Two Hands on My Shoulder

Two Hands on My Shoulder

by Bert Kerley

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

May the words of my lips and the thoughts of all our hearts be now and always acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen. Looking at Marjorie’s lovely, neat song lists, I was reminded of a song list that I found from somewhere. And it was a list of hymns for drivers. I don’t know if you’ve seen that somewhere. 45 mile an hour, God will take care of you.

55 mile an hour, guide me, O Thou great Jehovah. 65 mile an hour, nearer my God to Thee. 75 mile an hour, nearer, still nearer. 85 mile an hour, this world is not my home. 95 mile an hour, Lord, I’m coming home.

65 mile an hour. 65 mile an hour, mindfulness. 78 mile an hour, precious memories.

I was answering when we came on Saturday about the story of a guru who had one of his scholars reciting his first speech. And he was giving a whole list of wonderful scriptures. And he was making the rafters ring with these scriptures. Then he came to his guru expecting some sort of appreciation. And the guru said to him, “I’m still waiting to hear you.” And of course the young man was a bit taken aback and he said, “What do you mean?” So the guru said to him, “Well, there’s been an abundance of scriptures you’ve given. Wonderful illustrations from other people’s readings.” But he said, and listen to this, all speakers, “What original commentary can you give from the uniqueness of your own life?”

“Secondly,” he said, “what holy texts have you absorbed and made your own? And thirdly, in what way have these timeless truths renovated your nature?” What he was saying is, tell me from your experience what these things mean. And again, we’re reminded that in camp we’re often using experiential teaching. Aren’t we? Glenn Clark encouraged us in this. And Glenn says in that wonderful book, I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes, he said, “If you could describe a personal experience in all its detail, and no matter how trivial it might be, you might produce literature as perfect as Dickens or Poe. If you can tell your whole experience of spiritual rebirth, it may be as effective in changing souls as the testimony of Paul, St. Francis or Brother Lawrence.”

Starr Daily himself says, “My authority to speak is experience, not scholarship.” Now, each of us here, I am well aware, has suffered much. In fact, I always think as I am addressing a group of people that I am addressing a crowd of heroes. And some of those are still fighting battles now.

And there are tremendous experiences to be shared, if we could all stand up and tell our story. And I guess as I tell my story, you will be reminded of similar instances in your own life. But it will also remind us of God’s faithfulness and steadfastness in keeping us going. Especially when we thought we couldn’t go on. Before so doing, I want to read a passage of scripture from 1 Kings, chapter 19. And it tells the story of Elijah’s nervous breakdown.

Interesting this to me, you know, in all my years at Sunday school, in early church, I was always told and preached about 1 Kings 18 with Elijah when he had that tremendous battle with the prophets of Baal. When he tried to prove that his God was great. And do you remember the prophets all got together and he said, “Now let’s put it to the test. Let’s get an altar. Let’s put a sacrifice on it. Let’s put buckets…” No, he said put buckets of water on it. But he says, “Whoever calls to their God and He sends down fire, then that God will serve.” And so the prophets all tried and they called out and called out. And Elijah says, can’t you hear you? And so nothing happened. Then he was the one that poured buckets and buckets of water over it. And then he said, “God, show them You’re the one.” And fire came down this road. I used to think, wonderful. Wish I had that faith. I’ll never have that faith. No one ever told me about what happened in the next chapter. When this great man of God, fearless it seemed, had a nervous breakdown. It wasn’t until after my experience that I really began to see this tremendous passage in a different light.

He said, it comes out here. “Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he had slain all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying, ‘So may the gods do to me and more also if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.’” Listen to this. Listen to this. “Then he was afraid. Then he was afraid. And he rose and went for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree and he asked that he might die. He said, ‘It’s enough now, O Lord, take away my life for I am no better than my father.’” He didn’t want to live. “And he lay down and slept under a broom tree. And then behold, an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Arise and eat.’”

“Else the journey will be too great for you.” And he arose and ate and drank and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb and Mount of God. I was born in the centre of London, in fact in the slums of London, in little terrace streets in a very, very poor area. I was the last of seventeen children.

And as I said once to some friends, I’m glad my mother didn’t stop at sixteen. But I can imagine all the neighbours saying at the time, you know, “Tut, Mrs. Kerley’s gonna have another one.” And if I could hear from heaven, I’d say, “Mind your own business.”

I wanna come down. But anyhow, I entered into this world, the youngest of seventeen. And my father died when I was two. So you can imagine we was in a pretty poor state. My brothers and sisters, the older ones, and many of them I didn’t see at home, because as soon as they got old enough, they went and joined the forces, or they got married, because that was the only way out of this house. We only had two rooms. And I can remember sleeping five in a bed, three up and two down, so we all had to wash our feet at night, to make it comfortable.

But we were there in an extremely poor situation. In my childhood, I played in the streets. We had no fields around us. It wasn’t until eight, until I saw our fields and cows. And so we were miles from any place of recreation. No holidays, certainly. But we had our recreation in the streets, playing soccer and cricket in the street.

My education suffered because of the war. I was eleven years old when the war came. I was two years evacuated into the country where I was so blessed by then realizing the wonder of the country life. Even now I can remember rustling through fallen leaves and seeing cows and standing over a little bridge watching a stream go by. It really blessed myself. But after two years I got a bit homesick and wanted to go back to my mother and so I went back straight into the blitz. No one told you about the phony war. The two years when nothing seemed to happen. But as soon as I went back into London we had this tremendous blitz. And so there was I in the heart of this blitz. And I can remember quite vividly. I had a paper round one morning going round the streets delivering papers. The next morning just walking round the streets seeing rubble and bodies of people I had previously the day given papers to. It was a nerve-shattering experience. It also affected my school life because during the whole of the war what used to happen was that we used to have half day schooling. The villagers when it was evacuated had a half day in the morning and we had the half day in the afternoon.

When I came back to London all the schools had been taken over by the fire services and so we had half day schooling there but the teachers had all been called up most of them and so really it was a question of going there and playing games. So it was not much of a schooling and I always felt the lack of that, you know. It was a long time before I lost that inferiority complex.

However, something beautiful did happen when I was young, and that when I was about seven years old people from the churches in the middle class area used to come home and they established a mission in our area. And they were missionaries. And it was there that I was drawn into a Sunday school and then began to learn the love of Christ. And I so loved Him that they asked me to go across over to the other side of the road where the middle class people lived into a church. And I joined the choir there. And I loved singing. I really did love singing. And I was so blessed in that service, that service of the church.

I then grew up in the church till the war came and then when I came back from evacuation I went back into the church and took a very active part. In fact, I became far too active. I had a couple of years in the Royal Marines and then came back again to pick up service in the church. And then I made a big mistake. I concentrated too much on doing. I was not only a youth leader, I was a scout leader, I was on the church council, I was in the church choir, I was doing social work in the church. Whatever was going on, I was into it. I was so zealous. And I was so foolish. Because I was so concentrating on doing that I never found time to reflect and think and grow. And strangely enough, the church seemed to always pick on the type that we are to give us more to do. And so they loaded on and you don’t say no and you finish up with a lot of trouble.

And also the type of teaching in the church was pretty severe too. You know, it’s the sort of teaching that made you fear God and made you feel guilty if you wasn’t doing everything right. If you wasn’t in church three times on a Sunday, if you wasn’t attending the prayer meeting. And I remember now, I was a great sportsman, but I used to feel so guilty if I used to go and play football when there was a church meeting. Because when I come back, they said, “Where were you?” So, you know, and if I was in the church meeting, I wouldn’t be wanting to play football, you see. So I couldn’t enjoy either. And many of us Christians get into that state, don’t we? I know particularly too, my dear mother was a wonderful woman, a magnificent woman. A woman of great love. But she suffered so much with arthritis. She was in so much pain. And for months, night after night, I would rub her legs, you know, praying at the same time. Wondering why this wasn’t working. But I know even now that when I went out somewhere to enjoy myself, I would always be feeling guilty that I’d left her there, on her own. And yet, naturally, being a teenager, when I was in the house, sort of looking after her, I was wanting to be outside, with playing football or having a date with the girls, you see.

And so I was caught in that terrible situation that a lot of Christians get stuck in: double-mindedness. You’re not really happy either way. And so I was really suffering in many, many ways. I remember as a boy too, the poverty, the extreme poverty. I remember going into the shops and the long list of the money that you owed. And you had to pay a little bit off at the end of the week. And then there was a great big list to carry forward. And this, as a young lad, I was watching and absorbing. It’s only, you know, in later years that I realized what this does to a little lad. Instead of being free in a home of security to launch yourself out and become yourself, you’ve got so much responsibility on you and so much anxiety that it begins to have an effect upon your whole personality. And I had all sorts of nervous twitches and anxiety, neurosis, you know. I really was in a bit of a state as I grew up.

I met my wife, Rosie, in the church when I came out of the Royal Marines. And we got married. And we had children. Our first child was a beautiful little boy. He was absolutely lovely. Everything about him was beautiful. And it was one of those children, you know, the mother’s dream of: sleeps all the time, doesn’t make a fuss, you know, and all the rest of it. And he was a beautiful little boy. And then he was about eight months old. And it was about three days before Christmas. I had been out to work. And then I came back and Rosie said that Kevin’s not well, Bert. So I looked at him and we phoned up the doctor and told him the symptoms. And he said, “Well, it looks as if he’s got teething trouble. Give him some gripe water.” And so we did so. And I had to go out for the evening. Came back and went to bed. And then we heard a little murmur in the night. And I got up and took hold of Kevin, and lifted him out of his cot. And I found he was breathing extremely slowly. And I can remember even now, counting the spaces between the intake and outgoing breath. And it got wider and wider.

And then it stopped, in my arms. And this is three days before Christmas, with the lovely little Christmas tree up and a little presents. So he died just in my arms, just like that. And again, foolishly, I tried to be brave about it. I tried to, you know, in a sense not sure how upset I was because I was trying to care for my wife. And let her cry it out. But I didn’t do any crying myself. And I tried to make out I was brave. But really that had an effect on me later on, which was quite devastating. God gives us the secret of grief: to cry, to share our feelings out. They are absolutely necessary. And, of course, now I know. But then I didn’t know. And I was foolish. Again, trying to be too good a Christian, I suppose. And trying to be too good a husband. But certainly that was a tremendous experience in my life. Just after that, my mother died also. And then, again, I tried to be brave and didn’t share my feelings with anybody. We were talking about the old one, weren’t we? Didn’t share my feelings at all.

However, we were living in a couple of rooms up at the top of a house. And we were making a go of it. And we made a little bit of a recovery. But I was also then working in a national newspaper. And I was doing very well as a young man. I was a manager of a very important job. But just see what is happening, friends, you know? Here, with all these stressful circumstances, on top of a stressful childhood.

Working like the dickens in church. No time for real quietness. Pressures of business. Out nearly every night. And I still feel a sense of shame and guilt about that. Not being at home with my family enough. Not spending enough time with my children and my wife. You see? Always wanting to do and to help other people. But forgetting that it’s in the home that we practice first the love of God. Family relationship.

And this went on for some time, until I found that my sleep was beginning to be affected. I found that I couldn’t sleep much at night. And I began to be afraid. I began to have nightmares, too. Every night was hell. And I would have vivid nightmares. And then there came this one final night when I woke up. And the thought came to me, “You’re going to have a nervous breakdown.”

And… I guess you must know this, friends, but when you’re tense, it’s very difficult to get rid of a thought. That’s why the art of relaxation is so important. In order to come back to normality, one needs to quieten down and be still. And that’s another tip I would give our young friends here. Learn how to relax. Got it? Anyhow, again, I made the mistake of not sharing my fears with other people. I was known as a great church worker. I was known as a person who believed and had faith. And so I tried to carry all that on my shoulders, you know. And showed them my faith. So when I had broken down or was breaking down, I didn’t want to share that. And so I hid it. And people saw me as a smiling person, but they didn’t see that I was fighting a tremendous battle inside.

So I got sucked into this whirlpool of stress and strain. I visited the doctor. And he said to me, “Don’t worry.” He didn’t ask me what I was worrying about. He gave me some tablets. Said, “They’ll help you sleep.” And they didn’t. I didn’t sleep a wink all night. It was agony.

The doctor told me to relax. He never told me how to relax. And so I went on. And there I was fighting through every day and fighting through every night, every moment of the night, trying to get asleep. Dreading the morning. And then at the end of the day, dreading the night.

Now this couldn’t go on, of course. And there was one day at my work when I was working away. And then I began to see my hands shake and my whole arm shook. And I just couldn’t take it anymore. And I had to go up to my director and say, “You know, I can’t work.” And he sent me home in a firm’s car.

I had broken down. I had a nervous breakdown. Just imagine how I felt going home into Rosie with two little children. By then we got two more children, a little boy and a little girl. And telling her that I couldn’t work.

On top of this, I had this tremendous sense of guilt. Failure, that I’d let God down. I’d let my family down. The tremendous amount of regret that I’d made a mess of my life. That I’d sort of ruined my family.

Fear of the future. What would they give to me when I went back? If I ever got back, I had a very important job. Very responsible. What would they think of me when I went back? And then there’s a strange thing which has been a tremendous help to me since. But I didn’t know it then. But I know that there is a level of mental health above which normal people go up and down, up and down, according to whether you have a good day or a bad day, or a good bit of nerves or a bad bit of nerves. But above that health line, the mind is so made as to help you forget all your bad experiences and remember good. Now that’s the way God made us. And that’s why we live, even though we have so many bad things happen to us. We couldn’t live happily with all those memories. But when you slip below that mental health line, something else happens in the mind. It does a complete reverse and it keeps wanting to think of the things that you’ve done bad or wrong or your regrets and your mistakes. And in fact, you can’t think of anything good. Now that’s important to us who have people who are depressed. We say, “I can’t see why you can’t be happy about that.”

They can’t because their mind is in a different situation. They can only think of all the problems. And what’s more, a small problem above the line, the same problem becomes a massive problem when you’re below the line. That’s why we can’t understand why they’re worrying about that little thing. Because to them, it’s not a little thing, it’s a gigantic thing.

And it’s very difficult to make a decision when you fall below that line. Difficult even to choose a shirt or shoes or where to go. But you still have to make decisions. And so it’s a very, very sad situation.

I went to the doctor and he made an appointment with a psychiatrist. Now the psychiatrist was there but he had a team of students all around. I can remember that too. And I sat in this room and they asked me questions.

And he said to me at the end, “I’m going to give you some tablets. And I want you to come back in six weeks’ time.” Six weeks! And yet every night I didn’t want to wake up. And I’ve got to live through six weeks. I didn’t believe I could do it.

And I still don’t know how I managed it. At the end of six weeks, I went back and I said, “I just can’t do this any longer. You’ve got to do something. You’ve got to send me away.” So he did. He sent me into a psychiatric hospital.

And I had to leave my wife and children at home. The first interview I had with the consultant psychiatrist there was quite interesting. Do you know, the only thing I can remember about him was that he was chain smoking.

And I thought to myself, he’s worse than me. And it’s not very encouraging, is it? You see him popping away there and putting one out and popping another one on top of myself. He needs some tablets. Don’t he?

Anyhow, hardly anybody spoke to me. Do you know, this is why I love to be in the counseling ministry. I just listen to people and talk to them. And they don’t have to go through this procedure. They don’t have to go into mental hospitals. They just need someone to listen to them and talk with them. And help them get their feelings out. Ask them what they’re frightened of, what’s happened. And I know I spoke. But they gave me this electrical treatment, ECT. You’ve heard of it, haven’t you? You know? Where they put the stuff on you, the old electrodes on you. And they lay you down and give you a shot of electricity. And they hope that it will disturb some of the bad memories. And it does, for about a minute or so. And sometimes about five minutes. But I’ve seen that work in people. So I’m not knocking it altogether. But it didn’t work for me.

And I got up. And they gave me more drugs. Then they said they’d try another type of healing. And so they said they would put me to sleep for nine days and nights. And so they put on the floor a mattress. And then they gave me these drugs. Gave me what they called semi-narcosis treatment. They put me into a sleep. And made it possible only for me to sort of wake up in a sort of dream side of atmosphere. Where they would feed me. Still laying on the floor. I still don’t know much about how I got to a toilet or anything like that. I can’t remember anything about that. Until nine days of nights asleep.

And at the end of that, I was still no better. Still no better. Talk about the night being dark. I was certainly waiting for some stars to come out. But then I decided, “This is doing me no good. I will go out.” But the effort to go outside the walls of that hospital was massive. To get onto a bus and to go home. And then to try and go back to work. And when I did that, they gave me an office boy’s job. Now remember, I left as a manager. And they put me back as an office boy. Can you imagine how you feel? Although really I didn’t feel too well. Because I wasn’t capable of doing much else. But what it done to me spirit.

And again, still struggling. Night after night. Day after day. No hope. No hope. There sinned. But then people had been praying. And one would expect prayers to be honored. Certainly Rosie was praying. And then we saw the answer to these accumulated prayers.

I decided I would go to a friend’s induction as a minister. Rosie and I went with our children. There was other things I could have done. But it’s quite strange that I should choose to do that. Because it took a lot of effort. And I went into this church. And sat down for the service. And here again, young people, I am addressing you because I want you to focus on the things that happen in the out days of everyday circumstances. To get you to have an understanding that God is working with you. And God is there. Got it? I had got into this state not because God wanted me to. But because I did not understand the laws of body and mind and spirit. And so not understanding them, I was breaking them. And I suffered from it. Pain is a symptom of something being wrong. One then needs to know what is wrong. When you put it right, then as the healing power of the whole universe moves in, begins to heal. Because God is love. You see? But I had broken so many laws there unknowingly, unwittingly, sometimes willfully. And I had been subject to the laws of wounding as a child.

The world. This is the sad thing about the wars in the world. Think of all those little kiddies in Lebanon. And all those other places. What is going to happen to them, when they begin to develop? But I want you to get this understanding that God is there. Now I went into this church, and halfway through the service, I felt two hands on my shoulder. And I turned around, and there sitting behind me was a friend who I hadn’t seen for about a number of years.

But this friend had been made a friend because many years previous, he’d come to the area I lived in. And he came to our church for the first time, and he wanted to work in the slums. And seeing him outside the church, I invited him home. Talk about the Bible reading. “Don’t be forgetful to entertain strangers, for some have entertained angels unawares.” But we had a friendship. Then he went off again. And I didn’t see him again until I saw these hands put on my shoulder. And he said, notice that I had sat in that row, and he had sat behind me. Yet the church was full. The placing of that person. And then he whispered in my ear, “Bert, how would you and your family like to go for a holiday?”

I said, “I’d love to go.” He said, “We’ll pay all your expenses. We’ll send you off to Scargill,” which was a lovely retreat centre, up in the beautiful country of Yorkshire. When we got there, we went there, Rosie and I and the children. And we had a whole week of walking amongst the lovely hills. And there was his brother, who was warden in the place, who talked to us. And so we went through a week’s holiday. But still, I didn’t have a holiday in my mind. I was still gripped with fear. What, when this holiday is finished? Got it?

Well, came the final day. And I packed the bags. And Rosie was dressing the children. And I said, “I’ll take the bags down.” She said, “I’ll be back, I’ll be down in a minute, Bert.” So I said, “Right. I’ll be back.” So I took the bags downstairs and put them in the foyer.

I’ve often wondered what would have happened if she had been down in a minute. Or two minutes, or three minutes. That was vital. That was absolutely vital that she stayed up there. Because while I was standing there waiting for her, I turned and saw a book table there.

Now that book table had been there all week, but I hadn’t looked at it. Because, you know, one of the symptoms of this sort of depression is that you can’t read, you can’t concentrate, you can’t pray, except to say help. You certainly can’t read your Bible. You don’t want to know anything. And so it was no good me going up and reading books. But as I stood there, I looked, and at the edge of the table was a book standing up. Now, this is why I encourage all people in charge of bookstores. You never know when this is going to happen. If you’re just thoughtful and prayerful about putting out those books, something like this can happen. Got it? Because this is how God works. He actually, if we could see this in action, we would see Him through the bookstore manager, get hold of a book and place it in a certain spot. Got it? Because He wants that in that certain spot, because He’s got a use for it. Do you understand that?

And so I look at the book, and it was the title. It had to be the title, because I couldn’t read. And the title was Prescription for Anxiety. You had one on your bookstore. Has anybody bought it? Not yet.

Prescription for Anxiety. And it was the title that caught my attention. And I opened the book. And in the first chapter, I saw that this great man, Dr. Leslie Weatherhead, one of the greatest minds and psychologists of our century, had himself had a nervous breakdown and suffered from deep depression. And the thought that came to my mind was, if he’s been there, he knows the way out. And in that instant, what the drugs couldn’t do, what ECT couldn’t do, what semi-narcosis couldn’t do, God did. I knew I was healed.

And peace came over me. I knew I was on my way out. I was healed, and I was gonna be healed, if you know what I mean. I knew it. What a bit of luck. I knew it was, that book was there, just at that time. That Rosie stayed up those stairs, five or ten minutes, bucking in the youngsters’ coats. That young man stood behind me in the church. He went to that service, and I went to that service. What if we had never have gone there? I wonder how long I could have lasted. I see now in some way or another God would have brought me help. Because so many have been praying. But isn’t that wonderful? God’s great love.

The lovely thing is, He never wastes anything, does He? Because I did recover. And then I said to God, teach me, teach me how to live in the kingdom. Teach me the secrets of the kingdom. How come a Christian who loved You so much could get into a state like that? How come? So He began to teach me. And tomorrow morning I’ll be pleased to share with you what happened after that, which was really quite wonderful. But this is not about not wasting it. You see, I had to learn a lot of lessons.

But now, in my work, I am able to lead so many out of depression. And I often wonder there, sitting there, watching them in the chair, how I could have helped them if I hadn’t had those experiences. I’d have probably been trotting out a lot of little phrases. I’d have been delving into a lot of psychology. But I would never know just what they’re feeling like sitting in that chair. Would I? And so, I could be more compassionate, more patient, more understanding. I know something about what to look for. And it’s such a tremendous joy to lift them up out of the depression and see them go on to a life of abundant happiness. God never wastes anything.

Someone wrote that depression can be a springboard to new heights. It can be an opportunity to character growth and a more abundant life. It draws attention to attitudes which need to change. A mind needed to change. It draws attention to conditions which need attention: to self, to others, and to life generally. It helps us to look again at what we say we believe.

And to institute change in our lives. And that’s some of the positive things about depression. If you’re willing to learn by it, you can grow. God never wastes anything. I wonder if Marjorie would just now lead us in a moment or two in the year. So, He touched me. But before so doing, I just want us to do something.

I told you my story tonight. In this room, everybody has a similar story. There are people here who have gone through great battles, great struggles. They may even now be fighting them. They have been called upon to draw upon courage which in any other way would be rewarded. Do you know? If we was to be rewarded as governments reward soldiers who have fought great battles, we would all be wearing medals. And we would have citations, and there would be something like, “Well done. Well done.” So I want us to stand up and turn to the people I decided, look them in the eyes, knowing that they thought of great fat. Tell them, “Well done.” Then hug them and tell them, “God’s proud of them. And you’re proud.” Let’s do that. The answer is well because if you haven’t had battles yet, you’re gonna have battles. Just do that.

Shall we be seated now, friends? Can’t die of every burden Need the Lord at guilt and shame Let the help of Jesus approach me And now I’m the same. He touched me. Oh, He touched me. And I, that was my soul.

Something happened, and I… He touched me. And made me whole. Since I met his blessed Savior, Since he cleansed and made me whole, I will never cease to praise Him. I shall… He touched me. Oh, He touched me. And I… I… That was my soul. Something happened, and now…

He touched me. And made me whole. Let us join together now, in saying the 9 o’clock prayer, the prayer for peace in our world. Amen. Lord, kingdom be honored. And the God will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me. Amen. Amen.