"God, You Have Finally Done It!"

I’ve been doing outreach into a few of the brothels of Jos for the past eighteen months. In that time, I think two girls have left and moved into our halfway house: Neither of them stayed. There are girls with whom we have spoken time after time; girls who, every time we speak with them, are planning on leaving the hotel and turning their lives around next week, next month, next year……… and they’re still there.

Granted, a few girls leave the hotels, but we rarely know where they go: Whether this is a positive step, or to an even darker place than that they have left. The one’s who have left and are trying to set up a new life, have so much working against them: So much temptation to fall back into their own ways; their familiar routine.

As we step into the Hotels each week, we are aware that we are stepping into a battlefield: Satan has a hold of these ladies, and the dark, stinking, dishevelled hotels in which they live. It’s easy to get discouraged in this ministry; easy to look at the ladies’ situations through human eyes, and believe that there is no hope. It sometimes scares me how quick I can be to feel the hopelessness of their situations, forgetting that we serve the almighty God, and with Him there is always hope.

Each time I pray for this ministry, I thank God for all that he is doing in the lives and hearts of the ladies we meet, but we rarely see evidence of this beyond an uncomfortable shifting, or a few tears as we share truth with them, and by the next week they either don’t want to know, or have disappeared (we pray to a better place!)

Thankfully, this ministry is God’s, and not ours. We are His workers, and all we need do is listen to Him, take up our shield of faith and obey.

Precious reminded me of this. Precious is a lady, who lives in the first Hotel we visit each week. In this Hotel live a number of ladies, who we have spoken to time and time again, to what seems like little avail. Every week is different, but in recent weeks we have frequently been in and out of this hotel within five minutes, because they just don’t want to know; or so it seems. Seriously, this is the only place I have ever been where sitting on a stool listening music counts as being “busy” (or at least busy enough to not have to speak with us).

Precious has been to our outreach centre before, and has spoken with us in the hotel, but never showed us a response that convinced us she was actually hearing what we had to say. That was until Wednesday.

We were doing our outreach the same as we do every week, and were in this first hotel. Keesha, Rahab and I had walked through the whole place and sat and spoken with one lady along the way. We were literally by the exit, when we decided to greet the last girl on the corridor. Very little conversation really took place, but when we asked her if she knew Jesus, her response made me curious: “No. How can you know Jesus in this place?”

In a place where so many ladies will pay lip service to being a “Christian”; sleep in rooms with bible verses and phrases declaring the power and sovereignty of God on their walls, maybe put on some worship music between watching pornographic movies, just acknowledging how far she was from knowing Christ was significant. We told her that we agreed with her, and went on to tell her briefly about our house. Immediately tears came to her eyes. “If there is really a place like this I want to go.”

“Ok,” we said. “Pack your bags and we’ll take you there now.”

I should probably mention at this point that we say this a lot. This is usually the stage of the conversation at which they laugh, and begin to tell us all the reasons why they can’t leave now, but of course they will allow us to help them in one week / month etc etc.

However, when we said this to Precious, she actually started packing!!!  The three of us stood nervously in the corridor outside her room, and all prayed that she would not let anything get in the way of the decision she had just made! Over the next little while there were so many times when I was convinced she was going to change her mind, and just continued to pray that she wouldn’t. She didn’t, and thirty minutes after we had first greeted her, Precious was sitting in the back of my car on the way to the half way house!

Every day since then there has been reason to be encouraged by Precious’s life. She truly desires to live a life glorifying to God, and is growing in her understanding of what this means every day. Keesha, who works in our ministry house, has been able to spend some time with her each day. The testimony Precious has shared with her speaks of months of unhappiness, knowing that she was not in a place where she could truly know Christ. Time after time she cried out to God. Time after time she made plans to leave and something would stop her: A friend would get sick, or she would just be short of the money she thought that she needed to leave. The day we met with Precious in that corridor, she was sitting there with a true desire to leave. A few days later, when Keesha asked her what was going through her mind as she sat in the car on the way to the house, Precious said that she was just repeating one phrase over and over: “God, you have finally done it”.

Matthew 7 verse 7 says, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will opened to you.” Precious asked, and the door was opened. She did not leave that place through anything we ever did in our own strength. It was all God. “God, You have finally done it!”

“God will make a way”.

So often, when we talk to our ladies on outreach, they express a wish to leave the hotel in which they are working. They tell us that they are unhappy with their situation, and they know that the work they are doing is not pleasing to God. They finish by saying “But God will make a way”.

Time and time again, I find myself saying (on the outside) and screaming (on the inside) “BUT HE ALREADY HAS”! Not only did God love these ladies enough to send His only to die on a cross for them, taking punishment for all of their sins,  but he sent people across the world to walk into their room and tell them about this love. All they need do is accept it, but so often they don’t. So often it feels like our words are falling on deaf ears and nothing is ever going to change.

It’s true that these ladies' lives have been tough. I could probably bring most of you to tears by writing some of their stories here: Stories of abuse; stories of rejection; stories of incomprehensible poverty; my list could go on, and there’s so much about them I don’t even know.

Some days it makes no sense. We’re offering them so much: Freedom in Christ and support and guidance as they turn their lives around. A place where they could stay ad not have to worry about rent, food or clothes. What do they have to leave behind except a tiny dark room, and a profession, which one-day will likely take their life, whether it be through illness or something else? Who would want to stay there? Why will they not just drop everything and leave with us?

Then, on other days, I realise the enormity of what we’re asking: If a girl grows up in a family that never tell her she has any value, and then through earning money she suddenly has a role; a position of significance and importance. She is the provider for many; the answer to their problems. No wonder it’s difficult to let go! Yes, we’re telling her about the love of her almighty Father in heaven, about the value she has in his eyes, and about how He longs for her to be his daughter, but how can we expect her to understand this when she has no Earthly comparison? Our family should be our first experience of what it is to be loved and cared for. If we’ve never known this, how can we understand something so much bigger? If we’ve had to suffer so much to receive what we feel is any appreciation, why would we let go of that, for something that honestly just sounds too good to be true!?! If our life has been full of broken promises and deceit, why would we believe anything that anyone has to say about anything?

I so often wish we could just pluck our ladies out of the repulsive place in which they are living, but they have to choose. They have to first be repulsed by where they are and what they’re doing. If not, it will only draw them back. God has made a way, but it’s only them who can choose to take it. 

A new Kind of Normal.

I’ve decided to give this another go….lets see if I do any better this time!

After months of being frustrated at how “normal” everything can seem just a day, or maybe even hours, after there has been some sort of trouble in Jos, I’ve come to the conclusion that as human beings, we need “normal”.

We all know how it feels to start a new school or job: To feel like we constantly have to take in new information and to have nothing familiar around us. It’s tiring! At times such as these, it can be difficult to see how we’ll ever get the hang of everything that so many people around us are making look so easy. However, one day, whether it is a few days or weeks later, it all just falls into place: Gradually things begin to feel “normal”.

That’s kind of what I feel has happened here in Jos, except in this situation the circumstances never stop changing. Before the first major trouble here in 2001, Jos was a peaceful city. Neighbours from different tribes and religions would share life together without fear of what one of them may turn round and do to the other.

Over the years, crisis after crisis has occurred. With each crisis, I expect people have felt slightly more resigned to the fact that there would be another; periods of unrest became “normal”.

Alongside this, has come a decreased tolerance for the “other side”. A city, which was once completely mixed is now almost completely polarised. It’s just “normal” that there are certain places you would not live because of your religion.

After years of on and off violence came the next stage: The bombs. When the first bombs occurred in Jos over the Christmas period of 2010 it was a big deal, and a long period of tension followed. A few months later there was the first suicide bomb attack in the country, and once again people were shocked. Over the passed 4 months there have been 5 bombs in Jos, but I haven’t missed a full day of work because of the trouble.

I think to say that everything is completely “normal” in Jos would be brushing over what is actually a pretty serious situation. However, all I’m trying to highlight is the way we adapt to survive. Yes, we have people working tirelessly on our behalf to get hold of every piece of information they can in order to make informed decisions about what is and isn’t deemed “safe” for us to do, but even their decisions seem to change in time, with no new information at hand.

For example, a bomb threat, with no timing, was given (or at least said to be given), regarding a certain building. For about a week everyone in our mission was advised to stay away from this building. However, in time people have returned. The threat has not changed, but people just need to get on with their “normal” life, having adjusted to the idea that the risk attached to being in this building has significantly increased.

In the bible we are called to be as “wise as serpents”. This includes being wise to the risks that surround us each day. We are also called to “not be anxious about anything, but to give all things to God through prayer and petition”. I find it amazing that even in the midst of uncertainty, God can calm any anxiety we may feel, and give us such a sense of peace, and assurance that the safest place to be is in His will, wherever that may take you. I believe that one method God uses to fill us with that peace is to help us adapt to the changing circumstances around us. He allows things to feel “normal” in the midst of craziness.