I lied and said I was just stressed about graduation and finding a job.

But Aliyah didn’t believe me.

She could tell something was different.

One day in April, she came to my apartment when my roommates weren’t there.

She sat me down and asked me directly if I was thinking about leaving Islam.

I couldn’t lie anymore.

I was so tired of lying.

I told her the truth.

I told her I’d made a mistake.

I told her I didn’t believe in Islam anymore.

I told her I was going back to Christianity.

Her reaction was worse than I expected.

She cried.

She begged me not to do this.

She said I was going to hell, that I was committing the unforgivable sin.

She said leaving Islam was apostasy and apostates deserve death.

When I didn’t back down, she got angry.

She said I’d been fooling everyone, using the Muslim community, bringing shame on all of us.

She said I was going to regret this, that I had no idea what I was doing.

Then she left.

Within hours, the whole Muslim community knew.

My phone exploded with messages.

Some people were trying to convince me to stay, sending me Islamic arguments and videos.

Some were angry, calling me a hypocrite and a traitor.

Some were threatening, warning me about what happens to apostates.

I was terrified.

I called my mom for the first time in almost 4 years.

She answered on the first ring.

I broke down sobbing.

I told her everything.

I told her I was sorry.

I told her I wanted to come home.

I told her I was scared.

She cried, too.

She said she’d been praying for this moment every single day.

She said she never stopped believing God would bring me back.

She said she loved me and she forgave me and I could come home whenever I wanted.

My dad got on the phone.

His voice was shaking.

He said he loved me.

He said he was sorry for hanging up on me years ago.

Now, sorry for not fighting harder to keep me from leaving.

He said their door was always open and they’d protect me no matter what.

I graduated in May and I didn’t attend the ceremony.

I was afraid of seeing people from the Muslim community, afraid of confrontation or worse.

Instead, I packed up my apartment, threw away my hijabs and abayas and Islamic books and I drove home to Ohio.

I drove away from Islam and toward Jesus.

I drove toward Grace.

The drive home to Ohio took 4 hours.

4 hours of interstate highway, flat farmland, rest stops where I kept my head down and avoided eye contact.

4 hours of my phone buzzing constantly with messages I was afraid to read.

I turned off my phone somewhere around the halfway point.

I needed silence.

I needed to think.

I needed to process what I was doing.

I was running away from Islam.

That’s what it felt like.

Running, escaping, like a prisoner fleeing before the guards noticed.

I’d learned enough about apostasy in Islam to know I had reason to be afraid.

I’d read the hadiths that commanded death for those who left the religion.

I’d heard the stories of honor killings of ex-Muslims who had to go into hiding, change their names, cut off contact with their families.

I didn’t think my Muslim friends would kill me.

But I also knew that some of them believed apostasy deserved death.

I knew that I’d embarrassed them, betrayed them, made their religion look bad after being held up as a model convert.

I didn’t know what they might do.

So I ran and I prayed while I drove messy prayers to Jesus, thanking him for giving me the courage to leave, asking him to keep me safe, begging him to help me rebuild the life I destroyed.

My parents’ house looked exactly the same as it had when I left for college 6 years ago.

Same white siding, same blue shutters, same flower beds.

My mom kept immaculate.

I sat in the driveway for a few minutes, scared to go in, scared they’d change their minds, scared this was all a mistake.

But then the front door opened and my mom came running out.

She hugged me so tight I could barely breathe.

She was crying and laughing at the same time.

My dad was right behind her, tears streaming down his face, pulling both of us into his arms.

We stood in the driveway crying together for I don’t know how long.

Neighbors probably saw us and wondered what was happening.

I didn’t care.

I was home.

After four years of running from them, I was finally home.

That first week back was overwhelming.

My parents treated me like I was fragile, like I might break or disappear if they said the wrong thing.

They asked me what I needed, what I wanted, how they could help.

What I needed was to sleep.

I was exhausted in a way I’d never been before.

Not just physically tired, but soul tired.

Worn out from years of fear and pretending and trying to be someone I wasn’t.

I slept for days.

I’d wake up for meals and to use the bathroom and then I’d go back to sleep.

My mom said my body was recovering from trauma.

I didn’t argue.

When I finally started feeling more awake, more present, we talked.

long conversations at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, trying to make sense of what had happened.

My mom wanted to understand why I’d converted in the first place.

I tried to explain it, the doubts I’d had, the questions Christianity didn’t seem to answer, the appeal of Islam’s certainty and structure and community.

My dad wanted to understand what changed.

What made me leave Islam and come back to Christianity that was harder to explain.

It wasn’t one thing.

It was a thousand small things that built up over time.

It was seeing the difference between what I’d been promised and what Islam actually was.

It was the fear and control and oppression I witnessed.

It was reading the Quran and hadiths honestly and seeing things I couldn’t ignore anymore.

But mostly I told them it was Jesus.

It was remembering who Jesus was, what he taught, how he lived, how he treated people, how he loved sinners and outcasts and broken people.

It was comparing Jesus to Muhammad and seeing that they were nothing alike.

One came to serve and give his life.

The other came to conquer and build an empire.

One taught love your enemies.

The other taught fight the unbelievers.

One died for sinners.

The other killed his enemies.

The difference was so clear once I was willing to see it.

My parents listened.

They cried some more.

They thanked God for bringing me back.

Then my mom asked the question I’d been dreading.

She asked about the Bible burning.

I broke down.

I told her how sorry I was, how much I regretted it, how it haunted me.

I told her I understood if she couldn’t forgive me, if they couldn’t trust me anymore, if I damaged our relationship too badly to repair.

She took my hands and looked me in the eyes.

She said that Jesus had forgiven me the moment I asked.

So who was she to withhold forgiveness? She said that nothing I could do would ever make them stop loving me.

She said that the enemy had deceived me for a while so but God had brought me back and that was all that mattered now.

My dad said they’d never stop praying for me.

He said that every single day for four years, they’d prayed that God would open my eyes and bring me home.

He said watching me burn that Bible had been one of the worst moments of his life, but seeing me walk back through their door made it all worth it.

I couldn’t believe the grace they showed me.

I didn’t deserve it.

But that’s what grace is, undeserved.

That Sunday, they asked if I wanted to go to church with them.

Back to our old church, the one I’d grown up in.

I was terrified.

I didn’t know if I could face those people, if they’d even want me there after what I’d done.

But I said yes because I needed to.

I needed to stop running.

I needed to face what I’d done and accept whatever consequences came.

Walking into that church was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

I felt like everyone was staring at me, judging me, hating me.

My hands were shaking.

I wanted to turn around and leave.

But then Miss Sarah saw me.

She was in the lobby greeting people like she always did.

Our eyes met across the room and she froze.

Then she started crying and ran to me and hugged me so tight.

She kept saying, “Thank you, Jesus.

” over and over.

“Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, Jesus.

” Other people noticed, people I’d grown up with, people I’d known my whole life.

They came over one by one, and they hugged me.

They told me they’d been praying for me.

They told me they were so glad I was back.

Nobody condemned me.

Nobody brought up the Bible burning.

Nobody made me feel ashamed.

They just loved me.

They welcomed me home.

Pastor Mike saw me and he started crying, too.

He’s a big guy, over 6t tall, and he stood there in the church lobby with tears running down his face.

He said he’d never stop believing God would bring me back.

He said he’d watched that video of me burning the Bible and he’d wept and prayed for hours afterward.

But he said he knew that wasn’t the end of my story.

That God wasn’t done with me.

The service that morning wrecked me.

We sang Amazing Grace and I couldn’t get through it without sobbing.

The words hit different now.

I once was lost but now I’m found.

was blind, but now I see.

I had been so lost, so blind, and Jesus found me anyway.

Pastor Mike’s sermon was about the prodigal son.

I don’t know if he planned it or if God just orchestrated it, but it was exactly what I needed to hear.

He talked about how the son demanded his inheritance, left his father, wasted everything on sinful living.

How the son ended up desperate and broken, feeding pigs, wanting to eat their food.

How the son decided to go home, planning to beg to be a servant because he didn’t deserve to be a son anymore.

But how the father saw him coming from far away.

How the father ran to him, hugged him, kissed him.

How the father didn’t let him finish his prepared speech about being unworthy.

How the father called for the best robe, the ring, the sandals.

How the father threw a party because his son who was dead was alive again.

Who was lost was found.

Pastor Mike said, “That’s who God is.

Not a harsh judge waiting to punish us.

Not a distant deity keeping score of our good and bad deeds, but a father who runs to his children when they come home, who restores them fully, completely, joyfully.

I sat in that pew and I felt the weight of four years of fear and shame and guilt just lift off my shoulders.

I was home.

I was forgiven.

I was loved.

After the service, people kept coming up to me.

Some I knew well, some I barely remembered.

They all said similar things.

They were glad I was back.

They’d been praying.

They never gave up hope.

One older woman, Mrs.

Henderson, took my hand.

She said she’d prayed for me every single day since she saw that video.

She said she knew the Bible I’d burned was just paper and ink.

that the real word of God was Jesus himself and Jesus was alive and could never be destroyed.

She said she knew Jesus would bring me back because his love is relentless and his promises are sure.

I started crying again.

I felt like I’d cried more in the past week than I had in years.

The next few weeks were a process of rebuilding.

I got a job at a local coffee shop.

I started reading the Bible daily.

Really reading it, not just skimming.

I joined a women’s Bible study group at church.

I started seeing a Christian counselor to work through the trauma of what I’d experienced because it was trauma.

That’s what my counselor helped me understand.

I’d been indoctrinated, manipulated, controlled.

I’d lived in fear for years.

I’d witnessed and experienced spiritual and emotional abuse.

She helped me see that I was a victim, even though I’d made the choice to convert.

She helped me understand that cults and high control religions use specific tactics to recruit and keep people.

love bombing, isolation, fear tactics, information control.

Islam had used all of those on me.

She also helped me work through the guilt.

The guilt of burning the Bible, the guilt of leading others away from Christ with my testimony, the guilt of hurting my family.

She kept pointing me back to Jesus, to his complete forgiveness, to the truth that I was a new creation, that old things had passed away, that all things had become new.

It was hard to believe sometimes, hard to accept that I really was forgiven, that God really did love me after everything I’d done.

But slowly, I started to believe it.

I also started researching Christian apologetics.

I wanted to understand why I’d been so easily swayed by Islam’s arguments.

I wanted to be able to defend my faith to answer the questions that had led me astray in the first place.

I learned that the Bible hasn’t been corrupted like Muslims claimed.

I learned about the manuscript evidence, the thousands of ancient copies that all match.

I learned that we can be confident we have what the original authors wrote.

I learned that the Trinity makes perfect sense when you understand it properly.

I learned that Jesus absolutely did claim to be God repeatedly clearly.

I learned that Islam’s claims about scientific miracles in the Quran fell apart under scrutiny.

I learned that the Quran actually contains scientific errors, not miracles.

I learned that Muhammad’s biography, when you read the early Islamic sources honestly, showed a man who was violent, who married a child, who owned slaves, who ordered assassinations, not a prophet of God.

I learned all of this not to attack Islam, but to understand where I’d gone wrong, to protect myself from being deceived again.

And I learned to see the beauty of the gospel more clearly than I ever had before.

The gospel that says we’re saved by grace through faith, not by works.

The gospel that says Jesus paid it all, that there’s nothing we can add to his finished work.

The gospel that says we can know for certain we’re saved, not because of what we do, but because of what Jesus did.

The gospel that says God loved us so much he became one of us, lived among us, died for us, rose for us.

That’s a God worth worshiping.

That’s a God worth trusting.

By the end of summer, I felt ready to do something I’d been thinking about for months.

I wanted to publicly share my testimony, not the old testimony about why I converted to Islam, a new testimony about why I left Islam and came back to Jesus.

I talked to Pastor Mike about it.

He thought it was a good idea, but wanted to make sure I was ready, that I understood there might be backlash.

I told him I was ready.

I told him I needed to do this not just for myself, but for other people who might be where I was.

Other ex-Muslims who felt alone.

Other Christians who’d been deceived by Islamic apologetics.

Other families who’d lost loved ones to Islam.

We planned an evening at the church where I’d share my full story.

We advertised it on social media in the local paper to other churches in the area.

The night came and I was so nervous I felt sick.

But I stood up in front of a packed sanctuary and I told them everything.

I told them about my doubts in high school, about meeting Muslim friends in college, about all the arguments that convinced me Islam was true, about converting and burning my Bible.

I told them about the reality of Islam.

I discovered the fear, the control, the oppression, the violence in the texts and the teachings, the impossibility of ever being sure of salvation.

I told them about Jesus pursuing me even when I ran.

About the love Christians showed me even when I burned their holy book, about the grace that brought me home.

I told them that if Jesus could save me, he could save anyone.

That his love is stronger than any deception, any sin, any mistake.

The response was overwhelming.

People were crying, worshiping, praising God.

After I finished, dozens of people came forward for prayer.

Some recommitting their lives to Christ.

Some thanking God for answered prayers for their own loved ones in Islam.

We recorded the testimony and posted it online.

Within days, it had thousands of views.

Within weeks, hundreds of thousands.

I started getting messages.

So many messages.

Ex-Muslims telling me my story gave them hope.

Christians thanking me for being bold.

Muslims angry at me, accusing me of lying, threatening me.

The threats scared me.

But they also confirmed everything I’d learned about Islam.

Christians responded to my Bible burning with love.

Muslims responded to my apostasy with threats.

That difference said everything.

I also got messages from people I’d influenced when I was Muslim.

People who’d converted to Islam partly because of my testimony.

people who’d watched me burn that Bible and thought Islam must be true if someone would do that.

Some of them were angry.

Some were curious.

Some were having doubts of their own.

I tried to respond to as many as I could.

I shared my story, pointed them to resources, encouraged them to research honestly.

A few of them eventually left Islam too.

They thanked me for being willing to admit I was wrong, for showing them the way out.

That made everything worth it.

Every bit of backlash, every threat, every sleepless night worrying about my safety.

If even one person found Jesus because of my story, it was worth it.

By fall, I felt like I was finally moving forward instead of just recovering.

I enrolled in a local community college to finish my degree.

I got more involved at church.

I started dating a guy from the young adults group, a kind Christian man who knew my whole story and loved me anyway.

I still had hard days.

Days where the guilt came back, where I remembered what I’d done and couldn’t believe God really forgave me.

days where I was afraid, where I looked over my shoulder, where I worried about threats from angry Muslims.

But those days got fewer and farther between.

And through it all, Jesus was there.

Patient, loving, faithful.

He never gave up on me.

Even when I gave up on him, he never let me go.

I was a lost sheep.

He left the 99 to find, and he found me.

The first anniversary of leaving Islam came in May, one year after I drove home to Ohio.

My parents wanted to celebrate to mark the occasion somehow.

But I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.

It felt strange to celebrate what was essentially admitting I’d made a terrible mistake.

But my mom said we weren’t celebrating the mistake.

We were celebrating God’s faithfulness.

We were celebrating redemption.

So we had a quiet dinner, just the three of us.

And we thanked God for his grace, for bringing me home, for restoring what the enemy had stolen.

And that summer, I was baptized again.

I’d been baptized as a child, baptized as a believer before I ever left for college.

That baptism was still valid.

My salvation had never depended on it, but I wanted to do it again anyway.

I wanted a public declaration that I was back, that I was allin for Jesus, that I was done running.

The baptism was at the lake where our church did outdoor services sometimes.

It was a beautiful June day, sunny and warm, the water cool and clear.

Pastor Mike baptized me.

Before he lowered me into the water, he said something I’ll never forget.

He said that the first time he baptized me, I was a child who loved Jesus in a simple, innocent way.

This time, I was a woman who’d seen the darkness and chosen the light anyway.

This time, I knew exactly what I was committing to.

He said both baptisms were valid and both were meaningful.

But this one was different because I’d tasted the alternative.

I tried to find truth and peace and purpose in another religion.

And I’d found that there was no other name under heaven by which we could be saved except Jesus.

When I came up out of that water, I felt clean, brand new, forgiven completely.

The whole church was there on the shore, and they erupted in worship, singing, shouting, praising God.

I stood there dripping wet and crying happy tears.

And I thought about how far I’d come.

From burning a Bible to being baptized in Jesus’s name.

From running away from God to running into his arms, from lost to found.

Only Jesus could do that.

Only Jesus could take a mess like me and make something beautiful.

That fall, I started speaking more regularly.

Churches invited me to share my testimony.

Youth groups wanted to hear my story.

Christian conferences asked me to come and warn people about the dangers of Islam and the deceptiveness of its apologetics.

I said yes to as many as I could.

Not because I wanted attention or fame.

I’d had enough of that when I was a Muslim convert, but because I felt called to it.

Called to use my story to help others.

I spoke at a church in Michigan where a young woman came up to me afterward crying.

She said her brother had converted to Islam 2 years ago and they’d been praying for him ever since.

She said my story gave her hope that he could come back too.

I prayed with her.

I told her to never stop praying, to never stop loving him, to never stop pointing him to Jesus.

I told her that’s what my family did for me and it worked.

As I spoke at a conference in Pennsylvania where an ex-Muslim man found me during a break, he was older in his 50s, had left Islam 20 years ago.

He said he’d been alone in his journey, that he’d never met another ex-Muslim before.

He said hearing my story made him feel less alone.

He said he’d carried shame for decades about his time in Islam, and hearing me talk about God’s complete forgiveness helped him finally accept it himself.

We cried together and praised God together and exchanged contact information.

He became a friend, a mentor, someone who understood what I’d been through in ways most people couldn’t.

I started connecting with more and more ex-Muslims online.

There’s a whole community of us scattered around the world, supporting each other, sharing resources, helping people who want to leave Islam but don’t know how.

We shared our stories privately because many of them still face danger.

Some lived in Muslim majority countries.

Some had families who would kill them if they knew.

Some were in hiding, using fake names, living in constant fear.

It broke my heart.

But it also strengthened my resolve to keep speaking out because for every ex-Muslim who could speak publicly, there were dozens who couldn’t.

Someone had to be a voice for them.

I also kept getting messages from Muslims who were having doubts.

Young people, mostly college students like I’d been raised in Islam but starting to question.

They’d watched my testimony video.

They’d seen me talk about the contradictions in the Quran, the violence in the hadiths, the impossible standards of Islamic law.

They’d seen me talk about the peace and assurance and freedom I found in Jesus, and they wanted to know more.

I spent hours messaging back and forth with these seekers, answering questions, sharing resources, praying with them, walking them through the gospel.

Some of them eventually left Islam and came to Jesus.

Some disappeared, scared off by family or community pressure.

Some blocked me, angry at what I was saying.

But I kept doing it because Jesus had pursued me when I was lost.

And now I got to help pursue others.

By the second year after leaving Islam, I was in a completely different place.

I’d finished my associate degree and transferred to a Christian university to study theology.

I wanted to understand the Bible deeply.

Wanted to be equipped to defend the faith.

Wanted to help other people who’d been deceived like I had.

The guy I’d been dating, Michael, proposed on Christmas Eve.

We’d been together for over a year.

He was patient and kind and loved Jesus more than anything.

He knew my whole story, every dark part, and he loved me anyway.

We got married that spring in the same church where I’d been baptized twice.

Miss Sarah helped plan the wedding.

My parents walked me down the aisle together.

Pastor Mike officiated.

It was perfect, simple, and beautiful and focused on Jesus.

During the ceremony, Michael and I washed each other’s feet.

It was symbolic of what Jesus did for his disciples.

But for us, it also symbolized servantthood, humility, putting each other first.

I cried watching Michael kneel in front of me and wash my feet.

This good man who loved me sacrificially, who led me spiritually, who pointed me to Jesus constantly.

I didn’t deserve him.

But grace isn’t about deserving.

We honeymooned at a cabin in the mountains.

No internet, no phones, just us and nature and God.

We read the Bible together every morning.

We prayed together.

We talked for hours about our dreams and hopes and how we wanted to build our life together.

Michael wanted to be a pastor someday.

I wanted to continue ministry to Muslims and ex-Muslims.

We talked about how we could do that together, how we could serve God as a team.

One night, sitting on the cabin porch watching the stars, I told Michael about the guilt that still crept up sometimes, the memory of burning that Bible, the knowledge that my testimony as a Muslim had led people away from Christ.

He took my hand and reminded me of what the Bible says.

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away.

Behold, the new has come.

He said I needed to stop looking back at who I was and start looking forward to who God was making me.

He said, “Satan wanted me stuck in guilt and shame.

But Jesus wanted me free.

He was right.

I knew he was right.

But it was hard to let go.

” That’s when Michael suggested something that changed everything.

He said, “Maybe instead of being haunted by burning a Bible, I should do something redemptive with Bibles.

something that would honor God’s word instead of destroying it.

We started a ministry when we got back from our honeymoon.

We collected Bibles new and used in English and other languages.

We partnered with organizations that distributed Bibles to countries where they were banned or scarce.

We shipped boxes and boxes of Bibles to underground churches in Muslim majority countries.

to persecuted Christians in North Korea and China, to refugee camps, to prisons.

Every Bible we sent out felt like an act of repentance and worship.

Every Bible was me saying, “I’m sorry for the one I burned, and thank you, Jesus, for forgiving me.

” We called the ministry Restore the Word.

The name was intentional.

God was restoring his word in my life after I tried to destroy it.

And now we were helping restore it in places where it had been taken away.

The ministry grew.

Other churches heard about it and wanted to partner with us.

We started doing fundraisers, collection drives, awareness campaigns.

3 years after leaving Islam, we sent out over 10,000 Bibles.

10,000.

I’d burned one Bible and now I was responsible for 10,000 more being in the hands of people who needed them.

Only God could do that.

Only God could take my worst sin and redeem it so completely.

I also started writing during this time.

I wrote out my full testimony, every detail, holding nothing back.

I wrote about the mistakes I made, the lies I believed, the damage I caused.

But I also wrote about God’s relentless love, about how he pursued me in my rebellion, about how he welcomed me back with open arms, about how he gave me beauty for ashes and joy for mourning.

I published it on a blog first, then a Christian publisher reached out and asked if I’d consider turning it into a book.

a book.

My story in a book.

The irony wasn’t lost on me.

I’d burned a book and now I was writing one.

The book came out 2 years later.

I was nervous about it, about putting my story out there so permanently about the criticism and backlash I knew would come.

But I also felt peace about it.

This was what God had called me to.

To share my story, to warn others, to point people to Jesus.

The book did get backlash.

Muslim apologists wrote articles about me calling me a liar, saying I was never a real Muslim, saying I was being paid by Christians to make Islam look bad.

None of it was true, of course, but truth didn’t matter to them.

They needed to discredit me to protect their religion.

I also got threats, serious ones.

People saying they knew where I lived.

People quoting hadiths about killing apostates.

People telling me I deserved to die.

We had to get a security system for our house.

We had to be careful about what we posted on social media.

We had to report the most serious threats to the police.

It was scary, but it was also clarifying because it proved everything I’d been saying about Islam.

It proved that leaving Islam came with real danger.

It proved that Islam spread and maintained itself through fear and force.

Christians didn’t respond to criticism by threatening death.

Muslims did.

That difference mattered.

But the book also brought beautiful fruit.

I got messages from people all over the world saying my story had impacted them.

A woman in Egypt who was secretly reading the Bible and questioning Islam.

A man in Indonesia who’d left Islam and felt alone until he read my story.

a teenage girl in London whose Muslim family was pressuring her to wear hijab and she was scared to resist.

A college student in Texas who was being recruited by Muslim friends and my book helped her see the red flags.

A mother in Ohio whose daughter had converted to Islam and she didn’t know what to do.

Each message was a reminder that this was bigger than me.

God was using my mess, my mistakes.

In my story to help other people.

5 years after leaving Islam, Michael and I had our first child, a daughter.

We named her Grace because grace was the theme of my whole story.

Grace that saved me.

Grace that forgave me.

Grace that restored me.

Grace that never gave up on me.

holding her in the hospital, looking at her tiny, perfect face, I cried, thinking about God’s grace.

How he’d taken a lost, broken, deceived girl and not only saved her, but gave her this beautiful life, a godly husband, a ministry that mattered.

A story that pointed people to Jesus, and now a daughter to raise in the truth I’d almost thrown away forever.

I prayed over her that she would never doubt God’s love the way I did, that she would never be deceived by false religions, that she would know Jesus deeply and personally from the beginning.

But I also prayed that if she ever wandered, if she ever got lost, God would pursue her the same way he pursued me because that’s who God is.

the shepherd who leaves the 99 to find the one.

Being a mother changed my perspective on God’s love.

Because if I could love my daughter this much, this fiercely, this completely, how much more did God love me? If I would never give up on my daughter, no matter what she did, how much more would God never give up on me? The Bible says that as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.

I understood that now in a way I never had before.

I was God’s child, his daughter, and nothing I could do would ever change that.

Not converting to Islam, not burning his word, not publicly denying him, he never stopped being my father.

or he never stopped loving me.

He never stopped pursuing me.

I think about where I am now versus where I was six years ago.

6 years ago, I was standing in front of hundreds of people burning my Bible.

Convinced I was doing the right thing, convinced I’d found the truth.

Today, I read that Bible every morning.

Today, I teach that Bible to others.

Today, I’ve dedicated my life to pointing people to the Jesus I found in those pages.

Six years ago, I was lost, deceived, trapped in a religion of fear and works and uncertainty.

Today, I’m found, free, resting in the grace and love and finished work of Jesus.

Six years ago, I had nothing.

No family, no real friends, no peace, no hope, no assurance of salvation.

Today I have everything that matters.

A restored family, a godly husband, a beautiful daughter, a church community that loves me, a ministry that impacts lives, and most importantly, a relationship with Jesus that no one can take away.

I still have moments where I can’t believe this is my life.

Where I’m overwhelmed by how far God has brought me.

Where I’m amazed that he forgave me, restored me, used me.

I don’t deserve any of it.

That’s the truth.

I don’t deserve the grace I’ve been shown.

But that’s the whole point of grace.

It’s not about deserving.

It’s about a God who loves us anyway.

A God who leaves heaven to come to earth.

Who walks among us, who touches lepers and eats with sinners and welcomes prostitutes and tax collectors.

A God who lets himself be betrayed, arrested, beaten, mocked, crucified.

A God who dies for people who hate him.

A God who rises from the dead to prove that death has no power anymore.

A God who says, “Come to me.

” and all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.

That’s the God I ran from.

That’s the God who ran after me.

And that’s the God I’ll spend the rest of my life serving, sharing, pointing others to.

Because if he can save me, he can save anyone.

If he can forgive me for burning his word, he can forgive anything.

If he can take a mess like me and make something beautiful, he can do that for anyone who comes to him.

My story isn’t really about me.

It’s about Jesus.

It’s about his faithfulness when we’re faithless.

His love when we’re unlovable.

His pursuit when we’re running away.

It’s about the shepherd who won’t rest until every lost sheep is found.

I was lost.

I was so lost.

But Jesus found me.

He found me in my doubt.

He found me in my deception.

He found me in my sin.

He found me in my shame.

He found me and he brought me home.

And he’ll do the same for anyone who calls on his name because that’s who he is.

That’s what he does.

He’s the God who saves, the God who redeems, the God who restores.

He’s Jesus and he’s enough.

I stand in churches now and I share this story.

I look out at the faces, some crying, some worshiping, some struggling with their own doubts and fears.

And I tell them what I know for certain now.

Jesus is real.

Jesus is Lord.

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

No other religion offers what he offers.

No other god loves like he loves.

No other savior saves like he saves.

I searched for truth in Islam and found bondage.

I found freedom only when I came back to Jesus.

My name is Sarah.

I’m 27 years old.

I once burned a Bible in front of hundreds of people.

Today I read that Bible every day.

Today I know the author of that book personally.

Today I’m free.

And if you’re reading this, if you’re lost or searching or trapped in a religion that offers only fear and rules and uncertainty, I want you to know something.

Jesus is pursuing you right now.

Right this moment.

He’s calling you home.

It doesn’t matter what you’ve done.

It doesn’t matter how far you’ve run.

It doesn’t matter what you’ve said or believed or destroyed.

Jesus loves you.

Jesus died for you.

Jesus rose for you.

And Jesus will never ever give up on you.

Come home.

He’s waiting.

The shepherd is looking for his sheep.

And he will not stop until you’re found.

 

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