An Irish worship band whose song is featured in the movie The Shack is giving thanks to God for helping them survive a terrible, fiery bus crash.
According to We Are Messengers, over the weekend, the band’s vehicle collided with a car that was stopped on the highway with no lights on.
“The driver of the bus said as the vehicles were coming to a stop he noticed flames on his left side. He yelled at everyone in the bus to get out,” police spokesman Capt. Mike Ireland reported.
The other vehicle caught fire as well. The members of We Are Messengers escaped before their bus was destroyed, but the person inside the other vehicle did not.
“I’m heartbroken,” said vocalist Darren Mulligan in a Facebook video after the accident, asking for prayers for the family of the man who died in the crash.
“We should have all been dead. But the Lord is good. God’s still good, even in the tragedy that we’ve all been a part of, God is still good,” Mulligan said.
The band also posted a picture of a page from one of its partially burned Bibles that survived the fire. It’s an excerpt from Romans 5 about peace, joy and suffering:
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand, and so we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also boast in tribulation, knowing that tribulation produces patience, patience produces character, and character produces hope (Rom. 5:1-4).
Mulligan has been vocal about his testimony and how God broke through to him, even while he was living in sin as a secular musician.
The terrible accident comes after he had just gained a national audience for his testimony in an interview with Fox News.
Mulligan says he came to America for fame—wanting to be a rock star. But he says he was also a coward because he was running away from troubles with his then-girlfriend Heidi, who was struggling with an eating disorder and the loss of her father to alcoholism.
While Mulligan was touring in America, God was reaching his future wife, Heidi.
“[God] rescued [Heidi] and then I come home a couple of years later. … I had nothing going for me,” he recalled. “(But then) she told me she loved and she forgave me and then I fell in love with Jesus because of the choice and the love of a good woman. Strange how God operates,” said Mulligan.
“I was an adulterer, that was my thing, and a drunk. I was any amount of things—a blasphemer, I was violent, I was all of these things that saying prayers in some religious setting was never going to set me free from that,” he admitted.
“I’ve done things that I can’t even tell you. I have seen things with my eyes and been involved with things that if you really knew me you wouldn’t speak to me. Or maybe you would, because you know who Jesus is and He kind of specializes in dealing with people like me,” Mulligan said.
As his relationship with God grew, Mulligan decided to share what he was learning through his music, as a Christian artist.
“I am a Christian daddy, a Christian husband, a Christian racquetball player. I’m a Christian voter, I am a Christian gardener. Whatever I do, I do it in His name. I have no issue with bands that say, ‘You know what, I’m an artist who believes in Christ but we’re not Christian artists.’ I get why you say that [but] I’m not ashamed of Him, what He has done for me, I will never … in my life ever turn around say, ‘I’m not a Christian anything,'” Mulligan told Fox.
Mulligan says that, despite his and his band’s desire to run away and recover from the grief they share after their accident, they plan to get back on the road by the end of the week, supported by the fans who are praying for them.
The singer condemned the efforts of the devil to silence the efforts of his band.
“He’s just, he’s tearing at us, stripping at us, raking at us, but he’s not getting us. He’s not getting me, he’s not getting my wife, he’s not getting my family and he’s not going to make us cower out of what the Lord has asked us to do,” Mulligan said.
There is a YouCaring page to raise money for the band to replace everything that was destroyed in the crash. So far fans, family and friends have raised roughly $45,000 towards the $50,000 goal. {eoa}
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