Christ dramatically changed the life of “Hussein**,” a former Muslim in Iran. Once he had been a drug addict planning his own death, but now he was an on-fire believer in Christ who quit his job to pursue full-time ministry in the underground church. He was assigned to “shadow” a Christian couple in their ministry work as he learned and grew in his calling.
At one of the first houses they visited, the daughter in the house began to weep as soon as she saw the three Christians standing outside her door. They couldn’t understand her response, wondering if she’d just suffered some great tragedy or if in some way they had offended her.
Through tears she explained: she had wanted to see Jesus in her dreams. And just that week she finally had a dream in which Christ appeared to her. And in the dream Christ led her to a table and invited her to sit down with the three people at the table. And now, only hours later, those same three people—whom she had never met before—were knocking on her door!
She invited them in, and before they left she had committed her heart and life to following Jesus. Hussein was confident that God had called him into ministry work. But by the time he left that young woman’s house God’s amazing work had obliterated any shred of doubt left in his mind, and it wouldn’t return even when he was arrested and went to prison for his faith.
YOUR TURN: Sometimes God makes His will so plain it’s as if he’s written it on the sky with a neon magic marker. Other times, we “see through a glass darkly,” as Paul wrote to the Corinthian church. Raymond Edman, former president of Wheaton College, advised students to “Never doubt in the dark what God told you in the light.” Hussein saw clearly God’s call on his life, confirmed in neon obviousness by the girl’s dream. He hung on to that clarity, and remained faithful to Christ, even in police stations, solitary confinement cells and Iranian court rooms.
What truths has God revealed to you that you need to hold onto more tightly today?
**Name changed for security reasons.
Todd Nettleton has served the persecuted church and VOM 15 years. He has been interviewed more than 1950 times by various media outlets. He's the author of Restricted Nations: North Korea, and served on the writing team for FOXE, Extreme Devotion, Hearts of Fire and other VOM books.
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