Humans vs. Robots

The nature within me is always warring against the flesh. In fact, the Bible tells me so:

“For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” Galatians 5:17

I sit in a room filled with light and heat yet I feel ice cold.

Cold to the things that God sees.

I feel as though I am staring at robots,
un-relatable, clanky, mechanic, predictable.

They muster about their day completely distant objects to me.

I can’t understand their beeps and movements because they are…..robotic… at war with the humanity in me. Flawed though it may be.

I stare them in the eyes and feel nothing.
I shake their hand, I feel nothing but cold metal against my warm flesh.

I rattle my brain and try to see… I know it’s there. The robots trapped in the mechanics of their minds.

from pinterest

What I would give to peel back the layers and see the skin beneath.

I fall to my knees and I see glimmers of hope.

Eyes become flesh-like, deep and full of thought.

Slowly but surely I see the humanity within.

That I am just as broken as a machine.

I go back and forth. I see the metal hands and heart turn to flesh, again relatable and I get excited. Can robots become fully human and humans fully robotic? This I am not sure of. The answers lay deep in the processes of the mind. Lay in my belief in the God of the universe and His power to change even a heart of stone. Surely metal is no problem for Him.

But in the daily battle of the robotic vs. the human, I wonder how it will all turn out. The weapons I’ve been handed can surely endure.

“But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.” Galatians 5:18

Grace is the law that governs, no law of my own mind or law of man, and I am convinced that truth will set free. The battle goes on, but I surrender. Surrender that in Humans vs. Robots, if God is the victor then I am the victor.

 

 

Hear Their Cries….

So many faces flood through my mind. So many relationships, so little time. That’s how I’ve been feeling with the end of MTS closer than I am willing to admit. How do I choose which relationships to pursue? I can’t choose all of them… but they all deserve to be pursued. In the bars I seem to click with a lot of the girls…but I want to get to know each of them, to hear their heart’s cry, to encourage them and to simply be friends.

But… there is someone who hears the cries of the afflicted…

“You hear O’Lord , the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them and listen to their cry.” Psalms 10:17

 

Some days I just feel the weight of it all…. there is so much pain.  It seems like I could never pray enough. It’s not just the girls in the bars, its my family, its my friends at home, its my team and their families, it’s the trafficked and the trafficker. Health problems, drugs, relationship problems…. brokenness, the list goes on.

 And then these song lyrics hit me….like spoke to my heart….you could call it a revelation…

The truth is that God is wrapping His arms around the world every night, from my family in America, to this ministry in Thailand. He is drawing every last person to Himself.

 He is singing over my friend who just lost her mom while He is singing over Bangla Road. Even when we leave and relationships become long distance; the Lord hears each cry and He brings comfort. Jesus fills the gap.

 

 From babies hidden in the shadows

To the cities shining bright

There are captives weeping

Far from sight

For every doorway has a story

And some are holding back the cries

But there is One who hears in the night

 

Here are few of their stories, a few of their cries.

We met her while prayer walking one day, on a street we had never been to before… a completely divine encounter. I call her Freedom, because that is her inheritance and because she lights up every time it’s mentioned (isa la pop). She works in a bar off Bangla, a simple bar with one plastic table and chairs and a counter. We know where most of their business comes from…. We’ve had the privilege of many dates with Freedom, including her Birthday and many meals together. At her bar, they call us family.

She always tells us how bored she is, and on her Birthday with a look of desperation, she told me that she wants to leave, just leave and do life somewhere else. There is so much potential waiting to be unleashed.

If her visa is approved, she will be headed to Sweden after seeing her baby in Northern Thailand. She is leaving to open a bar with a “friend.” The situation seems dangerous, there is a possibility of trafficking… but all she wants is freedom.

God is wrapping His arms around her.

 

Great God

Wrap Your arms around this world tonight

Around the world tonight

And when You hear our cries

Sing through the night

So we can join in Your song

And sing along

We’ll sing along

 

She was wearing a baggy t-shirt, with sleeves rolled up, a plaid mini-skirt and fishnet stockings. The stark contrast between the baggy shirt and what she was wearing on the bottom half caught my attention.

She didn’t look a day over 18, but claimed to be 20. It was her third day working in the bars; still gleaming with innocence.  

 She smiled with a mouth full of braces and made a cross with her fingers when I said  pra’ jesu (Jesus). I lit up with delight. It was so encouraging to meet someone who has at least heard of Jesus!! She went on to spill her heart to me. We talked about Buddha, Jesus what I do, how she got there, some of her aspirations. And I know there is more just waiting to come out. In a thirty-minute conversation that felt like an hour, we became instant friends.

God is singing over her.

 

From the farthest corners of the earth

Still His mercy reaches

Even to the pain we cannot see

And even through the darkness

There’s a promise that will keep us

There is One who came to set us free

 

I sat down on the bus and the girl across from me struck up a conversation with my friends. She goes to school in Bangkok and is in Phuket visiting her boyfriend. She asked us what we were doing here and we told her that we are here to help women.

We got on the subject of Jesus and she explained how she wanted to be Christian, but her Buddhist father rejected such a thing. Woah. For the rest of the bus ride God opened the door for us to pour into her. We told her that the Lord loved her, had a divine purpose for her and that He would bless her for following Him even if her family didn’t understand. Divine encounter?? I think yes!

God sees the desires of her heart.

 

So let Your song rise

And fill up the earth

Let Your hope ring out

Let Your heart be heard

 

As I fall asleep singing this song after a night on Bangla Road, sick of the lights, sick of the affliction and sick of the pain that I see; I pray that the world would feel the Lord’s embrace.

God sees, He hears and He listens. 

The Enemy’s Assault on God’s Beauty Campaign

Underwear padded to enhance the look of someone’s butt…….

Now that’s disturbing….

Lets be real for a moment. At first glance, hysterically funny, slightly surprising and awkward…but when I thought about it more, a store that sells padded underwear really exemplifies the enemy’s assault on beauty.

Really though, the enemy is absolutely assaulting beauty, and it doesn’t take much searching to find it. This culture is filled with things like butt enhancing underwear, blue contact lenses on beautifully dark Asian eyes, skin whitening agents, and ads with Thai women who are photo-shopped to look American.

Somehow we’ve been deceived into believing that what we are is not enough.

Every last store on the fourth floor of the mall has something to do with weight loss, Botox, hair, make-up or manicures. I can feel the enemy’s deception creeping in seemingly innocent ways every time I walk past the sterile, glass-boxed stores that scream:

  “YOU’RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH.”

I’m sick of believing that lie, but much more so, I’m sick of seeing it in the lives of women that I know. It’s a lie that started in The Garden. Satan isn’t creative, he has been whispering lies about beauty since the beginning. We believe it for a variety of reasons, but the outcome tends to be the same. Powerful, worthy women shrinking back into a world of hurt, pain and shame.

…”but the Lord looks at the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7

For weeks now the Lord has been campaigning in my heart to show me what beauty really is. His beauty campaign is not surprisingly, a process where I’m finding what my worth and value have been rooted in. There have been many days that I would rather wallow in the shame than look in the eyes of my maker who tells me:

“You are all together beautiful my darling, there is no flaw in you.” Song of Songs 4:7

Day after day the Lord has been pursuing me with His beauty. The other day I had about 8 different people tell me that I’m beautiful. Now that doesn’t happen everyday… After the 8^th one, with tears in my eyes, I finally looked up and said, “I get it.”

He really wants my attention with this one…

In the bars, beauty is absolutely annihilated. One of the most common conversations I find myself trying to escape is not one about how the women hate their jobs and don’t get to see their children. It’s one where the girls are pointing out their flaws. Ahhhhhh it hurts my heart!!! THAT IS NOT OK!

I want to tell every last one of them, “You are a daughter of God. You have been deceived. You are worthy, loved and absolutely beautiful in Christ. You are His bride.”

….because I’ve been there far too many times….

It goes much deeper…. Women told all their life that to be sexy is to be beautiful, and to be sexy means to be like the girls on Bangla road, prostituted for the pleasure of men.

Where does it end??

Everywhere I look I may see the twisted form of beauty that the enemy wants us to believe as truth, but every now and again I get to see a glimpse of what God sees when He looks at me and every other woman… His perfect, flawless, true beauty.

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