“Riley, Run!”: God’s Work Through Near-Death Experience

I look behind and I just watch the tsunami just destroy buildings and people and just everything in its path and it got to this point where the tsunami wave was less than a car's distance from me and in that moment I just felt so much fear and my dad was like Riley run Riley Kei Hope was 10 years old when she and her family had to run for their lives during the massive Thailand tsunami of 2004 she's going to share Theory story of her narrow escape from Death on this episode of GPS God people stories it's an Outreach Of The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association I'm Jim Kirkland God used Riley's experience to build in her a courageous Faith something that Billy Graham says we all need the effective Christians throughout all history have been men and women of great personal courage and discipline you'll hear more from Billy Graham about having a bold faith in Jesus Christ a little later in this episode you can also discover more about it at our website anytime go to find peacewithgod.net that's fine peacewithgod.net and if you didn't get a chance to jot it down we always have that link in our show notes GPS God people stories Riley kho grew up on a small farm in New Zealand she made the decision to surrender her life to Jesus Christ when she was only five 5 years old I had the gift of growing up with parents that just loved the Lord and watching my parents just the way they loved each other the way they love Jesus it just made Jesus seem so attractive and also just like I wanted to get to know him I wanted to know this thing that my parents like put their whole life around Ry was so eager to know Jesus that she didn't ask him to change her life just once she gave her life to Jesus four Sundays in a row finally on the fourth Sunday the kids Pastor tells my mom like hey your daughter just keeps giving her life to Jesus and so my mom takes me aside and like asks me hey you know you only need to do this like once you have made this commitment in your heart and she's like why do you keep running up to the front and giving your life to Jesus and I turned to her put my hands on my hips and I tell her that I want Jesus to know I'm serious Raleigh has felt that way about her Faith ever since constantly telling others about Jesus she even told her dolls about him I'd come home from church sit them in little chairs and preach little sermons that I had written down on a napkin and then afterwards I would do an altar call and raise all of their hands up in the air and be like got 100% conversion rate every week life on her family's Farm in New Zealand was good for Riley she spent her days running around with chickens and goats riding horses and playing with her two younger sisters Riley says God used her childhood to grow her faith but during one of her family's Christmas vacations tragedy struck her idolic young life my grandfather he would spend half the year in Italy and half the year in Thailand and we had been to Thailand several Christmas holidays um on this particular Christmas holiday when I was 10 we went to go visit my grandfather before connecting with grandfather Riley and her family traveled to do some Mission work they spent a few weeks working at an orphanage that rescued children from sex trafficking from there they headed on to the planned family vacation my grandfather had actually booked us a vacation to one of the islands off the coast of Thailand a few days before Christmas we jump on a boat we go out to this island and it was beautiful like palm trees everywhere I remember the water was like so clear I could see fish swimming around everywhere and the boat pulls into the shore and I remember seeing my grandfather and my mom's whole extended side of the family and so we spent a few days there just like vacationing and then the day after Christmas that's when everything changed on December 26th 2004 Riley woke up to her bed shaking as a 10-year-old little girl I'm so confused I don't really know what's going on and I'm remember thinking my sister must be like underneath the bed pulling a prank on me so I jump out of the bed and look under and she's not there and the whole ground is shaking Riley didn't know she was experiencing a 9.1 magnitude earthquake she rushed down the hallway to her parents room I'm like Mom Dad like what's going on and my mom looks at me and she's like honey it's earthquake don't worry and the moment she said that the earthquake stopped and I remember looking around and things had fallen off the wall after everyone's nerves had settled the family moved back into vacation mode they went to breakfast and explored egg Island for about an hour then Riley's dad told them to head back to the hotel so he could get ready to go rock climbing my sisters and iel and my dad were walking back and this the Island's very small like it takes 2 minutes to walk from one side to the other and the way the island is structured is it's flat in the middle palm trees everywhere and then two big Cliffs on either side and so we're walking back and all of a sudden I noticed something really Airy there was so many wild animals on this island like monkeys wild dogs birds like just tons of Wildlife and they were noisy like you could just hear the sound of animals in the background and all of a sudden all the animals went silent I remember looking and there was like a wild dogs that yelped and howled and ran into the bush and then birds start flying up in the air and flying away and monkeys start climbing up the cliffs and the the only thing you could hear was now human sounds Riley her dad and sisters were almost back to their hotel room in the middle of the island when they heard people screaming at the top of their lungs you can see the beach through the palm trees and all of the water had left and it had left so quickly that there's fish flopping around everywhere people that were snorkeling are now stuck on the reef boats are now on the sand and you see in the distance is this thin white line Riley turned to her dad dad and asked where's mom my mom had been on the phone in the reception she runs to where we had been building sand castles and then ask the Lord like where are my children like doesn't know where we are in that moment people are running and banging into each other banging into my mom and then my mom just hears the word flee in her head and so she just decides to turn around leave the place of the sand castles and start running back to her room my mom is like this bold Confident Woman I remember seeing her running towards us and she just had fear in her eyes it was that moment that I knew I was like I don't understand what's going on but I know something's wrong what was wrong was that a giant tsunami wave was forming it Rose to over 50 feet high by the time her mom joined the rest of the family the tsunami was just a few hundred feet from them it took off running to the other side of the island it only took about 30 seconds and they made every one of those seconds count but Riley saw other vacationers who didn't is escape a woman sitting by the pool with her baby Frozen in fear a man in a boat I knew that my life was like hanging on by a thread and it was watching this man in a boat and this tsunami just absolutely consumed him and I just watched this man pass away in front of my own eyes and just thinking Lord I need you I could feel in me like this is like life or death just the day before Riley and her family had accidentally discovered a path to the top of one of the cliffs that path was now their Lifeline my mom looked at me and she was like Riley we have to find that path and so we start running up that path that we had found the day before and it got to this point my dad's holding one sister my mom is holding the other sister and I'm running as fast as I can behind them remember turning around and wishing I never had because here is this powerful force of a tsunami that shaking the ground that we're standing on I look behind and I just watch the tsunami just destroy buildings and people and just everything in its path and it got to this point where the tsunami wave was less than a car's distance from me and I remember my in that moment I just felt so much fear and my dad was like Riley run and that's what she did Riley focused on her father's voice and started running as fast as she could up that cliff and and truly by the grace of God we got up high enough that the tsunami wave didn't touch us me being alive was just mere the difference between M seconds and if we had not run up that path at that exact moment I truly would not be alive today on a big hill at the highest point of the cliff Riley sank to her knees and prayed here I am as this 10-year-old little girl as death and destruction are just happening all around me I just felt this like peace that it almost felt like somebody like wrapped this warm blanket around me and it was just this peace that transcends all understanding just met me in the middle of so much Devastation a few other people were on the cliff with Riley's family but none of them were members of her extended family I didn't know where my grandfather was where my cousins my aunties my uncles I was just had assumed the worst looking down and seeing what the wave had done to this island and so so there was my family the five of us and then there was this other family that we had met prior the four of them and then there was one man who was a chef at the resort and we kind of all just like cuddled together for the next six hours because there was three tsunami waves that struck our Island that day the group found a radio so they were able to hear updates from the Thai government finally the word came that there were no more tsunamis and it was safe to return to ground level when we walked back down the path which was now pretty hard to walk down cuz the wave had kind of like destroyed it it was pretty dangerous I remember just seeing just horrible horrible sites of people missing Limbs and bodies and just just heartbreaking the absolute devastation that the tsunami had caused only a few buildings were still standing on the entire Island and miraculously one of those buildings was the apartment building where Riley and her family were staying we walking towards our room my mom was shouting out the names of her family members and we were trying to find them and it was kind of like a ghost town like people were just so disassociated it was like pure chaos and we couldn't find my family we tried looking for an hour and or even longer and we looked all around and we couldn't find them anywhere and so I just remember thinking we've lost all of them the reality of what they' just been through was beginning to sink in they were devastated and all of them fell asleep from exhaustion then in the middle of the night they were awakened by a man pounding on their door yelling that another tsunami was coming and I just remember leaping out of bed and again the adrenaline is rushing through my body and my dad he was like packing like blankets and water and he was just like so surprisingly like w eyes in the midst of this moment that we had to be as quick as possible and so we follow this time man what a hero had gone down to ground level to try to find anyone that was potentially like sleeping on or like was on ground level and we follow him and he guides us through the forest in the pitch black darkness of the night this Tha man LED Riley's family to safety going up another pathway on the other side of the island he takes us to this big grass patch on top of the cliff and there is like hundreds of survivors and he turns to us he just like saluted us and then walked away and here's this man like who had risked his life but it turned out that there wasn't another tsunami The False Alarm had been sounded because of how quickly the ocean's high tide was coming back in everyone who had been evacuated to this High Ground was safe and then Morgan news we look over and there is every single member of my family and we hear them shouting our names and I mean it makes me so emotional but we just run over to them and hug them and just like this massive Embrace and I mean the odds of every single one of them surviving that's just God Riley's entire family slept on the hill that night the next next day a rescue boat arrived to pick up everyone and take them back to the hotel Riley was thinking she'd be back home in New Zealand soon but her parents had other plans they decided to stay for a few days to help local residents begin to clean up from the Sunami my parents made this surprisingly bold and also risky decision to keep our family there and so my extended family jumped on the boat and they headed home back to America but the five of us my sisters and my my parents stayed on this island when they did return home Riley was a different person my life was forever changed after living through something like that so we flew back to New Zealand and thankfully the first like week or two we didn't go back to school about 6 months after returning to school Riley's parents did something that surprised her they enrolled her and her sister in Beach lifeguard training and mind you I this point terrified of the ocean I don't want to go anywhere close to the ocean I'm like don't want to go to a beach like take me as far away from the ocean this Forest that I had seen kill hundreds of people she couldn't see it at the time but Riley's parents were teaching A Life Lesson to her and her sisters they enrolled me in my sisters and I in Beach lifeguard training because they wanted to teach us that the more you face your fears the less power fear has over you that idea was put to the test best the night before her first day of training she suffered a nightmare because the upcoming swim lesson Had triggered her PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder I woke up my hair is a mess I'm so nervous I can't believe my parents are forcing me to do this and my dad sees me in distress and he gets down on his knees he puts his hand on my shoulders and he's like Riley you are fighting a battle between courage and fair and all you need is a little more courage often that summer Riley had to battle the fear that was within her some days I didn't want to go to training and some days I didn't want to put my feet on the sand and I would be out swimming in the ocean and then all of a sudden I'd get freaked out and swim back to shore but I just remember being like Riley let's make more days that courage wins than fear wins and eventually the more and more I faced my fears the more and more I like did the opposite of what I wanted to do I was able to be in the ocean more and be more confident in the very place that I was terrified of as Riley's confidence increased so did her faith and she found herself wanting to live it out especially at school she would tell classmates about Jesus and she'd write encouraging notes to other girls who were going through tough times I'd ask the Lord God what does this person need to know and would write them letters put it in their backpacks and Rite it from your Secret Angel and my parents growing up would always say the same to us they'd be like be a secret Ninja for Jesus and it was just like go do wonderful acts of love but get no recognition for it and so I tried to do that as much as possible not everyone appreciated what she was doing though but I just remember being like I know the gift of life and how precious life is and I'm like telling you something that I know is going to change your life like the gospel is the greatest gift that any of us can receive it's like you're accessing a million dooll bank account that you didn't even know you have access to there was one group of cool girls in particular who gave Riley a hard time for sharing her faith but she didn't let that stop her in fact after she read in the Bible about blessing your enemies Riley decided to write in her journal the words Lord bless blank and then she wrote the names of and prayed for the girls who were bullying her that journal entry was dated October 27 4 years later on October 27th after I pray this prayer in my journal blessing they ended up coming to church and giving their life to Jesus and it was just so cool to see what happens when we because fear takes form in so many different ways and and fear does not stop death it stops life and for me like I had to face aair of man and what happens when we lay down that fear and let the fear of God be greater I look back and I see the Miracles of people's lives change for eternity as Riley learned to lay down her fears and trust the Lord more and more she was about to find herself confronting a fear of the ocean one more time it happened on a stormy day when she was 21 she'd gone out to spend some time on the beach when she heard someone yelling for help I see this man in the shore and he's pointing out to some further out way past the waves breaking and so I grab my fins and my flippers and start running towards this man that's way out there like few hundred feet into the ocean and as I'm looking at him I noticed like he this man is struggling to keep his head above water and he's Corner rip tied he's drowning Riley was just about to dive into the water when she froze I remember feeling so so scared I was thinking back to the tsunami I like having flashbacks I was thinking I could die like this is risky even for me to swim out that far but she was a trained lifeguard and wanted to save this man in my head I did this thing where I just counted to three and I was like I'm going to count to three and the moment I say three I'm going to step into the water one 2 3 I start running towards this man and swimming out to him and it gets to this point where I'm about 50 m and I see that his head is now just in the water and he hasn't lifted his head up when Riley reached the man she grabbed him and shouted at him he didn't respond and Riley couldn't feel a heartbeat this man had drowned there's storm all around me and I'm praying out to the Lord I'm like Lord this man is not going to die like you need to help me you need to rescue this man Riley felt the strength of the Lord within her and she followed her training i l this man onto my chest and from behind him start compressions and I'm just praying and praying and praying and a minute goes by and the man throws up and I put my hand on his neck and he had come back to life and I was just like thank you Jesus a local doctor happened to be on the beach at the same time he called an ambulance and took over care of the man for Riley this whole ordeal was a moment of redemption I just walked away being like the very place that I feared was now a place of Victory and impact and I was once terrified of the ocean and had seen the ocean kill people and yet here is this moment where the Lord completely turned the script and he now made the ocean a place that someone came back to life in in the years since she saved sa that man Riley has remembered the decision she had to make between staying on Shore or counting to three and running into the water she applies this experience to sharing her faith and hopes other Christians will do the same the reason we want to step out in those moments that we're choosing between the shore and the Ocean between our comfort zone and like the zone that is going to push us beyond what we're used to is that there's somebody else's life on the line and it might not be just physically it might be that there you know you get the honor of sharing the gospel with somebody or you just get to be the Jesus the only Jesus that some people ever meet and it might be you walking into a coffee shop and you see a lady and she looks lonely and you get you feel your heart racing you think should I go like say something to her I just want to encourage you that's the moment and that's the moment that I would just count to three and like just push myself to do it the enemy wants you to be bound in fear but God wants you to step out en 
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 courage God wants you to step out in Courage maybe you've been afraid to reach out to God to begin a relationship through his son Jesus Christ if so so we are here to help you right now call the Billy Graham 247 prayer line there is somebody there ready to talk with you and you can reach them at 855255 pray that's 855255 p a y we've also got resources online that can answer your questions about being a follower of Jesus Christ go to find peace with god.net now if you didn't catch the website address or the prayer line phone number look in the show notes you will find them there in just a minute we'll share the last question we asked Riley and you'll want to hear what she had to say you're listening to GPS God people stories a podcast production of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association today we need desperately to have men and women of courage and discipline for courage and discipline are contagious Billy Graham Christ never allowed anyone to be a bystander or a spectator Christianity if it is anything is something to which you must respond and commit yourself the word Christian itself means literally a partisan of Christ a true Christian never plays its safe he never sits on the fence he commits himself the effective Christians throughout all history have been men and women of great personal courage and discipline the Bible says plainly that our mental powers are to be brought under the control of Christ let this mind be in you which was also in Christ says the scripture today I'm calling upon Christians everywhere to come to Jesus Christ in dedication surrender and self-discipline would you like to know more about how to do that we've got answers at fine peacewithgod.net and if you haven't yet discovered the joy and per purpose that comes from having a relationship with Jesus that same website can help you too the address again is find peacewithgod.net Our Guest on this episode of GPS God people stories is Riley kho she survived the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004 which killed over 227,000 people in Thailand and 13 other countries today Riley is a speaker you're an author who encourages Christians not to let fear keep them from sharing their faith as we wrapped up our time talking with her we asked Riley if there was anything else she wanted to share with us yes there was as a matter of fact she said she wanted to pray for you dear Jesus I thank you that you are the god of courage and you are the one that tells us in your word to not fear and so Lord I just pray that you would show each of us that are listening to this right now the path of Courage Lord and I just thank you Lord that you're not expecting us to be completely Fearless but you are calling us to do it and do it scared anyway and so Jesus I pray that as people listen to this podcast as they listen to these words Lord that you would just impart on people just the Spirit of Courage that you Lord when we look away from fear we want to look to the father and so God I pray that we would keep our eyes fixed on you and Lord I pray for those people that are listening to this right now that are so overwhelmed by fear or anxiety or depression Lord would you meet them radically God would you come with your presence and meet them wherever they are in their car in their room um Lord I just pray for the presence the tangible presence of God to bless people right now amen we're thankful that Riley kiho could join us on this episode and we are grateful for that prayer her new book is titled three seconds of courage how small acts of Bravery lead to big change Riley lives on a mini Farm in Franklin Tennessee with her husband and newborn daughter if you enjoyed this episode make sure you're subscribed to GPS so you do not miss any future episodes and they'll be there waiting for you on your favorite podcast app or you'll find us always on YouTube we release new episodes every other Wednesday I'm Jim Kirkland and this is GPS God people story stories it's an Outreach Of The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association always good news 
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