“Can I follow Jesus and be a Muslim?” This was the question my friend threw at me just minutes before he trusted in Christ. Initially, I wanted to say no and show him Matthew 6:24 that says, “No one can serve two masters . . . ”
My background told me to tell him he needs to set everything behind to follow Jesus, but something stopped me. Just before I gave him this blunt answer I recalled a Bible passage I pondered just a few days before.
In 2 Kings 5, Naaman goes to Elisha to be healed from his leprosy. After being healed, he declares that Yahweh is the true God and asks Elisha to forgive him when he goes with his master to bow down before other idols. Elisha’s response is “go in peace.”
I was perplexed.
How could Elisha say it is okay for Naaman to bow down to another god?
God clearly says in the ten commandments to have no other gods before him. So I looked up an online commentary.
The cool thing about this verse is that Elisha never says it was okay for Naaman to bow down to the idol. Instead, Elisha lets him go, knowing that God would convict him in this area when the time was right.
The Scandalous Gospel
All this came flooding back to me seconds after my friend asked me if he could follow Jesus and still be a Muslim.
It pained me to answer, but there was no way I could ignore what the Holy Spirit had just shown me. As I began answering his question, it slowly started making sense. It felt as if the Holy Spirit continued to reveal the logic of this truth as the words flowed out.
I told him I wasn’t saying he could follow Jesus and still believe as a Muslim, but I could say believing in Jesus’ claims about himself and following him was the first step. I told him it didn’t matter where he started. He just had to say yes to Jesus’ call.
As I said this, I suddenly remembered that this was exactly what Jesus himself did. When Jesus called the twelve disciples, they might have followed him, but they were full of doubt. Jesus spent the next three years with them slowly proving himself to them.
These words pained and irked me in a strange way.
False Assumptions
I quickly identified this as the Spirit convicting me. The Holy Spirit was breaking down the rules I created to dictate how someone could trust in Christ and have their sins forgiven.
But isn’t this what we all do? It’s hard to see it because we don’t often think about all the nitty-gritty details.
So often we view God’s grace and plan through our own perspective and rules. Then, when we experience conflict as I did, our first instinct is to think the new view is false.
Even now I feel like I have to explain myself.
Hopefully, no one will accuse me of heresy for not telling my friend he had to stop being a Muslim. It took a lot of faith and courage to tell him to trust in Jesus and then pray in my head that God would convict my friend of the truth and lead him away from Islam in his own timing.
Now, I’m not saying this is the way everyone should go about leading people to Christ.
What I mean to say is that the Gospel is alive and moves in different ways. Just as every individual is different, so is the means that God will use to lead people to himself.
In the end, we can’t be afraid to follow God when he leads us in new and unique ways, as long as these new ways still line up with the Bible. Even if this way may be new to you or seem to go against what you have been taught. You need to rely on God’s word.
So often we—as the church—will add our own rules which may contradict the Bible in unrecognized ways. Such problems are inescapable as we use our limited understanding to comprehend our magnificent God.
When our ways conflict with God’s ways, the gospel can appear quite scandalous.
So let’s trust God and his word and do the things that might seem crazy. This is how we live wilder.
If you are having a hard time understanding how God speaks and leads you, I’d encourage you to check out my post: How does God Speak to Us?
