The smell of the desert, usually clean and empty, now seemed thick and suffocating.

One of the men stepped forward.

I didn’t know his name, but from the way the others deferred to him, he was in charge.

He was older, maybe in his 50s, with a beard that was more gray than black.

His face was hard, but I didn’t see cruelty in it.

I saw certainty.

He believed he was doing the right thing.

This made it worse somehow.

If he had been cruel, if he had enjoyed this, I could have hated him.

But he was just a man who believed he was serving Allah.

He asked me one final time.

His voice was level, almost gentle.

He said I still had a chance to save myself.

All I had to do was recant.

All I had to do was declare the Shahada, the Islamic confession of faith.

All I had to do was say that Muhammad was the messenger of Allah, and that Jesus was just a prophet.

He told me to think of my family, think of my children, think of my life.

Every cell in my body wanted to say yes.

Every instinct screamed at me to do whatever I had to do to survive.

My mind was racing, trying to find a way out, trying to find some compromise, some middle path.

Maybe I could say the words, but not mean them.

Maybe I could recant now and then leave the country later.

Maybe I could lie to save my life and ask Jesus to forgive me afterward.

But even as I thought these things, I knew I couldn’t do it, not anymore.

I had already spent a year living a lie.

I had already denied Jesus a thousand times in a thousand small ways.

I couldn’t do it again, not now, not like this.

If I denied him now, with death staring me in the face, what would my faith be worth? I looked at the man.

My voice came out barely above a whisper, but it was steady.

I said no.

I told him I was a follower of Jesus Christ.

I told him Jesus died for my sins and rose from the dead.

I told him nothing would make me deny that truth.

For a moment, no one moved.

The man’s face remained impassive, but I saw something flicker in his eyes.

Maybe disappointment, maybe respect.

I don’t know.

Then he nodded to the others.

Two men grabbed me by the arms.

I didn’t resist.

What would be the point? They were stronger than me, and there was nowhere to run.

We were in the middle of the desert.

Even if I broke free, I would die out here.

They walked me to the pit and forced me to my knees at the edge.

My knees hit the sand hard.

The impact sent a jolt of pain up my legs, but it was nothing compared to the terror coursing through me.

They pushed me forward so I was lying face down in the pit.

The sand was rough against my cheek.

I could taste it in my mouth.

I was breathing in rapid, panicked [clears throat] breaths now, unable to control it.

Someone tied my ankles together.

Then they tied my ankles to my wrists behind my back, so I was bent backward, unable to move effectively.

I was completely helpless.

They rolled me onto my side so I wasn’t face down in the sand.

I could see the stars above me.

They were so bright, so beautiful, and I thought how strange it was that I might die looking at something so beautiful.

Then I heard the sound of liquids sloshing.

The container was being opened.

The smell hit me first, gasoline, sharp and chemical and overwhelming.

I started coughing even before they poured it, and then they did.

The liquid was cold against my skin.

It soaked through my clothes instantly.

They poured it over my torso, my legs, my back.

The smell became so intense I could barely breathe without gagging.

My eyes were watering.

The fumes were burning my throat.

Some of it splashed on my face.

I closed my eyes and mouth tight, but I could still taste it.

The chemical burn on my lips and tongue was horrible.

They stepped back.

I could hear them moving away from the pit.

I could hear them talking in low voices, but I couldn’t make out the words over my own panicked breathing.

I tried to pray, but my mind was white with fear.

All I could think was, “This is really happening.

They are really going to do this.

” I was going to burn alive.

I had heard about people burning to death.

I knew it was one of the most painful ways to die.

The body’s pain receptors would be screaming until the nerve endings were destroyed.

It could take minutes, long, agonizing minutes.

I started to hyperventilate.

My chest was heaving.

Tears were streaming down my face, mixing with the gasoline.

I was making sounds, whimpering sounds I couldn’t control.

I didn’t feel brave.

I didn’t feel peaceful.

I felt absolutely terrified.

I heard someone say something about making an example.

Someone else said this was what happened to apostates, to those who betrayed Allah.

Someone said the fire would purify the land.

Their voices sounded distant, unreal, like I was hearing them through water.

I forced myself to focus.

I forced myself to pray.

Jesus.

Jesus, please.

I’m so afraid.

Please help me.

Please be with me.

But the fear kept overwhelming the prayer.

My thoughts were fragmenting, breaking apart under the weight of terror.

I thought about the times I had heard about martyrs in church history, how they had faced death with courage and faith, how some had even sung hymns as they died.

I had always admired those stories, had thought that if I ever faced persecution, I would be like them.

But I wasn’t.

I was just terrified.

I thought about Stephen in the book of Acts, stoned to death for his faith, seeing Jesus standing at the right hand of God.

I prayed I would see Jesus, too.

I prayed the pain would end quickly.

I prayed for my family, that they would be okay without me.

I prayed for my wife, that she would find peace somehow.

I prayed for my children, that they would grow up strong.

I prayed for my father, that somehow, someday, he would understand.

And I prayed for the men standing around me, preparing to kill me.

I prayed that they would come to know the Jesus I had found.

I prayed they would discover that same peace, that same truth.

Even now, even as they were about to burn me alive, I couldn’t hate them.

They thought they were serving God.

They were wrong, but they believed they were right, just like I had once believed.

And then I heard the sound that made my entire body go rigid with terror, the sound of a match being struck.

It made a small scratching sound, then the hiss of it catching fire.

Such a tiny sound, but I knew what it meant.

I saw the small flame in someone’s hand.

I saw him lower it toward the pit.

Someone said something.

I think it was a prayer.

I think they were asking Allah to accept this offering.

Then the man dropped the match.

For a split second, time seemed to stop.

I saw the little flame falling through the air, tumbling end over end, getting closer.

And then it hit the gasoline-soaked sand near me.

The fire came alive with a roar.

It wasn’t a normal fire.

Gasoline burns different.

It’s fast and hungry and hot.

The flames were blue and orange, and they spread across the pit in an instant.

The heat hit me like a physical blow.

My clothes caught fire immediately.

I felt the flames touch my skin.

And the pain.

Oh God, the pain.

There are no words for that kind of pain.

It was beyond anything I had ever experienced or imagined.

It was like every nerve in my body was shrieking at once.

My skin was burning, my flesh was burning.

I screamed.

I couldn’t help it.

The scream tore out of my throat, raw and animal.

I had never made a sound like that before.

I could smell my own flesh burning.

That’s a smell you can never forget, sweet and sickening and wrong.

The flames were spreading across my body.

My shirt was gone in seconds, just ash.

The fire was eating through my pants.

My skin was blistering and splitting and charring.

I couldn’t think.

I couldn’t pray.

There was only pain and fire and terror.

I thrashed against my bindings, but I couldn’t move.

I was tied too tightly.

All I could do was writhe in agony as I burned.

I remember thinking, this is it.

This is how I die.

Please God, make it be over soon.

Please.

My screaming had become continuous.

I didn’t even realize I was doing it.

My body was just trying to express the agony, but there was no way to express it adequately.

The heat was unbearable.

The air itself seemed to be burning.

I couldn’t breathe without inhaling flame and smoke.

I was choking, coughing, still screaming.

I could hear the men talking, but their voices seemed very far away.

I couldn’t understand what they were saying.

Nothing existed except the fire and the pain.

This went on for what felt like an eternity, but was probably less than a minute.

A minute that contained more suffering than I had experienced in my entire life.

And then something happened.

I don’t know how to explain it.

I don’t know how to make you understand.

The fire didn’t go out, not yet, but I felt something, someone in the midst of the flames, in the midst of the pain, I felt a presence with me.

It was as real as the fire, as real as the agony, as real as anything I had ever experienced.

More real, actually.

I felt arms around me, though I couldn’t see them.

I felt like I was being held, cradled, protected.

Not from the fire, but in the fire.

With me in the fire.

It was like I wasn’t alone anymore, like someone had stepped into the flames with me, the way Jesus stepped into the fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego all those centuries ago.

The pain didn’t stop, but somehow, impossibly, it became bearable.

Not because it was less intense, but because I wasn’t carrying it alone.

And then I heard a voice, not with my ears, not a sound that traveled through the air, deeper than that.

In my soul, in that place where thought becomes knowing, where the deepest truths register.

It said, “You are mine, and I’m with you.

” The voice was calm.

It was strong.

It was full of a love so vast and so personal that even through the pain and the fear, I felt it overwhelm me.

This was what I had been searching for my whole life, this presence, this love, this certainty that I was known completely and loved anyway, that I belonged to someone who would never let me go.

And I knew it was Jesus.

He was there in the fire with me, the same Jesus I had read about in secret, the same Jesus I had prayed to in the darkness of my study, the same Jesus I had confessed even when it meant losing everything.

He hadn’t abandoned me.

He was right there with me in the worst moment of my life.

I don’t know what happened next.

I can’t explain it.

The doctors I saw later couldn’t explain it, either.

The fire went out, not slowly, not gradually.

It just stopped.

One moment I was burning, engulfed in flames.

The next moment, the fire was gone.

I was still lying in the pit.

I was still tied up, but the flames were gone.

There was smoke rising from my clothes, from my skin, but no fire.

I could hear the men shouting.

They sounded shocked, confused, maybe frightened.

I heard someone say something about Allah’s judgment, about a sign.

I heard someone else say this wasn’t possible, that gasoline fires didn’t just go out.

I was still in terrible pain.

My skin felt like it was still burning even though the flames were gone.

Every breath hurt.

Moving hurt.

Existing hurt.

But I was alive.

I shouldn’t have been, but I was.

The men were arguing now.

I could hear them clearly, even though I couldn’t see them well.

My vision was blurred from smoke and tears and trauma.

One voice, young and shaking, said this was a sign from Allah.

He said maybe they were wrong, maybe they should let me go.

Another voice, older and harder, said this changed nothing.

I was still an apostate.

I had still rejected Islam.

The fire going out didn’t change what I had done.

A third voice, the one that had led them, spoke over the others.

He sounded uncertain for the first time.

He said they needed to leave.

Something had gone wrong.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.

They needed to go before someone came.

Someone asked what they should do about me.

There was silence.

Then the leader said to leave me.

I was badly burned.

I was tied up.

I was in the middle of the desert.

I would die out here anyway.

It was almost merciful, his logic.

Let the desert finish what the fire had started, rather than trying again themselves.

I heard them getting into their vehicles, doors slamming, engines starting.

And then they were gone.

The sound of their engines faded into the distance until there was only silence.

The men were arguing now.

I could hear them, even though I couldn’t see them clearly.

My vision was blurry, maybe from the smoke and tears, maybe from the trauma my body had just endured.

Some of them sounded afraid.

The fire had just gone out on its own, and they didn’t understand it.

They had seen something they couldn’t explain.

One voice rose above the others.

It was the older man who had led this.

He was saying they needed to leave.

He was saying something had gone wrong.

He was saying they needed to go now.

I heard engines starting.

I heard vehicles moving.

The sound was getting farther away.

They were leaving me.

I lay there in the pit, bound and burned, listening to them drive away.

The sound of the engines faded into the distance.

And then, there was silence.

Just silence and the vast, empty desert and the stars I was alone.

The pain was so intense I thought I might pass out.

Maybe I did for a little while.

Time became strange.

I would be aware, then not aware, then aware again.

At some point I realized I needed to move.

I couldn’t just lie here.

I would die here if I didn’t get help.

The night was cold now that the fire was gone, and I was going into shock.

I tried to move, but the ropes held me tight.

Every movement sent fresh waves of agony through my burned skin.

I bit down on my lip to keep from screaming again.

I tasted blood.

I worked at the ropes.

My wrists were still tied to my ankles behind my back, but the fire had burned some of the rope.

It was weakened.

If I could just It took a long time.

I don’t know how long.

My hands were burned and clumsy.

The pain was making me dizzy and nauseous, but I kept working at it.

Finally, the rope broke.

My hands came free.

Then I could untie my ankles.

Every movement was torture, but I did it.

I tried to stand, but my legs wouldn’t hold me.

I collapsed back into the pit.

The sun was rough against my ruined skin.

I lay there for a moment, breathing hard, trying to gather strength.

I prayed.

I thanked Jesus for saving me from the fire.

I asked him to help me now.

I told him I couldn’t do this on my own.

And I felt that presence again.

That assurance that I wasn’t alone.

I tried again to stand.

This time I made it to my knees.

Then, using the side of the pit, I pulled myself up to standing.

The world spun.

I thought I would fall, but I stayed upright.

I could see tracks in the sand where the vehicles had been.

I could see which direction they had gone.

That was the way back to the city, to help, to survival.

But it was also the way toward the people who had tried to kill me.

If I went that way and they found me, they might try again.

I looked the other direction.

Just empty desert.

If I went that way, I would die of exposure.

I was injured, burned, in shock.

I wouldn’t last long out here.

I didn’t have a good option.

But I had to choose.

I started walking away from the city, into the desert.

I don’t know why.

Maybe because I knew I couldn’t face my attackers again.

Maybe because I was delirious and wasn’t thinking clearly.

Maybe because God was leading me.

I just walked.

Each step was agony.

The burned skin on my legs cracked and bled with every movement.

My lungs ached from breathing smoke.

My whole body felt like it was still on fire, even though the actual flames were long gone.

The night desert is a strange place, beautiful and terrible at the same time.

The temperature drops dramatically once the sun goes down.

I had been burning minutes ago, and now I was shivering with cold.

The wind against my burned skin was like knives.

I was leaving a trail of blood in the sand.

I could see it in the starlight.

Dark spots marking where I had been.

I thought about how easy it would be to track me if they came looking, but I didn’t think they would.

They thought I had burned to death.

They thought they had left a corpse in that pit.

They didn’t know about the miracle.

They didn’t know the fire had gone out.

I walked for what felt like hours, but might have been less.

I had no sense of time.

The stars wheeled overhead.

The desert was silent except for my labored breathing and the soft sound of my feet in the sand.

My mind started playing tricks on me.

The pain and shock were making me delirious.

I saw things that weren’t there.

Shapes in the darkness.

Lights that disappeared when I looked directly at them.

At one point, I thought I heard my father’s voice calling my name.

I turned around, but there was no one there.

Just empty desert.

At another point, I thought I saw my children running toward me.

I reached out to them, but they vanished like I was dying.

I knew I was dying.

The burns were severe.

I was losing blood.

I was going into shock.

My body was shutting down, but I kept walking.

I fell several times.

Each time, it took longer to get back up.

Each time, I wondered if this was it, if I would just lie here and die.

But each time, I got up.

I kept walking.

I was walking toward nothing.

There was nothing out here.

Just sand and stars and the cold night air.

But I kept walking because it was all I could do.

And because Jesus had saved me from the fire.

And I believed he hadn’t saved me just to let me die in the desert.

I don’t know how long I walked.

Eventually, I saw something in the distance.

Lights, maybe a road, maybe a building.

I couldn’t tell.

I changed direction, heading toward the lights.

They seemed impossibly far away, but I kept going.

My vision was getting dark around the edges.

I was stumbling more than walking now.

My body was shutting down.

I saw the lights getting closer.

Or maybe I was getting closer to them.

It was hard to tell.

And then I saw a vehicle.

It was parked on the side of a road I hadn’t even realized I had reached.

There was someone next to it, looking at something under the hood.

I tried to call out, but my voice was barely a whisper.

I tried to wave, but I could barely lift my arm.

I took one more step toward the person and the vehicle, and then my legs gave out completely.

I fell.

I hit the ground hard.

The impact sent shock waves of pain through every burned nerve.

Sand stuck to my wounds.

I tried to push myself up, but my arms wouldn’t work anymore.

My body had nothing left.

I lay there on the side of the road, looking up at the stars.

They were still beautiful, still bright, still indifferent to human suffering.

I heard footsteps running.

Someone had seen me fall.

A face appeared above me.

A man, young, with dark skin and wide, shocked eyes.

He said something in a language I didn’t understand.

Not Arabic, maybe Tagalog or Hindi.

One of the foreign workers.

He knelt beside me, and I saw his expression change from shock to horror as he saw my burns in the light from his vehicle.

He was talking rapidly, maybe to me, maybe to someone else.

I couldn’t understand him and couldn’t respond.

My throat was too damaged from screaming and smoke.

But I saw him pull out a phone.

I saw him making a call.

I saw genuine concern and compassion on his face as he looked at me.

This stranger, this foreign worker, who I would have barely noticed a year ago, was trying to save my life.

He took off his shirt and tried to cover me with it, to keep me warm, maybe, or to protect my burns from the dirt and wind.

The fabric touching my skin hurt, but I couldn’t tell him.

I couldn’t speak.

I heard sirens in the distance.

The ambulance was coming, or maybe the police.

I didn’t know which, and part of me didn’t care.

I was just so tired.

The man stayed with me.

He kept talking, even though I couldn’t understand.

I think he was praying.

I think maybe he was a Christian.

I don’t know.

But his presence comforted me.

The last thing I remember thinking was, “Jesus, thank you.

You saved me.

You saved me.

Not just from the fire, but you sent this stranger to find me.

You brought the ambulance.

You orchestrated even this.

You haven’t abandoned me.

” And then nothing.

I woke up in a hospital.

I didn’t know where I was at first.

I didn’t know how I had gotten there.

I didn’t know how much time had passed.

Everything was white and bright and clean.

So different from the dark desert, the fire, the sand, and blood.

I tried to move and immediately regretted it.

Pain shot through my entire body.

My skin felt like it was being pulled apart.

I made a sound, something between a gasp and a scream.

A nurse appeared beside my bed.

She was speaking to me, but I couldn’t focus on her words.

The pain was overwhelming everything else.

She did something, adjusted something, and slowly the pain became more manageable.

Not gone, but bearable.

I realized she had given me medication through the IV in my arm.

As the pain receded enough for me to think, I looked down at myself.

My arms were wrapped in bandages.

My chest was wrapped.

I could feel bandages on my legs, my back.

I was covered in them.

The nurse was explaining something about my burns, about the treatment, about how lucky I was to be alive.

I heard words like second degree and third degree and extensive damage.

I heard miracle, too.

She said it was a miracle I had survived.

She didn’t know how right she was.

I tried to ask questions, but my throat was so damaged I could barely make sounds.

The nurse understood and brought me water with a straw.

Even swallowing hurt, but the water was cool and I was so thirsty.

I managed to whisper, “How long?” She told me I had been in the hospital for 3 days.

I had been unconscious for most of it.

They had kept me sedated while they treated the worst of the burns.

3 days.

It felt like both a moment and an eternity since I had been in that desert pit.

Over the next few days, as I drifted in and out of consciousness, I learned more about what had happened after I collapsed on the roadside.

The man who found me was a Filipino worker named Carlos.

He had stopped because his truck had overheated.

When he saw me fall, he had immediately called for help.

He had stayed with me until the ambulance arrived.

The medics who responded hadn’t known what to make of my burns.

They were severe, but not severe enough for how fresh they appeared to be.

They asked me what happened, but I was unconscious by then.

At the hospital, they had treated my burns as best they could.

They had cleaned the wounds, applied dressings, given me antibiotics and pain medication.

They had kept me stable while my body tried to heal from the trauma, but they were confused.

The pattern of my burns didn’t make sense.

They looked like fire burns, but they weren’t consistent with being in a building fire or a vehicle fire.

And why had I been out in the desert? I couldn’t tell them the truth.

If I told them I had been burned for apostasy, for leaving Islam, they would have to report it.

And then, the men who tried to kill me might come back to finish the job.

So, I said I didn’t remember.

I said I had been attacked, but couldn’t remember the details.

I implied I had been robbed, maybe, and left for dead.

The doctors seemed skeptical, but they didn’t push too hard.

Saudi Arabia is a place where sometimes it’s better not to ask too many questions.

What I didn’t realize yet was that my disappearance had caused problems for the men who had tried to kill me.

My wife had reported me missing when I didn’t come home that first night.

The mosque had to explain where I was.

They couldn’t say they had handed me over to be killed.

So, they said I had left, that I had abandoned my family and my faith.

But then I turned up in a hospital, burned and nearly dead.

Now, there were questions.

If I had simply left, how did I end up burned? Who had done this to me? Where had I been? My wife came to see me on the fourth day.

I saw her before she saw me.

She was standing in the doorway of my hospital room, and the expression on her face was one I had never seen before.

Horror mixed with disgust mixed with grief.

When she finally looked at me, really looked at me, she began to cry.

She came closer, but she didn’t touch me.

She stood at the foot of my bed and asked me why.

Why had I done this? Why had I thrown everything away? Why had I become an apostate? So, she knew.

Of course she knew.

The mosque would have told her.

I tried to speak, but my voice was still rough and weak.

I told her I was sorry.

I told her I loved her and the children.

I told her I had found truth and couldn’t deny it.

She shook her head.

She said I had found lies.

She said I had been deceived by Shaitan.

She said I had destroyed our family.

I wanted to reach out to her, but I couldn’t move without pain, and I knew she wouldn’t have accepted my touch anyway.

She told me the children were asking for me.

Khalid kept asking when I was coming home.

Our daughter cried at night.

Even the baby seemed to sense something was wrong.

Then she said the words I had been dreading.

They couldn’t come home.

Not to me.

Not while I was an apostate.

My father had taken them in.

He was caring for them, raising them in a proper Muslim household, protecting them from my influence.

I felt something break inside me.

A pain worse than the burns.

My children.

My babies.

I would never see them again.

I begged her.

I told her to let me see them just once.

Let me explain to them that I loved them.

Let me say goodbye properly.

She said no.

She said it would only confuse them, only hurt them more.

Better for them to think I had abandoned them than to see me like this, to know what I had become.

She stayed for a few more minutes, but there was nothing left to say.

She looked at me one last time, and I saw that she was already mourning me, already treating me as if I were dead.

Then she left.

I lay in that hospital bed and wept.

Not quietly.

Not with dignity.

I sobbed like a child, and the sobs hurt my burned chest and my damaged throat, but I couldn’t stop.

I had known there would be a cost to following Jesus.

I had known I might lose my family.

But knowing it intellectually and experiencing it emotionally were completely different things.

My children were gone.

My wife was gone.

My father had disowned me.

My brothers would never speak to me again.

My community had rejected me.

I was alone.

In that moment, I questioned whether it had been worth it.

I had gained Jesus, yes, but I had lost everyone else.

The pain was so deep I thought it might kill me when the burns couldn’t.

But then, in that darkness, I felt Jesus again.

Not the dramatic presence from the fire.

Just a quiet, steady assurance.

A reminder.

You are not alone.

I am with you.

And I will never leave you.

It didn’t take away the pain, but it kept me from drowning in it.

The days that followed were difficult in ways I hadn’t expected.

The physical pain was bad enough.

The burns were healing slowly, and every dressing change was agony.

I had to learn to move again, to walk again.

Simple things like eating or using the bathroom became ordeals.

But the emotional and psychological pain was worse.

I had nightmares every night.

I would wake up screaming, feeling the fire again, smelling the gasoline, hearing the men’s voices.

The nurses would rush in to calm me down, to give me medication.

But the fear remained.

I was afraid to sleep, afraid to close my eyes, afraid the fire would come back.

I was also afraid that the man who had tried to kill me would find me.

Every time someone new came into my room, my heart would race.

Every unexpected sound made me jump.

I was constantly on edge, constantly waiting for them to come finish what they started.

The hospital social worker came to see me.

She wanted to know about my living situation, about my family support, about my plans for when I was discharged.

I had no answers for her.

I had no home to go back to.

My family wanted nothing to do with me.

I had no money, no job, no plan.

I was a man with severe burns who would need ongoing medical care.

I was a known apostate in a country where that could get you killed.

I had nothing and no one.

The social worker looked troubled.

She said she would see what she could do, but I could tell she didn’t know how to help me.

It was Carlos, the man who had found me, who ended up helping.

He came to visit me in the hospital.

He brought fruit and juice, and he sat beside my bed and told me he had been praying for me.

That word, “praying”, caught my attention.

I asked him carefully what he meant, and he smiled and said he was a Christian.

He had been praying for me since the night he found me.

I started to cry again.

Here was another Christian, sent by God at exactly the moment I needed him.

Carlos told me about the underground church in Riyadh.

There weren’t many Christians who could meet openly, but there were small groups of believers, mostly foreign workers, who met in secret to worship together.

He said if I needed help, if I needed a place to stay, if I needed community, he could connect me with them.

I nodded.

Yes, I needed all of those things.

When I was finally discharged from the hospital, I had nowhere to go.

But Carlos had arranged for me to stay in a small room in a building where several Filipina workers lived.

It wasn’t much, just a single room with a mattress on the floor, but it was safe and it was shelter.

The workers there knew what I was.

They knew I was a Saudi who had converted to Christianity.

They knew I was in danger, but they welcomed me anyway.

For the first time in my life, I experienced real Christian community.

These men and women, foreigners in Saudi Arabia, working difficult jobs for low pay, far from their families, they shared what little they had with me.

They brought me food.

They helped me change my bandages.

They prayed with me.

And on Friday evenings, when the Muslim world was at mosque, we would gather quietly in someone’s room and worship Jesus together.

I cannot describe what it meant to finally worship openly, to sing praise songs without fear, to pray aloud in a group of believers.

I had been a Christian for over a year, but I had never experienced corporate worship.

It was beautiful.

It was healing.

These people, my new brothers and sisters in Christ, helped me in ways I didn’t know I needed.

They listened to my story.

They cried with me over my losses.

They prayed for my family.

They reminded me that I wasn’t alone.

One woman, a nurse named Maria, helped me process my trauma.

She had medical training and spiritual wisdom.

She explained to me that what I was experiencing, the nightmares, the fear, the sudden panic, were symptoms of trauma.

She said it was normal that my brain and body were trying to process what had happened to me.

She taught me breathing exercises.

She taught me grounding techniques for when the panic came.

She sat with me during the nightmares and reminded me that I was safe, that the fire was in the past, that Jesus had saved me.

Slowly, very slowly, I began to heal, not just physically, though my burns were improving, but emotionally and spiritually, too.

I began to understand that God had saved me for a reason.

I was alive when I should be dead.

I had survived when there was no natural explanation for my survival.

God had a purpose for me.

He had a plan, but understanding that intellectually didn’t make the day-to-day reality easier.

I still struggled.

I still hurt.

I still grieved.

Some days were better than others.

Some days I would wake up and feel grateful to be alive, grateful for my new Christian family, grateful for the freedom to worship Jesus openly in our small gatherings.

Other days I would wake up and the first thing I would think about was my children.

I would wonder what they were doing at that exact moment.

Were they eating breakfast, going to school, playing? Did they miss me? Did they remember me? The not knowing was torture.

I wanted to try to see them, to find a way to send them a message, to let them know I still loved them.

But Maria and Carlos both counseled me against it.

They said it would be too dangerous, both for me and for them.

My father was surely watching for any attempt I might make to contact them.

And if I did manage to reach them, what would I say? How could I explain to children so young why their father had chosen a different God? So I prayed for them instead.

Every morning and every night I prayed for their safety, their health, their happiness.

I prayed that somehow someday they would understand, that they would come to know Jesus, too, that we would be reunited, if not in this life, then in the next.

Those prayers were often the only thing that kept me going.

I also had to grieve what I had lost.

I thought about my children constantly.

I wondered what they were being told about me.

I wondered if they hated me.

I wondered if they would grow up thinking their father had abandoned them, not knowing that I had wanted nothing more than to be with them.

I thought about my wife, Layla.

I had loved her as best as I knew how.

I had tried to be a good husband, and now she was alone, raising three children without me, bearing the shame of having an apostate for a husband.

I thought about my father, who had devoted his life to Islam and to raising me in that faith.

How betrayed he must feel, how devastated that his eldest son, the one he had trained to follow in his footsteps, had rejected everything he held dear.

The grief came in waves.

Sometimes I would be fine, focusing on my recovery, grateful to be alive, and then suddenly I would be overwhelmed with sadness, with loss, with the weight of what my faith had cost.

My new Christian friends understood.

They didn’t try to rush me through the grief.

They didn’t tell me to just be happy because I had Jesus.

They let me mourn.

They mourned with me.

And through it all, Jesus was faithful.

In my darkest moments, when I wondered if I had made a terrible mistake, when I wondered if the cost was too high, he would remind me of his presence.

Sometimes through scripture, sometimes through a brother or sister speaking words of encouragement, sometimes just through a quiet sense of peace that I couldn’t explain.

I remember the voice in the fire, “You are mine, and I am with you.

” That promise sustained me.

As the months passed, I grew stronger.

My burns healed, leaving scars that would be with me forever, but I could move again.

I could function again.

I could live again.

Carlos helped me find work.

It was simple labor, work that foreign workers usually did, but I was grateful for it.

It gave me purpose and income.

The work was hard.

Construction sites, loading and unloading trucks, cleaning, maintenance.

Physical labor that made my healing burns ache.

The other workers, mostly from South Asia and the Philippines, were kind to me despite my Saudi background.

They knew my story.

They knew I was one of them now.

Not in nationality, but in faith and in circumstance.

I learned humility through that work.

I, who had been a teacher, who had been respected, who had sat in meetings with other religious leaders, was now doing the kind of work I had previously taken for granted.

The kind of work done by people I had barely noticed.

But I learned to find dignity in it.

Honest work is honest work.

And I was providing for myself through my own hands, not through my family’s position or my religious credentials.

The work also kept me busy, which helped with the grief and the trauma.

When I was physically exhausted at the end of the day, I slept better.

The nightmares still came, but less frequently.

I was living a completely different life than the one I had known.

I had gone from being a respected religious teacher to being a laborer.

From having a family and a home to living in a single room.

From being a Saudi with status to being treated almost like a foreign worker.

But I was free.

Free to worship Jesus openly, at least in the privacy of our small group.

Free to read the Bible without hiding.

Free to pray without pretending.

And I was loved.

My Christian community, these brothers and sisters who had barely known me, loved me in a way I had never experienced in all my years as a Muslim.

They loved me not because of what I could do or how righteous I was, but simply because we were family in Christ.

It was during this time that I was baptized.

I had wanted to be baptized since the moment I believed in Jesus, but circumstances had made it impossible.

Now finally, I could take that step.

We gathered one evening in someone’s apartment building.

They had filled a large tub with water.

It wasn’t a river or a baptismal pool in a church.

It was simple and humble, but it was sacred.

Carlos baptized me.

As he lowered me under the water, I thought about dying to my old life.

When he raised me up, I thought about resurrection, about new life in Christ.

My brothers and sisters gathered around sang softly, praising God.

And I wept, overcome with joy and gratitude.

This was my public declaration of faith, not in a mosque or in front of my old community, but here, among these believers who had become my family.

After my baptism, I felt a new freedom.

I had taken the step I had been afraid to take for so long.

I had publicly identified with Christ, and the world hadn’t ended.

In fact, I felt more alive than I ever had.

One evening, about 6 months after the fire, we were having a Bible study in Carlos’s room.

We were reading from Romans chapter 8.

Someone read aloud, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

” As I heard those words, I felt something settle in my spirit.

Nothing could separate me from God’s love.

Not fire, not persecution, not loss, not even death.

The men who had tried to kill me thought they could separate me from Jesus by burning me alive, but they couldn’t.

Even in the fire, he was with me.

My family had separated themselves from me because of my faith, but God’s love remained.

I had lost everything I thought defined me, but I had gained something far more valuable.

I looked around at the faces of my brothers and sisters gathered in that small room.

We came from different countries, spoke different languages as our first tongue, had different backgrounds, but we were one in Christ.

This was the church.

This was what Jesus had died to create.

This was the family that would last forever.

I realized that God had not just saved me from the fire, he had saved me for this.

To be part of his family, to know his love, to share his gospel, and I understood that my story wasn’t over.

It was just beginning.

The burns on my body were healed enough that I could show them to people.

The scars remained, deep and visible, but instead of being ashamed of them, I began to see them as a testimony.

These scars were proof of what had happened to me, proof that I had been set on fire for my faith.

Proof that Jesus had saved me when I should have died.

Every time someone asked about my scars, I had an opportunity to tell them about Jesus, to explain what he had done for me, to share the gospel.

I began to understand that God had allowed me to survive not just for my own sake, but so I could tell others what he had done.

Maria told me one day that the best way to overcome trauma is to find meaning in it, to transform suffering into purpose.

My suffering had meaning.

It wasn’t meaningless pain.

It was a testimony to God’s faithfulness.

It was proof that he saves those who call on him.

It was evidence that following Jesus is worth any cost.

I started to feel a growing conviction that I needed to tell my story more widely, not just to the small group of believers I worshipped with, but to the world.

I knew it would be dangerous.

I knew that speaking openly about my conversion and persecution would put me at even more risk.

But I also knew that there were others out there like me, secret believers in Saudi Arabia and across the Muslim world, living in fear, hiding their faith, wondering if anyone else understood what they were going through.

I wanted them to know they weren’t alone.

I wanted them to know that Jesus is real, that he saves, that he is worth following even when it costs everything.

I also wanted Christians in the free world to know what their brothers and sisters in restricted countries are facing.

To know that persecution isn’t ancient history, it’s happening right now.

To know that people are dying for their faith even today.

And I wanted non-Christians, especially Muslims, to hear my story.

Not to mock Islam or to be disrespectful, but to share what I had found in Jesus.

To explain why I believed he was worth losing everything for.

This growing conviction became a calling.

I felt God asking me to step out of safety and into purpose.

To use my story to glorify him and to help others.

It terrified me, but it also excited me.

I was alive for a reason, and that reason was becoming clear.

I needed to tell the world what Jesus had done for me.

I needed to testify to his faithfulness.

I needed to be a voice for those who couldn’t speak.

My life would never be normal again.

My family was gone.

My old life was gone.

My safety was always at risk.

But I had a purpose.

I had a mission.

I had been through the fire, and Jesus had brought me through it.

Now I would spend the rest of my life telling people why.

The scars on my body would fade over time, but they would never completely disappear.

And I was glad.

They were reminders of what God had done.

They were marks of his faithfulness.

Every morning when I woke up and saw those scars, I remembered I should be dead, but I’m alive.

And that’s a miracle.

A miracle that I would spend the rest of my life sharing with anyone who would listen.

I’m telling you this story today because it needs to be told.

Not for my glory.

I’m not a hero.

I’m just a man who found truth and was willing to lose everything to keep it.

A man who was terrified when they set me on fire, who screamed in agony, who didn’t face death with courage, but with fear.

But Jesus saved me anyway.

And that’s the point.

This isn’t my story.

It’s his story.

It’s about what he did, not what I did.

And I’m telling it because there are people who need to hear it.

To those who are being persecuted for your faith right now, wherever you are in the world, I want you to know something.

You are not alone.

I know what it’s like to be afraid every single day.

I know what it’s like to hide your faith, to pretend to be something you’re not, to live in constant fear of discovery.

I know what it’s like to lose your family because of Jesus.

I know the pain of being rejected by the people you love most.

I know what it feels like when your own father says you’re no longer his son.

I know what it’s like to face violence for your faith.

I know what fire feels like.

I know what it’s like to think you’re going to die.

And I want to tell you, Jesus is with you.

He was with me in the fire.

Not figuratively, actually with me.

I felt his presence.

I heard his voice.

He held me when the flames were consuming me.

And he’s with you now in whatever fire you’re facing, whether it’s physical persecution or emotional rejection or the daily struggle of hiding your faith, he’s there.

Your suffering matters.

It’s not meaningless.

It’s not in vain.

God sees every tear.

He knows every fear.

He understands every loss.

And one day, one day it will all make sense.

One day you’ll understand why he allowed what he allowed.

One day you’ll see how he was working even in the darkest moments.

But even if that day doesn’t come in this life, even if you never understand why, I can tell you this.

He is worth it.

Jesus is worth every cost, worth every sacrifice, worth every loss because he is truth and he is life and he is love.

Don’t give up.

Don’t let fear make you deny him.

Hold on.

He’s holding you.

To the secret believers in Muslim countries hiding your faith because discovery means death, I see you.

I was you.

For almost a year, I lived that double life.

I know the exhaustion of it.

I know the guilt and the fear and the loneliness.

I know how it feels to teach Islam while believing in Jesus.

I know how it feels to bow in prayer at the mosque while your heart is crying out to a different God.

I know how it feels to deny Jesus with your words even while your heart is clinging to him.

And I want to tell you I understand.

I understand the impossible position you’re in.

I understand that you can’t just confess your faith and face the consequences.

You have families who depend on you.

You have children to protect.

You have parents who would be destroyed if they knew.

I’m not going to tell you to go announce your faith tomorrow and prepare to die.

That’s not my place.

Only God can tell you when the time is right.

But I am going to tell you this.

You can’t live that double life forever.

Eventually, you’ll have to choose.

Either you’ll have to deny Jesus and return fully to Islam or you’ll have to confess him and accept the consequences.

And when that day comes, when you have to choose, choose Jesus.

Yes, it will cost you everything.

Yes, you’ll lose people you love.

Yes, you might face violence or death.

I won’t lie to you about that, but I’ll also tell you that he’s worth it and that he will be with you no matter what happens.

In the meantime, be wise.

Be careful.

Protect yourself and your family.

But don’t deny him in your heart.

Keep reading the Bible.

Keep praying.

Keep seeking fellowship however you can, even if it’s just online with other believers you’ll never meet.

And trust that God has a plan.

He brought you to faith for a reason.

He’ll make a way for you when the time is right.

Just don’t give up on him because he’ll never give up on you.

To Christians in free countries who can worship openly without fear, who’ve never faced persecution for your faith, I have a message for you, too.

Wake up.

Wake up to what’s happening to your brothers and sisters around the world.

We are being persecuted.

We are being imprisoned.

We are being killed right now, today.

While you’re sitting in comfortable churches singing worship songs without fear, we’re hiding in secret rooms whispering our prayers afraid of being discovered.

While you’re debating theological fine points and church programs, we’re facing actual life and death decisions about our faith.

While you’re complaining that someone was rude to you for being a Christian, we’re being tortured and murdered.

I’m not saying this to make you feel guilty.

I’m saying it because you need to know.

You need to know what’s happening.

You need to know that persecution isn’t ancient history.

It’s happening now.

And you need to do something about it.

Pray for us.

Please pray for us.

Pray for believers in Saudi Arabia and Iran and Pakistan and North Korea and Somalia and every other place where following Jesus can get you killed.

Pray for those of us who’ve been separated from our families.

Pray for those who are in prison.

Pray for those who are being tortured.

Pray for those who are about to die.

Your prayers matter.

They really do.

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