The Blue Cord, by iHOPE Ministries

Does God See You? Zara's Story

Episode Summary

Have you ever wrestled with doubt or uncertainty about God being in control of your life? Or maybe you have wondered if God really sees you? Today’s guest did. She grew up in the heart of the Middle East to a missionary family that had traveled for four generations to spread Islam. Could God see her there? Listen to Zara's story and find out, because if God could see and know her there in the heart of the Middle East, then He can see you right where you are too.

Episode Notes

Have you ever wrestled with doubt or uncertainty about God being in control of your life? Or maybe you have wondered if God really sees you? Today’s guest did. She grew up in the heart of the Middle East to a missionary family that had traveled for four generations to spread Islam. Could God see her there? Listen to Zara's story and find out, because if God could see and know her there in the heart of the Middle East, then He can see you right where you are too. 

-------->>>

Take Your Learning Deeper

Pay it forward. Give to help more Believers learn to share their biblical faith across cultures. 

FOLLOW AND ENGAGE WITH US: 

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

Episode Transcription

Karen: 

Have you ever held back from sharing your faith, especially with people of other faiths and cultures? Welcome to the iHOPE Empowers Podcast. This episode is from iHOPE Ministries, Blue Cord Series for women. I'm your host, Karen Bejjani. And here's a fresh dose of inspiration to embolden you, to share Jesus with women of other faiths and cultures. 

Zahara : 

The biggest blessing on planet earth that you worship a God, we worship a living God that loves us on a personal intimate level. Like a romance. I mean He literally called the Church His bride. How beautiful, but not only does He do that, it's not just a stretch to say that it's the reality

Karen: 

Hello Blue Cord friend. Have you ever wondered if God was really in control of your life? Have you wondered if God sees you? Zahara grew up in the heart of the Middle East to a family that had traveled for four generations to spread Islam? Could God see her there? Listen to Zahara's story and find out because if God could see her there, then He sees you right where you are too. But before you meet her, let me give you the backstory behind the name of this series the Blue Cord. 20 years ago, after extremists brought down the twin towers in New York City on September 11th, 2001. Christians have had more opportunities than ever to share the gospel with Muslims here and more Muslim refugees are coming. Yet, most Christians are not equipped to share Jesus across cultures. Together, we can make a difference because a great spiritual battle is waging for souls all around us. And it's never been more important that we raise up more believers now to share the hope of Jesus across cultures. Now, the Israelites struggled too. God reveals in the Old Testament in Numbers 15 that after another round of not doing what the Lord told them to do, He gave His people, His chosen people, a reminder, a tassel with a cord of blue on the hem of their garments, rich with meaning and purpose. The blue cord is a symbol that we serve a holy living God who left us instructions for how to remember and trust Him. Inspired by this biblical blue cord, I pray this Blue Cord episode will be a catalyst for you to be His witness, right where you live. So let's get started. Today I'm here with Zahara. And she's going to share how God saw her. So Zahara let's start with your own journey. Now you grew up the most Muslim of families somewhere deep in the heart of the Middle East. What was that like? 

Zahara : 

It was pretty much exactly what you would imagine I lived in a 3D bubble every single day revolved around being a Muslim. We probably wouldn't qualify it like that. It just so happened to be how we lived our lives prayed five times a day for as long as I can remember starting wearing the hijab when I was eight years old, which my mom would start a year preemptively nine would be compulsory in the denomination that my family's from but she needed to make sure I had practiced before it was very, very necessary. Yeah, every single day looked very, very Muslim in studying Islam in school because it was compulsory again in the Middle East and I also grew up in a really loving home. I think maybe people might have imagery of, I think they probably always overlap what Islam is and what Muslims are and I grew up in the most loving family of anyone I know of any I think I'm the most blessed with my parents. My, I can call my dad my best friend and it's not a stretch. He calls me his, I grew up in a family where I was able to voice my opinions although overtly I was probably more Muslim than sometimes my critical side might take me to, there was a dichotomy in my household I would say probably my dad, more of a rational thinker open-minded reasonable mom, all of the above, but within the bounds of Islam. So just a lot stricter. So I kind of grew up being very Muslim, but also kind of open to reason and having conversations that were very open with my father. So yeah, super loving childhood, great memories of living in the Middle East. It was just a 3D bubble of Muslim, Muslim, Muslim. 

Karen: 

I love how you say that a 3D bubble. The environment that we grow up in shapes us. And so I'm just curious. What is the earliest memory that you have of being in the Mosque or learning how to pray? 

Zahara : 

I don't think there was a time. I wasn't praying. My mom started us very young and I think it was mostly just you kind of just start sitting with her as she prays and I don't think I could pinpoint a time because I think as early as my memory would go I've been praying with her, maybe not to all the five times and making sure that she's maybe not to accountability where she would check up on me but I don't think there was a time where I was like all right today's when I start just cause there wasn't ever a time. I wasn't doing it. 

Karen: 

And how did you feel the first day that you got the chance to wear the hijab? Was that like an exciting day or is there a special celebration or something when that happened? 

Zahara : 

There was a weaning into it. I remember there was a period where I stopped wearing short sleeves shirts or t-shirts and she would make sure that I wasn't like cold turkey, which granted I'm eight what better do I know? So it was, yeah, there was a tiny period of weaning. And I remember my eighth birthday where she was like, all right, now, this isn't coming off because next year it's compulsory. And obviously, I mean, I don't know if your listeners would know this, but your Islamic birthday is different from your English birthday because the calendar is different. So even before I would have turned nine, it would have started to become compulsory. So she just wanted to be super careful, which would tell you something about my mom. She just wants to be sure. So on my eighth birthday, my birthday outfit the hijab was part of it. And that was just kind of henceforth. I just never left the house without it

Karen: 

A right of passage. So here you are, you've grown up in the Muslim bubble and now you've graduated and you're ready to go off to college. And so you decide that you're going to go to college in Europe, in a big city in Europe, and you're going to study either neuroscience or neurosurgery or law. And I can totally see this in you. What was that like? I bet that was a huge transition. 

Zahara: 

Oh, absolutely. University life was totally different from my school life. I have this, I wouldn't say newfound freedom cause I've never really been, I don't think I've ever felt trapped or that I can't do anything, but also I've lived at home. So it is entirely different when I'm living alone and I have no curfew and I live with people that look so different to me, people that speak so different to me, dress so different to me for the first time. I've probably the first time I saw alcohol being consumed. Granted, I never did any of that, but just even being around that, that was totally different. Living with flatmates and people from all walks of life. I think it was really cool to be in a setting where my chain of thought was unique because I grew up where we all think the same. We all have the same sense of belief. And now we're in a flat and we're cooking dinner together. All of us, 10 flatmates and all 10 of us have entirely different worldviews. It was insane. And I think it was really good exposure. 

Karen: 

So how did you live out your faith then as you go with your flatmates and they're all from different faiths and cultures, how did you live out your faith? 

Zahara: 

I was even more of my faith than I was in a Muslim country. And I've shared this with you before that I grew up in the Middle East where you need to be of the majority for you to be openly allowed to practice your faith. And so if most denominations and I mean, this is well known across the world. Any minority, even within the Muslim, faith is pretty harshly persecuted. And so being in Europe, I no longer had that baggage of, well, I can be in school and everyone knows I'm Muslim because I'm in this really Muslim bubble, but I can't be my specific denomination. I can't be outwardly expressing these views that even though we're all Muslim are going to be extremely controversial, they're going to be fiery if there are other Muslims that don't hold to the same views. So when I went to college, I had an insane amount of freedom that I didn't have, believe it or not in a Muslim country. 

Karen: 

It's so ironic. 

Zahara: 

it is, you would never imagine it. And whenever I would tell the Muslim friends that I made in Europe, I would tell them that you guys don't understand you have so much more freedom. I mean, they just wanted a halal McDonald's I don't know if they would know it. Like McDonald's obviously, there wasn't halal like, oh, you're so lucky you grew up in the Middle East. I was like, you guys were allowed to practice your faith with no barriers, even though you live in the West, we don't have that. And I think persecutions were increasingly getting worse before I left. And so this was for me, just fantastic because now I could be myself, what my mom's taught me all the ways. So going to Islamic society, the very first society I joined was that, and very soon became the president led it led national conferences around the country was just on every opportunity I got to be an ambassador for not just the faith, but also my sect, in particular, I took and I took it with a lot of pride. 

Karen: 

You are a leader like you hit the ground running. And the next thing you know, you're president of the Islamic Society of your huge university. And so in that process, did you ever come across any Christians? 

Zahara: 

I had a Christian flatmate and she's the sweetest girl you'll ever meet. And she was the person who probably opened my eyes to the fact that everyone else wasn't a Christian. So it's kind of ironic 

Karen: 

So before this time, you thought everybody in Europe were Christians? 

Zahara: 

Yeah or at least in my flat, I mean, it was two of us were Muslims, which I knew and I figured that's why they kind of put us next to each other in our doors to have us feel at home, I suppose. But I just assumed the rest of the eight are probably Christians because they're not Muslim is pretty binary, I suppose, growing up the way I did, but she looked different. She was walking out of her faith and I was like, you can spot a Christian. 

Karen: 

So how did you know that she was walking out of her faith? 

Zahara: 

She loved Jesus. You would just, she was a girl who clearly also living away from home. She is not from there. So she moved there would go to church and would have a Bible, which is weird for me because even I would never walk around with a Quran and I considered myself pretty pious. You know I didn't miss a prayer. I covered, I was the only one in the flat that was covered all the time and all that. But I just knew she loved Jesus. She wasn't scared of that. I don't think she was necessarily approaching me about it or the rest of us. But we had a lot of deep talks. I mean, the way you would in universities and our kitchen and just sitting down and all expressing our views. And she just knew that she was saved. 

Karen: 

So in this process, you're super pious. She's super pious thinking about one of the craziest things that you did in college. It wasn't like what you would think if you weren't out having sex, drinking, and having doing rock and roll and all of that, but you were listening to music. 

Zahara: 

Oh yeah

Karen: 

So tell us about that

Zahara:

Yeah, so I definitely grew up in a household where you weren't allowed to listen to music. I mean, right now my mom would still not listen to music in our house. My brothers will just come in my car and we'll jam up, but we're not allowed to listen to music at home. So that was definitely a rule-breaking there. But I would listen to, and again, not even vulgar music, not music necessarily that my mom has It's just that the concept of music is not okay. So I would listen to music in my room if I was cooking. And there was a song that I used to really, really like it was called Oceans by Hillsong didn't know that neither those things at any baggage for me.

Karen: 

Okay, wait, so Oceans by Hillsong, which is a huge worship song. And did you know this was a worship song? 

Zahara: 

Absolutely not I would not in my wildest dreams. I didn't know that until literally a few months ago, right now, like months into becoming a believer, which is absolutely insane because I listened to that probably most of first year. And that was one of the things my friend and I, the Christian friend, and I bonded over that. She's like, I love that song, but I didn't figure that meant it's a Christian song. It's just, we could bond over Adele. We could bond over anything. And she was like, oh, I really love that song. And I suppose in retrospect, she was a little perplexed that I liked that song. It makes sense now because when recently I shared with her that I'm getting baptized and all of this is happening and she's just wilded out. And she told me that when you told me you loved Oceans, I was so confused that the Islamic society president is just listening to worship music. And I would tell her, I was like, this song is just so peaceful. And I would listen to it in my room and play like on repeat until I fell asleep. And she would just tell me, I prayed for you so much that night because this Islamic girl is just out there asking the Holy Spirit to lead her deeper than her faith could ever hold her. And she was like I prayed for you that night for special peace and special revelation who knew all these years later that you were going to give me a phone call unexpected unprompted, definitely confusing. And I'm like, God started working so long ago. But also to think that I worship a God whose music could be confused with a romantic song, with a song about two people with a song that is about an intimate, loving relationship. I listened to it again, after she told me that. And I still see why I thought it might not be worship because it's a beautiful, personal relationship. Why would I ever think that's about God? There was no reason for me to confuse that with God. And I think that's just the biggest blessing on planet earth that you worship a God, we worship a living. God that loves us on a personal intimate level. Like, like a romance. I mean He literally called us His bride. How beautiful, but not only does He do that, it's not just a stretch to say that it's the reality. And I think that it makes sense why the Muslim girl didn't think that was about God, but that's just beautiful. 

Karen: 

It's mind-blowing. Isn't it? Just think about how God saw you right then. And He was using this forbidden music that was a love song to you, to Him even then. And you didn't know, so, okay. Let's fast forward so you graduate from college, you travel, you spend some time traveling the year and then you land here in North America with your family right in time for the pandemic. And so with this pandemic, you're now you're living in another new nation, all-new, strange cultures and all of that all around you, and you decide to take a mini master's course online and you're studying in the library and then just happen to randomly make a new friend. And tell us about that. 

Zahara: 

Yeah, I mean, in retrospect, that was not so random, but this new friend that I made in the library knew a lot about Islam. And as we mentioned earlier, I looked very obviously Muslim, right? It's not, I was wearing the hijab so it was very obvious that I was a Muslim girl and she had a bunch of books about Islam on the table. And I figured I see what's happening. You are clearly curious about Islam and you find a Muslim girl. But again, my friend just had a lot of questions about Islam and not surface-level questions and not questions that weren't given that hadn't been given a lot of thought and critical thought to my annoyance because these questions were a couple of years worth of research, which obviously my friend was too humble to tell me at the time they were just like, I'm just mildly curious, but you know, level four of this volume seems to suggest this. And I'm like, all right, well now I gotta do my due diligence because obviously have my cap on going to defend my faith. Really. That's what you want me to do. So it kind of put me in the position of like having to dig into things that I haven't necessarily because even though I grew up analytical and maybe critical, the critique was more doctrine and not necessarily the historicity of a lot of things, it might be. I don't like that God wants me to do this, but not that does God even want that in the first place. So I think the nature of the questions was totally different to the problems I've had in the past. So it required a whole new kind of array of research. 

Karen: 

So you had to start to in this process of defending your faith, you really had to start to think about your faith and understanding what it is that you believed. And I think that's a normal process for anybody who's been a believer in your faith for quite a period of time. When you come up against someone who has a different worldview in a different belief, and you start to ask each other questions you go into this process where you start to dive in deeply about, well, what do I believe? What is there? And I know with your lawyerly mind and your background, you dove in deep, you spent a year of just deep and wide study into Islam and into Christianity. And on the other side of that came an outcome that you didn't even expect. And so let's just kind of unpack a little bit about that because there were some big themes through your own study. So I can't even believe you approached your study just like a lawyer would just very methodical. You were looking for what's the word where you didn't want any bias in your study. You were studying it like a scientist actually. And so tell us a little hit the high points of the study. So some of it involved, a lot of book study, some involved, a lot of video study, some involved you observing Christians in their ecosystem to help you with your study. So what was that like? 

Zahara: 

I think at the beginning like I said, was definitely Islam-focused because I mean, I was just answering, I wasn't in the position to attack. I was just defending really the question thrown at me, but it was a little uncomfortable, which is kind of what you said because I wasn't able to persuade a person that doesn't have the same presuppositions as me. And that's about the only thing I've had before. Like I said, a 3D bubble of just Muslim was Muslim, Muslim. Like I can maybe defend my sect, but I never need to defend the foundation because that's just a given we're all Muslims. Whereas this person, a strong Christian and strong Christian on account of having learned my faith. That's offensive. Like to say that you grew a better Christian because you learn about mine. I'm obviously going to be on the defense. So a lot of that beginning was I can not go around in circles of circular reasoning, which is what my friend would always tell me like that circular reasoning. I was like, I'm not a fan of you calling me out on that because well, mom said that the Quran said that Mohammed said. Like I would need to step outside of that objectively. Why is this true? Why do you believe what you believe? One of the questions I remember was a moment I took back and wrote about and thought about, even though I was super angry, the moment she said, why are you any different to a Mormon? If I were deciding between you and a Mormon between Islam and Mormonism, what would be different? And I just flipped out because to me, even though I know zero about Mormonism, I just know that you can't equate me to a Morman and that the second-biggest faith in the world, you can equate to a bunch of people that just kind of had a prophet out of the blue revelation out of the blue, a book that completed. And she said that sounds an awful lot, like Islam to me. And I said, I don't like your question, but that was something for me to think about. So that's when I switched to gears, definitely started learning more about her faith, and to say, well, let's just see what the issues are with yours. If I'm not going to go all the way with defending mine, I'm at the very least going to attack yours 

Karen: 

You're so funny. So you're going to attack her faith, her Christian faith because you were fed up with trying to defend your own. And here's the thing I find that so interesting, you know, at iHOPE we talk a lot about looking for a person of peace and that is someone who the Lord might be wooing to Himself. Well, the way that you discern, if someone's a person of peace is if they keep coming back and asking more questions, it doesn't mean necessarily that person is a peaceful person. And in your situation, you are one of those rare individuals who you weren't exactly peaceful through this process. In fact, you were a little bit combative and if your friend had just kind of not also been a strong staunch believer in that process, she might have run away from you with your lawyerly mind, but the Lord was so sweet. He put someone in your path who was going to stand firm and not take personally your hard, tough questions and kind of your frustration and sometimes your anger. So you were a person of peace, although you were not peaceful. 

Zahara: 

Absolutely. I think that's such an important distinction because the fact that I was always there ready for the next potential argument, but maybe when I might win, I was just always back there. And I was always doing a little more digging, maybe more than I'd even let my friend let on or know about because then I can come with like 10 more things than she would expect. And it was, yeah, it was always there, but it was interesting that some of the first few months of learning about my friend's faith, I realized that the reason I sounded so silly in the first couple of months was because I was defining her faith based on how my faith defined her faith, which is probably the worst thing to do possible because you will not going to ask a Christian what the Bible has to say about the Quran and then believe that, right. Even though that might be the truth, but it's not, first of all, it came before, but just you, that's not the best way to go about it. So if I were doing it objectively, I needed to know what Christians believed from Christians.

Karen: 

This was such a turning point in Zahara's journey and next week on the Blue Cord Podcast we will hear the rest of her inspirational story and how God continued to work on her heart until then...

Thanks for listening to this podcast, a donor-supported series from iHOPE ministries. For more bite-sized things to know and do to share your faith with intention, follow us on Instagram @ihopeministries. Then go to ihopeministries.org and sign up for our weekly e-newsletter. If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts and subscribe wherever you listen. Your review helps the show empower more everyday Christians with the courage, confidence, and know-how to share Jesus in our generation. See you next time.