Ive walked streets where women are sold … I’ve talked with these ladies. Ive ministered in strip club dressing rooms and been an intercessor outside of them. Ive prayed Heaven over brothels … I’ve seen Papa move in love and power in these places more than most churches. Ive gotten so comfortable with walking up and striking conversation, asking Papa what He has to say and trusting as my words came out that they were actually His.
Ive gotten to see Holy Spirit in action around me and through me… its become normal in these places. I love going out into the darkness because Papa is better and its all His anyway…they just don’t know it and how will they if His people don’t go? Its not for everybody and thats fair, you do you where God has you – He just so happened to have me in these places.
Knowing that background about me, I was excited to find out we would be going to bars in Nepal to minister to women. If it was going to look like anything I had pictured in my head- I was stoked! All we had was about 45 minutes to walk to this bar, to talk/intercede/whatever and walk back to the bus ….not a whole lot of time but it doesnt matter cause we have Kingdom living inside of us.
the time was simple enough…sit down in this small bar…order cokes…drink said cokes…intercede… the women got called back to work while we were there so just the house mom stayed out front with us …as we were walking out I handed the house mom a bracelet I had made the previous day for this specific purpose …. she just so happened to be wearing the same colors as was on the bracelet. She didnt really speak english so I just handed it to her with a smile saying it was for her and she lit up. As we walked away I turned once more to wave, she smiled back with a wave. Thats it.
So what made this harder than before? besides our contacts, to my knowledge I was the only one in my group and maybe in the squad who had background in this type of ministry. No, its not the same and its going to look different but the information I have from volunteering still translates in broad terms. Its hard to feel like you’ve got some valuable information and your squad doesnt even know you have it …maybe it would help and maybe it wouldn’t I don’t really know but I know it helped me today.
It helped in very simple things like knowing how to converse in the physical like normal people and be interceding in the Spirit at the same time so you don’t look ridiculous just sitting or standing there not looking at each other and not saying anything. It helped when a drunk guy approached our group and already knowing that as a female in that environment that my presence or attention was not helpful. or knowing how to function in the Spirit while in dark places and yet not letting them affect you or giving any darkness attention. Be aware but remembering who we serve. Knowing to declare covering as our squad walked across a large bridge and basically ended up being a parade of american women for men to ogle at…knowing that its even going on and what to do in the mist of that.
Id love for our squad to capture some of this, cause again…not all of it is relevant but what power if we could go to these places and stand in authority where we don’t give the enemy a larger stage than we do our savior. Where we don’t take on a spirit of hopelessness and oppression but actually bring light, joy, peace, hope into these places and release the Kingdom as we should. Discernment in the spiritual realm is a powerful tool but what good is it if we only sense the darkness and don’t rise into authority and speak life over situations to where atmospheres begin to shift.
Its hard to have experience and yet be in a completely different area and remain in a place of learning but also be available to offer insight…its tricky but I hope for more chances to struggle through it because that means I get to do more of this kind of stuff! It made me miss going out in Atlanta 🙂 I hope for Nepal’s women because of what I’ve seen in Atlanta.
