I told her I hadn’t left because I wanted to, but because I had to follow what God was calling me to do.

I told her I prayed for her every single day.

I told her I hoped someday she would understand.

I sent it and waited, heart pounding, for a response, but none came.

Either she never received it or someone prevented her from replying.

I never heard from her again.

The grief of that silence was almost unbearable.

But I clung to the knowledge that Jesus loved my children even more than I did.

He could reach them in ways I couldn’t.

He could protect them, guide them, draw them to himself in his perfect timing.

I had to trust him with the people I loved most in the world.

After 2 years in Jordan, an opportunity arose to relocate to Lebanon, where there was a larger community of believers and more possibilities for ministry.

I moved to Beirut and began working with a ministry that served Arab refugees and conducted outreach to Muslims.

I also began sharing my testimony through anonymous blogs and Christian websites that reached Arabicspeaking audiences.

I never used my real name or identifiable details for safety reasons and also because I didn’t want it to be about me.

I wanted it to be about Jesus.

I wrote under a pseudonym sharing my journey from skepticism to faith.

The response was overwhelming.

Thousands of Arabicspeaking Muslims read my testimony online.

Some wrote angry messages accusing me of betrayal and deception.

But many others wrote to say my story had touched them, had made them curious about Jesus, had helped them understand Christianity in a new way.

One message particularly moved me.

It was from a young man in Egypt who said he had been assigned to write a paper refuting Christianity.

He had started his research with confidence.

Certain he would prove Christianity false.

But the more he studied, the more doubts he had.

Then he found my channel and heard my story.

He said it was like hearing his own journey reflected back to him.

He said he had recently surrendered his life to Jesus and wanted to thank me for helping him feel less alone.

I wept reading his message because I saw in his story an echo of my own and I understood then with stunning clarity how God works.

The project that was supposed to destroy Christianity, my book disproving the faith, had instead become the very thing that led me to Christ.

And now through my testimony about that journey, others were finding him too.

God had taken what was meant for destruction and used it for redemption.

He had taken my losses and transformed them into something beautiful.

He was beauty from ashes, joy from mourning, praise from despair.

I thought about the publishing house that had commissioned my original book, the book I never finished.

Sometimes I wondered what they thought happened to me, why I disappeared, why their scholar vanished without delivering his manuscript.

I imagined their confusion, their anger perhaps at the wasted investment.

But God hadn’t wasted anything.

Every hour I spent studying the Bible to refute it had actually been preparation for understanding it truly.

Every argument I learned against Christianity had become a bridge for reaching other Muslims who had the same questions.

Every piece of my former life that was stripped away had made room for something infinitely more valuable.

It had been 3 years now since that night in my study.

3 years since I heard Jesus call my name.

Looking back, I could see his hand in everything.

In the doubts he planted, in the passages that haunted me, in the dreams that prepared me, in the encounter that changed me forever.

I would be lying if I said the pain was gone.

It wasn’t.

I still achd for my children.

I still mourned my old life sometimes.

I still struggled with loneliness, with uncertainty about the future, with the lingering effects of trauma and loss.

But I had Jesus.

And I had discovered something I never knew as a Muslim.

That knowing God personally, intimately as a loving father through his son Jesus Christ was worth any cost.

The relationship I had with him now was so much deeper, so much more real than anything I had experienced before.

As a Muslim, I had submitted to Allah from a distance, never quite sure if he heard my prayers, never certain of my standing before him.

Always striving to be good enough, but never knowing if I was.

But as a Christian, as a follower of Jesus, I knew I was loved.

Not because I was good enough, but because he was.

Not because I deserved it, but because he chose me.

I was his child.

Called by name, held in his love, secure in his grace.

This changed everything about how I lived.

I no longer woke up anxious about whether I had prayed enough or followed enough rules.

I woke up grateful, amazed that the God of the universe knew my name and called me his own.

I no longer served out of fear of punishment, but out of love for the one who had pursued me, found me, and changed me.

I thought often about my grandfather, the Imam who had first taught me to love God and seek truth.

I wished I could tell him what I had discovered.

I wished I could share with him that the hunger he had planted in me, the hunger to know God truly had led me to Jesus.

I believed that if my grandfather had encountered Christ the way I had, if he had heard that voice calling his name, he too would have followed.

Perhaps someday in eternity, I would be able to tell him.

Perhaps I would see him again in the presence of Jesus and we would worship together the one we had both been seeking all along.

One evening I was asked to share my testimony at a gathering of believers, both Arab Christians and Western missionaries who worked in the region.

After I finished speaking, a woman approached me with tears in her eyes.

She told me she had been a missionary in Syria years ago before the war.

She said she had prayed for Muslim scholars and leaders to encounter Jesus.

She said she had sometime felt discouraged wondering if her prayers made any difference.

Now she said seeing me stand before her as a living answer to those prayers.

She knew that nothing in God’s kingdom was wasted.

Every prayer mattered.

Every seed planted bore fruit in God’s timing.

Her words reminded me that I was part of a larger story.

My conversion wasn’t just about me.

It was about all the people who had prayed for Muslims to know Jesus.

It was about the centuries of faithful witnesses who had preserved the gospel and passed it down so that it could reach even a skeptical scholar in Damascus.

It was about the God who never stops pursuing those he loves, who speaks into the darkness and calls us by name.

I still keep the Bible from that night, the one that opened by itself to Isaiah 43.

It’s worn now.

Pages marked and underlined, margins filled with notes.

Sometimes I hold it and remember that night.

Remember the terror and the joy.

Remember the voice that shattered my certainty and gave me truth.

I have started writing letters to my children, letters I may never be able to send.

I write to them about who I am now, about why I made the choices I did, about how much I love them and pray for them.

I write about Jesus, about what he means to me, about the hope I have that someday they might understand.

I don’t know if they’ll ever read those letters.

I don’t know if I’ll ever see them again in this life.

The not knowing is still painful.

But I’ve learned to hold that pain alongside the joy, to carry grief and gratitude at the same time.

Because that’s what following Jesus often means.

Holding sorrow and hope together.

Trusting him through losses that don’t make sense.

Believing that he is good even when circumstances are hard.

If I could speak to my former self, the confident scholar who sat down to write a book disproving Christianity, I would tell him this.

You think you’re in control.

You think you’re researching God, but God is researching you.

He’s pursuing you.

He’s calling your name even now, though you can’t hear it yet.

And when you finally hear it, when you finally encounter the living Jesus Christ, everything you think you know will be undone.

You will lose everything, but you will gain infinitely more.

You will lose your certainty, but you will find truth himself.

You will lose your family, but you will be adopted into God’s family.

You will lose your old life, but you will find real life, eternal life.

Life that begins now and never ends.

And it will be worth it.

every loss, every tear, every moment of anguish, it will all be worth it because you will have Jesus.

And once you have him, once he calls your name and you recognize his voice, nothing else will ever be enough.

I close with this.

I’m sitting now in my small apartment in Beirut, thousands of miles from the home I once knew.

I have very little in terms of earthly possessions.

I have no family nearby.

I have no prestigious position or respected career.

By the world’s standards, I’ve lost everything.

But I have Jesus.

I know him.

I hear his voice.

I walk with him daily.

And that is worth more than everything I lost combined.

If you’re watching this, if you’re hearing my story, I want you to know I’m not asking you to become a Christian because it will make your life easier.

It won’t.

Jesus never promised easy.

He promised his presence.

He promised his love.

He promised that he would never leave us or forsake us.

I’m sharing this because it’s true.

Not because it’s convenient or comfortable or socially acceptable, but because it’s true.

Jesus Christ is who he claimed to be.

The son of God, the savior of the world, the way, the truth, and the life.

I know this because I met him.

I heard his voice.

I experienced his love.

And once you’ve encountered the risen Christ, you can never be the same.

The cost is real.

I won’t lie to you about that.

Following Jesus may cost you everything.

It cost me my family, my country, my old identity, everything I thought defined me.

But I would pay that price again in a heartbeat because what I gained was infinitely greater than what I lost.

I gained Jesus and Jesus is worth everything.

So if you’re seeking truth, if you’re questioning, if you’re hungry to know God truly, don’t stop seeking.

Keep searching, keep asking.

Keep knocking because Jesus promised that those who seek will find and those who knock, the door will be opened.

He’s calling your name right now, even if you can’t hear it yet.

He’s pursuing you with a love that will never give up.

And when you finally hear his voice, when you finally recognize who’s been calling you all along, your life will never be the same.

But it will be better.

So much better.

Not easier, but better.

Not comfortable, but real.

Not safe, but worth everything.

My name is Rashid Hassan al-Mansuri.

I was a Muslim scholar who set out to disprove Christianity.

Instead, Jesus found me.

He called me by name.

He shattered my certainty and gave me truth.

He took everything I had and gave me himself.

And that was the best trait I ever made.

That is my testimony.

That is my story.

And every word of it is true.

 

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