In hour ten on our travel day via bus to Thailand, I cried hot and angry tears. A few squadmates and I were discussing human trafficking and wondering what potentially waited for us in Chiang Mai, Thailand. All we knew is that we would be working with human trafficking and prostitution, but we didn’t know what our specific ministries would look like.
As we discussed, bone deep anger at the injustice being done against the women, men, and children caught in this trade rose up in me. And I cried, because what else can you do when you feel that angry?
“People who use children in that way deserve to die. They don’t deserve the same right to life as the rest of us.” I meant those words, from the darkest part of my heart.
My squadmates graciously and lovingly challenged my opinion, and I knew, in my head, that they were right. However, I didn’t know it in my spirit. Convicted, I took my hate and my tears to the Lord who, I’m learning on the Race, is the single best person to cry to.
I asked Him to change my heart and to strengthen me for the month ahead. I prayed that my path and mission this month would be clear.
He told me, first, “Humble yourself before me.”
And second, “Pick up your sword.”
“Pick up your sword” repeated in my head and in my spirit for days, like a finger drumming on my frontal lobe, insisting I listen.
So, I am reading the word like it’s the only bread in the world and I’m a person starving. In a lot of ways, I’ve realized how starved of this bread I have been my whole life and I’m grateful for its truth entering me daily.
Humbleness came more difficultly. He chose to humble me by teaching me what it truly means to fear Him.
Before I’d always conceptualized God as peaceful, loving, and full of grace—and He is that. But He is also justice, truth, and light, completely intolerant of sin and darkness of any kind.
He began showing me His heart for those stuck under the dark oppression of prostitution and human trafficking. Yes, He loves at all levels— the pimps, the Johns, the women, the ladyboys, and the children— but he hates their oppression; he hates their sin.
He cannot be near sin for it is so foreign to the holiness and glory that is his Being. He allowed me to feel the burning hatred for sin that He feels and it terrified me.
But not them. He never hates them. He never hates them.
Justice belongs to the Lord alone. And for now, I’m content to chew on that truth.
There wasn’t one moment where all of this clicked. Rather, it came slowly through lots of quiet times spent in frustration and worship services on my face as I attempt to understand an unfathomable God. Most of the heavy wrestling came during prayer walks down bar streets and through Buddhist temples.
Turns out, once I decided to let Him brush passed the walls I put up to contain Him—ones I didn’t even know I’d put up—understanding came to me.
I’m beginning to see Him as a God who can rage against sin just as fiercely as He can love. I’m also humbled to learn that the God I thought I knew and believed in my whole life is actually much, much broader and much, much… more than I could’ve ever imagined.
I love my God more today than I ever have before in my life. I am also more fearful of Him than ever before. Yet another contradiction that I am not sure I will ever truly understand.
Really, I’m just thankful for grace through Jesus because, family, that hatred is a scary, scary thing.
This month, I’m working with Buddhist Monks to spread some light to them, spending time in the slums of Chiang Mai playing with children who often spend their evenings working in the bars, and interceding for my sweet squadmates who go out each night to make connections with the men, women, and children in the red light district.
I am wielding my sword as best as I can and even if I feel most days like I’m just swinging into the darkness, well, that’s probably exactly where I need to be swinging. God cannot and will not tolerate darkness.
So neither will I.
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Currently: Zion Hostel, Chaing Mai, Thailand as rain pounds against the roof | 10:50 PM | 85% Funded | Pray that everywhere I walk, his sweet peace follows closely behind.
