It can be easy to only see the walls & the obstacles when it comes to reaching the Muslim world with the message of Jesus. Audrey Frank and her family have certainly encountered those in their years serving and reaching Muslims both overseas and in the US. But they’ve seen something else as well. Something that will stop us in our tracks if we take the time to listen.
Audrey says the stories we hear of God using dreams and visions to speak directly to people in Muslim countries aren’t simply rumors. They are powerful realities she’s witnessed firsthand. She takes us back to what she calls one of the most formative moments of her life.
“I was working amongst an Islamic tribe, and we were living in a remote area. It took about two hours if the river was down to get to the nearest supplies in town. One night, I heard a voice at my door, and a woman appeared with her little girl. Her little girl had fallen into the fire, and she was pretty badly burned.”
“I was the closest thing to a medic for a long way around us. So she came in, and – as I was treating her little girl’s burns – I began saying to her, ‘I am doing this in the name of Jesus. Jesus said, “I Am the Way. The Truth. And the life. And no one comes to the Father except through Me.” And when I said His name, she gasped. Her eyes got really big, and she said to me, ‘I’ve been waiting for you!’“
Audrey was in for the surprise of her life.
“She began telling her story. She said when she was twelve years old that she had become the payment for a debt of her fathers’. Her father went to a witch doctor – the kind who places curses on people when you want a curse – and her father had procured a curse. And he did not have the money to pay him, so he gave him his daughter as payment. And here she sat in front of me with her little girl.”
“She told me that she had a dream one night, and in the dream a man in shining white clothes, bright like the sun came to her. He extended his hand, and said, ‘Follow Me. I am the Way. The Truth. And the Life. One day, I will send someone to tell you My name.’”
As extraordinary as the moment was, the miraculous connection went deeper still.
“I thought I was bringing God to these people. He was already there, and He had spoken to her some ten years earlier. The beautiful and powerful part of this story is the fact that when I was twelve or thirteen years old, growing up in abuse and trauma – feeling desperate much like she was at twelve years old – I was crying out to God, and Jesus came to me in a very similar way to what she told me in her dream.”
“I felt exposed. I thought, ‘We are exactly alike. Jesus, You came for both of us, and rescued us Yourself. You didn’t wait for someone else. You came to her, and You came to me.’”
Audrey Frank is an author, speaker & a true-story-teller who’s spent over twenty years reaching and serving Muslims with her family both overseas and in the US. Her new book is Covered Glory: The Face of Honor and Shame in the Muslim World.