First Night

Perhaps it's the result of fascination or romanticism, but I often find that Christian workers have one kind of person in mind when they enter ministry.  

"I want to work with Berbers in Morocco so I'm going to find the Berber community where I live and only minister to them."  

"I want to work with Muslims so I am going to work with Muslims."

This certainly is not wrong.  But in searching for this one person or group, we often end up not ministering to the people God places directly in our path.  The night before we left for Beirut, we prayed as a team that even though we have a tentative schedule of who and where we'll minister, that we'd be open to who God placed in our way.

Seven months ago I asked for prayer for a young male prostitute that our friends in Beirut had begun ministering to.  It's a long and complicated story, but after arriving we stopped by the apartment of our friends to find the same young man.  He's been battling drug addiction and pressure from his family and pimp to remain a prostitute because they like the money he brings in (he can make more money in two nights of prostitution than a month of honest work).

Yesterday after overdosing on opiates he came over to our friend's apartment.  He wants to be clean.  He wants freedom.  He read a beautiful prayer that he'd written (in Arabic) several months ago about how God gave him life and freedom and, when he continuously turns away, to seek the pleasures of life, God's hand always comes to bring him back up.

We read through Isaiah 61 and Romans 7 last night & prayed over him.  If we can find a mature brother in Christ fluent in both Arabic and English we'll have this young man spend some of his days with us, provided he goes through detox safely.  They're going to attempt a detox in their home so that he doesn't have to go to the only other detox center in Lebanon and raise questions from his family and others.  Shame is an integral part of the culture here and even though he would be seeking help for a deep problem, the shame he's experience is, in his eyes, worse.

We're going to spend this evening with him and our friends.  Please pray for this man's recovery.  Jesus said, "I have come to give life and life to the fullest."  Pray that this man would experience this life.