My friend is muslim and he means a lot to me. We both love eachother but we can't be together since I am a Christian and he is Muslim. I was wondering if it is possible to reach his heart so that he could let Christ in?
How did some of you come to God? I know that it's not easy and I'm trying my best not to give up on him. Is there hope?
Hi. I've already tried to give you some advice in your other thread, but I'll be happy to respond here as I responded there not knowing the rules to that specific forum.
To answer your question of how I came to Christ:
Someone shared the Gospel with me, a person who was extremely knowledgeable in scripture having studied for years.
The mention of long term study is an important point because I'm an American Muslim so I was around Christians my entire life - I just never understood some very key differences between Islam and Christianity and there hadn't been a Christian who could explain Christianity to me well, prior to this particular Christian who had the right amount of knowledge.
So First - I recognised Christ in this last person who shared the Gospel with me. That is why they shared the Gospel with me in the first place - because I recognised Christ in them and
asked about their Jesus. (I had never recognised Christ in anyone before this.)
Secondly - They were able to answer every argument and every objection and show me that Christianity was a true faith and Islam was false.
Yet, for all this persons knowledge and all their teaching (which was beautiful) I still couldn't understand salvation.
There was some kind of mental block and as much as I would have loved to worship the Christian God, without understanding the key concept to faith, namely salvation, I couldn't practice the faith so I became agnostic.
I stopped practicing Islam, stopped praying and everything but as I couldn't understand salvation I just did my day to day life and stopped thinking about Godly things...
After two years of being agnostic, one night I ended up having a dream where the Angel of God explained salvation to me and I was saved that night before I even woke up.
I've been Christian ever since, and devoutly so..
That is my story, as short as I can possibly make it.
In the end, people can't convert others, all we can do is share the message of the Gospel with knowledge, while filled with the Spirit, and then stand back and let God take it from there.
As the Bible says faith is a gift from God... your role in that gift is to pray for people and let God work.
Your heart is at work in this situation and you've somehow convinced yourself that you need to turn this guy into a Christian - but you can't. Only Christ has that ability. People shared the Gospel with me my whole life yet I was 40ish when the perfect storm occurred in which all the circumstances were perfect for me to begin to understand - and even then
God made sure I was physically safe before I was saved. (your not always safe from family, even in western nations, after converting.)
So, thats my story as far of how I came to belief in Christ for my salvation.
If you want to know more about cultural differences between middle eastern Muslims and Americans I can share those with you as well as they are many. And with a Muslim man they are nearly insurmountable, even for other Muslims.
There is a reason Muslims who immigrated to western countries from the middle east are trying to find other second generation immigrants for their children, who were born in the west, to marry. For most there is a serious, near insurmountable cultural difference between those born in the west and those born in Muslim countries, even for us.