“Who Do You Say That I Am?”

This is the true testimony of a Muslim man from Tunisia who came to Christ a few years ago. While he was raised in a nominal Muslim home, the man we will call “Ali” , who at the time was in his teens, had many questions about God. And so he began searching for answers, and he wondered about this “Jesus” that Christians talked about. Initially, he only asked his family and then his Imam, but no one seemed to have the answers to his questions. He asked many religious scholars, but again, no answers came and they got angry with him and so he stopped going to ask them. Ali became obsessed with pressing deeper into who God really was! “Did God even exist?” he wondered. However, in the meantime, he was to be finishing his last year of high school and taking THE ONE BIG TEST that all his fellow students have to take and complete if they are to go on to university. Ali said that he spent so much time trying to find out who God was that he failed to properly study and subsequently failed the test! In the “shame-based” culture in which Ali lived, this was one of the worst things a young person can do is to fail this test. In their eyes, he had brought shame on his entire family, and they all but disowned him. And so, with no school and only menial work, Ali kept up his search for God. He was so lonely and desperate that he entered a church….and he was welcomed by the followers of Jesus! They gave him a New Testament and he began to read, but he still had questions. The Christ-followers gave him all the help they could with answers. Then one evening, he was in his room in his bed. As he says, “A man entered my room, and grabbed me by the shoulder! I had never met this man before! He asked me, ‘Who do you say that I am?’ I wasn’t sure if I was asleep or awake, but I was almost afraid to answer! Then the man said, ‘Have you been with me all this time and still do not know who I am?’ I said, ‘No!’ The man shook me really hard and said, ‘He who has seen Me has seen the Father!’ At that point, the man started to leave the room, but then turned and said, ‘Follow Me!'” Ali said that his shirt where the man had grabbed him was wrinkled from the grasp! And at that point Ali became a follower of Jesus! Today he lives in Tunisia and attends the same church, and everyone in the church prays for their nation, as well as for the people who live there who do not follow Christ.