We Will Love Our Enemies

Feb 9

Series: As for Me and My House

Alec Seekins

My name is Alec Seekins. Living Streams has been my home since I was three years old. Like he said, he was my youth pastor when I was a wee laddie. I was as pudgy back then, so maybe “wee” is the wrong word. I’ve been here my whole life. Up until about year ago, I spent time volunteering or working in our youth ministry, hanging out with these guys quite a bit. I spent a chunk of that time as our mission pastor as well. Living Streams is the only church my wife has ever known. She came here and to the Lord a little bit later in life.

About a year ago we quit our jobs. We packed all of our extra stuff in our parents’ spare bedrooms in their houses. We went to an island in southeast Asia, where we didn’t have any friends and we didn’t know the language—just to the follow the Lord. And I kind of followed my wife into this ministry where we were working in anti-sex trafficking, trying to connect with women and build friendships and relationships, just to see what the Lord might do. If there were some women who were hoping to get out and to see if maybe we could help them make that happen.

When we showed up for that, I think we really were prepared to experience the love of God for the victims. That’s something we had seen enough of the lord taking people that have been kicked around little bit, people that people think are too scarred and too dirty. Sinners, people that are the lowest. We had really seen the Lord do some cool stuff with people who believe that they are lower than everyone else, people who everyone else believes are lower than them.

So we expected to build those kind of mutual friendships that the Lord so loves to use. Not those “I’m up here and you’re down there” kind fo relationships, but just like real friendships, laughing and sharing life together—those things that the Lord uses to bring healing and life and fullness to everyone involved. We expected to see that. And we were shocked to see how quickly we saw that. I was talking to someone last night.

And I don’t know how much of it was the culture of where we were or how much was the Holy Spirit going before us. But we didn’t find a lot of barriers to building relationships with these women very, very quickly and to calling them friends very quickly, to celebrating birthdays and sitting down and laughing with them and playing games with them. And also, just having serious conversations with them and sharing struggles and sharing joys with these women. Like I said, I think we really were prepared to experience the love of God for the victims when we got there.

What we were not prepared for was to experience the love of God for the violators. I don’t think we were ready for that at all. I don’t think we were ready to have pimps and traffickers that we called “friend.” I don’t think we were ready to have violators that have meaning to us, that we care for. I don’t think we were ready to celebrate birthdays and exchange gifts with people who were actively engaged in something I think we could all rightly call evil. But the love of God is a lot bigger than my heart. It’s just so much bigger.

The way I’ve been thinking about it is, like in my life, I don’t know when I’m going to used to the reality that God’s love is bigger than I think it is. It feels like, every once in a while I turn a corner and I see a new facet of his love and I’m like, “Whoa. Where did that come from? There’s no way that was there before.” But also, there’s no way it hasn’t been there forever. And then I think that’s it. I’ve seen the fullness of the love of God. That’s as big as it gets. There’s no way it could be bigger than that. Then I see there’s another corner and I turn it and it’s just bigger. Eventually I hope to just figure out that his love is just bigger. I hope to be amazed but not shocked at the greatness of his love and the power of his Holy Spirit.

I didn’t say this last service, but I just want to say this. If there’s nothing else that you hear me say today, I would just say, please figure out how to hear the voice of God and then just obey and follow. Whatever that means. If that’s crazy, if it’s mundane, there’s so much richness in following the Lord. I never thought I was going to see the things that I saw the Lord do this last year, and yet I’ve seen them and it’s amazing, and it’s beautiful.

In March, as we know, things got a little weird. And on this particular island where we were, about 60% of the economy is tourism. So, as you can imagine, it dried up real quick. And these women that we had come to love and call friends, there was this bitter sweet situation for them, and for us as we engaged in a relationship with them. On the one hand it was sweet, because these women we had come to love and call friends, they were no longer being purchased quite so frequently by men who didn’t know their true value. But it was bitter because they were no longer able to purchase food quite so frequently for themselves.

So the ministry we were working with over night decided to shift gears and try to figure out how to meet this immediate physical need and, in the course of it, continue to build new relationships and strengthen existing ones. So we pivoted and starting trying to bring food to these women. And I really want to thank Living Streams, because you guys funded about 80 to 90% of the project that came out of that. And for three months, 80 women, and whoever was peripheral to their lives, every single week got these giant bags of fruit and veggies and proteins and rice. And it opened doors that literally led to actual freedom, both physical and spiritual. And I think those doors are still being walked through. So there’s no way to really even count the impact that you guys had on the kingdom.

So there was this one particular brothel that we would go to, among all the brothels that we would go to on a weekly basis. And for some reason, there we just had a lot of favor. We had more and more and more significant relationships. And our relationships were growing deeper and deeper and we were even occasionally having conversations about Jesus and about freedom in this particular brothel.

And in this brothel, there was a pimp. And we’re going to just call her name Grace, which I know might be a little surprising, but actually there’s a significant minority of the pimps who are women. And Grace had the kind of presence that you might imagine from a pimp. She had a very oppressive and heavy and aggressive presence to her. When she walked in the room, you could see shoulders kind of tighten up, and when she walked out, you would see an emotional, almost spiritual sigh of relief when she wasn’t there anymore.

And Grace was personally responsible for deceiving, trafficking, capturing and pimping out a number of our friends. And I remember on one particular day when we were there—we would often play games with the women at this location. A lot of the kind of games that we would play with the youth like Ninja, and that weird water bottle game where you throw it around, and ultimate spoons and stuff like that. And we were playing this game where we throw a water bottle around and Grace decided she wanted to join the game. So, obviously, a good number of the women who were on the fence decided they no longer wanted to play the game.

As we were playing this game, I remember connecting with Grace. And I remember feeling like the Lord was saying, “Hey, I want you to really develop this connection here.” And I saw her laughing and having fun for the first time. And she was overjoyed when she won because we let her win. Yeah. It was definitely a “let the Wookie win” kind of a situation. I just remember feeling the weird dissonance in my heart, of loving this woman who was actively engaged in oppressing and violating friends of mine. But it was the love of God and there was nothing I could do about it. Because his love is just so much bigger than my heart.

And I even realized later that day that this is the same woman who had been kind of pushing against Colleen a little bit in a weird, passive-aggressive way, walking around saying, “This is my wife,” on a day when I wasn’t around. (Which is very upsetting to hear.) And, fortunately, my wife is strong and capable and knew how to say, “Huh-uh,” in a way that didn’t rock the boat too much. But there was nothing I could do about this love that was creeping up.

Let’s rewind a little way back. I remember before shut-down there was a prayer meeting we were having. We always had these long prayer meetings before any outreach. And I felt like the Lord started to tell me that he wanted me to begin praying for pimps that they would go from being captors to liberators. So I started praying that prayer on a regular basis. I prayed it for a few months. But I really need to be honest with you guys. It didn’t matter how boldly the words were coming out of my mouth every time I prayed that prayer, there wasn’t that much bold going on on the inside.

On a really good day, all that was happening in my mind and my heart was something like, “God, I know you can do this, but you’re not going to.” And on a bad day is was more like, “God, do you do this? Are you good enough? Strong enough? Powerful enough? Real enough to do this kind of stuff? I’ll just pray anyway.”

But Jesus wasn’t joking when he talked about mustard seeds. He knew what he was saying when he said, “Just a little bit of faith can move mountains into the oceans. And just a little bit of faith can take captors and turn them into liberators.” And I’m so grateful for that reality.

So fast forward back up a couple of weeks after that interaction, playing a game with Grace, and all of a sudden at that location, we hear something crazy is going on. And we don’t know. There was some drama and we’re concerned it might have had something to do with some conversations we might have had with someone about Jesus or freedom. So we thought maybe we need to lean back a little bit. And the next thing we know, Grace and about half the women from that brothel have disappeared.

No one is responding to text messages or phone calls, and we’re super concerned about it. And then, after a few days, we hear back from a couple of women who are saying, “Hey, Grace just took us all and we’re scared and we want to go home.” And we start to get a trickle in of conversation. On one particular night, maybe a couple of weeks after they had all initially disappeared, a few people from our ministry team started hearing back from Grace and all at the women with her at the same time. They were texting and they were saying, “Hey, we want to talk. We want to meet. Can we talk right now? Not tomorrow. Not in the morning. Right now. Where we can we meet? When can we meet? Where are we meeting?”

So our friends dropped their plans for that evening and they went to meet with Grace and these women and they found that what had happened was Grace had had some sort of a disagreement with one of the other pimps, and Grace said, “I’m going to take these women and I’m going to start my own brothel.”

So she took these women and she tried to start her own brothel, but then she failed. And she had this thought, “Maybe I need to be done.” And she knew that our ministry had been an off ramp for women in the past. She knew she couldn’t wait for the morning. Her resolve might change. So they reached out and they had this meeting. Our friends began to talk with them about what freedom might look like and what Jesus looks like and what freedom in Jesus might look like. Then they began to pray. They began to worship. And the Holy Spirit came down in that room and started moving in the hearts of these women who barely even knew his name.

And the Holy Spirit planted something in Grace’s heart that night that really took root. And that oppressive spirit began to be replaced with a joy and lightness. To make a long and beautiful story—that is still very much in process—short, we were able to find a place for these women to live. We were able to find legitimate income for them. Grace was actually able to get a job with a local pastor for a few months where she was working in his Corona side gig and getting bible study and discipleship every morning along with the rest of the staff. These women got hungry for the word of God.

Grace, when we would talk about the word of God, or when we would pray or worship, she would have this weird, goofy smile on her face, and would almost rock for the joy that was in her. And we knew that this was real, because the women around Grace were starting to relax around her, and starting to feel comfortable letting her know when they were leaving, instead of trying to slip out like they were before.

And then, eventually, they started inviting us into this home to do like a little mini church with them every week to worship and pray and talk about the things that they were giving over to Jesus this week. And I got to see the power of God in a way that I’ve never seen it before, because God gave us the love for an enemy.

In Matthew 5, Jesus says this,

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?

I read this passage a couple of weeks ago as I was starting to prepare for this message. And all of a sudden, what Jesus is talking about, that reward that you get—it brought a whole new light for me. I’ve known for a long time it’s not this weird, flimsy theology of prosperity gospel that you do what Jesus asks and then boom there’s a bonus at work, or a raise, or you find a bunch of miracle money. I’ve actually, some of the few legitimate miracles that I’ve experienced in my life was miracle money. And the money itself was pretty lame. The promise that God gave was way more meaningful. And I’m still holding on to that. The money disappeared years ago. It didn’t last that long. Money tends to not last long. But that promise is still sticking around.

So I started thinking that, maybe the rewards that are eternal that the Bible talks about, maybe I could just imagine them like there’s this room that the Father’s preparing for me. In that room there’s this treasure chest that’s kind of closed. And every time the Lord’s like, “Here’s a gift for you,” he hides it in that treasure chest. And one day, after Jesus comes back, I’m going to go into that room, I’m going to pop open the treasure chest and be like, “Oh, that’s the reward you gave me on that day. Oh that’s so cool. What an awesome mystery that’s not a mystery anymore.”

But I don’t even think of it that way anymore. Because I feel like I’m holding some of those rewards in my hand today. I feel like those rewards are continuing to grow in value. And there’s going to be a day when their value is going to skyrocket. When Jesus comes back to say, “Behold, I make all things new.” And the value is going to be more significant of an increase than anybody who bought stock in GameStop last year. It’s a big deal. Jesus knows what he’s doing. He’s got some good rewards for us.

And Jesus says, “What reward, if you love those who love you? Maybe they’ll buy you lunch after you buy them lunch. Maybe you show up for them at a really hard time, and later in life they come into some money and they buy you a free car. That’s pretty cool.” But lunch is gone in a couple of minutes, if you’re a fatty like me. And a car is gone in a few years.

But I have this friendship with this amazing, redeemed woman that we’re calling Grace. And I got to see the power of God at work in an enemy, in a way that I never imagined I would see the power of God. Paul elsewhere says that our battle is not against flesh and blood, it’s against spirits and principalities. Usually when we read that verse, we read it as a spiritual call to arms. And it is that. But lately, I’ve been focused on our battle is not against flesh and blood. Our enemies are not really our enemies.

I think that, if we think we have enemies that have flesh and blood, I think it’s very likely that we’ve actually been deceived by the real enemy, that our enemies are just decoy enemies. That if we think people, any people, regardless of what evil they do, or what wrong things they believe, if we think they’re the enemy, I think we’ve been deceived by the very same enemy that deceived them into believing or doing the things that we find so reprehensible. We’re missing the real fight. If evil people are our enemies, it’s the spirits that are deceiving them.

And the way we fight the real enemy is not with fists or with Facebook, but it’s with enemy love. It’s with sacrifice. It’s with turning the other cheek. It’s with walking an extra mile with an oppressive authority who’s forced you to carry their burden for one. It’s with giving our shirt to people who would steal our coat. That’s how we fight the real enemy.

I think our enemies are actually like the redemptive power of God pressed into something like potential energy. Like a spring that’s been pressed down, waiting to be released so it can come into life. Or like a battery that’s been hiding in a drawer alone, waiting to be plugged into some device of God and bring it to life. Because God is wanting to take your enemies and show off his power and his goodness in the midst of their darkness.

One of the greatest joys, I think, of my life to date, is that I have another story to share with you this morning, of another captor turned liberator. We’re going to call him Bapok. That’s just a common honorific in this particular part of the world, on this island.

Bapok, he’s a really big, bad guy. Bapok is not just a pimp who owns a decent-sized brothel in the second largest red-light district that we know of. There’s usually about 150 women working there on any given night. Bapok is also part of the association of pimps in that area. Bapok is also part of the local mafia, and he’s also a low level government enforcer. You don’t mess with Bapok for good reason.

When we started going there, early on last year, we met Bapok and we met his wife. She was really hungry for something good and clean and right in her life. So she would invite us and chat with us longer than anyone else. We would talk with her for hours. It wasn’t long before she was inviting us in for meals. It wasn’t long before both of them were asking us to pray for them over and over and over again. I’ve never prayed for anyone more than this couple, because they continually asked for it. We built relationship and we were invited to birthday parties.

Then there came a point in our relationship where we trusted them so much, and felt the next step was actually to invite them to our home, where we sleep, for a meal. And we prayed about it. We talked together, me and Colleen, and we talked to our oversights in the ministry. And we felt like, yeah, this is where the Lord was leading. Because we just loved them that much and we just trusted them that much.

And we began to see the Lord change their hearts. And we began to see the way they interacted with the women who were under them changing and holding them with more of an open hand. Letting them leave if they wanted to leave. We learned about the fact that Bapok actually had cancer, has cancer. Because of at the state of health care over there, it’s just unclear whether he’s just got months or many more years to live.

There came a day where there was a woman from another brothel in that red light district who had upset her pimp somehow, so he kicked her out on the streets and blacklisted her. She ran to Bapok for safety. And Bapok harbored her at their place. Then that other pimp took Bapok to the association of pimps to bring his grievance before them, and said, “This man is harboring a woman that I blacklisted. Do something about it.”

And Bapok addressed the association of pimps and he said this. He said, “We have been living in sin our entire lives. I don’t know how much longer mine’s going to be. How am I going to get clean?” He said, “I don’t really care what you do or say. This woman’s going to be safe with me until she’s ready to go home.” And that was the end of the situation. That woman was safe with him until she was ready to go home.

Then, a little while later, Bapok and his wife made a really significant, earth shattering decision. They decided that they were going to enable all of their women to go home. As soon as they had all gone home, they were going to close down their doors, and they were going to reopen as a community center, where kids could come and hear about Jesus, and learn English, where they could get tutoring in the morning. There’s hopes this next year to put something like a little clinic in there.

And then, a week later, the boat started rocking. And Bapok’s wife had a dream in the night. And she heard a voice after that, saying, “I have medicine for your husband.” So she got up early in the morning before the sun was up. She didn’t tell her husband where she was going, and she went to a Hindu temple to pray for a day and a half. And then, as you can imagine, that upset him. It caused some issues between the two of them. Our whole team that was heavily involved in community with them was really concerned. What’s going on? She’s hearing from these other spirits right at that time when it felt like something really good was happening.

But I felt like the Holy Spirit was saying, “You know, this isn’t another spirit she’s hearing from. She just doesn’t understand what I’m saying.”

So we went to their house and I asked her, “Would you tell me about the dream you had?”

She said, “It wasn’t just a dream. I had a dream and then I woke up and I had a waking vision. Then I heard this audible voice.”

And I said, “The Holy Spirit, I think, is the one speaking to you. So would you tell me and I’ll ask the Holy Spirit what the meaning is?”

And the dream was essentially this vision of her, this dream of her on top of this giant, beautiful valley with waterfalls and rainbows and all this kind of stuff. And it was the Holy Spirit telling her, “I’m calling you into the kingdom fo heaven. This is the kingdom of heaven and I want you to enter into it.”

And then she woke up from that and she went outside. It was still dark, like two or three in the morning. And she saw a light that had no light source. And she went to the light, and as soon as she got to the light, it disappeared. And she didn’t see a light bulb or anything that made any sense. And she was so confused. And this was the Holy Spirit saying, “You’ve been pursuing me, but that’s not how it works. I pursue you. You surrender to Jesus. You let Jesus come after you and that’s how you enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

And then the voice that she said she heard said, “I have medicine for your husband.” That’s the Holy Spirit saying, “I have medicine but it’s not necessarily for his body. I have medicine that he really wants for his spirit to be cleaned.”

And a week later, they were both in the hospital. Him with complications from his ongoing condition, and her with typhoid. One of our friends from the ministry went to go visit them. In the course of that visit, Bapok’s wife gave her life to Jesus. Right after that, so did he. And a few weeks later, it was two days before Christmas, and that former brothel hosted a Christmas party. Sixty women from the surrounding community showed up. And they heard the story of the birth of Jesus, and they heard the gospel. And they heard the testimony of one our good friends about how Jesus saved her from the sex trade, and then he saved her from sin and death. And there was weeping in that former brothel, but the kind of tears that come from hope.

Jesus is pretty powerful. Jesus has a very different way of dealing with evil than our natural inclination. Our natural inclination, our best efforts on our own, they just fall short. And they’re just lame. And they tend to just make the problem worse. You hit me in the cheek, I’m not turning the other cheek. I’m hitting you back in the face. That’s what I want to do. You come at me with a sword, I’m coming back with a sword, or a gun, if I can find one. But Jesus didn’t fight with a sword. He fought with a sacrifice.

And I know that that is really controversial right now. But it’s not new. It’s always been offensive. It’s always offensive. It has always been offensive to love the enemy. It has always been hard to turn the other cheek. It has always felt like just lying down for evil. But we’ve seen Jesus’ way start to take root in some really powerful ways. Over the last couple of hundred years, for some reason or another, there have been more and more men and women who have followed Jesus in this way of enemy love. And it has made a marked difference on goodness, righteousness and justice here on earth.

We’ve seen men and women like Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu. People like Mother Teresa, William Wilberforce, Rosa Parks. And even people like Mahatma Ghandi, who don’t follow Jesus, but just take his words really seriously. And it has made a notable difference for goodness in the world. Because the way of Jesus is powerful. Because enemy love is tapping into the love of God. And he knows what he’s talking about. He’s not messing around when he says it’s time for us to turn the other cheek. It’s time for us to love our enemies.

I have been watching through my phone this last year and the last couple of weeks, as I’ve gotten here, as this strange divide is kind of welling up around us in our culture. I’m not here at all to say there isn’t truth and there isn’t a lie, that there isn’t good ideas and good ideologies, and bad ideas and bad ideologies. But I think if we’ve landed on either side of the strange divide, I think we’ve landed on the wrong side. Because Jesus has never been on the other side of his enemies.

When Jesus showed up in the Old Testament to talk to Joshua and Joshua said, “Are your on our side or on their side?” And Jesus said, “Nah. That’s not how it works.”

When the Pharisees would ask him, “Is it this or this?” And he would say, “No, it’s that.”

When the Scribes would say, “Is it this situation or is it like that?” He would say, “You just don’t get it.”

And we’re doing the same thing right now in our culture, saying, “Is it me? Or is it me?” And Jesus is saying, “No. If you’re on the other side of your enemy, you’ve missed it completely. You should be on the same side of your enemy. Not to say you agree with them or follow them in wickedness, but you should be standing next to your enemy and loving them, even if it hurts. Even if it costs you your life.”

And if God himself would reach across that strange divide of sin and death to love us, to save us, and to even die for us, then what are we doing drawing lines in the sand that end with anything else but us standing up and saying, “Neither do I condemn you.”

Jesus has laid out a very different way.

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