With various speakers from the Middle East, the attendees of VOM’s National Conference this past weekend had the opportunity to get a picture of what God’s work in that region looks like, literally.
In the West, while we may hear stories of mysticism and abnormal happenings in the Middle East, these speakers brought proof that God is turning these things to honor Him. He is the one performing miracles and showing up right in people’s faces.
As a brother from the Middle East said, “Working in the Middle East, you have to believe in miracles.”
This same brother told a story about a woman, a non-believer, who saw rays of light and heard God say, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” After seeing this vision, the woman gave her life to Christ. Another brother from the Middle East told a similar story of God, or a “man in a white robe” as he described it, coming to a non-believer and speaking to him the entire Book of John. This man had never read the Bible before or heard of God, but God took form and sought him out. The phrase, “I saw Jesus Christ,” was repeated as a Middle Eastern brother spoke. He used this phrase to describe his impressions as he told about miracles such as when he went through customs with a suitcase of Bibles and upon seeing one of the Bibles, the inspector looked at it, covered it up and let the suitcase go through. Also, this brother took a Bible to the inspector later on, and he and his family are now saved. A brother from another Muslim country said “Many people come forward and say, ‘God gave me a vision or dream.’” By this, he meant Christians and non-Christians alike.
Wow! What faith!
I was so surprised and challenged by this. When I say “I want to see Jesus” or sing that in a worship song, I never actually mean that I expect God to stand in front of me. Whether He does or does not, the point is that He can. This has stretched my faith and inspired me to believe that God can show Himself to anyone in the world, and He is doing so all around me. It might just take me letting him out of my literal, scientific, American box, to see His face.
Grace Pennington is a summer intern in the news services department of The Voice of the Martyrs. She is from Hot Springs, Ark., and is a junior majoring in journalism at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Ark.
