Things Are Different Here

We had an hour long prayer meeting at New City Fellowship yesterday; it was a great time of worship and group prayer. Thais pray a bit differently than we do back in the states. Generally we pray several times throughout the course of the meeting, and pray is broken up with worship. When Thais have group prayer, everyone prays at once out loud. It definitely takes some getting used to, but it is pretty neat.

Towards the end of our prayer meetings we take prayer requests from all of those in attendance. The prayer requests are not all that different than those back home, families struggling financially, sickness, prayers for the nation, but one thing has slowly occurred to me throughout our prayer meetings.

Almost every Thai has a friend, family member, or coworker that they're praying for because they are asking questions about Christianity, or they feel that God is working on their hearts. It is often a slow process, sometimes taking years, but God is working on these Thais, challenging them to examine their beliefs. I guess what really amazes me is that in 23 years of attending church, I cannot really think of very many times anyone has asked for the church to pray for a specific person's salvation. I feel as if we don't generally concern ourselves with the salvation of our coworker, or at least we don''t publicly pray about it. I don't know, I just realized how complacent we become in America; especially in the South. We kind of assume everyone is a Christian, or that their salvation in their own business, and it would be rude to pry. 

In Thailand, only 1 percent of the people are Christians. Could you imagine if only 1 out of 100 people you knew were Christian? Wouldn't you be praying for so many of your friends, coworkers, and family? The truth is that so many of the "Christians" in our lives don't' really have a saving faith, they go to church on Easter and Christmas, and somehow that satisfies us. We should be on our knees continually, praying that God would break our hearts, and theirs.

 

Another wake up call came yesterday. During the prayer meeting one woman asked that we be praying for one of the families in Mahatthai. 

The family is really struggling with debt, and cannot pay their loans and living expenses. The mother wants to sell their 9 year old daughter.

This of course was distressing to me, but in my naivety I assumed it was simply like selling a girl to a family that wanted a child. 

That's when it became clear that the mother wanted to sell her 9 year old daughter into prostitution. This is something that I can't even wrap my mind around. A mother would be desperate enough to sell her daughter into the sex trade, and that legally, there is nothing that can be done about it. You can't call social services, it doesn't exist. You can't call the police, because while there are laws against it at that age, they are not enforced. 

I can't even imagine this happening in the US, and I guess it does, but you never hear about it. I just can't even comprehend how a mother gets to the point where she is willing to sell her child into the worse possible lifestyle ever, for monetary gain. It just shows the depravity of the human heart without Christ's redeeming love. 

I've been thinking of the song "God of This City" something we sang a lot at The Journey. It is so easy to sit in a chair in a church in Jackson, MS and feel like God is the God of our city. Being here in Bangkok has challenged all of that for me, and it makes me think of these lyrics, and realize that God is the God of every city, even this fallen, depraved place...