Dear friends,
As we stood worshipping at a church in Amman a week and a half ago, I felt a rising conviction: now is the time for the church to move into the Islamic world in a decisive, committed, focused and sacrificial way.
Many parts of the Lord’s body are doing this in their different callings. I believe that ours particularly is to go into Iraq with this message:
Your religious leaders say that God wants us to kill each other. Jesus says he wants us to love each other.
The terrorists in Iraq don’t see the struggle as political or cultural. They are willing to blow themselves up by the dozens because they perceive it to be a defining spiritual conflict. And I believe they are right. The choice between death and life, cursing and blessing, hate and love, Satan and God, has not in my lifetime ever been laid out so clearly for the Arab people. And the Spirit of God desires to respond through his people.
This conviction undergirds my decision to step up our outreach into Iraq by offering life through heart surgery to many more dying children. Each intervention carries with it a powerful and far-reaching message about who God is and how we are to relate to him and to each other.
And coming to terms with God means coming to terms with the salvation history revealed in and through the Jewish people. Here our partnership with Israeli doctors to help Arab Muslim children is itself a hugely significant message. God’s desire is to tear down through Messiah the wall of division between Jew and Arab. This is essential to coming to faith in the God of Israel, the God of the scriptures.
I’m asking you, our longtime friends, to stop and think and pray about where we stand in history and what God is asking of us. We need to seek him and know his will if we are to make a difference. We will need to tap new resources of money, prayer, and volunteers. God has prepared the way and given us a wonderful position from which to move forward.
As I write, we are starting to see the fruit of the visit by Israeli doctors to Amman two weeks ago. Three children in need of heart surgeries are now in the air en route to India with their escorts (photos from the airport are at the end of this message). Three more children for Germany and seven to Israel are still waiting for their visas. And when this group is in Israel, the Lord may show us to release the story to the media, particularly the Arab satellite television stations which saturate the Middle East. The Iraqi families I’ve spoken with are amazingly ready and willing for this to happen.
There will be opposition and there will be costs. Our volunteers, myself included, are coming under surprisingly sharp spiritual attack. Our enemy wishes to sow division and confusion. We keenly need your intercession now. And only by God’s immediate intervention will we stand under the financial pressures. We need $4750 by Thursday simply to meet the needs of this week.
Thank you for allowing me to make these needs known to you, so that together we can make them known to the LORD our provider.
Jonathan Miles
International Coordinator
Shevet Achim
