Inside the Fight for Freedom, Part III: The Men

But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea (Matthew 18:6).

It is easy to hate men here. In fact, it is part of a necessary process to become just as broken for them as you are for the girls. First comes putrid disgust at them, what they are doing to these girls, and the fact that many of them travel so far away from home to do it. This is the part of the process that is often the hardest to leave behind. But often, through night after night of watching them closely, sooner or later, it hits you: These men are just as broken as the girls they take advantage of.

Coming to a place where you hate the sin instead of the sinner is a very “church-y” thing to talk about. But it is an absolutely necessary place to come to in order to be truly effective in reaching the girls with unadulterated love that is undistracted by your fury towards the men.

Don’t get me wrong, the (sometimes righteous) anger will long be right under the  surface. I may or may not have jokingly prayed in our team meeting yesterday for “mass castration.” But I know that at the end of the day, these guys, though they are acting as willing adults, are in almost as dark of a place. Just look at their faces and you can see the boredom, the numbness, the depression. It’s as if they just want to feel something–anything–so they go to extremes to do so. And yet, it is unfulfilling in the harsh light of the next morning.

No one is contending that their actions are justifiable. But as He does with all of us, God will deal with each man’s sin in His own time. And if Matthew 18:6 gives us any prelude as to the punishment, it sounds like these guys are in for a rough road ahead. In the meantime, however, we are still called to love them. Tough to swallow, isn’t it?

As difficult and unfair as it seems, we ask you to join us in praying for these men. We talk a lot about the girls coming to freedom. But these men, while not enslaved, are just as imprisoned. They need the light just as much, even if they have intentionally sought out the darkness.

Pray, just for tonight, that God will bring such conviction into the heart of one man to make him so uncomfortable that he will say, “Not me. Not tonight,” and walk away. Then repeat this prayer every night. If we all did this, perhaps we could witness a mass exodus from the bars.

But if you can’t pray that–if you aren’t there yet–that’s okay. It took/is taking us awhile too. Instead, just pray for healing. For redemption. For freedom…for the girls, and for the men. After all, He loves them just as much.

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5:44-45).