Unstoppable (23 page)

Jacqueline Isaac, who is my unofficial second sister, is now a figure of international importance in her own right. She lived in California until the
age of thirteen, when her life changed dramatically from a typical American teen’s existence built around school, friends, church, and entertainment.

“When I was thirteen years old, I came home one night and found my grandmother dead on the floor. My grandmother was my entire life: she helped raise me, I fell asleep next to her every night, and she was always the person I went to with all my secrets. I was shocked! In fact, I was so scared, shocked, and angry that I started to blame her death on God,” Jacqueline told me.

The teen was still reeling from her grandmother’s death when her parents gave her even more shocking news. They had decided to move the family to Egypt, where they would continue their work as Christian evangelists.

“I had lost my grandmother, my life back home, and everything I was accustomed to,” Jacqueline recalled. “It was then when I felt like giving up on life. I also remember giving up on God. I used to sit in my room by myself and shout out, ‘God, if You’re there, why would You take everything I know and love away from me?’ ”

Looking back, Jacqueline realizes now that she didn’t understand that God had a much bigger plan for her life than she had ever envisioned. “In fact, one day I met with a pastor who was counseling me. This pastor looked at me and said, ‘Don’t you understand? God has stripped you away from everything that you know so that all you have left is to rely on Him.’ ” At that point Jacqueline understood God’s calling for her life, and she knew she had to walk in faith, regardless of her circumstances.

“In essence, those difficult circumstances were exactly what I needed to shape and mold me for God’s calling,” she said. “I finally understood the principle of ‘walking in faith.’ ”

Months after meeting with that pastor, another pastor was visiting
Egypt from Texas. She was leading a Christian conference. After the Texan’s sermon, there was a segment of prayer time where she approached Jacqueline and said, “Young lady, God has called you for a high purpose. I see you moving around the globe. You will go back to the United States, but you will always come back to Egypt. I see you returning to Egypt many times and bringing the women and the people out of oppression. I see you speaking to people of very high authority and major leaders of the country. When you speak, they will listen, and God will give you anointing and favor. You will ask yourself, ‘Who am I to have the honor to speak to these people?’ ”

Jacqueline was both shocked and humbled when she realized those words were a gift from God. “I had to hold on to His word and truly believe within that, even though I did not have the stature, education, or position at that point, God would do His work in me,” she said.

At age fifteen Jacqueline was accepted by a US college, but she shifted from biology and plans to become a doctor after one of her mentors said she was destined to be an ambassador. “You are going to bridge the gap between two worlds, and when you speak, people will listen,” he told her.

Jacqueline realized then that her destiny was linked to her parents’ Egyptian homeland. “I knew God had a plan to send me back to Egypt. During my college years, I walked in faith and I allowed Him to do a wondrous work in me,” she said. “Even when it sounded unbelievable, I realized when it seems impossible, hold on to the God who makes unrealistic dreams and wonders possible!”

Jacqueline has fulfilled that vision. She now works with religious and government leaders and social activists to bring change to Egypt. When she first moved there as a teen, Jackie was immediately struck by the oppression of women and shocked that even some of her female Egyptian
relatives had been subjected to the horrific tradition of genital mutilation. When she questioned adults and even clergy about it, they denied that it was still practiced. Others said it was only done to “protect” young females from premarital sex. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that as many as 140 million women around the world have been subjected to this cruel cultural tradition, which remains widespread in Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Sudan, with some groups also practicing it in Kenya and Senegal. Many in those countries believe that this custom performed on infants to fifteen-year-olds is mandated by their religions, even though no major religion requires it. Others believe that this mutilation protects girls from sexual activity until they are ready for marriage.

“All I knew was that these girls had pieces of their bodies removed, and it was horrible,” Jackie told me. “These things all shocked me. I could have been one of those girls if there had not been God’s grace in my life. I was blessed enough to be an Egyptian American, and I felt an obligation to help the women of my country understand their rights and freedoms.”

After Jackie returned to the United States to earn her law degree, she became an outspoken advocate of human rights in Egypt and across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She has made frequent trips to rural areas in Egypt and other countries in her campaign. Many times clergy and community leaders try to cover up or lie about these practices, even as young women are subjected to them in secret. When she learned that one clergyman was telling mothers in his congregation to have their daughters mutilated in this manner, Jackie confronted him. He told her, “It is better to cut your right arm off than have your whole body burn in hell,” meaning that it is better for girls to have their bodies mutilated than to risk having sex outside marriage.

Since physicians and hospitals won’t perform this illegal procedure, it
is sometimes performed in barbershops or by midwives or clergy members. Infections, internal bleeding, and other long-term medical problems frequently result. My friend has put herself in harm’s way by speaking out against this abusive practice and others, but she feels that it is necessary to put her faith into action on behalf of women and girls in nations where they remain oppressed and victimized.

“One time we were driving with a doctor and pastor to speak to three hundred village men, and my heart was beating a hundred miles per hour. He was petrified too. We knew there would be resistance, so I prayed to God, asking Him what I should say to these men. They had no idea what I was going to speak about. I was afraid they would kill me when I told them that genital mutilation was evil and dangerous.”

Jackie believes that prayer is the tool to overcome all fear that may arise when you put your faith into action to stop oppression. She says prayer can bring victory beyond your circumstances.

“When I was about two minutes away from the church, I felt the Holy Spirit’s peace coming all over me. This is when I knew that the words coming out of my mouth were not going to be mine, but it was going to be God speaking through me. It was God who would bring the victory. It was God who would bring favor over me, and it was God who would touch these men’s hearts,” she said.

When she stood to speak to the men, the mercy and grace of God fell over her. Instead of the feared outcome, a heavenly result took place, and God brought overwhelmingly positive responses from these men whom she had feared.

“They had their hands held up high. They were on their knees, begging God for forgiveness and repenting for their actions toward their daughters,” she said. “All I could think was that if I had let fear control me, God wouldn’t have used me in this unimaginable way.”

Jackie explained to the men that many of their wives did not want to have sex because they’d been mutilated as girls and it was painful for them. Normally, it is considered offensive for an outside woman to even mention sex to men, but they responded by asking for forgiveness and vowing to never allow the mutilation again.

“I felt God was protecting me with His favor,” Jackie told me. “It was very moving. We have seen so much repentance.”

On another occasion, when she first began her efforts, Jackie went to a very poor and dangerous village to speak with women about their experiences with female genital mutilation, which was considered a taboo subject. Various people told her she should not go, “but I truly felt in my heart that God was leading me there. I felt Him say to me that it was important to tend to ‘the least of these’ in a village filled with thugs, trash, and poverty.”

Jackie said she “followed the whisper in my heart” and went despite her fears. She was speaking with some women when two men walked into the apartment. One had a knife, and they started fighting with each other over whether Jackie should be allowed to stay. As they were fighting, the man with the knife fell down near Jackie’s feet. “I began to pray and ask God to control the situation. I called in the name of Jesus, and all of a sudden, the man stood up, looked at me, and ran off,” she said. Jackie called this “an incredible account of faith.”

“I realized from this that when danger turns your way, it is because God is about to do something great that Satan wants to stop,” she said. “The question is, how will you address the circumstance? By walking away or by facing Satan with the armor of Christ? I am so happy I stayed that day, because not only was I able to hear from these women, God used me to convince the father of the household to never circumcise any of his daughters again. In fact, this father began speaking to other men in his family and throughout the village as to how wrong the practice was.”

In following the Bible’s direction to “have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them,” I have worked with Jackie and her parents to help in this cause with missions to Egypt and other countries, but this young woman’s demonstration of faith in action under dangerous conditions is remarkable.

Since the Egyptian Spring revolution that overthrew the ruling party in Egypt in 2011, Jacqueline has become deeply involved with peacekeeping, consensus building, and human rights efforts there. She works with Christian and Muslim leaders as well as scholars, activists, and young revolutionaries to create a peace and human rights agreement, known as the Cannes Peace Accord and Plan of Action, for the nation. She has also formed a coalition movement called God Created All to unite Egyptians living around the world. In recognition of her work in Egypt, Jacqueline was asked by the world’s highest sheik to be the US representative of the Family House, a committee organized by Egypt’s religious leaders to encourage cooperation between Christians and Muslims.

“The promise of God given to me as a young girl is coming to pass with every small detail today,” Jacqueline told me. “Yes, it is dangerous sometimes, but it is like a fire in my heart. There is fear and concern about what I am doing, but I can’t extinguish this passion, and after the revolution in Egypt, there is a great window of opportunity to make a difference. So for now I walk step by step.”

The Bible says, “He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the L
ORD
require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” Injustices like bullying, hate crimes, religious persecution, and other human rights violations are responsible for much suffering in this world. I would never advise you to put yourself in harm’s way, as Jackie has done, but if you are a victim, or if you know of someone
who is being abused, please notify someone in a position to help. Put your faith in action against oppression and injustice in any way that you can. And most of all, pray for a world in which every individual is allowed to live unharmed and in peace while pursuing God’s purpose.

Will you pray for yourself first? Pray that, if you are doing anything that can be seen as a seed of death through persecution or gossip or bullying, He would help you to change. Will you pray that God guards your heart when people put you down? Without prayer we are weak, but with it, we have His strength behind us.

Will you also pray with me that this generation will be the generation to stop being bystanders, that it will stand up to help instead? Pray for your school, pray for your bullies, pray for your heart that we may all remain alert for ways to make a difference in this world.

EIGHT

M
Y REMARKABLE FRIENDS
G
ARY AND
M
ARILYN
S
KINNER CAME UP WITH
a modest plan in 1983. They had already married and started a family in Marilyn’s native Canada. But Gary, who comes from a long line of missionaries and grew up in Zimbabwe, felt God’s calling him to plant a small church in war-torn Kampala, the capital of Uganda.

Their mission to plant a church may have been simple, but the decision to leave the safety of Canada was not. Uganda was in the middle of a violent civil war in which hundreds of thousands were killed or displaced. Guerrillas, thieves, murderers, drought, and sickness had transformed the resource-rich country once known as “the Pearl of Africa” into one of the poorest nations in the world. The chaos and strife of war was exacerbated
by a raging epidemic of HIV/AIDS, which had destroyed Uganda’s social fabric as well.

Within just two years of opening their church, this dedicated Christian couple added another major task to their mission after finding scores of children wandering the countryside, abandoned in urban refuse piles and even bound and left to die. “We had the highest infection rate in the world at that time. I strongly felt God say, ‘Look after My children,’ ” Gary told me when I visited with him and his wife and their three children a few years ago.