AMAZING STORY
Amy Ghazal: Dreaming of Jesus
By Kara Lavengood
The 700 Club
CBN.com - “I’m ashamed to be a woman. God made a mistake to create me a woman. I wanted to be a man.”
Amy Ghazel grew up in Syria, born to a Muslim family. Her parents and religious leaders taught her women had little value. “Many times I’ve been beaten up for asking questions,” Amy says. “Why I am created unclean woman? Why that God create me less intelligent, and men has dominion over me?”
According to her family’s beliefs, a woman had no guarantee where she’d spend eternity—even if she lived a good life. “There is no grace is Islam faith, so a lot of women in that culture, they do their best to be good women, but deep in their hearts, the are desperate for God, that He may accept them and allow them to go to Heaven.” Amy was never at peace with Islam. “I read the Koran and I feel like an evil spirit—someone—has his hand on my neck and is choking me,” she says.
At 18, Amy and her family moved from Syria to Egypt. There, she openly renounced Islam. “I stopped praying,” Amy says. “I stopped fasting. I stopped being involved in any sort of ceremony or any sort of religious practice.”
Amy learned English in college and took a job with a travel agency. While on business in the United States, she met and married and American Muslim doctor. But her husband began abusing her six months into their marriage. “Even [though] he wasn’t a religious man, but he has the mentality of Mohammed—controlling woman, and I’ve been verbally many times, very, very, very abused.” After almost three years of marriage, Amy and her husband divorced. “I felt I’m so lost,” Amy says. “I felt like a failure because I failed in everything I have done. I lost myself totally. I didn’t know why I’m living here and why should I live, why should I continue to live.”
On top of that, she was plagued with the Islamic idea of Hell. “I feel like I’m going to die, and God going to send his angel to torture me, to torment me in the grave. I could not sleep, and nobody wants to be friend to me because my face looks so miserable - bitterness, and resentment in my heart, against anybody. And I became feeling I’m a victim of everybody. And I felt like if I have the courage to kill myself, I would do it.”
When one of Amy’s coworkers invited her to church, she agreed to go, but she couldn’t believe that Jesus was God. “It was so confusing to me. He’s God. He’s the Son of God. And He’s man also at the same time,” Amy says. “And I said ‘God, I’m not going to be deceived again. And if Jesus is truly, He’s your son, and He is God and He’s the Son of God and He’s died on the cross for me to be forgiven, You must prove it to me.”
A few months later, Amy became very ill with gallstones. As she lay in the hospital, waiting for surgery, she called out to Jesus. “Jesus, you have healed a lot of people in the past, and would you please come and heal me, if you are true,” Amy asked. “I am broken financially. I am alone. I don’t have family to take care of me. I cannot just survive during this situation alone.”
Amy shares, “After I finished my asking and my request of Jesus, the room was full of light and out of the light Jesus came to me in real human body. And He stretched out His hands, and He was close to me standing by my bed. And He said, ‘Come to me, who are weary and carry heavy burden, I will give you rest.’”
The words she heard in that hospital room were the same that Jesus had spoken in Matthew 11, but Amy had never read these verses. “I saw nails in His wrist,” she says. “That’s the way they describe it to me, that He died on the cross. And He truly, when He appeared to me, there is no one who will deny him that He is not God. I felt like I am so dirty and so full of sin, and He is holy. He is righteous. He is beautiful.”
Doctors ran a scan to check Amy’s gallstones again before surgery. They couldn’t find any! “I am healed because Jesus healed me. The result of the test came negative. There is no stone, there is no infection and they test me physically and they let me go.”
Amy started reading the Bible and went back to church with her friend. “So it was here in my heart that I needed to make a commitment and declaration that I am a Christian and I’m going to follow Christ,” she says. “I felt like something has been changed in my life. You know, you feel like your life has been completely changed. You feel like you are a new you are renewed, and that’s how I felt.”
Amy was baptized and her relationship with Christ freed her from the lies she learned as a child. “It’s given me eternal life, that guarantee I have—I am for God. I am set free. I am a new creation in Christ Jesus. Not a woman that I been created less intelligent and have dominion over me by men. There is no dominion over me anymore. I have the power of God Almighty to walk every day in life,” Amy says. “I’m not going to go to hell. Hell is not for me anymore. That’s out of my life. And I totally live in the light. And I know I’m going to be for eternal life with Jesus.
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