Recognizing Your Mission Field
June 24, 2019
Creation: It’s Not Complicated
July 25, 2019
Syrian Refuges. Muslim extremists. War-torn countries. Violence. Jihad.
The Middle East is synonymous with all these terms, but national missionaries like Sam Jordan live and minister there without reservation. It’s just life in Jordan. Americans may not have the same kind of difficulties, but they still exist in other forms: bias, hostility, limits to religious freedom.
Bro. Sam encounters those issues and the aforementioned ones as well.
Recently he spent some time in the States and talked about his ministry to the people in Jordan and the refugees seeking asylum from an ongoing war just across its borders.
Lebanese laws, and those in other Middle Eastern nations, prohibit forced conversion, which is punishable by death, but Sam oversees medical clinics that meet physical needs. Free clinics mean little interference or pushback from the government.
So how does he share the gospel without fear? It’s all about relationships, the ones created by simply loving people. Bro. Sam says he relies on God’s grace and power every day as he ministers to approximately 2,500 people a month who come to their clinic. It is open seven days a week and primarily draws women and children who have left Syria and other countries to escape constant war and violence.
Lebanese doctors and nurses volunteer to help those who come to the clinic with very little money, certainly not enough to pay for doctors’ visits and medicine. Bro. Sam described one situation where a young woman whose face had been burned so badly her face was disfigured. She was so despondent that she had already attempted suicide three times.
The clinic has developed a program, he said, where doctors are willing to provide free surgeries for extreme cases like hers. After a review process and approval, a series of four surgeries was performed on this young lady, and today there is almost no way to tell that she was once unrecognizable because of a bomb.
Her physical need had been met in an amazing way.
Bro. Sam went on to share that she was so grateful to the medical staff that she began to volunteer at the clinic. It wasn’t long before she noticed that workers there had joy and hope that she did not. When they eventually shared the reason why – the good news of Jesus Christ – she became a believer.
Her spiritual need had been met in a life-altering way.
The medical clinic in Lebanon is just one of the ministries that Bro. Sam oversees, but it continues to be a way to bring people to Christ. He would want us to pray for a reduction in violence but also for a newer, larger, more effective building that will meet the needs of those who continue to be affected by it.
This story and others that he shared made me further realize that my American perspective is wrong. There have been Christians in the Middle East since Jesus walked the earth 2,000 years ago. In fact, they were some of the very first believers and missionaries!
Bro. Sam shared that, “Syrian churches are on fire for the gospel. Believers there are very loyal to their country, all while groups are fighting for their religions based on their God, Allah.”Pray for Arabic Christians who minister in the Middle East, that they would continue to be “on fire for the gospel.”