Learning to Be the Light

The truth is, living in Thailand and trying to show the love of Christ can be one of the most difficult things ever, but totally awesome at the same time. Weird, huh?

I walk along the Sunday night market seeing thousands of people and you know that more than nine out of those ten do not believe in God. The feelings you would expect me to have would be disappointment, discouragement, sadness, and a whole bunch of other negative emotions. However, I surprise myself by being totally encouraged, totally humbled, totally in love with these people, and passionate.

Night Market

You see these people walking aimlessly, not aware or accepting the love of Jesus, and the thought that continually rolls through my mind is, "I could have been just like these people." It's only by God's grace that I am a believer and follower.

So with that truth in my mind, I am given courage and boldness to proclaim the good news and to not be ashamed. Even though my Thai skills are lacking, I totally can share with English speaking people. So in the midst of Buddhist temple grounds, the sound of the Monks chanting, the smell of incense burning in sacrifice to idols, I share and pray.

Two men sat down at the table where some friends and I were eating. I started listening to him talk and quickly found out he liked rock music and tattoos. So I jumped into talking to him about his tattoos and told him about mine (which is a Jesus fish) and we got on the subject of God. I asked him if he liked the band Korn. "Oh yeah!" he said.

I shared with him the story of Brian Head Welch (who was the lead guitarist of Korn who left because he became Christian) and he was really interested! I asked if I could pray with him and he said yeah, so I did. Praise God! His name is Josh if you want to pray for him, he still wasn't sold out on God, but he was interested.

So even though Thailand is spiritually dark, I'm learning to be the light.