Through the Door: A Muslim Girl’s Dream of Jesus

Once a month, my church went out in the city to do evangelism together. We set up a table on one of the busiest pedestrian streets in our European city. Our table was as full of books and Bibles in different languages as the streets were of people from different countries.

We were well into on evening when a young woman came up to the table and started rummaging through the Turkish books. I struck up a conversation with her and it wasn’t long before she started sharing pieces of her story. Tears streamed down her face as she opened up about a recent divorce and a move to our city away from family that had shook her world. I listened and waited for a chance to speak words of Hope. I didn’t have to wait long, though, as she began to tell me about a recent dream.

The dream was simple: she was standing outside of a beautiful cathedral and a man she thought to be Jesus stood at the door. He opened the door and beckoned for her to enter the church, a place of rest and beauty. My new friend was familiar with this cathedral in real life. Despite being Muslim, she would often go and sit inside it because she felt a sense of deep peace in the sanctuary.

At this point she asked me if I knew what the dream meant.

And so I shared the Good News and how Jesus wanted her to come into a place of peace and rest. That through his life, death and resurrection, a way was made for us to be restored to right relationship with God. Her eyes told me that she longed for that peace and yet those same eyes hardened when she heard that Jesus is the only Way through the door. She told me that she could not believe that, would not believe because Jesus isn’t God. I told her I didn’t know if she could believe it but that it was true all the same.

Miraculously, this girl agreed to swap numbers with me and we met again the next week. I was heartbroken in that meeting as she asked me to not talk about Jesus again. I listened as she shared her broken story unable to offer the hope that she so desperately needed. My friend didn’t want to talk about the Gospel but she did keep coming to events at my house where she met other believers.

It was months before she broached the subject of Jesus again. I had invited her to a Thanksgiving meal at my home. Amid a loud and rowdy table, she turned to me and told me that she had another dream about Jesus. In this dream, she was holding a candle in her hand and running towards Him. As conversation swirled around us, we talked about how Jesus is the light of the world and the good news of the gospel. She wasn’t ready to believe, but she listened. She also watched the gospel live out in the community of believers gathered at my house that day.

My friend didn’t come to faith that day. She still doesn’t know the Lord.

Honestly, I was surprised that she didn’t immediately become a believer after having dreams of Jesus. In all the stories I’ve heard about Muslims having dreams, they always see to come to faith!

It’s true that God is meeting many followers of Islam through dreams. But the dreams themselves are not enough to bring someone to saving faith.

The story of Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunuch comes to mind.

“So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” Acts 8:30-31

How can a Muslim understand their Jesus dream unless there is someone to explain it?

My friend first turned to google and found some wacky interpretation of her dream. Yet, God in His kindness did not leave her without an answer. He crossed her path with a believer and gave her the chance to hear the Truth about Jesus, to repent and believe.

“How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” Romans 10:14

We often pray that God would give Muslims dreams of Jesus. But are we also praying that God would send someone to share the Good News with them? Have we asked God to send us to be that instrument of truth?

Join me in praying that my friend and others like her would one day come to faith. That she and Muslims around the world would believe that Jesus is the only way through the door to everlasting life.

Let’s pray boldly and always be ready to give an account.

Who knows, God may just drop a covered girl in front of you who has been dreaming of a man in white.