We love him, because he first loved us.
1 John 4:19 (KJV)
From Preacher Bassam
I thank God for each and every one of you for your prayers and financial support for us, and I praise the Lord for Final Frontiers leaders for helping us in all the work and meeting the needs of our ministry, from Bibles and locations for our meeting, etc.
Day after day, we see God working among our people, and the Word of God helps us build the bridge between us and the people to reach them the message of salvation filled with love, clarity, and the hope of eternal life.
A 70-year-old man grew up in a traditional Muslim family and learned to obey all religious rituals and traditions of Islam and to follow the religious leadership of his sect. He lived all these years following all religious traditions, praying, fasting, and practicing religious duties.
He lived in one of the remote villages surrounding our city. When he reached the age of fourteen, his father made him leave school to work with him in farming. When he was twenty-two years old, he married and continued his life with the same routine. Whenever the time for the call to prayer came, he went to the mosque to pray. God gave him five children, two boys and three girls, and he raised his children the same way he was raised.
When his family began to grow, he would go to the city to shop for the family’s needs once a month. This was his routine. One time, he decided to go to another store to get his stuff. A member of the church was working in this store, displaying a verse from the Bible. Of course, he didn’t specify where the verse was written, just what it said. (We love him, because he first loved us.)
Our church member noticed that the man was reading the verse, so he asked him, “Do you like it?”
The man replied, “ I’m not educated. I like to read, but I have difficulty understanding this sentence.”
Our church member said to him, “We love God because he loved us first.”
The man didn’t answer a word, so our church member continued by saying, “I obey God because I love him, not because I am scared of him, and I learned to love Him because He loved me first.”
The man looked at him in astonishment and said, “I have never heard anything like that in my life, even though I go to the mosque every day.”
Our church member said, “Can I ask you a question?”
The man said, “Of course.”
Our man said, “Do you obey God because you are scared of him or because you love Him?”
The man couldn’t answer that question, so he took his stuff and walked away. Five days later, that man came back and said to our church member, “I don’t have the money to travel twice a week, but I don’t know when I’ll die. Your question increased my fears, and I returned to you to tell you that I followed all the rituals and regulations of Islam because I knew that I’m not sure.”
Our church member asked him if he and I could come to visit him and talk to him. He said, “Of course.” They exchanged the phone number, and we prayed and started to make preparations to visit him.
When we went to his home, he received us alone. I introduced myself to him and said, “I’m going to try to answer your question.”
The man said, “That question made me feel confused, and until right now, I don’t know.”
The Lord gave me wisdom to start to talk to him about our true God, with his age and education, and for our safety, we decided to take it step by step with him, so we visited him once a week for three weeks. After that, we asked him if he would like to receive the Bible to read. He said with a smile on his face, “Of course, but I can’t see the small written word.” He doesn’t wear glasses but said, “I’ll let my grandchild read it for me.”
A week later, we went back to visit him. He said to me, “Do you know in my entire life how many times I have read the whole Quran?”
I said, “No, I don’t know.”
“Twice,” he said, “but when you gave me the book on the first day, my grandson read to me for one hour. On the second day, after dinner, he did the same thing, but for two hours.”
After that, he would dictate questions to his grandson, and he would ask us his questions. After that, he started sharing with his wife and one of his sons what he was reading. After a few weeks, we met, and I repeated the reasons for the need for the man to know the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal savior. The father, his wife, and his son came to the knowledge of salvation and accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal savior.
It didn’t stop there. He began to do a Bible study for all his family twice a week and read to them from the Bible. I kept visiting them once a week and preached to them the Word of God. His prayers were to get the Bible’s promise in the book of Joshua, “But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
And the Lord gave him that promise. Within six months, the Lord saved the entire family of twenty-one people.
