The Dangerous Cost of Studying the Bible

I stood alone on the side of the mountain, on the border of my home country in the Middle East, wind whipping my hair, dust stinging my eyes. I wasn’t sure what awaited me on my journey, but I was sure it was where God wanted me to go. After resting in that wild place, I picked up my backpack and continued my long walk home.

This was a journey that had begun several years earlier. Not on foot, but in my heart.

In my youth, I heard about Jesus and immediately knew that out of all the gods worshiped in my country, he was the one true God. The one I wanted to worship. 

Soon, I began meeting with three other new believers. The gospel meant so much to us – we had to tell people! We shared the good news with anyone we could, including our families. 

Then, in the summer of 2014, we were arrested. 

After we were released, our leader moved away. We were young in faith and afraid to meet by ourselves. Our group fell apart.

A few years later, I heard about an Entrust Bible institute that was designed for people from my country to learn more about God and his teachings. I began to dream of going there. 

Through God’s grace, within two weeks, I received a call from the school’s director, encouraging me to come and study. It was a long, dangerous journey, crossing mountains and borders, but finally I arrived. My dream had come true!

During my studies there, God gave me a new dream! God was moving in my country and saving many. But those new believers were living in a spiritual desert. I wanted to return and share what I was learning. To quench their thirst to know God. I knew this might involve suffering, even another arrest. But I took courage from my studies of 2 Corinthians where Paul talks about his suffering for Jesus. 

Ten days after completing my last course, I put my dream into action. While standing on that same mountain where I had started, I knew Jesus would guide me back across those mountains and over the borders so I could use what I had learned at the Bible institute in the spiritual desert of my homeland.

I was confident in the skills I had been taught and used them to establish Bible studies in seven cities and to arrange for small groups to travel to the Bible Institute for short, more intensive studies.

But, my time at home was cut short. A year and a half after I arrived, I was arrested again. 

Miraculously the Lord opened the door out of prison, but I had to leave the country. God directed me back to Entrust’s Bible Institute to continue his work from there. 

God has carried me a long way from that day when I gave my heart to Jesus.

He has moved me back and forth between countries, often on foot.

I have known imprisonment and hardship.

But he’s allowed me to continue creating Bible studies, resources and devotionals to help grow and strengthen the body of Christ in my home country.