The Arabian Peninsula Partnership
The Gospel for every person and a church for every people in the Arabian Peninsula amongst indigenous peoples
January 17, 2009
Perfect sacrifice.
Praise
God has been opening doors of opportunity to share His good news across the country recently. Some workers were involved in praying for and seeing God heal some local families visiting their area. Another key worker was forced to take a taxi due to logistical issues, and ended up in an excellent conversation with the driver who initiated and asked for the worker to pray for him.
Prayer
Just after one of our national brothers, "Abu" was released from prison, another from our small group, Mohammed, has been placed in prison. Having no contact with his family, we don't know why. We merely received a distressed call from him after it happened. Please pray for God's continued work in him, and for his timely release.
There have been demonstrations against the problems that Palestine is facing right now in many countries. Pray for the whole Arab world during this hard time. Pray for peace.
There have been several kidnappings of foreigners in the last 3 weeks by tribesmen. Ask that the tribesmen will be willing to work through their differences verbally and not through violent methods and that kidnappings will stop.
Please pray for my friend Bea who asked for a Bible. Pray she would read it and be drawn to our heavenly Father. Pray for God's spirit to be at work in her and her husband, too.
As our new national believers increase, we have begun a discipleship program among the men, meeting in groups of 3. Pray that the relationships will be strong and lasting, and that the believers will grow in depth as well as number.
Testimony
Last month, Ellie got talking to a local woman in the park. Ellie asked her about Eid al Adha, and they discussed the slaughter of a sheep in remembrance of Abraham having to sacrifice his son, but then being supplied by a sheep to be sacrificed instead.
In the conversation that followed, Ellie explained why followers of Jesus don't sacrifice and that He is the perfect sacrifice for us. They also talked about why God would send the Koran as a replacement of the Torah (book of the law – first 5 books of OT) and Gospel – could it be that "He changed His mind?..." Her answer was that Jews and Christians had changed the holy books and God had let it happen, to test their faithfulness. Following this, she said that "the Koran was then sent and it would not be changed." We did not agree with each other. Her closing comment was that in spite of this, Christians were good people.
Pray that this woman will never forget the encounter in the park with Ellie and that she would rethink the lies (common objections) that she explained. Ask that she will believe that Jesus had to die, and understand that he really died because of her sins.