Our first three days in Pattaya, Thailand were spent at a worship conference called Pattaya Praise. People from all over the globe gathered together in this particular city – that is filled with 20,000 prostitutes – to proclaim that God reigns. In a city that seems especially dark, this was a necessary reminder that God is Lord over every place, every power, and every evil.
The location of this conference was right by the beach, at the end of the most famous tourist street in the city, Walking Street. This street is lined with bars, brothels, pole-dancers, and countless prostitutes standing by the road, waiting to be bought for a night. As we were worshipping, there were drunk men and women standing near-by, watching. Some sat for hours just watching and listening.
There was one song in particular that the Thai Chrisitans loved – the song entitled “God of This City.” This song was written specifically for Pattaya city and says, “You’re the God of this city, You’re the King of these people, You’re the Lord of this nation, You are. You’re the light in this darkness, You’re the hope to the hopeless, You’re the peace to the restless, You are. There is no one like our God. Greater things have yet to come, greater things are still to be done in this city“. After we finished singing this song, the middle-aged Thai woman standing next to me looked at me with tears running down her cheeks. She touched my arm and said, “This place is filled with such bad things…it’s so bad.” I rubbed her back and tried to comfort her, but I was struck with how little there was I could do about it. I recognized that this city was in desperate need of a Healer, of a Savior…of a revival.
Towards the end of the night, I decided I wanted to put my feet in the ocean. As I was walking over the huge rocks on the shore, I slipped and cut my foot on one of the rocks. When I looked down, blood was gushing out of my toe. I looked up to my teammates for help and one of them went to get some toilet paper or napkins. Five minutes later, there was a huge swarm of people surrounding me and the paramedics had come to check out my foot.
Thankfully the cut was not deep enough to need stitches. As I was watching my toe being bandaged, God gave me a new perspective on healing. The fact that He created the human body to heal itself reveals that He is love, He is good, He is perfect. Imagine if the wounds we received never healed – our bodies would be filled with infected open gashes. But instead, God created them to heal themselves, and only leave a scar. This reveals that God longs for restoration. He is Healer. He longs to close our wounds, to fill them with fresh skin.
While there is so much pain and hurt in this city, God reminded me that He is restoring the world day by day. Being able to worship God with former prostitutes and with transsexuals (the appropriate name for these individuals here is “lady-boys”) reminds me that God is narrowing the gap between His Kingdom and Satan’s Kingdom. I am seeing God’s Kingdom taking over before my eyes. I have had the opportunity to sit at a bar and listen as a Christian Thai woman tells her story to prostitutes of her previous life of being in their position.
The word about Jesus is spreading. It is changing lives. God has been challenging me to talk about Him to the people I meet, whether they know Him or not. The word must get out…because someday, the gash will be closed for good and Christ will reign. Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord!
