MY ACCOUNT
At A Glance:
A North African church leader who has walked with persecuted believers for 30 years reflects on the cost and the calling of following Jesus in a hostile land.
- A young man in a remote North African village heard 10 minutes of a radio broadcast in 1997. Fluent Arabic spoke the name of Jesus Christ.
- Persecution began before he even made a decision to follow Christ – just for listening and telling others what he had heard.
- Thirty years later he still opens his door every morning – knowing what is waiting – and yet refuses to leave.
Phone Calls at Midnight
At about midnight, Yusuf* received a phone call from another Christian in his network.
“He was telling me a story of a family threatened with death because they became Christians,” Yusuf says.
These phone calls are not unusual for Yusuf. For nearly 30 years now he’s been in contact with Christians across northern Africa whose experiences with pressure and backlash are similar to his own.
From Radicalized to Radical Obedience
Yusuf had grown up in an impoverished village where life felt stagnant.
“Nothing is moving. Nothing is changing. Nothing. Nothing,” he says. “All I was concerned about was how to survive in a family. A large family. So many brothers and sisters. We work in the field and every day there is a new assignment for each one.”
Then an extremist group found the young teenager. His feeling of insignificance was replaced with care and he joined their training camp in the bush. They were kind. They provided him with food and purpose he had never found at home. They introduced him to extremist Islamic teaching, which he embraced.
“They taught us how to be good fighters and to know more about the teaching of Islam and apply it,” he said.
But by the time Yusuf was 18, he found himself walking away.
“I really found that there is nothing worth fighting for,” he says. “I gave up. If you met me during that time, you would not say that I am here or there. I am nothing. I am lost.”
It was in that emptiness, on the night of June 12, 1997, that everything changed. Yusuf was 21 years old, sitting alone in a field the night before his final school exams, when he picked up a small radio transmitter with dying batteries.
The airwaves carried the voice of a man speaking about Jesus.
“Suddenly I am listening to somebody very fluent in Arabic – classic Arabic – and he speaks about Jesus Christ. It was only 10 minutes I listened to that night.”
‘Filled my Heart’
Ten minutes about marriage and home life for Christians.
“I was not interested in marriage, but I said this is a beautiful picture. This is not the same I have here at home.”
He returned each night to that radio program.
“Every night I listened for one hour. And this hour filled my heart and my spirit.”
Yusuf couldn’t put out of his mind what he’d heard. He began telling others. It made him an immediate target for the people in his village.
‘They wish you don’t wake up’
“Everyone in the street will stop me, will talk to me harsh, and they will push me. They will grab my shoulders and shake me," Yusuf says. "And a lot of people, especially the old ones, will spit on my face.”
He was confined to his house.
“I was not able for the rest of the summer to leave the house until only at night,“ he says. “I was not even looking to become a Christian. That was not my goal at all. I always told them ‘I am Muslim like you all.’”
All that summer he listened. Villagers gathered in the cool of the evenings to challenge him, sometimes 20 or 30 at a time. He had no Bible, only what he had heard the night before on the radio. Eventually a copy of the Gospel of Luke arrived in the mail from that radio program. Then another. And another. He gave them away throughout the village.
“A lot of people talked behind my back. Sometimes it was people from my own family. They tell me, don’t you know that they talk against you and they want to kill you. They want to throw you to the fish in the sea. And they wish you don’t wake up.”
'As soon as I open the door of my house, I am facing giants. It’s a struggle all the time. Everywhere there is struggle.'
— Yusuf, a secret believer in North Africa‘What About My Brother?’
A pamphlet arrived. Its title asked a question he had never considered: “What Must I Do to Be Saved?” For the first time, Yusuf understood that a decision was required of him.
“I thought I was good. But when I faced the reality and I knew that Jesus did this for me, especially the resurrection, I felt: 'Now I know who I am.'”
In the decades since Yusuf discovered his identity in Christ, the persecution has not ceased. In the face of daily dangers, though, his faith in his Savior grows. Any opportunity for finding safety and security is met with a reminder of the mission he’s been called to.
“As soon as I open the door of my house, I am facing giants, either men or thoughts or physical things or ideas. It’s a struggle all the time. At the grocery store, at school, where you fix your car, everywhere there is struggle," he explains. "And you bring it with you back home. This is what my wife tells me also. She doesn’t feel secure. Shall we stay here or leave? But what about my brother who just accepted the Lord? Who will be his support? I don’t want to disappoint future believers.”
‘Pray boldly’
Yusuf’s story connects him to the global Church. He has seen what happens when believers around the world pray with persistence.
He was blessed by churches in Brazil that prayed for North Africa for seven years. Year 7 was when he heard that radio program. Revival spread throughout the region following that season of prayer.
“Something happened here,” he says.
Now Yusuf is asking the global Church for the same kind of prayer.
“I want to see this again,” he says. “I know the power of prayer. So be bold. Pray boldly.”
How You Can Pray
Here’s how you can stand with Yusuf and believers like him across North Africa:
- Pray consistently for persecuted Christians in North Africa and for the church leaders who serve them at great personal cost.
- Pray for Yusuf specifically, that God would protect him and his wife, sustain his resolve to stay, and to keep answering the phone when believers call in crisis.
- Pray that God would do again what he did in the late 1990s, when sustained prayer by churches thousands of miles away sparked a revival across North Africa.
- Partner with Global Christian Relief to provide ongoing support for believers facing hostility, isolation, and danger for their faith.
Secret Believers When Faith Must Stay Hidden, Hope Must Not
Across the Muslim world, men and women are encountering Jesus in hidden places – through a dream, a late-night search, or a quiet conversation with a local believer. But when someone chooses to follow Christ in secret, the cost of their decision can be immediate: family rejection, social isolation, and real danger.
Learn more about how you can support secret believers and help ensure no follower of Jesus ever stands alone.
