Rashid Kadirov was a Muslim in Central Asia when the worst thing happened. His six-year-old daughter Azizza was killed by a drunk neighbour driving a tractor. In his grief he went looking for something the ache could rest on, and he went to the Koran. There he read a line, in Surah 5:70, that pointed back to the Gospels as holy scripture. So he prayed a strange, specific prayer. He asked God for an Injil, a New Testament.
His friends brought him one. It was a stolen Gideon Bible, taken from a vandalised car. It did not last. When the friends took it back, Rashid prayed again, this time for a Bible no one could take away from him.
The book that stayed Then a couple arrived from Tajikistan, sent by a former classmate of his who had himself come to Christ. They carried a Bible and a copy of the JESUS Film. Rashid and his wife Aleka watched it, and as the good news was explained, each of them, without telling the other, quietly prayed to receive Jesus. Aleka barely understood it all. "She had very little understanding of the Gospel," she said later, "and yet peace flooded her heart."
They were baptised in Tajikistan, and Rashid started telling others what he had found.
A grieving father asked for a book, and God gave him a Person. The peace Rashid could not manufacture arrived the moment Jesus did. He is close to the brokenhearted, and He is near to you.
