My time in Phuket, Thailand has been a time of pursuing God as the lover of my soul, and the fruit flowing out of that has been letting him awaken or reawaken a passion for women and for seeing them set free. As a result, travel back to Malaysia with me….
Malaysia: Sitting outside of the coffee shop in Malaysia an Islamic woman sat down at a table opposite me and immediately my spirit quickened inside of me. As you may remember, it is illegal to share your faith with anyone who is Malay or of the Islamic faith. With that understanding, I felt like the Lord just wanted me to notice and pray for her. I watched her read her book while she sipped her coffee-she was well dressed and had a diamond ring on her finger signifying her marriage. I began to ask myself, “Who is this woman? Is she Malay and therefore born into Islam or did she marry into it? If she married into it why did she?” As I sat and watched her, the Lord spoke to me “Cath, she’s not all that different than you were before I ripped through your walls and brought freedom to your heart and a light to your eyes, and she’s definitely not all that different from so many women in America who are caught in a bad relationship, looking for love from a man who cannot give it or trying to fill the void I created in them with something as perverted and disgusting as money.” And it’s so true. I began to pray, I prayed for the women who are born into Islam and have little hope of hearing about Jesus. I prayed for the women who, for the love of a man, married into captivity and I prayed for the thousands of women around the world who are trapped and trying to fill their dead prison cells with money, fame and fortune and still haven’t been told about the freedom that has already been bought for them.
The next month we headed to Thailand where, as you know, David and I split for the month. He did preventative trafficking work in the North and I worked in the South with the women who are already in the trade (funny how no matter how many hundreds of miles we are away from each other we still seem to be working together). Anyway, I found myself nightly going to bars and talking with women of all different ages and backgrounds. Some women had children who were living with family in another part of Thailand and others were on their own. No matter what her story was, the look was the same. I’m not talking about the look on her face but deep down you could see a discontentment in each person we talked to. Sometimes I would ask, “do you like your job?” and even when she gave no reply it was so easy to spot that she didn’t want to work there. On occasion a girl would say “yeah the money’s good so that’s why I like it” or “my family needs the money.” Behind all the different answers it was easy to see that no one was happy and no one was fulfilling a dream by being down there. God again spoke and revealed to me the freedom he wanted to bring these women, women he created to worship him, women caught up in lies – entrapped.
As I say good bye to Asia I can’t forget these women. I feel like God has shared the tiniest glimpse of the affection he has for women, all women. The God of creation is calling out to these girls, longing to open up their death-filled prison cells and remove the chains from women who are caught in sin and therefore entrapped until someone offers them a key to freedom. Wherever you find yourself reading this blog, remember that God has a calling for these women and a calling for you as well. Who knows, maybe those callings are intertwined?
