“God, why am I so different?”
I feel like this has been my most commonly uttered prayer this month.
When we first learned in China that our ministry would be Lighthouse in Action, I got really excited. Lighthouse in Action is an amazing that ministry that focuses on working with people that are being directly affected by human trafficking and the prostitution industry. It that has three main facets:
Love Acts: Working directly with the girls and ladyboys that work in the bars. Building relationships with them, loving them, and showing them that Jesus is about freedom and restoration, not condemnation. A huge, huge part of Love Acts is prayer. Prayer walking the bar street twice a day and then half of the team stays behind at night to intercess for the ones going out and talking to girls. Like, 95% of it is straight up prayer. Love Acts also extends to the slums, loving on kids and helping establish relationships with them, as well as chatting with monks in the Buddhist temples.
Xlife: A vision to stop trafficking at its source: the villages. Parents often sell their daughters (and sons) to brokers that come to the villages promising a better life for their children. Sometimes it’s through lies and promises of a waitressing or housekeeping job and the parents are tricked, sometimes it’s just a last resort to help the impoverished family survive. If we can instill biblical principles and show these people that their children have value, we can stop trafficking at the source.
Zion Café: A café and restaurant where girls freed from working in the bars can work and be poured into. Also it’s a great place to host game nights, bible studies etc. When making relationships with the girls in the bars.
After arriving here our teams learned that Xlife wouldn’t really be an option this month, and that our contact, Pi Emmi, was going to let our three teams decide amongst ourselves which ministry we wanted, Love Acts with a focus on the bars, Love Acts with a focus on the slums and monk chats, or Zion café. Immediately my heart leapt. Slums, slums, slums! Love on kids! Chat with monks! Could there be a ministry better tailored to my hearts desires?! After a hard first month in China, I was so excited to find a ministry I could actually thrive in. I started praying immediately that my team would be assigned slums, and immediately got an answer from God. “Bar ministry. Your team will be in bar ministry, but YOU won’t go into the bars.”
Well… that’s cool God…actually that’s kind of weird… so I’m going to share my heart for slums with my team anyways because maybe that’s what they have been feeling too and we’ll just go to slums.
I shared my heart with my team and they agreed I was perfect for Slums, but they all felt pulled to bar ministry. Go figure. I’m not going to say my heart sank, because it didn’t. I was actually really, really excited to grow in my prayer walk. I’ve never prayed for hours on end before, and I knew it would challenge me and allow me to experience God like never before. So, when the three teams came together and it was officially decided my team would do bar ministry, I felt really good about it.
Later that day however, as I was thinking about what our month would look like, I started to get a little angry with God. I came on this race to grow, but does EVERYTHING have to be a struggle? He’s given me gifts for ministry, why isn’t he letting me use them? I just want to feel like I’m being used! Why is everyone else getting the ministry opportunities they have gifts for and I’m not? Why am I so different?! Why am I even on this team if they all have relational gifts and I don’t?!And what did He mean I wasn’t going to go in the bars?
As my frustration grew I began to feel more alone and alienated. Seriously though, why am I hearing different things from the rest of my team? Why does my ministry look so different from theirs? I just want to go love on kids, why is that such a hard request?
Here’s the thing about God: He can handle me. He can handle all my angry questions, my doubts, my frustrations. I think that night God was smiling at me, the soft grin that a loving father has for his infant daughter when she’s crying about not getting what she wants in that moment because He has something far better in store for her.
“Just wait Elizabeth… (God has to use my full name a lot)
Just wait and see what I have in store for you…”
