Women’s discipleship classes

In the third week of February, Horizons International hosted its first of six Cubs to Lions discipleship festivals for 2019 in our Beirut Lighthouse for four days. As was explained in part 1, each day the women came and brought their children with them for discipleship. Last week we talked about the children’s discipleship classes, but in this post we will focus on the women.

The women were welcomed each morning to the main hall to praise and worship God.  After this Horizons staff member Pastor Armen preached a message about the love of God and about salvation. His messages included topics such as, “What does it mean to be a christian,” “We are created in the image of God,” “What is sin and how has it separated us from God,” “How good works alone doesn’t remove sin,” and “How Jesus is the savior and has the solution.”

Group Activities

After each morning’s message, the women were divided into four groups. Each group had a different colored ribbon and they rotated into different classrooms.

First group had an awareness session where they were taught, “ You are beautiful.” The next learned how to love and accept themselves through God’s loving heart. The following discussed the idea that they are worth dying for. Finally, the last discussion was about how God loves them as they are.

God’s love truly touched the hearts of these women over the four days, many of whom confessed they never knew about the Love of Christ in this way. There was a period of questions and answers, and this gave them the opportunity to start proclaiming good things about themselves.

Testimonies from discipleship classes

The following testimonies are shared by the Horizons Discipleship Leaders.

Leader Lena:
One of our disciples shared about her husband who has been without work for a while. She told me that her children prayed for the first time ever, and they prayed for the work of their father. The Lord responded and today he went to work. During bible study she told this story in front of everyone, hallelujah!

Another woman asked for prayer for her nephew who was a cancer patient. He is only ten years old and he needed to have a series of tests done. After praying with her, the result of the test showed that he was free of cancer. All results came back miraculously negative. The boy was healed!  She said to her brother, “This is Jesus, we prayed at the center, and the Lord Jesus answered.” Through this miracle she brought also her brother to Christ. They live in Syria, but they gave their lives to Christ because of the prayers that were happening at our lighthouse in Beirut!

Leader Silva: 

One of the women at the festival had a friend who is living in Turkey. She was very sick and was going to need to have an operation, but after praying for her, she was healed and didn’t need to go to the doctors.

Another faithful woman was suffering greatly with her husband but a team of our staff visited him with all love and humility. This visit ended up helping the man to be more flexible with his wife and become not so opposed to her commitment to church meetings. Glory to the Lord.

One of the women was suffering and crying at the meetings, saying that her children were no longer able to attend their school. So the leader of her group spent time praying with her about this matter, and the Lord intervened one day later and the children returned to their schools.

Leader Sahar:

One theme among the women this week has been of prayer and forgiveness. Many of the sisters are testifying about the power of prayer and forgiveness in their lives!

One woman reported an amazing story. She said that she had worked like Jesus to feed people from her daily food even though it was a very small amount. This caught the attention of her daughter, who objected, saying: “Mama we don’t have much left.” The woman replied that ‘Jesus told us to teach about his love and feed his people.’ On the same day her husband came home with 3 kg of goat meat, which was out of the ordinary. When the daughter saw this she understood that God had blessed them with more because of the service of her mother. She rejoiced and thanked Jesus.

Another woman reported how her husband lost work, but after praying for three days and nights for his work and to be able to pay the rent, the Lord responded. The director called her husband back and asked him to work again. They both praised the Lord for this!

Leader Armen:

One sister was having a serious problem with her residency and for three consecutive days her answer was delayed. On the final day on the discipleship festival, someone from general security told the woman that there is suspicion of her young son and this means there will be more delay and investigation and chances are high that their residence wont be renewed.

The woman called me at 10:25 to ask me and her discipleship group to pray. We prayed and prayed for her before and during the lesson. I called at 11:30, after the lesson and she said, “I believe that Jesus made a miracle! At exactly 10:35 the responsible person called and in a strange way said, ‘I decided to help you’ and he did everything within five minutes to complete my papers.” She came immediately afterwards to the Beirut Lighthouse and witnessed to everyone that the Lord intervened. She said, “Even though we were threatened to be kicked out of Lebanon, the prayer of the group at the center made a miracle and opened the door for us immediately. Jesus is Faithful.“