They came and embraced me.

They said they understood.

They said they had similar stories.

They said I was not alone.

That night, surrounded by other refugees in a camp in Turkey, I felt the fellowship of believers for the first time.

These were my brothers and sisters.

Now, not by blood or nationality, but by faith.

We had all paid a price to follow Jesus.

We had all lost much, but we had gained something worth more than what we lost.

I spent three months in that camp.

Three months of waiting, of paperwork, of interviews with officials from various countries.

I applied for asylum in several Western nations.

I was rejected by some, others kept me waiting.

Finally, I received word that my application had been accepted by a country in Europe.

I would be resettled there.

I would be given temporary housing, assistance in learning the language, help in finding work.

It was not much, but it was a chance to start over.

The day I left the camp, I said goodbye to the friends I had made there.

Some of them were still waiting for their own applications to be processed.

We prayed together.

We promised to remember each other.

Then I boarded a bus that would take me to the airport.

On the plane, flying over countries I had only read about in books.

I thought about the journey that had brought me to this point.

from a comfortable professor’s office to a prison cell to a refugee camp to a seat on this plane.

It seemed impossible that this was my life.

But I also thought about what I had found.

I had found truth.

I had found Jesus.

I had found a faith that was real, that had sustained me through the darkest valleys.

and I had found that I could trust God even when I could not understand his plans.

As the plane descended toward my new home, I whispered a prayer of thanks.

Thanks for protection.

Thanks for preservation.

Thanks for the freedom I was about to experience.

I was starting over with nothing, but I was not really starting with nothing.

And I was starting with Christ.

And that I was learning was everything.

The apartment they gave me was small.

One room with a narrow bed, a table, two chairs, a tiny kitchen area in the corner.

The bathroom was shared with three other apartments on the same floor.

The building was old and the heating did not work well, but it was mine and it was in a country where I could live without fear.

I arrived in winter.

The cold was different from the cold in Thrron.

It was damp and penetrating.

I had only the clothes I had carried in my backpack inadequate for this climate.

A social worker took me to a charity shop where I was given a warm coat, a pair of boots, some sweaters.

I felt like a child being dressed by strangers.

Everything was foreign.

The language was foreign.

The food was foreign.

The way people interacted was foreign.

I had spent 40 years in Iran where I understood every social cue, every unspoken rule.

here.

I understood nothing.

I was illiterate in a thousand small ways.

I was enrolled in language classes.

I sat in a classroom with other refugees and immigrants.

All of us struggling to learn basic words and phrases.

Please, thank you.

Where is the bathroom? How much does this cost? Simple things that children knew but we did not.

I was a university professor with a doctorate in philosophy and I could not order food in a restaurant or ask directions to the post office.

The humiliation of this was crushing at times.

I I would go back to my small apartment at night and feel the weight of everything I had lost.

My career, my reputation, my language, my culture, my family.

I had given up everything to follow Jesus.

And some nights I lay in that narrow bed and wondered if I had made a terrible mistake.

I tried to find work, but my credentials meant nothing here.

My doctorate from an Iranian university was not recognized.

My years of teaching experience were irrelevant.

I did not speak the language well enough to teach or do any professional work.

I applied for cleaning jobs, warehouse jobs, any work I could find.

After 2 months of searching, I was hired to work in a commercial kitchen washing dishes.

The pay was minimal, but it was something.

I worked eightour shifts standing at a large sink, scrubbing pots and pans, loading dishwashers, taking out trash.

My hands became raw from the hot water and harsh soaps.

My back achd from standing.

I came home each night exhausted.

This was my new life.

Dr.

Raza Farhadi, former professor of philosophy, washing dishes in a restaurant kitchen.

The fall could not have been more complete.

There were moments when I felt angry at God.

I had given up everything for him.

Was this what I got in return? Poverty, loneliness, manual labor.

But then I would remember Evan prison.

I would remember the darkness of that cell.

I would remember the fear and the interrogations and the isolation.

And I would realize that I was free now.

I could walk outside whenever I wanted.

I could go to a church openly.

I could read my Bible without hiding it.

I could speak the name of Jesus without fear of arrest.

Freedom, I learned, is precious, even when it comes with hardship.

Maybe especially when it comes with hardship.

I found a church through another Iranian refugee I met in my language class.

It was a small congregation that met in a rented building.

The first time I attended, I I sat in the back and wept through the entire service.

They were singing worship songs.

People were raising their hands and praising God freely.

The pastor was preaching from the Bible without looking over his shoulder.

After the service, people came to welcome me.

They asked where I was from.

When I said Iran, several of them smiled and said there were other Iranians in the congregation.

They introduced me to a man named Hamid who had come from Iran 5 years earlier.

Hamid embraced me like a brother.

Hamid became my first real friend in my new country.

He helped me navigate the systems I did not understand.

He took me shopping and showed me where to buy halal meat and Persian groceries.

He invited me to his apartment for dinner and we spoke Farsy together and I felt less alone.

Through the church, I met others who had similar stories.

Other Iranians who had converted to Christianity and fled, Afghans who had left Islam, Syrians, Iraqis, people from across the Middle East who had found Jesus and paid a price for it.

We formed a small fellowship.

We met weekly to pray together, to share our struggles, to encourage each other.

These gatherings became the highlight of my week.

Here I was not a failure.

I was not a lost refugee.

I was a brother in Christ.

I was valued.

I was loved.

One evening during our fellowship, we were sharing testimonies.

Each person told their story of how they had come to faith.

When it was my turn, I spoke about reading the Bible for the first time, about the teachings of Jesus that had captured my heart, about prison, about escape.

When I finished, there was silence.

Then a woman named Nasarin, who had fled from Afghanistan, said something I have never forgotten.

She said that we were the lucky ones.

She said that yes, we had lost much, but we had gained Christ.

And millions of people in our home countries were still in darkness, still without the gospel.

I still believing the lies we had once believed.

She said that our suffering was not meaningless.

She said that God could use our stories to reach others.

She said we should not waste our pain by keeping silent about what we had found.

Her words planted a seed in my mind.

A sense of purpose began to grow.

Maybe my life was not over.

Maybe this new chapter had meaning I could not yet see.

The church offered baptism classes.

I had never been baptized as a Christian.

In the refugee camp, I had believed, but there had been no formal ceremony.

Now I had the opportunity to publicly declare my faith.

I attended the classes and learned about the symbolism of baptism, dying to the old self, rising to new life in Christ, being buried with him and raised with him.

It was everything my journey had been.

Death and resurrection.

Letting go of who I was to become who he was making me to be.

The baptism took place on a Sunday morning in front of the whole congregation.

And I stood in the baptismal pool in a white robe.

The pastor asked me to declare my faith.

I said, “I believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God, that he died for my sins, that he rose from the dead, and that he alone was my savior and lord.

” Then he lowered me under the water.

For a moment I was submerged, all sound muffled, weightless.

Then he raised me up, and I broke through the surface, gasping.

The congregation erupted in applause and shouts of praise.

I stood there dripping and I felt clean.

Oh, not just physically, but spiritually.

All the guilt, all the shame, all the weight of my past was washed away.

I was a new creation.

The old razor was gone.

This was the real me, the person God had always intended me to be.

After the service, dozens of people came to congratulate me.

Many were crying.

An elderly woman hugged me and whispered that she had been praying for people like me in Iran for 40 years.

She said seeing me baptized was an answer to her prayers.

I I had not thought about it that way.

I had been so focused on my own journey that I had not considered how my story might encourage others.

But I saw it now.

My faith was not just for me.

It was part of a larger story God was writing across the world.

Time passed.

Months became a year then two years.

My language skills improved.

I was able to have simple conversations then more complex ones.

I read newspapers and slowly began to understand the culture around me.

I left the dishwashing job and found work as a teaching assistant at a language school.

It was not university level philosophy, but it was teaching.

I helped immigrants improve their language skills so they could find better employment.

It felt meaningful to help people who were on a similar journey to mine.

I moved to a better apartment, still small, but in a quieter neighborhood.

I bought furniture from secondhand shops.

I created a space that felt like home.

I established routines.

I made a life, but I also felt a growing restlessness.

I had survived.

I had escaped.

I had found safety.

But was survival enough? Was safety the end goal? I thought about the millions of Muslims in Iran and across the Middle East who did not know the gospel.

I thought about people like I had been going through the motions of religion without knowing the love of Christ.

I thought about how desperate I had been for truth.

how I had searched in secret.

How I had nearly died without finding it.

What if I could help others find what I had found? What if my story could open doors for the gospel in places where doors seemed permanently closed? I began writing.

I wrote my testimony in Farsy.

I wrote about growing up Muslim, about becoming a philosophy professor, about reading the Bible, about discovering grace, about prison, about escape, about finding new life in Christ.

I shared what I had written with Hamid and others in our fellowship.

They encouraged me to do more with it.

One of them knew someone who ran a ministry focused on reaching Iranians with the gospel.

They connected us.

The ministry leader asked if I would be willing to share my testimony on video.

They produced content in Farsy that was distributed online and via satellite television to Iran and other countries.

They said my story told by someone who understood the culture and spoke the language could have significant impact.

I was hesitant.

Going public meant there was no possibility of ever returning to Iran.

It meant my family would certainly know what I had become.

It meant potential danger even here if extremists decided to target me.

But I thought about Nasarin’s words.

We should not waste our pain.

And I thought about Jesus who had given everything for me.

Could I not give this for him? I agreed.

We recorded my testimony.

It was edited and posted online.

within weeks.

Why, the ministry began receiving messages from Iranians who had watched it.

Some were angry and condemned me, but others said it had made them think.

Others said they had secret questions, too.

Others asked for more information about Jesus.

I began communicating with some of these seekers through encrypted messaging apps.

I answered their questions about Christianity.

I sent them links to Farsy New Testaments online.

I encouraged them in their search for truth.

I prayed for them.

This became my new mission.

By day, I worked at the language school.

In the evenings and weekends, I corresponded with seekers in Iran.

I saw myself in each of them.

I remembered what it was like to question in secret, to fear the consequences of doubt, to desperately want truth, but not know where to find it.

Some of the people I communicated with eventually came to faith in Christ.

They would message me with joy and tears, saying they had prayed to accept Jesus.

I would weep with them, unknowing what they had discovered, knowing also what it might cost them.

I also reconnected with some former students from my university days in Thran.

A few of them had found me through the video.

They reached out cautiously.

Some were curious about what I believed.

Others were hostile.

But a few told me that they had never forgotten the day I said truth should never fear investigation.

They said that statement had stayed with them.

Had planted questions they were only now beginning to explore.

One former student, a young man named Ali, began asking serious questions about Christianity.

We corresponded for months.

He read the Bible.

He wrestled with the same issues I had wrestled with.

Eventually, he told me he believed.

He was baptized at a secret house church in Thran.

When he told me this, I sat at my small desk in my apartment and cried.

I had lost my teaching position.

I had lost my students.

I had lost everything.

But here was fruit from those painful years.

Here was a student who had heard truth in my classroom and years later had come to faith.

God wastes nothing.

Every word spoken in faithfulness, even words that seemed to accomplish nothing at the time, can bear fruit years later in ways we never imagine.

Life continued.

The seasons changed.

I celebrated my first Christmas in freedom, attending a candlelight service at church and marveling at the beauty of worshiping Christ’s birth openly.

I celebrated Easter and felt the power of the resurrection in a new way, understanding what it meant to be raised to new life.

I made new friends both within the Iranian community and outside it.

I learned to appreciate aspects of my new culture while maintaining my Iranian identity in ways that did not conflict with my faith.

I cooked Persian food.

I read Persian poetry.

I maintained the good parts of who I was while leaving behind the parts that belonged to my old life.

I also learned to embrace being single.

Mina had divorced me while I was in the refugee camp.

I received the papers and signed them, knowing our marriage had ended the day I left Thran.

I grieved the loss, but I also accepted it.

Not everyone could walk the path I had chosen.

I could not judge her for making a different choice.

There was loneliness in this new life.

Moments when I desperately wanted someone who knew me before, who remembered the person I used to be, or moments when I wanted to speak Farsy without having to think, to eat my mother’s cooking, to walk familiar streets.

I thought about my parents sometimes.

I wondered if they were well.

I wondered if they ever thought about me.

I wondered if my father still said he had no son or if time had softened his heart.

I would never know.

The bridge between us had been burned beyond repair.

But I also found joy, joy in worship, joy in fellowship, joy in seeing others come to faith.

a joy in small things like a sunny day or a good cup of tea or a conversation with a friend.

I learned that joy does not require perfect circumstances.

Joy comes from knowing you are where you are supposed to be, doing what you are meant to do, serving the God who loves you.

One Sunday, the pastor asked me to share my testimony during the service.

I stood before the congregation, this mix of people from dozens of countries, and I told them what God had done in my life.

I told them I had been a successful professor who had everything the world says brings happiness, career, respect, comfort, security, and I had been empty.

I told them I had lost everything, position, homeland, family, culture, and I had found fullness.

I told them that Jesus was worth it, worth the cost, worth the suffering, worth the loss because in losing everything, I had gained the one thing that mattered.

I had gained Christ.

When I finished, I looked out at the congregation and saw tears on many faces.

Not tears of sadness, but tears of recognition.

Because many of them knew.

They had their own stories of loss and finding.

They understood that the pearl of great price is worth selling everything to obtain.

After the service, a man approached me.

He was a citizen of this country, born here, never persecuted for faith.

He told me that hearing my story had convicted him.

He said he had taken his freedom for granted.

He said he had been a lazy Christian, comfortable and complacent.

He said my testimony reminded him that the gospel was worth everything and he wanted to live like it.

This has happened many times now.

My story, which is a story of pain and loss, somehow encourages others.

It reminds comfortable Christians not to waste their freedom.

It challenges nominal believers to take their faith seriously.

It shows seekers that truth is real and worth pursuing even at great cost.

I still work at the language school.

I still live in a modest apartment.

I still struggle sometimes with loneliness and grief.

But I also have a purpose.

I have a community.

I have a savior who walks with me through every difficulty.

I think about the road I have traveled from a philosophy classroom in Thran to a prison cell in Evan to a refugee camp in Turkey to this small apartment in a western nation.

It is not the life I planned.

It is not the life I would have chosen if the choice had been mine.

But it is the life God gave me.

And I am learning to trust that his plans are better than mine, that his ways are higher than my ways, that what looks like disaster from my limited perspective is actually part of a beautiful design I cannot yet fully see.

I received an email recently from a young woman in Iran.

She said she had watched my testimony video.

She said she had grown up Muslim but always felt something was missing.

She said she had been reading the Bible in secret for 6 months.

She said she believed Jesus was the son of God.

She asked if I would pray for her.

I wrote back immediately.

I told her I would absolutely pray for her.

I told her about grace.

I told her about the love of God that pursued me even when I was running from him.

I told her she was not alone in her journey.

Continue reading….
« Prev Next »