Saving One Girl At A Time

It's funny how God works. I have been feeling a bit helpless after being back in the States from my trip. So much work to do in Peru and I come back to my comfortable home, bed, hot, clean water, food, job, cable, cellphone, and other random luxuries I take for granted. I have been feeling a bit disconnected, like I don't fit here because I would rather be doing something instead of being here among a culture of people who turn a blind eye to the rest of the world. Being in a foreign country where water is rationed and children are as dispensable as garbage, you get a new outlook on the world.

I have been in a funk all day. Went to lunch alone just to get out of the office and on my drive back, I knew I needed to have a conversation with God about my mental state. I tearfully pleaded with God to show me what I was supposed to do at this point. What am I supposed to do with my life now that I have these new eyes in which to see the world? I needed an answer.

And there she was. Christine Caine...my favorite anti-sex trafficking advocate.

While at lunch, I read a few pages of her book "Can I have it all, please?" and had intended on blogging about some of the passages I had read. But after taking a quick detour to CNN.com...there she was again. The Freedom Project section of the site featured an article about her efforts to end modern day slavery with The A21 Campaign...one girl at a time. I heard her speak a couple of months ago at my church and her passion to end this atrocity still resonates in me. Seeing that article gave me that familiar ping of fire in my spirit.

End modern day slavery one girl at a time.

I feel like the human trafficking area is where I am supposed to be. That is one thing that I can talk about for hours and never get tired of. That is the one injustice that blows my mind that people are clueless about when I mention. That is the one injustice that breaks my heart to know that even after knowing the facts, people are still indifferent.

Saving one girl at a time. 27 millions people in slavery right now. Christine always says that 27 million is an overwhelming number so if we can just put a name and a face to one victim and save her, it is all worth it. I put a name and a face on one victim this time last year and her name is Sabrina. One girl at a time. God sent me to Peru to get a global perspective on how bad things really are. Before, all I knew was how bad sex trafficking is here in Atlanta. Not discounting what the girls here go through but it does pale in comparison to the stories about trafficking internationally.

Be her freedom...join the fight...save a life. Check out Christine's article here.

Heart Set Ablaze...

This past weekend was the spiritual awakening that I absolutely needed. My church, Victory World Church, hosted its annual Resilient women's conference. I went last year and enjoyed hearing Valerie Burton speak. I knew our speaker was going to be Christine Caine from Hillsong Church in Australia. I had never heard of Christine and we sing a lot of Hillsong songs for worship. What caught my attention was the fact that Christine was an advocate for the anti human trafficking movement.

Little did I know she was going to change my life.

Christine Caine blew me away! I have heard lots of motivational speakers, preachers, evangelists, you name it, over the years but never has one little petite woman leave me with a heart set ablaze to change the world and wake up the sleeping body of Christ to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to Earth. She has a tell it like it is, no sugar coating, true and honest approach to removing the veil of denial, normalcy, and complacency in the lives of people professing to be Christian.

She came from nothing. Literally. She was abandoned by her mother in a hospital, unnamed and unwanted. She grew up in a poor Greek Orthodox family in Australia. She was sexually abused for 12 years. She learned she was adopted at the age of 31. Yet she went on to be apart of the leadership team for one of the most dynamic and influential churches in the world. She has traveled the globe leading crusades for Christ, spreading the gospel to some of the darkest nations in the world. It was 4 years ago that she was in the Frankfort, Germany airport did she learn about the issue of human trafficking. Being a leader of a church, she was appalled that form of modern day slavery was still happening when there are billions of Christians in this world.

She decided to that human trafficking was not going to continue on her watch.

She established the A21 Campaign, a grassroots organization that has established safe houses in Greece, the corridor for the world's human trafficking. This organization is taking on the global human trafficking issue on like no other organization I have ever seen. Since God has already put this social injustice in my heart, I felt like I was in the right place at the right time hearing Christine speak with such passion and urgency for the church to get mobilized and take back the lives of those that are enslaved. There was such a move of the Holy Spirit on Saturday morning, before Christine even came up to speak again, and as the worship team sang, I was so overcome with His presence, His urgency, His heartbreak, I was in tears. Crying my eyes out, singing His praise at the top of my lungs. My heart was breaking for what broke the heart of my Savior.

I had this passion to set the captives free and I wasn't doing anything about it.

I needed that. I needed that jolt. I needed that renewed spirit. I needed that sense of urgency, that heartbreak, that wake up call. I needed to be reminded that there are 27 million people held in slavery around this world, more than any other time in the history of man kind. I needed to know that 1.4 million of those slaves are sex slaves. I needed to know that traffickers get the women pregnant and sell those babies to pedophile rings across the world. Babies as young as 6 months old, sold for sex, with no documents, no papers, no one even knowing they exist on this Earth.

Where is the church?

I have been rescued from the darkest places in my life so that I can rescue others. Isaiah 61 is my heartbeat. I have been called to proclaim freedom for the captives, to comfort those who mourn, to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes. They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.

I am ready to be a trailblazer. I am ready to empty myself so that I can be filled with the Holy Spirit and used in any way He see fits. I yield to my own will, my own desires and I full surrender to His will. I am excited. I am on fire.

I am on His mission to set the captives free.