I’m not going to tell you this is the most joyful blog in the world, but I think it’s important. So here it is.
I’ve been waiting the whole race for something to break my heart. To feel God’s heart for his broken children. This month we’re working with sex trafficking victims in the red light district of Chiang Mai and God showed me his heart. He broke mine for these women.
We’re doing quite a bit for ministry this month including monk chats, slum ministry, working at a coffee shop and bar ministry.
Slum ministry is ministering to children. These arent just any children though. They’re from the poorest parts of Chiang Mai. These families are so poor, so desperate for money to get by that they groom their daughters at a young age to eventually be sold into sex trafficking. It’s sad, but it’s become the norm of the area. The girls grow up knowing this may happen because it happened to their neighbor when she became old enough. Its just part of every day life.
With bar ministry, we go out to the bars at night and start making relationships with the prostitutes. I don’t know what I expected, but what I walked into tonight was completely heart breaking. These girls are just like us. They have hopes to be married, they’ve suffered heartbreak, they laugh, make jokes and enjoy good conversation… they are broken, just like we are. But instead of going to counseling, turning to a friend or turning to the Lord, they turn to money.
The whole thing is a huge game. They aplaud and get excited when they get a client. But when the cheering stops and everyone’s eyes are turned, you can see their brokenness and loss of self. They’ve been destroyed by lies and the thought that they can’t get out of this. The idea that they don’t deserve anything better or that they have to do this to help their families is so driven into their minds that they have no other way of thinking, no way to escape. They see no hope, so they accept it.
It’s not just the girls that my heart is broken for, but the men who come into the bars for them as well. As I was sitting there watching everything going on, all I could think when looking at one of the men is, what brought you to this point? How heartbroken or lost could you be that it brought you here? What happened in your life to make you hurt this much?
I can’t just love the girls selling their bodies, I have to love the men using them as well. Because in the end, we’re all broken people. These two groups are just two groups of broken people using each other to try to heal. Its not how God intended it. It won’t bring healing or happiness. Just more pain.
I’ve been waiting for my heart to break these entire 9 months and it finally has. But I’m beginning to get the feeling that it’s been slowly breaking all along.
People in Serbia and Macedonia are lost in depression. Syrian refugees are fleeing to Greece to escape death. Africa is filled with witchcraft and dark spirits. Asia is filled with a heavy spiritual realm flooding the streets of the Philippines and Penang. Thailand is crawling with sex trafficking. Pimps abducting girls. Parents selling their children. Women and men stuck in an endless cycle of hopelessness.
And America? Its filled with people blinded by the American dream. People so focused on themselves and establishing a comfortable life that they refuse to see what’s going on not only on the other side of the world, but right in their own back yards.
I’m laying in bed with a broken heart. I’m finally seeing God’s children through his eyes and I can’t sleep.
So I’m not ending this blog with a hopeful message or a God changing story like I normally do, because let’s face it, the month has just begun. I’ll end instead with a question.
This is our world. Our broken world filled with our broken people.
What are you going to do about it?
