Report 47 July 2019
In many ways, God keeps amazing me. When we become completely surrendered to God’s will, He reveals Himself in marvelous ways. If our hand is eternally raised, “Lord pick me,’ He will oblige us with an opportunity to bring glory to His name. Sometimes God is so involved in our daily lives we may miss the actions of His presence. One case is our seemingly inconspicuous encounter with Victoria and Atay on our last day in Jerusalem.
Prior to our journey to Jerusalem, I felt a prompting to bring a specific amount of money, as the Lord had a purpose for it. The Lord had provided extra funds that were to be used by His will, but I was oblivious to what it may be. Once I placed it in my backpack, I did not think about it for the next 10 days. So many chance coincidences happen to make this meeting between unfamiliar people even occur. Of course in retrospect, when serving the Master, nothing is by chance.
To start with, we were all together at the Open Heavens conference in Jerusalem. Our daughter Maria is a linguistics student at Cedarville University. She loves language, and learning new ones every chance she gets. There was a young lady named Ramona who was interpreting English to Mandarin. It was her first time on stage and she was a bit nervous. She was apologizing frequently for her mistakes. Maria shouted out encouragement from the audience and later talked further with her. This led to a morning meeting over breakfast between Maria and Ramona. Ramona was friends with Victoria and Atay. In fact they had traveled to the conference together. This was the initial set up that caused our encounter to take place.
In addition to that, we were scheduled to do the fourth day of a tour of Jerusalem. This involved gathering with about 55 people on a tour bus. We would be traveling around to different monumentally important sites involving the life of Jesus when He walked this earth. Anyone that knows me knows that motion sickness (if I am not driving a vehicle) can be a problem for me. I had taken Dramamine which seemed to help the first few days. Regardless, we made a family decision to forgo the fourth day. Here again was another action that took place to allow the meeting with Victoria to occur.
Heidi and I made a nearly instant connection with Victoria and Atay. In fact, God gave Heidi some specific words that she shared. That day prior, we had bought several chocolate croissants at a bakery. During Heidi’s conversation with them, I went back to the room to retrieve some of them to share. When I entered the room, I retrieved the money from the backpack in a very nonchalant way, and put it inside the box with the croissants. Reflecting back on the situation, it was as if a pre-programmed assignment was being fulfilled. I hardly realized what I was doing.
I returned to the meeting and reported to them our desire to share the croissants with them, and that was all I had said. We exchanged contact information and discussed briefly God’s Echo and that He wanted more to happen. I believe by faith that there indeed was to be more. I told Victoria about Martin and his role as international director. I indicated to her that I would be sharing her contact information with him. This was the conclusion of our interaction. Little did I know that this would set up a cascade effect to fulfill a predestined interaction between Victoria and her group with Martin and the Echo group. Almost immediately after receiving the contact information and having a conversation with Victoria, Martin booked a flight to Taiwan.
The events that occurred during this time were supernatural to say the least. Unbeknownst to me, the money that the Lord had provided was the exact amount that they had been praying for. This answer to prayer stirred revival in their hearts. I want to make sure this is very clear, this was 100% God, and I was just the delivery service.
Martin was able to interact with a group of young people that demonstrated a reckless abandon for the Lord. They participated in times of prayer, intercession and weeping of five or six hours concurrently. Martin has convinced me that these are some of the warriors the Lord will be sending out across the world in these last days. Prior to his journey, Martin had been praying about countries in and around the Asian continent that he felt the Lord was leading us to. When he had met with Victoria, she mentioned the same locations. At that point Martin shared the list that he had compiled and it was no longer a question on anyone’s mind of the interaction that was to take place.
The Master always succeeds in His will, and causes the situation to unfold accordingly. When we hesitate, question, or interject our own plans, God will simply choose another path. This is why we must be obedient servants who are quick to obey. When our Father finds us faithful in little things, He will continue to boost our assignment to a higher level.
Martin was in awe at the presence of the Holy Spirit in these meetings. He commented that there were certain things that happened that he never experienced before. There was opportunity during one of the meetings to minister to some of the people. By faith, Martin felt prompted by God to do a foot washing ceremony. He enlisted a man to assist in the process. He was a Buddhist, but Martin knew he was supposed to ask him for help anyways. After they had completed the foot washing, the Buddhist man gave a testimony that he saw Jesus sitting with the people that were having their feet washed. He was proclaiming the mighty power of Jesus by seeing His presence. I must admit, something inside of me wished I could have been that man- to see my glorious Savior before me, how marvelous that would have been.
Through these amazing events that the Almighty had orchestrated, the Asian world is now opened to God’s Echo. Many more things are happening around the world at different locations. I believe God has allowed three families to be set free from slavery in Pakistan. They are under Sharia law which means entire Christian families can be slaves to Muslims if they are unable to pay back a debt. I am even talking about children as young as three or four years old making bricks 12 hours a day. Truly, every person can make a difference. Ask God to show you how He may use you to break the chains of Satan. Every morning as God allows you to live another day, your hand should already be raised, “Choose me Lord, I am Your servant.”
