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We can stare at a blessing and not recognise it. But when blessings flow interminably, they are impossible to ignore. Matthew 6:33 (NIV) says, “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” This is a promise from God Himself. In the years that I responded to God’s call to the mission field, my family and I experienced God’s innumerable blessings. You may ask, “How were you blessed?” Let me count the ways.
We were blessed with indescribable joy of serving the underprivileged, the poor, the sick, the widows, the orphans and the victims of natural disasters. Nothing can beat seeing children jumping up and down with joy when they receive second-hand coats in freezing winters. I recalled stuffing my room full of dusty coats as I trudged daily to the second-hand market during winter to buy up all the coats we could lay our hands on because of the huge number of poor women and children living in the villages. Each trip would take me a long time to scour for coats that were thick and of reasonably good quality. Our joy bubbled over when we saw the women folk and children covered in warm clothing.
We were blessed by the support of our overseas partners when they send doctors on short-term missions to serve alongside a local medical team in mobile clinics to care for the sick in the remote villages. Mobile medical clinics provide free consultations, medicine and health training. I would choke up with emotion as I witnessed more than a thousand patients being attended to each time. I remembered a six-year-old boy who came, weak and unable to walk. The doctors prescribed him medicine and taught his father how to strengthen his son’s legs. Within a few months, this little boy was able to take slow steps. Local pastors continued to minister to the physically ill once the overseas medical team flew home. Recently, we set up a small mobile local medical team to villages which we had not visited before.
We were blessed to have our faith strengthened when we see God’s power overcoming evil spirits. I met a helpless family whose son was possessed by an evil spirit. I knew that only God could win this battle. My sole weapon was my faith in Jesus Christ. I came together with some Christians and a local pastor in worship of God’s power and prayer for the young man. We ordered the evil spirit in the name of Jesus Christ to get out of the young man and the evil spirit departed hurriedly. The young man immediately regained consciousness from his semi-trance state. The local pastor visited the family the next day. The young man was completely well and normal. How great is our almighty God!
We were blessed to belong to God’s universal family - His Church. Without a shadow of a doubt, my church and Christian friends would pray for my children. But they often went beyond the call of duty. While we were in the mission field, my church members often visited my parents and persistently shared the good news with them. With their encouragement and support, my parents started attending church and before long accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour. Acts 16:31 (NIV) tells us to “… believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved – you and your household.” In our second year in the mission field, my parents were baptised in church and continued to experience God’s love and the love of His church.
We were blessed to have God as my children’s caretaker. God took care of them intellectually and physically, endowing them with wisdom and good health. At the same time, God took care of their spiritual needs. He provided them with accommodation and education in a mission boarding school where they received biblical teachings from the teachers and house-parents daily. We could see their faith growing and strengthening day by day and step by step. Nothing relieves our anxiety more than to know that God cares for our children much more than He cares for the lilies in the field.
Since we are so blessed, how can we not give thanks to the Lord for calling us to the mission field? Ecclesiastes 2:10 (ESV) says, “…My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labour.” My awakening to His countless blessings helps me see missions not as a job or activity, but as a privileged commitment. Serving God as a missionary in the villages is a wonderful life. My family and I enjoy driving our vehicle to the remote villages to visit families, to worship God together and to teach the Bible in the Holy Spirit. We are filled with inexplicable joy as we see God changing the hearts and minds of people, and leading them to His kingdom. We delight in the presence of God in every moment and in every area of our lives.
It is a wonderful thing to find pleasure in our labour and to know that God’s blessings flow freely to His people.
In 1987, God graciously opened the door for me to a Creative Access Nation (CAN). It was my maiden mission trip to a country where Christian workers needed to be creative in order to access the unreached peoples because proselytisation of one’s faith was prohibited. I was excited to meet Christians who had suffered severe persecution. When I got there, I was amazed at what God was doing and I felt the first stirring of a desire to be part of God’s work in this CAN. I started praying for an opportunity to serve as a missionary there.
I was all ready to quit my pastoral duty and be a full-time missionary. To my dismay, God refused to open the door. My friends who shared the same burden were, however, able to take up secular jobs and used their free time to spread the Gospel and make disciples. Meanwhile, I could only make one or two trips per year to this CAN. To say I was envious of what my friends could do for God was an understatement. I continued to pray fervently for God’s opening so that I could, like my friends, serve on a regular basis. Years passed but the door remained shut.
In frustration, I uttered an unreasonable prayer – that I would, on my one or two trips a year, yield similar if not more impact than my friends who were stationed all year round in this CAN. Naturally, I did not expect God to ever answer it. After all, I did sound like a sour grape. But strangely and unbelievably, He did. Just not the way I expected. I came to find that my friends who were tentmakers landed with jobs that were so demanding that they had little time for the ministry. In fact, one had absolutely no time. His wife was the one reaching out to the community. I realised then that their initial vision of the marketplace as opportunities for evangelism somehow got buried in the midst of their work commitments. I resolved to stop moaning about how my two trips a year presented limited opportunities for sharing the Gospel. Instead, I turned my attention to seeing how I could maximise opportunities that arose.
But God led me on a path I never would have envisaged for myself. The idea to train Bible College students in the CAN popped into my head. I gathered a small band of teachers to secretly conduct training for these students. My team-mates taught them a creative teaching approach for Sunday School and an effective layman’s interpretation of the Bible. Another sister taught them “How to Follow-up a New Believer”. I taught them Inductive Bible Study using a New Testament Bible character. They enthusiastically copied our notes late into the wee hours of the night. We spent only five days with this group and were encouraged to hear them say at the end that what they had learnt in five days surpassed what they had gleaned in their two years of training in Bible College.
Four of my team members subsequently decided to serve full-time in this CAN, while one pastor was so driven that he decided to make the annual trip alone to conduct the training by himself for about ten days.
One advantage I had over my friends who were stationed in the CAN was that we could sneak in a full load of resources because of the regularity of our trips. Miraculously, we always got through the customs. I felt blessed to witness the participants’ exuberant joy when they got hold of the Study Bibles and the much-needed commentaries.
Hooray, God answered my first prayer, albeit in an unexpected way.
While training the leaders and Bible College Students, I realised they all lacked resources. Over 90% did not have a high level of education, were poor and therefore unable to afford any theological books. Photocopying machines in the CAN were also considered as luxury items in the 1980s. Many participants sacrificed their sleep just to copy our notes. I said in my heart, “I don’t have the money to buy them a mini library.” So, I prayed that God would enable me to develop an effective Bible Study method that would require no resources. It seemed an unrealistic prayer because how could anyone possibly study the Bible seriously without consulting resource materials? Like my first prayer, I didn’t expect God to answer. Surprisingly, He did, some years later. But in the interim, I had forgotten the prayer.
Ten years after I began my mission teaching in the CAN, God opened the door for me to pursue my Master’s in Divinity in USA, Tennessee, Chattanooga. It was perfect timing as my participants were increasing in their knowledge of the Bible. Chattanooga is where the Precept Ministry has its headquarters. It was there that I learnt the world’s best Bible colouring approach. I learnt how to use different colours and letters of the English alphabet for Bible characters, and different symbols for keywords. It makes gleaning the background information of the characters so effective and easy. Repeated reading is no longer a chore, but interesting. At the Seminary, I learnt from Professor Dr James D. Price how to do a detailed outline for the books of the Bible and then transpose it into an expository outline. When I combined the Precept colouring approach and Dr Price’s detailed outlining, I discovered it worked wonders. The two combined made it easier to identify the main theme.
I tested this new approach with the city preachers and the university graduates. They were able to identify the main theme with confidence. Not so, however, with the village preachers who loved to spiritualise the text. They became angry when I prodded them to think and meditate harder. Their stormy reaction, however, did not deter me. I became even more determined to help them. They formed my target audience, the ones I wanted to help the most. While I was pondering on how to develop an easy and yet dynamic approach that would help them identify the main theme of the text, God prompted me to use common sense as a tool. He showed me six common-sense ways of determining the main theme. The ideas just popped up, shedding light in the dark corners of my mind. These six ways eventually doubled as God helped me map out another six ways over the years.
One idea evolved while I was helping out as a parent volunteer in my daughter’s school. I was introduced to Mind Mapping. I was intrigued and experimented with it to see if it could be used to outline the Bible. To my surprise, I found it to be extremely effective when I tested it in a Chinese Reformed Bible College in the mountainous city of Pyin Oo Lwin in Northern Myanmar. From it sprang an in-depth Inductive Bible Study approach that uses the left and the right brain without the need for any resources other than a set of colour pencils. It took me 15 years of trial and error to produce the finished product which formed the basis of my Doctor of Ministry dissertation in the Singapore Bible College. My dissertation supervisor said, “You are filling a gap.” According to my professors at the college, this is an innovative and in-depth approach to studying the Bible. Nobody expects a Bible Study method that would be exciting, effective, in-depth and accurate, yet simple.
It was then that I recalled my prayer in 1988 asking God for an effective Bible Study approach without resources. God had helped me to formulate an effective Bible Study method to grow and groom His people. He had answered my prayer. I realised that God in His own time had been leading me each step of the way to this.
I call the method, Creative Bible Exposition (CBE), Using the Left and the Right Brain. It has four steps: (1) Gleaning the background using colours; (2) Identifying the main theme using common sense; (3) Designing a detailed, textual and thematic outline using mind maps; and (4) Transforming the thematic outline into an expository outline.
Participants were thrilled. Preachers who had difficulty identifying the main theme of a text were overjoyed. Bible College students were so excited that they were prepared to forego sleep just so they could mind map the Book of Philippians. After using different colours for different biblical characters, followed by different symbols for repeated keywords, they realised that while they were studying the text, the text was also staring at them. Village and tribal preachers could now identify the main theme with ease. Leading Bible Study became more interesting and engaging. Preachers could now easily spot the text while preaching.
One lady preacher in Myanmar said, “We used to have the Bible only, now we have the Bible and this method.” She had attended numerous seminars before and could confidently vouch for it. Pastors in South Asia informed me that their congregations noticed an improvement in their preaching. A Chinese preacher who had several commentaries said that he often got lost in the abundant information. Now with the main theme and the thematic outline, everything fell into place for him. A senior pastor from Imphal, Manipur who has a Master’s in Theology testified that he took the background, the main theme and the outline he had gleaned using the CBE training and counter-checked it against the commentaries. He found that his answers were all accurate. A few Bible colleges and one seminary included the CBE approach into their curriculum.
I was also invited to teach in three schools on how to use the right and the left brain. Students were thrilled to discover that they could memorise 30 words in two minutes and more easily recall numbers.
God not only answered my second prayer, but also led me out of my pastoral ministry in 2014 to be a travelling missionary, training church leaders on how to study the Bible using the left and the right brain. In 2019, my main supporter requested that I join SIM. I am now actively and passionately involved in training leaders in the developing world. When I first prayed for an open door to CAN as a full-time missionary, I did not think that God would have another plan for me.
In His Time
I have learnt that God in His own time does great things through our prayers even if they appear crazy, unreasonable or unrealistic. He placed me in the right environment, prompted me to pray for a method using the Bible alone, then led me to places where I could hone my skills. The whole process stretched over 20 years. But through the years, He gave me wisdom on how to synthesise Dr James D. Price’s detailed outlining, the Precept Ministry’s colouring method and Tony Buzan’s Mind Mapping to develop a Bible study approach to groom and grow His people. It had taken me 15 years of trial and error to devise a simple method to equip ordinary preachers. I never imagined that I could come up with such an effective right and left brain, in-depth Inductive Bible Study approach. God initiated and worked out the whole process. All glory be to God!
So go ahead and make big dreams and pray your unreasonable prayers. Ask God for the impossible. He loves that.