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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Pattaya's red-light district in the daytime |
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.
