Prepared … Positioned … Perplexed. Things were surely about to hot up.
January 2005 and first, my main concern was finding an income but I also decided I needed to pray every day and so I set aside an hour daily just to do that. It began to bear fruit immediately and God gave me two visions and a dream about my income right off.
About my financial stability He first told me, “What you want won’t come by handing out CV’s.” A CV is the British version of a résumé—I certainly didn’t share that with my wife at the time—I knew she would say it was just my excuse not to find a real job.
About a week later I was praying again and again it was for money and I heard God say, “The whole world is yours, just take it.”
Surely not, I said! So I told God, “That’s not in the Bible! You can’t say that!”
I bet God loves it when we correct his mistakes. Sure enough, that or the next day I opened the Bible to Psalm 2! In NIV it reads, “Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.” I later clarified, “Are you serious? Will you really give me nations as my inheritance?” And faster than I could anticipate and with more emphasis than I asked him the question he said, “ABSOLUTELY!”
About a year later I would actually see my inheritance as a room in the spirit, only a few feet above my head, set aside before I was born and it was reserved IN MY NAME and with everything I would need for this life and all I needed to do to withdraw any of it was to take it by faith.
That’s crazy, right?!! But then we must have a God who’s crazy!!
But God was teaching me step by step everything I needed to learn or asked him to teach me. It was slower than I wanted but it was real progress.
Rising Out of the Forest, the Purple Puzzle Piece.
Meanwhile that same week in a vision, or maybe in a dream, but I first remember seeing like a messy image, like things were a mess, but I could see movement so I knew it was a vision and soon it looked like I was rising, like I was being picked up, being raised up off the ground; yes, and then I saw the tops of trees and realized, ‘Oh, OK, I’ve been lost in a forest!’ Over the treetops I could see the ocean and a bay, and a second bay that extended further out into the sea and these two bays had a very distinct shape. I could draw it, it was so clear. And since then I looked all over for that view and could not find any ocean view that looked out to two bays like that. Like I said it was a very distinct shape. And anyway as this was happening I said out of my spirit in the vision, “I will rise up as on the wings of eagles.” And the part that comes first, ‘They that wait upon the Lord,’ well, I must have already been doing that because now I was actually rising up!
Then in the vision I looked up and there was a puzzle being put together in the sky; it was all purple (my color!) and the last row was being put into place, piece by piece and then, Wow! That place was for me! and I was put into the exact place where I belong—I fit in like a puzzle piece fits exactly where it was made to fit in. [End of Vision.]
He also told me that week that if I would make up with my old pastor Patrick from New Hampshire, then God would bless me. So I called him on the phone and even sent him some money as well.
Is the Puzzle Solved?
Now, concerning the Purple Puzzle Piece, I won’t fully spoil the surprise, but nearly 10 years later I was already in the Philippines sent by God on a real mission, not a weekend vacation, but a real life-purpose-fulfilling kind of mission. The Lord unexpectedly gave us a luxury 9-bedroom mansion overlooking the ocean and shore of Panglao Island, a house that I would guess was about 9,000 ft2—a small hotel actually. The upstairs wrap-around balcony overlooked the ocean and so we had nightly views of glorious sunsets, but on holidays it also gave us a vantage for many dozens of private fireworks displays, very popular where we live in the Philippines. We would sit out on the balcony and say, Well it’s getting late, we need to go to sleep, so let’s count just three more shooting stars before we go in, which would only be about five minutes later. It was a beautiful but very trouble-attracting house.
So one day I was photographing some family ministry guests on the balcony. I turned around to face the floor-to-ceiling glass walls that lined the balcony so I had my back to the ocean and in the camera view, right behind the people I was photographing I saw the reflection of the ocean view—AND I CANNOT BELIEVE IT! IT CANNOT BE! But yes, there it was, the two bays from this 10 year old vision. I had been staring at it for months—it was the view of the ocean and shore of Panglao Island from our balcony—but in reflection. This means I was soon going to find where I fit in, exactly where I was made to fit. What a wild ride!
So back in 2005, and well, I can’t share all the prophecies I got at this time, the volume becomes quite high. The more I prayed, the more God spoke to me, pure and simple. Most of what God talked to me about was my marriage, and love life—sometimes quite explicitly, which I won’t share! I not only asked God about my love life, but he was happy to counsel me, even during moments of private intimacy! I wasn’t hiding anything from the Lord and he was blessing me in every area I let him into!
Do you let God talk to you about your sex life? If you don’t let him into your sex life to cover it, then who rules it? Whatever you give to God he will prosper and bless. Just think about that a little!
God’s Desire … for a Mainstream Christian Magazine
Later in April I was at my computer and I realized I had just taught so many kids how to make magazines, I had freshened up on my publishing software skills, and I was going to Julia’s church now. Her pastor was a Filipino architect, and the whole church was mostly all Filipinos, mostly kids of domestic helpers, but the law had already changed a few years before and domestic helpers could no longer bring their kids to Hong Kong. So this was a small group of Filipino kids in Hong Kong and they were very gifted as dancers and musicians but they had a lot of trouble with drugs and sin and things, but I thought, maybe I could design a concept for a Christian magazine for youth in Hong Kong? I worked on it for a day.
Then the next day working at the computer it hit me! Literally. I was thinking about the magazine for Christian youth and wondered what about making a mainstream magazine for regular adult Christians?
And it was like a BOMB of JOY hit me so powerfully I nearly fell over laughing. God’s real joy was to talk to his people in a mainstream Christian magazine! So I started working on the project immediately.
Then I recalled the old instructions I had to make a magazine, an adequate magazine for Filipinas. Before what we made was more like a fashion lifestyle magazine, but this would be a real Christian magazine. God soon confirmed it and in the youth magazine we added a small comic strip, The Chronicles of Silver, which was about angels helping people in Hong Kong and angel warfare and things like that but which just kept getting bigger and longer … and then just as we decided the comic strip should be its own comic book—my wife began to hear God’s voice herself!
About this time my wife was on a flight and they had a massive engine fire at night and the trail of fire behind the engine was very shocking. The captain is supposed to go back, land, change the crew, take on a fresh team, a new plane, but the pilots did not want to do all that and made the same ladies get back on the new plane and go all the way to Australia, an 8-hour flight after the very scary engine fire. Then over the ocean there was intense turbulence so bad that people were crying and praying not to die. This also happened to coincide with a serious back injury she had. She was off work for many weeks, and ever since 9-11 she did not want to fly anymore anyway, but had a lot of reasons to stay—my own lack of a steady career the main one.
Understandably growing up modestly deprived in India and getting a job as an international flight attendant at Cathay Pacific in Hong Kong, well you can image how hard it would be to let that go. She was wrestling with the idea and went to the beach to pray. She got back and I asked her, “Did God speak to you?”
“No! But the funniest thing happened! I was just running my hands through the sand and asking God, ‘If I quit my job where will our money come from, just thin air?’ And at that moment I picked up some sand and let it run through my fingers and there was a coin! But I said to myself, ‘No, that’s not God talking to me!’ Then I saw a caterpillar in the sand and it couldn’t walk in the sand so I put a stick next to it but it was too stupid to see that I was trying to help it. Just get on the stick! I’ll help you!”
“But God didn’t talk to you?” I clarified.
“No, but,” … and she began to laugh. “Maybe that was God talking to me?”
Her Sacrifice Bore Immediate Fruit
She soon did quit her job, taking a BIG leap of faith and we used her severance money to live on for a time while we started the magazines. But this is where things start to get very interesting.
One day I made breakfast and came back to the bedroom and she had her head under the covers. I think it was Sunday because my daughter was home without our helper and I asked suspiciously, “What are you doing?”
She took off the sheet, “God is talking to me.”
“That’s good,” I said, incredulously.
“No, wait …” and she quieted her heart and started speaking what God was telling her in her heart and it knocked me to the floor!
Any question we asked God, even what I asked God privately in my own heart, he would tell her the answer to!
He was mostly chatting about us, about my daughter, about his love for his people, but then we asked him about specific people like the kids and people at church and the Filipino pastor and his wife, and for every person he had something unique and personal to say about their true heart, their journey, their future.
Then I got really upset.
I had been hearing God’s voice for maybe 15 years by then and NEVER had a personal conversation with him. Here my wife was fighting me almost every day over everything, especially over church and religion and the Bible, and now he was just talking to her in her heart like they were best buds! That’s what I was thinking when God spoke, “And tell Ed not to be jealous!”
“What? I’m not … jealous!” I lied.
She closed her eyes and listened more and said, “God says, yes you are, but don’t be. I speak to everyone in their own way.”
Well that made me TWICE as jealous!
My ‘way’ was piecing together indecipherable puzzle pieces for fifteen years, scattered dreams and ideas that made no sense, and ‘her way’ was to resist the Lord, the Holy Spirit, refuse to read the Bible, make my life miserable for following God and WHAMMY, she gets to talk with him like BFF!! That was just TOO MUCH!
“But also,” God continued talking to me through her, “EVERYONE can hear my voice in their own hearts, if they would just quiet themselves down and listen.”
Learning to Quiet Myself Down and Listen
Did you hear that?! Did you hear what God just said? EVERYONE can hear his voice if they would just quiet themselves down and listen!
Well, this began an intense period of learning from God while we struggled for everything. Making a magazine is hard, making four, without proper help or money was painful. We hired two very talented local Filipina sisters from the church to help with the comic. One drew, the other colored and shaded the drawings in the computer. Their whole family were musicians, extremely talented I might add. But our money ran out, our food ran out and God was still trying to teach and lead us the whole time. He said things like:
“The same principles of solving a problem of paying $500 apply to paying US$5 million, which you will also pay out … you will buy and sell houses.”
***
“How to claim a promise from God? By faith. When I speak a promise to you faith will grow in your heart and you can act knowing with 100% certainly that I will not fail. The world calls it taking a risk, but THERE IS NO RISK if I made a promise….”
***
“God is telling us to DREAM BIG, pray like in a dream not bound by reality but only by WHAT GOD CAN DO. Pray and wait in faith; this is your faith, patience with the right attitude….”
So many wonderful conversations and I’ll share a few pages of those conversations in just a minute because I don’t want to keep jumping back and forth, but the five main areas of struggle I needed God’s help with included first, our immediate needs as our cash flow was so low; second, the continued ongoing friction with my wife; third, the Filipino church we were attending was small and family run and they didn’t know what to do with us; fourth, our new magazine publishing ministry/business was a huge challenge, and coming in last was God’s continued teaching of us and his preparation of our future calling, whatever that was!
And now things were about to get really, really interesting!
