Here I Come by Mayada Naami
“If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will bein you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”
(John 14:15-18, NIV)
I am in Cartagena, by myself, enjoying a week of mingling with the local Colombians. This is the second time this year I visited Colombia. When I tell my friends and family where I’m going, I always get the same response, “Be careful.” I always respond in the same way, “There is no fear in love.” We are created in His image, obviously not in the physical realm, and yet we sometimes operate out of fear and judgement. This is not His Way. God is Love. I enjoy traveling and witnessing what the Creator has given us in love. He has provided a world that is heaven on earth (if we choose to see the world through His eyes). Jesus’s first prayer was the “Our Father” and He says, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
A few days ago, I was sitting at a beachfront restaurant, and I was praying a prayer over Colombia and especially over the young girls that are selling their bodies for money, and I heard the words to a reggae song playing in the background:
Love and hate can never be friends. Here I come with love and not hatred... It was a song by Dennis Brown called, “Here I Come.”
“And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.”
The Lord heard my prayers and reassured me through a song. Is there corruption in Colombia? Absolutely. Men come from all over the world for “Tourist sex.” Young girls that look barely fifteen approach men on every corner; drugs are sold on the streets,
Yet the tour busses have images of Jesus Christ.
There are shrines to the Virgin Mary on almost every corner. Unfortunately, this is the way of the world. The Bible tells us in John 15:19: “As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.” During my travels, I have met some wonderful, kind people. Some are lost sheep looking for their way and I tell them Jesus is the only Truth and the Way to life. He is the Good Shepherd and He will come looking for His lost sheep.
So he told them this parable: “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.