Radio saved her life
My life has fallen into a few stages.
As a child, I lived in Box Hill when it was village. I then became pastor to the slums of inner Melbourne for eight years. I was then a country parson and a teacher at a one teacher bush school out at Jackson Creek in Western Victoria and then for 13 years, I was a suburban minister in one of Australia’s largest suburban ministries.
And then, for more than 27 years I’ve been Superintendent in Sydney of Wesley Mission, Australia’s largest church ministry.
I’ve told you stories of people in each of these places.
Tonight I want you to come with me into the heart of the city.
Throughout most of the 1980’s up until the present time, I have conducted my Sunday Night Live Program on 2GB. This runs for four hours from 8pm to midnight each Sunday night and these stories form the last segment of the last hour. I also do another one hour of programming by way of Christian spots and promotions on the station during the week. The relationship with the radio station has been a very interesting one over the years which included Wesley Mission rescuing the station at a time of great financial need by purchasing 87 per cent of the shares, and subsequently running the station until the time came when we sold those shares to John Singleton and other investors.
Throughout all this period I was Chairman of the Board of the Macquarie Radio Network.
There have been many remarkable stories come out of these years on radio.
One of the most remarkable concerned a call to me in the days before I was telling these stories. In those days, I had talkback continuing until midnight. At about five minutes to midnight one night back in 1988, I received a call from a young woman who was sobbing. Later on she wrote a full account of that, and I will quote to you her own words.
Her name was Melody. Melody wrote:
“It was the winter of 1988. It was cold and pouring with rain. It was after 11:30 pm and I was driving back to Sydney having spent the weekend in Canberra saying goodbye to my friends.
I had decided that the only way out of my problems was to kill myself. I had no self-esteem, believing that the abuse I suffered as a child and a young teenager was all my fault. As the trucks came thundering towards me out of the dark, I though how easy it would be to steer my car underneath the front of one of them. It would be a quick and easy death.
As I drove I usually listened to cassettes, but on this particular night I turned on the radio to see if I could find a friendly voice. As I listened I heard the announcers say that if anyone wanted him to pray for them, then to give him a call. It was Gordon Moyes on 2GB and immediately I knew I had to call. “I have to stop and phone—this is my only chance!”
I was just leaving Goulburn and as I looked to the side of the road, there was a phone booth. I wondered if it would work and if I had any change. It did and I was put straight through to Gordon on the air. I was pretty upset and it took a while for me to tell Gordon why I had called. But I remember he just kept on talking to me. He didn’t even say the prayer that he normally says when he closes the program.
After the program finished, he kept on talking to me off the air. That telephone and that link with another human being became my only hold of life. When we eventually stopped talking, I had calmed down a little and begun to see that maybe there was some way out of the deep depression I had sunk into. Gordon had made me promise to call him as soon as I got home. I remember the relief in his voice when I called him at 2:30 in the morning to say that I had arrived home safely. When we were talking on the air, he had asked people to pray for me. Those prayers were the only thing that carried me through that night and beyond.
During my teenage years I had always blamed myself for everything that had ever gone wrong. I felt utterly worthless. My life had no purpose and all I could see was that I had caused problems for everyone. In my depression I decided that the best thing I could do was to kill myself so I wouldn’t be a burden anymore.
That late night call to Gordon on 2GB changed my life. My life turned around—a complete about-face! I began to see that what happened to me was not my fault. I was not responsible for what had done to me!
After I understood that and I put the blame squarely on those who had done wrong, I was able to take the next step in the process of healing—to forgive those who had hurt me.
I had also made a decision to take God at His Word and believe that what the Bible was absolutely true. God said He loved me in His Word—therefore it was true—God love me!!
I read the story of the unforgiving servant in Matthew. (Matt 18:23-35) God had forgiven me many things yet He still loved me. I also started to see that God loved those who had hurt me too and had sent Jesus to die for them as well.
Slowly it sank into my heart that if God could love and forgive them, then who was I to hold something against them!
My only option was to forgive them and trust God with their lives. That step brought such freedom into my heart and for the first time I really saw what Jesus meant when He said, “I came that you might have life, and have it abundantly!” (John 10:10) Since that time my life has been filled with God’s love and the joy of sharing His love and His Gospel of redemption, grace and wholeness with others. The change in me wasn’t something that happened instantly—it was a process that had to be diligently worked through and couldn’t have been done without the love and support of friends who let me cry and who prayed for me.
Because of all that God had done in my life, I wanted to work full-time for Him, and the opportunity arose for me to go to Africa at the beginning of 1990. It was a fantastic time of seeing God’s faithfulness over and over again as He supplied my every need and as He taught me constantly from His Word. My own spiritual life grew amazingly and it was such a joy to see people’s lives change radically upon hearing of the grace of God and the salvation He has made ours in Jesus.
I spent seven months in South Africa, a month in Zimbabwe and England and three months in Canada. Each place was different, and in each place God had different things He wanted to emphasise, but in them all God’s word was, “I love you”. This is what has given me the strength to go on when my life seemed worthless, not just overseas, but here as well.
Now I am back in Australia and grateful for the opportunity to say thank you to anyone who heard that first call to 2GB and who prayed for me. And to those of you who have friends who are struggling with thoughts of suicide and worthlessness—don’t give up help.
In Jeremiah 29:11 God declares, “I know the plans I have for you, plans for welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope.”
God’s plans for us are always for the best and always for our welfare. When I could see no future for my life and was totally devoid of hope, God reached into my life, changed my heart, gave me hope and filled me with His love.”
Obviously I met Melody. But there were a couple of interesting points that Melody didn’t know at that time. When she rang me, at five minutes to midnight in tears and in the pouring rain from the phone box outside of Goulburn where she had been waiting to kill herself by driving her little car in front of an oncoming transport truck, I said to my listeners, “Now I always close with my prayer. But tonight I do not want to have this prayer because I want to keep talking to Melody. Those of you who are Christian, would you please pray for me and Melody while we have this discussion, and I’m quite sure your prayers will help us resolve this problem.”
So the program ended without the prayer as usual. But out among my listeners, many people earnestly prayed for Melody and for my discussion. Over the next half hour or so, I talked to her on the telephone. I suggested that she come on towards Sydney and I would drive to Liverpool and meet her. However, she said she felt quite confident that she could drive home to Lane Cove and ring me from there, which she did. I made arrangements to meet her the next day, and over the next few weeks we met several times and one of my staff provided Melody with a great deal of encouragement and help. Her life was put back into order, and her visit to Africa, which she mentioned, was an absolute triumph for her as she went to help some of the most underprivileged and poor people in the world. From time to time I still talk with Melody and I am just grateful to God for those who prayed throughout our discussions.
Some time later, an elderly lady wrote to me and told me that when she heard the suicide call from Melody and when she heard me say that I was going to keep talking to her and I asked for listeners to pray, this elderly lady wrote, “I got out of bed and knelt beside my bed and prayed for Melody as if she were my own daughter. I prayed over and over again, in fact it was daylight before I got up from my knees.
What this dear faithful soul did not realise was that God heard her prayers and enabled us to resolve the problems, and as a result, Melody today is living fruitful and effective life. Who knows just what is the outcome of our sincere and effective prayer?
And who knows the outcome of care and counselling given in the program? Melody rang me at the point of suicide. One night a desperate man rang me who had a shotgun and was about to shoot himself. Carefully and thoughtfully, I went through the counselling steps I train the Lifeline counsellors in every year. I normally have about 80 counsellors and the theory is that, when trained, they should be able to help someone attempting suicide to re-evaluate their discussion and instead, decide for life.
As I led that man from death to life, I received two other calls from people who were both—then and there—contemplating killing themselves, and for one man, killing his wife and children as well. Several lives were saved that night, saved by the intimacy and power of the radio.
Through our Lifeline Telephone Counselling Service, our Lifeforce Suicide Prevention Service, and through our radio and television programs like this, Wesley Mission has saved hundreds of lives.
The city of Sydney would grow to be one of the world’s great cities and Wesley Mission would grow to be one of the world’s great churches and I was privileged to spend each day in the heart of both.