The Real Enemy

 Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

Thanksgiving with my parents and some Thai friends
(Miang is next to my mom in the back row)

I recently had a wonderful time with seven American friends who came to spend two weeks with me in Thailand, followed by a five-week visit from my parents.  Prior to these visits, I had been feeling discouraged and exhausted but, after the extended time with such strong believers, I am encouraged and ready for the battle.  It was such a blessing to be with so many loved ones for so long!

Prayer Necessities:

1.  Please lift up my Thai partner Miang and me as we are trying to establish relationships in some new areas.  Pray that our Gospel presentations to those we meet would be very clear and directed by the Spirit and that the Father would lead us to divine appointments where we encounter women who truly want to hear the Good News.

Helping to baptize Ja was a wonderful experience!

2.  Continue to pray for Ja and Best as they grow in their new faith.  They are both great encouragements to me as I see the changes in them constantly, and Ja, in particular, is sharing her faith with the students at the after-school tutoring center she and her mom lead.  We are hoping to start a new Bible study group at her house after the new year, with the plan to invite any of her interested students to come and learn more about following Jesus.  Please pray with us that this group would develop into a strong and healthy body of new believers.

3.  Please pray for a Christmas party hosted by a local ministry to women in the red-light areas.  Miang and I will be involved in inviting many of these ladies to come and join us for a night of good food, gifts, and a Gospel presentation.  Pray that many of them will be interested in learning more about Christ and will ultimately choose to follow Him.

Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:

Life has its distractions.  If you're anything like me, you feel surrounded by them all the time.

Busyness is my constant companion.  My work and the relationships I strive to maintain take me in varying directions throughout the week, and I feel as if I'm running around like a chicken with its head cut off most of the time.  I'm sure the vast majority of you can relate.  Even when I'm not working, there are still so many things that clamor for my attention:  Internet, music, TV, sports, texting, and any number of other things.  Those things keep my mind occupied and take my focus away from where it needs to be.

As if the daily distractions weren't enough, the leaders of my mission agency (and yours, if you're Southern Baptist), the International Mission Board, made a big announcement a few months ago that 600-800 of our veteran mission personnel needed to leave the organization by the end of this year in order to achieve greater financial stability.  The beginning phase of this process was a voluntary retirement incentive offered to all personnel aged 50 and up who have at least five years of service.   Wow, 50 and 5? Let me tell you, those numbers are staggeringly low.

Since the initial announcement, many of my friends, people I love dearly, have chosen to resign, and it breaks my heart to see them go.  And beyond my own selfish desires to keep my friends here with me, the missionaries around the world who have taken this incentive and are returning to the US represent hundreds of years of cross-cultural service.  I am grieving because I will miss so many of them so deeply, and I am grieving because it seems to me that sending people home from the mission field runs counter to Christ's command to pray that more workers will be sent into these harvest fields.  Don't get me wrong; I know God is sovereign, and He is not surprised by this.  His plans will not be thwarted, not even when we are not doing as we should.  But I cannot seem to keep this subject off my mind lately.

In addition, our world is absolutely rife with fear.  Nearly every day, it seems we're hearing of another terrorist attack, another world disaster, another plane crash.  Police are shooting citizens, and citizens are shooting police.  There is a refugee crisis, and no one knows what to do with people who might be terrorists or might be on the run from terrorists.  I can't open up my Facebook page without seeing friends on both sides of these arguments throwing darts at one another on social media, and it all boils down to fear.  We are absolutely terrified, and our government and its laws seem completely powerless to protect us.

As I've been thinking about all of these things lately, it occurred to me just how effective our enemy really is at misdirection.  While we've been thinking about the next thing on our to-do lists or mourning the retirement of friends or arguing with one another about whether refugees should or should not enter our country, we have forgotten both who our enemy is and who our leader is.

There is a line from the movie, "The Hunger Games, that has been on my mind quite a bit lately.  I realize that is a secular film, but I think there's some truth to this particular quote:  "Remember who the real enemy is."  That's the context of this passage, where Paul urges the Corinthian church to forgive one of its members:

"...so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes."  (2 Cor. 2:11)

We spend far too much time arguing with one another on social media or caught up in our own busy lives, and we have forgotten that we are in a very real war between good and evil that is played out in our lives every day.  We have a very real enemy in the spiritual realm, one who is powerful and resourceful and who is bent on our destruction and one whose schemes we should not underestimate or refuse to acknowledge.  He is good at what he does, and we would be wise to be aware of that.

But the other thing we often forget when our enemy misdirects our attention is that we have a leader, a general, a King, Who is even more powerful and has even better battle tactics than our enemy.  We are guaranteed to win, but wars always result in casualties.  We are given spiritual weapons with which to fight, divinely powerful ones with which we can demolish "strongholds,... arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God" (2 Cor. 10:4-5) and spiritual armor to wear (Eph. 6:10-18).

And, in the midst of this battle that is raging around us, we must NOT fall victim to our enemy's scheme of distraction.  We have been given a point of focus.  His name is Jesus,

"Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."  (Heb. 12:2)

The war will be won.  Let's stay on target.

With seven wonderful American friends and our housekeeper at our rented beach house in Phuket, Thailand

New Family Members!

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

We have two new family members that I am now discipling!  Ja and Best both came to Christ a couple of weeks ago and are learning how to walk with Jesus daily.  It is exciting to be a part of their lives and to see how they are changing!  (Read on for more details.)

Prayer Necessities:

1.  Please be praying for me as I disciple Ja and Best each week.  Pray that I will have wisdom to know what to teach and how to teach it, and pray that I will live my life before them in such a way that they can follow me as I follow Christ.  Please pray that they would search the Scriptures to ensure that what they are learning aligns with God's Word and that they would be obedient to it.

2.  Pray for a group of believers at The Well that will begin meeting together as a church for the first time this week.  Ask that the Spirit would direct us, that we would hear from Him when we meet together, and that He would add to our number.

Dinner at the restaurant where one of our friends now works  

3.  Please ask that the Father would bless our outreach efforts into the red-light areas each week.  I go with two different teams (one Tuesday, one Wednesday) each week.  Please ask that He would draw each team together in unity and that we would reflect Christ to all we meet.  Ask that He would continue to grow our friendships with the women there and that we would have opportunities to share the Gospel with them.

Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:

I had something entirely different in mind for this blog, but something incredible happened this week, and it became my top priority to share with you.  The Lord allowed me to lead my first new believer to Christ!  And, consistent with His character, He even gave above and beyond what I had asked for and gave me not just one but TWO new believers.  I am still bursting with excitement, so you'll probably have to forgive my excessive use of exclamation points in this blog. :)

Let me tell you how it all came to be:

About a year ago, I got a phone call from a missionary friend who lives in another city in Thailand.  She had a friend who knew a lady in Bangkok who wanted to learn English with a native speaker.   Did my friend know anyone who might be willing to teach her?

So my friend called me and asked if I would be willing to do so and, I must admit, I was really reluctant.  This lady was not part of my target group of women working in the red-light areas and, honestly, I can't think of many things I enjoy doing less than teaching English.  I just felt like it would be a distraction from what I was sent here to do.

But then my friend said the magic words:  "She's interested in spiritual things."

So I began meeting with Ja weekly.  We chatted, we played games, we did grammar exercises, we did vocabulary quizzes, and we had a great time together.  From time to time, she would also bring her 16-year-old daughter Best to our English lessons, and I became great friends with both of them.

But the main thing I wanted to do in our English lessons was to share the most important thing there is, so we always read chapters from the Bible during our time together.  We started at creation, and Ja really ate it up.  And she had all of these amazing questions:  Why did God put the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden?  Could the snake walk before God cursed him?  Why didn't God accept Cain's offering?  Why did God destroy all of the people with the flood?  Why did God command Abraham to obey Sarah's wishes and send Hagar and Ishmael away?  Why did God forgive David for such terrible sins as murder and adultery?  Should we pray to Mary?  And the list goes on...

Each week, Ja and I would have these wonderful spiritual conversations, and we always reviewed the previous stories we had studied as well.  At one point, I brought a friend from church with me to our lesson so that Ja could practice her English with another native speaker.  Ja proceeded to accurately relate the stories from creation all the way through the life of Abraham.  Yeah, it was pretty impressive.

Through all of this, I had multiple opportunities to share the Gospel with her, both in English and in Thai.  But it still seemed like it wasn't getting through.  She seemed to love the stories but would then go to make merit at the Buddhist temple.  I knew that one of the major barriers to the Gospel in Thailand is the idea that Christianity is a Westerner's religion, that it's fine for others but that their religion is Buddhism, and to turn from that is to betray their culture.  So I really wanted her to hear the Gospel from someone in her own culture.

I invited her to a social event my church was having on a Friday night.  I knew she wanted to practice her English as much as possible and wanted Best to practice also, so I thought it would be good if they could come and be with my church, which is about half American and half Thai.  They came that night and had a great time, and Ja left saying she wanted to come back soon.

So, when the church planned a weekend retreat at a nearby province just outside of Bangkok, I invited Ja and Best to come along.  I was hoping the Thai believers at my church would share Christ with her and that she would see Truth in a way that she wasn't hearing it from me.  I was overjoyed when they accepted the invitation.

Riding an ATV at a recent church retreat

Once we arrived at the retreat, there was a group time that evening that involved some discussion of Scripture.  When we got back to our cabin afterward, Ja asked me if she needed to come to church every Sunday because she has some difficulties in doing that at the moment.  I was a little confused by that, as she had only attended one social event and never an actual church service, so I asked her, "Ja, are you saying you want to follow Jesus?"  When she said yes, I was overjoyed!

She then proceeded to explain that she had recently talked to her mom and asked her what she would think if Ja chose to follow Christ, and her mom said it was fine.  So she and Best both wanted to become Christians.

I was shocked, since I really didn't think anything I had been saying was getting through.  I tried to be sure she really understood what she was getting into.  My own problem, when I first became a believer, was thinking that Jesus had saved me but that I could continue to live as I wanted to.  He was basically "fire insurance" (salvation from hell) for me; what I didn't realize until later was that surrendering to Christ meant my life was no longer my own.  It now belonged to Him to do with as He wanted, and it was my responsibility to obey, even if (and probably when) that obedience meant suffering.  I explained all of this to Ja, and she responded quietly, "Yes, I understand."

And still... she wanted to follow.

The next day, as I was teaching Ja and Best how to have a quiet time, Ja began to ask me questions that showed how she is really thinking through how to live out her new faith in her culture.  Things like how to continue to show honor to her Buddhist mother but to only worship the One True God.  It was encouraging to see how real this has become to her.

This past week, Ja and I met for our regular English lesson, which has now become a discipleship lesson done in a mixture of English and Thai.  She and Best, separately, are each reading a chapter a day from the book of Mark.  When I asked how things are going, she told me that they are each praying daily.  Best is reading Mark with wide eyes as if she were reading the latest bestseller.  Ja told me that she herself is sharing the stories she has learned with the kids at the after-school center that she and her mom run.  And we are beginning to discuss baptism, which will occur as soon as possible.

Folks, this lady is for real!  She blesses me in so many ways, and it is a joy to call her and Best my new sisters.  What an encouragement it has been to be a part of someone coming to know Jesus, to see how their lives are changed in an instant, and to watch them "get it" and obey it!  It is sometimes so hard in Thailand to continue to share with people who seem so disinterested, but this one makes it all worth it.

Me with Ja (left) and her 16-year-old daughter Best

 Please pray for your new sisters Ja and Best, that they would grow in maturity and in intimacy with the Lord Jesus and that they would continue to walk in obedience.

Seeing Reality

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

The dangerous situation with our friend D has been resolved.  While she remains in a vulnerable state, she is relatively safe for the moment, and we will continue to work with her.  Thank you so much for your prayers, and praise the Lord for her safety and continued openness to having an ongoing relationship with our team of workers.

Prayer Necessities:

1.  Though I cannot share in great detail about D, I can say that she is at great risk for a variety of dangers.  She has been offered an opportunity to do other work but, sadly, is not yet willing to leave her current life because the money she can make to send home to her family is greater than she could make elsewhere.  This is, unfortunately, a common refrain among this population and one that only Christ can overcome.  Please continue to pray that D will come to know Him as the pearl of great price, the One Who is so much more valuable than any amount of money she could ever make.

The kids from my science class acting out a Bible story

2.  Please lift up my two new Bible classes that I will begin teaching at The Well in the beginning of June.  One class will be evangelistic Bible stories, and the other will be a study in the book of Acts in preparation for trying to start a new church with these women.  Pray that the Father would put the right people in each class and that His Word would dwell in their hearts richly.  Ask that they would grasp the concepts and obey them.

Kids learning about the things that come out of hearts when they overflow

3.  Please pray for me, as I am in an extremely busy phase for the next four weeks with a variety of ministry opportunities.  Honestly, I am exhausted but need to push through and be faithful during this time.  Please pray that my minimal time off would be full of refreshment and rejuvenation from the Lord and that I would be faithfully obedient while at work.

Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:

Recently - meaning within the last five years or so - human trafficking has become a really hot topic.  This is good because it means there is increased awareness that this kind of evil exists, which will, hopefully, lead to some help for those who are trapped in that kind of life.  But I think the limited knowledge that most of us have in regards to those who are involved in prostitution now leads into a somewhat romanticized view of the women and, conversely, an overly hateful view of the men.  With that in mind, let me see if I can correct some misconceptions, mostly based on my own admittedly limited experience in ministry to women involved in the sex industry in Thailand.

1.  Pretty Woman is a load of garbage.

A Bangkok red-light area at night

So many of the women I meet - and their families as well - have the idea that prostitution is their ticket out of poverty.  If this young lady can just find herself a rich Western husband in the bars of the red-light districts of Bangkok, her problems are solved.  In a culture that has no concept of right and wrong as established by the One True God, that is highly promiscuous, and that does not prioritize education, a poor woman's one useful resource is her body, and she will leverage it for the benefit of herself and her loved ones.  The price that she will pay tomorrow is a lot harder to see than the money she can make today.

But here's the reality:  There's nothing pretty or romantic about prostitution.  It's a manipulative power play acted out between two people who are each seeking to gratify their own self-interests, and no one finds true love in it.  It's ugly, it's messy, it's dangerous, and it's unfulfilling.  There's no cute, spunky prostitute with the heart of gold who just needs to find her wealthy and handsome Prince Charming in order to live happily ever after.  There's no Julia Roberts, there's no Richard Gere, and there's no snooty-hotel-manager-turned-best-friend.  There are only two broken people, often from two dramatically different cultures, play-acting at a real relationship while only serving themselves.

Prostitution is rooted in money passing through any number of dirty hands, retains its power through the blatant degradation of women and the more subtle but equally dangerous lowering of expectations for men, and surges forward through the fleeting fulfillments of various lusts.

The hard truth is that there is no happily-ever-after following prostitution.  What exists both in and after prostitution is brokenness and abuse and soul-sickness and shame.  Hollywood doesn't seem to want to capture that on film.

2.  The women are victims.  They're also predators.

Most of us are people of extremes.  We learn about human trafficking and see teenagers who are prostitutes in a culture with very little economic opportunity, and we see them as victims who need to be rescued.  And we're right.  They do need that because they are victims.  But their real victimization is to something far more sinister than a trafficker.  

They're in bondage to sin and have been for their entire lives, and they can do nothing but sin because they do not know Christ.  They only know how to surrender their bodies to the power of sin.  Romans explains:

"Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey - whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?"  (Rom. 3:16)

So, yes, these women are victims.  But they're also predators.  They know only too well the power they have as beautiful women, and they wield seduction like a sharp sword to entice men to their deaths.  Proverbs describes the scenario vividly:

"With much seductive speech she persuades him; with her smooth talk she compels him.  All at once he follows her, as an ox goes to the slaughter, or as a stag is caught fast till an arrow pierces its liver; as a bird rushes into a snare; he does not know it will cost him his life."  (Prov. 7:21-23)

I've watched this in action, shaking my head in disgust as I watched women physically grabbing the arms of men who were simply trying to walk down a busy street, doing their best to sweet-talk him into taking them home.  This didn't occur on a street in the red-light district, mind you, but on a busy thoroughfare through the downtown area, so these were not men who were actively seeking this out. And when they are actively seeking out the woman, the enticement is all the more powerful.

3.  Men are also both victims and predators.

When I first moved to Bangkok, I prayed that the Lord would help me to not become bitter and hateful toward men.  Having at least a small idea of the things I would eventually see, I knew that the potential was there, because it was very obvious how the customers exploited the women.  But I didn't want to go through life hating half the population of this planet, most of whom were not directly involved in this exploitation, so I asked God for help, and the Father was faithful to answer that prayer.

Pattaya's red-light district in the daytime

During my first week in Thailand, I spent a lot of time walking through the red-light areas in order to familiarize myself with them, and most of that time was spent praying.  As I walked down one particular street in the middle of the afternoon, I passed several open-air bars and saw dozens of older white men, and I found myself so disgusted that I could barely look at them.  I began to pray that the Lord would break the chains that kept these women in that life and that He would free them from their bondage.

Immediately, I heard His quiet voice say, "Don't you think the men are in bondage, too?"

That stopped me in my tracks and totally changed my perspective.  Because yes, yes, they are.  Their bondage may look different than mine and than other women's and even than other men's.  But they are in bondage as well and are desperately in need of Christ just like the rest of us.  They are no more unworthy of compassion and of the Gospel than I was.

4.  Ending prostitution is not and cannot be the ultimate goal.

Estimates vary, but Bangkok has somewhere in the neighborhood of 400,000 prostitutes, and Thailand as a whole has about half a million.  Half.  A.  Million.  500,000.  That is more people than the populations of some cities I've lived in.  It is a staggering number.

Prostitution is frequently referred to as "the world's oldest profession."  While not technically true (according to Genesis, that distinction belongs to farming), it has still been around for quite a while and will, in all likelihood, continue until the Lord returns.  If the goal of my ministry were to end prostitution in Thailand, I would feel completely overwhelmed by the task because it's an exercise in futility.  How does one even begin to stem the flow of a raging sea of women rushing to the city to enter this industry?

Thankfully, the goal God has given me is very different:  It is to make disciples of these women.  While at times, that seems just as impossible as ending prostitution - and it is... for me! - the Lord is the One Who ultimately accomplishes it, and the end results are far more satisfying.

If we manage to successfully end prostitution here, seeing every former sex worker with a "good" job but never introducing them to Jesus, what eternal good have we done?  We have accomplished nothing because those women will still die in their sins, living lives of futility that bring no glory to their Creator.

But if even one person comes to know Christ, her life will be changed forever, and that will have a ripple effect on others as well.  Throughout the narrative of Scripture, God cares about "the one."  Nowhere is this more clear than in Luke 15, when the shepherd leaves the 99 sheep who are with him in order to go and seek out the one who is lost.  My goal is to look for the one and to introduce her to the Shepherd.  He'll take it from there.

5.  Jesus is able to transform these lives just as readily as He was able to transform mine.

As I so often tell these ladies, the only difference between me and them is that I know Jesus.  This Son of Man Who met the legalistic Saul, a man who killed thinking he was offering service to God, and transformed him into Paul, an apostle to be emulated and the writer of half our New Testament, is the same Christ Who met me in the filthy mire of my own iniquity and changed me into a daughter over whom He rejoices.  If this same Jesus can turn the uneducated and cowardly Peter of the High Priest's courtyard into the bold and articulate spokesman of His Truth of Pentecost, He can certainly turn a woman of the night into a Princess of the King.

The Spirit of Jesus has a way of changing lives.  And it's really cool to watch it, even when the process sometimes has its ups and downs.

There's No Such Thing as Karma

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

I recently had the joy of being able to share the Gospel with a young lady named “Kat” (read on for her story).  She is one of a very few people whom I have met that seems to have real interest in Jesus, and she even asked to attend a church service with me when she has time off work.  It is exciting to see how the Father is pursuing her!

Prayer Necessities:

1.  Please be in prayer for me to have wisdom to know how to use my time.  There are so many ways my time could be spent in ministry, but I want to hear His voice and obey it, doing only what He tells me to do.  Please pray that I would walk in the Spirit at all times and would know what to do each day.

2.  Please pray for me as I teach science to a group of kids at The Well for the next couple of months during their summer break from school.  We do science experiments and learn related Bible stories (for example, we made a rainbow from different colored liquids of varying densities to illustrate the story of Noah, the flood, and God's promise of a rainbow).  Pray that I would communicate the stories well and that the kids would get a clear picture of God and His plan of salvation through the lessons.

The kids preparing to make rainbows

The best rainbow of the bunch!

3.  Lift up Kat and the time that I get to spend with her (read her story below).  Pray that her heart would be open to receive salvation and that her eyes would be opened to the Truth.

Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:

I frequently hear Americans – and even American Christians – talk about “karma.”  There are all kinds of humorous pictures and videos posted on Facebook in reference to how this or that person who has done something “bad” will get their comeuppance in some sort of appropriate way.  For example, there’s a video of a man who moves a cat from a chair in a none-too-gentle way, grabbing it by the scruff of the neck and then giving it a shove with his foot.  He then proceeds to sit in the chair previously occupied by the cat, which happens to be just underneath the stairs.  The cat, in its hurry to get away from the man, bounds up the stairs and inadvertently knocks a plant right onto the man’s head.  “Oh, ha ha!” say many of the comments.  “Instant karma.”

Karma is a Hindu concept, but it’s deeply engrained in Thai culture as well, since Thai Buddhism is heavily influenced by Hinduism.  Essentially, the idea of karma is that every evil you’ve ever done is repaid to you by the universe in some fashion.  Nothing is ever forgotten, everything must be paid for, and you are the only one who can pay for it.

Can you see how this is in direct opposition to the Gospel?  The part of the concept of karma that is true is that every evil must be repaid.  However, it is not some nebulous “universe” that demands repayment but by a holy God Who is the very one who defined what is good and what is evil.  And it is not repaid directly to us if we have chosen to believe in Christ but is instead repaid by the Son of God Himself.  That is the very essence of the Gospel, that we don’t have to pay our sin debt for ourselves because we could never repay it!

So why is it that even Christians laughingly throw about the term “karma” as if it were a joking matter?  It’s not.  It’s pure falsehood from an evil enemy, lies that keep billions of people trapped in a bondage that tells them they can never escape from their own wickedness and that everything that happens to them – from sickness to financial problems to injustices done to them by others – is the result of their own evil deeds and is merely something to be passively accepted because it can never be changed.

I realize that, in America, we don’t have much knowledge of Hinduism or of Thai Buddhism.  Perhaps you never even knew this is what karma meant or the implications of it.  But, please, my friends, I beg of you:  Don’t throw around the word “karma” as though it were something true.  There is no such thing as karma.  There is only a Sovereign God Who is ultimately in control of the universe He created, and He is long-suffering with those Who rebel against Him.  He is not some vindictive Being out there just waiting for the moment when we do something wrong so that He can let us have it.  He is patient and loving far beyond what we deserve, and He rejoices not in punishment but in lavishing His grace upon sinners.  Let me just give you one example of what He’s really like:

About a month ago, I was involved in an event to women in the red-light areas, which was put on by a local ministry.  We planned a nice dinner at a nearby hotel for weeks.  There was a vast array of excellent food, beautiful roses for each woman, fun games, good music, and a time of testimony by a Thai believer.  We were excited about doing this for our friends, and we told them about it multiple times for a couple of weeks before the event.

Thai believer Joom sharing her testimony

The day arrived, and we went to the hotel to begin setting everything up.  But, as we walked down the street, we were shocked to find all of the bars closed and very few people milling about.  It happened to be a major Buddhist holiday (none of our friends informed us of this when we mentioned the date of our party), and the red-light area bore a shocking resemblance to a ghost town.  It was too late to cancel things, and the hotel had already been paid.  What would we do?

We were reminded of Jesus’ parable of a great banquet that had been prepared for many guests, but they all made excuses not to come.  When the homeowner heard the excuses, he told his servants to bring in the crippled and blind to his banquet.  After that had been done, there was still room, so he told his servants this:

“Go out into the highways and along the hedges, and compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled.” (Lk. 14:23)

With those words in our minds, we went out and invited as many as we could find to come to our party.  Most turned us down, but we did find a group of seven – three older women, two younger women, three transvestites, all of them free-lance prostitutes – who were willing to come with us.  As this motley crew of Thais and Americans walked down the street to the hotel, one of the younger women with us stopped in front of a restaurant to invite some friends who were sitting on a nearby bench.

As this new friend invited her friends to our party, I heard a Thai voice behind us urging them to go with us:  “These people are Christians.  They want to help you.  You should go with them!”

Needless to say, I was pretty shocked, so I turned around to see that this new voice belonged to a waitress at the restaurant.  Her name was “Kat” and, when I asked her if she was a Christian, she said no but that she had a lot of respect for Christians because they really help people.  The rest of our group continued on to the hotel, but I remained engaged in conversation with this new friend for the next 20 minutes.  She even specifically asked me about Easter, and I was able to explain how Christ came to die for our sins and how His resurrection means that we can have eternal life in Him.  When I said this, she rubbed her arms and said, “I’ve got goosebumps!”

It was tremendously exciting to me to meet someone with real interest in this wonderful news I have to share!  Kat and I made plans to go out for dinner on her next day off from work.  When that day finally came, I met her and one of her friends for dinner, and Kat immediately wanted to know more about Jesus.  So I began at creation and told her the whole story.

I wish I could tell you Kat became a follower of Jesus that day.  She didn’t, but she is still open to hearing more.  And, rather than using some karmic fist to pound her into the ground for her sins, the Sovereign God Who continues to lovingly pursue her used a Buddhist holiday, bar closings, a group of people on a bench, and the previous actions of Christians to be able to bring to her the story of how He took upon Himself that punishment for her sins that she believes can only be repaid through lifetimes of karma and its unmerciful retribution.

That’s the kind of God we serve.  Not only is He long-suffering and unfathomably loving towards sinners, but He also pursues them to the ends of the earth and through miraculously ordained circumstances.

There is no karma.  There is only the One True God Who is ultimately in control of both punishment and forgiveness.

Let’s be certain that we’re proclaiming that truth and not perpetuating the lie.

Me with two of my Bible storying students