It takes thick skin to walk into strip clubs week after week, praying for the Lord to move mightily. It also takes tremendous amounts of courage, compassion, empathy, and love.
Truth is, you don’t always get the results you want or hope for. You’re not only battling with spirits of lust and perversion, but spirits of witchcraft, jezebel, and even offense.
But you keep showing up, you keep loving on the lost, you keep shining the Light of Jesus, trusting and believing that the seeds you’re planting are for His Purpose, and will indeed bear fruit.
I was so pleased last weekend when a woman I’ve been ministering to for a while gave me her phone number and real name. We messaged this week and made plans to go for coffee today. I confirmed with her last night, then drove to her house this morning to pick her up and…nothing. No answer, no returned call or texts. Just nothing.
I waited 30 minutes, praying God would push her out that door, but He didn’t. That’s not His way. I texted my team who’d been praying about the meeting and said I did what the Lord had asked, and I don’t know what’s next, but I won’t give up.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been stood up by a dancer, and probably won’t be the last.
Truth is, we don’t know what personal demons anyone is facing. We don’t know the strongholds in their lives, where they’ve come from, or what’s currently keeping them oppressed.
Trust doesn’t come easily for most women who’ve been used and abused.
I had a few moments this week where I got into some dark places within the caverns of my own mind, and it reminded me of the state of mind I was constantly in without Christ. It’s hell.
And that’s the place so many in this world are in, in their minds, and the literal place they are going to if we don’t keep planting those seeds, and loving the lost.
The world doesn’t need more condemnation. We condemn ourselves enough. What we truly need is more love, more compassion, and more understanding. We say we want and welcome the broken ones into our churches, but do we really even know how to minister to them when they do show up?
LOVE, LOVE, LOVE.