An American missionary couple working with Ekballo Project answered God’s call to Berlin, Germany, and have been ministering to refugees from the Middle East.
They recently baptized a young man named Nizar, who told them a story that demonstrates the power of Jesus’ name.
“My uncle’s wife, she couldn’t walk,” Nizar recounted to them. Due to a serious back problem, she was confined to her bed for a year and her weight swelled to 220 pounds.
“My uncle was really lost, he didn’t know what to do,” Nizar said. His uncle had little work and was facing the possibility of relocation to another city. Nizar says his uncle is one of the toughest people he knows. “He even has a tattoo on his body that says, ‘Don’t mess with me; I’ll kick your (expletive).’
“He didn’t have much money. He had to sell the things he had. It was a very hard time for him,” Nizar said.
A few months went by, and his uncle decided to study the Quran and become more Islamic. But after spending several weeks in the Islamic scripture, he became disillusioned and said, “OK, let’s see another thing.”
So he began to converse with some of the Druze refugees about their faith. Their religion is considered a monotheistic Abrahamic religion, but it does not follow the Five Pillars of Islam. Their beliefs integrate features of Isma’ilism, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism and other philosophies.
The Druze call themselves “People of Unitarianism or Monotheism.” After the uncle searched for answers among the Druze he concluded, “OK, I have found nothing here. Let’s go to another place.”
Then he found a New Testament and started reading. “He read and read and read. After one week he was bored,” Nizar recounted.
One day Nizar’s uncle walked into the living room, set the New Testament down, and began to pour himself a drink of arak, an anise-flavored, distilled alcoholic beverage.
“He was an alcoholic,” Nizar noted. “When he was spiritual he left alcohol, but now he decided to go back.”
At the same time, his wife was in the other room in severe pain.
At this point, he was desperate for any kind of breakthrough and cried out to God.
“OK, (God), what do you want from me? I have been through all this. You know that deep in my heart, I love You. I know that deep in my heart that I am Your child. Why am I suffering like this? Why do You let life hit me like this, break me like this?
“I was rich,” he lamented. “I had a lot of money. I had a lot of friends. What do I have now? I have a sick woman on the bed in the other room yelling all day for a year.”
Then he was stunned by a response from above, a voice that said: “Go to your wife and pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Put your hand on her back, and she will be healed.”
Startled, he put the drink down, jumped up and rushed into her room.
“Come, woman, don’t speak; turn,” he instructed with some urgency.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Turn around!”
He placed his hand on her back and prayed: “In the name of Jesus Christ … .”
Suddenly his wife felt something like a piece of hot metal piercing her back. “What are you doing?” she cried out. She thought he was stabbing her.
But it was not a knife entering her back; it was the healing power of Jesus, the God who heals!
After he prayed, she stood up and walked.
Soon, she went to the doctor to see what happened. They examined the X-rays and could see something happened, but could not explain it.
“After this, my uncle’s faith is so strong he can’t speak of anything except Jesus,” Nizar says. “Now he has the strongest belief, and he’s the most peaceful guy ever.” {eoa}
This article originally appeared on Assist News Service.
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