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Emptiness in their hearts
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‘I see emptiness in their hearts’
Believer strives to spread joy of own conversion
By Called and Sent Staff
Names have been changed
NORTH SUMATRA, Indonesia—There’s nothing like the threat of stoning to test your perseverance as a believer.
Ask Chazali.
Perseverance won the 37-year-old minister to Jesus. It kept him focused when angry Muslim neighbors pounded on his door during house church meetings. And it gives him the boldness to keep telling people about Isa al-Masih (Jesus the Messiah) in a town that is virtually 100 percent Muslim.
Trouble in the Neighborhood
Following university and Bible school, Chazali went to work in 2002 as a church staff member in an area of Sumatra with deep Christian roots. But his heart wasn’t inside the walls of the church. After two years, he quit, moved his family to a Muslim city and began ministering full-time to whomever would listen.
An English major in college, he began giving private English lessons in his home to make a living. While getting to know his students, one of his tactics was to give them Gospel tracts as a way to introduce them to English and Jesus at the same time.
The strategy backfired in 2005.
He gave a tract to one of his students, the son of a Muslim couple next door. Everything was fine for about six months until a friend of Chazali’s asked the student for directions to Chazali’s house and made an offhand remark about him being a Christian minister.
“From that time … it was more dangerous because the student was Muslim,” Chazali says. “He stopped the lessons.”
Not only that, but the boy’s parents became so irate that they incited other Muslims in the neighborhood to attack Chazali and his wife.
“They threatened us, and they said that if we kept praying and singing and praising God and having fellowship in our house, they would stone us,” he recalls. (Stoning is still a widely accepted form of punishment in Indonesia—40 percent of people surveyed last year by the Indonesian Survey Institute said that adulterers should be stoned to death.) “So we were big-time afraid, and from that time, any time I sang a song loudly, or if we had more than five persons gathering in my house, they hit the door of my house because they didn’t like to listen to our praise and worship.
“We don’t have any services in my home now.”
So far, Chazali and his family have been able to stay in their home. It’s given him a chance to show his neighbors what the Bible means when it says to “love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).
“We have to be sincere to the lost when we talk, and we have to be patient,” he says. “If they want to persecute us, we don’t need to offend them. We don’t need to talk back to them harshly. We need to look for the chance when we could help them, even if they hate us.
“In the case of my neighbor[s], even though they currently hate me, I am always friendly to their son. And I know that he likes me. Even though he is a Muslim, he wants to eat in our house. This is very interesting.”
The Turning Point
During Chazali’s university days, faith meant Mary and Catholicism, but a relationship with Christ didn’t really enter into it. A classmate of his tried to tell him about Isa al-Masih, but Chazali brushed him off.
But like the widow in Jesus’ parable who badgered the judge into hearing her case, Chazali’s classmate persisted: talking with him, inviting him to events and asking questions.
“I believed strongly in St. Mary, because my parents came from Catholicism — so I refused the evangelist many times,” Chazali says. “But one thing that astonished me was, this evangelist always came and always came — and he cared for me, too. So I was asking myself, ‘Why has this person come, even if I refused him?’ I believe the Holy Spirit touched my heart at that time.”
When the friend asked him to a Christian revival meeting on campus, Chazali went. He gave his life to Christ that night.
He went on to finish his undergraduate degree and a three-year Bible degree before taking his church staff position.
Today Chazali leads a new church that meets in a rented room. It’s a small-but-diverse, group -- Batak (his own people group), Javanese and even some of his Chinese Buddhist friends. His earnings might be meager (he only charges about $1 per private English lesson) and the stakes high, but Chazali remains convinced he’s sticking his neck out for the right reasons.
“They need salvation,” he says of his Muslim neighbors. “So many times, I ask them about heaven. They say, ‘Hopefully I will come to heaven.’ But if I ask them, ‘How much do you have to do … to guarantee you will to go to Heaven?’ our friends always say, ‘We don’t know. Hopefully God will receive us.’ So they don’t know the way.
“That’s why I always look for times to speak to them, even if it is hard.”
Sipping his Coke casually on a hotel lobby couch, Chazali answers the “Why?” about his work without much of a pause.
“The more I work, the more I make friends, the more I see emptiness in their hearts and their lives, the more I desire to speak to them,” he says. “I try to look for time. If there is no time to speak to them, I wait for another time. I know this is not my effort – I know this is God’s work in my life.”
Believer strives to spread joy of own conversion
By Called and Sent Staff
Names have been changed
NORTH SUMATRA, Indonesia—There’s nothing like the threat of stoning to test your perseverance as a believer.
Ask Chazali.
Perseverance won the 37-year-old minister to Jesus. It kept him focused when angry Muslim neighbors pounded on his door during house church meetings. And it gives him the boldness to keep telling people about Isa al-Masih (Jesus the Messiah) in a town that is virtually 100 percent Muslim.
Trouble in the Neighborhood
Following university and Bible school, Chazali went to work in 2002 as a church staff member in an area of Sumatra with deep Christian roots. But his heart wasn’t inside the walls of the church. After two years, he quit, moved his family to a Muslim city and began ministering full-time to whomever would listen.
An English major in college, he began giving private English lessons in his home to make a living. While getting to know his students, one of his tactics was to give them Gospel tracts as a way to introduce them to English and Jesus at the same time.
The strategy backfired in 2005.
He gave a tract to one of his students, the son of a Muslim couple next door. Everything was fine for about six months until a friend of Chazali’s asked the student for directions to Chazali’s house and made an offhand remark about him being a Christian minister.
“From that time … it was more dangerous because the student was Muslim,” Chazali says. “He stopped the lessons.”
Not only that, but the boy’s parents became so irate that they incited other Muslims in the neighborhood to attack Chazali and his wife.
“They threatened us, and they said that if we kept praying and singing and praising God and having fellowship in our house, they would stone us,” he recalls. (Stoning is still a widely accepted form of punishment in Indonesia—40 percent of people surveyed last year by the Indonesian Survey Institute said that adulterers should be stoned to death.) “So we were big-time afraid, and from that time, any time I sang a song loudly, or if we had more than five persons gathering in my house, they hit the door of my house because they didn’t like to listen to our praise and worship.
“We don’t have any services in my home now.”
So far, Chazali and his family have been able to stay in their home. It’s given him a chance to show his neighbors what the Bible means when it says to “love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).
“We have to be sincere to the lost when we talk, and we have to be patient,” he says. “If they want to persecute us, we don’t need to offend them. We don’t need to talk back to them harshly. We need to look for the chance when we could help them, even if they hate us.
“In the case of my neighbor[s], even though they currently hate me, I am always friendly to their son. And I know that he likes me. Even though he is a Muslim, he wants to eat in our house. This is very interesting.”
The Turning Point
During Chazali’s university days, faith meant Mary and Catholicism, but a relationship with Christ didn’t really enter into it. A classmate of his tried to tell him about Isa al-Masih, but Chazali brushed him off.
But like the widow in Jesus’ parable who badgered the judge into hearing her case, Chazali’s classmate persisted: talking with him, inviting him to events and asking questions.
“I believed strongly in St. Mary, because my parents came from Catholicism — so I refused the evangelist many times,” Chazali says. “But one thing that astonished me was, this evangelist always came and always came — and he cared for me, too. So I was asking myself, ‘Why has this person come, even if I refused him?’ I believe the Holy Spirit touched my heart at that time.”
When the friend asked him to a Christian revival meeting on campus, Chazali went. He gave his life to Christ that night.
He went on to finish his undergraduate degree and a three-year Bible degree before taking his church staff position.
Today Chazali leads a new church that meets in a rented room. It’s a small-but-diverse, group -- Batak (his own people group), Javanese and even some of his Chinese Buddhist friends. His earnings might be meager (he only charges about $1 per private English lesson) and the stakes high, but Chazali remains convinced he’s sticking his neck out for the right reasons.
“They need salvation,” he says of his Muslim neighbors. “So many times, I ask them about heaven. They say, ‘Hopefully I will come to heaven.’ But if I ask them, ‘How much do you have to do … to guarantee you will to go to Heaven?’ our friends always say, ‘We don’t know. Hopefully God will receive us.’ So they don’t know the way.
“That’s why I always look for times to speak to them, even if it is hard.”
Sipping his Coke casually on a hotel lobby couch, Chazali answers the “Why?” about his work without much of a pause.
“The more I work, the more I make friends, the more I see emptiness in their hearts and their lives, the more I desire to speak to them,” he says. “I try to look for time. If there is no time to speak to them, I wait for another time. I know this is not my effort – I know this is God’s work in my life.”
© 2007 Called and Sent Magazine. All rights reserved.