Journal of James's Journey with Jesus

This is a mission report I submitted. This will be more readible than the 2 parts of my long and personal entry.

My team consisted of team leader Ian and team members Carrie, Collin and Liang Jie from Brighton Church and Jaslyn, Gui Zhen, Kelvin, Grace and me from Church of Singapore(Bukit Timah).

We were Team 4, a team that was formed impromptu in Nong Khai, Thailand after Brother Hubert requested for 4 teams. Throughout those ten days, I’ve learnt that nothing is impossible for God as the team worked quite well together with joy, love and unity.

This mission trip was really different from my previous ones but it was one of the most edifying ones I have been on, due to the guidance of our church’s missionary couple, Brother Jeff and Sister Tammy.

The main message I felt God was speaking to the whole lot of us was to depend on His Spirit, not on our own might and power. It is ironic how people can be Spirit-filled and yet not Spirit-led.

I speak for myself because I am accustomed with the protocols, procedures, guidelines, rules and formulas of Christian living that I often work on hindsight and human perspectives, not on God's prophetic Word of the moment.

God taught me to depend on Him the night I was preparing my first sermon for an adult cellgroup. What I usually would do was to construct a message from my memory bank of Bible verses after deciding what to share about.

This time, all I did was pray in tongues in my room while doing other stuff. The whole sermon formed by God's inspiration while I was still penning my journal, complete with three points, Bible verses and structure. How powerful dependence on God is!

The next day, I preached without much nervousness because I was preaching God’s Word, not my word. The glory was to God and the pressure to perform was on Him. It felt awesome giving the glory to God and saying exactly what He wanted me to. Healing even took place when Gui Zhen prayed for an elderly woman who had acute stomach pain during altar call.

Brother Jeff and Sister Tammy were simply awesome in teaching us about how evangelism should be done. Our method of evangelization was totally different from the previous trips. In the past, we went from house to house giving tracts, sharing the gospel head-on and praying for the sick.

But Brother Jeff brought to our attention what Jesus said when He sent out the seventy in Luke 10:5-7. "When you enter a house, first say, 'Peace to this house.' If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you. Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house.”

What we did this trip was to spend time understanding the Thai people and their culture. On a few occasions we dined with them, eating papaya salad and local delicacies. We did move from house to house but we did not rush to get every house over and done with. The missionaries changed tactics after they followed up on people who received Jesus and found out that some of them accepted Christ because of us, the foreigners. They wanted to ensure that the Thai people knew exactly what the Gospel is.

After I shared to someone using the usual approach, Brother Jeff found it surprising that we did it this way and told me that it had to be done in a spiritual way. Brother Jeff brought to my attention that Jesus used parables and the Jews understood them perfectly because He used things that were from the environment and lifestyles of the Jews. Brother Hubert told me on the last mission trip that we must be able to preach using any object of the surroundings.

Brother Jeff taught us the four keys to open people’s hearts to Jesus: power, humour language and culture. The power key, miracles and signs, is the most convincing but not the only way. Ian made use of the humour key, repeating the words of a television ad.

Sister Tammy taught me to use the language key by saying ‘subai subai’, which is the Thai equivalent of ‘slacking’. I saw a person warm up to her because she spoke Thai like we speak Singlish. I wore the culture key, an Isaan traditional men’s skirt, and people actually said I was handsome.

I am sure I was not that handsome and anyone who wore that skirt would be complimented the same. The saying that ‘people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care’ is really true. We are to become like Thai people that we might save some, as apostle Paul says.

We did many radical things like worshipping God in a temple, pretending to be a medical team and praying against the annual Naga Fireball phenomenon. Brother Jeff brought us to villages and daringly introduced us as doctors and asked if any people are sick and want to be healed.

He poured oil, representing the Holy Spirit, into the Mekong River while we prayed to and worshipped God. The Thais worship the Naga, a mystical dragon that supposedly lived in the River. Every year in October, the Thais would crowd to Nong Khai just to see the scientifically unexplained lights in the sky, supposedly emitted by the Naga. We were amazed that our intercession reached God’s ears and the deceiving lights failed to appear. Brother Jeff had done the same last year with the same results.

I had to go over to Ian’s room one night to let him review and help me along with the sermon I was going to preach. That night spent in his room edified me most in the whole mission trip. I believe he was sharing something all of us need to learn.

He prophesied over me, saying that he had been praying for me and sensed that I was like a wild horse. He continued, saying that God wants to teach me to slow down and wait on Him. In my own words, I have to get rid of the anxiety and insecurity in my heart, be still and know that He is God. He explained Psalms 23:2-3 in a new way.

He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside the still waters.

He restores my soul;
He leads me in the paths of righteousness
For His name’s sake.

God will make me lie down and be still; it is not an invitation. The still waters are quiet times of reflection to see if I am becoming more and more like Christ. My broken heart desperately needed to be restored, disciplined and led in righteousness. His words spoke tons to me. When I went back to my room, I knelt and prayed on the toilet floor to repent from not relying on Him.

Being in the flesh for sixteen years, I went back to rely on my own strength like the Galatians after being saved by God’s strength. In Galatians 3:1-3, Paul rebukes them saying,

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified?

This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?

Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?

God speaks to different people about different things at different times. This mission trip, many of the people who went were leaders, ex-leaders, ex-mission trippers or people who had seen God do miracles in Thailand before.

God’s focus this time was not on miracles, though there were miracles. He did not want to distract us from His main message of learning to depend and trust in Him. This was also a mission trip of personal breakthroughs, where God spoke individually to each one of us about our lives.

There was this 100 year-old woman lying on a mattress who had been blind for 11 years, almost totally deaf and with hardly anyone to talk to. We observed that while we were speaking with her, she kept touching us like she never wanted to let go-a sign that she yearned for affection and attention.

We prayed for her three times without avail, each time persevering in faith. Normally I would get discouraged and faithless by this time but somehow God just kept me believing that we were smack right in the center of God’s will.

It was not due to euphoria over miracles that made us love her but we loved her like Christ would. I felt compassion flowing through me to a woman who has seen almost everything that is beautiful and important in the world but not God’s love.

We put God in a very small box when we say that she was healed only if we can see it physically in the restoration of sight. Does she need sight or love more? Does an old woman like her need to see anything, anymore? Something in my heart just knew that we had accomplished what we were sent to do, whether there were miracles or not. We were sent to be messengers of love.

However, there was a miracle. Brother Jeff began testing her and he discovered that she had received significant healing in her hearing. Whereas at first we had to go close to her ear to speak, now she could hear from a distance of about one meter. As for her sight, it remained as it was.

This experience inspired me about faith in God that is not by sight. What is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal.

Brother Jeff told us a testimony that occurred in Kazakhstan many years ago. He prayed for sight for a blind man but had no time to check for healing as he was rushing for time. Many years later, he went back to the same place and was surprised to find a church planted by other missionaries. The villagers were only receptive to Christ after that blind man’s healing. Brother Jeff planted in faith, others received it in sight and God had the glory.

The most important thing I have learnt is to give all the glory to God and depend on Him. It then puts the pressure on God to lead and me to follow. I won’t feel bad when people do not receive healing or salvation. After all, I would not have failed because I was relying on my own strength.

So I end by saying, “To God be the glory, forever and ever. Amen!”