A typical McDonalds visit usually consists of ordering the number of your choice with coke and an extra squirt of ketchup. The ketchup fiend in me would pump out about 3 to 4 extra cuplets full no matter what actual food I end up with. Then your brain shuts off as you consume your heart attack and that’s about it. Let’s be honest, not much really goes down on a typical day under those golden arches. But the other night at a McDonalds in Bangkok, something happened which its walls probably have never heard before: questions upon questions about God and about His love from a ‘lady of the night’.
Enthusiasm lit up her face with each question about Scripture and delighted in each gentle response she received. She told in Thai how she never understood what ‘peace’ could be until the other night she was prayed over and how a calming blanket enveloped her like a divine hush to the soul. Now she sat with expressive eyes and a captivating beauty that enhanced by her passionate inquiry of faith. She expressed desires to forgive; especially to her enemies because she knows Christ wants her to be free. Though she doesn’t want to forgive, something inside her does and It longs to give something in return. Two hours or so pass at the table. During that time I’m overhearing her conversation with one of the bilingual missionaries who’s been on the field longterm. Frankly exhausted and hardly able to remain conscious after having longer than a 12 hour day in this kind of ministry. I was thankful for the opportunity but I wanted my bed.
And then I hear, “She’s getting it, that God’s love is much greater than anything she’s known from the people around her. Let’s pray that she will experience His love right now like she felt His peace the other night through prayer.” I forced my eyes open and once we began praying I had an extraordinary ability to focus on the prayer and the requests I lifted up. The four of us prayed fervently in that place. An uncommon location to voice such requests. Then we all finish praying and listen. She says, “Something like wind moved through me. -she pointed- It felt like wind.”
The word for wind in Hebrew also is the same word used for Holy Spirit and breath — the word is ‘ruah’. The word for wind in Greek also is the same word used for Holy Spirit and breath — the word is ‘numa’. Very few Christians in the world know this, let alone a very young believer who is newly aquainted with the Bible (Pra cumpee in Thai which means God’s word). The Holy Spirit stirred in her and produced such a rich sense of joy and understanding of Christ’s love at that time, that it’s hard to deny what happened there. How would she know about wind being in relation to the Holy Spirit? Why would she make a reference to wind at such a time that we were praying for her to be moved by God’s spirit?
If you’d ask her, she’d tell you with bright eyes that something is changing in her. That she understands things about God’s character that based off of worldly logic, she shouldn’t be able to; since she hasn’t had done studies of the Bible. But yet wisdom is being divinely imparted to her. If you ask her what she feels about it all, I think she’d say, “I want to know more and experience Him because what He has for me is better. It is something good.”
This lovely woman is someone most would call a prostitute whose nightly work stigmatizes who she is to many. Looking at Luke 7:36-50 where the woman of the night uses her tears and hair to wash the feet of Jesus makes me think immediately of her love and longing for Him. (I would have liked to share a picture of her but due to confidentiality, I won’t be posting a picture.)
You think you’ve out-sinned the love of God? Think again.
