Kidnapped in Baghdad, What Happens Next is Miraculous

We must all develop an unhindered friendship with God and a sensitive, discerning spirit so that we hear Him when He speaks.

I learned this early on in Baghdad. During one church service I became acutely aware in my spirit that a certain inoffensive-looking, smartly dressed man with a calm, composed demeanor needed to be instantly removed from the church building. There was no obvious exterior indication that the man’s presence was sinister, yet during worship my spirit was in a state of deep unrest. I quietly spoke to my security guards and asked that the man be removed. The man was escorted out of the building and handed over to the Iraqi army who discovered that he was wearing a suicide belt around his waist that was packed with explosives.

We may not all live in a war zone, but the world is a dark place and we must all cultivate sensitivity to His voice and to the prompting of His Spirit. This comes from friendship with Him. We must walk in constant recognition that He is counsel, He is strength, He is revelation knowledge, He is understanding, He is wisdom, He is the reverent fear of the Lord, and He is the bold Spirit that declares Jubilee and proclaims Jesus. His resource is inexhaustible, and we must learn to walk hand in hand with Him.

Another powerful memory I have of God going literally before me and filling the space ahead of me relates to the only time in my adult life when I would say I experienced fear. It was around the year 2005-2006. A fortnight previously, I had been in the US where I was speaking at All Nations Church with my good friends Mahesh and Bonnie Chavda. It was a glory conference lasting several days, and the atmosphere of God’s glory was thick throughout the conference. It came as waves over the entire gathering and many miracles and encounters were taking place.

At the end of the conference, as I was about to leave and return to Baghdad, Mahesh gave me one final hug and stuffed an unusually large sum of several thousand dollars cash in my jacket pocket. All Nations Church has always been generous supporters of our work in Iraq, but I have to say that this was an unusually large sum of money, and Mahesh assured me that God had told him to give this exact amount. I was extremely grateful for it, and on returning to Baghdad I placed the cash in a money belt that I wore around my waist beneath my body armor when moving around between zones.

Two weeks later I was working on a hostage negotiation case, attempting to rescue a group of Brazilian security staff. They were all former military men and experienced in dealing with kidnappings, but not of this extreme nature. After extensive investigation, my team and I managed to track down the kidnappers, and as confidentiality was critical to success we did not disclose details of the location to anyone other than my private driver who also acted as one of my bodyguards. My other group of bodyguards followed us in a separate vehicle up to a certain point. After this point, I journeyed alone with my driver toward the location, which was in a very dangerous suburb.

The kidnappers had no intention of negotiating and they were violent men. Holding my arms behind my back, they led me to an empty, dilapidated house. They threw me aggressively through the door of a very dark room and thrust me to the floor. I fell to the ground onto a hard, concrete surface and I was in a lot of pain. There was no light at all in the room, and I could sense the presence of evil.

After several hours, I realized that I still had my phone, and though there was no signal I used the light as a torch to see around the room. Fear entered me as I saw chopped off fingers and toes scattered all over the floor. I cannot even describe with vocabulary the deep dread that I felt in those moments as the light from my phone exposed the unspoken tortures of many yesterdays. Would I be the next victim? What would they do to me? Where was God within this sinister darkness? How much battery was left on my phone? How would I manage with no water? What would happen to my beloved wife and my boys? I was desperately thirsty, hurt, and bruised. Having been pushed so violently to the ground, my body felt terribly weak. As I sat in the darkness, I prayed, sang in my heavenly language, and wept with my head in my hands like a child.

There was just one music track on my phone at that time, and it was by a Jewish friend called Roni Shavit. I had known Roni since the day she was born. She is a highly talented musician, and I would often go to her family home and listen to her play, as her music always ministered great peace to my soul. By the age of sixteen, Roni became the official pianist in the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. I had been so overwhelmed by her stunning rendition of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no.2 in B-flat Major I recorded it live on my phone from Jerusalem, and, as I had literally no other music on my phone in those days, it became my “personal lullaby.” It uplifted me on long journeys and in endless queues at check points.

There in that dark room, the phone that had given me light gave me sound, and as the room filled with this dynamic concerto I felt instantly fortified and could feel God’s presence surround me like a blanket. Fear began to leave me, faith welled up in my heart, and I knew that somehow I would be liberated; somehow God would intervene. Somehow I would survive to tell you this story.

In those days, I always traveled with emergency money around my waist, and fortunately they had not searched me. I had totally forgotten that I had added Mahesh’s large bundle of cash, and it was still there in addition to what had already been in there. This gave me enough cash to pay my captors for my own release and I managed to walk away a free man. There is absolutely no way I would ever consider carrying that amount of cash on me, but am I glad that Mahesh heard so accurately from God in the atmosphere of the glory two weeks before! Once again, God had already gone ahead of me, from the glory in North Carolina to a dark, death-filled room in a dangerous derelict of Baghdad. The zone had traveled with me; He had gone ahead of me and filled the sinister space with His rescue solutions. Everything I needed was already with me, and most of all, His glory was in me. The dark room had become filled with the protective and peace-filled presence of He “who fills all things everywhere with Himself.”

His goodness is His glory, it is the outflow of His nature. Divine goodness does not just follow us, it goes ahead of us.