Marina Ayoub
She’s got a great smile, a friendly personality and she just can’t help talking about Jesus. And yet, though it’s hard to imagine for us who know her now, this was not always the case.
Though born in Lebanon, the eldest in a family of five girls, Marina spent her childhood growing up in Australia. Her Greek Orthodox parents sent her to a Catholic school which was where she was first introduced to Jesus. The school showed their respect for her religion by not making Marina and her other Orthodox classmates study the saints. Instead they did projects on the Prime Ministers. This made Marina feel excluded. Though she enjoyed going to the Orthodox church and participating in the traditions, she somehow felt that her classmates got to do things that seemed to be more “special”. She finally asked if she could take part in Holy Communion and, after getting permission from her parents and the teachers, she got to part of the ceremony, carrying the Bible in the procession and receiving a special blessing from the priest.
When Marina was 13, her family moved back to Lebanon because of her father’s job. She started attending a secular school which contained very few Christians. One of these, a boy named Amir, used to go around telling everyone that they were pagans destined for hell. He was particularly hard on Marina. Instead of retaliating, Marina decided to treat Amir the way she wished to be treated. She was always nice and never picked on him like her classmates. One day, after Amir got a bad grade for an assignment and was feeling particularly down, Marina cheered him up. In return, he wrote Marina a letter in which he said he wanted her to be saved because she “deserved” to know Jesus. This made her question what he had that she didn’t. She eventually prayed a prayer accepting Jesus Christ as Lord.
However, Marina’s prayer stemmed more from her fear of hell rather than a proper understanding of the gospel. Even after praying the prayer, Marina was still confused. She was told that she should evangelise but her early attempts resulted in her feeling like she had badly hurt others. She became a “believer who didn’t preach” and experienced a lot of shame and guilt as a result. In addition, she felt that, in order to reach God, she needed to “be perfect as my God in heaven is perfect”. She began to make lists of all her flaws so that she would know herself so well, she could say whether a criticism was true or not. Unfortunately, list-making caused Marina work harder and made her feel that, as long as she had flaws, no one could really love her.
In first year university, she started to realise that she was not like other Christians. She says of the time, ”I felt that I was in a ‘fight’ with God and we weren’t speaking. I felt that he was ashamed of me for not knowing right from wrong. Then, one day ... I realised God wasn’t fighting with me—I was the one fighting with him. After I realised this ‘war’ was due to me, I felt that God and I stopped fighting.” After a summer of reading her Bible and deciding she really wanted to find God, she started going to a friend’s Bible study group. This intensified her awareness of the difference between her and other Christians and made her feel like God was distant. She was ashamed of her “lack of faith” and feared that the others would be horrified if they found out. She prayed, “God, I know that Jesus is the truth and I can’t deny it. But I don’t think I can be a Christian. It’s not working. I DON’T WANT to leave, but you are so far away. Please stop me if you want me to be with you.”
All this turmoil was finally brought to a head when she was asked to share her testimony. She confessed—first to her best friend, then to others—of her feelings of inadequacy and shame. They in turn told her that they were not perfect either and nor did God require her to be. One friend told her, “The problem with perfectionists is that they always feel they need to do more, be more, and can’t simply be.” Marina then understood that being a Christian is all about being in a relationship with Jesus, a relationship that’s not a “one-way phone conversation”. She became content simply to “be”.
Now back in Australia, studying Science/Arts (Biology and English), Marina’s passion for Jesus is evident to just about everyone she meets. Though initially apprehensive of returning to the country of her childhood, Marina is now excited about what God has in store for her. Please pray for her!
- Thank God for saving Marina and drawing her to himself through all those years.
- Pray that this year will fully be the Lord’s, in Marina’s life and others’.
- Pray that God’s will be done in Marina’s life and that she will be able to surrender her fear, ignorance, doubts, unbelief and self-centredness so that God can change her heart, soul and mind.
Karen Beilharz
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