I used to run a bar a few years ago. Six to be exact. But it wasn't what I'd call a normal bar. And it was situated in a growing city in China, where I have been living for these past ten years. I came here from Canada in 2001 for work, and have since married and had a child here. I say it wasn't a normal bar because we were the only foreign one in the city, we had no books, hardly kept tabs on what the customers ordered and generally just agreed on a customer's assessment of what they drank.

That all changed of course in time. But the biggest change happened when Jo came in. The woman that would become my wife. She began to run it like a real business. And I had more free time to spend in the office upstairs.

Many years ago, I wanted to be a minister. Even going so far as to attend Bible School, start a youth center (in Canada) and study, pray and read for hours a day. But through a major crisis, plummeted into years of sadness and wandering. I lost two small children and a wife through divorce. It happened quickly. She took the kids to another country, and to this day, almost twenty years later, I have still not seen them.

While the dream to be a minister up and died mostly, and I spent years wandering, broken and lonely, I ended up here, eventually opening a bar. I would read the bible online often in the bar's office, as it still gave me hope.

One day Jo came into my office while I was reading it. "What do you really believe"? she asked me. It made me tremble a bit for some reason. But I told her. From beginning to end. And how while I was not a prime example of a Christian, Jesus never changes. And how he saves those who call on Him. To my surprise, she said she 'wanted that."

So I nervously prayed with her, for Jesus to come and fill her. Suddenly, the room filled with a presence, and she began to shake and cry. "What's that!" she said. I said, 'well, that would be the Holy Spirit".

The next day, we met downstairs. I gave her a hug. And clearly and distinctly, I heard, "get Jo baptized".

Baptized? Where am I going to get her baptized in China? We went to a church but they said they wouldn't do it. Too risky. Months passed. One day while walking through Beijing, I thought, 'I'll have to do it myself." Maybe in the river that runs down the mountain near our bar.

"Jo will get baptized in the Ocean." The words were clear and real in my mind. They came as an independent thought, apart from my own.

Upon returning on the Saturday to our city, Jo told me she would go for a walk on the beach, not far from where we lived. Away she went.

When she returned, she told me a story.

"I was walking on the beach and a little girl with golden hair came up to me and we started chatting. She said her dad was a foreigner. She was so sweet. Her dad came over and we chatted a bit and he gave me his business card. Here it is."

I read it. "Chris. Evangelistic Services." I called him up to introduce myself. He told me he had been working in Asia for several years as a missionary. I asked him about baptism and Jo's situation.

He answered. "We are having baptisms in the Ocean this weekend. Join us." And we did. And she was baptized in the Ocean, exactly as I had heard it in Beijing.

That wasn't the first time that voice spoke. Twenty years ago, while sitting in a hospital with my first wife, waiting for our first child to be delivered, I heard a voice speak to me. It said. "In your life, you will have two boys and a girl." That was it. As it turned out, the first baby was a girl. Two years later, my wife delivered a baby boy.

After bible school, she left with both. I was in Ontario at the time. We had been traveling, doing some evangelism. But she went home to her parents and wouldn't return.

In my despair, I saw myself hanging from a pipe in a little apartment I had rented for our home. My wife was gone. My kids. Why Lord? Now, suicide is an odd thing. A blanket enfolds you, like velvet, and it feels so peaceful. I felt that blanket cover me. But, thankfully, at the critical moment, that voice again. So clear.

"I will never leave you nor forsake you."

The moment of suicide passed. I climbed into bed. Broken and devastated at the loss of a family.

 I wandered for years. And often wondered on those words. "in your life, you will have two boys and a girl." Did my wife and I destroy something? In my younger years, before coming to the Lord, did something happen that I didn't know about?

 Did I hear wrong? I believed I didn't. But over the years, I slipped away. And was haunted sometimes by what could have been.After Jo was baptized, we married. She came to me one day and said, "my belly is feeling sick."

My first thought. "Ah. There you are."

And nine months later, a baby boy was born. The one I wondered about all those years. We invited the missionary in often, eventually praying with customers at the bar, hung a big red cross outside of it, and tried to have regular bible meetings. (I know. Strange thing to do in a bar)

But eventually we closed, and with the missionary, help set up the first ever, foreign evangelistic church in our city. That was five years ago. Today there are two in the city.

"Jo will get baptized in the ocean." And. "In your life, you will have two boys and a girl."

Have you received a promise? Count on it. It will come to pass. Even a flight to China couldn't stop that.

But I cry often. Even as I wrote this. You see, the last thing the Lord told me about my kids (the ones who are gone) is that "it will be okay. both the past and the future." and opened up my understanding that the horrible pain of losing them and not seeing them for lo these two decades will be erased.

It will happen. God cannot lie. But I've learned that there can be a lot of pain between the promise and the birth.

Are you hurting? Are you waiting for it to happen like He said it would? It will come to pass. Try not to let the pain distract you from that.

Ps. 137 1-10

O Lord, you have searched me

and you know me.

2You know when I sit and when I rise;

you perceive my thoughts from afar.

3You discern my going out and my lying down;

you are familiar with all my ways.

4Before a word is on my tongue

you know it completely, O Lord.

5You hem me in—behind and before;

you have laid your hand upon me.

6Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,

too lofty for me to attain.

7Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

8If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

9If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

10even there your hand will guide me,

your right hand will hold me fast.