wife.
That’s exactly what would give my wife comfort is knowing where her son was, knowing where he was sleeping, what the surroundings were like because that’s where her imagination would go. Like, what is he living through? I can see how not having to imagine what her son is going through would bring her comfort. And it they also received some comfort from the idea of so many people were trying to work towards freeing their son. You had the UN, the Red Cross, the Jadion government, the American government.
Everybody was trying to free him. Gaddafi even Oh, yes. To free him. If they would bring Steve to, Tripoli and give him over to Gaddafi, Gaddafi would get the honor of turning him over to the Americans, and he would get all the glory. Alright.
So Steve begins to find himself as a bargaining chip in a civil war and amongst the international community. Right. And Cash just thinks to himself, we gotta be more creative than this. Obviously, we’re not gonna pay any ransom. They’re gonna figure that out.
So he begins to pray and ask God to give wisdom to the rebels that they would figure out some way to free his son. And the weird thing is God answers his prayer. The guy who was in charge of the rebels who had taken Steve captive, found that there was no money to, be gotten. Then he began to try to think of a way he could use Steve to get some payment. And, what he decided was that if he gave Steve back to the Cheydian government.
If the Cheydian government would give him a position in the army of the same rank as in the rebels, and give him a paycheck every month for being in their army, then he would be willing to turn my son back over to, them. Okay. So, he’s a leader in the rebel army and he’s willing to give up Steve for a paycheck and to keep his rank in the government army. Okay. So is this normal?
What is this? Yeah. So essentially, this guy, he’s willing to defect from the rebel army and join the government army and he wants to use Steve as his bargaining chip. That tells me that it’s not ideological. Like, he’s not sitting there believing, you know, the Chadian government is evil.
It sounds like he just needs money. Isn’t that how a lot of civil wars break out? Not everybody in every single war is fighting for a particular ideology. Sometimes people are just fighting to put food on the table and that’s what this guy sounds like. Yeah.
But he’s a leader. So, I mean, what made does he just have natural leadership abilities so he keeps moving up in the ranks? I don’t know. Or maybe it was just that God spiritually and miraculously answered the prayers of Cash Godbold and this guy got an idea that I want to leave the rebel army and join the government and this is what God is gonna use to free Steve Godbold. So this rebel leader goes up to Steve in the middle of the night, wakes him up and says, hey, get your bag together.
We’re going. Right. Go time. And they begin to cross the desert on foot. About halfway to the, neutral position between the two camps, the government camp and the rebels camp.
They got word on their satellite phone, which they use in the Sahara, that the other half which was against it had found that Steve was gone. So they jumped in their Toyota pickup, loaded up their guns, and went running after Steve and the rebel leader. Steve said he outran every play. He was highly motivated. Yes.
So he they, got to the neutral position and the man who had the house there put Steve in a room behind the house so that when guns started going off, Steve wouldn’t get hit with, some, bullet. Okay. What caught me about that clip is that it actually says when guns start going off. It wasn’t as if, like, maybe. It’s just when guns start going off, he puts Steve in that backroom so he doesn’t get hit.
Yeah. What caught me about the clip is you have half the rebel army chasing them down in trucks and they’re on foot. Oh, man. I didn’t even think about that. And you know how tough it is to run-in sand?
Oh, man. I just can’t imagine the feelings. Like, Anne says he had a lot of motivation, so he eventually gets taken to a safe location and he’s given a phone where he’s able to call his family. And Cash and Anne still remember that day. Cash just shouted Steve!
Because I knew that she would want to know, you know, that he had called. And I just shot out of the bathroom without regard for anything other than getting to that second telephone. It is awesome just to hear their joy. Even now, all these years later, when they received, that call from Steve and to know that he was safe. Right.
The entire interview was amazing. Just Cash and Anne Godbold just impressed Howard and I. And I think we can honestly say that we would aspire to serve God and believe God in the ways that they’ve demonstrated for us throughout these three interviews. And because we have such respect for him, we wanted to ask them something that was on our minds. Right.
Something that we see in the news daily. We wanted to ask them how did they feel about Muslims coming to the United States as immigrants. I really do believe that God is bringing Muslims to us to share Christ with them. And we need to recognize that, animosity and hatred are not characteristics of somebody who’s trying to share Christ with, another person. You just get further if you, have compassion and have love for them and are friends with them.
One of the things that I loved about what he said is that it’s practical. It’s like it’s gonna be a lot better if you’re nicer to them, if you care about them. It’s hard to share Jesus with somebody that you actually hate or have malice towards. Right. Animosity isn’t gonna get you very far in your attempts to love people, and Cash brings that out.
So one of my students posted on my Facebook wall just basically asking what did I think about those states, in the US signing that they didn’t want Syrian refugees coming to their states. And, I just put I was very deeply saddened. And a member of my church, an older member, put on there amen, Not towards me, but that these states wouldn’t allow these Syrian refugees to come in. And then when I posted that I was deeply saddened, he wrote on there, says, Howard, I have no words. And I thought, oh my goodness.
We’re about to get into a social media war because this is this happens. I see a lot of people’s Facebooks. And I just put on there, brother, we are Christians before we are Americans. And I was just kind of like, dreading his response. And his response was, amazingly, you’re right, brother.
Please pray for me. I have just a hardened heart since 9/11. And I just realized, wow, man. God is totally moving, and for those of us that are have hardened hearts, towards Muslims, I understand. I mean, it’s not like, we the US hasn’t been through stuff, but it doesn’t mean that we can stay there.
No. I agree with Cash. He says that he believes God’s bringing them here and he’s bringing them here for a purpose. And I think, ultimately, we need to be praying that regardless of why they’re coming that they meet and encounter Jesus through the church. And Howard and I came across this prayer for the refugee.
Alright. We found this really moving. It’s called a prayer for the refugee crisis. I’m just gonna read it. It says, heavenly father, you are the source of all goodness, generosity, and love.
We thank you for opening the hearts of many to those who are fleeing for their lives. Help us now to open our arms in welcome, and reach out our hands in support, that the desperate may find new hope, and lives torn apart be restored. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, your son, our lord, who fled persecution at his birth and his last triumph over death. Amen. Have you ever thought about that, Howard, that Jesus was a refugee?
Not until I read this prayer, really. I mean, this is the first time. Right? Christmas season. Right?
Right. And when we’re talking about preparing our hearts for the coming of Christ and the birth of Christ on Christmas day, we have to realize that there is a point at which Joseph receives a dream and they flee to Egypt. And that’s the beginning of Jesus’ life as a refugee. And so Howard and I wanna say Merry Christmas to all of you. We are taking a 2 week break, and, we will be back in the new year but we really encourage you guys to share with your friends on Facebook about the show, other shows that you’ve liked.
It’s amazing that we’ve been doing this over a year. And the listenership, you guys you guys keep growing. You keep passing him, passing this podcast on, and we just we just are so encouraged by it. Yeah. I think we should, end with a a Christmas carol maybe, Howard.
Chingled. No. That’s not right. I’m just kidding. You guys have a Merry Christmas.
That’s all for this week. I think we should sing the song. Alright. I’m leaving.