When We Discovered One Illegal Bible In A Syrian Refuge Camp; Part 2 - The Voice

It's the Voice that leads. His Voice.

Recently we posted the story of the Bible we found in the Arab refugee family's tent. One English bible, left to a family who couldn't read it and didn't know what it was, became the key to the healing of a man's hand and the subsequent open doors to sharing the gospel and permission for leaving Arabic bibles behind. Almost as awesome as the end result of the story (at least the end result we saw) was how the bible made it there in the first place.

Before we left the camp, I opened the front cover of the bible to search for an inscription. Sure enough there was a name and address. And as soon as we returned to the States I began the search for this person whose name found it's way into a Syrian refugee camp. After multiple address searches I found myself in reverse phone directories online. Unfortunately, none of them delivered a working number. However, Facebook brought me to some people with the same last names who seemed to be located close to the address on the listing. About an hour after sending a few messages through Facebook I got a reply.

"Jane is my wife," the message read. "She will contact you after she leaves work." I sent my phone number so she could call me directly.

I couldn't wait to tell the story of this bible to it's original owner. And later on that night I got one of the best phone calls of my life. A lady's voice greeted me with eager questions. "Are you ministering to refugees?" she asked. "Were you near the border? Do you share the gospel or do medical work?"

Together on speaker phone Nikki and I tried to answer Jane's questions and tell the story of the bible we found in the camp. In a few minutes we unloaded the testimony and were able to share how this man believed his hand was healed because someone told him to keep it tied to this bible. "Oh my goodness!" she shouted. "The bible!"

"John," she said, "I have to tell you how that bible ended up in the camp with me." The story went something like this:

Jane was the head of a large ethnic denominational group's medical mission. The team geared up to head to the Middle East in order to work in Syrian refugee camps bringing relief. No bibles. No evangelism. The risk for a large medical team was too great so their team's protocol was none of the above. Only medical assistance and prayer for people. Except on this trip Holy Spirit wanted to make an exception.

"John," she shared, "as I was leaving the house, I heard the Holy Spirit tell me to take a Bible that was on my bookshelf for years. I haven't used that bible in so many years. And I wanted to ignore Him because we don't take bibles on our missions." Jane went on to explain that she was almost out the door and on her way to the airport but Holy Spirit would not let her go. "I felt like He really wanted me to take the bible with me. And I was scared and frustrated because I didn't even have room. I wouldn't be able to explain to my team why I was breaking the rules. I argued with Him internally for a minute."

In the end Jane did the right thing. Obedience to the voice is always the right thing. She stuffed the bible in her purse and hoped for a moment to know she had done the right thing.

Jane explained to us that she worked in the very same camp a few months before us. Her team worked giving medical relief in a temporary clinic of sorts. Some time toward the end of her trip an older man approached her with a mangled and broken hand that she couldn't help. He probably needed surgeries that she couldn't provide. She didn't even have a splint. And then Holy Spirit gave her a picture of the bible tucked in her purse. "I ran to the car and pulled the bible out. It fit his hand perfectly!" She added, "I bound his hand to the book and told him not to take it off until God healed it. We prayed for it, and that was the last I knew."

Jane went on to tell us that in addition to the unction she felt when she left about taking the bible, she had a dream a little while before the trip where she was in a camp handing out fruit and felt the dream was a prophetic picture of her preaching. Of course, preaching wasn't part of their ministry at all. Like the bible, it was against protocol. "Now I can tell my team how the Lord used the bible! I'm so glad I was obedient to His voice!"

And so are we. And so is He. He leads us by His voice. Gently. Sometimes in ways that seem foolish. Often in ways we don't understand. Always in ways that have eternal purpose. In this case the Lord led Jane to do something totally out of her ordinary. Against conventional wisdom and even policy Jane obeyed God and it opened the door into a hurting family's heart. Not only were they ministered to but there were healings and open doors to the gospel. The administrator became part of the testimony. The missions team will share in part of this. We got to play a part. This is Kindgom at work. This is family on mission - God's family being the light Jesus empowers us to be. And any one missing piece changes the whole story.

This Christmas we can remember the reason He came to us. "Peace and goodwill towards men" wasn't just a thought we could put on cards and manger scenes and read as memorials to a legend of yesteryear. "Peace and goodwill towards men" was a statement made by the Creator and Judge of all time who bowed His knee and made us a way to enter an eternal conversation - a dynamic, living relationship - that offers that peace and life in the face of a suffering and dying world.

Don't be a spectator. Let this Christmas be the one where you stop attending religious memorial services and begin to listen to the voice. His voice will lead you to life and take others along for the ride.

Merry Christmas.

When We Discovered One Illegal Bible In A Syrian Refuge Camp; Part 1 - The Setup

In our recent trip to the Middle East, Nikki and I got to join TNT's 10/40 Window Team in reaching out to Kurdish refugees. We brought food aid, blankets, and monetary relief to both camp based refugees and homeless refugees, as well as assisting some charitable groups on the ground with ministering to local believers and families sacrificing to help in the midst of the crisis. The nation, although open to the practice of Christianity, is highly restricted from the sharing of the faith.

During our first visit to the camps, I walked with the 10/40 Team Leader and the camp administrator to pray for people and encourage them in their hardship. We had just unloaded the first ton and a half of vegetables. One particular family stood out and asked if we would join them for tea in their tent and pray for their 12 year old son. Recently he had been waking up at night with night terrors and had begun to wet the bed. The horror of what he had been through was exacting a heavy toll on him emotionally and physically. The entire family - 8 in total from grandparents to babies - was sleeping on a single rug with a few short mats that draped over a series of wooden pallets. Our hearts broke for this beautiful and kind family.

What was interesting about this family was that they were the only Arabs in the camp. The Kurds and Arabs, though for the most brothers in Islam, have a general animosity and sometimes hate for each other fueled by years of ethnic sparring, mostly for land. In this camp Arabs were not allowed for fear they would bring elements of ISIS into the camp and threaten the Kurds living there. However, this one family was deemed so desperate, and the father so weak, that the exception was made.

As we sat together, praying for the son led to a series of conversations and sharing words of encouragement to each of the family members individually. It wasn't long before the grandfather jumped in to tell us a story of his own. He was an incredible gentle and mild mannered man. His smile was so warm as he reached into a plastic shopping bag hanging from a pole in the back of the gray canvas tent. We knew immediately what he was reaching for when the gold foil trimmed pages began to emerge from the bag. They were wrapped in a soft brown leather cover and bound like a million other bibles I had thumbed through. Sure enough when he handed it to me it was a pocket-sized bible. But honestly I didn't understand.

The first question was why do you have this; followed quickly by do you read English? The latter answer was as we expected. Nobody there except us and the translator understood any English. The answer to the first question proved remarkable.

"My hand was terribly broken," the old man explained to us. "There was a woman here who helped me and told me that if I kept my hand on the book God would heal me." He continued, "she bound my hand to the book and look - God did heal it! The book has power!"

Never in my life have I been served up a more tailor made situation to share the gospel with someone. And I couldn't. We weren't allowed. The translator was afraid. The camp administrator was with us, in the tent, and the leaders from our host ministry were uncomfortable with the prospects of being kicked out of the camp and even the legal ramifications of proselytizing. But the stage was set and there was a burning in us that this had to be done. Jesus Christ was the hope and life this family desperately needed.

It would not be this time. As the time in the tent progressed it was clear that the door was closing. I began to pray internally to the Lord. In my heart I felt I heard Him say that "She was the key." She was the camp administrator sitting to my right. I began to interact with her on a personal level, and over the course of the final five or ten minutes we were there she was laughing with us and feeling freer than when we had arrived. Right before we left the camp, as we walked from the Arab family's tent to the gated entrance, I felt in my spirit to ask her if she was having pain in her stomach or torso near the lower left side.

"No." She said. "It's more toward my back on that side. I have some lumps, and they are painful and they keep me from sleeping well.

The reason the Lord pointed this out was obvious to us. He had already spoken to our hearts that she was the key. We had to pray for her. And we did. We prayed for the healing power of Jesus Christ to touch her body and for rest to fall on her in the midst of the chaos she was managing. And then it was time to leave.

As I said earlier, our hearts were absolutely burning to leave that family with the gospel. From the moment we left we set ourselves before the Lord asking Him to give us that chance again. But it didn't look like it was gonna come because we could not get back to that camp on that trip. It would be three weeks before we got the chance to get back there. Three weeks is a lifetime in the camps. Families move in and out, people get sick and even die, and there's really no way of knowing what these border camps will look like in just a few weeks.

None of that matters when God ordains a situation for His grace to be poured out. We prepared for three weeks trusting that we would get the chance. We got a Bible in Arabic and a comic book about the biblical stories leading to Jesus for the family's teenage sons. We prayed for the door to open. And then we flew back to the region and drove to where the camps were with a plan for another weekend of aid and ministry. This time we were going without an Arabic translator.

This next trip was a bit quicker than the previous one. We had basically a full day to minister bookended by the evening of our arrival and the morning of our departure. That particular camp was the first stop on our itinerary the next day. As we arrived we split into two teams; one handled the distribution of blankets and met with the administrators. The second group of us worked to greet people and pray with them. The only things we were missing was that administrator whom we had prayed for the last time and a translator who could speak Arabic so we could go back to the Arabic family with the Bible and book we had for them.

As we prepared to go to the family's tent in spite of these issues, I caught a glimpse of our administrator friend walking toward us from across the camp. She walked to us with a smile on her face and warmly greeted us. It was her first words I was especially excited about. "God answers your prayers," she said. "The night after you left I slept with no pain and the lumps are gone. Thank you."

There it was. I remembered what the Holy Spirit had put on my heart three weeks before in the camp. What I had felt was He said she was the key. And here it was, the Lord had touched her directly. And immediately I was able to give Jesus the credit for what had happened. And since Jesus was the reason for her testimony, He was going to be the reason we would get to share Him with the Arab family too.

"So I was wondering if you could help us," I asked. "We want to go sit with that Arab family. Are they still here?" I continued.

"Yes. And of course you can."

I pressed on, "That would be great. But we need your help." As I watched her reply with an accommodating smile, I asked for the favors I needed. "Would you help us, because we have no one who can speak Arabic with us today. Would you translate for us, and also - we have these books - they are bibles. Would you let us bring them to the family?" All the chips were on the table. Our motives, our heart, and the reality of our Christ.

"Of course I will," she smiled. And like that we headed for their tent.

When we arrived, the family was happy to receive us. Their graciousness continued towards us and they made tea as all Middle Eastern families would in that situations. Our time was limited, and the challenge a little extra today. We had one translator from English to Turkish and a second from Turkish to Arabic. But the Lord's setup to this point was perfect. In spite of the challenges we were able to share the gospel in clarity to this family. They wept as we explained that our aim in bringing aid was to open a door to the hope in Christ which we were really purposed to bring to those in the camps because hope in Christ was the only thing we could give them that would last.

Of course, we were blessed to hear that event he son had stopped wetting the bed. With the living testimony of the healing sitting in the tent before us, this was a clear and resounding message. They received the bibles and our prayer with open hearts. They were unable to deny the reality of the moment we were in and even said to us at one point that "our love for God and the purity of our faith was so evident." The love of Christ had moved upon them and the door in that camp was opened wider than before.

Jesus is amazing. In a restricted camp in a restricted nation we sat with a Kurdish Muslim who translated the gospel of Jesus Christ for us to an Arab Muslim family with whom she would normally be opposed to, all because of the testimonies God had given each of them. But the story is far from over. Not only are we looking for the opportunity to go back, but there is another entire side to the story which we will be sharing next. After all, how did the English bible get there in the first place?

To be continued...