Sermon Illustrations
Prayer Leads to Conversion of Muslims
Austin Carty, a former contestant on the television show Survivor, shares about a mission trip to Indonesia:
Spending a couple of days in this Indonesian environment was quite rewarding for me. The country is 99 percent Muslim, and just this past March, Time magazine deemed the small nation "the crossroads of the Muslim faith." Therefore, we were prohibited to talk about Jesus in the Indonesian villages… But not being able to speak about Jesus in the villages didn't mean he wasn't there.
On the final night of our stay in Indonesia, we met on the beach. A bonfire had been lit, and as it stood tall as a man, violently ripping with flames, it spoke of the refining process God had been doing on all of our hearts that week. That night I, along with one of the young boys from the school, played guitar and led a chorus of praise songs that lasted for nearly an hour…
And that's when a remarkable thing happened: a kid fell to his knees to give his life to Christ. And then another followed…and then a third. Ultimately, seven children dedicated their lives to Jesus that night. I would learn the next morning that the seven kids who gave their lives to Christ were, in fact, the seven very kids for whose salvation the staff had been praying for nearly a year.