Jemima Ooi, co-founder of Love in Action Mission Global based in Singapore, told approximately 4,000 young Christians gathered in Manila on Tuesday evening that the central mistake of the Christian life is treating God as a destination to reach rather than a companion to walk with — and that purpose, however important, is best understood as a byproduct of his presence.
Ooi delivered the second-night keynote of the Arise Asia 2026 Congress, which has drawn delegates from 50 countries under the theme "For the Joy," drawn from Hebrews 12:2. Her address drew on years of missionary work in active conflict zones in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and with refugee communities in East Africa.
A guide, not a map
Ooi asked the audience: if lost in a jungle, would you rather have a map or a guide? Nearly everyone, she said, would choose a guide — someone who knows the terrain, has brought others through before, and can share the journey with you.
"Yet in the jungles of life, we are constantly badgering God for a map when he's already given us the guide," she said. "We're asking God, what is your five to ten year plan for my life? We want a map. But God gives us the guide."
That guide, Ooi said, is the Holy Spirit — the very spirit of God given to walk with each person through life. The problem, she believes, is that many Christians are too occupied with doing things for God to cultivate the relationship. "I don't want you to do anything for me," she said God told her during her first year of missionary work in Congo. "I want to do everything with you."
She grounded this in Exodus 33, where Moses, upon learning that God planned to send an angel ahead of Israel into the promised land rather than go himself, replied: "If your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here." Moses understood, Ooi said, that arriving at the destination without God's presence would be a hollow achievement. "We can get to the promised end of our lives without the presence of God. That is a very, very scary thought."
Revival in a war zone
Ooi recounted one episode from eastern Congo that she described as among the most formative of her missionary life. Working in an area controlled by more than 170 armed factions, she and her team were ministering to women in a remote village — including those in what she called a "prostitution corner," an area where women displaced by conflict and stripped of their harvests by rebel soldiers had been forced into selling themselves to feed their children.
While praying for one woman, with roughly 40 to 50 onlookers gathered, a rebel soldier suddenly charged at the group, shouting in Swahili that he intended to assault one of the missionaries. Her local Congolese pastor stepped forward, looked the soldier in the eye, and said: "I have a better idea. Why don't you kneel down, and I pray for your soul?"
"Suddenly this rebel soldier drops to his knees," Ooi said. "Nobody is touching him. He is just there struggling and writhing away, but he cannot move."
The group eventually prayed for him. When they finished, she said, "it was like something clearly demonic had left his eyes." The soldier reached into his pocket, pulled out a crumpled Congolese banknote, and handed it to the pastor as an offering to God. On the pastor's instruction, he agreed to attend church on Sunday. Turning to the watching crowd, the soldier then declared: "Listen to these people. They are the real servants of God."
"In that moment, everybody was like: pray for me, pray for my daughter, pray for my goat," Ooi said. "It was just the Holy Spirit came in that space and revival broke out." She drew a distinction between what preaching can accomplish and what an undeniable demonstration of God's power produces. "We could have preached until the cows come home that God is powerful. But it's an entirely different matter when God shows up and speaks for himself."
An encounter at the border
Ooi also described an encounter she said seemed to her like divine arrangement. Crossing from Congo into neighboring Rwanda after an exhausting stretch in the field, she checked into an inexpensive guest house and climbed the stairs to her room. On the second-floor landing she found an African family finishing a prayer meeting.
In conversation, she learned they were refugees whose country had descended into ethnic violence. A 10-year-old boy described how his 16-year-old brother had been rounded up with other boys by soldiers killing them at a police station one by one — and had only escaped because the officer interrogating him recognized the boy as his own son's classmate. The family had sheltered for three days without food or electricity, listening to violence in neighboring homes, before an evacuation truck finally reached them. Their father, a bishop overseeing more than 700 small churches, stayed behind to care for his congregation, separating from his family at the last moment. The moment Ooi met them was when the father finally reunited with the family.
Ooi said she returned to her room not knowing what to do. She opened her Bible to Proverbs 24, the chapter that fell on the date of the month as she was reading one chapter of Provers a day, and it read: "Rescue those who are going to the slaughter. Hold back those who are stumbling to their death."
"It's like the Bible was sharp and alive," she said. Between her and her colleague, they had 300 U.S. dollars left. She gave the family what they had, along with a note telling them they belonged to a bigger, spiritual family. That evening, the mother came to her door in tears. "She said, 'We had just been reunited as a family, but we had nothing left. We had no money to pay our rental, no money for food, we didn't know anyone in this country. And all we said was, God, please help us — and then you walked in.'"
That encounter, Ooi said, became the beginning of her work with an entire community of displaced church leaders who lost everything as they fled conflict.
Dependence as maturity
Throughout her address, Ooi returned to the question of what God looks for in those he calls. She recalled attending a missions conference early in her work where speaker Heidi Baker called forward those who sensed a long-term missions call on their lives. When Baker reached Ooi, she laughed and said: "You are asking God, what can you do with my little life?" Then she added: "God can do a lot with a willing heart."
Ooi said she spent years feeling that her lack of specialized skills — she is not a doctor, engineer, or pilot — left her with nothing to offer. The shift came, she said, in recognizing that full access to God himself was the only resource that mattered.
She offered what she called an inversion of how the world measures growth. "In the world, maturity is measured by independence. But in the upside-down kingdom, maturity is measured by dependence on and oneness with God."
She shared another story to illustrate God’s unexpected work. As she was once preaching in a village, the leader of an armed rebel unit who showed up in plain cloths heard her speak, said a sinner's prayer without her knowing, and then — after experiencing what he described as a peace that did not leave — came looking for her to ask that his men hear the same message. "I would never have imagined that I would stand in front of a rebel army and preach," she said. "But God knows where the hungry hearts are. He knows who is ready. He's already moving in their midst. All he needs is a willing vessel."
Commissioning despite uncertainty
Ooi closed speaking to those who sense a missions calling but remain uncertain of where it leads. "We don't need to know everything to feel qualified to make a difference," she said. "We just have to be children dependent on our loving Father."
She described the kingdom of God as a small seed whose full extent — "an entire forest," in her words — is invisible at the time of planting. "You just never know how many other lives are at the other end of your simple obedience."
She then led in a prayer of surrender, releasing, in her words, "the need to know, the need to have all the answers, the need to have the map" — and choosing instead to follow the Holy Spirit as guide.
"Who you are, where you are right now, as is, is enough for God," she told the delegates. "And who He is, is enough for you."
Follow Christian Daily International's full reporting on Arise Asia 2026.
