Slavery

We attended church with my brother and his family this morning and I had no clue what God had ready for me.  The topic was Slavery - the sermon was very good and looked back at the history of slavery in the Bible and how different it is from our perception of slavery.  The details of the sermon are many and can be found here - http://www.mosaicchristian.org/#/messages

He also talked about how evil the kind of slavery is that we are familiar with.

^{Hebrews 2:14} Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil — ¹⁵ and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
 

^{1 Timothy 1:9-11} We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, ¹⁰ for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine ¹¹ that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me. 


 We watched a video from www.IJM.org and I cried and cried.  They are a "human rights agency that brings rescue to victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression. IJM lawyers, investigators and aftercare professionals work with local officials to secure immediate victim rescue and aftercare, to prosecute perpetrators and to ensure that public justice systems - police, courts and laws - effectively protect the poor. "  The thought of anyone (mostly young children and women) being held, raped and mistreated for years and years is horrifying.  My brain and heart wants to deny it's truth - to believe that it doesn't really happy and certainly not to the extent that it does (400,000-600,000 people are taken across international borders in human trafficking every year).  I'm not sure my place in the this horrific tragedy, but for right now my commitment is to start praying for these individuals every day - both the victims and the perpetrators.  Also to pray for God to direct me and my families role in helping rescue and rehabilitate the victims of these crimes.    The thought of my own daughters in this situation is enough to make me puke and cry and cry.   It makes me so grateful for God's protection over our lives thus far - and to pray hard for it to continue no matter where in the world we are.   I challenge anyone who is reading this to look into it further and not be naive to the needed prayers and work to rescue and show these hurt people the love of Christ.  I admit that I have known about this organization for quite sometime and even get emails from them that I delete because the stories are much easier to ignore.  I'm grateful that the Lord put it in my face and broke my heart for these people again.