“Asking for God’s guidance, compared to living by our own ideas, is the difference between the squeak of a mouse and the roar of a lion.”

Where should we go on our first vacation?

My wife, Joyce, and I were in our mid-twenties. One day she said to me, “Where should we go for our first vacation?”

I said, “Well, why don’t I practice what I’ve been teaching and ask God about this?” At the time I’d been pastoring a small country church just east of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I’d started a 4-part teaching series on “How to Hear the Voice of God”.

After our discussion I went into our bedroom, closed the door, and knelt down beside our bed. I started praying and quoting Proverbs 3:5: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart…” I then declared, “Oh Lord, you are completely trustworthy because you are all knowing, all wise, all powerful and complete in love. There is no reason to not trust you.

The verse continued: “…and lean not unto your own understanding…”

“Oh Lord”, I prayed, “it makes total sense to not lean on my own understanding because my understanding is very limited compared to yours.”

“In all your ways acknowledge Him…”

Based on God’s character and limitless understanding, acknowledging Him for direction seems to make a lot of sense. I also used my imagination to stretch my faith and my normal boundaries. “Lord, if for this holiday time you want us to go to India or Russia or South America or just down the road to Rosebud, Alberta, We will go.”

The final part of verse 6 ends with a promise: “…and He shall direct thy paths.”

James 1:5 says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives …” Here is another promise from God to give us wisdom. It goes on in verse 6: “But when you ask, you must believe…”

So, once we ask God for guidance we must get up off our knees with faith. If you have faith, you will be listening and watching with joyful expectation for His clear guidance in answer to your question. And that is exactly what I did, and that is exactly what the Lord did!

All that week impressions regarding the general location of our time away came at me from every angle.

I was in a meeting one evening and someone started talking about a man in relation to Taiwan. One afternoon I opened a magazine, and a travel ad jumped out at me: “Come to Thailand.” A couple of weeks before, Joyce and I had been listening to some reports on the plight of the Vietnamese boat people and the Cambodians suffering under Pol Pot’s evil regime. All of this was pointing to Asia.

After about three days Joyce asked me, “So, where are we going?” I said, “Well, I think I know, but let’s give it a couple more days so you can hear too.” On that Joyce walked down the hall to our bedroom to pray. When she came out she said, “Well, one thing I know, this will be a holiday with a purpose.” Then, after a long pause she looked at me and said, “We’re going to Asia aren’t we?”

A few days later, a friend of mine called. During the course of the conversation I said, “Hey, Joyce and I are going on an incredible holiday half way around the world!”

He replied with a chuckle, “Where? China?” His seemingly off-handed comment couldn’t have been more accurate. Wow!

Normally a couple like us would think about going a short distance to a holiday resort with hot springs, or a cabin near a good hiking spot, but here we were being directed half-way around the world.

Seeing as we’d both been involved with Youth With A Mission when we were younger, we decided to look up where YWAM might be located in Asia. Yes, there was a base in Hong Kong, so that is where we headed.

One day when we were visiting the base, a man from another mission was there. He approached us and asked if we would like to take some Bibles into China. What?! I wasn’t so sure I wanted to do that. Everything in Asia was strange to us, and we were new comers to the area. But, I prayed about it and God said, “Do you remember when you were still back in Canada, I told you that when you arrive in the Far East I’d tell you why I sent you, well this is one of the reasons.”

A few days later Joyce and I found ourselves standing on a dock along the Pearl River in Canton City about 80 miles up from Hong Kong. We got there on a hydrofoil along with other tourists. This was the beginning of our scary adventure. Scary because the communist government of China was not happy to have the Bible come into their country. However, at that time in 1980, if they found you with Bibles at the border, they would just take them away and you could pick them up on the way out.

Joyce and I experienced some delays in getting our Bibles to the right people. The people we were supposed to meet never showed up. At one point we thought we’d just give them all to the government church we’d attended on the Sunday morning. But just before we moved in that wrong direction, a Chinese man dressed in Western clothes came up to us and started talking. He had come to check on how the church in China was doing. He ended up coming to our hotel room where we could visit.

While we were visiting, there was a knock at the door. “Oh no, who’s that?” When I opened it, there stood the contacts we’d missed the night before. It turned out they’d gone to the wrong hotel. But now we had someone who could translate for us as we asked questions about what it was really like to be a Christian in China.

“Yes, we really do need Bibles”, we were told. “In some situations 300 people have to share one Bible. And yes, it is hard to be a Christian in China because of the persecution.” In the end it all worked out, and we will never forget that experience as long as we live.

But there was more. After two weeks in Hong Kong we flew to Thailand. Again we visited a YWAM base in Bangkok. Unexpectedly, we had an opportunity to join a small team that was going to visit Cambodian refugees along the Thai-Cambodian border. These were the terrifying days of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge army which was terrorizing the whole country. Thousands were executed, especially the educated like doctors, teachers, and former military and police. Religious citizens were killed as well along with those who refused re-education. By the end of the war, over one million were murdered.

Seeing the refugee camps in Thailand and also the Vietnamese boat people in Hong Kong, deeply impacted Joyce and I. A year and a half after returning home from that six week trip, Joyce and I joined a YWAM ministry in Hong Kong and later spear-headed an Indo-Chinese refugee ministry in Edmonton, Alberta. However, our long-term mission field turned out to be an entirely different place, a place most people knew very little about at the time. Today, however, it is in the news almost every day!

On November 26, 1982, I was having a quiet time and asked, “Lord what country should I pray for today?” Without warning “GREENLAND” popped into my mind. I was stunned because I knew nothing about this place. I got up off my knees, went to the map on the wall and looked at Greenland. “Wow, are there even any people there?” I wondered.

Well, we found out there are people there! On my very first trip to Greenland in July of 1984 I was all alone with no contacts, no cell phone, no credit card, and limited finances. But I experienced supernatural guidance on that three-week trip, and complete provision for all I needed. It’s been almost 42 years since I made that first trip, and I’m still at it.

One of the most valuable lessons we learned over the years ministering in Greenland, was how the Lord came to heal the broken hearted and set the captive free.

Errol is the author of Out of the Ice: The Healing Power of Christ in Greenland, available from YWAM Publishing and Amazon.

You can watch a documentary about Greenland here.

Photo Credits
Hong Kong Photo by Nic Low on Unsplash
Greenland Iceberg Photo by Tina Rolf on Unsplash 
Houses in Greenland Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash