Beaten at the Hour of Prayer

Angry red welts blistered Sabir’s back.

“What happened?” asked his friend Jeremy, a Frontiers worker who meets with the Muslim-background believer for encouragement, prayer, and Bible study.

Sabir explained that he had been out job hunting when the call to prayer sounded. All the other men on the street stopped what they were doing and made their way to a nearby mosque.

But Sabir continued walking down the street.

Sabir felt the Lord say to him, “I am with you.”

An agent with the religious police saw that Sabir had no intention of going to pray at the mosque. The agent detained him, searched his pockets, and started beating him.

As the stick lashed his back, Sabir felt the Lord say to him, “I am with you.”

After the beating, the agent let him go.

Earlier in the day, Sabir had taken out of his pocket the little cross he often carried with him as a reminder of all that Christ had done for him. If the agent had found that little cross, Sabir would now be in prison.

“Lord, give me strength to stay.”

Many believers in Sabir’s situation would quickly make up their minds to leave the country as soon as possible.

But this event has had the opposite effect on Sabir.

After the attack, Sabir prayed with Jeremy, “Lord, give me strength to stay.”

“This is God’s mysterious way of working,” Jeremy says. “In the midst of adversity, we sometimes find more courage than before because we’ve experienced that the Lord is really with us.”

• Pray for Sabir to continue to trust the Lord amid persecution and to speak the Word without fear (Philippians 1:14).
• Ask God to make fishers of men out of Muslim-background believers like Sabir and to equip them as bold witnesses for the Gospel.
• Frontiers teams report that this region is ripe for a movement of faith in Jesus Christ. Pray that entire families will turn to the Lord and be baptized.