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My Introduction to God… Christine McDonald

Posted in #PaulthePoke, Christine "Clarity" McDonald with tags compassion, exploitation, Forgiveness, God, Jesus Christ, Pretty Woman on February 12, 2021 by paulthepoke

I understand the kind of rage that can bring you to the brink of taking a life. I also understand today the profound intervention of God preventing my ability to act on that rage, even when the opportunity was presented.

I have shared experiences, and thoughts, of my journey. I hope I have brought some insight that you hadn’t considered before. By understanding the life of a prostituted or homeless or addicted individual a little bit better, I believe our compassion toward those individuals can grow.

I believe I have succeeded in debunking the Pretty Woman scenario of prostitution for all who have read this book. And just because another person’s situation doesn’t look like scenes from the movie Taken, it doesn’t mean he or she isn’t a victim. An individual’s vulnerabilities may be exploited in any number of ways. Exploitation in general is too complex to exhaustively define or discuss in one book. It is my hope, however, that your personal perceptions of victimization, abuse, and exploitation have expanded to include those who are often ignored completely.

I pray I have been able to help you develop empathy for these souls. My journey was not an exception to the rule. My story is a reflection of a common and present reality of thousands, if not millions, of others.

I hope you have been challenged to look beneath the surface of these individuals and ask yourself: How did this person get here? I hope you can set aside judgment and pursue genuine interest in that particular individual’s story. Every person has a story.

Now I would like to share a little of my personal God experience and journey, and the events that led to His introduction into my life. It is clear that He was present throughout my journey, or I wouldn’t be sitting here in my living room writing this book for you to read. While I was unaware at the time, looking back, I know He kept me. The odds were certainly stacked against me. I should have died out there.

I worked Independence Avenue and Spruce. Many of my friends were murdered during my years on those streets. I believed they had somehow found their out. After I tried to get help a few times, I quit fighting my situation. As I’ve shared throughout this book, I would reach out only to be victimized in a different way. After so many years in darkness, the only thing I had real hope for was an end to my life.

I had heard the preaching from the church folks at the soup kitchens. They reminded me of how wicked and evil individuals like me were, but they assured me that if we repented, we wouldn’t die in the flames of Hell.

I knew nothing about a compassionate, loving God who loves us so much that He sent His only begotten Son to die for us, knowing we would be a mess. I had never heard of the God who generously gives grace and forgiveness.

After all of the beatings, rapes, drugs, malnutrition, lack of sleep, and exhaustion of being homeless, I was resigned to the fact that I was all on my own. The reality I lived was all there really was.

For the longest time, I believed I was a renegade. But the reality is, I was used up and my body was riddled with scars. My soul was tormented. No man/pimp wanted me to work for him anymore. I was used up and discarded even by the lowest of the lower class of street pimps.

Contact Information:
Christine C. McDonald
636-487-8986
Christine.CryPurple@gmail.com

“Love your neighbor, all of ’em.” -Christine Clarity McDonald

Through The Eyes of Grace – Christine C McDonald

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEj5RbFpuzjx_CuksAqgyXA/featured

https://crypurplemovie.com/

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Ripple Effects… Christine McDonald

Posted in #PaulthePoke, Christine "Clarity" McDonald with tags collateral damage, compassion, Jesus Christ, love, prostitution, ripple effects, sex trafficking on May 1, 2020 by paulthepoke

For every woman and girl violently attacked, we reduce our humanity. For every woman forced into unprotected sex because men demand this, we destroy dignity and pride. Every woman who has to sell her life for sex we condemn to a lifetime in prison. For every moment we remain silent, we conspire against our women. For every woman infected by HIV, we destroy a generation. —Nelson Mandela

Collateral damage is what we call the loss or injury caused to the unintended victims of an action or event. Many times, when we venture out in a helping capacity, we have our sights squarely focused on the population we serve. Yet, oftentimes, those individuals we serve touch the lives of many we may never encounter.

Compassion and love at their best grow and extend indefinitely. The things we do out of love for others can have a massive ripple effect across time and space. Likewise, the things we don’t do can carry greater, far reaching ramifications. What if one simple, yet sometimes controversial, moment of service could save a life? Conversely, what if a misapplied moral objection costs a life?

When we consider human trafficking, exploitation, and prostitution, we tend to recognize the purchaser/exploiter as well as the person being used. However, there is another population that is inadvertently affected yet rarely lands on our radar. Sometimes our narrow view of the impact and our tightly clung–to moral objections have unintended consequences.

When we think of serving and how we serve, the most important thing we can do is put on the love of Christ and remember how much He loves and how He would give all for just one person. We have to ask ourselves, Is making a moral statement that will inevitably be lost more important than the individual?

Jesus was well known in His day for spending His time with those viewed as the biggest sinners. When the religious leaders of the day attacked Him for this, He told a parable about a shepherd who had 100 beloved sheep and one ran away. In the parable, the shepherd left the 99 to go after the one. The Son of God did not withhold His presence from the “sinners” to make a moral statement. Instead, He left us all with a clear example to follow. He made it crystal clear that every one of those “sinners” was invaluable to Him.

Even while knowing His days were limited, Jesus didn’t spend His time with His family and loved ones. Instead, He chose to spend time among the untouchables of His day. And though He—the perfect, holy God of the universe—had many moral objections to their actions, He didn’t let those moral objections become the focus or stand in the way of an opportunity to touch their hearts.

Contact Information:
Christine C. McDonald
636-487-8986
Christine.CryPurple@gmail.com

“Love your neighbor, all of ’em.” -Christine Clarity McDonald

https://crypurplemovie.com/

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Glimmers of Hope

Posted in Christine "Clarity" McDonald, Culture with tags compassion, hope, Jesus Christ, kindness, love, Matthew 25 on April 26, 2019 by paulthepoke

Hope simply deals with possibilities. If something is still possible, even in our wildest dreams, if there is still a glimmer of hope, it is worth hanging on to for as long as it exists. —Peter G. Doumit, What I Know about Baseball Is What I Know about Life

In Matthew, Jesus tells a parable to illustrate the kindness and compassion He wants His followers to extend to those around them, particularly those who are often invisible in society. He says, “I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!” (Matthew 25:40, NLT)

Who are “the least of these” today?

Not much has changed since Jesus spoke those words. There are still the “invisibles” around us. They aren’t truly invisible; we just make excuses and justify our choice not to look.

“The least of these” could include a good friend who you know is struggling with something, but whose struggle you’ve not wanted to wade into with them. However, “the least of these” may also include a whole population of society you may not interact with often, or perhaps you only interact with professionally.

Jesus’ expectation of us is to be so full of His love that we love like Him by default. That means we allow our eyes, as well as our hearts, to be moved by compassion to action. Feeling sad or feeling sorry isn’t enough. We must be moved enough to be His hands, His feet, His smile, His words, His deeds.

Compassion is free, except that it demands what’s most valuable, our hearts. We must be careful to not close our hearts off to what we don’t understand. Sometimes the very thing we have guarded and protected most is the thing God purposed for us to share. Perhaps the thing you have tended with care and passion is meant to give hope to someone else.

https://www.gofundme.com/crypurplemovie

“Love your neighbor, all of ’em.” -Christine Clarity McDonald

https://crypurplemovie.com/

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Reminder, Saved By Grace… Christine McDonald

Posted in #PaulthePoke, Christine "Clarity" McDonald with tags church, compassion, empathy, faith, Grace, love, sinners on March 22, 2019 by paulthepoke

Everyone be blessed!

JUDGING OUTSIDERS IS UN-CHRISTIAN
Paul told us to stop judging people outside the church. Jesus said God will judge us by the same standard with which we judge others. Paul also reminds us to drop the uppity-attitude; that none of us were saved by the good we did but by grace.

Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

So what can you do?
1. STOP JUDGING NON-CHRISTIANS. START LOVING THEM.
Very few people have been judged into life-change. Many have been loved into it.

Mark 12:30-31 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

2. EMPATHIZE WITH NON-CHRISTIANS
Ask yourself, “If I wasn’t a Christian, what would I be doing?” Chances are, you might be doing exactly what the non-Christians in your neighborhood are doing. Understanding that and empathizing with that completely changes how you see people. And they can tell how you see them.

Colossians 3:12-14 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

3. HANG OUT WITH NON-CHRISTIANS
Jesus did. And caught plenty of disapproval for it.

Mark 2:15-16 And it happened that He was reclining at the table in his house, and many tax collectors and sinners were dining with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many of them, and they were following Him. When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that He was eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they said to His disciples, “Why is He eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners?”

4. PRAY FOR UNCHURCHED PEOPLE
How many unchurched people do you pray for daily? How many people you disagree with do you pray for daily? It is impossible to hate someone you genuinely pray for daily.

Luke 8:1-2 Soon afterwards, He began going around from one city and village to another, proclaiming and preaching the kingdom of God. The twelve were with Him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out…

5. LIVE OUT YOUR FAITH AUTHENTICALLY
Your actions carry weight. Humility is far more attractive than pride. When a non-Christian sees integrity, it’s compelling. I just have a feeling if we in the church loved the world the way Jesus did, the world might come running to Christ. And then the change we long to see might actually begin to happen.

James 1:22-24 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.

https://www.gofundme.com/crypurplemovie

“Love your neighbor, all of ’em.” -Christine Clarity McDonald

https://crypurplemovie.com/

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Remembering 9/11… Christine McDonald

Posted in Christine "Clarity" McDonald, Culture with tags community, compassion, Galatians, Jesus Christ, kindness, relationship on February 1, 2019 by paulthepoke

Tragedies are just that, tragic. It’s a pity that it takes the extremes in life to bring people together and to remind us that we are all just people—people who, despite our differences, are very much the same. -Susie, New Day New Lesson

Some people believe that God placed the ability to experience loneliness in us so that we would seek Him. Tragedy, chaos, and crisis tend to sift out the meaningless details of life and focus our minds on what matters. Even
when faced with the possibility of death, death frightens us less than dying alone.

Galatians 6:2 “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

What is this law of Christ?

Galatians 5:14 “For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

We were made for community, for relationship, for companionship, and for connection. We weren’t meant to live in a state of aloneness.

What would it look like to live in relationship all the time? What if we lived each breath with compassion? What if it didn’t take extreme circumstances to arouse kindness and compassion within us? What if we allowed ourselves to experience those feelings all the time? What if we connected with others in meaningful ways on a daily basis?

Perhaps our greatest crisis isn’t terrorism or natural disaster. Perhaps it is our need for compassion and community.

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Recovering Compassion

Posted in Christine "Clarity" McDonald with tags compassion, Creator, Daniel 9, God the Father, hurt, pain, Psalms on November 2, 2018 by paulthepoke

Psalm 25:6 Remember, O LORD, Your compassion and Your lovingkindnesses, for they have been from of old.

Psalm 145:9 The LORD is good to all, and His mercies are over all His works.

Daniel 9:9 To the Lord our God belong compassion and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against Him…

“I have been a part of fighting demand since 2007,” Christine Clarity McDonald.

See Christine in this featured story by Fox 4 News in Kansas City, MO. Video provided in the story that aired on television.

https://fox4kc.com/2018/10/29/kansas-leaders-join-growing-number-of-states-working-to-go-after-sex-buyers/

Our compassion should be guided by God’s compassion, not dependent on age or gender or how a person got in their situation in the first place. After all, when we engage with these individuals who are over 18 and learn how they entered the world of commercial sexual exploitation, we find that more often than not their victimization began as a child. Why then do we have such a hard time viewing adults as victims and worthy of our love when they are recovered or reach out for services?

It is because we, the outsiders, looking in with our judgments and our continued labels, have built these barriers. These barriers, coupled with the existing internal challenges these individuals face, stand in the way of their chance to soar and flourish into the creatures that our Creator has designed them to be.

I could go on here, but the point is simple: The hurt caused by trauma is the very same to the prostituted individual as it is to the homeless person, or to the individual suffering from mental illness, or the college student, or the elderly lady down the street, or the professional, or the fellow church members. We must recover compassion.

“Love your neighbor, all of ’em.” -Christine Clarity McDonald

Jude: Mercy

Posted in Jude with tags compassion, Genesis 19, God the Father, Isaiah 63, Jesus Christ, mercy, pity, Sodom Gomorrah, Yeshua on October 13, 2018 by paulthepoke

Jude 1:2 May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you.

The Greek word for mercy is ἔλεος/eleos. It is defined as pity or compassion. Mercy is being excused from a deserved punishment or outcome. HELPS Word-studies states it is God’s loyalty to His covenant. The word is used 27 times in the New Testament.

Per Strong’s Concordance, mercy defined: kindness or good will towards the miserable and the afflicted, joined with a desire to help them;

of men towards men: to exercise the virtue of mercy, show one’s self merciful;

of God towards men: in general providence; the mercy and clemency of God in providing and offering to men salvation by Christ;

the mercy of Christ, whereby at His return to judgment He will bless true Christians with eternal life.

Eleos is defined as “compassion” in some cases. For example…

Matthew 9:13 Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire compassion/mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” -Jesus

These are the words of Jesus in Matthew. He is quoting Hosea 6:6. The issue is one’s mental attitude, focus, and heart towards God. The Lord wants our hearts, not acts of religion.

Hosea 6:6 For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

The first time “mercy” is used in the Bible is in Genesis 19:16. The context is Lot’s family and Sodom and Gomorrah. God’s action towards Lot and his daughters is “merciful”. Notice, Lot and his daughters were spared from the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot’s wife was extended mercy and she ultimately rejected mercy. Judgment, she became a pillar of salt. It does not matter if one is extended mercy. What are you as an individual going to do with mercy that has been extended to you?

Genesis 19:16 But he lingered. So the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the LORD being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city.

This is the Hebrew word chemlah. It means pity or compassion just as the Greek word ἔλεος/eleos. Chemlah comes from the Hebrew word chamal which means to spare. The word implies we are responsible. Justice demands judgment. If a transgression is noted, punishment is indicated. The wage of sin is death. But, God is merciful.

Chemlah is used one other time in the Old Testament prophet of Isaiah. God is a God of mercy, even in the Old Testament. In the verse below chemlah is translated as pity.

Isaiah 63:9 In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.

At the time of Isaiah’s writing, the verse above had prophetic implications toward the future work of Jesus Christ. Hindsight being 20/20 in the 21^st century, we know this is talking about Jesus.

Afflicted… Who took affliction on behalf of an afflicted people?

…the angel of his presence… literally means “messenger of faces”. This messenger “saved” or yasha in the Hebrew. Yasha means to deliver or save from moral trouble. This is the verb form of the root word. The noun form of the word is “Yeshua”. Jesus is the English translation of Yeshua. Jesus delivers His people. Yeshua yasha…

Mercy is available. There is time now. God is merciful…

Ephesians 2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us…

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Collateral Damage

Posted in Christine "Clarity" McDonald, Culture with tags compassion, exploitation, HIV, Jesus Christ, love, prostitution, sex trafficking, victims on July 6, 2018 by paulthepoke

Featuring Christine “Clarity” McDonald

Christine is appointed by the Missouri Attorney General for the Trafficking Task Force.

“For every woman and girl violently attacked, we reduce our humanity. For every woman forced into unprotected sex because men demand this, we destroy dignity and pride. Every woman who has to sell her life for sex we condemn to a lifetime in prison. For every moment we remain silent, we conspire against our women. For every woman infected by HIV, we destroy a generation.” – Nelson Mandela

Collateral damage is what we call the loss, injury or victims incurred by an action or event who were never intended to be involved. Many times, when we venture out in a helping capacity, we have our sights squarely focused on the population we serve. Yet oftentimes, those individuals we serve touch the lives of many we may never encounter.

Compassion and love at their best grow and extend indefinitely. The things we do out of love for others can have a massive ripple effect across time and space. Likewise, the things we don’t do can carry greater, far-reaching ramifications. What if one simple, yet sometimes controversial, moment of service could save a life? Conversely, what if a misapplied moral objection costs a life?

When we consider human trafficking, exploitation, and prostitution, we tend to recognize the purchaser/exploiter as well as the person being used. However, there is another population that is inadvertently affected yet rarely lands on our radar. Sometimes our narrow view of the impact and our tightly-clung-to moral objections have unintended consequences.

When we think of serving and how we serve, the most important thing we can do is put on the love of Christ and remember how much He loves and would give all for just one person. We have to ask ourselves, is making a moral statement that will inevitably be lost more important than the individual?

Jesus was well known in His day for spending His time with those viewed as the biggest “sinners.” When the religious leaders of the day verbally lashed against Him for this, He told a parable about a shepherd who had one hundred beloved sheep and one ran away. In the parable, the shepherd left the 99 to go after the one. The Son of God did not withhold His presence from the “sinners” to make a moral statement. Instead, He left us all with a clear example to follow. He made it crystal clear that every one of those “sinners” was invaluable to Him.

Even while knowing His days were limited, Jesus didn’t spend His time with His family and loved ones. Instead He chose to spend time among the untouchables of His day. And though He – the perfect, Holy, God of the universe – had many moral objections to their actions, He didn’t let those moral objections become the focus or stand in the way of an opportunity to touch their hearts.

“Love your neighbor… ALL of ’em!” -Christine “Clarity” McDonald