Watch this Muslim blogger standing confidently outside this church. His name is Ashrav. He’s recording himself mocking Christianity and Jesus Christ. Then his expensive camera suddenly explodes in his hands, throwing him backward onto concrete steps.

My name is Ashraf. I’m 28 years old. And on March the 2nd, 2023, my entire world exploded along with my camera outside a church downtown. I was a successful Muslim blogger with 50,000 followers, defending Islam online every day. Then Jesus Christ changed everything in eight terrifying seconds that I will never forget.

I built my entire identity around being the voice of truth in what I believed was a world full of religious deception. For 3 years, I had been running a successful blog called The Muslim Truth, where I defended Islam against what I saw as attacks from Christians, atheists, and anyone else who dared question the faith I was raised in. My followers loved me for it. Every post I made defending the Prophet Muhammad or exposing what I called Christian lies would get hundreds of shares and comments from Muslims around the world telling me I was doing Allah’s work.

But somewhere along the way, my mission became less about serving Allah and more about serving my own ego. The more followers I gained, the more addicted I became to their praise. I started looking for bigger targets, more controversial topics that would get people talking and sharing my content. I told myself I was spreading truth, but really I was feeding my own pride. The rush I got from seeing my follower count climb, from reading comments calling me a defender of the faith had become like a drug to me.

Christianity had always been my favorite target because it seemed so easy to attack. The Trinity made no sense to me. How could God be three persons but one God? The idea of Jesus being both fully God and fully man seemed like obvious nonsense. uh and the crucifixion. The idea that God would allow his son to die, such a humiliating death, struck me as the ultimate proof that Christianity was built on lies. I had written dozens of posts breaking down what I saw as the logical impossibilities of Christian doctrine, and they were always my most popular content.

For weeks leading up to March 2nd, I had been planning something that I knew would take my platform to the next level. There was a beautiful historic church in the heart of downtown that had become somewhat famous in our city. It was one of those old Gothic style buildings with towering spires and intricate stone carvings. The kind of place that tourists came to photograph, but to me it represented everything wrong with Christianity. Here was this grand, expensive building built to worship what I believed was a false god, sitting right in the center of our city, like some kind of monument to deception.

My plan was simple, but I thought, brilliant. I would go to this church on a Sunday morning when services were ending, position myself right in front of the main entrance, and create a video that would systematically demolish the core beliefs of Christianity. I had spent hours researching and preparing talking points. I had verses from the Quran ready to quote, logical arguments against the Trinity prepared and what I thought were devastating critiques of Christian theology all organized in my mind. This was going to be my masterpiece, the video that would finally prove to the world that Islam was the only true faith.

I remember waking up that morning feeling more excited than I had in months. I had bought a new expensive camera specifically for this project. It was a professional-grade piece of equipment that had cost me nearly $2,000, but I justified the expense by telling myself that Allah’s message deserved the best presentation possible. I spent an hour that morning checking and double-checking the camera, making sure the battery was fully charged, testing the audio levels, adjusting the settings for outdoor filming. Everything had to be perfect.

As I walked toward the church that afternoon, I felt like a warrior going into battle for the truth. I had my talking points memorized, my camera ready, and my confidence at an all-time high. The church was about a 20-minute walk from my apartment, and with every step, I felt more and more convinced that I was about to do something truly important for Islam. I imagined the thousands of shares my video would get, the comments from fellow Muslims praising my courage, maybe even invitations to speak at mosques around the country. This was going to be the moment that established me as more than just a blogger, but as a real defender of the faith.

When I arrived at the church, I was struck by how imposing it looked. The stone walls seemed to rise forever into the sky, and the cross at the top of the main spire caught the afternoon sunlight in a way that made it almost impossible to ignore. For just a moment, standing there looking up at that building. I felt something I hadn’t expected. It wasn’t fear exactly, but something like nervousness, a small voice in the back of my mind wondering if I was really doing the right thing. But I pushed that feeling down immediately. This was just my human weakness trying to interfere with Allah’s work, I told myself.

I positioned myself directly in front of the main entrance where anyone coming out of the church would have to see me, where the cross would be visible in the background of my video, where the maximum number of people would witness what I was about to do. I set up my expensive camera on its tripod, adjusted the angle to get the perfect shot of both me and the church behind me, and took a deep breath. This was it. This was going to be the moment that changed everything. I thought I was serving Allah, but I was about to learn that I was really only serving my own pride.

I had no idea that in just a few minutes I would be lying on those concrete steps with my camera in pieces around me, face to face with the God I thought I was defending myself against. I had no idea that Jesus Christ was about to introduce himself to me in the most dramatic way possible.

I pressed the record button and immediately felt that familiar rush of adrenaline that came with uh creating content. The red light on my camera was blinking and I knew that in a few hours thousands of people would be watching whatever I was about to say. I started with my usual introduction speaking directly into the lens with the confidence that had made me popular among my followers.

‘Peace be upon you my brothers and sisters. This is Ashra from the Muslim truth and today I’m standing in front of one of the largest Christian churches in our city to expose the lies that millions of people have been deceived into believing.’

I gestured toward the towering Gothic structure behind me, making sure the cross was clearly visible in the frame. ‘What you see behind me is not a house of God, but a monument to one of the greatest deceptions in human history.’ The words flowed easily at first. I had rehearsed these opening lines dozens of times in my apartment, and I felt completely in control.

I talked about how Christians had been misled into worshiping a man instead of the one true God, Allah. I explained how the concept of the Trinity was nothing more than an attempt to make polytheism seem sophisticated. Every point I made, I delivered with the kind of confident authority that my followers expected from me.

But as I continued speaking, something strange began to happen. The more I talked, the bolder I became, and the bolder I became, the more I felt like I needed to say something even more provocative. It was as if there was some kind of momentum building inside me, pushing me to go further than I had originally planned. What had started as a theological critique began to turn into something much more personal and vicious.

‘Let me tell you about this Jesus that Christians claim to worship,’ I said, pointing directly at the cross above the church entrance. ‘They say he was the son of God. But what kind of god allows his son to die the most humiliating death possible? What kind of all powerful deity gets himself nailed to a piece of wood by mere humans?’

I could feel my voice getting louder, my gestures becoming more animated. ‘This is not the behavior of a divine being. This is the story of a failed prophet who got in over his head.’ I remember feeling intoxicated by my own words, by the power I felt in speaking what I believed was truth to a world that desperately needed to hear it.

The church seemed completely empty at that moment. I couldn’t see anyone coming or going, which made me feel even more bold. It was as if I had this massive symbol of Christianity all to myself, and I could say whatever I wanted without any Christians there to defend their beliefs.

‘And what about this crucifixion that Christians are so obsessed with?’ I continued, my voice now carrying across the empty courtyard in front of the church. ‘They claim that Jesus died for their sins. But think about how ridiculous that sounds. If God wanted to forgive humanity, couldn’t he just forgive them? Why would he need to torture and kill his own son? Or what kind of twisted theology is that?’ I shook my head dramatically for the camera. ‘This is not the merciful God that we know in Islam. This is a god invented by people who wanted to make sense of a tragedy.’

The strange thing was that with every word I spoke against Jesus, I felt more powerful, more convinced that I was doing something important. It was like each criticism I made was feeding some kind of energy inside me that wanted more. I had originally planned to keep my critique theological and intellectual, but now I found myself getting personal, getting cruel in a way that even surprised me.

‘Christians talk about Jesus like he was some kind of perfect man,’ I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘But look at what he actually accomplished. He preached for three years to a handful of fishermen and tax collectors. Got himself killed by the very people he claimed to be saving. And then his followers had to invent stories about him rising from the dead just to keep his movement alive. If this is what Christians call success, then I feel sorry for them.’

I was so caught up in my own performance that I didn’t notice how the atmosphere around me seemed to be changing. The air felt different, thicker. somehow like the moment before a thunderstorm hits. But I was too focused on my camera, too intoxicated by my own words to pay attention to what my body was trying to tell me.

‘Let me ask you something,’ I said, now speaking directly to any Christians who might eventually watch this video. ‘When you pray to Jesus, when you ask him to help you with your problems, does he actually answer? When you’re sick, does he heal you? when you’re poor, does he provide for you? Or do you just tell yourself that his silence is somehow part of his plan?’ I laughed. And even now, remembering that laugh makes me sick to my stomach. ‘The truth is that you’re praying to a dead man, and dead men don’t answer prayers.’

That’s when I decided to cross a line that I had never crossed before in any of my videos. I looked directly into the camera and said something that I now know was the moment I pushed God’s patience beyond its limit.

‘Jesus Christ was not the son of God. Jesus Christ was not a savior. Jesus Christ was a false prophet who led people away from the truth. And anyone who follows him is following a lie that will lead them straight to hell.’

The moment those words left my mouth, I felt a chill run down my spine that had nothing to do with the weather. But instead of taking it as a warning, instead of recognizing that I might have gone too far, I interpreted it as confirmation that I was speaking truth that the world needed to hear. I was about to learn just how wrong I was.

The moment I finished speaking those final words against Jesus, something happened that defies every natural law I thought I understood. There was no warning, no gradual buildup, nothing that could have prepared me for what was about to occur. One second I was holding my expensive camera, feeling triumphant and powerful, and the next second I was experiencing something that would change my understanding of reality forever.

The first thing I noticed was heat. Not the gentle warmth you feel when you hold something that’s been sitting in the sun, but an intense burning heat that seemed to come from inside the camera itself. It was as if someone had suddenly turned my $2,000 piece of equipment into a branding iron. The heat went from zero to unbearable in less than 2 seconds, and I remember looking down at my hands in confusion, trying to understand what was happening.

My first instinct was to drop the camera, but somehow I couldn’t. It was as if my hands were frozen around the device, unable to let go, even as the heat became so intense that I could smell my own skin beginning to burn. I tried to scream, but no sound came out. I tried to move, but my feet seemed rooted to the concrete beneath me. For what felt like an eternity, but was probably only 3 or 4 seconds, I was completely helpless, trapped, holding something that was literally burning me.

Then came the sparks, tiny at first, just little flashes of light coming from the camera’s battery compartment, but they grew rapidly into something much more dramatic. Electrical sparks began shooting out from every seam and opening in the camera body, creating a light show that was both beautiful and terrifying. The sparks weren’t just random, either. They seemed to be following some kind of pattern spiraling around the camera and my hands like they were alive, like they had intelligence behind them.

The smell of burning electronics filled the air. that sharp acurid scent that comes from melting plastic and fried circuits. But mixed with it was something else. Something I couldn’t identify at the time, but that seemed almost sweet, almost like incense. The combination was overwhelming, making my eyes water and my lungs burn with each breath I tried to take.

That’s when the real explosion happened. Not the gradual breakdown of electronic components that you might expect from an overheated device, but a sudden violent eruption of energy that seemed to come from somewhere beyond the physical world. The camera didn’t just break apart. It was torn apart with such force that pieces of metal and plastic were sent flying in every direction, some of them traveling so far that I never found them afterward.

The explosion threw me backward with more force than should have been physically possible. I’m not a small man. I weigh nearly 200 lb, and I’d been standing firmly on both feet. But the blast lifted me off the ground and sent me flying through the air like I weighed nothing at all. I remember the strange sensation of being airborne, of watching the church and the sky spinning around me as I tumbled backward through space.

When I hit the concrete steps behind me, the impact should have broken bones. I landed hard on my back and shoulders with my head snapping back against the stone with enough force to crack my skull. But somehow, impossibly, I wasn’t seriously injured. I felt the pain of the impact, felt the breath knocked out of my lungs, felt the scrapes and bruises forming on my body, but nothing was broken. Nothing was permanently damaged. It was as if something had cushioned my fall at the last possible moment.

I lay there on those cold concrete steps for several seconds, unable to move, unable to think clearly, staring up at the cross that topped the church spire. My ears were ringing from the explosion, and my vision was blurry from the impact. But I was conscious and alert enough to realize that something impossible had just happened to me.

My hands, which should have been severely burned from holding that superheated camera, were red and tender, but not seriously injured. They hurt, but they weren’t the charred ruins they should have been. Pieces of my destroyed camera were scattered across a 20ft radius around where I had been standing. Some of the fragments were still smoking, little wisps of white vapor rising from the twisted metal and melted plastic. The tripod had been completely destroyed, its legs bent at impossible angles, the mounting plate cracked clean in half. The memory card that contained my video was nowhere to be found, as if it had simply vanished into thin air.

But here’s what I can’t explain. What still gives me chills when I think about it. In that moment of chaos and destruction, as I lay there, surrounded by the smoking remains of my equipment, I felt a presence. Not just the sense that someone was watching me, but the unmistakable feeling that someone was there with me, someone who had been there the whole time, someone who had just made himself known in the most dramatic way possible.

It wasn’t a voice that I heard with my ears, but I knew with absolute certainty that Jesus Christ was speaking to me. Not in anger, not with the wrath that I deserved after what I had just said about him, but with a love so powerful and overwhelming that it broke something inside my chest. In that moment, lying on those church steps with my camera destroyed around me, I felt forgiven. I felt loved. I felt like I was meeting my creator for the first time in my life.

The strangest part wasn’t the explosion itself, as impossible as that was. The strangest part was that I should have been angry. I should have been furious about my destroyed equipment, my ruined video, my public humiliation. But instead, I felt peace. A piece so deep and complete that it seemed to reach into every corner of my soul and heal wounds I didn’t even know I had been carrying.

I don’t know how long I lay there on those concrete steps, staring up at the cross that seemed to be looking back down at me. Time felt different, suspended somehow, as if the normal rules of the universe had been temporarily set aside. My body was shaking, but not from the cold or even from the shock of what had just happened. I was shaking from something much deeper. Something that was happening inside my soul that I had no words for.

Slowly, I managed to sit up. And that’s when the full reality of what had occurred began to sink in. The area around me looked like a war zone. Pieces of my camera were scattered everywhere. Some still smoking, others twisted into shapes that didn’t even look like they had once been part of an electronic device. The concrete beneath me was scorched black in several places, as if lightning had struck the ground. But there had been no storm, no clouds in the sky, nothing that could explain what had happened according to any natural law. I understood.

My hands were trembling as I picked up one of the larger pieces of what had been my camera. The metal was still warm to the touch, but not burning hot like it had been moments before. I turned it over in my palm, trying to make sense of how a piece of equipment that had been working perfectly just minutes earlier could have been so completely destroyed. There was no logical explanation. Cameras don’t just explode for no reason, especially not with the kind of violent force that had just thrown me backward across the church steps.

But as I sat there among the wreckage, something even more impossible was happening inside my heart. Everything I had believed about Jesus, about Christianity, about the nature of God himself was crumbling like a house built on sand. For the first time in my life, I was asking myself a question that terrified me. What if I had been wrong about everything?

I tried to stand up, but my legs felt weak, unsteady, as if they weren’t quite sure they wanted to support me anymore. When I finally managed to get to my feet, I realized that people were starting to notice what had happened. A few passers by had stopped on the sidewalk and were staring at me with expressions of concern and confusion. One elderly woman approached me cautiously and asked if I was okay, if I needed help, if she should call an ambulance.

I tried to tell her I was fine, but when I opened my mouth to speak, no words came out. How could I possibly explain what had just happened? How could I tell her that I had been mocking Jesus Christ and then my camera had exploded in my hands with supernatural force? How could I describe the presence I had felt, the overwhelming sense of love and forgiveness that had washed over me in the moment when I should have been experiencing God’s wrath? Instead, I just nodded and waved her away, gathering up the larger pieces of my destroyed equipment and shoving them into my backpack.

But I couldn’t bring myself to leave. Something was holding me there on those church steps. something that felt like an invisible hand on my shoulder keeping me in place until I dealt with what had just happened to me.

That’s when the pastor came out. I don’t know if someone had told him about the commotion or if he had heard the explosion from inside the church, but suddenly there was this man in clerical clothing walking toward me with an expression of genuine concern on his face. He was probably in his 50s with graying hair and kind eyes. And when he spoke to me, there wasn’t a trace of judgment in his voice, despite the fact that he had probably seen exactly what I had been doing.

‘Are you hurt?’ he asked, looking at the scorched concrete and the scattered debris around my feet. ‘What happened here? Do you need medical attention?’ There was something in his voice, a gentleness that I hadn’t expected that made me want to tell him the truth. Even though the truth sounded insane even to me, I found myself telling him everything about my blog, about my plan to create a video mocking Christianity, about the explosion that had just destroyed my camera and thrown me backward onto his church steps.

I expected him to get angry, to tell me I wasn’t welcome on church property, to call the police and have me arrested for disturbing the peace. Instead, he listened to every word I said with patient attention, nodding occasionally but never interrupting.

When I finished my story, he was quiet for a long moment, looking at the evidence of what had happened scattered around us. Then he said something that changed the entire trajectory of my life. ‘It sounds like Jesus wanted to get your attention. The question is, are you ready to listen to what he has to say?’

Those words hit me like a physical blow. For the first time since the explosion, I started to cry. Not just tears, but deep, gut-wrenching sobs that seemed to come from a place inside me that I didn’t even know existed. All the anger I’d carried toward Christianity. All the pride I had built up around my role as a defender of Islam. All the certainty I had felt about my understanding of God came pouring out of me in a flood of tears that I couldn’t control.

The pastor didn’t try to stop my crying or hurry me along. He just stood there beside me, occasionally placing a gentle hand on my shoulder, letting me work through whatever was happening in my heart. And in that moment, surrounded by the wreckage of my camera and my former certainty, I found myself doing something I’d never done before in my life. I prayed to Jesus. Not the formal ritualized prayers I’d learned in Islam, but a desperate, honest conversation with the God I had just spent 20 minutes mocking.

I didn’t know how to pray to Jesus. Didn’t know the right words or the proper format. So, I just spoke to him like he was standing right there beside me, which somehow I knew he was. ‘Jesus,’ I whispered, ‘If you’re real, if you really are who Christians say you are, I need to know. I need to understand why this happened to me. I need to know the truth.’

The pastor, whose name I learned was Father Michael, invited me inside the church to continue our conversation. Walking through those doors felt like crossing into another world. Everything I had spent years railing against every symbol and image that had triggered my anger as a Muslim suddenly looked different to me. The stained glass windows that depicted scenes from Jesus’s life seemed to glow with an inner light that I had never noticed before. The wooden pews, the altar, even the cross that hung above everything else felt like they were welcoming me home rather than challenging my beliefs.

We sat in the front row and Father Michael began to answer questions I didn’t even know I had. He explained the trinity in a way that actually made sense, describing how God could be one essence but three persons, like how water could be liquid, ice, and steam, but still be fundamentally water. He talked about the crucifixion not as a sign of weakness, but as the ultimate demonstration of God’s love for humanity, willing to sacrifice himself to save us from our sins. Every explanation he gave seemed to unlock a piece of understanding in my mind that I hadn’t realized was missing.

But the real transformation happened when I went home that night. I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that explosion happening again. Felt that presence of Jesus surrounding me on those church steps. I found myself on my computer at 3:00 in the morning, not writing blog posts defending Islam, but secretly researching Christianity. For the first time in my life, I was reading the Bible not to find ammunition against it, but to understand what it was really saying.

The Gospel of John hit me like another explosion. ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’ I must have read that verse 20 times that first night and each time it seemed to reach deeper into my heart. This wasn’t the distant unknowable Allah I had worshiped all my life. This was a God who loved me enough to die for me even when I was mocking him in front of his own house.

Over the next few weeks, I found myself living a double life. During the day, I maintained my normal routine, posting content to my blog that defended Islam and criticized Christianity because I didn’t know what else to do. I had built my entire identity around being a Muslim defender of the faith. My family, my friends, my followers, everyone in my life knew me as Ashra, the Muslim blogger who stood up to Christian missionaries and atheist attacks.

But at night in the privacy of my apartment, I was reading the Bible and praying to Jesus, asking him to help me understand the truth. The internal struggle was tearing me apart. I would write a blog post in the morning about how Christians had corrupted the original message of Jesus and then spend the evening reading about how Jesus claimed to be the way, the truth, and the life. I would defend the Quran’s teaching that Jesus was just a prophet and then find myself crying as I read about his resurrection and his promise of eternal life to anyone who believed in him. The contradiction was becoming impossible to maintain.

Ask yourself this question. Have you ever had your entire worldview challenged in a way that forced you to choose between everything you thought you knew and a truth that was calling to your heart? That’s where I found myself caught between the religion I had been raised in and the god who had literally exploded my camera to get my attention.

The breaking point came about a month after the incident at the church. I was trying to write a blog post about why Muslims should be wary of Christian evangelism, but every word I typed felt like a lie. My heart wasn’t in it anymore. I knew too much now about what Christianity really taught. had experienced too much of Jesus’s love and mercy to continue spreading what I was beginning to realize were misconceptions and half-truths.

That night, I made a decision that I knew would cost me everything. I deleted the draft of the blog post I’d been working on, and instead wrote something completely different. I wrote about my experience at the church, about the explosion that had destroyed my camera, about the weeks I had spent secretly studying Christianity. I wrote about how Jesus had revealed himself to me in a way that was undeniable and how I could no longer pretend that Islam had all the answers. I published that post at 2:00 in the morning knowing that when my followers woke up and read it, my life as I knew it would be over.

And I was right. By the time I woke up the next day, my blog had exploded with angry comments from Muslims accusing me of betraying the faith. My follow account, which had taken me three years to build up to 50,000, dropped by half in a single day. Friends stopped talking to me. Family members called to demand explanations that I couldn’t give in a way they would understand.

But the real test came when I told my parents. My father, a devout Muslim who had raised me to see Islam as the only true religion, looked at me like I had just told him I was dying. My mother cried for hours, begging me to reconsider, to think about what I was throwing away. They couldn’t understand how their son, who had spent years defending Islam online, could suddenly convert to the very religion he had been fighting against.

The conversation that broke my heart the most was with my younger brother, who looked up to me and had always seen me as a role model for standing up for Muslim beliefs. When I told him about my conversion to Christianity, he accused me of being bought off by Christian missionaries, of betraying not just my faith, but my family and my community. The pain in his voice when he said he was ashamed to call me his brother was almost more than I could bear.

Within 2 months, I had lost almost everything that had defined my identity. My blog was essentially dead. My Muslim friends had abandoned me. and my family was treating me like I had committed the ultimate betrayal. But in the midst of all that loss, something incredible was happening. The peace I had felt on those church steps was growing stronger every day. And I was discovering a relationship with God that was deeper and more personal than anything I had ever experienced as a Muslim.

The night I finally knelt in my apartment and officially asked Jesus Christ to be my Lord and Savior, I felt that same presence I had encountered during the explosion. But this time it filled me with a joy that was beyond description. I lost everything I thought mattered. But I gained eternal life and a relationship with the God who had loved me enough to destroy my camera to get my attention.

Today, 9 months after that explosion changed my life forever, I’m sitting here creating content for Jesus Christ instead of against him. The blog that once attacked Christianity now shares testimonies of God’s grace and mercy. Where I once had 50,000 Muslim followers hanging on my every word as I criticize other faiths, I now have a smaller but growing community of believers who are hungry to hear how God is moving in the world today. The numbers are smaller, but the impact is infinitely greater because now I’m spreading truth instead of deception.

The transformation hasn’t been easy. Learning to live as a Christian after 28 years as a Muslim required rebuilding my entire understanding of prayer, of worship, of what it means to have a relationship with God. In Islam, Allah felt distant and unknowable, someone to fear and appease through ritual and good works. But Jesus became real to me in a way that still takes my breath away. I can talk to him like a friend, pour out my heart to him when I’m struggling, and feel his presence with me in ways that are as real as another person sitting in the room.

The financial cost has been significant, too. Losing my Muslim audience meant losing most of my income from the blog. The speaking engagements I used to do at mosques and Islamic centers dried up overnight. I had to take a part-time job at a local bookstore just to pay my rent while I rebuilt my platform around Christian content. But you know what I’ve discovered? God provides in ways that are often surprising and always sufficient. Just when my bank account would hit zero, a check would come from somewhere unexpected or someone would offer me work or a financial blessing would appear that could only be explained as divine provision.

My family relationships remain complicated and painful. My parents still hope this is just a phase I’m going through, that eventually I’ll come to my senses and return to Islam. They’ve tried everything from emotional appeals to bringing in Islamic scholars to debate with me, thinking that if they could just present the right arguments, I would realize my mistake. But how do you argue against a personal encounter with the living God? How do you debate away an explosion that defied every law of physics and a peace that surpasses all understanding?

My brother still won’t speak to me directly, though I hear from other family members that he follows my new blog and sometimes shares my posts on social media. I pray for him every day, asking Jesus to soften his heart and help him see that my conversion wasn’t a betrayal of our family, but a response to God’s call on my life. The hardest part is knowing that my decision to follow Christ has caused real pain to people I love. But I’ve learned that obedience to God sometimes requires difficult choices that others don’t understand.

The Christian community that welcomed me has become my new family in ways that continue to amaze me. Father Michael, who showed me such kindness on that first day, has become a mentor and friend who helps me navigate the complexities of my new faith. The church that I once stood outside mocking has become a place where I feel more at home than anywhere else in the world. The people there have embraced me not despite my past as a Muslim who attacked Christianity, but because of how powerfully God worked in my life to bring me to himself.

But here’s what I want you to understand about God’s sense of humor and justice. The very thing that I thought would make me famous as a Muslim defender of the faith, that video I was creating to mock Christianity became the catalyst for the most powerful testimony I could ever share. God took my rebellion and used it to demonstrate his power and love in a way that has reached thousands of people who might never have paid attention to a conventional conversion story. That explosion wasn’t destruction. It was God breaking through my hardened heart and creating something beautiful from my attempts to tear down his kingdom.

Every day I create content now. I remember that moment when my camera exploded in my hands and I’m reminded of how patient God was with me even when I was actively working against him. While I was standing outside his house speaking blasphemy against his son, he was planning my salvation. While I was mocking the cross, he was preparing to demonstrate his power in a way that would bring me to my knees. The love that drove him to die for me is the same love that destroyed my camera to save my soul.

Look inside your own heart right now and ask yourself this question. Is God trying to get your attention in ways that you’ve been ignoring or explaining away? Maybe it’s not an exploding camera, but perhaps there have been moments in your life when you felt a presence. When circumstances aligned in ways that seemed too perfect to be coincidental. When you experienced peace or love that couldn’t be explained by natural means. Those weren’t accidents. That was Jesus calling your name, just like he called mine on those church steps.

I’m asking you, just as Father Michael asked me that day, are you ready to listen to what Jesus has to say to you? You don’t have to wait for your own dramatic divine intervention. You don’t need a supernatural explosion to prove that God is real and that he loves you. The same Jesus who destroyed my camera to get my attention is standing at the door of your heart right now, knocking gently, waiting for you to invite him in.

If God can save a Muslim blogger who stood outside a church mocking his son, he can save anyone. If Jesus can take someone who spent years attacking Christianity and turn him into a defender of the faith, then there is no heart too hard, no pass too dark, no sin too great for his love to overcome. Your divine intervention might not be as dramatic as mine, but God is calling your name right now, and he’s waiting for your response.

Don’t wait for the explosion. Don’t wait for the dramatic sign. Jesus is reaching out to you today, right now as you read these words. The same love that saved me from my rebellion is available to you. No matter what you’ve done, no matter how far you think you’ve strayed from God, no matter how impossible redemption might seem, all you have to do is call on his name and surrender your heart to him.

If you’re ready to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, pray with me right now. Tell him you’re sorry for your sins. Ask him to come into your heart and commit to following him for the rest of your life. Your divine intervention starts today.