This past weekend, I attended the statewide Georgia Baptist Collegiate Ministries conference called Confluence. To be honest, I didn’t really want to go. I was tired, and knew I wouldn’t get much sleep over the weekend. I was starting to get sick, and it was only getting worse. Most of the weekend seemed to be focused on a push for summer missions, and I am already going on the World Race. As they kept stressing the importance of missions, I kept finding myself asking, “God, I am already doing missions. What more do you want from me?“
Then Saturday night, I understood why God wanted me at that conference.
I truly did learn a lot over the whole weekend, but Saturday night there was a speaker who we called BB. BB has been serving for the past five years in East Asia where she ministers to young women in brothels.
I have heard the human trafficking speech so many times over the past couple of years. I can tell you so many statistics about slavery and list off all kinds of facts, but it has still always seemed like such a far-off problem.
But when BB told us the stories of some of the women who she has met in the brothels, my heart was broken. When she showed us the pictures of the girls who have become her friends, it finally hit me. The world is so broken. There are so many people who need Christ more than anything.
I have lived such a me-centered life. Even in doing missions, as much as I say it’s not about me, I don’t always act like it. American Christianity is so often about what God can do for me. It’s about making me feel good.
But the point of missions isn’t to make me feel like I am doing something good. It’s not about awesome adventures and experiences. It’s about the people who desperately need Christ more than anything.
It’s about the girl who burns herself with cigarettes because her pimp and her customers have tricked her into thinking she is fat and worthless. It’s about the baby girl of a brothel owner who has no other toys to play with than a box of condoms.
If only that girl knew she is worth everything to God. What if that baby girl grows up and is forced to sell her body like the girls in the shop that her mother owns, and she never hears about how she can have freedom in Christ?
How can I keep living my life not caring that there are so many people who have never experienced the love of Christ? How can I keep on hoarding that love for myself and not telling others about God’s infinite grace?
After BB finished her message, the band came back out to close the service, and I grumbled under my breath as they began to play “How He Loves.” To be honest, I have grown kind of sick of that song and I have a hard time worshipping to it anymore.
But as the chorus kicked in, I found myself singing a different song. The song wasn’t about me anymore. I know just how much God loves me, and and am forever grateful for what He has done for me, but there are so many who do not know just how much God loves them. And as the band sang the chorus, I found myself singing, “Oh God, how you love them.”
How you love the prostitutes. How you love the pimps. How you love the brothel owners, and even the men who purchase those young women’s bodies. How you love the orphans and the widows, the poor and the forgotten.
That’s what missions is about. I have spent so much time thinking about what missions will do for me, but I have spent hardly any time praying for those who God has called me to serve.
My prayer over the next couple of months and during my time on the field is that God will show His love to those who the world has forgotten. And if He allows me to be the tool in showing people that love, I pray that He will be given the glory every step of the way.
