ENGAGING WITH PEOPLE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

It's late at night, and Ahmad* is sitting alone in a park somewhere in the Middle East. He’s chosen a secluded spot so he can freely talk with friends he met on social media. While this might not be unusual in most parts of the world, this particular conversation is different. Ahmad is speaking with someone on the other side of the world, and their conversation is about Jesus.

Ahmad lives in a country where missionaries are not allowed and the culture is resistant and often hostile to the Gospel. Like most people in his part of the world, Ahmad had never known or even met a Christian. All that changed when he began looking for a way to improve his English. He discovered a social media group where he started engaging with Reach Beyond staff and volunteers and having conversations that would change his life.

Five years ago, Suzanne* was serving with Reach Beyond when she decided to take a class on using social media in missions. Suzanne remembers, ”The professor gave us an assignment, ’Find an app that reaches the people you want to reach. Download it, play with it, and report back on how you’re going to use that for ministry.’ So I started using this social media app, and before I knew it, I had an English group with the very people that God had placed on my heart.”

Suzanne’s class assignment would become The Ephraim Project—a pathway for anyone with a willing heart to do frontline evangelism in closed countries simply by using their computer keyboard or mobile phone.

Reach Beyond staff working in North Africa/Middle East were ecstatic to see how God was beginning to use Suzanne in this new work. The team had been praying for and trying to reach this people group for over seven years, yet every effort had been thwarted or failed.

Suzanne recalls, ”I was told that even if we were only able to do ministry for three months, that would be a success. And here we are four years later, still going strong.”

The idea of ministering to people in the Middle East was challenging for Suzanne, especially at first. ”God had to do a big work in my heart to want to reach out to anyone from a Muslim background. I was afraid of them. I was afraid of what they believed. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to argue or debate what I believed. I was afraid they’d be mean. None of that was true.”

The Ephraim Project is currently engaged with over 100 Middle Eastern people living in some six countries. Suzanne says, ”They tend to be in their twenties or early thirties. They work in a variety of occupations including artists, business professionals, doctors, engineers, farmers, taxi drivers, and teachers. They are disillusioned with Islam. They are not seeking Christianity necessarily, but they’re always excited about the concept of love and being loved. We find that a lot of them do ’seek’ once they have a relationship with a Christian, or at least they’ll seek conversation. They love to debate and converse, and they are delightful, lovely people.

”I have learned from many years of working with young people who are learning English: they have a burning desire to belong. And even if it is just a group of other people who are practicing English, it fills a deep need for them.”

As a volunteer with the Ephraim project, Joy* has built deep friendships with many in the group. She says, ”I’ve learned almost every one of them is hurting—like deeply. They’re facing their hopelessness. They’re afraid. They’re alone and just completely lost. They’re all trying to find a way out. They’re all trying to find a way to be loved, truly loved. A lot of them don’t know what love is—I mean heavenly love, Jesus’s love. They’re just desperate for direction and hope and love.”

”It’s unique, because we provide almost like a window into the freedom that they don’t have, like the freedom of speech.” Joy says, ”There’s so many of them that have come to me and just said, you know, ’I can’t ever say these things to anybody here. Not even my mother, not my brother. This is the only place I’m safe to say this to you.’ And so it’s amazing the things that they share. And that creates an opportunity to give the truth of Jesus’s teaching and love.”

Joy says, ”My goal is to love people with the truth into Jesus’s kingdom, one at a time, one heart at a time, through relationship and sharing the hope and the joy that we have in Christ alone.”

Ahmad joined The Ephraim Project social media group in 2018 and soon began engaging in private conversations with Esther*. They would send each other pictures of where they were and all sorts of things. Esther recalls, ”He began to ask me about Jesus a little bit. So I just began sending him Jesus stuff, you know, the Sermon on the Mount and different things, and he would practice his English by reading these to me. He’s very well read. He’s read existentialism. He’s read philosophers and psychologists. He’d ask me questions about what I thought of all these different people, and I’d have to quickly Google it to know what I thought. But he was making these excellent connections between what he’s read in philosophy or psychology or anything with Jesus. And you see the superiority of course, of Jesus, in all of these things. And so sometimes, we’d read a whole chapter, and then I’d kind of get worried that he’s going to ask me a hard question or something, and he’d just say, ’Yes, that’s great!’”

During private conversations, Ephraim staff are often asked for advice in personal situations. Esther recalled one conversation with Ahmad, ”He had a practical issue with his roommate. He said ’My roommate is making me angry with his behaviors. I don’t know how to deal with it. I’d love to keep my peace of mind.’ And so we talked about what was irritating him.”

Topical discussions within the social media group also generate many private spiritual conversations. Joy posted a video which depicted a man out in this desolate place. He was continuously walking with his head down, but not actually going anywhere. Then Joy asked the group to share what the video meant to them. Joy said, ”The responses were pretty heavy. And so we talked about what gives hope and how you can turn suffering into beauty. We had a great conversation. Ahmad privately messaged me, and so we started talking. And he goes, ’Joy, you know a lot of times when I meet people, I realize what they’re obsessed about.’ He said, ’You know what you’re obsessed about?’ And I said, ’What?’ He said, ’Love.’ I smiled and said, ’That’s right, that’s it. I’m obsessed about love. And that love comes from the fire in my heart that’s Jesus.’ I knew that he was talking to Esther, so I kind of left it at that.”

Joy continued, ”One morning, I woke up, and I was talking to my sister, and we both had some things we were praying about. I said, ’Let’s grab our Bibles and see what Scripture God would give us.’ So we both grabbed our Bibles, and at the same time, we opened up Isaiah 26:3. ’You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you.’ We were amazed, and I thought, ’Wow, OK, Lord, got it.’ Right after that, I got a message from Ahmad. He said, ’Hi, Joy. How are you?’ I said, ’I’m good. Is there anything I can pray for you?’ And he said, ’Actually, I need a peace of mind.’ And he said, ’I’m thinking about the love that’s in your midst.’

”OK!’ I said, ’Ahmad, let me tell you something. Before you texted me that, this happened. I know God has this message for you. The love that’s in my midst is Him. It is the Creator. It is God who came to this Earth, Jesus Christ who died for your sins.’ And I just gave it to him, and he said, ’Thank you. Thank you, Joy.' And that was it. So then, he goes off to Esther and says, ’Esther, I want to read the Bible with you.’ And so that’s when it took off. It was just so cool how God orchestrated all of that. It was so sweet.”

Esther and Ahmad began reading more Scripture together. She would send him small portions at a time, one side in his heart language and the other side in English. Each passage would lead Ahmad one step closer to Jesus.

I'VE DECIDED TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN

Esther remembers, ”I sent him an illustration that basically shows us and God, and how sin separates us. And we try to bridge that gap with many things, but only Christ can bridge the gap. And so that was when he saw that connection for real salvation.”

Ahmad wrote back, ”I don’t know anything of the history of Christianity. I’d love to know more about it from you. I’ve decided to be a Christian. Can you help me?” Esther recalls, ”So I just gave him a prayer and he says, ’Should I read it and repeat these verses?’ He wanted to know how to accept Christ! I wrote and sent him a prayer for him, and then a prayer for him to say. And then I said, ’Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he’s a new creation. The old has passed away, behold the new has come.’ And then he said, ’I want to start learning right now.’”

Over the next few months, Esther and Ahmad studied Scripture together once or twice a week, but that was not enough for Ahmad. Joy recalls the text he sent her, ”He said, ’Joy, I can meet with you every single day this summer. I don’t have school. I don’t have to work.’ He said, ’I want to read the Bible as much as I can in this free time and be strengthened.’ He said, ’Could you do it with me? Because the times that Esther can do it, I can’t do it.’ And I said, ’I’m here. I’ll do it. This is crazy, but OK.’ So we met every day in the morning. I would get up and meet with him at 5 a.m. Sometimes Esther would join us, and it was just fun. We got through Luke, Mark, and Acts. They had already done Matthew and John. And now he’s trying to get through Romans on his own, but I know he can do it. I kept saying, ’Holy Spirit’s your teacher. You got it.’ So in that discipling, we read The Word. We read a chapter a day, and we talk about it, and we pray about it. And then Ahmed would come back with the things that Jesus was teaching him. He would show that what he had learned in the Bible was getting in his heart because he would go off and tell his best friend about it. Which is amazing discipleship—being fruitful.”

Ahmad’s roommate was also surprised by the noticeable change in his attitude towards him—a change that surprised even Ahmad. He wrote Esther saying, ”I now have this love for my roommate.”

The decision to follow Jesus is not often a quick one for people in the Middle East. Ahmad’s journey took nearly three years. It requires a lot of prayer and the planting of seeds that take time to grow.

Ahmad wrote, "Joy, I was thinking about what has happened here. You didn't attract me to Christ by some prestigious university degree and fancy talk. It was simply your pure love. And I know this was Jesus's love filling you and pouring out into my life and heart.  It is a simple yet powerful miracle."

*names changed for security