Oh my goodness, I don’t even know where to begin right now… tonight has been so moving. No, tonight has been ground-breaking in our journey. Leading into this trip, I always talked about how I had hoped that the magnitude of what we are doing wouldn’t set in until we were back home because I knew it was going to be an overwhelming feeling. Well, we almost made it, but tonight was our night. Things really set in. God really set in. I wish I could explain the conversations our team had tonight in any sort of justifiable manner in comparison to how big they really were, but I don’t think that is possible. You really needed to be there to feel the presence of the Lord moving through our hearts and our minds, but I will do my best to put those feelings into words.
The last two weeks have been unimaginable. It’s so hard to explain. In the last 14 days, we’ve conducted at least 17 different interviews (a few of them with multiple people), had three unfilmed meetings with different people learning and building connections, experienced a court focused on rescuing women from the daily controls of prostitution, and explored numerous cities. There isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t forget what day it even is. Everything seems so recent, but yet so long ago. I think back to our first week in Columbus and have to convince myself that it was even on this same trip. Such a crazy feeling. But we’ve still got three busy days ahead of us that we are greatly looking forward to. I will come back to those days after I try and process through our conversations tonight. Oh boy.
So we were just sitting at Starbucks tonight to use their wifi because the wifi here in our hotel can’t even handle one of our computers on the internet. It all started at Starbucks, the last place (well, probably second to last behind an all-vegetable grocery store, or something like that) anybody that knows me would expect anything amazing to happen for me. We were just working on looking over documents and articles for the people we will be interviewing in the next few days, and God decided that he had something so much bigger in store for tonight. He really wanted to remind us of exactly why he has us on this trip. And then the mind blowing began.
I don’t even remember how the conversation began. The earliest part I can remember was Luke bringing up how pornography plays such a big role in driving men into the path leading them to being johns and purchasing sex, while at the same time, its connection can be so weak. There is no doubt in our minds that pornography plays a role in the destructive path that a man takes from being a normal, productive member of society to a position where he is actually seeking out purchasing sex from another human being to satisfy his own personal desires. But at the same time, we understand the pornography does not lead every man down that path by any means. Then it clicked. Every time somebody asks me to explain the goal of our documentary, I tell them that we are exploring how it is and why it is a man in our society finds himself on that path from a productive member of society to a man purchasing sex. I never realized just how pivotal that explanation was to what we are actually doing in this fight. We are trying to figure out exactly what it is in between pornography and the act of purchasing sex. What is happening biologically? What is happening psychologically? Our organization is based off of a “fabric of exploitation”, if you will, on the different steps men take in this destructive path. We need to know the difference between men who view pornography and have no desires to go beyond that and the men who view pornography and feel the need to seek out more. What’s the difference between the high school kid that can’t break his tendency to get lost in pornography until the day he finds himself speaking out against those very struggles and the man scanning Backpage.com for his next fulfillment? What’s the difference between me and him? How can we ever understand such a thing? To be honest, I’m not really sure how that will ever happen. But that is what we are going for. That is what we, as Hope for the Voiceless, are setting out to understand.
Once we found ourselves all on the same page understanding what we are doing with this documentary, God really started to move through the conversation, showing us just how in control he is. For the last month or two, I haven’t really been planning on being able to work on this project next summer because I want to do a summer project with Cru at school to help build my ministry skills. All of the sudden, while sitting at dinner at Applebee’s, I found myself saying “I don’t think I’m going on a summer project next summer.” I never expected those words to come out of my mouth because that is something that I really want to do. I really want to experience all of the different ways God can use my life. But it now feels like that is not God’s timing. I just don’t think that three weeks of next summer would be enough to devote to this film project before I would have to leave for a Cru summer project. I know that God has specifically chosen this team to prepare our hearts in a special way in order to fight this evil. He doesn’t choose too many people to fight these battles because it’s just not an easy thing to do. And I now realize why I’ve felt so called to devote my life to this endeavor. It’s because it’s requiring that level of devotion to accomplish the things we are working for. I’ve been able to half-off everything we’ve done so far and still manage to get everything done by the grace of God. But I don’t see that happening anymore. I feel like God has officially called me to put my big-boy pants on and step up to the work he has called me to or step away. It’s all or nothing. Luke shared the fears that we all have… it’s so hard to fully devote ourselves to this endeavor because we are afraid of what happens when it is our life and something fails. Where do we go from there? So we call it a project we do on the side of our lives to provide some sort of assurance in case things go wrong here. But that’s not where God needs us to be. When people ask us what we are doing this summer, our responses are no longer things like looking for a job, or working on this project, etc. It is about time that our response is confidently “I am filming a documentary.” This is what we are doing with our lives right now. This isn’t a thing we are doing, this is our life. This is where I see myself going with my life. I don’t know that we will find an answer to the questions we are seeking to understand in our lifetime, but I’m sure ready to seek out that answer until the day God says it’s time to come home. That’s a little scary, to be honest.
Now, for the final topic of discussion, I think. We are only four people out here on this journey. Four people. You don’t film a documentary with four people. Heck, you don’t even like each other after having four people stuck in such confined spaces, often in fairly stressful situations, after this amount of time on the road. But we are doing this. No, God is doing this. We spent a lot of time comparing this trip itself to the will of God. First, we had to realize that nothing will change in our audience without Jesus. The only way we will truly change the hearts of men in America, and throughout the world, is with Jesus. We may not be sharing the Gospel everywhere we go, but we are surely carrying Jesus on our backs everywhere we go. In 1 Peter 2:12, Paul says “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.” If nothing else happens while we are in an interview, we are determined to make sure that each person we come across knows that there is something different about us so that, in the end, they will praise God for the things he does. But really, we look at each day of this trip and there isn’t really anything that is absolutely mind-blowing by itself, but when we combine the last 14 days into one event as a whole, our breath is taken away. Honestly, we have experienced more in the last 14 days than some people will in their entire lives. The same thing can be seen in God’s will. You look at each one of our lives as an individual, and it’s fairly insignificant in the scheme of everything going on in the timeline of eternity. But then you look at how intricately and beautifully he has woven all of our lives into one body of Christ living out his will, and we cannot help but to be taken aback.
Wow, this has been a lot to unpack. I will try and get back and fill you guys in on the next couple days soon, but I think my mind has used every bit of power it has to unpack all of this. Like I said, you really needed to be there to truly experience the power of the Spirit moving through our conversation and how pivotal tonight really has been in our walks in this endeavor, and with Christ in general. But I hope that you can at least begin to feel the excitement we experienced tonight through this post. I love you guys.
Lord, lead me where you need me.
peace and love,
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