This month we’re staying at a hostel owned by AIM (the parent organization over the World Race) in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We’ve been painting and doing renovations to welcome future WR teams and outside guests. I’ve been struggling with what to write a blog about because it’s hard to write about painting white walls.
But today half of my team is spending the day in intercessory prayer. Praying for the long-term missionaries here, the hostel, the café downstairs, and the surrounding red-light district where women, men, and children are sex trafficked.
While we were in Cambodia, several of the guys on our squad, including our mentor, were approached by women on the streets of Siem Reap and asked if they wanted to have sex for $30, or whatever their price was. It is heartbreaking that these women are conditioned to believe so little of themselves, that they offer their bodies for money.
Even just traveling through the city in our tuk-tuks we saw men (usually older) with young, Khmer women in short, tight dresses and we knew what was going on. We began asking each other how could these men do this? It’s just disgusting. They’re disgusting.
During that time in Siem Reap we had a day set aside for the women and men of our squad to have separate time to just hang out and share. But it wasn’t the same as the last time. The men of our squad ended up coming into our “lady time” and individually, handed us each a rose, washed all of our feet, and apologized for any men that have ever hurt us in the past. It was a sweet, sweet time of just letting them serve us in that way and watching them humble themselves to do that for us was beautiful.
So, today, as I was sitting, praying for the victims of human trafficking in Thailand, I began to think about the men who participate and, either, sell or buy these women, men, or even children. What happened in their lives that makes them so different from our squadmates, our mentor, and our coach? What happened to them that set their lives on this path that they buy women for their bodies?
These men are just as broken and lost as the victims, maybe even more so, because they don’t see the sin in their actions. And if they do, they continue to act on it. They need to be ministered to just as much as the victims.
I began to pray for conviction in their hearts. That as soon as they set foot in the red-light district they feel a conviction so strong they literally can’t take another step. I prayed that they couldn’t explain this feeling except that it was the Holy Spirit and that it makes them curious for God. That this conviction of their sin turns their heart to God.
But conviction and shame are different. I prayed that when, not if, they turn to the Lord that they find freedom in His forgiveness, His love, not shame. I didn’t pray for them to forget what they’ve done, because those women deserve to be remembered, but for all shame to be erased and for them to KNOW they are forgiven fully for everything – every sin.
No matter what we’ve done, what we’ve said, what we’ve thought, we have forgiveness and freedom in the Lord.
There’s a song by For All Seasons called “No Other Name” and some of it goes,
Open arms on the cross
Oh the pain, on the cost
By Your blood, all things are made new
All my chains breaking free
Miracles still happening
Nothing is impossible with You
No other name
Carries the power to save
Crushes the power of the grave
But Jesus
No other hope
Can silence the fear in our souls
Our Saviour is King over all
Jesus
His name holds the power to save, to erase our sins, to break our chains of guilt and shame. We don’t have to do anything except call out to Jesus. There is freedom in just saying His name.
