Where Heaven Meets Hell (the blog I promised)

I didn’t think that I would ever play in another bar…sing in another bar. A handful of years back, the band I was in would book shows at a bar in the Springs, and while it was fun to play on a stage with an audience listening, lights flashing, amps blaring – it was dull after the initial performance high wore off. It was dark in that bar. Heavy. Depressing. Grown adults wasting their lives day in and day out. 

So when the band split, I did NOT see myself in another bar, singing.

I didn’t know that God had planned an opportunity for me to do just that, on February 24th, 2011 in the Coyote Bar off Bangla Road in Thailand.

I am convinced that Bangla Road is one of the darkest places in the world. It’s more than just another sketchy place. It’s more than a place where you’ll find dirty dancing and alcohol. It’s even more than prostitution, sex trafficked men and women and children, it’s more than a place where human beings come with a price tag.
The word hellish comes to mind.
A place where slow, steady burning melts souls and empties them into vacant shells. A place where beauty and love have been replaced by cheap and inaccurate fabrications.

On my way to the Coyote Bar, I passed a young woman who is caught up in prostitution, a woman who is beautiful and has unlimited worth that goes far beyond skin deep. As I passed her, I looked in her eyes, and do you know what I saw? 

I saw death.

There wasn’t a shred of evidence that there was life behind those eyes. It shocked me. Shocked me.

It broke my heart, but it also got me ready to fight. To fight with weapons that dispel the darkness in flashes and floods of light. I stood with brothers and sisters who did not hold back in worshiping the Lord. 

I don’t think I stopped praying once we got to Bangla Road. Because i could feel this weird tension, like the apprehension before getting on a stage, but a heaviness that I can’t label as anything but demonic. That heaviness began to fade, and by the time we got set up in the Coyote Bar, I was thrilled, energized, and more than excited. Humbled to be given the opportunity and ready to go. 

So there we were: Alana Lusted on guitar and vocals, Natasha Hurt on drums, Brandi Jo Magee on violin, and me, singing. Just some westerners who were there to worship God, as long as we could and as loud as we could. I lost my voice before the first 45min set was over, and miraculously got it back at the end when Alana lost hers. 

There are times, when I’m singing in front of people, that I get really self-conscious. Nervous. I’ll get distracted if I don’t hit the notes just right. Then there are times when the right notes don’t matter. When all that matters is the truth that is in the lyrics of the song, and the fact that I believe those truths. When all that matters to me is God – it’s in those times that the words, and my voice, are coming from my heart. 

I know I missed notes. I know it didn’t sound perfect. I mean, I forgot some lyrics once or twice. I know, from listening to some of the video that was taken, that it wasn’t the best I’ve ever sung. But my heart….my heart was focused on Jesus, and when I opened my eyes I didn’t really notice the bars across from us with all the lights and dancing and the sickening ugliness that is in it all. Even when a drunk man started bothering me while I was singing, my only reaction was to move away from him. I was completely unafraid.

God worked through the prayers of countless people: in the states, in Thailand, in my squad, and in other random places where prayer warriors lift us up and ask the Lord to give us strength and direction. Sometimes I forget that there’s a real war going on…not only for us as sons and daughters of the Lord, but against us as we fight to gain ground for the kingdom of heaven. I felt the exhaustion of that fight right after we stepped off of Bangla road after our loud, crazy, awesome, intense worship session in the bar. 
The kind of exhaustion that seems to be in your mind, your body, your soul.

It wasn’t a secret why we were there. I don’t know how many people passed by the bar, how many stopped to listen for a while, how many paused long enough to hear some of the words in the songs….how many conversations were happening. I don’t know what God did with that night, but it’s not really my right to know. It’s an experience I will probably never forget – because it felt like there was something real happening…something that really mattered. 

I honestly felt like I was standing in the middle of a war. And I was fighting.

I won’t forget the feeling that stole my heart when we played “God Of This City”, which was written in brokenness, in the red-light district of Thailand. So close to where we now stood. Suddenly the song meant so much more to me than it ever had before – a song crying out for God to rain down on His hurting, blind, deaf, broken people. “Greater things are still to be done in this city,” it seemed like God was telling me. “Yes, greater things have yet to come, I AM not finished with my work here.”