miracles amongst muslim Syrian Refugees

Four of us took a 5 day trip to Jordan this past week with the intention of spending time with and ministering to Syrian refugees. As they have fled their war-torn nation, many of them have ended up in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. We had the privilege of connecting with a number of Syrian families in northern Jordan while we were there. We also got to minister to other Jordanian, Palestinian and Egyptian muslims during this trip.

This trip had a major impact on me personally largely due to the time we spent with refugees, hearing their painful stories; ones of loss, shattered dreams, destroyed families and other violent traumas. To see the way the Church has arisen in Jordan to provide for the basic needs of thousands of refugees, was amazing and humbling. To see the way radical Islamic clerics from the Arabian Peninsula are also there to peddle their radical ideas (ironically, the very ideas that have fueled the war they have fled from) and to literally attempt to “buy off” these vulnerable Syrian muslims, made me incredibly angry. The radical “Wahabi” Islam that the Saudis have exported all over the world, and which fuels global Jihad, is pumped into any place and every place that the petrodollars can access. Today one of their targets is wherever there are Syrian refugees. One Syrian after declaring in front of us and his entire family that “all the Saudi Religious Sheikhs are liars”, pulled me aside and pleaded with me for help as he explained that they were ‘confusing’ their women with their poisonous ideas, and ‘buying’ their loyalty (paying them to attend their lectures) which he said was destroying the relationships between husbands and wives. Diabolical. A revelation of the true face and nature of religion of Islam.

All this to say, that this is truly a kairos moment for Syrian muslim refugees and we must pray that the Gospel reaches them at a time when many of them want little to do with the Islam that has destroyed their lives. We saw absolutely no opposition to our message and ministry while we were with them. Not a single objection from one Syrian we spent time with! Unprecedented. Remarkable.

I will try to describe some of the encounters we had and how the Lord led us to minister to them. We had been invited by a friend to visit a number of the Syrian families she knew. We had the honor of sitting with them, and praying for them. God gave us many prophetic pictures and words for them and their futures. Many of them were healed physically often after the Lord would reveal the sickness or injury supernaturally through words of knowledge. One miracle really stuck in my mind. As we were sitting with one family, I got a word of knowledge and asked who in the family had a left shoulder problem. The husband said that it was for his brother who was living outside of the city in the largest refugee camp. I asked if he could get his brother on the phone as I wanted to pray for him. He did and I found out that the shoulder was injured while he was being tortured when the brother was in captivity in Syria. Two years of chronic pain. I prayed for him in Arabic over the phone. I broke off the trauma of the experience. I asked for God’s Kingdom to come and this man was completely healed! I handed the phone to the husband so that his brother could tell him what happened. After hearing his brother testify, he shared with the whole room what the Lord had done. The great end to this story is that one of the Jordanian Christians, who was formerly a muslim, will be able to follow up with him inside the camp.

Perhaps more impactful than the physical healings were the emotions and trauma that God healed, or at least began to heal. We would lay hands on these men and women and ask the Holy Spirit to come and to ask for the Peace of Christ to rest on them. The things that happened were stunning. Those who haven’t laughed or even smiled in as long as they could remember, had joy return. Those who were tortured with flashbacks and night terrors would try to describe what they were experiencing during and after prayer and would say, “I can’t describe what is happening”. Talk about “the peace that TRANSCENDS ALL UNDERSTANDING” (Phil 4:7). We saw that happen to every person we prayed for. A couple of people we prayed for really stood out as they had been fighters in the war. They were bearded radicals (as are most of the opposition regardless of what the liberal media wants us to believe), and I wasn’t sure how open they would be to having Westerners pray for them. The Western-led air strikes are hurting their cause, even if they aren’t/weren’t connected with ISIS (which we don’t actually know) because it strengthens the Syrian Regime that they were fighting against.

The great thing is that LOVE NEVER FAILS (1 Cor 13:8) and we weren't there to talk politics or take sides; we were there to love these men and women in the power of the Holy Spirit in the Name of Jesus. We had the unthinkable opportunity to pray for two different fighters who had life changing encounters with the love of God. Their countenances changed. We saw the anger and desire for vengeance begin to dissipate. I was able to share why Jesus taught us to love our enemies which is a totally foreign concept in Islam.

Beyond these encounters, there was such a hunger for them to hear through prophetic words what the Lord was showing us about their lives. He revealed so many things, some in great detail, which got their attention. Islam teaches that God no longer speaks today. These Syrian muslims heard God speak to them – to call out their destinies, to show them that their futures were full of hope, and to reveal to them the beauty of Christ and His work to make a way for them into His Kingdom. In one house, the muslim women were so impacted that they called their neighbors on the phone and another group of women arrived hungry to hear what God would show us about their lives and solutions to their problems.

Please pray for the Syrian people. More of them are hearing the Gospel today than arguably at any point in the past 1000 years. They are also “seeing” the Gospel as so often it is Christians who are meeting the needs especially in Jordan and Lebanon. One testimony we heard from Lebanon was stunning – a husband who was fighting in Syria heard about people who were helping his family and protecting the honor of his wife and daughters. He came off the battlefield to meet these Christians and to thank them for doing for them what he was supposed to do. The entire family came to Christ. More Lord.