Open Up My Eyes

God is still doing quite a work on my heart.  I keep pushing my way through the research and the stories, the facts and the figures, the tragedy and the hope.  I am anxious to really get started on what God would have me do.  I have been researching and gathering information for presentations, working with Jeannie on reviewing our church's purchases, and making plans.  Plans for what to do here in mid-MO and plans for a trip, God-willing. 

During this process though, I have started to get discouraged.  I feel like God is moving me to take a trip to Thailand and see the effects of trafficking with my own eyes.  To truly open up my eyes to what is breaking His heart.  Twice, I thought I had the money to fund at least part of the trip and then things keep coming up that seem like they are blocking it ~ loss of both part time incomes, car problems with 3 of the 4 vehicles, a wrecked truck, a clutch going out in a car, the list goes on (and on and on).

It is so easy to give in to the discouragement, to just give up, because it seems like every time I turn around something else has gone south. 

But God knows my heart and He wants me to have the same passion He does for these people, so He did two things.

1) The movie "Not Today" came out on DVD on August 6th.  I was so looking forward to seeing it that I pre-ordered and had it in my hand on August 6th.  Then it took me 23 days to finally sit down and finally watch it.

Wow.  That is all I can say.  It is an amazing movie about God using a vacation to break one young man's heart for the hurting and the poor in the trafficking industry of India.

This young man has a courage I cannot even imagine.  I know it is a fiction movie, but there are people in this big world who have done what this man did or something like it.  It pushes the drive in me even more to see this for myself.  To be changed by it. 

2) I am currently doing the David Platt study "Follow Me".  Before it started the other day, someone at church asked me about my trip.  I gave the basics - hoping to still raise funds to go, being discouraged, want to go in late fall.  When I went to Bible Study, I texted her then to ask what made her think of it.  She said, "God has laid it on my heart.  I want to do what I can either donate personally or help with a fundraiser."  We talked more later about what my discouragement was about and she encouraged me.

Wait...did God use people from church THREE times to motivate me?  Yes.  (First time was when a friend told me of her vision of what my role was to look like and another asked me to speak in the future ~ see The Rest of the Story).  He is using others to push me forward.  I cannot even begin to tell you how much that made my heart happy.  Every time I get discouraged or think I can't, He sends  me someone to tell me I can.

So, in the Bible Study, we studied that Matthew tells us that Jesus told His disciples at least six times to "follow me".  They were to leave their families, jobs, possessions, even a dead relative to follow Him.  His ministry was short and demanded their full attention and commitment that although his demands seem radical, it was because of the urgency of the message.  I have been looking at my own life over the last two weeks - since starting this study - and I wonder if my life looks different.  If I am "following Him". God has chosen each of us to do something for His kingdom work.  I believe He has put trafficking in front of me for a reason.  I believe He has looked me in the face and said, "Follow me.  Follow me down this scary, dark path.  Be the light to someone.  Be a fisher of men, of women, of children."

Maybe I won't be able to save a life from a trafficker's grip.  Maybe I won't be the one who prevents another life from suffering these horrors.  But maybe, just maybe, I can be a small light, plant a small seed, bring hope.  I truly believe it is what I am supposed to do. 

SO...I will be doing some small fundraisers.  These are to raise money for a trip that will allow me to go into the Red Light District, prayer walk, see and truly understand the brokenness and darkness, and I will even be able to go to a rescue home that cares for children after they have been rescued from the traffickers/sex industry.  I need to see the depravity and allow it to truly break my heart so that in my broken heart I can be more motivated to help end slavery/trafficking. 

If you wish to donate new or craft items to an online auction, donate used items for a yard sale, have any brilliant ideas on fundraisers, or just wish to donate, please let me know.  The online auction will be coming up soon and has some great items already. 

I covet your prayers ~ for me, for this trip, for my journey, and more importantly for those impacted by trafficking - the victims, the traffickers, the slave owners, and the johns. 

Truly this is my prayer (from Hillsong's Hosanna) -

Heal my heart and make it clean
Open up my eyes to the things unseen
Show me how to love like You have loved me

Break my heart from what breaks Yours
Everything I am for Your kingdom's cause
As I walk from earth into eternity

 

James 4:17

I heard this verse again this weekend during the Pastor's sermon.  This verse has haunted ~ wait, that isn't the right word ~ convicted me repeatedly over the last year and a half.  It started with the study of James. 

If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.  ~James 4:17

Once you know the good you are to do and don't do it, it is sin.

James is talking about many things here.  Following His will, tithing, making disciples, praying.  There is so much more.

Learn to do right; seek justice.  Defend the oppressed.  Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. ~Isaiah 1:17

And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. ~Micah 6:8

Conviction isn't really conviction if all I do is FEEL convicted.  True conviction means you feel, you KNOW, that you aren't doing something you should or that you are doing something that you shouldn't, then making that change.  You change, you transform, your actions. 

I have been riding out the feelings of conviction for far too long, and now I need to really focus on transformation.  The kind that gets me off my backside and puts me out in the world.  The kind that no longer reads about or researches or gathers tools for fighting trafficking but puts those words and pieces of information and tools to work.  The kind that pushes me outside my comfort zone to spread awareness of this growing epidemic.  The kind that puts me in places where God is ready for people to hear and be uncomfortable in their "doing nothing"-ness.  The kind that sees first hand what true, deep darkness and despair looks like when I look into the eyes of someone who has been trafficked.  The kind that has me fully depending on God.  The kind that puts me where God leads me in order to do what I was put on this planet to do - spread the gospel. 

If we were put here to do anything other than spread the gospel and make more disciples, God would take each and every one of us as soon as we were saved by grace and mercy.  He doesn't.  He prepares us for taking the gospel into the world.  He prepares us to fight injustice and help the poor and needy.  He prepares us to defend the widow and the orphan.  He prepares us where He convicts us. 

So here I go.  Take a step out on faith.  Taking steps to take my conviction to transformation.

Once you know...

The Rest of the Story

So I left off, back in April, with a presentation for a friend of mine.  While I was talking, the information just came to me, it just rolled off my tongue.  Sure, I had done research.  Sure I had notes.  But these weren't my words.  God gave me the words and the confidence.  Unfortunately, I ran over time.  A LOT.  I didn't get to talk about fair trade adequately, because I had spent so much time discussing sex trafficking.

My heart is really in the sex trafficking side of it. 

Don't get me wrong.  I, by no means, belittle the horrific violence and brutality that accompanies trafficking for labor or for organ harvesting.  They are equally as horrifying.  Something just strikes a chord with me when it comes to sex trafficking.  I cannot even imagine the shame, the guilt, the sickness, the violence, the depravity that accompanies the crime of sex trafficking.  It completely blows my mind.

But back to the presentation.  I felt at home when I was giving this presentation.  Like everything I had been doing since quitting my job for the state was in preparation for this new phase.  I felt God was revealing to me that I was to be talking about trafficking here in Moniteau County.  That He planned for me to make trafficking known.  That I was to introduce fair trade products to friends, family, and neighbors.  No longer would I just post trafficking information on Facebook or participate in trafficking events at church.  He planned for me to speak up.  The more people know the better chance we have of eradicating trafficking and slavery in our world.  I felt this before and during the presentation, all the way to my toes, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what it would look like.  Or if I was imagining this.

Another friend of mine was there during the presentation and she had a vision.  In it I was giving presentations on trafficking and there were visuals and examples, etc.  She told me what it looked like in her vision.  I caught a glimpse in her vision and that is when I knew for sure what He was revealing.

I was so excited to finally have a part in His plan.  I studied and researched and read books.  I watched movies and documentaries and videos.  I wrote and prepared slides and presentations.

Finally.  I knew what I was supposed to do.

Then I got my hands on a book called "Refuse to Do Nothing: Finding Your Power to Abolish Modern-Day Slavery" by Shayne Moore and Kimberly McOwen Yim.  Everything I felt was written in this book.  It was as if I was walking in the authors' footsteps, down to the question of what my role was.  This book inspired me to start taking the steps down the path where God was leading me.  This book helped me figure out what to do.  I am still reading it and I am still learning what my role is and what it will look like.  I am excited to finally have a direction.

Then I received a call from someone asking me to do a presentation in early 2014 about trafficking.  Another reassurance that I had understood correctly. 

Then I stepped back a little in May and June.  I was so busy.  I was so tired.  I was focusing on other things.  I didn't desert this plan.  Life just stepped in.  I am ready to move on and not let life keep me from this any longer.  It is still so very important to me to follow God's will and inform anyone who will listen about this horror.  

My hope is that in the future I will be able to see this tragedy for myself.  I am hoping to go on a trip in late 2013 that will truly open my eyes to trafficking. 

Please pray for me that satan will stop throwing me curveballs and if I am supposed to go on this trip, that the funds will be there to go.  Please pray that if I do go, that in all things He will be glorified.  Lastly, also please pray that I will have the courage and strength to share with whomever wants/needs to hear that slavery is alive and thriving;  that men, women, and children are being sold as sex slaves, labor slaves, and for organ harvesting.

The more we share, the better chance we have of ending slavery and trafficking.  It is a daunting task.  But there is HOPE.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.  ~Philippians 4:13

Disappear

I didn't disappear.

 

I haven't forgotten.

 

I didn't turn my back.

 

My heart still beats and still pounds and still breaks for those who are victims of trafficking.

 

I was so super busy with life. 

 

I let the trafficking thing slip from the top of my stack to somewhere in the middle.

 

I was tired.

 

I was worn.

 

But God reminds me that it is important.

 

That there is still suffering.

 

And despite how I feel or what I am doing or how much I may or may not want to do something, that I cannot forget, or turn my back, or disappear.

 

Despite whether it feels like this crime is so overwhelming and its victims so many, that there are 27 million people enslaved today, that children as young as infants are bought and sold, that there is so much evil out there.

 

What difference could I possible make?

 

I feel like this is my calling.

 

This is what I meant to do in this part of my life.

 

I am supposed to make trafficking known in my corner of the world.

 

I am supposed to tell people that there are children suffering.

 

That girls are being taken off the streets and prostituted.

 

That whole families are slave laborers.

 

That while there is so much heartbreak, so much victimization, so much pain,

 

He is still on His throne.

 

There is HOPE.