alrighty y’all, you made it to my last blog post about the Islam religion. 🙂 so pumped about this and extremely passionate, so thank you to every person reading this!!!
okay, this is a very important part to the story of the Islam faith and why it differs so much from Christianity.
Biblical Origin:
do you all remember when Abraham and Sarah couldn’t conceive and so Abraham had sexual relations with Sarah’s handmaiden Hagar? well, Hagar got pregnant with Abraham, and she bore a little boy named Ishmael. Abraham’s first son was Ishmael. yeah, we’re going that far back.
so when Sarah was blessed by God to have children, it was very hard for Sarah to have Hagar and Ishmael around (which is definitely valid.) so Sarah told Abraham that she wanted Ishmael and Hagar out of the house. Abraham then kicked out Ishmael and Hagar out of the house and into the desert without anything with them.
a few days into the desert, Ishmael was 10 years old at this point, and was very close to death. his father abandoned him, and then his mother saw that Ishmael was very close to death and couldn’t bear it, so she left him as well. at this point, Ishmael father left him, mother left him, had his friends and home taken from him, and quite literally had nothing to keep him going.
Muslims believe that Muhammad descended from Ishmael, and that they pay their respects to him for everything he’s done.
they don’t view God as a father because Ishmael’s father abandoned him. isn’t this sad? they constantly look for love and support, but they continually believe that they aren’t loved or that living a perfect life is going to earn them something. they believe that they aren’t loved for who they actually are.
I don’t know about you all, but this story hurts my heart. the Muslim people feel like they need to live a perfect life in order to maybe get to heaven? they don’t feel the love that we feel and the grace that we feel. these people are needing help to feel loved and to know that God is for them. Jesus is the ultimate answer.
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so, you may be asking, “what can I do?”
well, the Great Commission says to “go out and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” I know that not everyone can go overseas and help people get to know Jesus.
you don’t have to do that though. you don’t even need to leave your homes for this to happen.
prayer is extremely important, and knowledge in itself is so important as well. now knowing that this is happening and that these people need help, I’m telling you so you can tell others. these people don’t know Jesus and that’s very sad to me. pray for others, pray for the countries, and pray for the missionaries going to those countries so that they may touch the hearts of others.
if you do go somewhere, remember that it’s not about fixing others, but more about building bridges so that they can find Jesus.
here are some ways to introduce Jesus and how you should perform them:
– highlight similarities between religions or situations brings discovery. if you highlight differences, it may cause hard feelings and could lead to debate.
– showing interest leads to relationship building. if you condemn someone for what they believe in or how they choose to live, it may lead to isolation or hard feelings.
– pointing people to Jesus and letting them know that the Bible is grace is very important. is you try and disprove Muhammad or any other religion or situation, people may consider it attack to the Qur’an, or whatever the other person is doing.
– promoting Jesus is transformation. if you promote Christianity, it’s conversation.
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here’s my last statement on this topic:
remember that not everyone is like you. like I said in my first blog post of this little series, we are all different and so we are all going to worship Jesus differently. don’t try and fix someone, that’s not your job. our job is to show them who Jesus is.
I heard a fact a few days ago and it said something like, “it takes an average person about 6 or 7 times to hear about Jesus before they become a Christian.”
y’all, that means that we need 6 or 7 people to tell people about Jesus without seeing a difference within that person. the real question is, is
“will you be one of those 6 or 7 people?”
remember to have an open heart, as people are people no matter where they are from or what they believe in or what their skin color is. love is most important, and Jesus is love.
thank you all for reading this little series 🙂 I seriously cannot thank all of you enough for you kind words and for reading these blog posts :).
I’m writing another one today!! stay tuned! <3 Bri
