"From Burning Churches to A Burning Heart"

I sat in a small room in Djibouti, East Africa, as Guled wept, he told me one of the most amazing and captivating stories of GRACE that I have ever heard. He recalled the events of his youth and how that God had taken this Somalian Muslim and made him into a preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. To be sure, he was not just any Muslim from any part of the Islamic world. He was a fundamentalists from a people who pride themselves as being the "watchman" of the Koran. He was a young and impressionable Somali.

He had grown up in a place called Hargeisa. His father had died when he was still a child, and his mother was unable to care for the needs of Guled and the remaining children. It was a hard life in a hard place. He ended up moving across the border into the eastern towns of Ethiopia. Guled was about 16 years when he and other young teenagers were radicalized by local cleric, and began to spend their evenings burning down church buildings. As we sat and talked in this quiet guest house, Guled said, "I never really knew why I hated Christians and Churches? I just grew up in a culture where it was expected".

Oneday something happened that would change the life of this teenager. An older Ethiopian man offered Guled a place to live, and he spent the next several months living in the home of Christian. The old man cared for him, fed him, and showed a compassion that he had never known from Islam. After being there for several weeks, the man offered him an Arabic New Testament. Guled nearly refused it, but felt compelled to accept it due to the old man's kindness. However, he didn't immediately begin to read it. Then one night he picked up the Bible and after making sure that he wouldn't be seen or found out, he begin out of curiosity to read the Scriptures. He read it nightly, over and over again. He was drawn to the life of Christ and the love of God for people. One evening as he read John 3:16, he could not continue. He was captured by 'God loving the whole world'. Could God love a boy that had burnt churches? Could he love the people of Somalia? Could he even love those that had blasphemed His name? Guled, under the weight of conviction from his own sins, fell to his knees and  with tears begged Christ to be his Savior. For 14 months he had read this Book. He had looked at it with skepticism and so much doubt in the beginning. Now he believed it like a child. Now he believed in the One who died for the sins of every race. He had gone from a Saul of Tarsus, to an Apostle Paul. He had become a Christian, a real Somalian Christian.

Guled travelled back to his home after 4 months of intensive discipleship in Ethiopia. He thought that he might reach his own family with the Gospel. He learned through great affliction that some "come unto their own, but their own receive them not". However, after a period in Hargeisa, through the advise of a man of God, Guled made a decision to go into Djibouti and reach his people in that neighboring country. He came with hardly the shirt on his back, but now, several years later, he conducts Bible studies in a home with several Somalians. He is now married to a good Christian woman and both are serving the Lord. Guled no longer burns churches where people meet to worship the Son of God, but instead his heart burns to serve this same Christ that he once despised.