Our follow-up team recently visited with a dear man called Jacob, who had made aliyah (immigration) to Israel nearly five years ago. We have been in touch with Jacob from the very beginning of his immigration to Israel, as he often attended our humanitarian projects to receive practical help. Jacob also began attending our evangelism outreaches and he questioned us very often about faith in God and the Gospel. He was still very skeptical, and so we allowed the Holy Spirit to guide us in our interaction with Jacob.
At the same time though, he kept to himself and wouldn’t open up to us when we offered to pray for him or to share the Gospel with him. We respected his decision, and we made sure that he knew that our love for him was unconditional, that our doors were open to him, and that God loved him endlessly.
After our most recent evangelism event, Jacob unexpectedly decided to enroll in our Aleph Discipleship Course, which he also managed to complete successfully. Shortly afterward he also joined us for a seminar about baptism and its significance and impact on one’s walk with Jesus. It seemed to us that Jacob was on the cusp of accepting Jesus as his Lord and Savior, but he just wouldn’t take the final step.
During our most recent visit, Jacob explained to us that he had problems with certain scriptures, such as Luke 6:29 which speaks about turning the other cheek. We continued communicating with him and sowing the Word of God into his life, and we tried our best to answer his many questions, and we continued to share that salvation and baptism are the beginning of his walk with God. We asked Jacob if we could pray, to which he agreed. Afterward Jacob sat for a while thinking, and then made the decision to receive Jesus and to get baptized. Halleluyah!
After the baptism, he decided to start attending one of our home groups. For some of us who have known Jacob for a long time, this was a tremendous testimony of God’s mercy, since for a long time Jacob did not even tolerate conversations about God and did not let anyone close to him. Thank God for the change in Jacob’s life! God will never give up on any person, as His love endures forever!