Hello friends! Welcome to the second last episode of the series.

The Lord is not slow in keeping His promises, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (2 Peter 3: 9)

We are frustrated when our airplane flights are delayed due to bad weather conditions. We immediately wail, ″Why? Why? When can we get going?″ We wail and wail. Waiting time is certainly wailing time.

Joyce discovered the value of waiting as she studied the life of Moses. In the course of her Spirit-led fast of forty days, she read the book of Exodus, one chapter a day. The Lord opened her eyes and showed her marvellous truths. On the second day, she discovered in Exodus 2 - God is not slow or forgetful. His divine purpose is surely and steadily unfolding. In yielding to God’s timing, Joyce learnt that waiting time is not wailing time, and God is not wasting time either. She experienced while waiting that she enjoyed God’s gracious provision to keep close enough to Him to hear His clear command to move on when His time is right.

In her life and ministry, Joyce felt stifled because she couldn’t serve at the time she wanted most. God reiterated to her that her plans are not His plans, neither are her ways His ways. God has His own timetable. The sooner she learnt to wait in silent submission to His purpose, the better she felt. So she waited in silent surrender.

Exodus 14 taught her that God would fight for her. She needed to give up all her fretting and frazzled plans and become completely still before Him.

In Exodus 27, Joyce learnt that she must prepare to worship God with an undivided heart. God is concerned about details. He cares about who, where and how worship is done. As Joyce worships Him in spirit and in truth, she must return to reverence God and stand in awe of Him. Entering His Presence cannot be done in a slipshod, thoughtless way.

Exodus 40 reminded Joyce that God is a God of order. He has His unique timing and His fail-proof method. In times of waiting, God trained Joyce to rein in her impulses and worship Him for who He is. God taught her to yield to His greater purpose.

I can see my life taking on greater simplicity, greater balance and greater freedom. There may still be battles ahead of me, but God has given me new eyes to see Him and a new heart to embrace His divine purposes.

During my forty days of fasting, I made peace with my lot of waiting. If Moses waited so long to be used by God in such tremendous ways to deliver the children of God out of slavery, I can wait too. In retrospect, I had a forty-day vacation with Jesus!

Joyce learnt the dance step for the healing of her frustration in her ‘flight delay’. It is PAUSE, PAUSE, WAIT.

Mee Hwa’s Dance

Mee Hwa and her husband Wai Mung served as missionaries in Cambodia for almost 12 years. In June 2007, they together with their god-daughter Sara, returned to Singapore. In early July, while Wai Mung was away on a three-week sabbatical in the United Kingdom, Mee Hwa contracted three weeks of shingles followed by three bouts of ‘flu’. She also coughed out blood. She went for an X-ray. She also saw the doctor who treated her for tuberculosis in 2003. She was given some medication and advised to return to the Accident and Emergency department at the hospital if she didn’t feel any better.

On 13 October 2007, Mee Hwa was rushed to the hospital and admitted for three weeks during which she underwent tests including bronchoscopy, a needle biopsy and various scans. She was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. The cancer had spread from her lungs to her brain, vertebrae, hip bones, left shoulder bone, the linings of her lung cavity, the abdominal area and interconnective tissue of her intestines. She was given only 3 to 6 months to live.

The news was a huge shock to the family. They cried out to the Lord for His mercy and healing. God sent Gareth Thomas, His servant, who gave Mee Hwa a prophetic word he received from God along with a vision. He prophesied that she would be well in 4 to 6 months. Mee Hwa took the word into her heart and clung to it with great hope. The family decided, no matter what happened, to fix their eyes on God – their Hope, their Healer and their Help.

While resting in hospital, Mee Hwa asked the Lord to search her heart. She spent time waiting in His presence, worshipping Him, reflecting on her life and listening to what God had to say to her. One morning, she saw an eagle soaring into the sky as she looked out of the window. Isaiah 40: 31 came to her mind: “But they that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings as eagles; they will run and not be weary, they will walk and not faint.” She saw the eagle two more times during her stay in the hospital.

Mee Hwa knew God wanted her to wait upon Him, spend time with Him, read His Word and pray. She then stopped all her usual activities. She slowed down, rested and was refreshed by being in and enjoying God’s presence. During this time, God confronted her to forgive those whom she felt had been unjust to her. Releasing forgiveness was the start of her journey with God’s healing in her life. As she rested and waited, Mee Hwa found intimacy with Him and saw the power of prayer and found peace. God was healing her day by day and she even joked with those who visited her that she had discovered a spiritual RIP – Rest in God, Intimacy with God and Peace with God.

As Mee Hwa looked back on her life and waited, she realised she was always in a rush, doing many things in a day, in a week, a month or a year. This return to Singapore was the time she had to slow down and do only what God told her. The call of her life was to rest and to intercede in the quietness of God. She believed at God’s appropriate time and according to His will, He would send her out into active ministry again.

Her waiting time was also used by God to fine-tune her sensitivity in intercession. Mee Hwa found herself more attuned to the prayer needs of others. The Holy Spirit also taught her to use her physical problems as indicators of the spiritual problems faced by churches in Singapore.

For example,

1)  As she sucked in air to fill her lungs, she prayed that churches be filled with the breath of the Spirit and the life of the Spirit.

2)  When she felt a severe headache coming on, she prayed that churches would not function on intellect alone but on the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

3)  Her constant backaches reminded her to pray for the structure of Christian churches. Churches shouldn’t be built on humanly-contrived plans but they should be built  by God’s leading and directions. She prayed for God’s servants and leaders to lift their eyes up to the Lord so that they would see the harvest, refocus their energy and resources to reach the lost and be engaged in worship, prayer, discipling, teaching of God’s Word and pastoring God’s flock.

4) When the excruciating stomach pains hit her as a result of chemotherapy, she prayed for God’s people in churches to hunger for the true bread that satisfies, and not for the transient, quick-fix spiritual diets of our times.

Three weeks later, Mee Hwa was discharged from hospital, but she had to undergo radiotherapy to kill cancer cells in her brain. Ten sessions of radiotherapy later, the brain scans showed she had responded well to the treatment. Following the radiotherapy, Mee Hwa was put on Tarceva, an oral targeted therapy.

A year later, as some of the cancer had become resistant to Tarceva, Mee Hwa had to undergo another regime of chemotherapy for six cycles. She continued to worship, read God’s Word and intercede during the six months of treatment. She found that waiting on the Lord had become so much a part of her life.

In April 2009, Mee Hwa experienced pain in her eyes and severe headaches and stiffness in her back and neck. She visited an oncologist and was hospitalised for a month as she had to undergo various procedures including one that involved the brain.

The brain treatment was her greatest challenge because prior to that, Mee Hwa had already undergone four lumbar punctures and one was unsuccessful. She was so reluctant to go for more tests as each test was extremely painful. God knew her struggles and sent friends to pray for her. As they prayed, God gave them visions and their words encouraged her. In her daily time of waiting on the Lord, Mee Hwa kept on hearing, “Pain. Suffering. Joy and Glory.” That was part of the journey the Lord was leading Mee Hwa through. When Wai Mung led daily in worship, reading the Word and praying  together with Mee Hwa, he constantly reminded her to “look to God, not at the odds.” Wai Mung’s faith and Sara’s tears and cries for God to heal her touched her immensely. Mee Hwa finally agreed to go through with the brain surgical procedure.

She underwent an ‘ommaya’ implant which would enable doctors to introduce chemotherapy to her brain directly. The night before the first brain chemotherapy, God sent His servants, Bishop Rennis Ponniah and Canon Derek Hong, to pray for Mee Hwa. It was a miracle that they were allowed in as it was very late at night and the hospital had very strict regulations about visitors during that particular time. She was having severe headaches due to the pressure that had built up in her brain fluid. Bishop Rennis and Canon Derek anointed her with oil and prayed in faith for God to touch her and to release His healing grace over her. Then a miracle happened! When doctors checked Mee Hwa the next day and tested her brain fluid, they found that the cerebral spinal fluid pressure had reduced substantially. The protein and sugar levels had normalised. Even the fluid was clear! Though the headaches were still there, they weren’t as excruciating as before and she didn’t need any painkillers which was a great surprise to the doctors and nurses.

Praise God that with each subsequent chemotherapy session, all intense headaches had disappeared. Her cerebral spinal fluid was back to normal. On the evening of the last day of her hospital stay, Mee Hwa saw an eagle flying outside the window. That was the only time she had seen one during that period of hospitalisation. She shouted to Wai Mung, Sara and Faith, her house-help, to see the eagle soaring across the ward window in the beautiful evening sky.

Mee Hwa realised that God was teaching her a slow dance – it was “waiting”. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as “defer until someone arrives”. And that someone did arrive, her Lord Jesus Christ, who lifted her from her sickbed and taught her to dance one step at a time towards the deliverance from the pain of suffering. In the stillness of her time, Mee Hwa learnt surrender, submission and staying-power in the Lover of her soul. She learnt that her journey with Him was a “slow dance to wholeness.”

Mee Hwa’s dance took on a whole new meaning on 5 February 2011 at 5.30am. That was the time she usually met with the Lord in worship and quiet meditation. That morning, the Lord took her home. Joy and Glory.