It’s not often that God speaks through the guy in the next shower stall. But that’s exactly what Charif Haddad said happened to him.
Haddad, pastor of a new church among people of Middle Eastern descent in Dearborn, Mich., was one of 38 new North American Mission Board missionaries commissioned Feb. 9 at Great Hills Baptist Church in Austin, Texas.
In a personal testimony during the service, Haddad shared how he struggled with his call to ministry as a teenager in his native Lebanon. During a shower after a soccer game one day, he found himself thinking of all the reasons he couldn’t obey: He had a family to raise, a plan to become an engineer and the obstacles were just too great.
“It’s impossible to do it financially,” he told God. “It’s impossible for me to change people’s hearts.”
Then his friend in the next stall — a non-Christian who had not heard Haddad’s silent prayers — shouted out loud: “What is impossible to man is possible to God.”
“It made the hair on my neck stand up,” Haddad said. “I said, ‘Sam, where did those words come from.’ He said, ‘I don’t know. They just came to mind, so I blurted them out.’”
That was the beginning of God’s intervention, Haddad said. Later he felt God wanted him to serve in the United States, but he didn’t see a way for it to happen.
“I said, ‘Lord, if you want me to serve You, send me to the States. I don’t have the visa, I don’t have the resources, I don’t even have the desire to go.’”
The next day, he received a letter from a church in the United States offering to sponsor him as he pursued his education and ministry. Eventually — after Bible college and seminary — God called Haddad to his current work in Dearborn, Mich.
“People at NAMB and in Michigan were praying hard that God would send somebody to work with the Middle Eastern people in Dearborn,” Haddad said.
“We answered the call a couple months ago, and we need your prayers and support, because without your prayers we cannot do it on our own.”
(BP)
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