I hate where I am at right now. I hate Pattaya, Thailand. I want to leave here and I don’t want to come back. I hate this place.
I walk around every day and see so many things. I want to cry and yell and shake someone. I want walk around with the desire to fight and the desire preach and the desire to cry at almost all times. I see so many things I wish I never had to see.
I see old men. Men my grandfathers age and I want to hug them, to speak to them, to tell them they are loved and that the moment of “love” they pay for is fleeting. I want to tell them they are running out of time to accept the forgiveness and grace they’ve already been offered.
I see young women. Women about my age and I want to embrace them. I want them to know they have a choice. I want them to know they can walk out of the bars any time and that they are worthy of love. I want to tell them their skin is beautiful, that their worth more than sex, that my father loves them and bought them with his life to spend eternity with them and not with money for monetary meaningless physical “love”.
I see women. Women my moms age raising children and I want to tell them to keep going. I want to tell them they are doing a good job. I want them to teach their daughters and sons that money isn’t everything. I see them breaking their backs for hours to provide for their kids without selling their bodies. I want to hug them and love on them and I want to support them. I cry for them. They don’t know their worth because they are devalued by society.
I see white tourist women. I want shake them. I want to carry them off. I want them to leave. Their presence and support of this place is support of the sex industry which is predominantly women. I want them to know they are valued just as the women who are bought are. I want them to stop perpetuating the belief that they and these other women are just objects and possessions. I want them to know they are ENOUGH.
I see families. I see young children and I want to cry out in anguish and in rage. I want to cover these children’s eyes. They perceive more than we realize and they can see whats going on here. I want them protected! I want to take them away so their eyes do not see so their brains will never connect what is going on in this place.
I SEE so much more than this. I see broken men and women. I see poverty. I see lost and wondering souls. I see people hurt by men and hurt by women. I see children exposed and broken. I see children as witnesses to suffering. I see, and I see, and I see and I cannot unsee. I cannot unsee or unbreak but I want to.
I want to unsee and unbreak so I can go about life without NEEDING to do something and NEEDING to come back to this place I hate so much. I want this place and these things gone from my mind so I don’t have to create the change I want to see here.
I want healing in this place. Redemption for these people. I want to see this place changed in the name of Jesus. I WANT this but I am POWERLESS to do any of it. I have no power to create change here and nothing I do will be successful anyway. I am POWERLESS to do anything.
But it is not hopeless. Pattaya, Thailand will not remain notorious for the nefarious things that happen here. It’s beaches and beauty will not always be a mask to hide the depravity of sin in this place. It is not hopeless because evil has already lost because God is already moving here.
I am POWERLESS to do anything but my God has the POWER to change all things. This city will be like Nineveh, it will turn to the Lord. Not because of anything I do or anything the other missionaries and christians do here but because the Spirit within us is moving and conviction and spreading God’s kingdom.
I hate this city much like Jonah hates Nineveh. God called me here and I will not run and I will rejoice when this city turns to the Lord. I am powerless to create this change by my God is ALL POWERFUL.
Jonah 4:10-11a, “But the Lord said, ‘You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of [Pattaya]?” I cannot tend this plant nor water it and make it grow. Only God can do that. And I will rejoice when his work here is completed and this city knows him.
