“How He Loves” was blaring in my ear today as we stepped out on Bangla Road to prayer walk in preparation for the night. The song speaks of God’s jealousy for us, our hearts, of how much He loves us. Sometimes when I look around, and especially on Bangla where darkness and injustice is so in your face, I have a really hard time seeing God’s love for people. If He is a good and all powerful and caring God, why does He allow the darkness in people’s hearts to hurt others? Why are these women selling their bodies? Why does injustice exist? God could stop that, but He doesn’t. I love Thailand, but it’s been an incredibly hard month for me; God has been showing me that I don’t trust Him or really anyone as much as I thought. And that gets in the way of me choosing to see God in any situation. Right now, God is allowing Satan to work in this world, but God is still sovereign, He is still good, He is still present and piercing the darkness…even when I’m not actively looking for it and seeing.
“We see what we go out seeking. So my question to you is what are you going out seeking to see? Are you going out wanting to see God and how He is working? Or are you going out expecting to see darkness? I want to challenge you when you go out to Bangla to pray for new eyes to see God.” – Jalin-Irene, one of the wise Passport girls living and working with our teams this month. God frequently uses them to speak and it’s freaking awesome. So, the next day when we went prayer walking…this is all I prayed the entire time…for new eyes and to see God. I looked for Him; in the street, the bars, all of the people walking by. I took off my sunglasses and I started looking people in the eye as I passed, trying to see God in them, how He sees them, a glimpse of His love for them maybe. I noticed a few things from this… 1) a lot of people are uncomfortable with this and don’t like looking you in the eye 2) People who rarely get looked at, like really, really noticed by others as more than an object…take note of this. To the promoters, vendors, and bar girls, making eye contact without a face of judgment and condemnation, and simply just acknowledging them as a human being and not coming at them with an agenda of using them is very different than their everyday reality…and they notice the difference in us from just that few second interaction 3) a lot more conversations with these people happen naturally because you are acknowledging their existence and appreciating that they are relevant and important. I did this every time we went to Bangla and I really came to love these people. There was much more goodness and beauty there than I had originally seen, and anything that is good and beautiful is of God.
I’ve learned this month that God always has an agenda. Everything has a purpose. Your story has a purpose. My story has a purpose. These women’s stories have a purpose. God has a plan for each of us, even when lose sight of Him in our surroundings.
Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers, falsely accused, thrown in prison, forgotten about, and ultimately perfectly positioned before Pharaoh to save his entire family-the lineage of the entire Israelite nation and Christ-and all of Egypt from starvation. The story never says anything about Joseph being discouraged in all of this strife and circumstances that weren’t his fault. He chose to trust God even when he couldn’t understand why God allowed horrible things to happen to him…He chose to see God in every situation. Unbelievably, in the end, Joseph ended up over the entire Egyptian nation because no matter what happened he trusted that God was good and that God was with him. Even when we don’t understand we can still choose to trust God. We can live our lives absolutely sure that God is with us no matter where we are or what happens to us. And God always has a bigger picture in mind for us; He uses all of our circumstances to lead us further into His plan.
I’m still not sure why things happen the way they do sometimes. Why some people are trapped in hell selling their bodies every night, why men are so lonely and empty that they purchase and chase whatever they can to fill that void, why children starve all over the world. But I trust that God has an agenda and He is working even when I cannot see. Some day He will set all of these things right, but for now we are privileged to walk along this path seeking Him and bestowing any little bit of importance and grace and hope we can to people we come across.
