Changed Lives

Today I had the incredible privilege of meeting Joel Rosenberg's wife and three of their sons. Joel is an author and speaker who incredibly predicted a terrorist attack on the US before 9/11, Yassar Arafat's death, and many other events in the Middle East that shocked the world. His source? The Bible. Reading through the prophecies of the Old Testament, he hypothesized what would happen to make them come true... It's intriguing at least. The Bible does have a lot to say about future events.... maybe we're living in them right now. Maybe not. I'm no expert. But I have read one of his books and heard him speak here a couple weeks ago. He had some interesting ideas. But anyway, this blog isn't about him.
This afternoon, his wife, three of their boys, and one of their friends and two of her sons came to hang out. They came with us to the local park so we could play with the Iraqi kids and just hang out. They are lovely down to earth people that love God and love the work he is doing in the Middle East.
But it was the friend's story that was the most fascinating part of the day. Let's call her Sarah. Sarah grew up in a nominal Shiite Muslim family in Iran, but her extended family was very religious. She married an Asian man who had grown up in a nominal Christian family, but had walked away from God in college.
When Sarah was nine years old she heard about "truth" and all her life she wondered what this "truth" could be. She couldn't find anything that seemed to satisfy.
After she was married and her kids were born, through a whole bunch of circumstances, she learned a little about Jesus and ended up praying to Jesus one day. In that moment, she felt him touch her shoulder. That's how Sarah knew he was real. So she went and told her husband who encouraged her to go to church and find out more. She went and loved it. From that day on she followed Jesus. In the following years all of her family members came to know Jesus through dreams and visions.
Her story is only one of hundreds of thousands in the Middle East. If you haven't heard, I recommend you do a little research about Muslims converting to Christianity in the Middle East. The numbers are astounding. And for the most part, it's not through missionaries. It's through Jesus. He is appearing to them in dreams and visions! Even though Christians may be scared to enter the Middle East and evangelize, Jesus isn't!