Basim* pulled the card out of his pocket and read the words that would change his life forever: “Our Father, who art in heaven.”

He read the Lord’s Prayer several times, but his mind kept replaying the phrase “our Father.” “I wondered what those words could possibly mean,” Basim said. “I figured if they were true, they would be the best news I’d ever heard.”

Basim’s father had died when he was six. “Even at that age, I felt a big hole in my heart,” he recalled. “I began dreaming I would see him again. I wanted to ask him why he left, to tell him how much I miss him and how much I need him.” Basim had been dreaming of a father for years, and the words on the card he had received from a tourist intensified the longing.

Basim read the prayer daily and wondered what it was like for Christians to have a God who lets His creatures call Him Father. He was aware that the prayer was changing the way he thought about God, but in his family, thinking of God as a father was heresy. In a rush of fear, he threw away the card.

But Basim’s desire for a father was greater than his fear. “Every night, I raised my eyes to this heavenly Father and talked to Him like I’d always wanted to talk to my father. I thought about Him a lot. I felt drawn to Him.”

One night, having missed his ritual prayers, Basim crawled into bed, feeling afraid of God’s wrath. Soon, however, he fell into his usual conversation with the Father in the Christian prayer. To his awe, he felt God’s presence, very real and close. For weeks, he was haunted by this experience, wondering, Is this God who comes close to me the same God I anger when I forget my ritual prayers?

One day, he walked by the open doors of a neighborhood bookstore and felt drawn inside. There, he saw an Arabic Bible on a table and picked it up. “The first verse I read was Luke 3:16, which says, ‘One more powerful than I will come,’ ” Basim remembered. “I turned to the store owner and said confidently, ‘See, Jesus is acknowledging a greater prophet than himself.’ Politely, the man suggested I read about John the Baptist in the previous verses.”

Basim left the bookstore with the Gospel of Luke hidden in his jacket. When everyone in his family had fallen asleep that night, he pulled it out to read. He was deeply moved by the little he could understand and couldn’t sleep that night or the next. “I was gripped by the fear of becoming a Christian,” he shared. “I knew it would cause shame for my family.”

Basim couldn’t resist the love that drew him, and eventually, he accepted Jesus as his Savior. He felt like a new person, filled with peace and love.

One day, Basim overheard a customer’s conversation at the grocery store where he worked. “Are you a Christian?” he asked the young woman. She responded evasively, “Oh, to be a Christian or not, what difference does it make?”

“It makes a big difference,” Basim responded emphatically. The woman invited him to lunch with her family, then to a Wednesday night prayer meeting, and then to studies on Daniel and Revelation. “It was a sweet experience!” Basim remembered. “To think I could actually understand what had once sounded so strange to me!”

Basim was baptized as a Seventh-day Adventist Christian in a country that doesn’t recognize his new faith. That same day, a young woman, who would later become his wife, was also baptized. Today, they serve together in full-time ministry to their people. Not only is Basim now a father of two children, but he has also met his heavenly Father and can testify that God has filled the father-sized hole in his heart.

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