FROM PROSTITUTION TO MINISTRY
Our friends at KAC Media share an incredible testimony of a former heroin addict and prostitute who tried to commit suicide multiple times, but God spared her and turned her life upside down. Once homeless and living on Skid Row, she now runs After Hours Ministry, a ministry focused on sharing the gospel with pimps and prostitutes in the sex industry in Los Angeles.
In the spirit of our friend Pastor Sam’s awesome testimony from earlier this week, we here at WitnessLA.org want to hear how you, our readers, have been protected by God in the past. Please share any stories you have of divine intervention, near-death experiences, healing miracles or any other way God has protected you, your family, or your friends by submitting a comment below. They can be grand or small. We just look forward to reading your stories and for our community to be blessed by witnessing God’s hand on each of your lives!
“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.” (Isaiah 43:2, NIV)
Have you ever felt like you should have died? That if God hadn’t put you in the right place at the right time, or that if even the smallest detail had been different, something would have happened to you? Our friend Pastor Sam shares an incredible story about how God protected a member of his church through the leading of the Holy Spirit and the intuition that he needed to be at Denny’s at 5 in the morning.
I am a pastor at a church in the San Fernando Valley. Last year we began to realize that our community valued the word of God, but not really. Not enough to actually read it. We began to notice that our encounters with the Holy Spirit had an undeniable shallowness. With that much of it became man-centered. We were led to have a season where we established bible reading in our lives. Not sporadically but chapter by chapter, book by book. Not to read into it but to read
what’s contained in it. It was hard work. Many people were not enamored with the idea but the leaders felt that this was what God was leading us to do. So people began to meet everyday online, in cafes, and through other ways to read the Scripture everyday and for prayer.
I was praying at the time that our community would really value God’s word. I was led by the Lord to pray that the people would realize the gravity of His word in our lives. A sister at the church started a group at 5 AM in the morning at a local Denny’s. 2-3 people were there every morning. One of our brothers thought of going to the gathering everyday but always ended up hitting the snooze button on his alarm. Then one morning he woke up at 5 AM and for some reason couldn’t go back to bed…[click “Read More” below to continue]
“No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” - 1 Cor. 10:13.
How real are the promises of God in our lives? When God promises that we will not be tempted beyond what we can bear and that He will provide a way out, does He really mean it? Our friend C shares below a brave testimony of how God completely fulfilled this promise to her in her life:
I wasn’t initially going to write about sex. All sorts of thoughts ran through my head - what if this gets posted under my full name? What if my parents or my guy friends see it? Shouldn’t I, as the child of missionary parents, write about something “unique”, something not experienced by almost everyone? And maybe I will - next time (I certainly have more than enough issues to make more than just one post). But for now, this is what God has laid on my heart to write about.
I grew up the child of missionary parents and grandparents. I spent my childhood either in a foreign country as a missionary kid or traveling around the US visiting Christian friends and churches. You could probably say I’m about as Christian as they come. I didn’t date in high school, and I came into college pretty confident in my ability to resist romantic and/or sexual temptation.
My first two years did nothing to prove me wrong - secure in the certainty of my faith, I turned down the non-Christian guys who came my way - even one or two who were close friends whom I was drawn to- and as my crushes on Christian guys came to nothing, I decided that God probably didn’t want me to date in college (I received an actual conviction of this first year, but unfortunately it didn’t stop me from having crushes). By the time third year came around, I thought I had it down. I wasn’t going to date in college, in all likelihood, and even if I did it would be a Christian guy. I wasn’t worried too much about non-Christian guys because clearly by this point I was strong enough and experienced enough to know how to handle them - hadn’t I done it several times already? I was exactly like the young man “devoid of understanding” of Proverbs 7 - “passing along the street near [the harlot’s] corner, taking the path to her house”. Ignorant, confident.
And then someone entered my life - let’s call him Tim. We met in an unspectacular manner - I joined a new on-campus organization and he was one of the other members. I wasn’t on the look-out for romance, and for some reason I also labored under the delusion that since I didn’t expect and wasn’t looking for it, it wouldn’t appear. At the first party the group held, I noticed that Tim seemed nice and reasonably interesting,but that was it. That night, however, when I went to leave, I looked up as I was putting on my jacket and noticed that Tim was watching me. A little frisson of excitement ran over me - the guys who’d liked me in the past were, for the most part, good friends and didn’t treat me in a special way, and so get looked at by a stranger in a way that says “you are beautiful and sexy” was not something I was accustomed to, nor something I expected…[click “Read More” below to continue]
I remembered being attracted to him when we first met but I kept it to myself because I knew he wasn’t Christian, and also I was secretly scared I didn’t have a chance. When he asked me out I didn’t hesitate to say yes. He kissed me on our first date and naturally I liked it. The chemistry is off the charts when you’re attracted to someone. We only made it through two dates before God intervened.
I knew it was wrong to date him. Even though we both agreed it would be casual (no sex, open relationship with zero intention for marriage) I knew God wouldn’t permit it since he wants his kids to be with liked yolk (2 Corinthians 6:14). I had serious intentions to end it before feelings and soul ties developed but I didn’t do it. I was knowingly sinning against God because I knew the truth but I couldn’t get myself to do the right thing. I was strong enough to keep it just to kissing during the first two dates but I had serious doubts I could keep it up for long. Lucky for me God intervened and saved both me and him from committing sexual sin.
I struggle with lust and maintaining purity in romantic relationships. Before I knew Jesus I thought sexual consummation equaled love in relationships. How could you not want to be intimate with someone you care deeply about? I reasoned sex was warranted in relationships when two people have strong feelings of love. I thought it was in line with God’s definition however the caveat was you had to be in a committed relationship like marriage, which God deems as a safe and healthy place for couples to unionize in a holy manner. And I knew why—-we develop soul ties and get attached. It’s this bond that helps keep us together for the long haul —-God’s intended design for relationships (What are soul ties —-> http://www.greatbiblestudy.com/soulties.php). I’ve been in relationships that dragged on for almost 5 years because our soul ties were so strong we couldn’t fully cut each other out until we formed “ties” with others. I wasn’t fully freed from my soul ties until I experienced healing and deliverance prayer three years earlier. I knew I was healed but the urge for sex didn’t go away.
I said no to the third date only because I was sick but as I was getting better I knew I couldn’t stay away for long. We sent flirty texts to each other all day. It was borderline sexting (sex texting). I couldn’t stop thinking about him in that way. It was so bad I had to go for walks to “cool down”. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me because 3 years earlier I had zero problems maintaining purity for God. I’d date guys for weeks to months at a time and not so much as kiss them. Sex didn’t cross my mind and lust wasn’t even on the radar. But in this particular situation I wasn’t doing so well. I was so ashamed because I knew God’s word but I couldn’t get myself to do the right thing. I told no one which made the situation worse. I continued to secretly talk to him.
After another steamy text session I sensed God telling me to lookup Romans 6:12-23, which was about refraining from sinning of the flesh. I immediately became fearful and I prayed God would make the lustful feelings go away, but that didn’t happen fast enough so I repented my sin of lust and begged God to keep the guy far away from me because I wasn’t strong enough to stay away. God answered that prayer immediately.
For the next two and half months “unforeseen circumstances” kept occurring in both our lives that made it IMPOSSIBLE for us to meet up. His computer at work crashed, he had car problems, then he had to work late. Stuff happened to me too. Dad got sick so I had to leave LA and stay NorCal for 2-3 weeks, then I had to work late, I was out of commission because mom offered to pay for mole removal surgery, then the planned events where we were suppose to “run into each other” got canceled 3 times. The list went on.
During that time apart my desire to do lustful things dissipated as God showered me with tremendous grace and love. He got me to a place where I was strong enough to permanently end the relationship, not because of guilt or shame, but because I had fallen so in love with Jesus I couldn’t continue to hurt him anymore. God didn’t want me to see that guy but God gave me the free will to say no. By taking over the situation he helped eased me into a place where I could think clearly and empowered me to a point where I could be strong.
1 John 5:14-15
This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.
(http://www.crosswalk.com/singles/1376192/ info on christian dating)
