I just finished reading one of the most powerful books I have ever read. It's called A Big Life: Ordinary People Led by an Extraordinary God by Peter Hone. The book is about John and Kathy Heerema's extreme obedience to God to live for Him and to start Big Life Ministries and the lives that God has transformed through Big Life. The book is filled with testimony after testimony of how God radically transformed and called numerous people to His service because of His unconditional love for them.
I want to share an exert from the book on the story of Faizal because it is a powerful testimony of God's love and transforming power. Please join us for this two part series and I pray that it will stir your heart for the lost as it has mine.
Part 1
Pakistan-
He raised the small plastic cup to his lips and sipped gingerly, holding it delicately between thumb and forefinger because the tea was scalding hot, steam rising and swirling even on this blistering hot day. It probably wasn't good tea, but it tasted good to Faizal. When you have just returned to the city after months in the mountain wastes of Afghanistan training to be a Taliban freedom fighter, any tea tastes good.
They had first approached him outside the mosque where many young Muslims were recruited. The clerics told of the fatwa announcing the call to arms. He was excited and surprised to find he was no stranger to them. They knew all about his family's standing in the community, his strong religious education at the Madrassa, the Koranic school, and his strict upbringing as a devout Muslim. They said they wanted him, and they were calling him in the name of jihad. He was to be a warrior for Allah, given the honor of fighting to expel the infidels from Afghanistan.
His father, a prominent Pashtun leader, was so proud. To have a son called to jihad in this manner was a privilege. When the war had begun a few years ago and the Taliban fighters were driven back from Kabul, many had been conscripted to fight; but they were poor fighters, poorly trained, and they were defeated. But now the Taliban had regrouped, they were organized, and they chose their soldiers more carefully, selecting men who were strong in mind as well as body-men who understood the holy vision of the Koran, obedient men with passion who would never accept defeat.
Faizal became skilled in modern weaponry and in the art of guerilla warfare that has always been so successful in the maze of mountain strongholds that is Afghanistan. He learned to kill efficiently and to hate the arrogant, invading infidel and everything for which he stood.
He was comfortable handling both light and heavy weapons and many kinds of explosives, most of which he could improve himself. He could blow up a bridge or a railway track in minutes. He was taught hand-to-hand combat, survival techniques, communications, and how to set up spy networks. He learned to assess the weak points in different kinds of enemy aircraft and armored vehicles and to master the weapons that were effective in destroying them. And he learned how to conceal a device on his body if he was ever given the honor of being called to be a suicide bomber. He had no fear of death, knowing that his reward in paradise was assured. He was a Muhajid, a warrior called to jihad.
Now he was back home. He would work in his father's business until he was called again-this time not for training, but for war. He would pray that this would be soon because his purpose and his destiny were rapidly approaching. Faizal knew this because he could feel it in his heart. Something was about to happen.
As he sipped his tea, he looked around this busy, open tea stall. No one paid him any attention. He smiled, wondering how they would regard him if they knew he was a Taliban soldier. His mind drifted back to his training. It had been difficult sleeping five hours a night on the hard ground in a thin tent, a loaded weapon constantly at his side. Some nights he froze, not sleeping at all, and the food had been pitiful.
But Faizal's heart stirred as he remembered the commander's address the day he left to return home. He recalled the set of the man's jaw and the steel in his eyes as much as he recalled the passion in his words: "The infidels are ruling this world, and they are bent on the demonization of Islam. They are terrorists, and it is the duty and the holy purpose of all Muslims to take up arms and crush those who would oppress and murder Muslims throughout the world. They must be killed, slaughtered, and annihilated wherever we find them."
Faizal had wept as he cheered. He was ready to fight, ready to kill, and ready to sacrifice.
(Exert from "A Big Life" by Peter Hone. Used with permission.)
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