Michael Youssef sounds alarm over Islamists in Texas ahead of AWAKE Houston

Michael Youssef is warning that Christians must “wake up” to a growing Islamist influence in the United States, particularly in Texas, while contending that the ultimate answer is found in repentance, revival and a renewed commitment to proclaiming the Gospel.

The 77-year-old founder of Leading The Way, bestselling author and senior pastor of the Church of the Apostles in Atlanta, will bring that message to AWAKE Houston on Saturday, a citywide gathering of Christians for worship, prayer and Gospel proclamation at the Smart Financial Centre at Sugar Land.

The event, part of AWAKE America, a national prayer and revival movement founded by Youssef, will feature Grammy-winning artist Chris Tomlin leading worship, with Youssef preaching and presenting a Gospel invitation. O.S. Hawkins will host the evening, while evangelist Ahmed Joktan, founder of Mecca to Christ Ministries International, will also speak.

The program, one of several citywide gatherings, will include focused prayer for Houston and personal prayer ministry, with prayer teams available throughout. The goal is to encourage repentance and mobilize believers to take the Gospel into their families, neighborhoods, workplaces and communities, organizers say.

In an interview with The Christian Post ahead of the event, Youssef, who was born in Egypt and left the country in 1969 before eventually immigrating to the United States, shared how his experience living under Islamic and socialist rule has given him a perspective he lamented many Americans do not have.

“I have had experiences that very few, very few, if not 99.9% of Americans have had, and that is living under Islamic socialism or social socialism slash Islamists,” Youssef said. “I immigrated here legally, immigrated because I was longing to escape from that horrible life under socialism and Islamic pressure. When I come to this great country that I love so much or read so much about, that I want to serve it by basically proclaiming the Gospel.”

Those concerns are part of what put him “on this trajectory” of launching AWAKE America, which he said now has about 600,000 people signed up to pray daily for an awakening.

The pastor pointed to Texas, where he claimed that Muslim groups are seeking to establish communities governed by Islamic principles and are taking advantage of the “generosity” of Texans.

“I focused on Houston and Texas because they are focusing on Texas,” Youssef said. “They took advantage of the kindness of the people in the Lone Star."

Youssef referenced Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's opposition to sharia and pointed out that Islamic religious courts are operating within mosques in the state. What’s happening in Texas, he said, is exactly what he warned about in Britain two decades ago. Islamists have historically formed strategic alliances with left-wing political movements, the bestselling author claims, pointing to Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution as an example.

“So I want to wake America up to what is going on,” the An Unholy Alliance author said. “You must get out of the pew and share Christ because that’s the only hope. ... The law can do things. The politicians can do some things, but we know ultimately it’s a part of the Gospel that’s going to change lives.”

Evangelism will be a central message at AWAKE Houston. Joktan, who will speak at the gathering, is a former Muslim and the son of a former grand mufti of Mecca who converted to Christianity. Youssef said Joktan's testimony clearly shows why Christians should boldly share their faith despite cultural opposition.

“He now loves Christ, preaches Christ, and we invite him to share his testimony and to challenge the Christians to be bold,” Youssef said, adding that believers should not “cower in the church walls.”

“[Jesus said] ‘I want you to go there because you have My authority, and you have My supernatural power,’” he said. “And so that’s the challenge I bring to the Christian community in Houston on Sept. 19.”

The gathering will also bring together Christians from a range of churches and denominations, something Youssef said is particularly important amid divisions both inside the Church and throughout the country.

“We are united on the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” he said. “The seriousness of that unity is when Christ is at the center, and the proclamation of the fact that Jesus and only Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father but by Him. Let our unity be around Jesus.”

The longtime pastor is also praying that the event sparks genuine revival, though he stressed that “revival” and “awakening” are not interchangeable.

“A revival has to happen within the Christian believers,” Youssef said. “Christian believers can experience a revival when they are repentant, when they are not rationalizing or baptizing sin into the church by repenting of sin, sin in our own lives and sin of our congregations.”

“Awakening cannot happen by human effort; it’s an invasion by Heaven onto Earth,” Youssef continued, pointing to historic periods of spiritual awakening associated with figures such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield.

“When people repent, and they live what I call ‘keep short accounts with God,’ and long and thirst and hunger for righteousness, God, on His part, says, ‘I’m going to invade the world and bring the lost to the Kingdom,’” he said.

After attending AWAKE Houston, Youssef hopes Christians will leave committed to living a “repentant lifestyle.” He encouraged Christians near Houston to attend the gathering and asked believers elsewhere to pray ahead of the event.

“Living the repentant lifestyle is what honors God,” he said. “That is a lifestyle. It’s not something you do when you go to church on Sunday or something you do on occasions. … A repentant lifestyle becomes infectious.”

“This is more than just a concert,” he added. “We will see a message preached and people responding.”

Arena doors for AWAKE Houston open at 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 19, and the program begins at 7 p.m.