If, on a breezy, warm, quiet weekend with only the distant sounds of children playing, you happen to sit down and reflect on where you are at in your life, you’d realise that you have a divine destiny.

It need not be a vocational, grandiose or even sacred calling; it may be a divine appointment that has led you to something. It may be a burden for someone, or a sense of incompleteness – some form of divine restlessness.

Whatever it is, it’s like an itchy scab. You want to scratch it but dare not, because you know it will leave an indelible mark.

The trek to obedience

My own reckoning began when, after my ‘A’ levels, not having received any reply from the Naval Recruitment Centre, I decided to study medicine instead.

I prayed about the decision, post hoc, and promised God that if I got into medicine, I would serve Him full-time. The medicine part happened a few months later and the serving Him part, a few decades thence.

It was whilst wondering aimlessly in the church library one day that I randomly picked up an autobiography of Hudson Taylor, missionary to China. By the time I finished reading the book a few hours later, I was in tears.

My life was in every Singaporean way very successful. I’d had a fulfilling career as a Navy doctor, left the service with an unsigned promotion letter on my desk and set up a thriving and growing private practice.

But my life was in a mess. I knew I had a divine destiny (Ephesians 2:10) and was veering completely off-course and for too long.

To weigh anchor and leave the safety of the breakwaters can be a scary thing. I was still reluctant to serve Him completely but decided anyway to enrol in Trinity Theological College for part-time theological studies whilst mulling my options.

Turning point

God has a way of bringing to completion His good works started in us (Philippians 1:6) if we let Him and take the first baby step of obedience.

So, by the time I graduated with a Masters of Divinity five years later, I was quite ready to serve Him. And in good time too.

God spoke clearly to Kaiser: “You are a doctor … Why are you still asking if you should be serving in one of the world’s poorest country with the least developed healthcare system?” Photo courtesy of Kaiser.

I was 48 with many good years ahead and all set for a second career in ministry. It would be missions in South Asia. Why?

Because I would make a lousy pastor. Because I knew my strength and giftings (God would reveal more of my weaknesses as I went along). Because it was my divine destiny and because my wife said so.

She had always been involved in missions since she was a teacher trainee and I, a junior doctor. Someone had said prophetically on our wedding day that we would make the perfect missionary couple; she thought the same.

Our denomination’s missions society had need for missionaries in China or South Asia. My wife and I visited both countries and, sitting in a café one day, God spoke very clearly to me: “You are a doctor and always have the compassion and burden for the poor.

“You have been involved in social works since medical student days, so why are you still asking if you should be serving in one of the world’s poorest countries with the least developed healthcare system?”

It was a rhetorical question and an immediate epiphany. It was to be South Asia; my wife felt the same way too.

Rough roads

The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, but it is still a thousand gut-wrenching, knee-jarring miles.

The first year of missions was extremely difficult. My wife was diagnosed with a high-grade but thankfully early stage uterine cancer and operated on. My daughter had to return from her overseas studies as the stress of domestic, parental and academic dislocation was too much for her.

For three months, it did not rain; it poured.

My wife and my daughter had to return to Singapore with no home as we had rented out ours. I came back for a period and left again, alone, with much head-shaking and disapproval from friends.

Alone and with no support: Discouragement on the faces of those around him mirrored Kaiser’s own disillusionment. Photo courtesy of Kaiser.

Ministry is not easy. You are, after all, in the thick of a spiritual firefight within and without. There will be discouragement, disillusionment, self-doubt and periods of faithlessness.

Disagreements and misunderstandings abound in ministry. It gets personal. Many pastors I know harbour wounds and some are left embittered.

God puts His servants through this – even as He put His Son through it.

Because of fundamental differences, I left the missions society and resigned my appointment in my home church.

All of a sudden, we were alone and with no support. However, we had prayed about it and we both felt that it was God’s will that we proceed on our journey of faith (Mark 10:29-31).

We would have to dig into our savings. We had some passive income. Otherwise, there would be no other material support to live on, let alone to start or sustain any ministry in South Asia.

But God provides and He provides in abundance, both our physical and spiritual needs (Psalm 35:27). It has been a blessed, joyful journey.

Starting over 

I was now “liberated” to work unfettered across the denominational divide. My experience, training, skills, personality and gifting could be now be used creatively and fully for God and my family. 

It was as though the itch was finally relieved!

Though we literally restarted with nothing, partners came from out of nowhere. In wonderful ways I call “Godincidences”, He sent people to walk alongside us, who provided, supported and prayed for us.

They came from Singapore, Malaysia and even the United Kingdom and India. A one-man ministry had now become a team of three full-time missionaries and six youth ministry workers with a pool of specialised volunteers and, of course, our strategic South Asian partners.

Resources poured in. Not too much, not too little. Always enough.

In the first nine months of our ministry, we raised $90,000 – far short of our five-year target of $250,000, but enough to affirm what we were doing. All of these monies were dedicated to ministry even as we pledged our own savings and passive income to support our personal living expenses.

Inner healing

It was also a journey during which I rested in the pitstop of spiritual healing of my anger, unforgiveness and insecurity. It was a journey towards wholesomeness and holiness. The God whom I committed to serve had Himself disrobed and knelt down before my dirty feet and was scrubbing them day after day.

The journey towards wholesomeness and holiness extends to those the Peace Child Ministry serves. Photo courtesy of Kaiser.

The Peace Child Ministry has been established to serve the poorest of the poor, to plant and grow churches in their midst.

Doors have also opened for me to set up a mission hospital and to establish a new medical school and help in a new provincial university and, most importantly, to empower the South Asian church to help all their own people.

We all have a divine destiny and it is not in the pursuit of worldly matters. This divine destiny straddles across our different seasons of life. 

Today, many skilled mid-career professionals like me are realising that God has a plan for us, a plan that He has prepared us for right from the beginning. It does not have to be in full-time ministry, it could be in an area where our giftings and experience and training can be put at His altar of true worship.

In obedience to that plan of love, His joy would be in us so that our joy would be complete. “I have told you this so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” (John 15:11)

Would you weigh anchor and leave the safety of the harbour to sail towards your divine destiny?