I ask for your prayers as I prepare to visit Senator Kay Hagan’s office in Greensboro, NC on Wednesday to again address a Senate Bill that can make great strides in the fight against human trafficking. Please pray for me and other International Justice Mission (IJM) advocates who will be making these visits over the next several weeks.
When I attended the IJM Advocacy Summit this summer, I met up with fellow Redbud Writers, advocates, and the authors, Shayne Moore and Kimberly McOwen Yim of Refuse to do Nothing: Finding Your Power to Abolish Modern-Day Slavery. This is a powerful book and we will be going through it together at the start of the New Year, but in the meantime, I wanted to share this recent interview that fellow Redbud, Kelli B. Trujillo, had with Shayne:
1. Why are you passionate about biblical justice?
There is much division in the world. We are divided by issues of religious belief and practices, racism, sexism, agism, you name it. I grew up in the conservative Evangelical church. It is my faith family and my heritage and there are many positive aspects of my tradition I happily pass on to my own children. Yet I admit to being soured by the fighting and division over issues such as women in leadership/ministry, worship styles, and what to do with homosexuals in our midst.
When I woke up to the reality of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the church was just beginning to talk about it and to be aware of the crisis in sub-Saharan Africa. When I learned how mothers and children, families just like my own were struggling in unthinkable poverty, disease and death, it broke my heart.
An internal mantra began to play over and over in my soul: On Earth as it is in Heaven. . .
There are many things of which I am unsure. Many doctrines, practices, traditions, teachings that I will never be 100% sure of and, if others are honest, neither will they. I am not God. It set deep within me I might be wrong about a lot of things — but if I am spending myself on behalf of the poor and oppressed (Isaiah 58-59), I’m not wrong. There is no HIV or AIDS in heaven. There is no sex trafficking and rape of children in heaven. There is no labor slavery in heaven. On Earth as it in heaven.
I can work tirelessly on behalf of those struggling in extreme poverty, preventable disease, the evils of human trafficking, lack of education, political influence, property rights, and know I am not wrong. In my adult life, this truth has informed my faith and how I live it out. It is, quite frankly in the current tone of Evangelical sub-culture dialogue, one of the only things that makes me passionate about my faith. It brings meaning to my faith and the sometimes dark world we live in.
Read the rest of the interview by clicking here. In it, she also shares 3 meaningful things a person can do to take up the cause of biblical justice.
A Word for Today: Isaiah 58.
Blessings, Natasha
A SISTA'S JOURNEY 