Stories

Can the green pastures of Psalm 23 be the blue waters of Hawaii?

It was early in 2004 and Helen and I were in France at a debriefing centre. We were in our first year of following God in this “new thing.” As good missionaries should, we were learning the language and culture of Germany so that we could then communicate the message that we believed God had bought us to Europe for.

Well we were in this meeting talking about options for us and one option that was mentioned was to take a time out of Europe and to do a Crossroads school with YWAM in Hawaii??!! Immediately as it was suggested my automated reject system came into full operational mode. There is no way we could tell our prayer and financial team that we as Missionaries to Europe were just going to hop over to Hawaii for a 3 month course. I just couldn’t do it. After all we were in Germany to learn the language and the culture and to get things started.

As soon as this suggestion came up, my response was strong and negative. I thought I knew what people were expecting of us and this wasn’t even close. Then the very next thing that happened was that I felt a strong presence or sensation come into the room and the words “This is ME. It is OK” swept through my mind. My immediate response was ‘This is not OK I can not do that, what would people think?’ Anyway the three other people in the room had similar responses, ‘You know what? That seems good to me, it seems the right way to go.’ Oh man..

As we were driving back to home again I had this overwhelming feeling that this was God. But I was still stuck. It might be God and He might be fine with this idea, but what about the people that we report to and our friends? God was about to show us that HE is good and that nothing He asks us to do will ever lead us to harm. He was also beginning to show us how obedience to Him is paramount to obedience to man or mans expectations.

We decided to act in faith and head to Hawaii. We believed we had heard the voice of God, while we didn’t understand it, we wanted to be faithful. He is King after all. We also didn’t have the funds for this course but figured He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. (Psm 50:10)

A few days later I was in our apartment packing it up, this included pulling out the kitchen, yes even the kitchen sink! I wanted to settle our final rent but there was not enough money in our account to do so. On my second day of packing I checked our bank on-line and discovered that there had been an anonymous gift of $1000 deposited with the simple notation ‘FROM JESUS’. Wow Helen and I had never received a gift of that size before, this was indeed miraculous. So with this money I was able to pay the final rent.

The fees for the Hawaii course were huge, but we were going to have 3 weeks home in Australia before heading off so I figured that we would share what was going on and raise the money that way. On my way home in Singapore airport, I was sitting and doing some writing trying to hear from God when I believed I heard Him say, ‘When you are in Australia I don’t want you to ask anyone for money. I have asked you to do this course and I will pay’. That thought complicated my plan.

When we arrived in Australia we did share what we were doing and where and why we were going but we didn’t ask anyone for money. One church gave us a cheque for $500 but this wasn’t even 10% of the fees. We had enough for the airfares so off we went.

We had a stopover on Waikiki beach, then took the last flight over to the big island, this was a Tuesday. When we arrived they were packing up the reception and told us that they had closed so we couldn’t pay our fees until Friday. Well that was fine with us as we didn’t have the money anyway. So here we were Aussie Missionaries to Europe setting up in Hawaii for three months.

The next day, after sorting out an internet connection I decided to check our bank again, to my astonishment there was an anonymous deposit of $5600 in our account. I couldn’t believe it I had to close my eyes and then look again. Was this our account? Had I keyed in something wrong? No there it was $5600. It with what other we had was enough to pay the fees in full come Friday.

Wow when God asks you to do something, money isn’t the big problem. Just be willing to act out IN FAITH what HE has asked of you. ‘He who has called you is Faithful and he will do it‘. 1Thes 5:24 This is so true, He is alive and well and very involved.

The course was magnificent for us and the outreach phase of it was in Israel, where God in his ultimate wisdom, opened so many doors for us and walked us forward in the understanding of the vision that we were to walk out in Europe.

The five months of the course moved us years forward in our task in Europe. He also introduced us to many key people including Pastors and Leaders. The course was all about what we were in Europe for. We had to be willing to leave Europe in order to find it.

Imagine that!? God knowing more than us our best way forward.