Frontiers, is a Christian organization dedicated to preaching the Gospel among Muslims. One of their field workers recently reported on a remarkable conversion of a Muslim woman and her husband.

According to the report, Gulzhan was meeting with a Christian worker for a Bible study in an unnamed isolated village. This went on for some time without the woman choosing to follow Christ.

That all changed when Jesus appeared to Gulzhan in a dream. When that happened the woman knew she needed to become a Christian.

As news of Gulzhan’s faith decision spread, the neighbors in the Islamic village where she lived were not impressed and immediately turned against the woman. But it was the onset of winter that drove Gulzhan from the proverbial pan into the fire.

Though the cold weather reduced her interaction with the villagers, she was now in constant contact with her husband, Elemes, who was becoming increasingly agitated with Gulzhan’s faith. He would become enraged when he found his wife reading the Bible or singing hymns to God.

In a fit of fury he would beat her and at one point grabbed Gulzhan by the hair and dragged her around the room of their small home. During these episodes Elemes would curse Jesus and his wife’s faith.

He even threw her outside into the cold snow one time without footwear or proper clothing. Though he eventually let Gulzhan back into their home, the beatings continued.

The unrelenting persecution continued for several months until one day Elemes woke in the middle of the night screaming he was paralyzed.

Unable to leave his bed, he was terrified. Nobody knew what to do.

The answer came a few nights later when Elemes received a dream. In it God spoke to Elemes that he was being punished for the way he spoke about Jesus and treated his wife.

It took a few days for this message to sink in, but Elemes repented of what he had done and even asked for members of the local group of believers his wife attended to pray for him.

Though there was no immediate healing, Frontiers reports the paralysis partially lifted in Elemes’s upper body and he is now able to move his hands. Through this Guzhan’s husband has turned from being her worst persecutor to biggest supporter.

I love Frontier’s mission statement: “With love and respect, inviting all Muslim peoples to follow Jesus.”

With Muslim extremists recently slaughtering 129 people in Paris and 14 more in California it has been a struggle for many, including me, not to react to Muslims. Showing respect is another issue entirely.

Yet this is what God wants us to do. Peter writes that we are to honor all people (1 Peter 2:17).

Muslims are an enigma. On one hand they can react strongly to those in their group who become Christians, but according to Frontiers at the same time they are often very open to the Gospel.

Frontiers writes:

“Many are sensitive to God and spirituality. They’ll often speak of how God appeared to them in dreams or visions (see Acts 10:1-8 for an example of this) as well as share stories of healings because of God’s power through Jesus’ name. Muslims are hungry to know about God’s work through Jesus.”

Other organizations working with Muslims are saying a similar thing.

I have also heard many accounts of how God is speaking to Muslims through dreams. It is funny how God so easily challenges our traditional interpretations of Scripture. As I read in the book of Joel how in the end times that God would speak to people through dreams and visions (Joel 2:28), it never once occurred to me that God would use these to convert those who didn’t believe.

I posted an article sometime back, how the Muslim Qur’an speaks quite favorably about Jesus. One former Imam (Muslim teacher) who converted to Christ said this was one of the reasons he became a Christian.

According to their website, Frontiers has been involved for 30 years reaching out to the estimated one billion Muslims in the world. There are 1,108 Muslim people groups who have not heard the Gospel.

With the flood of Muslim refugees entering Western nations maybe God is bringing the mission field to us.

Source:

• A Traitorous Decision: FrontiersUSA.org