It was the Hindu floating village in Thailand that did it.
Many years ago, on our first overseas mission trip to Southeast Asia, we took an afternoon off to get in a Thai flatboat and go visit a floating village. Out in the middle of the Andaman Sea were hundreds of wood fishing shacks on floating platforms lashed together, hundreds of them. There was even a school, post office and Hindu temple.
I’ll be honest, I was creeped out by this place and I begged God on the boat ride to shore to NEVER, NEVER CALL ME TO MINISTER TO THAT PLACE!!
Boy, never say never to God.
In 2004, when the Indian Ocean super tsunami hit the Asian mainland caused by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, 250,000 were swept away into eternity, most without God.
I was shocked, broken, ashamed and grieved for years over my selfishness and my telling God what he could and could not do with my life. I was brokenhearted for those souls lost in southeast Asia. In repentance, I embraced the fact that my life , “was not my own, I was bought with a price. Therefore, I was to honor God with my body.” (I Corinthians 6:19-20) And so, I laid down my life in submission to WHATEVER God called me to do.
Fast forward, March 2014.
In a hotel room in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the only English speaking tv channel was broadcasting the CNN Freedom Project (http://youtu.be/3oQX1DT71x4) . They related the modern day holocaust of child sex trafficking right there in Cambodia. Scenes of that Hindu floating village and its lost souls came to mind, as Pete and I submitted to a new radical call with Agape International Missions in Svay Pak, Cambodia assisting in the restoration and reintegration of these precious children rescued from the evil of sex trafficking.
God called me with this verse, “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners… (Isaiah 61:1)”
Do you bargain with God?
Lord, I can’t stay in this marriage any longer?
Lord, don’t make me go to the jungles of Africa?
Lord, we can’t live on this salary ?
Lord, I can’t parent this rebellious teenager any longer?
Lord, never, never, never give me cancer?
Repent and submit to God’s radical yet often difficult plan for your life. Embrace the cross, He paid the price and gets to call the shots with your life.
“ Roll your works upon the Lord, and He shall make His thoughts become your thoughts, and THEN your plans will be established.” (Proverbs 16:3)
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