I write this blog as most blogs… Thoughts a jumbled mess and passion pouring out into sometimes coherent thoughts.
Brace yourselves…
This month we are stationed as a squad in the heart of the red light district in Chiang Mai . We are not here at the peak of tourist season and this is a good thing….
I can’t imagine seeing anymore Hawaiian shirts, kaki shorts, sandals, and Safari hats walking around these streets. If I had 5 baht for every one I saw I could buy hella street pad Thai!
This month ministry is different every week as we rotate with the rest of the teams. This month is all squad month …. If you’re confused as to what that means it means that the entire squad is indeed here….all.
My first week this month was bar ministry. Bar ministry consists of prayer and building relationships with the men and women at the bars. We do this in order to eventually find a way to minister to them and to daily show them the love of Jesus. This process takes time.
It sickens me to my core to walk past the bars every night without having an immediate solution to the exploitation I see. It’s almost as if you can feel the spiritual chains wrapped around these places. I walk with my eyes glued to the ground most of the time because if I walk past one more woman on the arm of a man twice her age and if I look one more time into her eyes I think I might burst. I might lose control and beg her to come with me or offer her twice of what he’s paying to instead sit and talk with her for the night…. To be someone who wants nothing from her, to be Jesus with skin on.
The reality is that this is how she lives.
It’s not some campaign or conference that pulls at your heartstrings once or twice a year.
It is every day.
It is how she earns money so that she can help support her family.
It is what she sees as her only option.
It is his emptiness.
It is his unquenchable lust.
It is his desire to feel fulfilled and wanted.
God not only wants to redeem the woman selling herself to the night… He also wants to redeem the man buying her.
It’s our desire to fill the void and
the emptiness created by the fall of man that only the creator of life can fulfill.
I want my heart to break not only for the easy but for the hard. I want my heart to break for the perverted, the thief, the criminal.
I want my heart to break for the pedophile, the rapist, the murderer…
Did Jesus not die for them too?
One of the most powerful lines written in a worship song is , “break my heart for what breaks yours.”
You might have sung it out a couple of times with arms raised high, eyes closed, and a pure heart before the Lord.
While I don’t doubt anyone’s sincerity in the moment…. I wonder how many of us would truly allow our hearts to be broken as Christ’s has….
How many of us are willing to love like Him?
I’ve heard it said hundreds of times growing up……if I had been the only one who had ever sinned, Jesus would have still come and died just for me.
Can we even grasp the vastness of that kind of grace?
Jesus looked into the eyes of a sinner during death and forgave him, permitting Him into His kingdom forever. How many christian people look into the eyes of transsexuals, bisexuals, and homosexuals and tell them we love them?
We don’t always love those whose sins we see as “obvious” and we are quick to justify our lack of compassion for those we see as blatant and hopeless sinners.
We pick and choose the sins for God as if telling Him that maybe His son only died for those who sin “pretty.”
We tell Him just how far His grace extends and we package Him perfectly in the boxes we create for Him.
I’ve got news, church! I sin UGLY! I sin ugly er’day! That’s because no sin is pretty and more acceptable to God.
How many times have we heard of the rapist on the news and prayed that he would come to know the Lord?
We will never lose compassion for victims and we never should but how often do we lift up the pedophile in prayer?
Do we not serve an all powerful God? Is His grace not sufficient for all?
Jesus came to restore the lost and broken. He came to redeem the suffering and depravity in this world.
As Christians we need to be harbors for the hurting. We need to be open arms for the weary.
We need to open our eyes to the “things unseen” and ask God to help us love like Him. We need to ask God for better spiritual lenses so that we can see the war waging all around us. We need to identify the real enemy and call him out on his bull.
Jesus is not willing that one soul should perish. Are you?
There is redeeming love and therefore hope at the foot of the cross for ALL who seek it.
It’s easy to love the least of these. It’s easy to love the victims and the powerless.
It’s hard to love those who bring destruction and heartache.
Let’s pray for hearts like Christ.
Let us grow in our faith as we step out in grace.
Let’s allow courage and compassion to lead the way as we learn to love others as we are loved by Him.
