Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:
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| Several of the ladies from our cell group |
Prayer Necessities:
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| A couple of sweet kids during a cell group meeting |
1. Please be in prayer for this new cell group as they learn how to be the church to one another. Ask that the Father would bring men into the group (only a very few of the ladies are married to believers, and those men work seven days a week to provide for their families). Pray that they would all catch the vision for making disciples of their neighbors.
2. Lift up my new friends W, M, and J. They are three young ladies who work in a go-go bar that I visited this week. W seems particularly fond of me, and I am hopeful that we can build our friendship. Please pray that I would have wisdom to know how to share the love of Christ with her and that she and her two friends would be good soil in which to plant the good seed of the Gospel.
3. Next week, I will be attending a meeting of Christian workers from this part of the world. Please pray that it would be a time of refreshment and encouragement for all of us and that we would "spur one another on toward love and good deeds" (Heb. 10:24).
Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:
Warning: This blog may not be appropriate for young children. Parents, please use discretion.
I have debated whether or not to write this post. I was unsure whether it was appropriate for a mixed audience - or for any audience. To be honest, I'm still not sure. But what I want to share has already brought me to a greater understanding of the people to whom I minister, and I'm hoping it will do the same for you. So here goes:
Last week, I went three times to do outreach in the red-light areas, seeking to meet some of the women who work there and build relationships with them. The first and third times, I made a nighttime venture to a street that is notorious for its seduction, alcohol, and foreign tourists. It's decadent, it's disgusting, and it's depressing.
And, yet, it was much less so than my second outreach experience.
The second time I went on outreach was to a different part of town with two Thai national partners on a Wednesday afternoon. You'd think it'd be easier going in the day and going with Thai nationals and, in some ways, it was. There's no language barrier that they have to fight through to communicate with these women, and they've been going to this area for years. They have many established relationships there and are freely able to chat away with the seemingly unlimited number of free-lance sex workers throughout the area.
I won't describe what I saw except to say that it made the other area look pretty and almost tame. It was heavy, oppressive, so weighted down by Satan and his deceptions that every person we saw seemed draped in hopelessness like a heavy wool coat. Faces drooped, eyes downcast. And, yet, there were moments of genuine laughter when my Thai teammates cracked a joke. You could see hope break through the oppression then, and I know that, despite appearances, God's Spirit is at work in this place, too. He loves these people profoundly, knowing every unspeakable act they've ever committed - and ever will - and yet still pursuing them relentlessly.
When it was time to go, we walked up the street to flag down a taxi. We stopped for a few minutes to chat with a few young sex workers sitting by the side of the road and, then, my teammates signaled for a cab. In the intervening moments between calling for the taxi and the vehicle actually pulling up to the curb, I got some insight into my people group's worldview in a way that I never expected.
A man who looked to be in his 30s walked up to me, obviously drunk or well on his way to it, and he slurred the word, "Hello," to me in English. Weighing my options, I decided to respond - not being rude but certainly not being friendly. I answered curtly with the traditional Thai greeting. He asked, again in English, where I was from, and I responded in Thai that I was from America. At that point, he asked me another question - this time in Thai - but I didn't understand what he was asking. I looked to my friends for help and was surprised to hear them saying very clearly, "No, she doesn't want that." When I turned back around to see what they were rejecting on my behalf, I saw the man holding out a wad of money, and I realized what he was asking of me.
That wasn't the first time I'd ever been propositioned, but it was definitely the first time money was involved. And somehow, I experienced an entire range of humans emotions in the span of sixty seconds or less.
The first thing I felt was shock. It was such a surreal moment. Did that really just happen? I thought. Despite my current ministry, I wasn't prepared for that experience. Let me be perfectly clear here: I was, in no way, dressed provocatively. I was wearing baggy blue jeans and a long T-shirt. The only skin showing was that on my forearms and on my face.
The shock quickly morphed into several different emotions. One of the most prominent was anger. How dare this man think I would give him something as precious as myself in exchange for even the most invaluable commodity, let alone for something as worthless as money? Why would he insult me in such a way? I wanted to respond physically - to hit the guy, to slap that dirty money out of his dirty hands, to scream at him that I wasn't a thing to be bought but a human being of infinite worth. I didn't respond in that way, but I definitely wanted to.
I also felt disgust. The thought of sharing something so intimate with a perfect stranger, one with whom I'd exchanged little more than two sentences of conversation, was utterly repulsive. I couldn't, for the life of me, understand why he would want such a thing - nor why he would think I would.
That thought made me feel sadness, both for him and for the women who do this for a living. To see them settle for something so much less than what God has to offer them almost brought tears to my eyes.
And then, once inside the safety of the taxi, I felt stupid and ashamed. One of my Thai teammates very gently educated me on the dangers of "being friendly" to the men in this area (though my actions toward this man were nothing that I ever would have classified as "friendly" before that day). I berated myself internally for being too trusting, for being a gullible idiot who responded to this guy's questions in the first place. You should have known better, I told myself. I realized later that I could not have known this beforehand and that only life in a desperately sinful world would dictate that one can't even respond to a simple greeting, but I felt stupid nonetheless.
And, yet, underneath all of those other emotions clamoring for my mental attention in the moment, I recognized the one that I hated the most.
Pride.
I was flattered that this man wanted me. Though we were standing near a group of young and very beautiful women, he had chosen me - and I liked that. It didn't matter that the transaction was merely a financial one or that the man was drunk. It still made me feel special and desirable and, even coming from the most repulsive and insincere of sources, that is a powerful feeling.
I'm ashamed to admit that even now. I hate to own up to the fact that I'm susceptible to such weakness, to what I consider with some disdain to be "girly" emotions, but it's the truth.
It was only as I was thinking and praying through it all later that I realized that most of the ladies I work with feel that emotion also - and all of those others, too.
I never would have chosen this particular means of learning empathy for the women that I came to serve. I would much prefer to have just talked with them and heard their stories, perhaps over dinner or even tea in some cozy little shop. I would have listened intently and taken a very genuine interest, but I doubt the lesson would ever have been as profound - or as well-learned.
I would have chosen to learn about their lives in a very sterile and academic fashion, one that didn't really require much emotional investment on my part. See, I don't particularly like emotions. I pride myself on being a logical thinker, and I strive to be very rational in my approach to life. Things are much neater that way - or so I think. Emotions are messy and uncontrollable, spilling over like tears onto my very neatly arranged attempts to order my life and leaving little droplets of chaos in their wake.
But these women - these beautiful ladies that I love with the love of Christ and whom I want to serve - are highly emotional beings, often to extremes. They struggle with anger, with depression, with anxiety, with shame, with that sense of pride in their ability to get a man's attention. In short, they experience every emotion I felt that afternoon - and frequently run through that gamut of emotions in the same minuscule period of time.
Our Creator, who made us in His image, is an emotional being, One Who feels anger, happiness, sadness, grief, and everything in between and, being the good Creator that He is, He gave us those emotions as well. Like the other parts of us, including our rational minds, those emotions are fallen and can lead us into trouble, but they are not bad in and of themselves.
That same Creator is also a very good Teacher, One Who is willing to go to great lengths to conform us to the image of His Son. Apparently, He even makes use of such unconventional methods as the sin of a drunken stranger on a busy street in order to increase my compassion toward His lost sheep and to equip me to better reach them.
Lesson learned, Lord. And I hope I never forget it.
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| With one of the senior ladies from my church |
