Go Blind!

“I will lead the blind by a road they do not know; by paths they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I will do, and I will not forsake them.”-Isaiah 42:16

This week one of the women I work with stated this, “We work in a ministry that does not allow us to hide and is all about bringing women out of the hiding they know too well.”

So much can change from the day to the night. The light to the dark. The same street will look completely different depending on the time of day you are there. It’s true the night life finds its way on the streets in Dallas and there is one main strip where one can find all the “gentlemen’s clubs” but by day you would drive down the street like it’s any other street. The women I work with have spent many a night on the unlit streets, dark alleys, and unknown hotel rooms. They have been in hiding, but New Friends New Life allows none of the women who walk through those doors no matter what her background is to hide and learn to “become.”
One of the staff women who know firsthand that lifestyle can testify to the dark memories of long ago. She said, “It’s the memories that can keep you sober.” She remembers the dark nights when she didn’t know where her clothes were, the address she was at, or who she had been with that night. Like the majority of the women, there were years of hiding behind drugs, alcohol and turning tricks not knowing how to become the women God has destined for all us to become.
I have been thinking about the darkness and going through life blind. Often times we think this are bad. I mean after all how fun is it to truly stumble and bump into things in the dark? Or going through life blinded feeling as though you might miss out on something exciting? There are those risks when we choose to live life like this, but Isaiah talks about in our blindness we will be guided on paths and turn the darkness before us in to light. What catches my eye in this verse is it’s by nothing by my own doing that I will see the light or know where I am headed, it’s all God. Yet so many times I think I am in the light but I am in my own darkness whether it is pride, shame, self-doubt or the desire to control my life. What if we all CHOSE the darkness over the light we saw in the moment and CHOSE to be blindfolded—I wonder in our blindness and darkness would we see more than we could of trying to live in our own light??

Maybe we find ourselves at a time when we are hiding. But God is asking you to continue on the journey blindfolded and in the dark and he’s got the rest, stay sober from all the things you are not willing to surrender. And friends I am praying that in living this way He will take us all too incredible heights, and sights we could only see in this fashion of blindfolded and darkness. He does not want to see us hiding he wants to take us to a world where we see as he sees-HOW SWEET would that be??

She ran...He SAW

“She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me…”-Gen. 16:13

NOTE: Hagar is the only one in the Bible who gives a name to God. I find it striking that she is a woman and also the name she gives me...so profound...

Genesis talks of a young slave woman who was seen only as an object to reproduce and nothing more. Her owners, Sari and Abraham saw themselves as upstanding citizens and viewed Hagar as someone who was beneath them, just as we do today when we see a human who is in a position of being objectified.

We forget they have a story; they have a reason for being in the place they find themselves. We stop trying to see them as someone’s daughter, someone’s mother, someone who has a name.

Hagar fled from her home feeling unseen and abandoned. She had been kicked out from the only home she has known feeling as though she was at fault, a criminal according to the family she served. But as she sat in the desert, in her most critical time God saw her and she was known.
My hope is that as we finish this year we would see not only these women who have a “past” but all people whom we casually dismiss as people who have names and they have journeyed from somewhere to be where they are now.
God saw Hagar and she knew she was seen despite the way she was treated by those who should have treated her well.
At New Friends New Life I am SEEING each woman has a name, each woman is a daughter, and each one is a jewel in her Creator’s eye.

“The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert…And he said to her, “where have you come from and where are you going?”-Gen. 7-8
When we start to SEE these women as victims we can give mothers and their children a chance to live as a family. Hagar went into the remotest of places looking for a way to escape. Her life was out of control not knowing what to do or where to go, so she hid.
God asks her a question, “Where have you been and where are you going?” He wanted to engage this woman and treat her as a human being. First of all he FOUND her. It didn’t matter how far she got God still found her in her troubles. Not only that, but he wants to know about her and love her in the midst of her troubles.
The questions are valid, because in order for Hagar to know who she is and how God SEES her she’s got to be honest in where she has been and how she wants to change her life.
The women at New Friends New Life have been victimized since they were young but they have to choose change their path. However, there have to be people along the path to help them SEE their worth and walk with them as they choose to be different.
There is hope for them, for me, for you, God sees us, finds us, and wants to walk with us through our circumstances.