Lina Abu­Jamra Con­nects with Stu­dents

MISHAWAKA—Dur­ing the 2023 Deeper Life Se­ries, stu­dents heard from Lina Abu­Jamra, M.D., a pe­di­atric emer­gency room physi­cian who has pur­sued op­por­tu­ni­ties for med­ical min­istry in her na­tive Lebanon, while also al­low­ing the Lord to work use her in the United States and abroad through her re­flec­tive and de­vo­tional writ­ings. Abu­Jamra shared with the Bethel com­mu­nity dur­ing five ses­sions from March 6-8, fo­cus­ing on the theme of what it looks like to deepen our re­la­tion­ship with Christ and sub­mit our­selves fully to His will. 

Abu­Jamra was led to Christ by the tes­ti­mony of her mother when she was a child and then moved to the United States from Lebanon when she was 16 years old. It was at a camp she at­tended dur­ing her early years in the States that she ex­pe­ri­enced what she be­lieves was her first deep, per­sonal en­counter with Christ. 

“I think, look­ing back, that prob­a­bly started what I look at now as my call­ing,” Abu­Jamra said. “It was when I feel like I re­ally started be­ing proac­tive with ask­ing God, ‘What do you want me to do with this life?’” 

She started col­lege soon af­ter that ex­pe­ri­ence, and over the next few years reached a point where she felt her per­sonal life was in sham­bles af­ter break­ing off an en­gage­ment two weeks be­fore the wed­ding and fac­ing a faith cri­sis she was­n’t sure how to re­spond to. 

“It was a lot of trauma, but that re­ally piv­oted my life into the start of teach­ing wom­en’s Bible stud­ies in Sun­day School for­mat, and I fell in love with that for­mat,” Abu­Jamra said. “I was train­ing to be a pe­di­atric ER doc­tor when God called me to teach the Bible, and then I moved to Chicago . . . where the min­istry re­ally de­vel­oped.” 

Abu­Jamra has now lived in Chicago for 22 years, and the min­istry has grown in ways she never could have pre­dicted at the time. Her teach­ing min­istry shifted gears af­ter an­other faith cri­sis, dur­ing which she left the church she had been at­tend­ing, which gave her the op­por­tu­nity to pur­sue med­ical min­istry op­tions in the Mid­dle East and to start writ­ing more se­ri­ously. 

“Ba­si­cally, God stopped me to say, ‘Hey, there’s some­thing else I want you to do,’ so I started the work in Lebanon, and that's where it is now,” Abu­Jamra said. “I think the theme that comes out as I look at my life is how God amaz­ingly uses every fail­ure, or what we per­ceive as fail­ure, He re­ally uses it strongly to redi­rect us in our call­ing.” 

She said it is im­por­tant to take time to con­sider our per­spec­tive when peo­ple face sit­u­a­tions they au­to­mat­i­cally want to la­bel as “fail­ure.” 

“I think some­times we as­sume fail­ure is cor­rec­tion, when re­ally it’s just redi­rec­tion,” Abu­Jamra said. 

She shared that, as Chris­tians seek to be­come more Christ-like in their walk with Him, a key part of the Chris­t­ian walk should be help­ing oth­ers. She said this should par­tially be help­ing one an­other within the church set­ting, but that it also must ex­tend be­yond the church. 

“A lot of Amer­i­cans sep­a­rate so­cial jus­tice from dis­ci­ple­ship,” Abu­Jamra said. “I think jus­tice work is an over­flow of dis­ci­ple­ship, whether it’s here lo­cal or global.” 

Part of dis­ci­ple­ship is grow­ing in knowl­edge, and to as­sist with that, Abu­Jamra has writ­ten and pub­lished a num­ber of de­vo­tional works. Her ma­jor books in­clude “Frac­tured Faith: Find­ing Your Way Back to God in an Age of De­con­struc­tion,” “Thrive: The Sin­gle Life as God In­tended,” “Re­solved: 10 Ways to Stand Strong and Live What You Be­lieve,” “Stripped: When God’s Call Turns From ‘Yes!’ to ‘Why Me?’” and “The Daily Dose: 365 Days to a Healthy Soul.” All of these books are avail­able for pur­chase on Ama­zon, and Abu­Jamra do­nated sev­eral copies of them to Bethel that were dis­trib­uted at chapel on March 17. 

In of­fer­ing ad­vice to stu­dents, Abu­Jamra said it is im­por­tant to rec­og­nize one per­son can­not do every­thing and that to be able to give every­thing to one’s call­ing re­quires a give-and-take men­tal­ity. 

“You have to be will­ing to live with trade­offs, re­mind­ing your­self that God is the one that grows us and God is the one that opens doors,” Abu­Jamra said. “If you honor God, and your mo­tives are right, He’s the one that’s go­ing to build it.” 

She said it is im­por­tant to trust God and to not live in the shadow of “FOMO”: the fear of miss­ing out. 

“You’re never go­ing to miss what God has planned for you,” Abu­Jamra said. “You can’t miss it by your fail­ures, you can’t miss it by not show­ing up, you can­not miss it by hon­or­ing God, by putting Him first and giv­ing up things oth­ers would tell you to. Ig­nore the voices around you and lean in to the voice of the Lord.” 

To learn more about Abu­Jamra and her min­istry re­sources and op­por­tu­ni­ties, visit liv­ing­with­power.org or fol­low her on In­sta­gram @linaabu­jamra.