Because Muslims expect to be shunned as terrorists by citizens of Western nations, Christians can sometimes win them to Christ by showing them radical love and acceptance, former Muslim Afshin Ziafat said at the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission's Leadership Summit on the Gospel and racial reconciliation.
"My goal when talking to a Muslim is for them to see Jesus in me and then for me to share Jesus with them," Ziafat, lead pastor of Providence Church in Frisco, Texas, said during a March 27 breakout session on Islam. "I don't know any former Muslim who became a Christian who has said to me, 'I was just cornered in a debate, and it made sense that Islam was crazy and I became a Christian.' Every former Muslim that I know who's a Christian -- every one of them -- points to a person" who loved them.
In a main session, Ziafat explained the biblical rationale for loving Muslims, noting that the Gospel requires believers to share Christ in word and deed with people from different cultures and religions. Acts 10 and other Scriptures make clear that God intends to save people from all races, Ziafat said.
"If we go out with the message of reconciliation to people who don't look like us, who don't talk like us, who don't dress like us, who are separated from us, we are living out the Gospel," Ziafat said. "Why? Because the greatest divide isn't even a racial divide. The greatest divide of all time is the divide between Holy God and sinful man." Yet Jesus loved those on the opposite side of the divide. Keep reading
Photo credit: Alli Rader
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