What If You Were The Plan?预览

One night walking the streets of New York with our oldest daughter between us, Chad and I passed a woman strolling with a man. Her eyes met mine and then went to my daughter. I noticed she was too young to be scantily clad with all that makeup. And that’s when I really saw. 

Not everyone in the heart of sinful living is having a good time. 

Not every person in the clutches of disgrace went willingly. 

It’s interesting that Paul as well as James were both Divinely inspired to include praising the faith of a prostitute. Maybe it’s because what we think we see is not really what’s under the surface. 

For if you look at the facts, normal, healthy girls with options don’t aspire to be prostitutes when they grow up. 

Instead it’s often been for survival, or they are lured into a relationship that forces them into the industry. Others have been coerced through a series of empty promises and ball-faced lies assuring the individual of one type of work and upon arrival, requiring an altogether different one. The women become indebted to these perpetrators indefinitely. Some women are stolen away and forced into a life they cannot escape. Then there are those women who have been incarcerated who are threatened, coerced, or anonymously bailed out of jail only to enter another type of prison. 

Rahab reminds us that people aren’t always the sum of their reputation. This is a woman who believed God and was willing to stake her life on it. Like Abraham, she abandoned her cultural practices, their gods, and everything she knew to follow God in pure, unadulterated faith. Consequently her life, her legacy, and her eternity was transformed. 

That is the power of the Gospel! 

Today almost 25 million people are trapped in forced labor across the globe. Over 70% of these are girls and women. Experts estimate human trafficking as the fasting growing crime worldwide. But these woeful statistics are not a hopeless loss. 

God viewed Rahab, the prostitute, highly enough to plan her into the lineage of His son. 

May God forgive us for wrong assumptions. 

Today, let us begin praying the industry into absolute bankruptcy! May God bring the hope of Jesus Christ and a way for freedom and safety for those who desperately need it—using His people to accomplish His work.