32

HeartSongs

Returning home, I marveled again that the interview stories sounded like stories right out of the New Testament. As I shared the stories with my family, with the college students, and with our Persecution Task Force, they reached that same conclusion on their own. That, in itself, was a wonderful affirmation. Sharing the stories, almost invariably, led to animated discussions about the implications and applications of what I had heard from these believers in persecution.

In particular, the story of “the toughest man I ever met” seemed to touch people deeply. By this point, I had reached another conclusion about him. I realized that he was willing to endure great suffering for his faith for two reasons. First, he understood the nature of persecution and the intent of his persecutors. Second, he knew the One for whom he was suffering. This man not only knew Jesus—he was also convinced that Jesus was worth whatever his faith might cost him. This had been true of so many believers that I had met around the world—and it was certainly true of this man that I had most recently interviewed. Those reflections led, time and time again, to long discussions about what our faith costs and how much we are willing to endure for Jesus’ sake.

I shared repeatedly how God had used that persistent doctor to help me pay attention to a truly divine appointment. I confessed my embarrassment that it took four very direct e-mails to get my attention. I was uncomfortable that it had taken such effort to get me to the place where God obviously wanted me to be. Miraculously, I had encountered five Muslim background believers in a tiny corner of the world. If it had been up to me, I would have missed the entire experience. Those men had been praying that God would send someone to help them, encourage them, and teach them. It turned out that I was the answer to their prayer. But it grieved me that I actually fought against God’s purposes. In our gatherings back at home, we talked about how we can recognize God’s direction—and about how we can easily miss what He might be doing. We celebrated God’s remarkable creativity in accomplishing His purposes, but we also humbly confessed how often we cannot—or do not—hear His guidance.

The time at home was rich and restful. It was a joy to share the stories. At the same time, I found myself growing impatient to resume my journey to hear and collect more stories that I could then bring home to share.

By this point, I felt confident that there would be many more stories to hear and many more lessons to draw from them. I would be returning to Southeast Asia to visit several countries that I had missed before. Specifically, I would be visiting Buddhist and Hindu cultures. Eventually, I would make my way to Bangladesh and Pakistan. Then I planned to move even deeper into the heart of Islam, first in Central Asia, then in the Gulf and the Middle East, and finally back where this journey had begun for me in North and East Africa.

Over the years, we have met so many people with so many stories that it will take many other books to share much of what we have heard and seen. Originally, Ruth and I envisioned this task as a two-year journey. It has now become the passion of a lifetime. Fifteen years later, we are still learning how to identify and articulate the right questions to ask believers in persecution so that they can mentor us ever more effectively.

Clearly, only God’s guidance made my encounter with the five believers in Southeast Asia possible. Only the Lord could have arranged that appointment. The five believers had been waiting and praying for weeks that someone would show up in their remote Central Asian border town. In retrospect, I could see how carefully the hand of God had been guiding the overall schedule for our project from the very beginning.

If we had started seeking answers in the Muslim world where we had first started wrestling with our questions—if we had done our pilgrimage backwards and gone from the world of Islam first and then to China and then to Russia—I believe that our journey could well have been a waste of time and resources. It might even have been a disaster. The fact that we started where we did and followed the general plan that we followed wasn’t the result of our strategic wisdom (though we might have thought so at the time).

It was the clear activity of the Holy Spirit. God was not only arranging encounters with specific individuals; He was involved even in the schedule that we were putting together.

If we had gone to the world of Islam first, the relatively few number of Muslim-background believers who we could have accessed and safely interviewed might well have discouraged us even further. From a research standpoint, the sampling size might have been too small to draw any statistically valid conclusions or to begin identifying meaningful patterns and trends. With just a few interviews in that setting, it would have been almost impossible to learn any helpful, applicable lessons at all.

On the other hand, by starting in Russia and Eastern Europe, we were able to learn what had helped and/or hindered the survival and growth of the long-established Body of Christ under decades of persecution. Interviews were abundant in number. Almost immediately, I found myself talking to people—many people, in fact—who had thrived in a setting of persecution. My time in China was more of the same. The literal explosion of faith throughout China in the house-church movement gave us access to a wealth of believers who could speak about what had happened. Multitudes of people were eager to bear witness to a faith that had not only survived persecution, but had thrived because of it.

With that beginning, we were finally ready to step into the world of Islam. By that point, we had identified significant patterns and trends (positive and negative) to be watching for. We had also, in large measure, discarded our first set of research questions. Instead, we were now simply asking believers to tell us their stories. Listening for thousands of hours, we were becoming more adept at connecting the dots, seeing patterns, and extracting applicable lessons for ourselves and for believers all around the world.

Originally, we had hoped to develop western-styled discipleship materials for those living and working in the most oppressive environments on earth. Our end result, however, was something different. Instead of developing a curriculum, we were being taught by believers in persecution how to follow Jesus, how to love Jesus, and how to walk with Him day by day.

At one level, we already knew this. But we were introduced all over again to a relationship with Jesus that is precisely what can be found in the New Testament. It is also a relationship that, even today, can still change lives.

For many years a western faith-based organization had operated a medical clinic in one of the cities of a large Islamic country. Most of the local population appreciated having ready access to quality medical care. As a rule, the people essentially ignored the staff’s religious affiliation and background. The religious beliefs of the medical staff weren’t much of a concern; what mattered was the medical care.

However, a few radical Muslims were concerned with the religious beliefs. And the most militant and outspoken opponent of the medical ministry lived right across the street from the clinic’s front entrance. He owned a shop in that same location, which was only a few doors down from a local mosque.

Every Friday this shop-keeper, whom we will call Mahmoud, would stand in front of his store and stir up the Muslim crowd streaming by on the street as they made their way to worship. Later, at the mosque, he would accuse the evil infidels at the clinic of preying on, poisoning, or over-charging good Muslims. He would curse and condemn some of the medical staff by name. He was an angry and hateful man whose anger spilled over as he spewed animosity at anyone affiliated with this medical clinic.

Later, Mahmoud contracted an incurable cancer. His superstitious Muslim community considered him contagious and quit frequenting his shop. Now he was not only sick and dying, but he was also unable to feed and provide for his wives and children. The staff of the hospital learned of his sad plight and many of them actually began to go to his shop on their way to and from work.

The clinic personnel purchased goods from the shop of their most vocal antagonist. They conversed with him and asked about his family. They regularly inquired about and expressed concern for his health. They always made a point of letting him know they were praying for him. Eventually, they began to treat his suffering—and even washed his body when the need arose. As these followers of Jesus loved their persecutor and enemy of so many years, Mahmoud’s stony heart softened. Over time, his attitude changed to one of gratitude and friendship.

In his last days, he continued to accept the compassionate and professional medical care of the “evil infidels.” He trusted his former enemies to help him die in peace, with dignity. Before he finally passed away at the age of fifty-seven, Mahmoud made the decision to become a follower of Jesus.

Mahmoud’s youngest wife, Aisha, suddenly became a twenty-four-year-old widow with four children. She had watched how the clinic staff had loved and cared for her husband after he had cursed and railed against them for so many years. During Mahmoud’s last days, she also became a follower of Jesus. After her husband’s death, Aisha became an outspoken witness to her new faith and perhaps the most effective evangelist in that area.

Her Muslim family and friends couldn’t silence her witness. The authorities eventually took notice. Even though her nation didn’t have a history of imprisoning women, the police finally arrested her.

She was lectured and threatened with every imaginable punishment. Her captors threw her not into an actual jail cell, but down into the dank, dark, unfinished cellar of the police station. In that place, there was no light at all. The unfinished cellar had a dirt floor. Spiders, bugs and rats skittered around her in the darkness.

Terrified, and at the point of giving up, she told us that she intended to scream out to God that she couldn’t take any more. But when she opened her mouth in protest and despair, a melody of praise rose out of her soul instead.

She sang.

Surprised and strengthened by the sound of her own voice, and overwhelmed by the renewed sense of God’s presence beside and within her, she began to sing her praise and worship to Jesus even more loudly. As she sang, she noticed that, office by office, the police station above her head became strangely silent.

Later that night, the trap door was opened. The light spilled down into the darkness of the cellar. The Chief of Police himself reached down, pulled Aisha out, and told her, “I’m going to release you and let you go home.”

“Please, no!” she protested. “You can’t do that! It’s after midnight. I can’t be seen on the streets alone.” He, of course, knew that is was against the law for a woman to be out alone at night. She wondered if maybe this was a trick to get her in more trouble.

“You don’t understand,” the Chief told her. “There’s no need to worry. I am going to personally escort you to your home . . . on one condition.”

Aisha immediately suspected the man’s intentions. But it turns out that he had nothing sinister in mind.

The Chief of Police, one of the most powerful men in the city, looked at twenty-four-year-old Aisha and shook his head in bewilderment. “I don’t understand,” he admitted. “You are not afraid of anything!”

He sighed and he shook his head again. “My wife, my daughters, and all the women in my family are afraid of everything. But you are not afraid of anything. So now, I am going to take you safely to your home tonight. Three days from now, I am going to come to get you, and bring you to my house. I want you to come to my house so that you can tell everyone in my family why you are not afraid. And I want you to sing that song.”

In truth, I am certain that Aisha was afraid. She, like so many believers living in persecution, simply refused to be controlled by her fear. By faith, she found a way to overcome her fear.

Because of the testimonies that I had already heard, I was able to instantly recognize and understand the significant role that music and the HeartSong played in building and bolstering this young Muslim woman’s faith. It was very similar to what I had already observed and heard from believers like Dmitri and Tavian in their very different cultures.

And thinking back to the Book of Acts, I recalled the story of Paul and Silas and their imprisonment almost two thousand years ago.

In prison, Paul and Silas sang.

It was clear that a vibrant faith like Aisha’s could take root, survive, and thrive in hostile conditions. That much was certain. Recognizing factors in her faith journey that I had seen in so many other places was fascinating and life-giving. Though I had never seen the connections before, they were now unavoidable. Suffering believers in Russia—and in China—and in Eastern Europe—and in Southeast Asia—and in the world of Islam—and in Bible days—were telling the very same story, doing the very same things to survive, experiencing the presence of the very same God.

Back in 1992, on one of my darkest early days in Somalia, during my first or second trip into Mogadishu, I was walking down a bomb-cratered city street with my Somali guards. We were scouting the neighborhood around our compound, looking for needs in the neighborhood that we might be able to meet.

The trouble was that there were so many needs that it seemed to be a ridiculous search. The people I saw in that neighborhood had nothing but needs! Where would I even start to help when I encountered death and destruction at every corner and around every turn?

As I walked those streets, I felt the presence of evil like I had never known before. It was a palpable, tangible presence. It felt like a vice tightening around my heart, slowly, steadily squeezing out any hope of helping. All that was left was discouragement and despair.

Suddenly, piercing that spiritual darkness, a sound came. At first, the sound was confusing. Then, it was shocking. Finally, it was simply amazing. The sound was completely out of place in that setting, but it was as welcome as the sound of a waterfall in a desert.

Walking through what had to be at that time the worst place on earth, I heard what sounded like angels singing. For an instant, I thought that I was hallucinating. I stopped dead in my tracks and I tried to determine the source or direction of the sound. My guards stopped too. I could tell that they were also hearing the sound.

“This way!” I said and we set off in a different direction. The singing grew louder. At the next corner, I listened and we turned again. We grew closer and closer to the music. We finally stopped outside the gate of a small compound from which the singing seemed to originate.

I pounded loudly on the gate. A guard appeared and tried to send us away. I pressed—and negotiated. Finally, he allowed us to enter what turned out to be a small orphanage. There, a chorus of children was assembled and singing their hearts out under the rather animated direction of a young Somali woman. Her name was Sophia.

I had no way of knowing at that time, of course, that Sophia, Ruth and I would have many surprising encounters and share many adventures in faith, heartache, laughter and loss in three different countries over the next ten years.

When I first met her that day in the orphanage, she had already lost her job, her home, and her family to the violent chaos and destruction that had marked Somalia’s long and brutal civil war. Even those who had told her about Jesus many years before had now fled the country. Physically, she was ragged, worn out, and thin beyond belief. She stood a few inches over five feet.

Evidently, though, there was enough strength left in this little shell of a woman to have gathered thirty orphans together in this shattered neighborhood of Mogadishu. It seemed to be only the sheer force of her will that had kept the orphans alive and waiting for help to show up. They were looking to her—and she was waiting for someone to be an answer to her prayers.

In that hard time, she sang. And she taught the children to sing as well.

As I walked up to her, she whispered, “You are a follower of Jesus, aren’t you? I have prayed that you would come.”

Even before she said that, I had known that Sophia was a believer. I had seen the love of God shining in her eyes and I had heard it in the children’s songs. I asked her to tell me her story. To my surprise, I learned that this smiling, joyful woman had a typically tragic Somali story. Her husband had been killed during the civil war. And her two young daughters had disappeared months ago; she assumed that they too had died.

Her entire family was gone. She had lost everyone she loved. Still, here she was trying to make a difference in the lives of these orphans who had also lost their families. She was a beacon of light shining in this very dark place. Her HeartSongs witnessed to faith. At the very same time, her songs strengthened her faith. The songs instilled happiness and hope in the souls of the orphans. And her songs also wafted through the streets of Mogadishu that day and strengthened the resolve of one western relief worker who had been temporarily paralyzed by overwhelming despair.

I had been scouting for needs. I was trying to figure out a logical place to start. No matter what else we might do in Somalia, I immediately knew that we would help Sophia and her orphans. And we did.

That was just the first of many ways that our lives and personal stories would become intertwined. Several years later, I would just happen to learn, and would be able to give Sophia the joyous news, that her two daughters were actually still alive. They were living in a Somali refugee camp in Ethiopia.

But then, at a later time, I had to console Sophia when her in-laws broke her heart by legally preventing her from taking custody or ever seeing the girls again. They took that legal step because they refused to allow their grand-daughters to be raised by an infidel believer in Jesus.

We eventually celebrated Sophia’s marriage to another Somali refugee believer in a neighboring country. Sometime after that, we were able to use our contacts to help save her life and that of her new baby by arranging an emergency flight to get her medical care in yet another country. This happened after doctors and nurses at her local maternity hospital threatened to let her and her baby die rather than treat a former Muslim.

What a wonder that all that interaction and involvement in this woman’s life started with a song.

It is surely obvious by now, but I am sometimes a slow learner. I don’t know why I would have needed yet another example to drive the point home. But whether I needed it or not, I once more was reminded of the impact and power to be found in the songs of faith.

I was visiting a different Islamic country in the Middle East, hearing the story of a follower of Jesus imprisoned for his faith. Though rotations of guards watched him around the clock, each day this man would do his daily devotions in his cell. One day two of his guards came to him in alarm and insisted that he stop his singing. They told him to stop singing “so that your songs won’t convert us.”

Evidently, those Muslim jailors recognized the power in HeartSongs a lot quicker than I did. And they didn’t need hundreds of interviews to reach that conclusion.

When I finally connected enough of the dots, I came to understand the significance of music as a faith factor and recognize its presence and power already at work in the Islamic world. Only then did I begin to grasp what was for me a new, much bigger, life-changing lesson.

I have always believed that Jesus was serious about his final earthly instructions to His followers. I have always believed that He indeed wants us to reach the world with His message. I am convinced that He elicits our help in that great task. In fact, one of the reasons for my discouragement in Somalia was my growing doubt about whether God really was at work in places like that. And, then, there was the follow-up question that haunted me: If God is not in places like Somalia, what does He expect His followers to do there in His absence?

Gradually, as my pilgrimage through persecution progressed, I began to understand that God is not helpless without us. Even though He wants our help, values our help, and calls for our help in changing the world, our all-powerful God is not helpless—even without us.

I also came to understand that our all-knowing God is completely aware of all that is happening in His world—even in places where evil seems to be running rampant. Even in these dark places, our ever-present God is not somehow absent until we show up ready to help.

It is crucial to understand that God values our help. But it is even more crucial to remember that our all-powerful God is able to work with or without us, that our all-knowing God is not blind to the evil in His world, and that our ever-present God is there . . . whether we are or not.

Indeed, one of the most exciting and encouraging lessons that my journey was teaching me was that God is always present and always working even in the most hostile places on earth. I understood that He had been at work in Somalia long before Ruth and I ever showed up. Rather than thinking that we are all alone and that we have to start from scratch in wolf country, a much better and more effective strategy for carrying out the great commission, especially in our world’s toughest and most discouraging places, would be to learn what God already has been doing and is doing there, join Him, and together figure out how we can build on that.

Once we find out what God is already doing to show Himself, all we have to do is point others to Him.

For me, that was a hope-renewing thought. And I was beginning to wonder if it was time for me to start to sing again.