One day she became seriously sick, someone called one of the Christian ladies who helping to rehabilitate Rebecca. Rebecca was in a critical condition. She had lost six pints of blood because of an ectopic pregnancy. The Christian lady and her husband searched the city and found some other Christians who were willing to donate blood. She had surgery and her life was saved. Seeing how much God really loved her through people who were strangers to her deeply toughed Rebecca’s heart. She began to understand that God’s love was real through God’s people, and that it was not just words even her own parents had not been willing to give her blood in her time of need. The experience brought a very great change in Rebecca’s attitudes and values. She truly repented of the life and behavior in which she had been living. She decided that she would serve God herself by helping to rescues other girls from the street. From that time to the present, Rebecca has become a partner in reaching out to street girls along with the Christian girls she first met. Although she is still young, she has become a real person of prayer with a great burden for other girls who are trapped as she was especially the young ones who are forced into prostitution by necessity as she had been. The Lord has even begun to soften her heart and change her character from the hardness, stubbornness and hot temper of her former life. Rebecca has learned that the living God is a God of forgiveness and a God of deliverance. She can do the same for a multitude of other girls trapped in the same ugly life, but it will take the love and commitment of other Christians who are willing to reach out to these unwanted and despised girls with practical evidence of the love of God. It will be of value here to relate how God first touched the heart of one of the Christian girls who originally spoke to Rebecca about God
Serawit was born and grew up in a middle-class Christian family. Her parents loved and cared for her. She was secure in her parents’ love and in the love of God. Serawit’s parents encouraged her to be the very most she could be in life. She was taught the importance of education from early childhood. Eventually Serawit was able to attend the national university in her country. She majored in economics. When she graduated she was full of energy and enthusiasm about her future life. How ever, about that time the government went through a difficult time which created concern for everyone. During this time Serawit became involved in a discipleship training programme and became part of every active church. Late one evening, driving home from a dinner party with some of her family, Serawit saw something happen that made an impression on her heart and began a process in her life that lead to a ministry among street girls. A girl on the street with a very short skirt started running towards her car. For few seconds Serawit and her family were confused, but then they realized that the girl in the short skirt was trying to get attention of the car behind theirs, which had a lone male driver. The man drove past the girl but she ran after him, calling to the man.
At that moment, the whole tragedy of prostitution suddenly came into sharp focus for Serawit. She began thinking about her own secure, protected life and family relationships. She thought about her BA degree and she certainly of finding a good paying job with all her needs fully met. But what about this pathetic young girl on the street, trying to survive with the only thing possessed-being a female? What could such girls hope for? What could they live for? What degrading experience would this young girl have to endure this very night with some gross, evil-minded man? As a female herself, Serawit wondered how these street girls must hate themselves. She thought about how they have to literally destroy their lives just to ‘survive’ for a few more months or years. Some time later, Serawit got a job with a Christian agency and enjoyed her work very much. The incident with the street girl did not leave her mind. She found herself praying that God would do something to rescue these poor young girls. She prayed that God would send some mature Christian girl with a deep knowledge of the Bible to help them find God’s for given ness and love.
Serawit realized this would be a difficult prayer to answer. In addition to spiritual maturity, such a person would have to enlist the means to give these girls training to earn a living in an honorable way of life. That would be no small matter. Serawit felt she had none of the qualifications or resources needed to ever attempt such a ministry herself. Little did she realize that God intended to use Serawit herself to answer her own prayer. One day Serawit shared her burden and concern of these streets girls with the people in her discipleship Bible study group. The group began to pray about it. A friend in the group offered a suggestion that caused Serawit to think. Instead of being overwhelmed with the need of the estimated ten thousand prostitutes in city, why not ask the Lord to open up an opportunity to contact the build a relationship with just one of them, and then to love and pray that girl into a new life in Christ? As Serawit considered this idea over the next few days, the Lord brought her into contact with another Christian girl and her husband with the same burden and concern. Together, Serawit and this couple began to read articles and statistics about prostitution in their city and to talk to others who knew something about the situation.
As the three of them talked the matter over and prayed about it, the Lord gave them the courage and the will to go out onto the street together to seek to make contact with just a few girls. The other girl’s husband promised to pray the whole time the girls were out on the street so that the Lord would lead them to the ones he had prepared. They also enlisted others to pray. On 13 December 1994, the two very nervous Christian girls made their first attempt to contact girls on the street as others prayed. God began to work. Relationships were built. Trust was established. But it was very hard. Often the two girls would come home after an evening on the streets frustrated, discouraged and overwhelmed by what they would hear from the street girls. The world of street girls was an ugly, evil place. Some of the girls would indicate a desire to change, but them they would find them back on the streets again a few weeks later. Serawit and her friend realized that, without serious occupational rehabilitation, there would be no lasting change. The street girls could make money in one night from prostitution than they could in two weeks at any kind of casual jobs they might be able to find. Serawit and her friends cried out to the Lord for help. In spite of their great difficulties, they saw the Lord begin to touch the lives of just a few girls through their love and friendship. Rebecca was one of these girls.
Then one day Serawit and her friend discovered how much God himself cared about the street girls. They received word that a Christian foundation in another country had heard of their small efforts and was offering a grant of money to establish a vocational rehabilitation center for the girls. Now they could truly offer the girls a practical way out of miserable lives. Slowly, God has been answering their prayers. One by one, girls whose lives have been destroyed by circumstances and sin are being put back together by the love of God expressed through his people. Even more important than the money they received to build a rehabilitation centre, Serawit and her friends now realized that the key to success in difficult ministry is the dedicated Christian partners in ministry God has given them, as well many people committed to pray for them. Modernity and the wholesale acceptance of western entertainment and values have brought some true horrible problem to the cities of Nigeria. Such things as pornography, sexually transmitted disease, abortion and prostitution have a grim power to destroy all that is good in families and in God-given male-female relationships. These things are problems that will not go away apart from the intervention of God and his people. Human governments do not have the will or the moral and spiritual resources to solve such problems. Only God and his people on earth can bring about lasting change.
God is able to overcome these problems-but he choose to overcome them through the intervention and involvement of his own people. The church is the body of Christ. The people of God are the hands, the feet and the heart of Christ for people who are trapped by the ugly sins of modernity. If God’s people do not respond to his call to help others, there is a very grim future coming. It takes courage, faith, prayer and commitment to see God’s deliverance take place. But the God who raise the dead is able to do “exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us” {Eph. 3:20}. The question is, are we willing to let him demonstrate his love and compassion through us and to do the impossible? We have and operate rehabilitation, recovery and rescue centre call: Helping Hands Rescue Centre, to be involved you may call: 08033399821.
Dr. Lewis Akpogena
08055059656
E-mail: akpogena@yahoo.com
