Hosea 2: 14-15
“Therefore, behold I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.”
“Achor” means trouble. God makes the Valley of “trouble” into a door of hope. Over the past few weeks, the Lord has been challenging me to see “trouble” as an opportunity for Him to work, as an opportunity for hope. It’s not easy to look at a seemingly hopeless situation and declare hope. It takes faith, because eyes of faith help us to see what is not there already (Hebrews 11:1). It takes love, because love is what motivates us to want the best for others (1 Corinthians 13). It takes understanding, of who I am as God’s child and what kind of authority He has given me. I want to share with you some of the opportunities I have encountered over the last few weeks to spread hope in a hopeless world.
Walking Street, Pattaya Beach, Thailand.
The music was so loud I could barely hear myself think. People shoved menus for “Live Sex Shows” as I walked down the street. Yes, it was a menu… you could pick what you wanted to see. I watched ladies and ladyboys take men by the hand and lead them up stairs or behind a curtain. I saw children sitting on the steps outside the club waiting for their mom to stop working. I saw homeless people begging outside the gates of the street. Everywhere I turned, there seemed to be nothing but death. The centre for pleasure, but no one was smiling. Plenty of liquor and sex, but no one looked happy or satisfied. A group of us girls walked down the street silently praying. The more we walked the street, the more excited I got. I looked into the people’s faces and declared that one day they would know that there was Someone who truly loved them and wanted great things for their life. For the men who looked sad and lonely in the bars, I declared that through Jesus Christ they would find joy and peace and the satisfaction they were so desparately longing for. There was one scene that I remember in particular. Off to the side of the bar, there was this person who had what looked like a Halloween exhibit going on. He was dressed up with his face painted white,and blood was painted on his face and hands. In front of him was a table, and on the table was what looked like a murder scene where a butcher knife also covered in blood was piercing a doll. People stood around gawking and taking pictures of this death-filled scene. I found myself speaking against the death that was pictured there and declaring that life would one day be there instead. I looked down and saw a rose in my hand. I went up and looked into the eyes of the person behind the costume. I smiled and bowed slightly as I put the rose on the table. The person bowed back, as is traditional for Thai culture to do. I walked a ways down the street. When I looked back, the rose was still there. The tiniest symbol of life in the midst of so much death. The tiniest glimmer of hope.
Conversations with Friends
X squad had what is known as debrief at the beginning of this month. Debrief is a time of rest and relaxation, an opportunity for us to have meaningful conversations with leaders and peers alike. A few friends confided that they felt frustration over dealing with the same things that they had dealt with all race. They didn’t even know if they wanted freedom from it anymore, it might just be easier to keep dealing with it. Would God really do anything about it? It seemed pretty obvious that He hadn’t. As I listened to their needs, I felt the Spirit stir inside me. I felt the Lord urging me to pray with them. As I prayed, I felt the Lord ask me to cast a vision of freedom over their life, to declare what their life would be like if they were truly free. After we finished praying, they looked at me and said, “I just feel a lot of hope.”
Ministry
This month my team is stationed in Wang Pa Pao, Thailand, at the Sending Hope Orphanage. As it turns out, most of the women we saw on Walking Street are taken from the poor hill tribes in the mountains of Thailand and are sold into the sex trafficking trade. Traffickers come into the tribe with money and liquor and ask to take the daughters to “work in their restaurant”. When the girls reach their destination, they are instead forced to work in strip clubs or brothels. Sending Hope Orphanage attempts to reach the girls at risk before the traffickers find them. There are 40 girls here at the moment. The houses that the girls live in are entitled Houses of Hope. These girls are not afraid to pray expectantly, they are not afraid to speak of the future with hope, because they are living examples of what hope can do.
The gospel is referred to in 1 Peter 1:3 as a “living hope.” Hope is indeed alive. It is shed abroad in our hearts when we think of the cross and the resurrection. It burns within us when we see who we were and who God has transformed us into being. My prayer is that we will all continue to spread hope and speak hope into hopeless situations.
