The Refuge

About two months into my desert a year ago (so around the beginning of December), the Lord took me to the Refuge for the first time. I remember the cold weather, the creaking stairs and the ruined carpet. I remember the industrial beige paint that was concealing the blood-stained walls, the dust-outlines of drug paraphernalia and the smell of rotten food in the abandoned refrigerators. I remember the looks on our faces as we listened to Tim tell us the horror stories of each of the 25 rooms- especially when we came to one of the prostitutes' 3.5'x12' rooms with baby toys till lined up by the doorway. Tim kept saying, 'You don't know how you wound up here, do you? That's so awesome. That's how it starts. God's bringing us some warriors. I can tell you are warriors.'

I found it funny that he called us warriors, because all of us were in shock, our mouths hanging open, our eyes bulging, our heads shaking, our fingers quivering and the weight of the story gluing our feet to the ground. He's prophetic, so maybe he could see past the helpless appearance we couldn't hold back, maybe he could see that we all were coming from a place of brokenness in our hearts. Maybe he could see that these nine college students who just met each other 'randomly' the week before were desperate for God to fill them- because after all, He was the one who had just recently broke them.

So I had found myself in this building that once was a crack-house. I thought we were just going to hang out with homeless people and use our Saturday leisure time to do it, intending to sacrifice it 'for the Kingdom,' but God decided to have us meet Tim and receive a heart for the Refuge that day. 

The Refuge is a developing ministry in the homeless community of Oklahoma City. Its building was a highly powered crack-house less than a year and a half ago, and being the neighbor to the city's largest rescue mission, it enabled the addicted that would feed off the rescue mission's provision of food and shelter to stay locked in the cycle of drug-addicted homelessness. At one point, the crack-house was the destination of +60 percent of all 911 calls in OKC and trafficked over a million dollars of drugs a week. Inside its walls dwelled prostitutes, pimps, gang members and leaders, murderers, thieves, con-men drug dealers and drug lords. Porn, the production of meth, cocaine, acid, ecstasy, and heroin... you name it, it was happening here. It was 'the place to be' if you wanted any of it.

These are some of the quotes I have burned in my brain from walking and talking with people who know about this place :

"One of America's Most Wanted was squatting in this room, and as police were chasing him, they through a smoke bomb through a window. He had just murdered someone and raped one of the prostitutes that lived here."

"Someone committed suicide in this closet right over here." (the whole room was black and grey from smoke, the closet being the source of a fire caused by an explosion that tore through the walls)

"This was the lookout room where pimps and gang members would watch for their prostitutes, gang members, drug dealers and cops, so they could be ready."

"They'd make porn in here. I met a girl who said she lived here when they would all take x and lay around naked, watching each other have sex."

But that's the past. Here's what has happened since a year and a half ago :

Tim, the recent owner of the building, bought it a couple years ago as an investor. He lived in California at the time, and when he heard about what was going on, had the SWAT team come in and ransack the place, kicking everyone out and leaving it vacant for Tim to go in and start from scratch, claiming the building as a temple for the Lord. A few times as Tim would be cleaning and praying over a certain room, the tenant or squatter who used to live in that room would come in to the building, up the stairs, and break down in repentance before Tim, calling him an angel from God. Tim would unclog pipes from underneath the floor to find it was a jam of drugs, pipes, broken bongs, and porn material that had caused it.

Each time Tim or one of the 'warriors' God brought to the Refuge would unclog a pipe, paint a wall, or rip up a hallway of carpet, God was busy in the Spirit Realm flowing into what once was clogged, making white what once was blood-stained, and re-flooring what once was a ruined foundation. God is still doing this, everyday. Families (mostly middle to upper class citizens) from California and Oklahoma are selling all they have and moving to The Refuge on California Avenue (funny 'coincidence', huh?) to see that God does what He wants to do in the homeless and addicted community of Oklahoma City.