Lebanon (MNN) — Amazing changes have taken place in Lebanon in recent months, yet the battle for a free country isn’t over yet, says Nuna* with Triumphant Mercy Lebanon.
According to the November Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire, Israeli troops were supposed to fully withdraw from southern Lebanon by late January. Hezbollah was supposed to give up its military position in the same region (south of the Litani river), replaced by the Lebanese army. Neither has happened yet, though there has been progress.
H.E. General Joseph Aoun, President of the Republic of Lebanon, right, and Dubravka Šuica, center, during a meeting in Baabda, Lebanon February 2025. (Photo and caption by © European Union, 2025, CC BY 4.0. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Instead, this month, Hezbollah has been defiant as Lebanon’s new president, Joseph Aoun, navigates international pressure for the militant group’s disarmament.
Nuna describes Lebanon as at the hinge point of change. Without that disarmament, Nuna explains, nothing will change the nation’s financial straitjacket or future.
“We can try to do many changes. However, we will not have the money for reconstruction. We will not have the approval of either [the] U.S. or Saudi Arabia, or all the countries that are involved in the rebuilding of Lebanon,” she says.
Lebanon will either step forward to become again what it once was: the Paris of the Middle East. Or it will live longer in today’s status quo, which Nuna says is chaos, “where Israel is still bombing places where Hezbollah has weapons, and we still have [places] like the south of Lebanon being hit every day, the Beqaa Valley being hit every day.”
Ministry impact and prayer points
The political climate has impacted ministry, sometimes for the worse and sometimes with new doors.
Nuna says the weakening of Hezbollah has stripped Muslim Shiite communities of the power, prestige and leadership they once had. Now Triumphant Mercy has recognized the way opening for gospel ministry to these communities.
Triumphant Mercy Lebanon provides food aid at its community center in Beirut.
(Photo courtesy of TM Lebanon)
“It was completely difficult for us to just touch them. Now it’s an opportunity,” says Nuna. “And I think this is how we need to look at life. God gives us opportunities, and we need to seize them.”
They are opening a new center where Shiite communities are located! Nuna asks for prayer that broken hearts among these communities and others in Lebanon would find healing in Christ.
“I would pray also for the common sense of people to see that when you lose a war, you don’t have to keep on trying to make it as if you’re still on the winner’s side,” she says. “Because actually, when you lose, you have to lay down your weapons and say, ‘Okay, what can I do now?'”
She adds, “Pray that this will come to pass, and that Lebanon will be freed from all the Iranian pressure that is keeping people in bondage. Of course [pray] for the ministry too, that now that people are open, that they will receive the gospel and that they will find healing and restoration in their hearts.”
*Pseudonym
Header photo courtesy of Triumphant Mercy Lebanon.
