Maybe there never will be.

But I’m learning that following Jesus doesn’t mean everything works out perfectly.

Sometimes it means losing everything and having to trust that he’s enough.

So far he has been just barely some days, but he has been.

It’s been 8 months since my father told me I was dead to him.

I’m sitting here in my flat in Canary Wararf trying to figure out how to end this story when I’m still living in the middle of it.

There’s no triumphant conclusion.

No moment when everything suddenly made sense and became easy.

If you’re hoping for that, I’m sorry to disappoint you.

But there are things I’ve learned, things I need to tell you while they’re still fresh, while the cost is still high and the choice is still hard.

The grief hasn’t gone away.

That’s the first thing.

I thought maybe after a few months I’d adjust, that losing my family would hurt less over time.

Some days it does, but then my mother’s birthday comes or aid or I see a father and son walking together on the street and the loss hits me all over again.

Last month was Ramadan.

This was the first time in my life I didn’t fast.

I went to work every day, ate lunch normally, and each time I took a bite of food during daylight hours, I felt the weight of how much had changed.

I wasn’t breaking the fast because I was weak or rebellious.

I simply wasn’t Muslim anymore.

The rules that had governed my entire life no longer applied or that should have felt freeing.

Instead, it felt disorienting, like I’d been walking on a path my whole life, and suddenly the path disappeared, and I was standing on open ground with no map.

The church community has helped.

People at St.

Mary’s have been kind beyond anything I expected.

Margaret, the older woman I met at that first newcomer’s lunch, has basically adopted me.

She invites me for Sunday dinners, makes sure I’m not spending every evening alone.

She doesn’t try to replace my mother, but she offers something maternal that I desperately needed.

The pastor and I still meet weekly.

We’re working through a book about Christian formation, about how faith is less about having all the answers and more about following Jesus into the unknown.

Some of the theology still confuses me, the Trinity, predestination, arguments about baptism and communion.

But I’m learning that not every question needs to be answered immediately.

What matters most is that I’ve encountered someone real.

That dream in Mecca wasn’t a hallucination or wishful thinking.

Jesus spoke to me and everything that’s happened since has confirmed that it was real.

The peace underneath the pain, the sense of being held even when everything else was falling apart.

The way doors have opened when I needed them.

He’s been faithful.

Emily, the woman I’m dating, has been patient with my mess.

She’s British, grew up in a Christian home, and sometimes I think she doesn’t fully grasp how alien all of this is for me.

Marriage carefully aware of how marriage carefully aware of how complicated it would be.

Her parents would welcome me.

Mine would never speak to her.

Our children, if we have them, would grow up without my side of the family.

That reality sits heavy between us, unnamed but always present.

I told her she should consider carefully whether she wants this.

A husband whose family has disowned him, who carries trauma from his past, who’s still figuring out what it means to be a Christian.

She said she’d been praying about it and she felt peace.

I hope she’s right.

The ex-Muslim group has shrunk and grown.

Raza moved to Canada for work.

We keep in touch through messages.

Mariam’s mother finally cut her off completely after years of strained contact.

She was devastated for weeks.

AF is doing better than expected, building a new life by even dating someone now.

But we’ve had three new people join.

A Somali woman whose family found out and she had to flee her home with just the clothes on her back.

A young man from Morocco who had a vision of Jesus while working construction in London.

an older Egyptian man who’d been secretly Christian for 10 years before finally leaving Islam publicly.

Each of their stories is painful and beautiful.

Each of them paid a high cost to follow Jesus and each of them says the same thing.

I’d say it’s worth it.

That sounds insane probably.

How can losing your family, your community, your identity be worth it? What could possibly compensate for that cost? I can only tell you what I’ve experienced.

Before all this, I was successful on paper, but empty inside.

I had everything the world said should make me happy.

But I was dying slowly, drowning in guilt and performance and fear.

I was living a lie.

pretending to be something I wasn’t and terrified that the real me was unacceptable.

That dream in Mecca was the first time in my life I’d felt fully known and fully accepted at the same time.

Not despite my failures, not after I cleaned myself up, but right there in the middle of my mess.

Jesus looked at me, all of me, and said, “I am the way.

” like he’d been waiting for me to stop pretending and come to him as I really was.

Everything since then has been learning to live in that reality.

That I don’t have to earn love through religious performance.

That I don’t have to be perfect to be accepted.

That grace is real and it’s free and it changes everything.

I still pray but differently now.

I don’t pray five times a day at set times in Arabic.

Words I memorized as a child.

I pray when I need to in English mostly, sometimes in Arabic, sometimes just sitting in silence.

I talk to God like he’s actually listening because I believe he is.

I still read scripture, but I’m reading a book about someone who loves me rather than a book of laws I’m constantly failing to keep.

The Bible has become this rich living thing that speaks to my actual life rather than an ancient text I’m supposed to respect from a distance.

And worship, God, I never understood worship before.

In the mosque, we’d recite the same prayers in Arabic.

Boo and prostrate in perfect unison.

Everything formal and prescribed.

Now I sing songs about Jesus love.

And sometimes I cry.

And that’s okay.

Sometimes I lift my hands.

Sometimes I sit quietly.

Sometimes I’m angry or confused and I tell God exactly that.

and he doesn’t strike me down for being honest.

Last Sunday, we sang a hymn I’d heard before, but the words finally clicked.

It is well with my soul.

Written by a man who’d lost everything, who’d experienced tragedy after tragedy, and yet he wrote, “Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, it is well with my soul.

” I’m not sure I can say that yet.

Not completely.

My soul still hurts.

I still grieve.

But I’m learning what it means to have foundational peace even in the middle of pain.

To be held by God even when everything else is falling apart.

3 weeks ago, I got an email from Aliyah, my sister.

Not a text, an email longer than any communication I’d had from my family in months.

She said she’d been thinking about me constantly, that she didn’t understand my choice, but she missed her brother.

She said our mother cried herself to sleep some nights.

She said our father wouldn’t talk about me at all, wouldn’t allow my name to be mentioned in the house.

She said she’d been researching Christianity in secret, trying to understand what could be so compelling that I’d give up everything for it.

She hadn’t found answers yet, but she had questions.

Real questions, not rhetorical ones meant to prove me wrong.

She asked if we could talk sometime, really talk without judgment from either side.

She said she wasn’t promising anything, but she wanted to understand.

I cried when I read that email.

Not sad crying exactly.

Hope maybe.

The first crack of hope that maybe someday the distance between us might shrink.

Not disappear.

probably never disappear completely, but shrink enough that we could be siblings again.

I wrote back immediately, told her yes, absolutely anytime she wanted to talk.

We’ve video called twice since then.

Brief conversations, careful ones, dancing around the big topics, but we’re talking.

That’s something my father still won’t speak to me.

My mother sent one message through aliyah.

She prays for me every day that Allah will guide me back.

I wanted to tell her I don’t need guiding back, that I finally found what I was looking for.

But I know she’d never understand that.

Not now, maybe not ever.

So I pray for them instead.

That’s another thing that’s changed.

I pray for my family now, not to Allah, but to Jesus, asking him to reveal himself to them the way he revealed himself to me.

I don’t know if that prayer will be answered in my lifetime.

Maybe it won’t, but I pray it anyway.

The cost is still high.

Some days it feels unbearably high.

I see photos on social media of family gatherings.

I’m not invited to weddings, celebrations, births of new cousins.

Life going on without me.

My younger brother graduated from university last month.

I found out from Facebook.

I wasn’t there.

at work.

Tariq, the Muslim colleague who used to invite me to Juma has stopped talking to me.

Someone told him I’d converted.

He won’t even make eye contact now.

I lost two other friends from the Muslim community when they found out.

The Arab social circle I’d been part of in London disappeared almost overnight.

I faced discrimination I never expected.

Not from British people, ironically, but from my own community.

Someone wrote mortad on my car, Arabic for apostate.

I’ve gotten threatening messages online from Muslims who found out about my conversion.

Nothing serious enough to go to the police about, but enough to make me more careful, more aware of my surroundings.

Emily’s parents met me last month.

They were warm and welcoming, but I could see the concern in their eyes.

They understand their daughter is choosing a complicated life if she chooses me.

They never said it directly, but I know they’re worried.

Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I’d never had that dream.

If I just completed Hajj, come home, married a Muslim woman my parents approved of, raised Muslim children, lived as a good son and a good Muslim.

It would have been easier in so many ways.

But I also know I would have been empty.

Performing a faith I didn’t really believe.

Living a lie.

Dying slowly inside while everyone thought I was fine.

That’s not really life.

That’s just existence.

Jesus said he came to give life and life abundantly.

I’m only beginning to understand what that means.

It doesn’t mean ease or comfort or everything working out perfectly.

It means being fully alive, fully yourself, fully known.

It means relationship instead of religious performance.

It means grace instead of constant striving.

And yes, sometimes it means losing everything else.

I think about that phrase from the dream constantly.

I have been with you your whole life.

All those years growing up in Riyad, memorizing Quran, praying in Arabic to Allah, Jesus was there.

Through my doubts and questions, through my failures and guilt, through London and university and the empty trying to be good enough, Jesus was there.

He was waiting not to condemn me for being Muslim, not to punish me for my mistakes, but waiting for the moment when I’d finally stopped performing and come to him as I really was, broken, confused, desperate, empty.

And when I finally did in that prayer in my flat 8 months ago, he didn’t reject me or require me to clean myself up first.

He just welcomed me like I’d always been his and he’d been waiting for me to realize it.

That’s the truth that keeps me going when the cost feels too high.

I’m known fully.

Completely known.

every secret thought, every failure, every moment of doubt, and I’m still loved.

Not because I’m good enough or religious enough or pure enough, and just because that’s who Jesus is.

I spoke at a gathering last week, a group that supports people questioning Islam.

About 50 people there, mostly Muslims curious about Christianity.

A few Christians wanting to understand Islam better to reach their Muslim friends.

I told my story similar to what I’ve written here about the dream, the search, the cost.

Afterwards, a young Pakistani man came up to me, maybe 23 years old.

He was shaking.

He said he’d been having dreams, too.

Dreams about a man in white who called him by name.

He didn’t know what to do.

Was terrified to even tell anyone.

He thought he was going crazy.

I told him he wasn’t crazy.

I told him Jesus often reveals himself through dreams, especially to Muslims.

I told him the road ahead would be hard if he chose to follow Jesus.

That I couldn’t promise him it would be easy, but I could promise him it was worth it.

He cried.

We prayed together right there in the back of the room.

He gave his life to Jesus that night, knowing full well what it might cost him.

I gave him my number, connected him with the ex-Muslim group, made sure he wouldn’t have to walk this road alone.

That’s my life now.

Working as an engineer to pay the bills, but really living to help others who are going through what I went through.

To be the support I wish I’d had earlier in my journey.

to tell people that Jesus is real, that he’s pursuing them, that the cost is high, but he’s worth it.

I don’t know what the future holds.

Maybe someday my family will come around.

Maybe they never will.

Maybe I’ll marry Emily and we’ll build a life together.

Maybe that won’t work out and I’ll have to start over again.

Maybe I’ll stay in London.

Maybe I’ll move somewhere else.

Maybe I’ll be safe.

Maybe I’ll face worse persecution than I have so far.

I don’t know any of that.

What I know is this.

I encountered Jesus.

Not a religion, not a theology, not a set of rules.

A person, real, alive.

I am present.

He called me by name in Mecca.

And he’s been with me every day since.

And for the first time in my entire life, I feel known.

Really known, seen, understood, accepted.

Not performing, not pretending, not hiding.

Just me with all my mess and questions and failures.

Loved completely.

That’s what I gave up everything for.

Not a religion, but a relationship.

Not a system, but a person.

not rules but grace.

Was it worth it? You might ask me that question again in five years.

And my emotional answer might be different depending on what I’ve walked through.

But the truthful answer, the deep down answer will always be the same.

Yes.

A thousand times yes.

Because here’s what I’ve learned.

You can have the world’s approval and lose your soul.

You can have your family’s blessing and miss the one thing you were made for.

You can follow all the rules and still be empty inside.

Or you can lose everything and gain the one thing that actually matters.

You can be rejected by everyone else and be accepted by God.

You can walk a hard road and find that Jesus walks it with you.

I chose the second path.

I didn’t choose it lightly.

I didn’t choose it without counting the cost, but I chose it and I’d choose it again.

Not because I’m brave or special or because I have stronger faith than anyone else.

But because I met someone in a dream in Mecca who knew my name, who saw all of me and who loved me anyway.

And once you’ve experienced that, once you’ve tasted that kind of love, you can’t go back to pretending it doesn’t exist.

My name is Omar.

I’m 27 years old.

I grew up Muslim in Saudi Arabia and I’m now a follower of Jesus in London.

My family has disowned me.

My community has rejected me.

I’ve lost almost everything that once defined who I was.

But for the first time in my life, I know who I actually am.

I’m known by God.

I’m loved by Jesus.

I’m held by grace.

And that despite everything, despite all the cost and pain and loss is enough, more than enough.

It’s everything.

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Saudi Prince Forced To Marry His Mother Until JESUS SAVES HIM

My name is Ahmed.

I’m 29 years old and I was born into a wealthy prominent family in Dearborn, Michigan.

In October 2019, my family forced me into the most horrifying situation imaginable.

But that’s when Jesus Christ saved my life.

Let me tell you how the son of God rescued me from hell on earth.

I need to take you back to understand who I was before Jesus found me.

My full name is Ahmed Hassan al-Mansour and I was born into one of the most influential Muslim families in the Midwest.

My father was a senior board member of three major Islamic centers which meant I lived a life most people could never imagine.

Our estate in Bloomfield Hills sprolled across 35 acres with golden accents that caught the morning sun and Italian marble floor so polished you could see your reflection.

I had my own suite with nine rooms, including a private library filled with Islamic texts and a prayer room that faced perfectly toward Mecca.

From the moment I could walk, my life was a structured around Islam.

Not just any Islam, but the strictest interpretation that governed our household.

I was awakened every morning at 5 Aurorog by my personal assistant for fasure prayer.

Before I even brushed my teeth, I was on my prayer mat reciting verses I had memorized since childhood.

My tutors were the most respected Islamic scholars in the region.

They taught me classical Arabic so I could read the Quran in its original form.

And by age 10, I had memorized all 114 chapters.

Ask yourself this question.

Have you ever been so sure of your faith that you couldn’t imagine being wrong? That was me.

I lived and breathed Islam with a devotion that impressed even the most rigid religious authorities.

Every aspect of my day revolved around Islamic law.

I prayed five times daily without fail.

Fasted during Ramadan with genuine enthusiasm and gave zakat charity according to precise calculation my advisers provided.

When other wealthy children were playing video games or watching movies, I was studying hadith collections and debating Islamic jurist prudence with visiting clerics.

My reputation as the most devout young man in our generation spread throughout the community.

At age 14, I began leading Friday prayers at our family mosque, delivering sermons that drew hundreds of worshippers.

The Imam would introduce me as a shining example of Islamic youth, someone who proved that wealth and power didn’t have to corrupt a pure heart.

I believed every word of praise they gave me.

I thought I was earning Allah’s favor with every prayer, every charitable act, every moment of religious study.

The estate itself reinforced this religious atmosphere.

Continue reading….
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