Encountering Islam, week 2

Shalom!

I can't let another week pass without commenting on my Encountering Islam class. Last night was our second Wednesday evening session (dad, and my brothers Matthew and Nathan are attending too). Each week the class is hosting a different speaker (several will be Muslim back-ground Believers) addressing different aspects of understanding and interfacing with Islam from a Biblical worldview.

The book that goes along with the course (by the same title) has been fascinating to peruse. Granted, with the Peru trip next week, I haven't had long, settled times of reading, but everything I've read so far is fascinating. I appreciate that it brings in over 80 different authors, rather than just hearing one man's perspective. Encountering Islam (the book) is extremely well laid out, very user friendly, well foot-noted, with graphs, pictures, and charts, divided into succinct little chapters with specific life application at the end of each section. (Encountering the World of Islam was one of five finalists in 2006 in the ECPA Christian Book Awards' Christian Life category.)

My prayer is that God would till up hard places in my heart and do what He will in my life with this information. It's not that I'm after expertise; God hasn't placed a specific call on my heart to work in a Muslim country. In fact, I don't even know a single Muslim personally right now. It's more of that still, small voice that over the past few years, through missionary friends, books, Perspectives, and trips, that has been compelling me to look carefully at this people- this most unreached people in the world and ask, "Lord, what is my part?"

Here are a few things notes interesting to me from last nights "history of Islam" lesson.

• Not all Arabs are descendants directly from Ishmael. There is a whole group of Arabs that are decendant from Qetura (or Keturah) Gen 25:1-6, Abraham's wife after Sarah died.
• In the Koran, many allusions/references to Jesus Christ, come from the so called "Gnostic Gospels," such as the Gospel of Thomas. A half truth, can be more harmful than a obvious lie.
  
• We all hear about the Sunnis and Shiites in the news. There are several differences between these groups. Here's one distinction that helped me sort out the files in my brain. For one, Sunnis are extremely leader loyal while Shiites are more Koran loyal. The speaker compared these two groups to Catholics (who place great importance on the pronouncements of the pope) and Conservative Evangelicals (holding up the inspired Word of God).
  

Blessings, my friends. May His kingdom come, His will be done!