At training camp, many different leaders encouraged our team to seek out the small victories in the day to day. The little things are going to be a big deal, they said. This is a hard ministry. In the time you are there, you don't always get to see much fruit. That doesn't mean that things are changing or that God isn't moving. He is. It just takes time.
Well, I am finding they were right.
As much as I want every bar girl I spend time with to immediately realize and believe in their worth and leave their job right away, that's not how it works. It's a slow process because it takes a lot of time to uproot the lies we've believe about ourselves as long as we can remember.
So celebrate the small victories, we were continually told. Don't count those out.
And yet I don't think they are small so much as they are simply unseen.
Like the time a military procession went through Bangla and all the pole dancing and usual behavior stopped for about an hour out of respect for the military passing through.
Or the times I have prayed and prayed to make eye contact with and smile to the sad-eyed, second floor go-go dancers in the glass boxes that hang above Bangla and it actually happened.
Or storming the throne room of God and begging him with everything I am that somehow he would get the seven year old girl that is standing on the bar being encouraged to pole dance off of the bar. And then seeing her get off less then a minute later and scamper off to play with a cat that came out of nowhere.
Or hearing one of my favorite songs playing while in a bar where I am watching the saddest girl I have ever seen in my life across the street hold a sign advertising a Russian strip show. And as I ask God where he is in all of this, the lyrics sing,
I feel so close to you right now
It's a force field
I wear my heart upon my sleeve
like a big deal
Your love pours down
And it surrounds me
like a waterfall
And there's no stopping us right now
I feel so close to you right now
And I find him there. In a dingy bar as my teammates and I sit on another bar stool, as we order another soda, as we connect with one of the most precious girls I've ever met and make plans to have lunch later in the week.
Maybe it's not that mountains aren't being moved, but that mountains I can't always see are being moved. Because he is faithful and desires for restoration, healing, and freedom for every last girl and vendor and ladyboy and bar manager and tourist on that street–more than I could ever imagine.
So as my team and I begin week four, we'll go in standing firmly on the hope that God is moving. Walls are coming down. Strongholds are being broken. And the cross doesn't mean that he's winning, but that he's already won.
