I am sitting here today thousands of miles from the country I was born in about to tell you a story I never thought I would be able to share openly.

My name doesn’t matter.

What matters is what happened to me and what continues to happen to thousands like me in Iran.

I am 24 years old.

I used to be a teacher.

I used to be a Muslim.

Now I am a Christian and I can never go home.

Before I tell you about the persecution, before I tell you about the price I paid and continue to pay, I need to tell you how it all began.

Because my story didn’t start with courage.

It started with questions.

Small, dangerous questions that grew like seeds in dry ground, waiting for rain that I didn’t even know I needed.

Hello viewers from around the world.

Before our sister from Iran continues her story, we’d love to know where you are watching from and we would love to pray for you and your city.

Thank you and may God bless you as you listen to this powerful testimony.

I was born in Thran in 2001 into a family that took Islam seriously.

My father worked for the government.

I cannot say in what capacity for reasons that will become clear.

My mother stayed home as was expected.

I had two younger brothers who were given freedoms I could only dream of.

This was normal.

This was life.

I didn’t know anything else.

My earliest memories are of my mother’s prayers.

Five times a day.

The sound of water running as she performed wudoo.

The ritual washing the prayer mat unfurled on the floor.

Always facing Mecca.

Her whispered Arabic words repeated over and over, a rhythm that marked our days like a clock.

I found it beautiful then in the way children find their mother’s habits beautiful simply because they are familiar and constant.

I was 9 years old when everything changed for me, though I didn’t understand it at the time.

It was the day I had to start wearing the hijab to school.

My mother made it a celebration, buying me a white headscarf with small pink flowers embroidered along the edge.

She showed me how to pin it, how to make sure not a single strand of hair escaped.

She told me I was becoming a proper Muslim woman, that I was making Allah proud, that this was a beautiful thing.

I remember standing in front of the mirror that morning looking at myself.

The girl staring back at me looked older, more serious.

The pink flowers seemed childish against the severity of the covering.

I felt something I couldn’t name then, a sense of something being taken from me, wrapped up in the language of giftgiving.

But I smiled at my mother because I loved her and because I didn’t have words for what I felt.

School reinforced everything I learned at home.

We memorized verses from the Quran in Arabic, a language none of us spoke fluently.

We were told what they meant, but we never questioned.

Questioning was not part of the curriculum.

Questioning was not part of faith.

We learned that Islam was the final and perfect revelation, that Muhammad was the final prophet, that the Quran was the unaltered word of God.

We learned that Christians and Jews had corrupted their scriptures.

That they had gone astray.

That we were the ones who had the truth.

I believed it all.

Why wouldn’t I? It was all I knew.

But children notice things that adults wish they wouldn’t.

I noticed that my brothers could go outside without covering their heads while I had to adjust my hijab even to step into our own courtyard.

I noticed that my father never asked my brothers about their day, but interrogated me about who I spoke to, what I said, where I went.

I noticed that my mother, who was intelligent and had once dreamed of being a doctor, spent her days cooking and cleaning and waiting for my father to come home.

I was 14 when I witnessed something that planted the first real seed of doubt.

We were visiting my aunt’s house.

my father’s sister.

I was in the kitchen helping prepare tea when I heard shouting from the other room.

My uncle’s voice loud and angry.

Then the sound of something breaking.

Then my aunts crying, a sound that made my stomach turn cold.

My mother rushed me out of the kitchen, told me to go sit with my cousins.

But I had seen my aunt’s face as she came out of that room, the bruise already forming on her cheek, the way she held her wrist, the tears she tried to hide.

I had seen the way the other adults looked away, said nothing, did nothing.

Later, in the car going home, I asked my mother why no one helped my aunt.

My mother’s face went hard in a way I had never seen before.

She told me that what happens between a husband and wife is private.

That a man has authority in his home.

That my aunt must have done something to anger my uncle.

And that it was her duty to be more obedient, more careful.

I sat in the backseat of that car, staring out the window at Tyrron Streets and felt something crack inside me.

Not break completely, not yet.

Just crack.

a thin line in something I had thought was solid.

The questions started small.

Why did Allah create women to be ruled by men? Why was a woman’s testimony worth half of a man’s in court? Why could a man divorce his wife by simply saying it three times, but a woman needed her husband’s permission and a judge’s approval? Why could men have up to four wives, but women could only have one husband? I asked my Islamic studies teacher these questions when I was 15.

She looked at me with something between pity and alarm.

She told me these were the wisdoms of Allah beyond human questioning.

She told me that Western ideas about equality were corrupting Muslim youth.

She told me to pray more, to read the Quran more, to stop thinking so much.

But I couldn’t stop thinking.

The questions only multiplied.

I was a good student, excellent grades, obedient, respectful.

My parents were proud of me.

They talked about finding me a good husband when I finished university, someone from a respectable family, someone who would take care of me.

When they talked like this, I smiled and nodded.

But inside, I felt like I was disappearing, being erased, replaced with someone else’s vision of who I should be.

At 17, I started university, studying literature and education.

This was considered acceptable for a woman.

I could become a teacher, work with children, have a respectable profession that wouldn’t threaten anyone.

My father approved.

I think he liked the idea of his daughter being educated as long as that education didn’t make me too independent, too questioning.

But university opened a new world to me.

Not because it was liberal.

It wasn’t.

The Islamic Republic controlled what we could study, what books we could read, what ideas we could discuss.

But university gave me something I had never had before.

time alone with my thoughts and access to the internet in the computer labs.

The Iranian government blocks thousands of websites.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, all banned.

Most Western news sites blocked.

Any site critical of Islam or the regime completely inaccessible.

But Iranian young people are clever.

We learned to use VPNs, virtual private networks that let us access the forbidden internet.

Everyone did it, though we never spoke about it openly.

I was 18 when I first used a VPN on my phone.

My hands shook as I downloaded the app as though the authorities could see me through the screen.

My heart pounded as I connected, waiting to see if it would work or if somehow the revolutionary guard would knock on our door.

It worked.

Suddenly, the whole world opened before me.

I started with music videos, silly things, western pop songs we all wanted to hear but couldn’t access.

Then movies, TV shows, things that seemed harmless.

But then because the algorithms of the internet know how to lead you down rabbit holes, I started seeing other things.

Videos of Iranian women who had left Islam.

Videos of people sharing testimonies about leaving Islam and finding other faiths.

I was disgusted at first.

These were apostates, traitors to Islam and to Iran.

This was exactly the kind of corruption our leaders warned us about.

The poison of the West trying to destroy our faith and our culture.

I should have closed those videos, blocked those channels, deleted my VPN app, but I didn’t.

I kept watching, not because I agreed with them.

I didn’t.

Not at first.

I watched because I was angry, because I wanted to hear their arguments so I could refute them in my mind.

so I could prove to myself how wrong they were.

There was one woman, I remember, an Iranian who had moved to England.

She told her story of leaving Islam and becoming an atheist.

She talked about the questions she had asked, questions that sounded so much like my own questions.

She talked about the contradictions she found in Islamic texts, the things that troubled her about Islamic law, the way she felt about women’s rights.

I watched that video three times, the first time in anger, the second time in confusion, the third time in something approaching recognition.

I started reading more, always in secret, always feeling guilty.

I read critiques of Islam from ex-Muslims, from Christian apologists, from atheists, from scholars.

Some of it was clearly hateful, written by people who seem to despise not just Islam but all Muslims.

I dismiss those.

But some of it was thoughtful, careful, written by people who seemed genuinely troubled by the same questions I had.

I was 19 in my second year of university when I stumbled across a website about Christianity.

I don’t even remember how I got there.

Some link from some video, the endless chain of clicking that the internet enables.

The website was in Farsy created for Iranians and it had testimonies from Iranian Muslims who had converted to Christianity.

My first reaction was revulsion.

Christians were kafir, unbelievers.

They worshiped three gods, not one.

They believed Allah had a son, which was blasphemy of the highest order.

They had corrupted their scriptures and gone astray from the truth.

I knew all of this.

It had been drilled into me since childhood, but I kept reading.

One testimony caught my attention.

A woman from Shiraz, who had been even more devout than me.

She had worn the chador, the full body covering by choice.

She had memorized large portions of the Quran.

She had planned to make the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

And then she wrote she had encountered Jesus in a dream.

I almost laughed.

Dreams.

This was her evidence.

But she described the dream in detail.

a figure in white who called her by name, who told her he loved her, who showed her scars on his hands and feet.

She wrote that she woke up weeping, that she had no idea who the figure was until she asked a Christian friend who told her it sounded like Jesus.

The woman wrote about how she had started reading the Bible in secret, expecting to find it corrupted and false, expecting to prove to herself that her dream was just a dream, nothing more.

But instead, she found something she had never expected.

She found love.

That word stopped me.

Love.

It seemed too simple, too emotional.

Islam spoke of Allah’s mercy, his justice, his power, his knowledge.

We feared Allah, respected him, obeyed him.

But love, that was not a word I associated with God.

God was distant, judging, keeping a record of every wrong deed, every missed prayer, every improper thought.

God was someone you tried desperately to please, knowing you would probably fail.

I closed the website.

I deleted my browser history.

I performed my evening prayers with extra care that night, as though I could wash away the contamination of what I had read.

But the seed had been planted.

The crack in my certainty had widened just a little more.

I had a professor in my third year of university who taught Persian literature.

She was in her 50s, always properly covered, always careful in what she said.

But there was something different about her.

When she taught the classical Persian poets, Hafes, Roomie, Sahadi, she spoke about love in a way that made the classroom feel almost sacred.

One day she was teaching us Roomie, the 13th century Sufi mystic whose poetry Iranians love even today.

She read a verse about divine love, about the souls longing for union with the beloved, about how love transforms everything it touches.

Her voice cracked with emotion as she read, and I saw tears in her eyes.

After class, I lingered, pretending to organize my notes.

When the other students had left, I asked her why Roomie’s poetry made her cry.

She looked at me for a long moment as though deciding whether to trust me with something precious.

She told me that Roomie understood something most people miss.

That God is not just a judge or a master, but a lover pursuing the human heart.

That the highest form of worship is not fear or duty, but love.

That love transforms everything.

How we see God, how we see ourselves, how we see others.

I walked home that day thinking about her words.

Love.

There was that word again.

I realized I had never once in my life thought about loving Allah, obeying him, yes, fearing him certainly, trying to please him constantly.

But love, how could you love someone you were terrified of disappointing? that semester I began my final teaching practicum at a girl’s primary school in Tyrron.

I loved teaching, loved the children, loved seeing their faces light up when they understood something new.

But I also saw things that troubled me deeply.

I saw 9-year-old girls forced into hijab who cried because the pins hurt their heads.

I saw the way they were taught that their bodies were sources of temptation and shame.

that they had to cover themselves to protect men from sin.

I saw bright, curious girls being told that certain subjects were not appropriate for them, that certain dreams were not possible for women.

One of my students, a girl named Zahara, was 10 years old and brilliant at mathematics.

She told me she wanted to be an engineer like her uncle.

I encouraged her, told her she could do anything she set her mind to.

Two weeks later, her father came to the school and complained to the principal.

He said I was filling his daughter’s head with inappropriate ideas, that I was encouraging her to abandon her proper role as a future wife and mother.

The principal called me to her office and told me to be more careful, to remember that my job was to teach within the boundaries of Islamic values, not to encourage girls to rebel against their nature and their faith.

I went home that day and cried for the first time in years.

I cried for Zara, for all the girls like her whose potential would be suffocated under the weight of expectations and restrictions.

I cried for my younger self, for the 9-year-old with pink flowers on her hijab who had no idea how small her world was about to become.

I cried because I realized I didn’t believe anymore.

Not really, not in the way I was supposed to.

But not believing and knowing what you do believe are two different things.

I was 20 years old and I felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff in the dark.

Knowing the ground beneath me was crumbling but unable to see where to step next, I started reading the Bible.

I told myself it was just research, just curiosity, just wanting to understand what Christians believed so I could better refute it.

I downloaded a Farsy Bible app on my phone, hiding it in a folder labeled study materials.

I read at night under my blanket.

The phone screen dimmed as low as possible so no light would show under my door.

I started with Genesis, expecting stories I already knew from the Quran, Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham.

The stories were similar but different in ways that surprised me.

Then I moved to the Psalms because someone online had said they were beautiful poetry.

The Psalms undid me.

Here was David writing to God with raw honesty, anger, doubt, fear, joy, desperation, praise, all mixed together.

He questioned God, complained to God, even accused God of abandoning him.

And somehow this was considered holy scripture.

This honest, messy, emotional conversation with the divine.

In Islam, questioning Allah’s wisdom was dangerous, potentially heretical.

But here was a man after God’s own heart, the Bible said.

And he questioned everything.

He brought his whole self to God.

Not just his obedience, but his doubts, his anger, his fear, and God called him beloved.

Then I reached the gospels.

I started with Matthew reading about Jesus’s birth, his childhood, his baptism, his temptation in the wilderness.

And then I came to the sermon on the mount.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Blessed are those who mourn.

Blessed are the meek.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

I read it once, then again, then a third time.

This was backwards from everything I had been taught.

The blessed were not the powerful, the wealthy, the righteous who followed every rule perfectly.

The blessed were the broken, the mourning, the hungry for something more.

Love your enemies.

Pray for those who persecute you.

Turn the other cheek.

Go the extra mile.

Give to those who ask.

This was radical.

This was dangerous.

This was impossible.

And it was beautiful.

I kept reading.

I read about Jesus touching lepers, eating with tax collectors and sinners, defending an adulteress from being stoned, healing on the Sabbath, letting women follow him as disciples, speaking to a Samaritan woman at a well when he should have avoided her completely.

Every story showed me a God I had never encountered before.

Not distant and judgmental, but close and compassionate.

Not concerned with ritual purity, but with the heart.

Not building walls between clean and unclean, righteous and sinner, but tearing those walls down.

And the women, the way Jesus treated women made me weep.

He taught them, spoke to them in public, let them support his ministry, appeared first to them after his resurrection.

He didn’t treat them as temptations or property or halfpersons.

He treated them as fully human, fully worthy, fully capable of faith and understanding.

I was 21 when I read about the woman caught in adultery.

The religious leaders brought her to Jesus, ready to stone her as the law required, trying to trap him with their question.

And Jesus, instead of condemning her, instead of agreeing with the punishment, knelt and wrote in the dust.

Then he said those words that reached across 2,000 years and gripped my heart.

Let him who is without sin, cast the first stone.

One by one, the accusers left.

And Jesus, the only one who actually was without sin, the only one who had the right to condemn her, said, “Neither do I condemn you.

Go and sin no more.

” I closed my phone and stared at my ceiling in the dark.

I had spent my whole life trying to be good enough, trying to follow enough rules, trying to pray enough and fast enough and cover myself enough to maybe possibly earn Allah’s approval.

I had watched other people be condemned for their failures, girls shamed for showing their hair, women beaten for disobedience, apistates threatened with death.

I had lived in fear of judgment, constant and merciless.

And here was Jesus offering something I didn’t have a category for.

Grace, unearned, undeserved, freely given grace.

Not approval based on performance, but love based on nothing but his own nature.

I wanted it.

God helped me.

I wanted it so badly it hurt.

But wanting it felt like betrayal.

Betrayal of my family, my culture, my country, everything I had been raised to be.

For months, I lived in this tension, reading the Bible in secret, performing my Islamic prayers mechanically, feeling like I was being torn in two.

I started having panic attacks, waking up in the middle of the night with my heart racing, feeling like I couldn’t breathe.

My mother noticed I was losing weight, looking tired.

She worried I was studying too hard, suggested I take a break from university.

But the break I needed wasn’t from my studies.

It was from the pretense.

From living a lie.

From the exhausting work of maintaining a facade when everything inside me was changing.

I graduated from university with my teaching degree in the spring of our 2023 just after my 22nd birthday.

My parents were proud.

My father talked about finding me a teaching position at a good school.

My mother started making comments about suitable young men from good families, asking if there was anyone I was interested in.

I felt like I was watching my life being planned out before me.

A life that wasn’t really mine.

A future that belonged to the person everyone thought I was, not the person I was becoming.

I would teach in an Islamic school, marry a Muslim man my father approved of, raise Muslim children, perform Muslim prayers, live and die as a Muslim, and I would never ever know what it felt like to live in the truth of who I really was and what I really believed.

The fear of that future became greater than the fear of the consequences of leaving it behind.

That’s when I knew I had to make a choice.

I couldn’t live in the middle anymore.

I couldn’t keep one foot in Islam and one foot reaching toward Jesus.

I had to decide.

But I didn’t know how.

I didn’t know any Christians.

I had no one to talk to, no one to ask questions, no one to guide me.

I was utterly alone with the most important decision of my life.

So, I did the only thing I could think of.

I prayed not the formal Islamic prayers I had been performing mechanically for months.

I prayed to Jesus feeling foolish and terrified and desperate all at once.

I told him I didn’t know if he was real.

I told him I didn’t know if I could trust what I had read.

I told him I was afraid, confused, lost.

I told him that if he was who the Bible said he was, I needed him to show me because I couldn’t do this on my own.

Then I waited.

I didn’t know what I was waiting for.

A voice from heaven, a burning bush, some unmistakable sign.

Days passed, then weeks.

Nothing dramatic happened.

I felt foolish for expecting it, but small things began to change.

A piece I couldn’t explain started growing in my heart, even as my external circumstances remained the same.

The Bible verses I read seemed to speak directly to my situation in ways that felt too specific to be coincidence.

The weight of guilt and fear I had carried for so long started to lift slowly like a fog burning off in the morning sun.

And then one night in late summer, I had a dream.

It was so vivid, so real that even now I can close my eyes and see it perfectly.

I was in a garden, though not any garden I had seen in Tehran or anywhere else.

The light was strange, golden and soft, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.

And there was a man standing there dressed in simple white clothes.

He called me by name.

Not the name my parents gave me, but a name I had never heard before.

A name that somehow felt more truly mine than the one I had lived with for 21 years.

He smiled at me, and the love in that smile was so pure, so complete that I fell to my knees.

I tried to speak, to ask who he was, but no words would come.

He knelt down beside me.

I remember being shocked that he would kneel, that he would lower himself to my level, and he took my hands in his.

That’s when I saw them.

The scars, circular marks in his palms, and when I looked down, marks on his feet, too.

He didn’t say much.

He didn’t need to.

He told me he had been calling me for a long time, waiting for me to answer.

He told me he loved me, had always loved me, would never stop loving me.

He told me not to be afraid.

Then he was gone, and I woke up with tears streaming down my face, my pillow wet with them.

The call to prayer was sounding from the mosque down the street.

The fajger prayer, the dawn prayer, the same call I had heard every morning of my life.

But everything was different now.

I was different now.

I knew with a certainty I had never felt about anything in my life.

That Jesus was real, that he had called me, that he wanted me, that I belonged to him.

I had reached the cliff’s edge in the dark and I had jumped.

And instead of falling, I found myself caught, held, loved beyond anything I had ever imagined possible.

That morning, as the sun rose over Thran and my family slept in their rooms and the city woke to another ordinary day, I whispered the most dangerous, most liberating, most terrifying prayer I had ever prayed.

I surrender.

I believe.

I am yours.

I had no idea what I had just set in motion.

I had no idea what it would cost me.

I had no idea how much I would lose or how much more I would gain.

I was 21 years old and I had just become a Christian in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

My real journey was only beginning.

The days after my dream were strange.

I moved through my life like someone walking through a familiar house that had been rearranged in the night.

Everything was the same, but nothing felt the same.

I sat at breakfast with my family, listening to my father discuss politics, watching my mother pour tea, hearing my brothers argue about football, and I felt like I was observing it all from very far away.

I wanted to shout it from the rooftops.

I met Jesus.

He called my name.

He loves me.

But I knew I couldn’t say a word.

Not yet.

Maybe not ever.

The weight of that secret was crushing.

I had become a Christian.

But what did that even mean? I had no church to go to, no pastor to teach me, no Bible study group to join.

In Iran, there are Armenian and Assyrian churches, ancient Christian communities that existed before Islam came to Persia.

They’re allowed to worship technically, but only in their own languages, and only their ethnic members can attend.

Converts from Islam are strictly forbidden.

The government watches those churches carefully, and anyone suspected of evangelizing Muslims faces severe punishment.

So, I was on my own.

Just me, my phone, my downloaded Bible app, and this overwhelming sense that I had stepped into a new world while still being trapped in the old one.

I started searching online for house churches, underground gatherings of Iranian Christians who met in secret.

I found forums, encrypted messaging, groups, coded language that believers used to find each other.

But I was terrified to reach out.

How did I know these weren’t traps? The government was sophisticated.

They infiltrated opposition groups, set up fake dissident websites, arrested people who thought they were attending prayer meetings only to find themselves in Evan Presen.

So I waited.

And while I waited, I read.

I devoured the Bible like someone who had been starving without knowing it.

I started carrying my phone everywhere, reading verses during my lunch break, in the bathroom late at night when everyone was asleep.

I read the Gospels over and over, watching Jesus heal the sick, cast out demons, forgive sins, challenge the religious authorities, love the unlovable.

I read Paul’s letters and was amazed by his story.

a man who had persecuted Christians violently, who had been convinced he was serving God by destroying the church until Jesus appeared to him and turned his entire life upside down.

I understood him in a way I never could have before.

I too had been taught that Christians were wrong, corrupted, astray.

I too had believed I was on the side of truth and I too had encountered Jesus and discovered that everything I thought I knew was backwards.

I read about the early church in the book of Acts.

How they met in homes.

How they shared everything they had.

How they were persecuted by both the Jewish authorities and the Roman government.

How they spread the gospel despite imprisonment, beatings, and death.

These people knew what I was feeling.

They had lived what I was living across 2,000 years.

They understood.

But reading alone wasn’t enough.

I needed community.

I needed someone to talk to, someone who understood, someone who could guide me.

The isolation was becoming unbearable.

I started taking risks.

I joined an online forum for Persianspeaking Christians using a fake name and a VPN.

I read testimonies from other Iranian converts.

Stories that mirrored my own.

The questions, the doubts, the secret searching, the encounters with Jesus, the joy mixed with terror.

I started commenting, asking questions, engaging carefully.

That’s how I met Miriam.

That wasn’t her real name any more than the name I used was mine, but it’s what I’ll call her here.

She was 10 years older than me, living in Mashhad, Iran’s second largest city.

She had been a Christian for 5 years, meeting with a house church of about 15 people.

She became my lifeline.

We communicated through encrypted apps, sending voice messages back and forth.

She taught me about baptism, about communion, about prayer that was conversation rather than ritual.

She sent me worship songs in Farsy, beautiful melodies set to words about Jesus that made me weep.

She answered my thousands of questions with patience and wisdom.

After 3 months of these conversations, she invited me to visit Mashad.

There was a wedding, she said.

code for a house church gathering.

If I could find a reason to travel there, I could meet other believers.

I could be baptized if I wanted.

I told my parents I wanted to visit my cousin who lived in Mashhad, a girl I had been close to as a child.

It wasn’t even completely a lie.

I did visit my cousin for an afternoon.

But the real purpose of the trip was the Friday evening meeting in a small apartment on the outskirts of the city.

I remember my hands shaking as I took a shared taxi to the address Miriam had given me.

I remember climbing the stairs to the third floor, my heart pounding so hard I thought it might burst through my chest.

I remember knocking on the door.

a specific pattern.

Three knocks, pause, two knocks, and hearing footsteps approach.

The door opened and there was Miam in person for the first time.

She smiled, hugged me like we were old friends, pulled me inside.

The apartment was small, already crowded with people.

15 believers, she had said, but there must have been 20 that night.

All ages from a university student who looked younger than me to a grandmother with silver hair.

They welcomed me like family.

Everyone spoke in whispers.

The walls were thin and you never knew who might be listening.

Someone pressed a cup of tea into my hands.

Another person offered me cookies.

Miam introduced me simply as our new sister, and everyone nodded, understanding exactly what that meant.

We sat on cushions on the floor, pressed close together.

Someone opened a Bible, an actual physical Bible, not just a phone app, and began to read from the Gospel of John.

Another person read a psalm.

Then we sang so quietly, barely above a whisper, a Farsy worship song about Jesus being our hope and our rescue.

I cried through the entire song.

I couldn’t help it.

These people were risking everything, their freedom, their families, possibly their lives just to gather and worship Jesus.

And they did it with joy despite the fear, despite the danger, despite the cost.

There was such joy in that room.

After the worship and teaching, Miriam asked if anyone wanted to be baptized.

I raised my hand, my arm shaking.

Two others did as well, a young man about my age and a woman in her 40s.

They filled a large plastic tub with water in the bathroom.

It wasn’t a river or a baptismal pool or anything beautiful.

It was a borrowed apartment’s cramped bathroom with a plastic tub.

But when I stepped into that water, when one of the elders placed his hand on my shoulder and prayed over me, when he asked if I confessed Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, and I said yes, when he lowered me under that water and raised me back up, it was the most sacred moment of my life.

I came up from that water gasping, water streaming down my face, mixing with my tears.

And the believers gathered around me, laying hands on my shoulders and head, praying blessings over me in whispers.

They prayed for my protection, my strength, my faithfulness.

They prayed that I would stand firm no matter what came.

They pray that the Holy Spirit would fill me and guide me.

I felt different when I emerged from that water.

I know that sounds mystical or overly spiritual, but it’s true.

Something had shifted inside me.

I had made a public declaration, even if only in front of 20 people in a hidden apartment.

I had crossed a line I could never uncross.

I was baptized.

I was a Christian.

Whatever came next, I had chosen this.

We shared communion that night.

Bread and grape juice passed around in a circle.

Everyone taking a piece.

Everyone drinking from small cups.

The elder leading us read Jesus’s words.

This is my body broken for you.

This is my blood shed for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In remembrance.

We were remembering something that had happened 2,000 years ago and half a world away.

And yet, it felt immediate and present and real.

Jesus had died for me, for me specifically.

He had known I would be born in Thran in 2001, raised Muslim, lost and searching.

He had known I would sit in this room on this night, broken bread in my hands, and he had gone to the cross anyway.

The weight of that love was staggering.

I sat there with the bread melting on my tongue and understood maybe for the first time what grace actually meant.

Not just forgiveness, but this that while I was still a stranger to him, still worshiping a different god, still completely unaware of his existence, he had already decided I was worth dying for.

After the meeting ended, we didn’t all leave at once.

That would have been suspicious.

20 people leaving the same apartment at the same time on a Friday night.

We left in pairs in small groups, 5-minute intervals between each departure.

Miam walked out with me and we went to a nearby cafe, continuing the disguise that we were just two friends meeting for tea.

Over that tea, she gave me a physical Bible, small, thin paper, compact enough to hide easily.

She had written in the front cover for my beloved sister.

May his word be a lamp unto your feet.

I held that Bible like it was made of gold.

In a way, it was worth more than gold.

If the wrong person found it, if someone reported me, it could cost me everything.

But it was also the most precious thing I owned.

Mariam also gave me contact information for a house church in Thran, much smaller than the one I had just attended.

Only six people, she said, very careful, very safe.

They met every other Friday.

Would I like to join them? I said yes without hesitation.

I needed this.

I needed community.

Needed people who understood.

needed a place where I could be my true self instead of the pretend Muslim I played everywhere else.

I returned to Thran the next day, the Bible hidden in the lining of my purse, my heart full in a way it had never been before.

My mother commented that I looked happy that the trip to see my cousin must have been good for me.

If only she knew.

The house church in Thyron met in a different location each time.

We never gathered in the same place twice in a row.

Sometimes someone’s apartment.

Sometimes a rented office space after hours.

Once in a doctor’s clinic after it had closed for the day.

The rotating locations were a safety measure.

If the authorities were watching one of us, they wouldn’t be able to predict where we would be.

There were six of us.

Like Miam had said.

Hassan the elder was in his 50s.

a former Shia Muslim who had come to Christ 15 years earlier.

His wife Parisa was quieter, but her prayers were powerful.

There was a couple in their 30s, Navidivid and Nazanin, who had been Christians for 3 years.

And there was another young woman my age, Fatame, who had converted just 8 months before I did.

Fatame became my closest friend.

We were living parallel lives, both from traditional Muslim families, both teaching, both hiding our faith from everyone we knew.

We understood each other’s fear, each other’s loneliness, each other’s joy in discovering Jesus.

We met for tea at cafes, always careful about what we said in public, but those stolen hours of fellowship were lifelines.

She taught me practical things.

How to pray with my eyes open so it didn’t look like I was praying.

How to read my Bible on my phone in public without anyone noticing.

It just looked like I was reading anything else.

How to fast on Christian holy days without my family realizing I wasn’t fasting for Ramadan.

How to find worship music that was labeled as something else in my phone’s music library.

The double life was exhausting.

At home and at work, I was still performing the role of a good Muslim girl.

I wore my hijab, performed the ritual prayers when people were watching, said the right things, acted the right way, but inside I was praying to Jesus.

Inside, I was singing worship songs.

Inside, I was completely different from who everyone thought I was.

The guilt of the deception ate at me sometimes.

I was lying to my family, to my students, to everyone.

But what choice did I have? In Iran, apostasy from Islam is technically punishable by death, though the government rarely goes that far.

More commonly, converts face imprisonment, loss of jobs, loss of custody of their children, and severe social consequences.

Families often disown converts, sometimes violently.

I told myself I was protecting them as much as myself.

If my family didn’t know, they couldn’t be accused of harboring an apostate.

They couldn’t be questioned by the authorities.

They could honestly say they had no idea.

But keeping the secret was becoming harder.

My faith was growing deeper.

and the disconnect between my inner life and my outer life was getting more painful.

I found myself longing to tell the truth, to live openly even as I knew how impossible and dangerous that would be.

During this time, I was teaching at a girl’s primary school in Thrron.

I loved my students, loved teaching them literature and poetry and helping them discover the joy of reading.

But I chafed against the religious restrictions, the mandatory Quran classes, the constant reinforcement of Islamic teachings that I no longer believed.

I tried to be subversive in small ways.

When I taught poetry, I chose pieces that emphasized love, compassion, freedom.

When we discussed stories, I highlighted themes of justice and mercy.

I tried to plant seeds, tiny seeds that might grow into questions later.

One of my students, a girl named Aayita, was particularly bright and thoughtful.

She reminded me of myself at that age, curious, questioning, not quite satisfied with the simple answers.

She asked me once after class whether I thought God was angry with people who made mistakes.

It was a dangerous question to answer.

Honestly, we were in a school surrounded by other teachers and administrators who were all expected to uphold Islamic teachings.

But I looked at this 11-year-old girl, saw the worry in her eyes, and I couldn’t give her the answer I was supposed to give.

I told her that the God I knew was more interested in love than anger, that he understood we were human and made mistakes, that his mercy was bigger than our failures.

She looked at me strangely and I realized I had said too much.

I quickly added something about Allah’s mercy and compassion, trying to make it sound Islamic, but I saw the question in her eyes.

She had heard something different in what I said.

something that didn’t quite match what she learned in her Quran classes.

I was more careful after that.

I couldn’t risk exposing myself, not at work, not when so much was at stake.

But the incident reminded me how desperately I wanted to share what I had found with others, especially with young women like Aida, who were just beginning to question.

Our house church was growing.

Word spread quietly through the underground network and we started getting visitors, people who were curious, people who were searching, people who had questions.

Hassan was always cautious about new people, screening them carefully, watching for signs that they might be informants, but he also had a heart for seekers, and he welcomed those who seemed genuine.

I watched people come to Christ in those meetings.

I saw the same transformation I had experienced happening in others.

A young man who had been suicidal, crushed by guilt and religious despair, who found hope in Jesus.

A woman whose husband had divorced her, leaving her shamed and shunned, who discovered she was beloved by God.

A teenager thrown out by his family for questioning Islam.

who found a new family in the church.

Each conversion was a miracle.

Each person who came to faith despite the cost was a testimony to the power of the gospel.

We celebrated together.

We prayed together.

We supported each other through the challenges of living as secret believers in a hostile environment.

But we also grieved together.

One of our members, a man named Raza, was arrested.

We didn’t know the details, whether he had been followed to a meeting, whether someone had informed on him, whether his internet activity had been monitored.

He simply stopped showing up.

And then we heard through the network that he had been taken to Evan prison.

The fear that ran through our group after Raza’s arrest was palpable.

Were we next? Had he been forced to give names under interrogation? Should we stop meeting for a while? Should we scatter and go completely underground? Hassan called an emergency meeting.

We sat in the basement of his house, lights low, speaking in whispers.

He read to us from the book of Acts the stories of Peter and John arrested for preaching about Jesus, of Steven being stoned, of Paul and Silas imprisoned and beaten.

He reminded us that persecution had been the church’s story from the very beginning that Jesus himself had promised we would face trouble in this world.

Then he said something I will never forget.

He said that every generation of Christians has to decide is Jesus worth it? Is he worth the cost, the risk, the sacrifice, the suffering? And we as Iranian believers had to answer that question for ourselves.

We went around the circle, each person sharing.

Some voices shook with fear, but everyone said the same thing.

Yes.

Yes.

Jesus was worth it.

Yes, we would continue.

Yes, we would keep meeting, keep believing, keep following him no matter what.

I was terrified when my turn came.

My voice barely worked.

But I said it, too.

Yes, Jesus was worth it.

Whatever happened, whatever I had to face, I would not go back.

I could not go back.

I had tasted and seen that the Lord is good and nothing else would ever satisfy me again.

We prayed for Raza that night.

We prayed for his safety, his strength, his faithfulness under pressure.

We prayed that he would not be tortured, that his capttors would have mercy, that he would be released.

We prayed that if he had to suffer, he would suffer well.

that his faith would shine in that dark place.

We later heard that Raza was sentenced to 2 years in prison for propaganda against the state and insulting Islamic sanctities.

2 years of his life gone because he believed in Jesus.

But we also heard that he was witnessing in prison, that other inmates were asking him questions about his faith, that even some of the guards were curious about why he seemed to have peace despite his circumstances.

Suffering for Jesus was producing fruit we couldn’t have imagined.

I was 22 years old, about a year into my faith when things started changing in Iran.

The death of Masa Amini in September 2022 had sparked massive protests that were still reverberating through the country.

Women were removing their hijabs in public, burning them, cutting their hair in defiance.

The slogan, woman, life, freedom was everywhere.

Spray painted on walls, chanted in the streets, shared on social media.

I watched the protests with a complicated mixture of emotions.

I supported the protesters.

How could I not? I knew firsthand how the Islamic Republic restricted women’s freedom.

How the mandatory hijab was a symbol of much deeper oppression.

But I also knew that the protests were dangerous, that the government was responding with violence, that people were being killed and imprisoned.

Our house church discussed whether to participate.

Some felt strongly that Christians should join the protests, that standing for justice and freedom was part of our faith.

Others worried it would draw unnecessary attention to us, that we needed to keep our heads down and survive.

I went to a few protests standing at the edges watching.

I saw young women my age shouting for freedom, risking everything for the chance to live without fear.

I saw the courage of ordinary people standing up to one of the most repressive regimes in the world.

And I felt a strange connection.

They were fighting for political and social freedom.

But I had found a deeper freedom.

A freedom that no government could give or take away.

But I also saw the crackdown.

I saw security forces beating, protesters firing tear gas, making arrests.

I saw the lists of the dead growing longer.

And I knew that for Christians, the danger was doubled.

We were already considered traitors for leaving Islam.

And now, if we joined the protests, we were political dissident, too.

Through all of this, my faith was deepening.

The more I read the Bible, the more I prayed, the more I worshiped, the more real Jesus became to me.

He wasn’t just a historical figure or a theological concept.

He was alive, present, active in my life.

I experienced small miracles.

Times when I was stopped by the morality police for my hijab being too loose and they inexplicably let me go with just a warning.

times when I was certain my family was about to discover my Bible or my Christian contacts and something distracted them at the last moment.

Times when I was struggling financially and anonymous help arrived through the church network.

But more than the circumstances, it was the internal transformation that convinced me Jesus was real.

I was becoming someone different, more patient, more loving, more at peace.

The anger I had carried for years toward my father, toward the system that had oppressed me, toward the religion that had confined me, it was dissolving, being replaced by something I could only call grace.

I was learning to forgive.

Not because people deserved it or had asked for it, but because I had been forgiven so much.

Jesus had taken all my rebellion, my doubt, my years of living for myself, and he had wiped it away completely.

How could I hold grudges when I had been given such grace? I was also learning that following Jesus didn’t mean my life became easier.

If anything, it became harder.

The persecution was real and growing.

But alongside the difficulty was a joy I had never known before.

A sense of purpose and meaning that made even the suffering worthwhile.

Fate and I talked about this often during our tea meetings.

We talked about how strange it was that we were happier now living in fear and hiding our faith than we had been when we were free to practice Islam openly.

We talked about how Jesus had ruined us for ordinary life.

How we could never go back to just existing, just following the rules, just trying to be good enough.

We talked about what we would do if we were arrested.

Would we deny Christ to save ourselves? We both said we hoped we wouldn’t, but we also acknowledged our fear.

We prayed for each other’s strength, knowing that either of us could be tested at any time.

My relationship with my family was becoming increasingly strained, though they didn’t know why.

My mother noticed I was distracted, that I didn’t seem engaged with the family’s discussions about finding me a husband.

My father noticed I was less enthusiastic about religious conversations.

My brothers noticed I was spending more time alone in my room.

I made excuses.

I was tired from teaching.

I was stressed about work.

I was just going through a phase.

But the truth was creating distance between us.

I loved them.

But I couldn’t share the most important part of my life with them.

Every conversation was an exercise in careful editing.

Every family gathering a performance.

I wanted to tell them.

I wanted to explain how happy I was, how I had found truth and life and hope.

But I knew how they would react.

My father especially would be furious.

He might even turn me into the authorities himself, seeing it as his religious duty to stop the spread of apostasy.

So I kept quiet and felt the distance grow.

I mourned the relationship we might have had if I were free to be honest.

I grieved the conversations we could never have.

The support they could never give.

The life I could never share with them.

But I had a new family now.

The house church was my true family.

The people who knew me completely and loved me anyway.

We were bound together by something stronger than blood.

We were bound by faith, by shared suffering, by the experience of finding Jesus, and chosen to follow him no matter the cost.

In early 2024, Hassan baptized three more people in his apartment’s bathtub, the same sacred, mundane setting where I had been baptized.

We sang worship songs and whispers.

We prayed over these new believers.

We welcomed them into the family.

One of them was a woman in her 60s who had been Muslim her entire life, who had made the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, who had worn the full chadore by choice for decades.

She wept as she went into the water, and she wept as she came out.

She said she had spent 60 years trying to earn her way to paradise.

And in one moment of surrendering to Jesus, she had found peace she never knew existed.

Watching her testimony, I thought about how the gospel turned everything upside down.

The religious leaders, the ones who seemed to have it all figured out, often missed Jesus completely.

But the broken, the desperate, the ones who knew they had nothing to offer, they found him.

They found grace.

I was I 23 years old, 2 years into my faith, and I felt like I was living two completely separate lives.

My public life as a Muslim teacher and my private life as a follower of Jesus.

The tension between these two lives was becoming unbearable.

Something was going to break.

I could feel it coming.

I just didn’t know when or how.

But I knew this.

I had met Jesus.

He had called me by name.

He had shown me his scars.

He had told me he loved me.

And whatever happened next, whatever I had to face, whatever I had to lose, I would not deny him.

I had tasted the living water.

And I would never thirst for anything else again.

The choice had been made.

The line had been crossed.

There was no going back.

I was a Christian.

And soon, very soon, everyone would know.

The unraveling began on an ordinary Thursday afternoon in April 2024.

I was at home, supposedly grading papers in my room, but actually reading my Bible on my phone.

My door was closed, which was normal.

I always kept my door closed these days, needing the privacy to pray, to read, to be myself for a few precious hours.

I didn’t hear my mother come up the stairs.

I didn’t hear her footsteps in the hallway.

The first thing I heard was my door opening.

She hadn’t knocked, which wasn’t unusual in our house.

Privacy wasn’t really a concept my parents respected.

I looked up and there she was standing in my doorway with a basket of clean laundry and I was holding my phone, the Bible app open, displaying the Gospel of John in clear Farsy text.

Our eyes met.

I watched her gaze dropped to my phone screen, watched her read the heading at the top, John 15.

I watched confusion cross her face, then understanding, then horror.

The moment stretched out forever.

I should have said something, anything.

I should have made an excuse, lied, explained it away.

But my mind went completely blank.

All I could do was stare at my mother as she stared at my phone screen.

She set the laundry basket down slowly, her hands shaking.

Then she asked in a voice I had never heard from her before, quiet and terrible.

What is that? I could have said I was researching other religions for a paper.

I could have said I was trying to understand Christianity to better refute it.

I could have lied so easily.

But something in me couldn’t do it anymore.

I was so tired of lying, so tired of hiding, so tired of pretending to be someone I wasn’t.

So I told her the truth.

I said, “It’s the Bible, mama.

I’m reading the Bible.

” She stepped into my room and closed the door behind her.

Her face had gone white.

She asked me why I was reading a Christian book and her voice was shaking so badly I could barely understand her.

I took a breath and said the words that would change everything.

Because I’m a Christian, Mammon, I believe in Jesus.

I will never forget the sound that came out of my mother in that moment.

It wasn’t a scream exactly.

It was more like a wounded animal, a cry of pure anguish.

She collapsed onto my bed, her whole body shaking, and she started weeping.

Deep, horrible sobs that came from somewhere I had never seen in her before.

She kept saying, “No, over and over.

No, no, no.

This isn’t possible.

This can’t be happening.

Not my daughter.

Not my girl.

” She grabbed my shoulders and shook me, asking me what had happened to me, who had deceived me, how I could betray everything like this.

I tried to explain, tried to tell her about my journey, about how I had studied and prayed and found truth.

But she wasn’t listening.

She was crying and praying, calling out to Allah, asking him how this could happen, what she had done wrong, how she had failed as a mother.

Then she asked the question I had been dreading.

How long? How long have you been like this? I could have minimized it, made it sound recent and temporary, but I was so tired of lies.

I told her 2 years.

Her face changed.

Then the anguish shifted to something colder, harder.

Two years I had been lying to her.

Two years I had been um pretending to be a good Muslim girl while secretly betraying everything.

Two years I had made a fool of her, of my father, of my whole family.

She stood up and told me to stay in my room.

Then she left, closing the door behind her.

I heard her footsteps on the stairs, heard her calling for my father, heard her voice breaking as she told him he needed to come home immediately.

There was an emergency.

I sat on my bed, my phone still in my hands, the Gospel of John still open on the screen.

I was shaking so hard.

I thought I might be sick.

This was it.

Everything was about to explode.

I should run.

I thought I should grab my things and leave before my father got home.

But where would I go? I had some money saved, but not enough to live on for long.

I had my house church contacts, but I couldn’t burden them with hiding me.

That would put them all at risk.

And part of me foolishly perhaps still hoped that maybe my parents would listen.

Maybe they would try to understand.

Maybe love would win out over religious loyalty.

I was wrong.

My father arrived home within an hour.

I heard his car pull up, heard the front door slam, heard his heavy footsteps on the stairs.

My door flew open, and there he was, his face red with rage.

He didn’t give me a chance to speak.

He started yelling, calling me names I won’t repeat here.

He said I had disgraced the family, shamed them beyond repair, become something filthy and corrupted.

He said I was no longer his daughter, that he didn’t recognize the person standing in front of him.

My brothers appeared in the doorway, watching with wide eyes.

My mother stood behind my father, still crying.

My father demanded I show him my phone, and when I hesitated, he ripped it from my hands.

He went through it, finding the Bible app, the worship music, the Christian contacts.

He threw my phone against the wall.

It shattered.

Pieces of glass and plastic scattering across my floor.

Then he went through my room like a storm, pulling open drawers, dumping out my closet, searching.

He found the physical Bible Miam had given me, hidden in a box at the back of my wardrobe.

He held it up like it was a snake, like it was something toxic and dangerous.

He asked me where I got it, who had given it to me, how long I had been meeting with Christians.

I refused to answer.

I wouldn’t give him names wouldn’t expose my brothers and sisters in Christ to his rage.

That’s when he hit me.

An open-handed slap across my face that made my ears ring.

My mother gasped.

My brothers flinched, but no one stopped him.

He hit me again and again until I fell to my knees on the floor of my bedroom.

He stood over me and said, “I had one chance to fix this.

I would denounce this Christian nonsense.

Go to the mosque and repent publicly, rededicate myself to Islam, and never speak of this again.

If I did this, he would forgive me.

If I didn’t, I was no longer part of this family.

I looked up at him from the floor, my face throbbing, tears streaming down my cheeks, and I said, “I can’t.

” Those two words sealed my fate.

My father’s face went blank like a door closing.

He told my mother to lock me in my room, that I wasn’t to leave until I came to my senses.

Then he walked out.

For the next week, I was a prisoner in my own home.

They took away my computer, my phone, any way of communicating with the outside world.

My mother brought meals three times a day, setting them inside my door without speaking to me.

My father didn’t come to my room at all.

My brothers, I could hear outside my door sometimes whispering.

I think they were frightened, unsure what to make of their sister, who had suddenly become a stranger and a scandal.

On the third day of my imprisonment, my father brought someone to the house, Amola, a religious scholar from our local mosque.

He came to my room with my father and he tried to talk to me to convince me to return to Islam.

He was gentler than my father, more patient.

He asked me what had confused me.

what questions I had, what doubts had led me astray.

I tried to explain about the questions I’d had for years, about the inequality I saw, about finding answers in the Bible.

He listened, and then he systematically tried to refute everything I said.

He explained Islamic theology, quoted the Quran, argued that I had misunderstood Islam, been deceived by Christian propaganda, fallen victim to Western influence.

We went back and forth for hours.

He was educated, articulate, sincere in his beliefs.

Under different circumstances, I might have respected him, but I had met Jesus.

I had encountered the living God.

and no amount of theological argument could undo that.

Finally, he asked me directly, “Do you believe Jesus Christ is the son of God?” I knew what my answer would cost me.

I knew that in Islamic theology, this belief is the worst kind of blasphemy, the unforgivable sin of sherk, associating partners with Allah.

But I couldn’t deny it.

I wouldn’t deny it.

I said, “Yes, I believe Jesus is the son of God.

I believe he died for my sins and rose again.

I believe he is the way, the truth, and the life.

” The mulla’s face fell.

He looked at my father and said something I couldn’t quite hear.

Then he left, and my father came back into my room alone.

He told me that the moola had said I was beyond reasoning with that I had been completely deceived by shaitan that the only hope for me was forced psychiatric treatment combined with intensive Islamic re-education.

He said he had been in contact with a facility that specialized in dealing with youth who had strayed from Islam.

I felt cold terror wash over me.

I knew what these facilities were.

essentially prisons where people were held against their will, forced to attend Islamic lectures for hours every day, psychologically abused and sometimes physically tortured until they recanted whatever beliefs had gotten them sent there.

I begged my father not to send me there.

I told him I would be careful.

I would be quiet.

I wouldn’t talk about my beliefs.

I didn’t promise to change them.

I couldn’t do that.

But I promised I wouldn’t cause scandal.

He said it was too late for that.

The mulla knew.

Our extended family would soon know.

His reputation was at stake.

He had no choice.

That night, I waited until the house was quiet.

My door was locked from the outside, but my window wasn’t barred.

We lived on the second floor, high enough to be dangerous, but not impossible.

I tied together bed sheets and clothes, creating a makeshift rope.

My hands were shaking so badly I could barely tie the knots.

I prayed as I worked, “Jesus, help me.

Jesus, protect me.

Jesus, show me where to go.

” I climbed out my window at 2:00 in the morning, lowering myself down on my rope of sheets.

I dropped the last 6 ft, landing hard on the ground, my ankle twisting painfully beneath me.

But I had to keep moving.

I limped to the street, not knowing where to go, just knowing I had to get away.

I had no phone, no money.

I hadn’t been able to get to any of my savings.

I had only the clothes I was wearing and a desperate hope that God would provide somehow.

I walked through Tan streets in the dark, terrified that someone would stop me, question what a young woman was doing out alone at night.

The morality police were everywhere, especially at night.

But I made it to a 24-hour pharmacy I knew, and I asked to use their phone.

I called the only number I had memorized.

Fatamese.

She answered on the fourth ring, her voice sleepy and confused.

I told her what had happened, that I had escaped, that I needed help.

She didn’t hesitate.

She told me to wait at a nearby metro station, that she would come get me.

45 minutes later, she pulled up in a shared taxi, paid the driver, and pulled me into a fierce hug.

We couldn’t go to her apartment.

That would be too obvious, too easy for my family to find me.

Instead, she took me to Hassan’s house.

He and his wife Parisa welcomed me in the middle of the night, gave me tea and food, tended to my bruised face and twisted ankle.

Let me cry and shake and process what had just happened.

I had left my family.

I was homeless, jobless, with nothing but the clothes on my back.

Everything I had known, everyone I had loved, my entire life gone.

But I was free.

For the first time in my life, I was free.

The next few weeks were a blur.

The house church network moved me between different safe houses, never staying in one place for more than a few days.

My family was looking for me.

I heard through contacts that they had filed a police report claiming I had been kidnapped or corrupted by an extremist group.

I couldn’t go back to my teaching job.

That was the first place they would look.

Hassan helped me contact the school and I resigned over the phone, citing a family emergency.

I knew that my teaching career, at least in Iran, was over.

The church members supported me financially, sharing what little they had so I could eat and have basic necessities.

I felt like a burden, but they insisted it was their joy to help.

That this was what the body of Christ did.

We carried each other’s burdens.

3 weeks after I escaped, my father found out where I was staying.

I don’t know how.

Maybe someone saw me and told him.

Maybe he had connections in the police who traced my phone call to Fatame.

But he showed up at the apartment where I was hidden, pounding on the door, demanding I come out.

The believer whose apartment it was, a man named Amir, refused to open the door.

My father stood in the hallway and shouted through the door.

He said I had one last chance to come home to make this right to save whatever shred of honor the family had left.

He said if I didn’t come out I was dead to him.

Not just disowned.

Dead.

He would sit Shiva for me like I had actually died.

He would tell everyone I had passed away in an accident.

He would erase me from the family.

I listened from inside the apartment.

Tears streaming down my face.

Part of me wanted to run out there to tell him I was sorry, to try one more time to make him understand.

But I knew it was useless.

He didn’t want to understand.

He wanted me to be who he had raised me to be, and I couldn’t be that person anymore.

So, I stayed silent.

And after 15 minutes of shouting and threats, my father left.

That was the last time I heard his voice.

Within a month, I learned that my family had done exactly what my father threatened.

They held a funeral for me.

They told all our relatives and friends that I had died in a car accident.

They mourned me publicly while knowing I was alive somewhere in Thran, dead to them in every way that mattered.

My mother, I heard, had a breakdown.

She stopped leaving the house, stopped seeing friends, spent her days in bed crying.

Part of me felt guilty for causing her such pain.

But another part of me was angry.

Angry that she valued her religion and her reputation more than her own daughter.

Angry that she would choose their comfortable lies over my difficult truth.

I grieved them like they had died too because in a way they had.

The parents I had known, the family I had grown up with, they were gone.

Even if I wanted to return, I couldn’t.

I was a ghost to them now.

A shameful memory they had buried.

But I was alive.

I had lost everything.

But I had gained something greater.

I had my faith.

I had my freedom.

I had Jesus.

and I had my church family who became more real to me than my biological family had ever been.

During this time, the pressure on Christians in Iran was increasing.

The government was cracking down harder on house churches, arresting more believers, handing out longer sentences.

We heard stories constantly.

Someone’s house raided in the middle of the night.

Someone taken from their workplace.

Someone sentenced to 5 years for propaganda against the state.

In June 2020, I had my first encounter with the authorities.

I was leaving a house church meeting walking to the metro with Nazanin when two men approached us on the street.

They showed us identification.

They were from the Ministry of Intelligence.

They asked us where we had been, what we had been doing.

Nazanin, who had been a Christian longer than me, and had been through this before, calmly said we had been visiting a friend.

The men didn’t believe us.

They asked if we knew what the punishment for promoting Christianity was.

If we understood that converting Muslims was a crime.

My heart was pounding so hard I thought I would faint.

But I remembered Peter and John in the book of Acts, arrested for preaching about Jesus, refusing to stop even when commanded to.

I remembered Paul and Silas singing hymns in prison.

I remembered Jesus promising to be with us always, even to the end of the age.

One of the men took our identification cards and wrote down our information.

He told us they would be watching us, that they knew what we were up to, that we would regret choosing foreign religion over our own country.

Then inexplicably, they let us go.

Nazan and I walked away shaking, not speaking until we were several blocks away and certain we weren’t being followed.

Then we stopped in an alley and prayed together, thanking God for protection, praying for strength for whatever might come next.

That encounter terrified me, but it also strengthened my faith.

I had stood there face to face with the power of the state, and I hadn’t denied Christ.

I hadn’t recanted.

Jesus had been with me, giving me courage I didn’t know I had.

The church decided it was too dangerous for me to stay in Thrron.

My family was looking for me.

The authorities knew my name now and I was too visible.

They arranged for me to go to a different city, to join a different house church, to start over somewhere my face wasn’t known.

I said goodbye to Fatime, to Hassan and Parisa, to the believers who had become my family.

We prayed together one last time.

laying hands on each other, asking God to keep us faithful, to keep us strong, to keep us together in spirit, even when separated by distance.

I left Thyran with nothing but a small bag of clothes and a new phone the church had bought me.

I was 23 years old, essentially homeless, cut off from my biological family, wanted by the authorities, starting over in a strange city with nothing but my faith.

But I was not alone.

Jesus was with me.

The Holy Spirit lived in me.

And wherever I went, I would find my family.

the global eternal family of believers who knew the same Jesus I knew, who had made the same choice I had made to follow him no matter the cost.

I had lost everything familiar.

But I had gained everything that mattered and I would not could not turn back.

The price had been paid.

The line had been crossed.

I belong to Jesus now.

And nothing, not my family’s rejection, not the government’s persecution, not poverty or fear or loneliness could change that.

I was his and he was mine forever.

I spent most of the 2024 in Karage, a city just northwest of Tehran.

The house church there was smaller than the one in Thrron, only four regular members.

But they welcomed me like family.

I found work, cleaning houses, paid in cash, in nothing official that would require documentation or verification of my identity.

It wasn’t much, but it was enough to survive.

I lived in a tiny room I rented from an elderly woman who asked no questions and seemed happy to have the extra income.

My life became very simple.

work during the day, house church meetings twice a month, hours spent in prayer and Bible reading, constant vigilance about who might be watching me.

But Iran itself was anything but simple during this time.

The protests that had begun after Maka Amini’s death in 2022 had quieted for a while, but the anger hadn’t disappeared.

It simmerred beneath the surface, waiting for another spark.

That spark came in early January 2025.

A young woman in Isvahan, a university student, was severely beaten by the morality police for not wearing her hijab properly.

Video of the beating went viral on social media, and within hours, protests erupted across the country.

This time, something was different.

The protests weren’t just about the hijab or women’s rights anymore.

People were calling for the entire regime to fall, for the Islamic Republic to end, for fundamental change.

The chance had evolved from woman life, freedom to death to the dictator, and we don’t want an Islamic republic.

Our house church discussed whether to join the protests.

It was a complicated decision.

On one hand, we understood the protesters desire for freedom.

We more than most knew what it meant to live under religious oppression.

On the other hand, we knew that Christians were already targets and joining the protests would make us even more visible.

But some of our members felt called to participate.

Navidid who was part of the original Thrron church and had moved to Karage around the same time I did said that Christians couldn’t stand by while people fought for basic human dignity.

He said that our faith demanded we love our neighbors, stand for justice, speak for those who couldn’t speak for themselves.

I struggled with this.

Part of me wanted to join, to be part of something bigger than myself, to fight for the freedom that had been denied to so many.

But part of me was terrified.

I had already lost everything once.

I didn’t know if I could survive losing more.

One evening in late January 20 to 25, Naveiv invited me to come with him to a protest.

He said it would be relatively safe, a candlelight vigil in a park, peaceful, not confrontational.

I agreed, partly because I trusted him.

Partly because I felt like hiding away was a kind of cowardice.

The park was filled with people when we arrived, hundreds of them, maybe thousands, young and old, women and men, all holding candles, all standing together in silent defiance.

Some women had removed their hijabs completely, letting their hair blow free in the winter wind.

Others wore them loosely, symbolically.

The morality police were there watching from the edges.

But they seemed uncertain what to do with such a large peaceful gathering.

Someone started singing a Persian protest song, and others joined in.

The sound of hundreds of voices singing together in the darkness.

candles flickering like stars was one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking things I had ever experienced.

Then someone started a different song, a worship song.

I recognized it immediately.

It was one we sang in house church.

A Farsy song about Jesus being our hope and our rescue.

I looked at Naveiv in shock.

who would be bold enough to sing a Christian song at a public protest, but others joined in.

There were Christians scattered throughout the crowd, and they were singing openly, publicly for maybe the first time in their lives.

I felt tears streaming down my face as I added my voice to theirs.

We weren’t hiding anymore.

In this moment, in this place, we were standing together with our fellow Iranians and declaring that there was hope, that there was another way, that Jesus offered something the regime could never give, true freedom.

The authorities didn’t know what to make of it.

The morality police shifted uncomfortably, speaking into their radios, but they didn’t move against us.

Not that night.

There were too many people, too many cameras, not too much international attention, but they were watching.

They were always watching.

In the weeks that followed, I attended several more protests.

I helped organize safe houses for the protesters who needed to hide from the authorities.

I used my phone to document the protests and share them on social media, showing the world what was happening in Iran.

I felt like I was finally doing something meaningful, using my freedom for something beyond just my own survival.

Our house church grew during this time.

People who had been curious about Christianity, who had heard about our faith but never had the courage to investigate, suddenly started reaching out.

Some were motivated by politics.

They saw Islam and the Islamic Republic as inseparable and wanted to reject both.

But others had genuine spiritual hunger.

When asking deep questions about God and meaning and truth, we were careful about who we brought into our meetings.

The government was known to plant informants, to send people pretending to be interested seekers who were actually gathering intelligence.

But we also knew that this might be our only chance to reach some of these souls.

That the protest had opened a window that might soon close.

I met Na Arjane during this time, though I didn’t know then how significant she would become.

She was 32, a teacher like I had been, married with a young son.

She had come to faith about a year before I had and had been serving quietly in the underground church, hosting meetings in her home, discipling new believers, supporting other women who had converted.

Naire had a quiet strength about her, a deep peace that was evident even in the midst of chaos.

She spoke about Jesus with such love, such conviction, such joy that you couldn’t help but be moved by her testimony.

She had lost her teaching position after her conversion was discovered, had faced intense pressure from her family and community, but she never wavered.

Her husband, Milad, had converted to Christianity around the same time she did, which was rare.

Usually in Iranian families, only one spouse converts, leading to divorce and separation.

But they had found Christ together, and their faith had made their marriage stronger rather than breaking it apart.

In February 2025, Naare told me she was going to start being more open about her faith.

She said she was tired of hiding, tired of pretending, tired of living in fear, and she wanted to use social media to share her testimony, to openly identify as a Christian, to let people know there was hope in Jesus.

I begged her to reconsider.

I told her how dangerous it was, how the authorities were already cracking down on visible Christians, how she could end up in prison.

She listened to my concerns and then she smiled and said something I will never forget.

She said, “Sister, Jesus didn’t tell us to be safe.

He told us to be faithful.

Maybe my testimony will cost me everything, but maybe it will also lead someone else to salvation.

” Isn’t one soul worth any price? I couldn’t argue with that.

How could I? I believe the same thing even if I was too afraid to live it out the way she was.

Na started posting on social media in March 2025.

She shared her conversion story, her reasons for leaving Islam, her faith in Jesus.

She posted videos of herself reading the Bible, explaining scripture, answering questions from curious Iranians.

She was careful not to explicitly evangelize.

That would have been an immediate arrest.

But she shared her personal journey and let people draw their own conclusions.

Her posts went viral.

Tens of thousands of Iranians watched her videos, commented on her posts, asked her questions.

Some were hostile and threatening, calling her a traitor and an apostate.

But others were genuinely curious, asking sincere questions about Christianity, about Jesus, about how to find the peace she seemed to have.

The authorities noticed, of course, in April 2025, just weeks after she started posting, Naare and Milad were arrested.

Their home was raided in the middle of the night, their computers and phones seized.

their young son sent to stay with Milad’s parents while they were taken to Evan prison.

The charges were vague but serious.

Propaganda against the Islamic Republic, spreading Christianity, insulting Islamic sanctities, cooperation with hostile foreign entities.

Each charge carried years of prison time.

Our house church prayed for them constantly.

We heard through the network that Naode was being interrogated daily, pressured to recant her faith, to name other Christians, to cooperate with the authorities in exchange for leniency.

But she refused.

Day after day, she stood firm.

Even when they threatened her with longer sentences, even when they said they would take her son away permanently.

Milad was being interrogated, too.

But his health was poor.

He had a heart condition and the authorities seemed uncertain whether he could survive a long prison sentence.

They kept him in detention but didn’t formally sentence him holding him as leverage against Naare.

In June 2025, Na was sentenced to 5 years in prison.

5 years for the crime of believing in Jesus and telling others about it.

She was 32 years old and she would be 37 before she saw freedom again.

The news hit our community like a bomb.

5 years for speaking about her faith, for sharing her testimony, for refusing to hide who she was.

Some people in our network started talking about fleeing Iran, about how it was too dangerous to stay, about how the government was getting more aggressive in hunting down Christians.

And they weren’t wrong.

Arrests were increasing as sentences were getting longer.

The crackdown was intensifying.

But others, like Naveiv said, “We couldn’t all run.

If every Christian left Iran, who would share the gospel with the 70 million Iranians who had never heard it? Who would plant churches? Who would disciple new believers? Someone had to stay, even if it meant suffering.

I was torn.

I wanted to flee, to go somewhere safe, to stop living in constant fear.

But I also knew that running felt like abandoning my people, my country, the very people Jesus had sent me to reach.

In July 2025, we learned that Milad had been released from detention due to his health issues, but he was given a suspended sentence of 3 years, meaning if he did anything the authorities considered wrong in the next 3 years, he would immediately go to prison.

He was devastated about Naare and desperate to get her out, but there was nothing he could do.

The legal system in Iran doesn’t care much about justice or appeals when it comes to religious crimes.

Mead was left alone to care for their son, to somehow explain to a 5-year-old why his mother was gone and wouldn’t be coming home for years.

The church rallied around him, helping with child care, providing financial support, praying constantly for Naare and for his family.

I visited Milad once, bringing food that some believers had prepared.

He looked broken, exhausted.

But when I asked how he was holding up, he said something that shook me to my core.

He said, “I miss her every moment, but I’m also proud of her.

She stood for Jesus when it cost her everything.

She didn’t deny him.

Didn’t compromise.

Didn’t try to save herself.

She chose faithfulness over freedom.

How can I be anything but proud? Then he showed me a letter N had smuggled out of prison.

In it, she wrote about the women she was sharing a cell with.

How she was telling them about Jesus.

How some were asking questions.

how even in prison, God was using her.

She wrote that she was reading the Psalms daily, finding comfort in David’s prayers from his own times of imprisonment and persecution.

She ended the letter with this.

I have learned that Jesus is most near when circumstances are most difficult.

I would rather be in this cell with Christ than in a palace without him.

Pray that I remain faithful to the end.

I left Milad’s house weeping, weeping for Naare’s suffering, weeping for her courage, weeping for my own cowardice.

She was in prison for doing openly what I was too afraid to do.

She was suffering for the faith I claimed to share, but was still hiding.

The protests continued through the summer and fall of 2025, though they had become more sporadic and more violent.

The government’s response had become increasingly brutal.

Live ammunition, mass arrests, executions of protest leaders.

The international community condemned Iran’s actions.

But condemnation didn’t stop the bloodshed.

Christians were caught in the middle.

We supported the protesters goals, freedom, equality, human rights.

But we also knew that the protest movement included many who were virolently anti- relligion, who saw all faith as oppressive, who would happily trade an Islamic theocracy for an atheistic dictatorship.

We had to be careful about how we engaged, who we aligned with, what we supported.

We wanted freedom for Iran, but we also wanted to be faithful witnesses for Christ to show that Christianity offered something different from both Islamic oppression and secular rejection of God.

In September 2025, another prominent Christian was arrested, a man named Hussein, who had been a house church leader for over a decade.

He was sentenced to 10 years, twice as long as Naier’s sentence, supposedly because he had been organizing illegal religious gatherings for such a long time.

10 years of his life, gone because he had hosted Bible studies in his home.

A few weeks later, a Christian couple was arrested in Shiraz.

Then another believer in Tre.

Then three young converts in Mashad.

The arrests were accelerating, the sentences getting longer.

It felt like the government had decided to make an example of Christians.

Yet to send a message that conversion would not be tolerated.

By late 2025, I was seriously considering leaving Iran.

The church network had connections with organizations that helped religious refugees flee to Turkey or Armenia and from there to seek asylum in Western countries.

Several believers I knew had already left, making the dangerous journey across the border, risking everything for the chance at safety.

But every time I came close to making the decision, I would think of Naare in prison refusing to recant.

I would think of Hussein sentenced to 10 years, still praising Jesus.

I would think of Milad caring for his son alone, still faithful.

How could I run when they were standing firm? In December 2025, our house church in Karage was discovered.

We had been meeting in a believer’s apartment, rotating times and locations as usual, uh being as careful as we always were.

But someone had been watching.

Maybe a neighbor had gotten suspicious.

Maybe we had been followed.

Maybe someone in our group had been an informant all along.

The authorities raided our meeting on a Friday evening.

We were in the middle of worship singing quietly when we heard the pounding on the door.

My heart stopped.

We all looked at each other knowing exactly what this was.

Hassan, who had moved to Karage and become our leader, went to the door.

He opened it calmly, and three agents from the Ministry of Intelligence pushed their way in.

They ordered us all to stay still, to keep our hands visible, to remain quiet.

They went through the apartment systematically, seizing our Bibles, our phones, our notebooks.

They took photos of us, recorded our names and identification numbers.

They asked who the leader was, who organized the meetings, who else attended that wasn’t there that evening.

No one answered.

We sat in silence, praying internally, asking Jesus for protection and courage.

The agents threatened us.

They said we were all under arrest, that we would be charged with serious crimes, that we would spend years in prison like Nier and Hussein.

They said that if we cooperated, gave them names, testified against the leaders, they might show leniency.

Still, we said nothing.

After 2 hours of this, they seemed to get frustrated.

They took Hassan and Naveid with them, leaving the rest of us with a warning.

We were being watched.

We were on a list.

And if we were caught meeting again, the consequences would be severe.

As soon as they left, we scattered.

And we didn’t even talk about it.

We just knew we couldn’t stay in that apartment, couldn’t be found together.

I grabbed my bag and left, walking quickly through courageous, dark streets.

Terrified that I was being followed, that any moment I would be grabbed and thrown into a van, I made it back to my rented room and spent the night packing my few belongings, preparing to run.

I didn’t know where I would go, but I knew I couldn’t stay in Karage.

Not now, not after this.

But then in the early morning hours, I got a message through our encrypted network.

Hassan and Navidid had been released.

They had been interrogated for hours, threatened, pressured, but then suddenly released without charges with only a warning not to organize religious meetings again.

It was a miracle.

A small one maybe, but a miracle nonetheless.

We should have all been arrested.

We should have all been charged.

But for reasons we couldn’t understand, God had protected us.

Still, we knew we couldn’t continue meeting in Karage.

It was too hot now, too dangerous.

The church dispersed, each member finding their own way.

Some fleeing to other cities, some going deeper underground, some I learned later, leaving Iran entirely.

I stayed in Karaj through the end of 2025, but I was completely alone.

No church, no fellowship, just me and Jesus.

It was the loneliest period of my faith journey.

I read my Bible constantly, prayed for hours, listened to worship music through headphones, but I missed the body of Christ desperately.

I missed singing with other believers, praying with them, taking communion together, being known and loved by people who understood.

Then in January 2026, everything escalated again.

A new wave of protests broke out, sparked by economic issues, but quickly becoming about broader freedoms.

The government’s response was immediate and brutal.

Thousands were arrested in the first week alone, and among those arrested were dozens of Christians.

The authorities seemed to be using the protests as a cover to round up known believers to finally deal with a Christian problem they had been concerned about for years.

I heard through the network that Naier, already in prison, had been moved to solitary confinement and her sentence might be extended for continued propaganda activities inside the prison.

Milad, still on probation, was arrested again.

The authorities claimed he had violated the terms of his release, though he had done nothing wrong.

His health was deteriorating.

N but they didn’t seem to care.

The stories kept coming.

A Christian woman sentenced to 8 years.

A convert sentenced to six.

A house church leader sentenced to 15.

The numbers were staggering.

The sentences crushing.

And then I learned something that changed everything for me.

My own name was on a list.

The authorities from the Karage raid had shared their information and I was wanted for questioning.

If I stayed in Iran, if I remained anywhere they could find me, I would be arrested.

It was only a matter of time.

That’s when I made my decision.

I couldn’t do nare any good from prison.

I couldn’t help the church if I was locked away.

I couldn’t share the gospel if I was isolated in a cell.

The most useful thing I could do was get somewhere safe and tell the world what was happening to Iranian Christians.

The church network arranged my escape.

I won’t give the details.

The methods are still being used to help others and I won’t compromise them.

But in late January 2026, after a terrifying journey that I will probably have nightmares about for the rest of my life, I made it across the border into Turkey.

I am safe now, relatively safe, at least.

I’m in the process of applying for asylum, hoping to be resettled in a country where I can practice my faith freely, where I can live without fear, where I can finally finally rest.

But I am also heartbroken.

I left my country.

I left my brothers and sisters who are still suffering.

I left Na in prison.

Milad struggling to survive.

Hussein serving his 10-year sentence.

All the countless believers still hiding and hunted.

And I am angry.

Angry at a regime that imprisons people for their faith.

We’re angry at a world that mostly doesn’t care what happens to Iranian Christians.

Angry at my own helplessness.

At the fact that even now, even safe, I can’t do anything to free my friends from their cells.

But I am also hopeful because I have seen the church in Iran and it is alive.

It is growing.

It is strong despite persecution.

Maybe even because of persecution.

Every arrest, every sentence, every act of brutality only proves that the gospel is powerful enough to be worth suppressing.

The authorities are terrified of Jesus and they should be because he is changing hearts they can’t control, offering freedom they can’t give, promising hope they can’t destroy.

And so I will tell their stories.

I will speak for those who can’t speak.

I will be Na’s voice from outside these prison walls.

Uh Hussein’s testimony from beyond Iran’s borders.

The witness that cannot be silenced because I am no longer within their reach.

This is my act of resistance.

This is my way of standing with those who stood firm when I was too afraid.

This is my offering to the God who saved me, who has protected me, who has brought me this far.

I am 24 years old.

I am a refugee.

I am a Christian.

And I will never stop telling the world about the unshakable faith of Iranian believers who loved Jesus more than they loved freedom, safety, even life itself.

S I am writing this from a small room in a refugee center thousands of miles from Iran.

It has been three weeks since I crossed the border.

3 weeks since I last heard Farsy spoken on the streets.

3 weeks since I’ve had to look over my shoulder constantly in a wondering if today would be the day they came for me.

I should feel relieved.

I should feel safe.

And in some ways I do.

But I also feel guilty.

Survivor is guilt, I think they call it.

Why did I get out when Nare is still in prison? Why am I free when Hussein has eight more years to serve? Why am I here comfortable and safe while thousands of Iranian Christians still live in hiding and fear? I’ve been wrestling with God about this, asking him why he allowed me to escape when so many others couldn’t or didn’t.

And slowly, quietly, I think I’m beginning to understand.

I’m here to tell their story, to be their voice, to let the world know what’s happening to Christians in Iran and why they refuse to give up despite everything.

So, let me tell you about the faith I have witnessed.

A faith so strong that persecution only makes it grow deeper, more beautiful, more unshakable.

When I first became a Christian, I thought faith was about believing the right things.

That Jesus is the son of God.

That he died for my sins.

That he rose from the dead.

And those things are true.

They’re foundational.

But I’ve learned that real faith, the kind that survives prison and rejection and suffering, is about something deeper than intellectual ascent.

It’s about relationship.

It’s about knowing Jesus, not just knowing about him.

I think of Naare in her prison cell, and I know what keeps her strong.

It’s not theology, though she knows her Bible well.

It’s not willpower, though she has incredible courage.

It’s Jesus himself present with her in that cell, more real to her than the guards or the walls or the threats.

She has encountered the living Christ.

And once you’ve met him face to face, everything else becomes secondary.

Prison is temporary.

This life is temporary.

But Jesus is eternal and his love is unbreakable.

This is what the Iranian church understands in a way that many comfortable Western Christians don’t.

Jesus is not a religion or a philosophy or a moral system.

He is a person alive and active who walks with us through the fire and never leaves us alone.

I’ve seen this reality proved over and over again in the lives of Iranian believers.

I have seen people lose everything, family, job, home, freedom, and still worship Jesus with tears of joy running down their faces.

I have seen believers face interrogation and torture and come out stronger in their faith, not weaker.

I’ve seen the church grow fastest in the places where persecution is most severe.

This makes no human sense.

By every logical measure, persecution should destroy faith.

It should make people recant, compromise, give up, and some do.

I won’t pretend otherwise.

Some people, when faced with the cost of following Jesus, decide it’s too high a price.

But for every person who falls away, there are 10 more who stand firm.

And their faith is not naive or simplistic.

These are people who have counted the cost and decided Jesus is worth it.

They know exactly what they’re giving up and they’ve chosen him anyway.

Why? Because they’ve found something that the world can’t give and can’t take away.

They found love that’s stronger than fear.

Hope that’s stronger than despair.

Life that’s stronger than death.

Let me tell you what I’ve learned about this kind of faith.

the kind that can’t be shaken no matter what storms come against it.

First, I’ve learned that suffering doesn’t destroy faith.

It purifies it.

When everything else is stripped away, comfort, safety, approval, success.

You discover what you really believe.

You discover whether Jesus is truly enough or whether you were using him as a means to get the things you really wanted.

The Iranian church has been stripped down to the essentials.

We don’t have buildings or programs or professional clergy.

We don’t have political power or social respect or financial resources.

We have Jesus.

We have the Bible.

We have each other.

And we’ve discovered that these three things are sufficient for life, joy, and growth.

Second, I’ve learned that persecution creates intimacy with God.

When you can’t rely on anything else, you learn to rely on him completely.

When you have no one else to talk to, you learn to pray without ceasing.

When you can’t go to church publicly, your entire life becomes worship.

The depth of relationship I’ve seen between Iranian Christians and Jesus is unlike anything I’ve witnessed elsewhere.

They talk to him constantly throughout the day like he’s right there beside them because he is.

They sing to him in the shower, pray to him while washing dishes, thank him for every small provision.

They’ve learned to practice the presence of God in a way that most Christians only read about in books.

Third, I’ve learned that the gospel is most powerful when it costs something.

When Christianity is easy and comfortable, it can become just another consumer choice, another lifestyle option.

But but when it costs you everything, when people know you’re risking your life to follow Jesus, your testimony carries weight that comfortable Christianity never can.

When Na posted her testimony online, she knew it would probably lead to her arrest.

She did it anyway.

And thousands of Iranians watched her videos, not because she was eloquent or clever, but because she was willing to suffer for what she claimed to believe.

That authenticity, that willingness to pay the price gave her words a power that no amount of apologetics or theological arguments could match.

Fourth, I’ve learned that persecution reveals who Jesus really is.

When you’re suffering for him, you discover that he’s not distant or detached.

He’s there in the suffering with you, just like he promised.

I am with you always, he said.

And Iranian Christians have found this to be literally tangibly true.

I remember Parisa Hassan’s wife telling me about her time in detention.

She was held for 3 days, interrogated, threatened, kept in a cold cell with no blanket.

She said that on the second night, when she was at her lowest point, shaking from cold and fear, she suddenly felt warmths around her like someone had wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, and she heard a voice clear as day, I am here.

You are not alone.

She started crying, but they weren’t tears of fear anymore.

They were tears of overwhelming gratitude that Jesus would meet her there in that awful place and remind her of his presence.

This is the Jesus the Iranian church knows.

Not the Jesus of prosperity and comfort, but the Jesus who enters into suffering with his people, who was himself tortured and killed for speaking truth, who understands what it means to be rejected by your own people and condemned by the state.

Fifth, I have learned that the church is most truly itself when it’s under pressure.

In Iran, we can’t be Christians for social benefits or family tradition or cultural expectations.

We’re Christians because we’ve chosen to be knowing full well what it will cost.

And this creates a quality of fellowship that’s hard to describe.

When you meet another Iranian Christian, you know instantly that you’re looking at someone who has counted the cost and decided Jesus is worth it.

You’re looking at someone who shares your deepest convictions, your most precious treasure, your willingness to lose everything for the sake of the gospel.

The love between Iranian believers is fierce and deep.

We’re not just friends or fellow church members.

We’re family in the truest sense, bound together by something stronger than blood.

We’re bound by the blood of Christ and by our shared willingness to suffer for him.

I miss that fellowship every day.

I miss the whispered worship songs, the prayers prayed with hands clasped together in basement rooms, the communion shared from cracked cups with grape juice we bought secretly.

I miss the way we looked at each other during meetings, eyes shining with tears and joy, knowing we were experiencing something sacred that most people will never understand.

Sixth, I have learned that persecution produces hope.

This sounds backwards.

I know you’d think suffering would lead to despair, but I’ve seen the opposite happen again and again.

You know, when you lose everything in this world and discover that Jesus is still enough, when you face death and realize that death is defeated, when you suffer and find that joy and peace and hope persist anyway, you develop an unshakable confidence that this world is not all there is.

The Iranian Christians I know have a hope that’s radiant and contagious.

They believe, truly believe that this life is temporary, that suffering is temporary, that one day every tear will be wiped away and we will see Jesus face to face, and that hope makes them fearless.

Seventh, I have learned that faithfulness matters more than success.

In Iran, we don’t measure church growth by numbers in seeds or dollars in the offering plate.

We measure it by faithfulness.

By people who keep believing when it costs them everything.

By believers who choose integrity over safety.

By Christians who refuse to deny Jesus no matter what threats they face.

Na is in prison.

But she is succeeding.

She is being faithful.

She is standing firm.

And her faithfulness is a testimony that will outlast her sentence, that will inspire others long after she’s released, that will echo into eternity.

Eighth, I’ve learned that God is at work in ways we can’t see.

When I look at the Iranian church from a human perspective, it looks like we’re losing.

Our leaders are in prison.

Our members are scattered.

We meet in secret, in fear.

with no resources or power or influence.

But the church is growing.

Despite everything, or perhaps because of everything, Iranians are coming to Christ in unprecedented numbers.

The government’s persecution has only made people more curious about this faith that’s worth dying for.

Every arrest, every sentence, every act of brutality is actually a testimony to the power of the gospel.

God is not absent.

He’s not defeated.

He’s working in the darkness, in the prison cells, in the hidden house churches, in the hearts of seekers who are watching and wondering why Christians won’t give up.

And ninth, most importantly, I have learned that Jesus is worth it.

everything.

All of it.

The suffering, the loss, the fear, the loneliness, the persecution.

I would not trade my relationship with Jesus for anything.

Not for my family’s approval, not for safety, not for comfort, not for freedom, not even for life itself.

This sounds extreme.

I know it sounds fanatical, but it’s not.

It’s just the logical response to encountering the God who created the universe and yet loves me individually, who died in my place, who offers me forgiveness I don’t deserve and a future I could never earn.

When you’ve tasted living water, you can never be satisfied with anything else.

When you’ve experienced perfect love, you can never settle for counterfeits.

When you’ve met Jesus, really met him, you’re ruined for ordinary life.

This is what I want the world to understand about Iranian Christians.

We’re not crazy.

We’re not brainwashed.

We’re not being manipulated by Western influences.

We’re people who have encountered the risen Christ.

And that encounter has changed us so fundamentally that we can never be the same again.

So now I want to speak directly to three groups of people.

First to Christians around the world, especially those in free countries where you can worship openly without fear.

Please don’t take your freedom for granted.

You have something precious that millions of believers can only dream of.

the ability to gather publicly, to own Bibles, to share your faith without risking imprisonment, to raise your children in the church.

Use that freedom well.

Don’t waste it on petty divisions or consumer Christianity or spiritual complacency.

Pray with passion.

Worship with joy.

Share the gospel boldly.

Build the church intentionally.

And please, please remember us.

Remember your brothers and sisters who are suffering for the same Jesus you worship.

Pray for us.

Advocate for us.

Support organizations that help persecuted Christians.

Don’t let our stories be forgotten in your comfortable churches.

Specifically, pray for Naare Arjane serving a 5-year sentence in Evan Prison for her faith.

Pray for her strength, her health, her faithfulness.

Pray for her son growing up without his mother.

Pray for her husband, Milad, whose suspended sentence hangs over him like a sword, whose health is failing from the stress.

Pray for Hussein and his 10-year sentence.

Pray for the countless other Iranian Christians whose names I don’t even know who are suffering in prisons across my country.

Pray that we would remain faithful, that we would not recant or compromise, that we would shine as lights in the darkness.

Pray that our persecutors would encounter Jesus themselves, that their hearts would be changed, that persecution would end.

And learn from us.

Learn that faith is not about comfort, but about Christ.

Learn that the church grows through suffering, not despite it.

learn that Jesus is enough, truly enough for whatever comes.

Second, I want to speak to seekers, to people who are curious about faith but not yet convinced, to those who are questioning Islam or any religion or no religion at all.

I understand your skepticism.

I was skeptical, too.

I was raised to believe Christianity was corrupted and false.

I thought Jesus was just a prophet, nothing more.

I thought I had the truth and Christians were deceived.

I’m not asking you to take my word for it.

I’m not asking you to believe something just because I say it’s true.

I’m asking you to investigate for yourself.

Read the Bible, especially the Gospels.

Look at Jesus, not at Christians who failed to represent him well, but at Jesus himself.

Consider what he said, what he claimed, what he did, and ask yourself, why would thousands of Iranians risk everything to follow him? Why would educated, intelligent people give up their families, their careers, their freedom for someone who lived 2,000 years ago? I can tell you why.

Because he’s real.

Because he’s alive.

Because when you encounter him, everything changes.

I’m not here to attack Islam or Muslims.

My family are Muslims.

My people are Muslims.

I love them even though they’ve rejected me.

But I have to be honest about my own journey.

I found in Jesus what I could never find in Islam.

I found love instead of fear.

I found grace instead of works.

I found relationship instead of ritual.

You might find something different.

But I beg you, don’t just accept what you’ve been taught without questioning.

Don’t just follow your culture or your family or your tradition without examining whether it’s true.

Truth matters.

Eternity matters.

Where you spend forever matters.

These are not questions to be taken lightly or answered casually.

And seek truth with your whole heart.

and I believe you will find Jesus because he promised, “Seek and you will find.

Knock and the door will be opened.

” He’s not hiding from honest seekers.

He’s pursuing you, calling you, waiting for you to respond.

And third, I want to speak directly to Iranians, especially Iranian women who might hear or read this story.

I know you.

I was you.

I know the weight of the hijab, the restriction of the rules, the suffocation of a system that treats you as less than fully human.

I know the anger, the questions, the desperate longing for something more.

I know what it’s like to live a double life, to hide who you really are, to wonder if you’ll ever be free.

I know the fear of disappointing your family, of shaming your parents, of becoming an outcast.

And I want you to know you are not alone.

There are thousands of us Iranian women who have found freedom in Christ, who have discovered that we are beloved daughters of the King, precious beyond measure, created in the image of God himself.

Jesus sees you.

He knows your pain, your struggles, your fears.

He knows how you’ve been treated, how you’ve been limited, how you’ve been told you’re not enough.

And he says you are treasured, valuable, worthy of love and dignity and respect.

I won’t lie to you.

Following Jesus in Iran comes at a terrible cost.

You may lose everything like I did.

You may face rejection, persecution, even imprisonment.

It’s not a decision to make lightly.

But I will tell you this, Jesus is worth it.

The freedom he offers, not political freedom, but soul freedom.

The freedom to be fully yourself, fully loved, fully known, is worth any earthly cost.

I would not trade these three years of following Jesus for a lifetime of comfortable Islam.

I would not trade the joy I found for safety.

I would not trade knowing Christ for having my family’s approval.

He has given me life, real life, abundant life, eternal life.

And if you seek him with your whole heart, he will do the same for you.

But I want to be clear about something.

Becoming a Christian is not about rejecting your Iranian identity.

I am still Iranian.

I still love Persian poetry, still cook Iranian food, still speak Farsy, still care deeply about my country and my people.

Christianity is not a Western religion.

Jesus was Middle Eastern.

The first Christians were Middle Eastern.

The gospel came to Persia in the first century, long before Islam existed.

Ye Iranian Christians are not traders or sellouts.

We are returning to something ancient and true.

You don’t have to choose between being Iranian and being Christian.

You can be both.

In fact, I believe Iran desperately needs Christians.

People who will stand for truth and justice and mercy, who will treat women with dignity, who will love their enemies and pray for their persecutors, who will bring light into darkness.

So I say to you, don’t be afraid.

Yes, there is a cost.

Yes, it’s hard.

Yes, you might suffer.

But suffering for Jesus is better than comfort without him.

Prison with Christ is better than freedom without him.

Rejection by the world is nothing compared to acceptance by God.

And remember, you’re not alone.

There’s a whole network of Iranian believers scattered across the country and around the world.

We’re your family, you know, waiting to welcome you, ready to support you, committed to standing with you no matter what comes.

Now, let me end by talking about what I believe God is doing in Iran right now because I think it’s one of the most remarkable things happening in the world today.

Despite persecution, or perhaps because of it, the Iranian church is experiencing explosive growth.

Estimates suggest there are now hundreds of thousands of Iranian Christians.

Most of them converts from Islam.

Some researchers think there could be as many as a million believers in Iran today.

This is a miracle.

Iran is a closed country, a place where evangelism is illegal and conversion is punishable by imprisonment.

There are no Christian TV stations, no public evangelists, no church buildings for converts.

Everything happens underground in secret through whispered testimonies and hidden Bible studies.

And yet the church grows.

How? Because God is at work.

Because the Holy Spirit is moving in ways that human power can’t stop.

Because Jesus is revealing himself to Iranians through dreams, through the internet, through the testimony of believers who refuse to be silenced.

I believe we’re witnessing the beginning of a mass turning to Christ in Iran.

I believe the very persecution meant to stop Christianity is actually fueling its growth.

I believe that one day, maybe in my lifetime, maybe not, Iran will be known not as an Islamic republic, but as a nation where millions worship Jesus.

This is my hope.

This is what I pray for.

This is what keeps me going when I’m overwhelmed by grief for my friends still suffering.

And I believe God is using this moment, the protests, the political instability, the disillusionment with Islam, the increased persecution of Christians to shake Iran awake, to create a hunger for truth, to draw people to himself.

Na’s imprisonment is not the end of her story.

It’s part of a bigger story God is writing.

A story of redemption and transformation.

A story where death leads to resurrection and suffering leads to glory.

Every Iranian Christian in prison is a seed planted in the ground.

And Jesus said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone.

But if it dies, it bears much fruit.

” Our brothers and sisters in prison are not alone.

They’re bearing fruit.

Fruit that will last.

Fruit that will feed generations.

fruit that will flourish in eternity.

So I end with a call to prayer, not just for Iranian Christians, though we desperately need your prayers, but for all of Iran.

Pray that the scales would fall from eyes that have been blind.

Pray that hearts hardened by religious legalism would be softened by divine love.

Pray that the government’s grip would loosen, that doors would open for the gospel, that the church would continue to grow and flourish despite opposition.

Pray for wisdom for believers still in Iran, when to speak and when to be silent, when to stay and when to flee, when to resist and when to submit.

Pray for protection over house churches, over Christian families, over new converts taking their first steps of faith.

Pray for miracles, for prisoners to be released, for sentences to be commuted, for interrogators to have a change of heart, for doors to open that no one can shut.

And pray for me.

I pray that I would use this platform wisely, that I would speak truth with love, that I would honor the faith of those still suffering by living faithfully in my freedom.

Pray that I would never forget where I came from.

Never stop advocating for those I left behind.

Never waste the opportunity I’ve been given to be their voice.

I am 24 years old.

I have lost my family, my country, my home.

I have experienced rejection and persecution and fear.

I have wept more tears in the last three years than in all the years before combined.

But I have also experience the presence of Jesus in ways that most people never will.

I have seen the church at its best.

Loving, sacrificial, courageous, faithful.

I have witnessed miracles.

I have seen God work in impossible situations.

I have learned that his grace is sufficient.

His power is made perfect in weakness.

And his love is truly unshakable.

And I would not trade this journey for anything.

Not for my old life back.

Not for safety or comfort or ease.

Not for anything.

Because I have found the pearl of great price.

The treasure hidden in the field.

I have found the one thing needful, the better part that cannot be taken away.

I have found Jesus and he is worth everything.

So to my brothers and sisters still suffering in Iran, be strong, be courageous, stand firm.

The world is watching.

Heaven is cheering.

And Jesus is with you in the fire.

Your faithfulness matters.

Your testimony is powerful.

Your suffering is not in vain.

To the watching world, please don’t forget us.

We are real people with real faith facing real persecution.

We need your prayers, your advocacy, your support.

Don’t let our stories disappear in the flood of daily news.

Remember us.

And to anyone reading this who is searching, who is questioning, who is hungry for truth, Jesus is calling you.

He has been calling you all along.

And if you respond, if you surrender your life to him, you will find what your soul has been longing for.

You will find home.

You will find freedom.

You will find love that will never let you go.

You will find life.

This is my testimony.

This is my story.

This is my act of worship to tell the world what Jesus has done in my life, what he’s doing in Iran, what he will continue to do until he returns and makes all things new.

May his name be glorified.

May his kingdom come.

May his will be done in Iran as it is in heaven.

And may the unshakable faith of Iranian believers inspire the global church to love Jesus more.

Trust him deeper and follow him no matter what it costs because he is worthy of everything always.

Amen.