Perhaps from a bookstore that sold such things quietly to religious scholars.

He handed it to me wrapped in newspaper, warning me to be careful with it, to not let anyone see it, to return it when I was finished with my research.

I took it home and hid it under my mattress.

For 3 days, I could not bring myself to open it.

It sat there like a bomb waiting to explode, like a forbidden thing that would destroy me if I touched it.

I was afraid.

afraid of what I would find, afraid of what it would mean, afraid of the line I was about to cross.

But on the fourth night, after everyone was asleep, I took the Bible and a small lamp to our bathroom, the only place I could read without being seen.

I locked the door.

I sat on the cold tile floor, and with shaking hands, I opened to the beginning of the New Testament.

I started reading the Gospel of Matthew.

By the time dawn prayer arrived, I had read through most of it.

I had wept.

I had argued with the text.

I had felt my heart burn within me.

I had encountered a Jesus that Islam had never shown me.

Not just a prophet who performed miracles and preached monotheism, but the son of God, the savior, the one who loved humanity so much that he willingly died for our sins, the one who rose from the dead to conquer death itself.

The sermon on the mount especially destroyed me.

these words about loving your enemies, about blessing those who curse you, about turning the other cheek, about the kingdom of heaven, belonging to the poor in spirit.

This was a teaching unlike anything I had ever encountered.

This was not about rules and rituals and external righteousness.

This was about the transformation of the heart, about a righteousness that came from within, about a relationship with God.

based on grace rather than law.

I thought of Yousef, my Christian neighbor, forgiving his son’s murderers.

Now I understood where that supernatural grace came from.

It came from following a savior who forgave his own murderers from the cross who said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”.

This was the source of that peace I had seen in Christian eyes.

That ability to love in the face of hatred, that strength to forgive the unforgivable.

As I heard the call to prayer echoing across Baghdad, in the pre-dawn darkness, I realized I was at a crossroads.

I could close this book, returned it to Hassan, forget what I had read, continue my life as I had always lived it, or I could step forward into the unknown, following this Jesus who had invaded my dreams and was now invading my mind and heart through his words.

I was not ready to decide yet.

I wasn’t ready to give up everything, but I knew even then that it was already too late.

Something had been awakened in me that would not go back to sleep.

A hunger had been created that nothing else would satisfy.

A door had been opened that could not be closed.

Jesus had found me.

And even though I did not yet have the courage to fully surrender, even though the road ahead looked dark and dangerous and full of loss, the process of transformation had begun.

In the coming weeks and months, I would learn just how costly this transformation would be.

I would learn that the narrow road is spoke of was even narrower than I imagined.

I would learn that losing your life to find it was not just a metaphor, but a literal reality.

But I would also learn that Jesus was worth it.

Every tear, every loss, every moment of suffering, he was worth it all.

The Bible stayed hidden under my mattress for weeks.

A secret burning in my heart, a truth I carried alone.

Every night after my wife and children were asleep, I would take it and that small lamp to the bathroom and read sometimes for an hour, sometimes until just before dawn prayer.

I read through all four gospels, comparing them, seeing how they presented Jesus from different angles, but with the same core message.

I read the book of Acts, watching how the first followers of Jesus spread this message even under persecution and threat of death.

I read the letters of Paul, this man who had been a religious zealot like myself, who had opposed Christians violently, who had been transformed by an encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus.

Every word felt like it was written directly to me, but I was living in agony.

During the day, I continued my work as a cleric.

I stood before my community and taught Islam.

I led prayers five times a day, my forehead touching the prayer mat, my lips reciting words I was beginning to question.

I counseledled people in their problems, always pointing them back to the Quran and hadith.

I was maintaining my external life while internally everything was changing, crumbling, being rebuilt from the foundation up.

The hypocrisy was eating me alive.

Every time I proclaimed the shahada, there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.

I felt like I was denying the truth.

I had discovered every time I told that Jesus was only a prophet.

I felt like I was betraying the one who was revealing himself to me.

I was becoming two people split down the middle unable to fully be either one.

the external me that everyone saw and the internal me that was secretly falling in love with Jesus.

My wife noticed something was wrong.

I was distracted, distant, troubled.

I would forget things she told me.

I would stare off into space during meals.

I would wake in the night and she would find me gone from our bed.

She would ask if I was sick, if something had happened at the mosque, if someone had offended me or threatened me.

I would tell her I was simply tired, stressed by the deteriorating security situation in Baghdad, worried about the future.

The lie was becoming easier, which made me feel even worse.

The dreams continued.

Sometimes they were the same.

Jesus in white radiating love and peace, inviting me closer with his scarred hands.

But other times they were different, showing me things I did not understand at first, but that began to make sense as I read the Bible.

In one dream, I saw a great harvest field, golden wheat, swaying in the wind as far as I could see.

Jesus was walking through it with a basket gathering wheat.

He looked at me and gestured to the field as if showing me there was work to be done.

Workers needed.

I woke up thinking of his words in the gospels.

The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.

In another dream, I was in darkness, lost and afraid, stumbling through what felt like a cave or tunnel with no light.

Suddenly, a light appeared ahead of me.

Jesus was holding a lamp and he said that he was the light of the world that whoever follows him will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.

These were his exact words from the Gospel of John.

In yet another dream I saw myself drowning in deep water, unable to swim, going under.

Then a hand reached down and pulled me up.

It was Jesus.

and he said what he had said to Peter when Peter tried to walk on water and began to sink.

He said one word, believe.

Every dream left me more convinced, more troubled, more torn between two worlds.

I began to pray in secret, not the ritual prayers of Islam with their prescribed words and movements, but simple prayers to Jesus.

I felt foolish at first.

I felt like I was betraying everything I had ever known, everything my father had taught me, everything I had built my life upon.

But when I prayed to Jesus, something happened that had never happened in all my years of Islamic prayer.

I felt heard.

I felt like someone was actually listening, actually caring, actually responding in my spirit.

There was a presence, a comfort, a peace that would settle over me when I said the name of Jesus.

In Islam, we had 99 names for Allah, the merciful, the compassionate, the all powerful.

But he always felt distant, unreachable, a master who must be obeyed but could never truly be known.

But Jesus felt near, present, personal.

This terrified me almost as much as it drew me in.

About 2 months after I had first gotten the Bible, I was reading late one night in my usual spot in the bathroom, sitting on the cold tile floor with my back against the wall.

I had reached the Gospel of John chapter 14.

I came to verse 6 where Jesus said to Thomas, “I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the father except through me.

These were the exact words from my dream months before.

The words that had started everything, the words that had shattered my Islamic worldview and opened the door to this journey.

I sat there on that cold bathroom floor, the Bible in my trembling hands, tears running down my face.

And I knew I could not continue living this double life.

I knew I had to make a choice.

I could not serve two masters.

I could not worship Allah while believing in Jesus.

I could not continue pretending to be a faithful Muslim while my heart was being drawn irresistibly to Christ.

But I was paralyzed by fear.

Fear of losing my family, my wife, my three beautiful children who trusted me and looked up to me.

Fear of losing my position, my income, my respect in the community.

Fear of violence because I knew what happened to Muslims who converted to Christianity.

I had heard the stories, beatings, torture, honor killings, families completely cutting off converts as if they had died.

Fear of being wrong, of being deceived by Satan, of throwing away my entire life for a mistake.

I closed the Bible and prayed with desperate honesty.

I said to God, whoever God really was, that I needed to know the truth.

I needed to be certain.

I could not base my entire life.

Could not risk everything I held dear on dreams and feelings alone.

I needed something more, something concrete, something that could not be explained away.

I said that if Jesus was truly the son of God, truly the savior, truly the way as he claimed, then I needed him to show me beyond any doubt.

I needed a confirmation that could not be attributed to my imagination or stress or anything else.

I need a sign.

Then I waited, hardly daring to breathe, wondering if I was being presumptuous to ask God for a sign, wondering if anything would happen at all.

The answer came 3 days later in a way I never expected.

It was a Saturday afternoon.

I was in the market buying vegetables for my family.

The market was crowded and noisy.

Vendors shouting prices, people arguing over goods, children running between the stalls, the normal chaos of Baghdad street commerce.

The air smelled of fresh bread and spices and vehicle exhaust.

I was standing at a stall, examining tomatoes, testing their firmness, negotiating with the vendor over price.

Then I heard someone call out a Christian greeting behind me.

This was unusual.

Christians in Baghdad had become very quiet, very careful about identifying themselves publicly.

To announce yourself as a Christian in a crowded market was to invite trouble, harassment, or worse.

I turned and saw a man about my age, perhaps slightly older, maybe in his mid-30s.

He was standing a few feet away, looking directly at me, with an expression I could not read, neither hostile nor friendly, but intense, purposeful.

He wore simple clothes, nothing that marked him as Christian, but there was something about his bearing that suggested strength, confidence.

Without thinking about the risk, without caring who might overhehere in that crowded market, he spoke to me in a low voice.

He said he had seen me before, knew I was a cleric from the local mosque.

He said he had been praying and God had told him to speak to me, to approach me specifically.

My heart began pounding.

How could this be?

Who was this man?

What did he want?

He told me his name was Daud, which is the Arabic form of David.

He said he was a Christian, that he was part of a small house church in Baghdad that met in secret.

Then he said something that made my blood run cold and hot at the same time.

He said, and I remember his exact words because they struck me like lightning from heaven that the spirit had shown him.

There was a Muslim religious leader who was seeking Jesus, who was having dreams, who was reading the Bible in secret, who was afraid and needed help.

I could not speak.

I could not breathe.

I stood there in that crowded market with the noise swirling around me, and I felt like time had stopped.

No one knew these things.

I had told no one.

I had been completely careful, completely secret.

There was no natural way.

This man could know any of this.

No human way.

He must have seen the shock on my face because he smiled gently and told me not to be afraid.

He said, “If I wanted to talk, to learn more, to meet others who had walked the path I was on, I should come to a certain address on Thursday night after dark”.

He gave me the address, made me repeat it back to him to be sure I had it right.

Then he turned and walked away into the crowd, disappearing among the people before I could respond, before I could ask any of the hundred questions flooding my mind.

I stood there among the vegetables and the shouting vendors, my whole body shaking, knowing I had just received my answer.

God had heard my desperate prayer.

Jesus had sent someone to find me, to help me at the exact moment I needed it most.

This was not coincidence.

This was not my imagination.

This was a miracle.

But going to that address would be the most dangerous thing I had ever done.

For 4 days, I debated with myself.

I would decide to go, then change my mind.

Within an hour, I would decide to forget the whole thing, to continue my life as it was, then find myself unable to think of anything else.

I barely slept.

I barely ate.

I was constantly distracted, jumpy, nervous.

My wife asked me several times if I was ill, if I needed to see a doctor.

I told her I was fine, just dealing with some difficult situations at the mosque.

Thursday came.

The day dragged on like a year.

I led prayers mechanically, taught classes without really being present, counted the hours until darkness.

I told my wife I had an evening meeting with other religious leaders to discuss community issues.

Another lie.

I was becoming someone I did not recognize, and I hated it.

But I felt I had no choice.

The truth would destroy everything, and I was not ready for that yet.

The address Daud had given me was in a neighborhood about 30 minutes away by foot.

As darkness fell and evening prayer time passed, I left my house and walked through the streets of Baghdad.

It was 2009.

And though the worst of the violence had passed, the city was still dangerous, especially at night.

checkpoints manned by nervous soldiers, militia patrols watching for targets, the constant possibility of kidnapping or random violence.

I passed burned out buildings, walls pokemarked with bullet holes, trash piled in the streets, but I was more afraid of what I was about to do than of any physical danger.

I found the address.

It was an ordinary house indistinguishable from the others on the street.

A singlestory structure with a small courtyard, a metal gate, yellowed walls.

I stood outside for several minutes, my heart hammering in my chest, giving myself one last chance to turn back.

I thought of my family.

I thought of my position.

I thought of everything I risked.

Then I thought of Jesus in my dreams looking at me with love, calling me to follow.

I thought of Yousef forgiving his son’s murderers.

I thought of the words I had read in the Bible about losing your life to find it.

I knocked on the gate.

The wood opened it almost immediately as if he had been waiting by it.

He smiled when he saw me, as if he had known I would come, as if there had never been any doubt.

He welcomed me inside quickly and quietly, looking up and down the street before closing the gate behind us.

The house was dark from the outside, but inside one room was lit by oil lamps and candles.

The electricity was out, as it often was in Baghdad.

There were about 15 people sitting on the floor in a circle, men and women together, which was unusual in our culture, young and old, all looking at me as I entered.

Their faces showed no suspicion, no judgment, only warmth and welcome.

They would introduced me simply as a friend who was seeking to know more about Jesus.

No one asked my name, no one asked my background or what I did for a living.

They simply welcomed me with smiles and nods, making space in the circle for me to sit.

Someone brought me tea.

A woman smiled at me with kind eyes and told me she was glad I had come.

What happened that night changed my life forever.

They began by singing songs of worship to Jesus.

quiet songs, beautiful songs in Arabic, songs about his love and sacrifice and resurrection.

I had never heard anything like it.

There was joy in their voices despite their circumstances, despite living in constant danger as Christians in an Islamic country, despite the persecution and loss many of them had experienced.

They sang about Jesus as if he was their dearest friend, their beloved savior, the reason for living.

Then they prayed.

Not ritual prayers repeated from memory with prescribed words and movements, but personal prayers spoken from the heart.

People talking to Jesus like he was right there in the room with them.

They thanked him for his blessings, for protection, for strength.

They asked him for courage and wisdom.

They prayed for family members who did not yet know him.

They prayed for Muslims to find the truth.

They prayed for me by name.

Though they did not know my name, they simply called me our new brother and asked Jesus to guide me and protect me and reveal himself to me fully.

I sat there with tears running down my face, overwhelmed by the intimacy and authenticity of their prayers.

This was nothing like the formal distant prayers of Islam.

This was relationship.

This was family.

This was real.

After prayer, they opened Bibles.

Most of them had small worn Bibles that looked well read.

And began discussing a passage from the book of Romans.

They read about how all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and how we are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ.

They talked about what this meant, how it applied to their lives, how it was different from earning righteousness through works and deeds.

I sat there silent, listening, absorbing, feeling like I was hearing the truth explained with clarity for the first time in my life.

Everything in Islam had been about doing enough good deeds to hopefully outweigh your bad deeds, about following enough rules to hopefully please Allah, about living in constant uncertainty about whether you would be accepted or rejected on judgment day.

But these people were talking about assurance, about knowing they were saved, about being confident in God’s love, not because of what they had done, but because of what Jesus had done for them.

The discussion went on for perhaps an hour.

Different people shared insights, asked questions, encouraged one another.

There was no hierarchy, no one person dominating the conversation.

It was a fellowship of equals, brothers and sisters in Christ, learning together.

When the discussion ended, Dwood asked if I had any questions.

I had a thousand questions, but I started with the one that troubled me most.

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