The Lord has been bringing me back to this place for some time in the past few months. It's a place that many do not want to sit in. It's not a comfortable place. It's a place that I ran from many times, a place that I by no means sought out, until the Holy Spirit led me there...
It all started when I came back from Cambodia last year. My heart became burdened with the countless number of those who are enslaved and forced into prostitution and sex trafficking. What I thought was to be only 3 months of working with victims of sex trafficking, the Lord began speaking to me that this would be a much longer pursuit. I loved working at Rapha House in Cambodia. I had a lot of fun teaching the girls there. Yes, I knew they had been trafficked, but the reality never fully hit me while I was at it. I think that for where I was at in my walk with God and for what I needed to be doing at that time, Jesus let the heaviness pass over me. I was given a lot of grace and filled with joy for that season. I am not one to be overcome with emotion or cry. Tears are scarcely seen on my face. But in the past year, I have found crying much easier. Jesus began breaking my heart for what breaks His. I said "yes" to this journey He asked me to go on with Him, although I had no idea, and still don't, what this fully entails. I counted the cost, and decided to be willing and obedient to be led into the darkness of what this whole industry of sex trafficking and doing therapy with victims entails.
My heart was wrecked for all else when I attended Exodus Cry's Abolitionist Summit conference in January. I was brought to my knees in tears when I began to grasp God's heart of weeping over these hurting girls and over the men who are in bondage to lust and greed. I was overcome with the deepness of the trauma, the pain, the hurt, the torture, the drugs, the disease, the abuse, the loneliness, the emptiness, that these girls who are stuck in this industry are forced to live in each day. I was undone when I saw Exodus Cry's documentary film, "Nefarious: Merchant of Souls". I was further broken during Freedom Week at my university campus. I was very involved in the events we planned to raise awareness about modern-day slavery. I attended every seminar to learn more and stayed after to speak with involved people. I began grasping the gravity of what this is going to involve - it's not going to be easy. This is one of the darkest issues I can think of. These girls have suffered torture and rape hours upon hours for years and years. I began feeling overwhelmed, and questioned whether I'm really cut out for this. I am so weak. I wondered how I would be able to help these girls when I felt like breaking down and crying every time I thought of their hurt. How can I be of help when I am so weak yet they are looking to me for help?
But Jesus was with me the whole time, amidst the questioning, amidst the doubts. I told Him, "Jesus, I am desperate for You to show up and help me because I have nothing. You are the Counselor. You need to counsel me and the ones that You give me to counsel." I invited Him in to take my burdens, and He began sharing His heart with me and teaching me through visions. A few months ago I wrote a blog entitled, "He Crowns Us With Royalty". In it I shared about how Jesus gave me His tears to weep over the lost. Right after Freedom Week, I had another vision. Jesus took me to dark places (places I might be led to in the future, and some flashbacks from Cambodia). He showed me filthy streets and slums, crying babies, children digging through the trash for food, brothels; He said to me, "Are you willing to go? Will you not love those the world loves not? I want to take you to the places where my heart is. I am with the poor and the needy. I want you to experience my heart for them. Yes, this will break your heart, as it breaks Mine, you will experience deep sorrow over the ones I give you to love. However, when you experience the deeper things of Me, deeper pain, suffering, and brokenness, you will also experience deeper joy, peace, and hope. You will experience the fullness of My strength when you willingly make yourself weak by allowing Me to burden your heart with the broken and desperate people who need My love." Jesus was promising me that by making myself vulnerable to a heart of anguish through the things I will encounter, He will fill me all the more with His unspeakable peace and joy abundant. It's ok if I am being led through a season of brokenness and tears now, because I am in a training process. Jesus will give me what I need at the time I need it as I go along. By the time I am in a counseling session, I will be given the strength to be strong and listen to each girl's story. Jesus says to me, "I'm in control. I'm over all things. Your life is in My hands. Trust Me."
I had another vision tonight as I asked Jesus for more of His heart. He took me to a garden. I often meet Jesus in a garden, a place of rest, happiness, and dance, but this was a very different garden. Its name: Gethsemane. The garden of mourning, of weeping, of sorrow. I was there to share in God's heart of anguish. To weep with Jesus. To ask Him about the things that were on His heart and listen, to stay up and watch with Him and be torn. I asked Him specifically about sex trafficking. I then saw another vision, where the tears me and Jesus were weeping created a river. A river that sweeps over the filth of the sex industry. I began praying that the tears I shed during times of intercession become a raging river that tear up the strongholds and knock down brothels. And also a river that washes over girls, and cleanses them; that they could bathe in our tears, and find cleansing, healing, restoration, and delight in the river, receiving living water. Jesus told me that I need to be baptized in prayer and shed tears in intercession, and that they are to be tears that set the captives free. But I need to know His anguish of sex trafficking - I can't go just because there's a need. I must carry His burden to be an instrument of restoration.
It is so easy for me to become apathetic, and to be only mildly concerned with the issues that are breaking God's heart. I know that's when I need to get on my knees in desperation and set my heart to seek Him. I need to fast, pray, and mourn until I am at the place of tears and brokenness. That's the only place I want to be because I never want to be in a place of lukewarmness. Oftentimes I have no tears. I have to pray, "God give me tears. Share Yours with me. Your tears are vast, You have many. You weep over iniquity. Let me share some of Your tears. Allow me to weep with You." I pushed back the burden for so long. I was comfortable in my place of apathy. I held back the tears. I only wanted to come to the river that Jesus had already created. But now I have tasted and seen, and I want to join with Him. I pray that I won't grow weary in Gethsemane. I am desperate for His strength because I know I have none. I thank Him for His grace.
You might ask, "Aren't we supposed to rejoice in the Lord always?" Yes, there is a time for laughing and rejoicing, but there is also a time of entering into a place of mourning. Where are the ones who are willing to go to the secret place and weep with Jesus? He is looking for intercessors who will follow Him and share in the fullness of His heart. This is a place of sacrifice and surrender. It takes discipline. Are you willing? Will you lose sleep over it and wrestle until you gain it? I want to hear Jesus tell me that I was one of His few who wept with Him and who carried His heart no matter the cost. I know I can do all things with and through Jesus; we will carry this burden together.
As strange as this sounds, I find comfort in the place of anguish. I know that this is the only place where I'll truly be moved, and where my flesh is crucified and my work is born of the Spirit. When ministry is born out of the place of anguish, it is not my own, but the Lord's. Oswald Chambers wrote, "When obedience is in the ascendent, He will tax the remotest star and the last grain of sand to assist you with all His almighty power." He gives His burden AND His peace. He promises comfort. There is proof of this in Isaiah 58. He promises to come again and bring lasting justice. I know that true joy comes out of anguish. Victory is birthed from anguish. When I become so close to Jesus that I can feel what's on His heart and be moved to tears, it is my joy. I just want to be with Him where He is. I am willing to partake in His sorrow for the joy that is set before me: being close to the only One who can bring me true, lasting peace and joy. David Wilkerson said that the result of baptism in anguish leads to an instant voice of God. As long as He speaks to me in the midst of sorrow I can be burdened. As long as I receive His comfort I can take on the anguish. The revelation of His coming, the knowledge of Him making all things new, can carry me through the battle. So I set my heart on a pilgrimage, through the valley of weeping I will go.
Come, Holy Spirit, baptize us in anguish and raise up a generation of lovesick worshipers who are willing to follow You all the way through.
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