Once we had to hide in a ditch for 3 hours while security forces passed nearby.

The woman next to me was praying in whispers, her children clutching her.

All of us certain we were about to be caught.

But we weren’t caught.

Mile by mile, night by night, we moved closer to the border.

And then one night, after hiking for hours up a mountain path, our guide told us we had crossed into Turkey.

We were out of Iran.

We had made it.

I collapsed on Turkish soil and wept.

wept from relief, from exhaustion, from grief for everything I was leaving behind, from gratitude for still being alive.

I had escaped against all odds with a death sentence hanging over me, monitored and watched and controlled.

I had somehow escaped.

God had made a way when there was no way.

He had opened doors that should have been locked.

He had blinded eyes that should have seen.

He had moved pieces on a board I couldn’t even see, orchestrating my rescue when I had given up hope of rescue.

The next months were a blur of refugee camps, processing centers, applications for asylum, the bureaucracy of displacement, the limbo of being stateless.

But I was alive.

I was free.

And eventually I was approved for resettlement in a country that would give me safety.

The day I stepped off the plane in my new home, breathing air as a truly free woman for the first time in my life, I fell to my knees right there in the airport.

People stared, but I didn’t care.

I thanked Jesus for carrying me through, for being faithful.

Even when everything seemed impossible, for writing a story more miraculous than anything I could have imagined.

I had left everything behind.

My family, my country, my language, my culture, everything familiar was gone.

But I had Jesus.

I had freedom.

I had life.

And I had a story to tell.

A story about a God who reaches into darkness and pulls people into light.

A story about faith that survives persecution.

A story about love that conquers fear.

A story about redemption that can transform even betrayers into believers.

My story.

But really, his story.

Always his story.

I’m sitting in my small apartment as I tell you this story.

It’s been 3 years since I left Iran.

3 years of building a new life in a country where speaking about Jesus won’t get you killed.

Where owning a Bible is legal.

where gathering with other believers happens in actual church buildings with signs outside announcing what they are.

The freedom is still overwhelming sometimes.

I’ll be walking down the street and realize I’m not checking over my shoulder.

I’ll be in church and remember that no one is going to raid this building.

I’ll open my Bible on my kitchen table in broad daylight and be amazed that such a simple act used to be a crime worth dying for.

But freedom isn’t simple.

It’s not just the absence of persecution.

It comes with its own complications, its own challenges, its own pain.

The nightmares started a few months after I arrived.

I would wake up screaming, convinced I was back in Evan, convinced the guards were coming for me, convinced the death sentence was being carried out.

My roommate, another refugee who had been kind enough to share her space with me, would hold me while I cried and reminded me where I was, safe, free, alive.

I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

A therapist, a kind woman who specialized in working with refugees, helped me understand that my body and mind were still processing the trauma I had been through.

That healing takes time, that it was okay to not be okay, even though I was physically safe.

Now, learning a new language was harder than I expected.

English words felt strange in my mouth.

I would struggle to express thoughts that came easily in Farsy.

Frustrated by my inability to communicate the nuances I wanted to convey, everything took more effort.

Shopping for groceries, navigating public transportation, understanding cultural references.

The exhaustion of starting over was relentless.

I missed my mother desperately.

Missed Persian food cooked the way she made it.

Missed the sound of Farsy being spoken around me.

missed the smells and sounds of Thrron even though Tyrron had become a cage I couldn’t live in anymore.

You can love a place and not be able to survive in it.

You can miss home even when home tried to kill you.

But in the middle of all this adjustment, all this pain, all this displacement, I found community.

other Iranian believers who had escaped, who understood what I had been through because they had been through similar things.

We would gather in living rooms and share meals and pray in Farsy and cry together and laugh together and remember that we weren’t alone.

There was a small church nearby that welcomed refugees.

The pastor was a gentle man who had himself fled persecution in another country decades ago.

He understood displacement.

He created a space where we could grieve what we lost while celebrating what we had gained, where we could be honest about the cost of following Jesus while also rejoicing in the freedom to follow him openly.

I started volunteering at a refugee assistance organization, helping other Iranian women navigate the asylum process, translating for them, sitting with them while they cried from the overwhelming weight of starting over, giving them what had been given to me, presence, patience, hope that life could be rebuilt from ruins.

And slowly, very slowly, I started healing.

The nightmares became less frequent.

The panic attacks subsided.

I could talk about what happened without breaking down completely.

I could function, not just survive.

I could begin to imagine a future instead of just processing the past.

About a year after I arrived, I received news through carefully coded channels.

My mother had started secretly reading a Bible that Raza had somehow obtained.

She was asking more questions.

She was seeking Jesus cautiously, quietly, terrified, but unable to stop herself.

The same hunger I had felt was growing in her.

Then came news that stunned me even more.

Raza had left the besiege, just walked away from his position, his career, everything he had built his identity on.

He faced severe consequences.

Loss of status, financial hardship, suspicion from authorities.

But he did it anyway because he said he couldn’t enforce laws he no longer believed in.

Couldn’t persecute people for following Jesus when he was beginning to follow Jesus himself.

The latest message I received said he was secretly meeting with other believers, that he was reading scripture voraciously, that he was wrestling with everything, asking hard questions, but moving toward faith.

My brother, who had signed my death warrant, was becoming my brother in Christ.

I wept when I heard this news.

wept from joy, from awe, from the overwhelming realization that God’s redemption really does reach everywhere, that no one is beyond his reach, that even the worst betrayal can be transformed into the most profound testimony.

The women from my house church survived.

Most of them are still there, still meeting in secret, still growing in number.

The persecution I faced, the story that got out about a young woman facing death for her faith apparently inspired others, made them bolder, made them willing to risk more.

The enemy’s attempt to crush us only made us multiply.

Leila, my atheist cellmate from Evan, eventually got released, too.

Through networks I don’t fully understand.

I learned she came to faith before she left prison.

That our conversations, my prayers, my peace in the middle of horror had broken through her skepticism.

She became a believer.

She’s [snorts] still in Iran, still facing danger, but she’s free in the ways that matter most.

God used my suffering.

He didn’t waste a single moment of it.

Every tear had purpose.

Every fear had meaning.

Every dark night was producing something I couldn’t see at the time, but can see clearly now.

He was building his church.

He was saving souls.

He was proving that his love is stronger than persecution.

His grace is more powerful than death.

His truth cannot be silenced no matter how hard authorities try to silence it.

About 18 months after I arrived in my new country, someone from a ministry that works with persecuted believers contacted me.

They asked if I would be willing to share my story publicly to speak at churches, at conferences, to media outlets, to give voice to what believers in places like Iran face every day.

My immediate reaction was fear.

Speaking publicly meant being visible.

Being visible meant being identifiable.

Being identifiable meant potential danger.

Not just for me, but for my family still in Iran.

I wanted to protect them, to stay hidden, to not draw more attention to myself.

But as I prayed about it, I felt a clear leading.

This was why I survived.

This was why God brought me out.

Not just for my own freedom, but to be a voice for those who can’t speak.

To tell the stories that need to be told.

To show the world that the church is growing in Iran despite persecution.

Maybe because of persecution.

To demonstrate that Jesus is worth everything people say he is.

So I said yes.

And this is what I’ve been doing for the past year and a half.

Traveling to churches, sharing my testimony, speaking to anyone who will listen, telling my story, but more importantly, telling his story.

The story of a God who pursues people into the darkest places and pulls them into light.

The responses have been overwhelming.

I’ve spoken to churches full of comfortable Western Christians who wept at hearing what believers elsewhere face, who told me they had taken their freedom for granted, had been lukewarm in their faith, had forgotten what it costs to follow Jesus in many parts of the world, who committed to pray more, to give more, to care more about persecuted believers.

I’ve spoken to Muslims who came curious or skeptical and left thoughtful questioning.

Who asked me afterwards why I couldn’t just lie, just say the words to save myself.

Who didn’t understand my answer but couldn’t deny the authenticity of what they saw in my face.

Seeds planted even in soil that seemed hard.

I’ve spoken to refugees from other countries who understood my story because they had lived similar ones, who needed to know they weren’t alone, that their suffering wasn’t meaningless, that God sees and knows and cares.

We would cry together afterwards, holding each other, finding family in shared trauma and shared faith.

I’ve spoken to skeptics and atheists who came to argue and left silent, who couldn’t explain away the peace I have, the joy that survives horror, the transformation that goes beyond what human psychology can account for.

I don’t expect them all to believe, but I expect them to think, to question their certainty that faith is just weakness or wishful thinking.

And I’ve spoken to believers in countries where Christianity is dangerous.

Though I can’t name those countries or contexts for security reasons.

I’ve looked into eyes that reflect my own experience.

We understand each other without words.

We’ve walked similar valleys.

We’ve faced similar terrors.

We’ve known similar joys.

And we encourage each other to keep going, keep believing, keep trusting that Jesus is worth it because he is.

He is worth everything.

This is what I want you to understand whoever you are listening to this story.

Jesus is not a nice idea or a comforting belief or a cultural tradition.

He is real.

He is alive.

He is powerful.

He changes everything.

If you’re a Muslim listening to this, I want you to know something.

I’m not your enemy.

I was one of you.

I believed what you believe.

I prayed the prayers you pray.

I followed the rules you follow.

And I was empty.

I was drowning.

I was desperate for something real, something true, something that actually changed me from the inside out.

I found that in Jesus, not because I was trying to rebel or reject my culture or insult Islam, but because I encountered truth and couldn’t deny it.

Because I experienced love that transformed me and couldn’t go back to religion without relationship.

Because I met God personally and everything else became secondary.

I invite you to seek him honestly, genuinely, without fear of what you might find.

Ask him to reveal himself to you.

Read the gospel with an open heart.

Consider that maybe maybe the message you’ve been told about Jesus isn’t the whole truth.

Consider that maybe he’s worth investigating.

Yes, it might cost you.

It cost me everything I knew.

But I gained more than I lost.

I lost my country but gained a kingdom.

I lost my safety but gained peace that doesn’t depend on circumstances.

I lost my old life but gained life that’s actually worth living.

If you’re a Christian living in freedom, I want you to know something, too.

Don’t take it for granted.

The ability to own a Bible, to attend church openly, to worship without fear, to share your faith without risking death.

These are gifts that billions of people don’t have.

Use them.

Don’t waste them.

Pray for persecuted believers.

We need your prayers desperately.

Pray for Iran, where the church is growing faster than almost anywhere else despite horrific persecution.

Pray for courage, for protection, for perseverance.

Pray for families who lose loved ones to martyrdom.

Pray for children who grow up without parents because their parents followed Jesus.

Pray for believers in prison right now in cells like the one I was in, wondering if they’ll survive.

Give financially to organizations that help persecuted believers.

Support those who risk everything to translate Bibles into restricted languages.

Support those who smuggle believers across borders.

Support those who provide legal aid and medical care and trauma counseling.

Your money becomes someone else’s rescue.

And don’t be lukewarm in your own faith.

Don’t settle for comfortable Christianity that costs you nothing and changes you minimally.

If Jesus is worth dying for, and he is, then he’s worth living for radically.

He’s worth your whole heart, your whole life, your whole devotion.

Don’t waste the freedom you have by treating faith like a casual hobby.

If you’re someone suffering right now, if you’re facing persecution or imprisonment or death threats for your faith, I want you to know you’re not alone.

Jesus is with you.

Even in the darkest cell, even facing the worst torture, even walking to your execution, he is with you.

He will not abandon you.

He will give you strength you don’t have naturally.

He will give you peace that makes no logical sense.

He will be your anchor when everything else is chaos.

I won’t lie to you and say it’s easy.

It’s not.

The valley is dark and deep and terrifying.

But he is there with you.

I know because I walked that valley.

I know because he carried me through it.

I know because I’m still here, still believing, still testifying that he is faithful.

And if you don’t make it through physically, if persecution takes your life, you are not losing.

Death is not the end for believers.

It’s the beginning.

It’s stepping from this broken world into perfect presence with Jesus.

It’s release from suffering into eternal joy.

It’s victory, not defeat.

The martyrs know something the rest of us are still learning.

That this life, as precious as it is, is not the main thing.

That Jesus is the main thing.

That knowing him is worth any cost.

that losing your life for him means gaining everything that really matters.

If you’re questioning faith, if you’re seeking, if you’re not sure what you believe, but something in this story resonates with you, I encourage you to seek Jesus.

Not religion, not rules, not traditions, Jesus himself.

Ask him to show himself to you.

Read the Gospel of John.

See what Jesus actually said and did.

Consider the possibility that he really is who he claimed to be.

Yes, following him might be costly.

It was costly for me.

It’s costly for millions around the world.

But the cost of not following him is greater.

The cost is living without truth, without freedom, without peace, without hope, without the only thing that actually satisfies the hunger we all feel.

I live now with purpose.

Every morning I wake up knowing why I survived, why God brought me through heaven, why he orchestrated my escape, why he gave me a platform to speak.

It’s so people like you would hear this story and understand that God is real, that he’s active, that he’s pursuing people everywhere, even in the hardest places, even in the darkest circumstances.

My story isn’t unique.

Thousands of Iranians are coming to Christ right now.

Despite persecution, maybe because of persecution, the church is exploding.

People are having dreams and visions of Jesus.

People are risking everything to follow him.

People are finding that he’s worth more than safety, more than comfort, more than life itself.

This is happening in Iran.

It’s happening in Afghanistan.

It’s happening in North Korea.

It’s happening in Saudi Arabia.

It’s happening in places where being Christian should be impossible.

But the gospel can’t be stopped.

Jesus can’t be silenced.

The church can’t be crushed.

The more they try to kill it, the more it grows.

I’m part of the fastest growing church in the world.

The persecuted church.

The underground church.

The church that meets in secret and prays and whispers and shares communion knowing it might be the last time.

The church that knows what it costs to follow Jesus and pays that cost anyway.

The church that proves every day that he’s real because nothing else could sustain us through what we face.

3 years ago, I thought my life was over.

I thought the story ended in Evan prison with an execution I barely escaped.

I thought I had lost everything and would spend the rest of my life grieving what was taken from me.

But God was writing a different story.

He was using my suffering to reach my family.

He was using my imprisonment to evangelize my cellmates.

He was using my testimony to inspire believers around the world.

He was using my weakness to display his strength.

He was using my darkness to shine his light.

I’m not special.

I’m not a hero.

I’m just a young woman who said yes when Jesus called, even though I was terrified.

I’m just someone who discovered that he’s real and couldn’t pretend otherwise anymore.

I’m just a broken person who found healing in the only place healing is actually found.

But God uses broken people.

He uses weak people.

He uses scared people who say yes anyway.

He doesn’t need our strength.

He needs our surrender.

He doesn’t need our perfection.

He needs our willingness.

He doesn’t need us to have it all together.

He needs us to give him whatever we have, however small it seems.

I’m still healing, still adjusting, still learning what it means to live in freedom after so long in chains, still wrestling with trauma and grief and loss, still figuring out who I am in this new life.

But I’m doing it with Jesus, and that makes all the difference.

He’s still transforming me, still teaching me, still revealing new layers of his love and grace, still writing my story in ways I can’t predict or control.

And I’m learning to trust that whatever he writes next will be good, even if it’s hard.

Because he’s proven he can be trusted.

He’s proven he’s faithful.

He’s proven he’s worth following even when the path leads through valleys and darkness.

My family is scattered now.

My mother still in Thran seeking Jesus in secret.

My father still resistant.

But I pray for him daily.

Raza in the middle of his own journey becoming someone new.

Me here thousands of miles away connected to them by love that transcends distance and by a God who sees all of us and is working in all of us.

I don’t know what comes next.

I don’t know if I’ll ever see my mother again in this life.

I don’t know if Raza will come to full faith or if he’ll stop short.

I don’t know if my father will ever soften.

I don’t know if Iran will ever be safe for me again.

I don’t know how long I’ll keep sharing this testimony or what God will ask me to do after this.

But I know he’s good.

I know he’s faithful.

I know he’s with me.

And I know that whatever comes next, it will be worth it because he’s worth it.

He’s always worth it.

So this is my testimony, my story of how a young woman in Thrron suffocating in religious emptiness found Jesus and found freedom.

How she faced imprisonment and death rather than deny him.

How her brother’s betrayal became part of his redemption.

How her suffering became other people’s salvation.

How God took the darkest circumstances and used them to shine his brightest light.

This is my story.

But really, it’s his story.

Always his story.

And maybe it could be your story, too.

If you let him in, if you say yes to his call, if you’re willing to exchange everything you have for everything he is, if you’re willing to trust that he’s worth the cost.

I’m here to tell you he is.

I’ve paid the cost.

I’ve walked the valley.

I’ve faced the darkness.

And I’m here on the other side telling you that every moment of suffering was worth it to know him, to be known by him, to be loved by him, to be his.

Jesus is real.

He’s alive.

He’s calling you.

And if you respond, if you follow him wherever he leads, you’ll discover what I discovered.

that he’s better than safety, better than comfort, better than anything this world offers, better than life itself.

Because he doesn’t just give life, he is life.

The only life that really matters.

The only life that lasts.

The only life that’s worth living.

This is what I came through everything to tell you.

This is why I survived.

This is my purpose now.

to point to him, to testify to his goodness, to invite you to know him the way I know him.

So I invite you now, whoever you are, whatever you believe, whatever you’re facing.

Come to him.

Just come.

He’s waiting.

He’s been waiting.

He’s calling your name just like he called mine.

Come and see that he’s real.

Come and find the freedom I found.

Come and discover that he’s worth everything they say he is.

Come to Jesus and let him change your life the way he changed mine.

This is my testimony.

This is my story.

This is my invitation to you.

Come and see.

 

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