Last month, my friend Vince Giordano led a HopeChest mission trip to India.

While there, he met with women trapped in brothels who graciously offered to buy soda for their guests while they chatted about life.

He walked down constricted corridors–barely shoulder width apart–where heat permeated every space. Rape for profit took place behind every door in that hallway.

The “work rooms” were small and spartan. A door, four walls, and a platform. Sex as simple brutality. Sex divorced from the Love that created it.

During their conversations, some of the women would get up to leave, service a client, and then return to talk with Vince and the team.

Many of these girls were sold into the brothels as child sex slaves–and some are
free to leave now–but they stay because they feel they have nowhere to go.

Vince and others walked these unfamiliar and uncomfortable places. As a ministry, HopeChest is active in bringing “Christ with skin” to the hard places of the world. For many of the people who come with us, it is their first time out of the country.

God works in the unfamiliar. How many times have we seen great heroes of the faith called out of the familiar patterns of their lives, and thrust into the unfamiliar unknown of God’s design?

“Stuck in a rut,” is a phrase we use to describe the familiar things of our lives. Someone defined a rut as a grave with the ends kicked out of it.

To understand God’s design and God’s kingdom, you must go to the unfamiliar places. What unfamiliar places is God calling you to walk in? Are you going? Leave your comment and share…