“Your prayers, your fasting, your charity, none of these get you to heaven!” said Nour, a 42-year-old Palestinian who once lived in the Midwest but moved to New York City, hoping that its large community of 16,000 Palestinian Muslims could help him find a job.

“You’ve got to have faith, my brother,” said Nour, who was counseling a young Muslim man. “Faith in Jesus the Messiah. It’s your heart that matters most.”

There are approximately 13 million Palestinians in the world, most of them living in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Israel. That’s where Nour’s conversion began.

One day he stumbled upon an ancient Christian catacomb, a former underground church, in his homeland. There in the darkness, using his flashlight to illuminate the Christian graffiti on the walls, Nour felt a strange peace come over him, a peace he had never experienced.

His spiritual and geographic journeys have been long and winding, but as a recently baptized Christian living in the Metro New York area, he has easy access to Palestinian Muslim communities in the nearby cities of Paterson, Clifton, and Bay Ridge.

There are an estimated 250,000 American Palestinians, including U.S. Representative Rashida Tliab from Michigan, whose parents were Palestinian refugees living in Detroit.

As Nour studies the scriptures, he thinks and prays about how he can introduce more of these Palestinians to Jesus Christ.

Pray for Christians working among the Palestinian people.

• Pray for new believers and the Arab Christians discipling them in Metro New York. May they be faithful gospel witnesses.
• Palestinians often feel rejected by the church. Pray for them to encounter a diverse gospel witness.
• Pray for a new Metro area church composed of Arabs, including Palestinians. May they lead Palestinians to the Lord in the city and around the world.