I put a song on the bottom if you want something to listen to as you read. It was the song I was listening to when God took me through this process today.
This month we are in Thailand. Our ministry is to love on the prostitutes that work here. We go into bars and just hang out with the women who work there in hope that they will see us as a reflection of Christ and we can share the gospel with them. Our hope is that the Holy Spirit will move in them as we use the power of the Spirit to reflect Jesus in our actions as we are out. (Ephesians 1:12) We want to love these girls with the entirety of our hearts just like Jesus does.
(us hanging out playing Jenga)
Honestly, I didn’t truly love these women the way Jesus does, until today when God turned my sympathy into empathy. As I was on the mile long trek from the Lighthouse (where we stay) to bar street (where the girls work), God started directing my thoughts. I use this time of walking to listen to music and spend time with God. The past couple of days God has revealed huge things to me. I will go into more deets about yesterday next time I blog, but what I experienced today was something else.
Today, God took me back to the day I got trapped in the tunnel. If you don’t know what I am talking about you can read about it here. He brought all the emotions flooding back. He then told me the feelings I felt that day in the tunnel are the exact feeling many of these prostitutes feel. TRAPPED.
As I pictured myself back in that dark tunnel, I started to cry. I didn’t want to be there. I wanted all of the feelings to go away. I was overwhelmed with fear; overwhelmed with a loss of hope; overwhelmed with the feeling of death. I was scared. I felt there was no way out. Although I know the ending, today I was put back in that place and experienced all the emotions once again. I was able to feel exactly how many of these girls feel. LOST. HOPELESS. SCARED. DEAD.
As my mind left me sitting in the tunnel, I got nauseated. Literally, I felt like I was going to throw up. My mind kept replaying it in my head. I started remembering how difficult it was to fight the current. How every time I would pull, I had to use every ounce of strength in me and the water current still fought me. It tried to force me back into the trap. Back into the darkness. Even if these girls decide they want out of prostitution it seems hopeless. They have to fight the world. They have to fight everything the world says they are. They have to use all of their strength not to get drug back to the same dark spot at the end of a tunnel.
The thing is, I didn’t do that with my own strength. As my mind kept wandering today, I could feel the tiredness in my arms. I could feel the exhaustion from fighting the current. I realized how there was truly no hope in my own strength that day. There was no way I was coming out of the darkness on my own. If I would have tried, right now I would be dead in the back of that dark tunnel. The same goes for these women. They can’t do this in their own strength. They can’t fight the world on their own. They need Jesus Christ. If not they will end up dead to their sin. Their only hope is that He will send legions of angels to save them and pull them from the darkness they are trapped in, just as He sent legions of angels to save me from the dark tunnel I was trapped in.
(Tashi and I out at the bar)
It is crazy that as the Lord has taken me back to that day, each time He reveals something new. The first thing He showed me was how much He loves me. Right after the incident He took me back into the tunnel and revealed that He loves me so much He sent angels after me. He gave me a vision of the angels in the tunnel fighting for me. He showed me that there was an angel behind me pushing me and an angel in front of me pulling and an angel in front of that angel with a sword out fighting for me. That's when I knew for a fact I did not get out of that tunnel with my own strength but with God's.
Now as I process this round number two, He is teaching me that He is trustworthy. The thing that has scared me the most the past few weeks is my future. Finding a job, having enough money to support myself, etc. As my mind goes back in the tunnel, I know I don’t have to fear the world because He is sovereign over everything. He shows me how according to the world I should be dead, but that was not His plan so that did not happen. Since I am His child and He loves me, He rescued me because He delights in me. (Psalm 18:19) He also delights in these women. He loves them. They are His children and He wants to rescue them from their darkness.
Although that was one of the hardest days of my life I would never take it back. I got to experience God’s love in ways people could only dream of. I got to tangibly feel God’s love. Now I get to tangibly feel His love for these women. I get to love these women because God loved me first! I get to experience it all over again. I got to experience the exact feelings Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 1:9-10, so on Him I will set my hope. I will also pray that these women will rely on God and experience Him so they can set their hope on Him!
