Through prayer and Spirit-led encounters, a home church in the Middle East became a place of hope for two brothers who found Christ online and longed for Christian fellowship, now worshiping faithfully with their families.
For some time, my wife and I have been praying intensely that God would help us build a home church to reach the local people whose hearts He has already been working on.
From daily prayer walks to team prayers, we have seen God moving people.
We started a home church knowing that only our foreign group would be attending, but we had faith in God sending locals to it. And He provided.
One day, ordering a taxi service, I met Salman*. As we were on the way to my destination, we started a conversation that soon diverted to religious topics. He shared with me his desire to go to a European country to find religious freedom, and that this was his plan for over two years, since he became a Christian while searching for answers to questions of his religion on the internet.
We slowly started forming a friendship, and on one occasion I asked him whether he had a community of believers, like our home church, or even Christian friends. I was shocked when he said he never met another Christian before! My wife, I, and another friend of ours were the very first Christians he had ever met! That’s when we felt compelled by the Holy Spirit to invite Salman to join us in worship at our house church gatherings.
One day, Salman decided to confess to his brother and open up about the love he had for Jesus Christ, and, to his surprise, his brother told him he was already a Christian who gave his heart to God a year before him, and that his meeting with Jesus was in the same form as Salman: Searching for answers online!
A few weeks later, Salman’s brother, Faisal, joined our home church and it has been a wonderful experience. Faisal truly believes and has no doubts that God has brought us together. When sharing his journey, we found out that just two weeks before I met Salman in the taxi, Faisal went to a local church looking for a community to glorify God together, the leader of the church told him not to return as it was forbidden for people of their denomination to be seen in a house of worship.
Faisal told us he kept praying to have a community and a group of people to worship with. But things in his country were difficult for new believers. Even when He knew he still had a lot to learn about God and the Bible, the desire to study Theology grew in his heart.
In their journey, Salman married and brought his wife to our home church, where she embraced Jesus Christ in her heart, and they now faithfully worship God as a family.
After two years of silence and prayer, Salman and Faisal decided to tell their family about their newfound faith. By the Grace of God, their parents accepted their decision, but other members, like uncles and cousins, turned their back on them.
Let’s continue praying for the maturity of these and other locals who faithfully are giving their time, hearts, and minds to God. There is a lot of work to be done in the region, but we are confident in the power of the Holy Spirit, and we hope God continues guiding our encounters with seekers. My strong desire is that every worker in MENA will place God ahead of any work, project, or strategy they may have. Never in the history of Christianity has anyone done great things without at least spending a good amount of time on their knees in prayer to God.
*Names have been changed