CONNECT TO GOD
Encouraged Love, Given Freely
by Rose Amer Rose and her husband pastor a church in Niagara Falls and are leading their congregation in the process of becoming part of the Canadian Baptist family of churches. 14 live • January - February 2022
Growing up as a Muslim, love often meant doing some action or some work for the person you loved so they could be happy with you. In the same way, God’s love meant that I performed my religious duties, hoping to please Allah and thus enter into his heaven one day. Since I was a little girl I’d been told that it would be extremely difficult for a woman to enter heaven because when the prophet Mohammed had visited heaven, he had not seen any woman there. There was no assurance of eternal life for me, no hope of seeing God face to face. I was lost in the endless chores and duties that I had to do to earn my place in heaven, however difficult that would be. On the outside I was a pious, legalistic and devout Muslim but on the inside I was yearning and longing to find my place on this earth and in heaven. The concept of marriage and finding love in marriage scared me. I could not accept my fate that I would have to be content with whatever leftover love I would get from the man I married, whether as first, second, third or fourth wife. I loved Allah with my whole heart but I was not willing to obey his commandment to accept my lot in life—to be a wife of a man who would also love many other women besides me. As a teenager I quietly vowed that I would never be okay with this. I wanted to have the full, whole love of the man I would one day marry and I wanted to have the full love, the whole love of God without working so hard to earn it. I wanted this but I did not know to do this until I met Jesus Christ.
