These are those guys…
“We have found the Messiah.” “We have found the one Moses wrote about.” The excitement of Andrew and Philip in John 1:44-45 was palpable. They had found what they had been hoping for and they wanted to tell others.
As I think about the young Sufi Muslims I have met here in the UK, I find myself thinkiing “these are those guys.”
Among the many Muslims who live around us, there is a segment that is looking for “the one,” someone who has a connection with Almighty God and can help them to find assurance, wholeness and spiritual stability in a crazy world. I have met guys – and some girls too – who think that have found their one. They call that person their pir or their shaykh or their murshid and they have become a disciple. What grieves me is that that they have settled for less than what God has provided for them in Christ, the living Saviour, the Mediator, the Way, the Light, the Shepherd, the one who imparts the Holy Spirit of God. But maybe they have never heard. Maybe no one has ever spoken to them of Christ in these terms.
When some Christians learn of the Sufi dimension of Islam their reaction is to find out more so as to be able to refute it. However well intentioned, they are missing the point. Offer the seekers the Higher Way. Point them to Christ, the true treasure, one who does not simply give instruction about how to approach God but deals with sin and makes relationship with God possible.