Helen Martin’s Blog

The poor will save us. I know this.

When I learned about the girls who are in forced prostitution, I so wanted to help save them and teach them that God loves them. Could I? Would I be credible? I have struggled to grasp God’s love and have questioned His care for me, and the things in my history are so much less devastating than the horrors those girls endure. How could I reconcile this?

I believed God was interested in those girls’ sufferings enough to mobilize the Western Church to deliver them, and at the same time, I could write off my own miracles as coincidences; often being tempted see even my Salvation as me “getting in on a technicality.” (He said “Whosoever will,” and I did… so He’s stuck with me.) Oh, I know it’s clearly nonsense when I state it like that. But the lying enemy of my soul just subtly whispers about how I’m generally a disappointment…. and how the promises might apply to me, but only as much as is absolutely necessary… and only a little agreement with him goes a long way to weigh me down.

Can I just say, “NO MORE!” to all of that? If I told you even half of what’s been going on—what God has been doing in me and around me—you would be sure He was up to something big, bold, beautiful! And now even I’m convinced of it!

I have wondered why I cry and cry when I hear Gary Haugen speak…. why I cry and cry when I think of how God uses IJM to rescue each sweet little girl. I started to think, Wow, you have a disproportionately emotional reaction, don’t you?

NO. I don’t. I am that little girl, and Gary Haugen and IJM are rescuing me. As Jesus rescues each of those little girls, He’s rescuing me!

I was afraid to read Terrify No More because I didn’t want to think about what happened to them. I was afraid the burden would be too heavy to bear. But the real, deep down reason the book scared me, why I didn’t want to buy it at first, was that I didn’t want to think about what happened to me.

By demonstrating that He has gone to great lengths to save their lives, He created in me the need to see His intervention in mine, in the past and the present. A heroic rescue beyond what I already “processed” through in my early years as a Christian… freeing me from the lingering question marks, and the cords that pull me back into shame and regret.

His passionate love for each of those little girls is so clear to me, and that clarity created a crack in my armor. He made me want to know that He loves me; to know it beyond what my rock solid theology had told me; to feel it to my bones.

And even though I’m not a lawyer, social worker, or former Special Forces member, I do think I could be of some use in saving those little girls whose rescue is so connected with my own. And I could tell them the Psalm 18 truth about their lives, too.

To God be the glory, Great things He has done!

[UPDATE: I forgot to note that I have heard Gary Haugen quoted as saying, "The poor will save us from our lives of trivia."]