Born to a Pakistani father and an English mother who was a Christian, Afsar Ahmed grew up with his father taking him out of primary school during the Easter and Christmas seasons so that he would not hear any messages connected with these Christian events.
His mother was forced to become a Muslim. Afsar’s mother prayed that one of her sons would become a Christian and witness to others in response to her being forced to convert by her husband.
He recalls making a silver cross in secondary school, keeping it inside a handkerchief, and even carving a cross on the Gideon’s New Testament Bible, which he kept in his bedroom for reasons he cannot explain to this day.
Afsar remembers his father getting furious when he found the Bible in Afsar’s room, and he saw fear in his father’s eyes. He was ordered to throw it away. That particular event planted in him the seed of curiosity to learn more about Christianity, which his dear father seemed to have a personal enmity against and vehemently opposed.
Afsar also recalls saying the Lord’s Prayer as a way of thanking the God of the Bible for getting him out of trouble while he was in England.
These events eventually took him to Canada when his family moved from England, where he met many Christians. At 15, he remembers badge-wearing Christians from Campus Crusade who shared the Gospel with him, telling him that he could have a personal relationship with God through Jesus.
“I was shocked, because as a Muslim, I was always taught that Allah was unique and distant. He has no associates, he has no partners,” Afsar says.
“When they shared the message of Jesus with me, I rejected it because I could not believe that somebody could have a personal relationship with God through Jesus.”
He could not accept that someone could have a personal relationship with God, so he rejected the message of the Bible. The idea was so revolutionary to him that he could not even begin to imagine that God loved him in that way.
Later, he found himself accepted into a government-sponsored summer farming program, where he had to live on a farm for two months. As part of the program, he was required to attend a weekend farming seminar, where he met a tenacious 16-year-old Christian girl who would not stop sharing the Gospel and the God of the Bible with him.
The girl challenged him, saying she would prove that her God was the real God and demonstrate to him an answered prayer based on her personal relationship with God by praying that he would go to a farm where everyone was born-again Christians. She said he would get the “Gospel rammed down his throat for two solid months.”
And that is exactly what happened to Afsar when he met Gerald and his family. He was overwhelmed to find out they were all born-again Christians. He could not believe that God had answered the girl’s prayer. This opened his heart to what the man shared about God during his stay at the farm, where he saw a love he had never seen in Islam, shining through the man.
Afsar fondly remembers the man calling him his “spiritual father.” The man’s love for the Lord and consistency in his life won Afsar over to Christ. He was a living example of the “Word”—a “genuine article.” A “doer” of the “Word,” not just a “hearer.”
On witnessing to Muslims, Afsar Ahmed suggests that we need to see Muslims as Jesus sees them—a people who need Jesus. We should have the compassion Jesus had for the crowd mentioned in Matthew 9, seeing them as people who were harassed and helpless, in need of the Good Shepherd.
We need to see Muslims as people God loves, just as He loved the people of Nineveh. Through our lives and prayers, they should see the need for Jesus, receive the forgiveness of sins and the promise of eternal life, and have a personal relationship with God through Jesus.
“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” —Matthew 5:16 (NKJV)
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
Video not working?
