I made a new friend at the strip club



I made a new friend at the strip club.

After mentioning a few times that she hadn't been there in years, I finally squatted down next to her on the dirty linoleum floors and asked her to tell me her story.

She told me her version of a story I had heard dozens of times before. It was just as upsetting as the first time I'd heard it. Then she looked at me, shrugged and said, "I don't even know why I'm here. I don't want to be here."

All I could do was smile from ear to ear. Isn't God funny, I thought, that He would SEND someone to a strip club so they could meet Jesus? And yet that's exactly what He did for her.

She shared her deep struggle with depression but her unwavering, passionate love for her children. After listening for some time, I shared my own struggle with depression and contemplation of suicide. We may have come from different worlds but the pain was the same. I was able to take her by the hands and say, "You might not know why you're here, but I know EXACTLY why you came tonight. God wanted to meet you here. Can I pray for you?" And we prayed. And prayed. And we both cried. After I said amen, I laughed and said only half jokingly, "Well you got what you came for, now you can go home!" To which she replied, "I think I just might do that."

When God says He'll meet us where we're at... HE MEANS IT! He would go to the ends of the earth to pursue His children. As I left that night, my new friend ran out behind me, fully dressed, threw her arms around my neck and said she was heading home.

The ministry I'm a part of is unconventional at best, crazy at worst. But if being crazy means people who need to hear from God turn and walk out of a strip club after they encounter Him. Call me crazy any day because I won't stop.