Information and Prayer Guidelines from the Christian Concern for Muslims Prayer Calender, Ramadan 2020 - Day 29.
[Written by Fred Nel from Eternal Life Outreach]
I was exposed to mission work among Indian people on the South Coast of Natal. I learned about the people, their
culture, food and different traditions and especially their religions. It was all new to me.
For the majority of people in South Africa all Indians was just part of one great large Indian culture group – sad to say for many people it is still like that today. To my own great surprise, I learnt very quickly that the Indian people mainly formed two main groups, namely Hindus and Muslims.
Prayer Point: There are Muslims in every town and city today, especially in the business areas. Many of us hunt for bargains among these Muslim businesses. Pray that the Lord will give us a passion to learn more about these people, their culture and they beliefs etc. but most of all to learn how to share the Gospel with them.
You may not know it, but Muslims are more open to talk about God, religion and spiritual matters than your average neighbor or even yourself. Pray that we as Christians will not shy away because of our own ignorance and lose a golden opportunity to lead someone to the Lord.
At that time, I was blessed to learn that there already exists a large number of churches, independent and denominational, in the Indian communities. Excited to learn about so many Indians that became Christians, I also learnt that almost 100% of them came from a Hindu background, only a few came from a Muslim background.
Prayer Point: Pray for the predominantly Indian churches of which the majority are in Indian communities close to Mosques and Hindu temples. Pray for these Christians that the Lord will give them a heart and a zeal to reach out to the Muslims in their communities.
Receiving some Anti-Christian Islamic material from some Muslims, mainly material from the late Mr. Admed Deedat, I learnt that the International Islamic Propagation Centre International (IPCI) is just opposite the Grey Street Mosque in Durban. From here Islamic Anti-Christian material goes out by the tons internationally, and thousands of Muslims from all over the world used to get trained there to argue and debate with Christians regarding The Bible, Jesus as the Son of God, Jesus as God, The Crucifixion and the Trinity among a number of other literature to refute and ridicule Christians and Christianity.
Prayer Point: Pray that Christians will not be offended about these objections that appear to oppose the very essence of Christianity. Pray that Christians will make the effort to learn why and what is the essence of these objections against Christianity. Pray that Christians will learn HOW to answer Muslims regarding these objections without going into a debate or long theological discussions. Pray for Muslims that they will not accept the teachings from people like Deedat and other likeminded, but that they will make a point to study the Bible and Christianity to get the TRUE answers to these objections that stand between them and receiving true salvation in Christ.
Prayer Point: Pray for John Gilchrist and Gerhard Nehls whose substantial material resources and answers are all over the internet available. Please pray for Fred Nel who train and teach people how to answer this objections all over the country, and internationally, without getting into a debate and who's "Gold Nuggets for Communicating the Gospel" which are also now available through https://www.tencourses.org/goldnuggets/
Today the general news is that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. Taking in consideration that Muslims can have four wives, it is obvious that populations that endorse Islam as a religion is growing fast, but there are no great numbers of people that convert to Islam. The average Muslim is therefore more culturally a Muslim leaving it to the clergy to explain and know the religion.
Prayer Point: Pray for Muslims all over the world who experience such legalism and hatred from among their own communities that they had to flee their countries to the Western World. Pray for these people as they do not want to be Muslims anymore. Because they do not know Christianity, they become agnostic and don’t want to have anything to do with religion. Pray that the Lord will send in workers amongst this harvest that HE brought to us as immigrants to show them that true Christianity is not a religion but a relationship.
Prayer Point: Pray for Muslim and converted Muslims and Christian immigrants from Muslim countries that flee to Europe, Canada, USA, other countries and here to us from all over Africa.
It made me sad to learn that since the Lord called me into missions' way back in the early eighties, that there were just a handful of people in the whole of South Africa that really reach out to Muslims with the Gospel. In 1985 those of us who were concerned about the Muslims gathered to encourage one another, we were less than 20 people, and we formed Christian Concern for Muslims (CCM) as a partnership to encourage one another and to work towards multiplying the workers.
Prayer Point: With the influx of immigrants into South Africa as well as population growth the need for more Christian workers among Muslims has become an enormity. We can do Missions and Evangelism right on our doorstep. Please pray for the local churches' Pastors and Dominees that they help their congregation members to see and use the potential to make Missions and Evangelism to Muslims part of their life style and let us CCM at large help them to teach their congregation members HOW to reach out to Muslims with the Gospel.
In 1987 three of us, John Gilchrist of "Jesus to the Muslims", Gerhard Nehls of "Life Challenge Africa" and my self of "Eternal Life Outreach" attended an international conference in Zeist Holland presented by the Samuel Zwemer Institute for Islamic Studies. Among other things we learnt that there were only 750 full time missionaries in the world that work among Muslims. Less then 2% of the church at large missionaries work amongst Muslims.
Prayer Point: Pray for the Muslims who are still today the largest unreached people group in the world. Islam spread over 550 major cultural groups in 75 countries. In many parts of the World as well as in Indonesia, the largest Islamic country, there are people groups where there are no Christian workers at all. Please pray for Indonesia, South East Asia, The Middle East and the Muslims in the 10/40 Window. Use the Joshua Project material and prayer points to pray for specific countries and specific people groups https://joshuaproject.net/resources/articles/10_40_window
In the same year, 1987, I was appointed in a Synodical Ministers position "2de Indiër Leraarspos" for the Northern and Eastern Transvaal Dutch Reform Church - a very vast area.
I started with a new paradigm – training ordinary congregation members on how to reach out with the Gospel to local Muslims.
This ministry took off in many towns in these provinces and mainly in Pretoria where a large number of Christian students became trained and involved in reaching out to Muslims in Laudium and in towns nearby Pretoria like Brits, Bronkhorstspruit, Witbank, Middelburg, Warmbath and many more.
The training on "How to reach Muslims" grew and in 1989 I found myself involved with the Lausanne movement and with the Haggai Institute - emphasizing and training on "How to present the Gospel to Muslims"
The work of Eternal Life Outreach spread, and I found myself training people in our neighbouring countries to reach out to Muslims in their own countries.
I took teams to Malawi, reaching out to the Yao in Malawi, an unreached Muslim people group.
Prayer Point: Pray for Muslims and Christians at large who live for so long beside each other but still know so little about one another and one another's beliefs and practices. As the Lord entrusted the message of reconciliation to us as Christians (2 Cor 5:17-20) pray that Christians will accept the responsibility to make missions part of our daily lifestyle and reach out to Muslims. Pray that we do not get influenced or distracted from our Christian responsibility by the information regarding Islam at large. Pray that we as Christians do not get confused about what is real Evangelism and Missions towards Muslims verses "showing the contradictions etc" in Islam, the Quran and their Prophet – take note those who do it, are not busy to win Muslims for Christ, but are maybe breaking bridges to Muslims instead of building bridges.
Through the Haggai Institute I have been training people since 1990 to present the Gospel internationally - from Africa to the Middle East, India, Pakistan, South East Asia - especially Indonesia which is the largest Muslim country in the world, Russia and many other parts of the world.
Prayer Point: Pray for the Haggai Institute internationally and locally. The Vision, Aim and Goal of the Haggai Institute is Advance the Leadership, Evangelism and Mission skills of Christians from developing countries. People who qualify for the training are committed Christians, have a proficiency in English, a heart to train others in their own countries and make a commitment to train at least a 100 other people in their own countries or community after their Haggai Training.
Please visit Haggai International for more prayer points. https://www.haggai-international.org/ Pray for these Haggai Alumni who live out their commitment to the Lord, most of the times in extensive hostile environments, especially in predominantly Islamic countries.
Today my training on how to reach Muslims with the Gospel is known as, "The Gold Nuggets of Communicating the Gospel to Muslims – Telling Muslims that Jesus loves them" It is now available on DVD in 8 sessions including a workbook.
It is one of the elective courses of Teach Every Nation (TEN) and can be downloaded from the internet at https://www.tencourses.org/goldnuggets/ together with the workbook, or can be ordered from Eternal Life Outreach as well.
Prayer Point: Pray for Teach Every Nation (TEN). Their focus is to help churches to disciple their congregation members as well as to train new pastors all over Africa, South East Asia, the Philippines and many other countries. TEN already developed full training courses with 5 main courses and 5 electives in each box, called "The Bible School on Wheels" red and blue box – they are working on a third box.
In Africa and all over the developing world there are Christians who really experience the calling of the Lord in their lives to become full time involved in the pastorate and even Church planting. One of these people's greatest obstacles is the fact that they do not have the money or the means to go for full time theological studies. The Bible School on Wheels train these people to go into the pastorate with sound Biblical knowledge.
Pray for our TEN African leaders where there are people busy with the training material in English as well as in French. Pray that the Lord will open a door that we will be able to have Gold Nuggets translated soon into French as well, as a large number of African countries are predominantly French speaking where there are also large numbers of Muslims in their countries.
On invitation Fred presents the Gold Nuggets training on how to reach Muslims with the Gospel to churches all over the country and internationally.
With a total lockdown now because of the covert-19 virus this year Fred started presenting the Gold Nuggets training LIVE to individuals as well as to groups interactively through the Internet and Zoom. This opens the doors for the future to present the training LIVE and INTERACTICE to Churches and groups in small, far off places where there are a few people who really have a burden from the Lord to share the Gospel with the Muslims in their town but the travel cost of the past just made it impossible for them to have brought the training to their town. Now it has become absolutely possible and they can get firsthand training to present the Gospel to their local Muslims so that Muslims not only hear it but also understand it.
Pray for Eternal Life Outreach and Fred who are:
i. Researching more material to make available for those who want to work among Muslims.
ii. Working on the development of new tracts for Muslims.
iii. Pray for the presence of Eternal Life Outreach on the internet through a website, Facebook, Zoom and YouTube.
iv. Training others to reach out to Muslims.
v. Reaching Muslims with the Gospel.
Contact details:
Fred Nel Cell: +27 81 762 8134
Email: frednel2010@gmail.com
