AMAZING STORY
Fatima's Quest for God
By Tim Smith
The 700 Club
CBN.com
–Of the 7 billion people living on our planet, 2 billion are Christian, and 2.1 billion are Muslim. Two different religions, with two very different points of view. Fatima Devanbeigi learned the truth about each of these religions in her search for a genuine relationship with God.
“On the inside, I felt like there was a huge rock hanging in my heart,” says Fatima. “It was real, and it was painful. It was like something that would draw me down and wouldn’t let me live. There was no hope in it. And there was no hope for the future.”
Fatima was raised in Iran as a Muslim.
“Being a Muslim is not by choice, it’s by heredity. So if your parents were Muslim, then you’re automatically a Muslim.”
Fatima resisted her parents’ Muslim faith.
“At a very young age, I started questioning whether there was a God or not. I would spend hours and hours thinking, ‘What would God look like? Where would He be?’ But traditionally, in Islamic culture, you don’t ask these questions. They’re tabooed. If you start asking questions like these, they will call you faithless.”
Growing up, the god of the Koran was the only god that Fatima ever knew.
“He’s not a personal god. He’s distant, and nobody knows who he is. Nobody knows his nature. Nobody knows his plans. You just know that he cares about morality and in order to go to heaven, you must do good works.”
As a teenager, Fatima looked for answers in fortune telling and by reading coffee grounds.
“I thought to myself, this could be something. Maybe I could get messages. That practice did not lead me to know God. But still I searched. I had no choice. Something in me would not rest. And finally I came to a conclusion. I said, ‘God, You are either so complicated that I could never know you, or you’re right in front of my eyes, and I can’t see you.’
“I remember every day, I would cry and cry, and ask God to show me Himself. I would look at the sun. Are you the sun? Where am I supposed to look?”
Her cry was answered when Fatima says that Jesus appeared to her in a dream.
“I dreamt that Jesus and I were walking in a rose garden. This is going to make my cry. In the dream, I’m thinking he’s a prophet. He’s walking, and I’m following, and He said, ‘Do you want to come with Me?’ and I said, ‘Yes.’ And He said, ‘Then follow me.’
“I said, ‘Hmm. How would I follow a person who was a prophet a long time ago? How would you follow a person and not his instructions?’ So that was kind of puzzling. Why would he ask me that?”
Night after night, Fatima had dreams about Jesus, God – and churches.
“Old churches, new churches, modern churches. And I dreamt that my Mom and all of my family are holding hands, going to the church.”
Fatima moved to the United States when she twenty. She met a friend from work who told her about Jesus.
“It was after he accepted the Lord Jesus that he found joy and peace, and those words just popped. I said, ‘Wow, this is good.’ I said, ‘Oh, I want that. I want the joy and peace.’
So Fatima went to a Christian church, and a woman there asked her…
“‘Do you believe Jesus Christ is God?’ and I said, ‘Did He say that? That He is God?’
And she said, ‘Yes, He says that.’ I said, ‘Sure. Trust me, I’ll find out if He’s not. I’ll just find out if things aren’t true. But I’m willing to give Jesus a try. Definitely.’
“She said, ‘Do you want to pray the salvation prayer?’ ‘Absolutely.’ Because I think God had softened me up to the point where I was soft toward God and I wasn’t resisting.”
That night, after years of searching, Fatima prayed to become a Christian.
“Things just started changing. That heavy, heavy heart, that stone, it was sharp even, you could feel how sharp and painful it was gone. It was completely gone. That night, the Lord just took his hand in my heart and took that rock out permanently. The one significant thing that Christ did for me was He put hope in my heart. A permanent hope.
And as I got to know the Lord more, He gave me many more dreams, just to show me that the scriptures were true, and that everything I was reading, God was backing them up.
Today, Fatima’s mother, brother, and two sisters are all Christians. Fatima is a real estate broker, and studying to be a psychologist. She’s also married and has two sons.
Fatima understands Muslims who are curious about Jesus, and those who really don’t understand who Jesus is.
“I would say don’t say no, just because your parents were Muslims, and your great grandparents were Muslims, and this is what you always were taught. You need to find God for yourself. He’s available. If Jesus says he is God, then He will prove it. All you have to have is an open heart to allow Jesus to come in, and then you will know for yourself if He is God or not god.”
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