MATTHEW 6:3-5
“But when you do charitable acts, do it in such a way that your left hand doesn’t know what your right hand had done. And your Father in Heaven, who sees what you did in private, will reward you.
Hi again my Pastors, bros & sisters in Christ,
Since my last testimony on receiving provision from God, I have been longing to go to Sichuan to see if the Lord will open the door for me to start His Christ for China’s Children ministry there. As you may have read, the earthquake has created more than 8000 orphans and many more thousands of single parents. I planned to go to visit my only friend in Sichuan, Mr. Zao Jiang who is in the city of Mian Yang, about 50km from the epicenter of the earthquake, after my business trip in Beijing on 31 May. I got to know Zao when my family and I went on a backpacking tour around China last Christmas and by God’s divine arrangement, we ended up hiring Zao to drive us around Sichuan for almost 24hrs non-stop on a one day stop-over whirlwind tour of the world famous “Jiu Zhai Gou” national park.
However, upon arrival in Beijing, a friend who is pastoring a church there discouraged me from going to Sichuan as he understood that the situation in the earthquake area is and will be very chaotic for at least a few months and the government officials may not entertain any requests for Christian orphanages as many people are still missing and unaccounted for. Many other friends also discouraged me from going there as there were still threats of strong aftershocks and diseases from the thousands of corpses. But when I went to purchase my train tickets to leave Beijing, the Holy Spirit strongly insisted that I go to Sichuan. After all the negative reports, I was also quite reluctant to go as I thought it’ll be a waste of funds to go there and not able to do much. However, the Holy Spirit specifically told me that I must go to encourage my brother in Christ and to give him RMB5000! I was puzzled, Zao said that he is physically and financially ok and doesn’t need my help so what kind of encouragement or difference can I and the RMB5000 make? But the burden to go was just too great so I decided to obey the Lord. I asked my Lord, why 5000? Why not 10k or 50k? Amazingly, less than 5 minutes after I decided to obey the Holy Spirit, I received an sms from a client in Malaysia asking the availability of my LED screen for hire on 4 & 5 Jun and I replied, sure it is and standard agents’ price is……Ringgit Malaysia $5000!!! Praise the Lord! We can never out give God can we? Jesus wants me to give RMB5000 and He immediately provides me with RM5000 (=RMB11k)! Doing God’s business is a really good business indeed, 100% returns. Hallelujah!! So that confirms the prompting of the Holy Spirit to go to Sichuan and to give this sum of money to Zao Jiang.
When I reached Mian Yang, it was a very painful scene. 80% of the people were sleeping in makeshift tents on roadsides and in their cars. They had to make do with makeshift toilets by the road covered by plastic sheets! Their homes were cracked and damaged and they did not dare to go home for fear of a strong aftershock that may cause their apartments to finally collapse. Those who couldn’t stand the rain, mosquitoes and open air cold took risks to sleep in their homes. On top of that, they were living in fear as a few dams and lakes created by the earthquake threatened to burst and flood the entire city with 4 storey high, 7billion litres of flood water!
Despite all these, Zao Jiang blessed me with a fantastic Sichuan Hot Pot at 4am when I reached Mian Yang after about 2 hours’ drive from the Chengdu airport. Isn’t God gracious? Do His work and get blessed with authentic “Ma La” Sichuan steamboat! We had a great time of fellowship and caught up on all that has happened over the last few weeks since the earthquake struck. I shared with Zao Jiang and his 2 brothers about whatever opportunities for me to build temporary homes to shelter some of the victims so we decided to go talk to some of the government officials the next morning. As I felt bad about checking into a hotel while my friends slept in roadside tents, I decided to sleep in Zao’s car that night. The next morning we drove to see the local housing committee and true enough, they were so chaotic that we were sent running to three other places to actually find out who was in charge and finally one senior officer told us to come back in a few weeks’ time as they don’t know how to handle our offer.
So we went back to Zao’s brother’s house which was one of the few that were not damaged at all, to rest for the afternoon before I fly off in the evening. When we were finally rested, I asked Zao if he and his family have been praying to Jesus lately ever since the disaster struck. He said yes and asked me why I suddenly asked him such a weird question. I told him that God spoke to me and wanted me to come to Sichuan to pass something to him. Then I took out the bundle of money and handed it to him and told him that Jesus specifically told me to bring him RMB5000! At that very moment, his face turned red and I can see tears welling up in his eyes. He was lost for words! Despite insisting that he had no problems, I could see from his expression that a huge burden has been lifted from Zao’s shoulder and he was greatly relieved and thankful at the same time. I told him that he should not thank me as God has paid me back and rewarded me for being HIS messenger but that he should give thanks to Jesus.
When he regained his composure, he started to share about what he was facing over the last 3 weeks since the earthquake struck. He revealed that he has not been doing his car rental business for that period of time when everyone else was going around charging 1000% higher to drive people out of Mian Yang city to escape the disaster. Instead, Zao was busy looking after his family and volunteered to drive victims and rescuers around the city for free! He was so caught up in doing his charitable deeds that he forgot he needed to drive paying customers to earn money to survive! Only into the 3rd week that he realized his car and house installments are due and his cash in the bank is running low and he has to support his aged parents, his wife and son and his elder brother’s daughter on top of servicing his loans! That was when he started getting worried and his mum and wife prayed with him for God’s providence.
However, they didn’t ask God for any specific amount. They just cried out for God’s help. He showed me his bank’s loan repayment schedule book and I saw that loan repayments alone come up to around RMB2k per month. Food, fuel and other living expenses come up to roughly RMB3k…..he actually needs around RMB5k to survive every month! Wow! Zao did not open his mouth for it but what a wonderful God we have in Jesus! HE knows what we need even before we ask; HE knows what is in our hearts and minds! Amen!
Pastors, brothers and sisters in Christ, I am so humbled and thankful to Jesus for using me as HIS messenger and for letting me witness so many verses of Holy Scriptures coming alive! So many things Jesus promised us in the Bible are so true and living!
Zao was greatly encouraged and was even more convinced of the reality of Jesus….in Zao’s own words “Gan xie Shen, wo zhi dao Ye Su de cun zai le” which translates to “Thank you God, I know Jesus is alive”! Zao started to recall how, many years ago, his prayers for Jesus to help him get out of a land deal gone sour was answered, not only he did not lose his investments and deposit, God caused the landowner to even offer him some interest on his money stuck in the land dispute for almost 10 years! Then I shared with Zao on the vision God gave me about the CCC ministry. He is very excited and eager to participate in this ministry and offered himself to go around in the next few months to get all necessary government licenses and permits to set up CCC in Sichuan. Praise God! I believe my Lord Jesus will use him to take care of the groundwork while I continue to wait on the Lord for more provisions of cash and workers to harvest in China. So I hope all of you will pray about this and help spread the word around for corporations to sponsor in cash and kind and for God to convict those whom HE wants to send to China to be involved in this children’s ministry.
Another amazing thing about this trip is that even though there were hundreds of aftershocks daily since the earthquake, and even though i personally asked God to let me experience the sensation of an earthquake, the whole time i was there, from 2am till 8pm when i left, there was not a single aftershock! Ha ha ha! I suppose earthquake is not such a nice experience that God would want me to experience. Praise the Lord!
Thank you for spending time to read my testimony. I hope it has and will encourage you to press on for victory in your walk with Christ.
CONTINUE TO DO YOUR GOOD DEEDS TO GLORIFY JESUS AND GOD WILL BLESS YOU AND TAKE CARE OF ALL YOUR NEEDS. AMEN!!
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