Dinner With Makram

The week I met Makram, I felt particularly underqualified to be training a group of North African ministry leaders. Crete was a staunchly Muslim country, and many of the missionaries under Makram’s leadership were seeing people come to Christ in droves. Here I was, brought in as the ‘expert’ from America to give training in evangelism methods. The truth was, I felt like Makram should be teaching me.

Boy, would he.

It was the beginning of 1999. Though I’d been on staff for nearly 20 years, it was hard not to think of Makram as a Christian Superstar.

I showed up early for the first meeting of the conference and tried to spot him. I wasn’t sure what he looked like, but I watched as people filed in thinking I might be able to pick him out of the crowd. I’m not sure how I thought I’d recognize him. Maybe he’d have some kind of faint halo.

Each time the older, friendly doorman opened the door to the conference room, I would evaluate the person who entered. Was this Makram?

Person after person came through, but no one stuck out, no halos or Holy Spirit doves on anyone’s shoulder. As the room filled up and the time for me to present approached, I asked someone to point him out.

What did Jesus tell us about greatness in the kingdom of God?

I’d been overlooking him the whole time. The friendly man greeting people and opening the door wasn’t a hotel employee; it was Makram. There to humbly serve.

First lesson.

A few days into the conference, I managed to get some time with him over dinner. We went to a little Greek restaurant and enjoyed several courses of wonderful food. Conversation was even more delightful.

I wanted to hear his story, and he willingly shared it with me; how he came to Christ, the literacy program, his family. [That’s when he first told me of his run-in with the firing squad.]

“Makram, what was that like? You nearly lost everything for Jesus . . . ”

Makram’s face scrunched up with a look of confusion. He looked as if I’d earnestly asked him what one plus one equaled.

“Well, you know. You’re the teacher here,” he said.

“That’s okay, tell me anyway.”

Hesitantly, he continued, “Jim, Jesus is my King. He’s given me His great commission. What else is there?”

Second Lesson.

What else is there?

My question was bizarre to Makram because he wasn’t living with any illusions. Jesus was his priceless pearl. Jesus was his inestimably valuable hidden treasure. If this is true, then it makes sense that nothing else would hold value.

In the middle eastern country where Makram lived, truly following Jesus and taking His great commission seriously made it likely that all he had – including his life – would be forcibly taken away. Gaining Jesus and receiving eternal life could literally cost him everything.

But he had done the math and found Jesus exceedingly worthy of that exchange. Having already handed everything over to king Jesus, what was left that a firing squad could take away from him? Jesus said that if you want to save your life, you need to lose it. It’s easy for first-world Christians to think of that as a nice metaphor, with a dash of hyperbole for good measure. In much of the world, it’s a clear reality. The fantasy we tolerate is that Jesus would make a nice addition to our lives; however, His asking price is ‘everything else.’ We think we can haggle Him down. Can we really?

It’s hard to imagine that a yard sale, dollar-store Jesus, picked up as an adornment to our comfortable existence, is anyone’s greatest possession. Fitting Jesus somewhere into your life is a long way from hiding your life inside His. Makram’s Jesus was his beloved king and greatest treasure. He couldn’t help but tell people about Him. We speak about the things we love.

Our plates at the restaurant had long been cleared and the dinner crowds thinned, but Makram and I talked on, the candle on our small table burning low.

I asked about the numbers. I wanted to hear from Makram about how many people they were reaching, so I asked him about how many staff he had on his team, how many people he’d shared the gospel with over the last year, and how many he thought had come to Christ.

Markram personally had led close to 300 people to Jesus in the previous year. Had I not observed him that week, I would have doubted that claim. But in a few days on Crete he had scores of spiritual conversations and 13 or 14 had trusted Christ with him. In fact, their team of 30 in Sudan had seen several thousand come to Christ through small group outreaches in the last few years. They didn’t know a specific number because they couldn’t begin to keep count. In all, they had shared Jesus with millions in the previous year.

Makram wasn’t bragging or prideful; Jesus was moving and he loved that people were giving their lives to Him. From Makram’s perspective, who wouldn’t want Jesus? I rejoiced with him over what God was doing.

Makram also wanted to celebrate what God was doing in my ministry, so he reciprocated. He asked me the same questions that I’d asked him. That’s when it became awkward.

“How about you, Jim–how many came to Christ in your ministry last year?”

We’d been fairly excited by our numbers, but here with Makram it felt paltry. In the Mid-Atlantic Region that year we’d seen something like 400 students come to Christ.

When I told him this, Makram sat back in his chair and cocked his head a little to the side. He looked perplexed. There was no judgment in his eyes, just confusion. This made no sense to him.

“Well, how many staff do you have?”

Makram had only thirty staff for his whole country. I was growing uncomfortable, but told him we had about 180.

“But…how many people did you share Christ with this year?”

“About 5,000.”

A look of deep confusion came over Makram’s face as he sat even farther back in his chair. We’d come to an incredibly awkward moment. He was trying to reason this out.

He wanted to be kind, but this was the opposite of what he expected to hear. In America we were completely free to share our faith and were awash in resources, unlike in his homeland.

After a long, uncomfortable pause, the confusion on Makram’s face turned to urgency. He leaned all the way forward in his chair, reached across the table to grab my hand, looked intently in my eyes and said “Jim. You need to pray that God will let you share Christ with more people next year. A lot more. You need to trust Him for a million.”

I nearly laughed. A million people? A million? Impossible.

But what could I do? Makram had fewer resources and lived in a country that was hostile to the gospel. Yet he trusted God for the impossible in an impossible place.

His challenge was beyond me, so all I could think to say was “Well, Makram…I’ll believe Him for that if you will believe with me.”

He agreed and he promised to pray for a million if I promised to pray for the same. Then he made me promise to call him when the Lord did it. Not if, but when.

We prayed together, left the empty restaurant strolling to our rooms in the cool of the night. A million people? How?

Over time, I let it slip back into the “wouldn’t that be nice” part of my mind. I nearly forgot about the conversation.
I didn’t realize it then, but the seeds for the third lesson of that night had been planted. They would take six months to sprout and bear fruit. First they had to be watered with the prayers of a little old man from the desert who loved to tell people about the thing he loved most of all – the infinitely wonderful, eternal king of the universe.

What else is there?