“Is there something the Lord is telling you to do?”
“Give myself to Him… but that’s in the future.”
This is part of a conversation I had during a discipleship lunch with one of the women we work with. While we were reviewing the passages we’d already studied, Magdalena* said her favorite one was the conversation between Mary, Jesus’s mom, and the angel that told her she would give birth to the Savior of the world. When I asked her why, she responded: “Because Mary did what the Lord told her to do… and He took away her fear of what everyone else would think of her so she could do it.”
So I asked her: “Is there something the Lord is telling you to do?”
And she said: “Give myself to Him… but that’s in the future.”
Then she continued, explaining that even though she knows she owes her life to the Lord, she doesn’t want to give her life to Him yet because she’s still working in prostitution.
“To me,” she said, “it would be like making fun of Him, to give my life to Him and keep [working] in prostitution. I don’t want to live one life at church and another life outside of church.”
Magdalena isn’t the only one who is waiting to leave prostitution in order to come to Jesus and give her life to Him. In fact, this is something I’ve been hearing a lot lately from several different Amadas. For example, during outreach, Fernanda* told me:
“I go to church every Tuesday and Friday because I like the worship and the sermons… but the pastor doesn’t know that I work in prostitution. That’s why I don’t get baptized, because I’m a sinner.”
Every time one of the Amadas says something like this to me, I do my best to share the news that saved my life: on the cross, Jesus took upon Himself the weight of all the wrong we’ve ever done, do, and will do and that’s how He reopened the way back to the relationship of unconditional love and forgiveness with God we were created for.
I explain that they don’t have to do anything more or less than receive the gift Jesus is offering them, putting their trust in Him and letting Him transform and heal their lives like only He can. The situation they find themselves in is so complicated and painful that I firmly believe Jesus is the only One who can get them out of it, and He will one step at a time when they put their trust in Him.
God is the Good Father who doesn’t stop waiting for and doesn’t get tired of calling out to each and every one of His beloved daughters. Please pray with me that the Lord would bring them back home.
*name changed for privacy