“Be Still and Pray” – The Story of the Bar Ministry

Coming into this month, I got a very clear call from God: either I started seriously commiting to living out the things I said I believed, or I made excuses and wound up wasting my time for the rest of the Race.  To be honest, I was pretty scared of both options.  I knew this month would be really intensely focused on making relationships without really any form of guidance, and that has been an area where I am absolutely terrible.  I’m paralyzed by a rather inchoate and inarticulate fear whenever I contemplate meeting strangers – and to think about making friends with prostitutes in the bars was well beyond my comfort zone in a lot of ways.  I did have one piece of advice going into the month, though, that really helped out a lot: “Put together everything God’s taught you for the last 5 months and you’ll be fine.”  I was thinking about what I’ve really learned over the course of this trip, and the overwhelming lesson has been how to love.  It gave me peace.  I don’t have to worry about how to act or what to say – it all comes down to love.  If I remember God’s love for me, and act and speak and smile out of that same love for the people I meet, I won’t have to worry about anything.

So I wasn’t scared to make friends with the people at the bars.  I went into the month totally willing to break way out of my comfort zone and reach out to the women trapped in the sex industry, the victims of human trafficking, and the men who perpetuate the vicious cycle.  I was going to be involved, and not sit on the sidelines, and in general really make the month COUNT for something.

Then we got to Chiang Mai.

I was battling a sinus infection the first night we went to the bars, so I stayed back.  God blessed the time with a great conversation, and I felt good about my time, invested in the Kingdom even if I wasn’t actively working the bars.  I was still committed – this was what God had called us to do this month, and I was going to do it.  My first night at the bars was very inconclusive.  I was confused, tired, overwhelmed – you name it.  I didn’t talk to a single person, I sat around feeling somewhat helpless, and in general I felt lost.  I specifically felt lost IN the environment – I didn’t quite recognize it, but I was really getting lured in by the bar culture.  There was a boxing ring that I enjoyed watching the fights at, there were pool tables everywhere (and I love pool), and even though the sex wasn’t on my mind at all I could have just stayed for a while and hung out around the pool tables – in the middle of the red light district in Chiang Mai.  I didn’t really even realize how enticing it was until we all sat down as a team and debriefed that night.

We decided it really wasn’t safe for just one guy to go out, even with some of our women as company, without another guy to keep an eye on each other.  So, I stayed back the next night.  Again, God blessed me with a deep conversation on spiritual matters, really opening my eyes to some important stuff.  I went out the next night with the two other men from team Wreckonciled, working with us this month.  Again it was a night of feeling somewhat inefficient and confused, but this time I could sense the area trying to pull me in.  It was surreal.  Every thought I had, the area would try to twist – here is a place like what you prayed for, see here’s a place that might fill that prophecy, look over here you’ll love doing ministry here – and each time I said no, that’s a trick, I’d turn my head and see something else that had the same draw.  I was a little weirded out, to be honest.  We talked it over with several people, and the consensus was that bar ministry was just not safe for me, spiritually.  I was really confused – here I was, ready to go and do what God called me to do, but this was a huge area where I just couldn’t do anything effectively.  But God had been blessing my nights staying back, so I stayed back.

It was a hard thing to commit to breaking through my fear to do what God wanted me to do – it was even harder to accept that God wanted me NOT doing.  I have been learning for the last couple of months that prayer is the most powerful tool in the Christian life, so I understand the importance of doing ministry – especially such a challenging ministry as the bars – with prayer support.  So for three hours, three nights a week, the women of team Divine Collision went to the bars, connected with the women, made friends, and shared God’s love.  I stayed back and for those three hours devoted my time to the pursuit of God.  I read my Bible, I had long deep conversations about God with people, I sang praise songs – but mostly, I prayed.

I’m beginning to understand that prayer is combat, and that a ‘prayer warrior’ is not just a cute way of talking about someone who prays a lot.  I’m also beginning to understand that there’s a lot I just don’t know about prayer.  “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” (James 5:16) I am still learning how to pray – I’m only just now learning that I MUST pray – but I am learning.  I am seeing God work through prayer, I am seeing answered prayer, and I am understanding the impact we can have on the spiritual realm through prayer.  I will continue, as I head off to Africa for three months where the darkness is great and the need greater, to pray fiercely on behalf of the work God is doing through V Squad.  I think it’s likely that God will ask me to ‘get my hands dirty’ and be directly involved in all kinds of things while we’re out there – but I know that He’ll also be asking me to pray continually.