Front-Row Seats to God’s Work

The power of real time prayer during interactions with North Africans

There were twenty empty benches she could have chosen to sit on. Instead, she chose the bench where I was sitting.  

This was not a coincidence. 

Prior to this, I had been praying and walking, asking the Lord to show me who to talk to. In the region of North Africa, it is against the law to proselytize. However, we can start conversations with North Africans and ask questions, and they will often ask questions back about what we believe.  

Our bench faced the ocean, and as we both looked out over the rolling waves, we started talking. 

As we talked, I learned that this woman, *Hayat, was a widow. She deeply loved her late husband and shared that he was in heaven. I asked her how she knew her husband was in heaven. What is heaven like for him? What the Quran teaches about heaven is very different than the Bible, and it also looks different for men and women.  

A strange thing began to happen. Every time I tried to ask her anything spiritual, she stopped understanding my Arabic. While I am not a native speaker, I wasn’t used to my Arabic not being understood at all.  

In the middle of our conversation, Hayat received a phone call. While she was on the phone, I sent a message to a WhatsApp group that my husband and I have. This group is for those committed to praying with us and for us as we share the Gospel in North Africa. It’s a place where we can send prayer requests out in real time. I quickly shared with the group about the conversation I was having with Hayat and how there seemed to be a spiritual block and asked for their prayers. Within seconds, I started receiving notifications that those in the group were praying.  

Hayat finished her call, and we went back to our conversation. I asked some of the exact same questions that I had asked before, the ones she hadn’t understood. But suddenly she was understanding what I was trying to say, and we had a very deep spiritual conversation about how she would like to hope for heaven, but she doesn’t have any certainty that that’s where she would go. As our conversation came to a close, we exchanged numbers and I connected her to other Christ followers who lived near her.  

It was prayer that removed the blocks from the conversation.

Whatever had been taking place, whatever blinders had been over her eyes, it was prayer that made the shift in our conversation and her ability to understand the spiritual questions I was asking.  

There was another time, when my husband and I were sharing at one of our sending Churches in the UK. Just as we have a WhatsApp prayer group, we are also a part of WhatsApp prayer groups of fellow workers. In the middle of our presentation about North Africa, we received a message in one of the prayer WhatsApp groups that we’re a part of from a coworker serving in North Africa. They were in the middle of a sharing with a young North African man, Abdu*. The conversation was going deep, and Abdu was showing real openness and asking deep questions.  

We stopped our presentation at the church and shared this prayer request. We had everyone break into small groups and pray for Abdu  

After we finished praying, we carried on with our meeting and then had another meeting with the youth group. While we were sharing with that youth group, we received a WhatsApp message that Abdu had decided to follow Jesus! We were able to share this news with the youth group who had been praying for Abdu at the previous meeting!

These youth will always know that they were a part of what the Lord did in this North African man’s heart. We told them,

“You know, one day in heaven you’ll have someone to meet who you may never meet on this side of earth, but you’ll be able to say, ‘Hey, I was a part of your journey!’”.  

Prayer Casts Vision

We see that there’s value in our words and in the time we spend praying.  

We each get to be participants in the work of the Lord in North Africa through our prayers. There are many times we may not see the outcome of those prayers, but there are times, like with Hayat and Abdu, when we are given a front-row seat in watching the Lord answer our prayers.  

*Names have been changed for security reasons.