Vic Moore in New Zealand

I was not seeking guidance from the Lord at the time. I was walking across the kitchen floor when an audible voice spoke to me:

“You are to go to Malawi”.

I stopped at once, knowing it was God who had spoken to me.

“You are to go to Malawi”, God repeated.

“Yes Lord.”

But I was confused. What was Malawi? Was it a country? I thought I had heard the name Malawi mentioned previously, but was unsure.

I searched it out and found it to be a small African country that had been named Nyasaland during colonial days.

This began an adventure in faith for me and my young family.”

               Vic’s testimony shows that:

1. God can give guidance from the Bible and often does so, but there is no Bible verse to instruct Vic specifically to go to Malawi. God therefore may speak aloud to His people on rare occasions to supply specific guidance.

2. God’s planning takes in the whole situation. Vic was needed in Malawi, not for his own sake, but for the sake of others whom he discipled. God, at the same time, blessed Vic and family in Malawi. The safest place to be is in the centre of God’s specific will for our lives. 

Ivan comments: Vic, Raewyn and their 3 young children were our friends in Malawi, and I confirm that Vic did an excellent work for the Lord there.

Dr Kevin Martin in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) 

Sometimes Jesus will guide you to a helpful person.

Living in Rhodesia, I had neglected to apply in time for a specialist medical examination to be held in London. I immediately prayed and asked Christ to forgive my carelessness and to please get my entry in on time if it was His will.

I then dashed around gathering references, the witnessing of signatures and copies of documents as required, and so on — by which time it was far too late to post the resulting parcel.

There was only one way in which it could be delivered to Regent’s Park in London in time. That was for a passenger on the evening flight from Salisbury (now Harare) to take it there for me. But I knew of no-one who was going. Nevertheless, I dashed out to the airport, asking Christ to guide me to someone I knew or knew of, as a sign that person would be a reliable courier. I could find no one.

I had ten minutes left and still no courier to trust my precious parcel to.

Desperately, I rushed around the terminal perhaps for the last time when I spotted an old university friend. I ran up to Bill and asked him if he knew of anyone going on the flight?

He replied that his brother standing beside him was, and introduced me to him.

When I explained my predicament, Bill’s brother said that his taxi was travelling right past the Regent’s Park address and that he would personally hand in my documents the very next day.

I wrote my examinations as planned.

            Kevin’s testimony shows that:

1. God is faithful to help faithful servants.

2. God often organises things behind the scenes to pull together all that is needed for a good outcome.

3. God can guide you to helpful people.

4. God often leaves things to the last few minutes before acting and resolving problems. We can only guess why — perhaps it has something to do with building up our faith?

Ivan’s Comment:

In the lead up to Kevin’s experience, he had not only been frantically busy in the Lord’s work and in the hectic hospital, but a series of weird disease situations landed in his lap needing his personal research on how to recognise and treat them, taking up much precious time. These were the obscure illnesses that featured in his specialist medical examinations!! He passed!

Jackie Bishop comments:

“Reminds me of the story of Ben Carson. If you have never read it, do so. He had not studied as he should have and asked God for forgiveness and said that he would never be slack again if God helped him to pass his exam to continue medical studies. He had a dream and saw the examination. He passed and became an outstanding and famous doctor and surgeon.”

 

Brenda and Ivan Rudolph emigrating to Australia. 

Sadly, like so many before us, we wanted to emigrate from Africa to give our children a secure future free from reverse racism. We intended to emigrate to New Zealand where I had relatives and had been made a job offer.

Then one night I had the only spiritual dream I have had – of a dam bursting and the water running over red desert soil. I cannot remember how I knew, but told Brenda in the morning “We will be going to Australia and not New Zealand”, and immediately changed my plans accordingly, although permission to emigrate to Australia was far more difficult to achieve. Without going into details, God opened doors for us and we landed in Perth, Western Australia, as fully accepted migrants. We spent a few days in Perth with friends before we were due to fly to Brisbane in Queensland where I had secured a teaching position.

Perth, bathed in sunshine, was beautiful and we loved it. The shops were full of inexpensive goods compared to our years in the lovely but impoverished Malawi, and we were thrilled and excited to be in Australia.

However, as we emerged from one shopping plaza, God dropped words into my understanding: “You are going to find Australia difficult”. This was a shock and I hung back a little from the family and friends to try to digest this unwelcome information.

As soon as I could speak to Brenda alone, I told her how God had spoken to me and warned her that regardless of how promising life in Australia would appear to be, we were going to find it very difficult. It was important not to let our hopes and enthusiasm run wild, but rather to prepare ourselves mentally and emotionally for some rough times ahead.

As I prayed over this warning, wondering what might be involved, I received confirmation that our early days in Australia would be difficult, but that “you will come to love Queensland”. As things turned out, that was very helpful information because when the difficulties came; I never once thought that they could be solved by going to another state in Australia. Our future lay in Queensland, which we would grow to love. God had said so.

Both of these preparations by God to help us to handle our futures have come true precisely, in part because Brenda suffered severe and unanticipated ‘migrant stress syndrome’, which required me to give up my teaching job in Brisbane and us to move to Toowoomba a year after landing, where we started again. And now, years later, we sincerely love Queensland just as God had promised.

            Ivan’s testimony illustrates that:

1. God loves us and knows the future in amazing detail. Out of His kindness, He may help us prepare for upcoming difficulties, so that we can ride out the problems that come along, knowing that better times lie ahead.
2. God can use different supernatural means to communicate with us and guide us – including spiritual dreams, and even dropping information unexpectedly into our minds.
3. God understands when we are weak and our high expectations will not be realised immediately. Providing we love Him, God can support us and guide us through our disappointments, including those arising out of our own inadequacies.

4. God really cares about the everyday details of our lives and will guide and walk with us through good times and bad.

5. In tough times, our dependence on God can grow and our faith can be refined.