Call to War:

The alarm goes off, it’s 2:45 am. Our house is stirring, jumping out of bed, preparing to go to battle. It’s a battle unlike anything I’ve seen. Our weapons are our authoritative voices; the Spirit is our leader. We sit among the nations, showering it with prayer, believing in the transformation of hearts and the shifting from sin across the world. But this war continues. In the streets we proclaim the truth: we’re here, because you matter. It’s a privilege to be a soldier in this war. It’s a fight worthy of the sacrifice.

As Christians, we have a tendency to cling to the comfortability of our communities. We go to church on Sundays, our Bible studies on Wednesday nights, and our blue-collar jobs during the day. But, we forget the urgency of the spiritual war happening in places we cannot see. We continually pray for God to bring comfort and to rescue girls out of sex trafficking, but have we ever been willing to be the answer to those prayers? If Jesus is the head and we are his hands and feet, aren’t we to be the answer? For how can a head with no hands bring comfort to a person who’s hurting? How can a girl being sex trafficked hear about the hope found in Jesus if no one takes the time to speak the truth to her? I recently heard someone say, “God is longing not for those who feel safety in the kingdom, but for those willing to leave it and bring the kingdom to where it is not.” This wrecked me. All too often I long to stay within the confines of my Christian environment. I want nothing more than to stay in the times and places where my encounters with God are the most intimate, where I’m continually learning what it means to live like a daughter of God instead of like an orphan.

But we forget that sharing God’s love is a privilege, that the girls caught in the world of sex trafficking have no other source of pure love. There is urgency in our message. Satan feeds them the belief that they are called by their sins, but God graciously calls them by their names. These girls are not their sin. They are not what the world has labeled them. They have a true self, one created by God. This is how he sees them. We are given the opportunity to love them and, by loving them, we open the window to share his truth. If love is the context by which we can give truth, I see no greater responsibility than to show the love that overflows out of our hearts. People are all we can take with us to heaven. If that truth was made known more, I fully believe there would be a shift in the way we live our daily lives.

There is a war happening. We’ve been living comfortably with God by our side, but do we trust that he will join us wherever we go? I know I personally have a hard time trusting that he will follow me, especially into the darkest places. But the greatest times of intimacy with God have come from the times I stepped out in faith and witnessed his promises of faithfulness. So I ask, will you trust that he will follow? Will you accept the call and be a warrior for this fight? Will you allow yourself to be the answer to your prayers against sex trafficking?