Pinching Myself on Easter

Today I am reflecting on how powerfully God is moving around the Arab World... and it's making my Easter worship just awesome! Because it is reminding me of God's creativity in drawing each of His children into relationship with Him. He has no limits! The whole world, creation and all created things, is at His disposal to help declare who Jesus is and the message of hope that He brings.

Here's a small sampling of stories that are helping me pinch myself today at the reality of my big, crazy-awesome God! And these are stories I have heard FIRST HAND while traveling the world. They are not rumors, they are REAL stories of God's work!

• A woman came to Christ and prayed for God to keep her safe from her husband while she conducted a Bible study in their home each week (she was a secret believer). After praying each week, God makes her husband deaf and paralyzed just for the time that her group meets and then brings him out of it. God's done this every week for 8 years!
• A widow had a dream where she was trapped in a room with no windows or doors and no way to get out. And her dead husband appears in the room and she asks him, 'how do I get out?' And he tells her Jesus can get you out. She wakes up and began to ask people, 'who is this Jesus?' (that she'd never heard of before) until she found someone who could explain and eventually she came to Christ.
• When one woman was praying to God for answers- asking 'what is the truth- Islam or Jesus?'- a cloud rolled into the sky and spelled the name 'JESUS' in Arabic. She screamed and started crying and ran to her bathroom to baptize herself.
• During Muslim prayers, one man started to see the image of a bright cross on the floor in front of him each time he bowed face-down on his prayer rug. It kept freaking him out and when he told his family, they thought he'd gone insane and put him on medications for mental illness. After a long time, and the cross consistently appearing to him, he eventually came to a relationship with Jesus.
• When a national newspaper ran a front page article aggressively blasting the Evangelical Church for evangelizing by putting Christian tracts on car windshields in a small neighborhood, they also ran a FULL copy of the tract with the article, on the front page for the whole country to read!

And THAT is just a small taste of our BIG and WONDERFUL, redeeming-love God! Happy Easter everybody. We worship THAT same God!