MEMOIRS (10)

THE DREAM EXPANDS

Soon after I tendered my resignation to Hillsong College, I was contacted by my friend Kong Hee the Pastor of City Harvest Church Singapore, inviting me to become an Associate Missionary for the church. They would fly me to Singapore, and send me off to associated churches throughout the region. After the ministry I would return to Singapore for a few days of R&R and then fly off again to another church somewhere in the region, then again back to Singapore, I would do this for up to three months blocks, and then return to Australia for a few weeks.
I would minister in:
East & West Malaysia
Indonesia
Taiwan
India
I also fitted in further visits to Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines, and Moscow Russia. We also spent three months looking after a church in Singapore, Margaret joined me and we had a great time with them, I am still in contact with some of the members up to this day.
The dream continued for quite a number of years joyfully working with City Harvest Church, until they had some financial difficulties and had to cut back on their Missions program. Trusting the Lord for finance I continued to minister across S.E. Asia with much blessing and fruitfulness for the Kingdom of God. The Lord met all our financial needs. I enjoyed excellent health, and was so conscious of the Lord’s anointing resting upon my life and ministry.
In late 2012 I needed  revision surgery on my  previous Left Knee Replacement. During surgery I contracted a  staph. infection in the knee, on Christmas Eve I was admitted to hospital where I remained for some weeks. It took over 2 years for the staph. infection to be removed from my body.  The infection caused considerable damage to my knee, and walking has  become increasingly difficult. I began to reduce my overseas ministry, until after about four years of this, I had to decide that basically the dream had come to end, I am hoping at the time of writing to visit Indonesia one more time for a week of teaching, but this is yet to be confirmed.
The decision to cease was like a “death in the family” and I struggled and was extremely sad about it, until the Holy Spirit, reminded me of the Psalmist’s words Thou hast turned my mourning into dancing, and the peace and joy returned.
I had been doing some blogging for a few years as the Lord would lay something on my heart, and I have come to see that this was area of ministry He wanted me to develop more.  I was still very frustrated, as I felt after nearly 50 years my ministry had come to an end, and I continued to cry out to God for a new avenue of ministry. Slowly I started to hear the Lord’s voice directing me to consider a Ministry of Intercession, I have always taught the importance of Intercession, and had some Intercessors praying regularly for me especially when I was on the Mission Field. Again when I yielded to this prompting of the Spirit, I felt like a school boy with a new toy, and felt so excited at this new door of ministry opening to me, and immediately I began receiving requests from other ministries, including past students from numerous countries requesting I pray for them and their ministries. I now have a list of about 300 ministries from over 20 nations, I am committed to pray for every day. I may not be able to fly too their countries anymore, but in the Spirit I do visit them every day, and am partnering with them, to see revival come, and being part of their team to “build according to the pattern of the Word” their local church and ministry.
I do have the opportunity to preach locally about once a month, which I still thoroughly enjoy, this month I will be doing a 2 week series on Searching the Scriptures, it is already in blog form having completed that series only yesterday.
In a further chapter I want to share how Missions became personal for me, and in another chapter the vision and dream I have for many of the nations I have ministered in, of a river of revival, and by faith I declare the river is getting stronger and larger every day.