Today she leads a house church network inside Iran, including training church leaders to be ready to face arrest, harassment and persecution. She’ll tell us how they prepare to face persecution, and describe ways VOM is helping and strengthening the church in Iran today.

Finally, we’ll talk about specific ways to pray for Christians inside Iran.

You can also watch a video about how Padina came to Christ.

Listen to this episode on VOMRadio.net

Listen to this episode on VOMRadio.net

Listen to this episode on VOMRadio.net

Their bold witness for Christ would cost them: they spent 259 days in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison. But even in prison God had a plan as He opened the doors for incredible ministry among their fellow prisoners.

Listen to their incredible story.

Listen to this episode on VOMRadio.net

As Neda’s heart continued searching, God supernaturally told a family member living in the Netherlands to go back to Iran and share the gospel of Jesus.

Neda came to faith in Christ through her relative’s witness and her life was radically transformed. Her husband, surprised and amazed by the change he saw in her, placed his trust in Jesus too. God faithfully restored their marriage and called them to ministry.

Neda drew strength from the stories of other persecuted Christians. She read a story in a book from The Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) about a girl who was assaulted and became pregnant. Yet she responded with remarkable faith by entrusting everything, even her body, to God. God used this story to teach Neda about the importance of obedience and sacrifice despite fear of persecution and threats of imprisonment and violence.

Over the next thirteen years, Neda and her husband faced increasing persecution from the Islamic government. In one incident, officials raided their home and threatened her husband at gunpoint. She and her husband ultimately decided to leave Iran, yet they continue to serve from abroad through Iran Alive Ministries.

Neda encourages every Christian to lay down their own desires and fully surrender to God’s will—even when it means taking up their cross and enduring suffering and persecution. She also shares specific ways to pray for Christians in Iran during the current turmoil there.

The VOM App for your smartphone or tablet will help you pray daily for persecuted Christians—in Iran and other nations—throughout the year, as well as provide free access to e-books, audiobooks, video content and feature films. Download the VOM App for your iOS or Android device today.

Listen to this episode on VOMRadio.net

Two years after placing her faith in Jesus Christ, Fareena still hadn’t told a soul. Like most new Christians in Iran, she feared the backlash she would face if her family learned she had left Islam. Since doing so is illegal in the Muslim nation, new Christians are often imprisoned after going public with their faith. And many more are beaten for bringing shame to their Muslim family.

Aware of these possibilities, Fareena decided to read her Bible only in secret. Then, one day she saw something that shocked her. “When I woke up and headed to the living room, my father was sitting on the floor reading a Bible thoughtfully,” she said. “I couldn’t believe my eyes.”

Fareena returned to her room in a panic, thinking her father, Bilal, had discovered her Bible. After realizing the Bible he was reading was a different color, she asked him what he was doing. “I am reading an amazing book,” Bilal replied. “I found it in the mailbox today. It was wrapped in wrapping paper.”

Iranian Christians had gone house to house, placing Bibles in mailboxes throughout the neighborhood. Each one included a note saying the book was a gift for Nowruz, the Persian New Year.

To Fareena, the gift was a miracle. Using contact information included with the gift, she learned how she and her father could join a house church. “God called my father into His family,” she said. “My father has been reading the book every day and talks about it joyfully.”

Stories like Fareena’s and Bilal’s are common. God’s kingdom is growing faster in Iran than anywhere else in the world. And Christians there are taking advantage of a distracted government to share the gospel with disillusioned Muslims.

A Random Encounter

When the coronavirus pandemic began, Aref and his wife, Liana, were happy to follow Iran’s lockdown because their age put them at risk. But one day while getting some fresh air in a local park, they were approached by a man who talked to them briefly about God and gave them a Bible. Aref gave it a quick look and, when he got home, placed it on a bookshelf.

Months later Aref had a dream about a light shining brightly from the bookshelf and a voice saying, “I will reveal the true way to you. You will find Me there.”

“The next morning, I thought about my dream,” he said, “and then I went to the bookshelf and grabbed the Bible after eight months. I opened it with more passion, and curiously, I remembered also the guy who gave me this book.”

After reading some passages in the Bible, Aref returned to the first page and found contact information for the man who had given it to him. “I grabbed my phone and called the number to ask about my dream and questions that came to mind about God,” Aref said.

Aref is connected to a ministry that answers his questions and prays with him, leading him closer to Jesus Christ.

A New Family

When her husband divorced her, and her father considered her a disgrace because she was unable to have children, Jasmine went to find an old friend. But when she knocked on the door, an older woman named Huma answered and told her that her friend had moved. Seeing the anxiety on Jasmine’s face, Huma invited her in.

After talking for a while, Huma, who lived alone, invited Jasmine to stay with her for a few days. Jasmine accepted, and while there, she watched curiously as small groups gathered to sing and pray. “I found that they were Christians and they gave their heart to Jesus,” Jasmine said.

A few days turned into two years, and during that time Jasmine adopted two young girls, giving her the children she never expected to have. Around the same time, Huma invited Jasmine to attend a baptism. Jasmine had already started reading the Bible regularly and learning more about Jesus, and the secret baptism moved her deeply.

“I went to Huma and told her I wanted to get baptized,” Jasmine recalled. After talking and praying with a pastor, Jasmine confessed her sins, acknowledged the saving work of Christ and received baptism. She said she never would have come to know Him if not for Huma’s generous heart. “Huma and my new family in Jesus helped me to grow in God’s Word,” she said. “God blessed me with this new family to heal me and show me the way to righteousness.”

Huma died a short time later, leaving her home to Jasmine and her two daughters. But Jasmine, overwhelmed by grief, felt anchorless and slowly stopped attending church. Then, one of her daughters found a package in the mail and Jasmine’s grief turned to joy. A Christian worker in Iran had sent her several Bibles and a Christian magazine.

“I was overwhelmed by this gift,” Jasmine said. “I thought to myself, ‘It’s been awhile since we attended a church group.’ I was about to forget that I’m a believer, but our Lord never forgets His children. He sent me this gift to remind me what He has done in my life and why I have been here in this house. I want to say thank you to the people who sent us this gift that opened my eyes again.”

Multiplying Access

Jalil has been involved in a house church in northern Iran for three years, and the Bible is central to their time together. “There is so much trust and intimacy in our group,” Jalil said. “We study the Bible and have fellowship with one another.”

Because Bibles are difficult to obtain in Iran, the group shares one Bible. While they are grateful to have even one, group Bible study is a challenge. “We passed this one Bible to each other to read, and we took notes or pictures of the verses,” Jalil said.

In 2020, VOM workers smuggled a large supply of Bibles into Iran, and local house church leaders distributed them to Christians who did not own one. Jalil’s group recently received a package of the Bibles, and now every member has a personal copy.

“God blessed us through your ministry!” Jalil said. “Today, not only do we have our own Bibles, but we also can give them to our friends and family and share the love of God with them.”

With each gift of a Bible in Iran, God’s kingdom advances in one of the world’s most restricted nations.

After overcoming his addiction and placing his trust in Christ, the former Muslim began leading his own addiction-recovery group, walking participants through a 12-step program that acknowledges a higher power without mentioning God or Jesus. In Iran, where it is illegal to leave Islam, that’s the only way he can operate.

Group leaders like Shahrokh know that if they are caught leading Muslims to Christ they can be charged with “acting against national security,” a common charge against Christians in Iran. So when an Iranian security official suddenly summoned Shahrokh to his office to discuss his work, Shahrokh had a good idea of what to expect.

The security official knew Shahrokh had become a Christian and wanted to prevent him from sharing his faith with others. He tried to corner Shahrokh with his questions during the interrogation, but the Holy Spirit gave Shahrokh the right words to say.

Surprised by His Boldness

Acknowledging his role as a group leader in the city, Shahrokh told the official that he maintains regular contact with group members as they work to overcome their addiction. And he reminded the official that the group is tied to a well-known international organization that is officially registered in Iran.

Hoping to anger Shahrokh, the official began to criticize those in the group who had come to faith in Christ. But Shahrokh was not intimidated. He simply replied that Jesus seems to be helping Iranians who turn to Him.

“If some of these people turn to Christ for help and for deliverance to help them not return to addiction, then they have not done anything wrong,” Shahrokh told the security official. “You should be happy that these people in our country are no longer taking drugs.”

Drug addiction is rampant in Iran, which has the highest per capita number of opiate addicts in the world. Nearly 3 percent of Iranians older than 15 — more than 2 million people — are addicted to opiates, and many other drugs are widely abused as well.

Angry at Shahrokh’s suggestion that Jesus could help those struggling with addiction, the official showed him a list of 400 recent Christian converts in the city who weren’t addicted to drugs. But Shahrokh, who disciples 80 believers who came to know Christ through the recovery group, assured the official that he did not know those on the list or where the list came from.

“Why are you lying?” the official asked angrily. “If you and your friends have not evangelized them, then how did they become Christians?”

“I am ready to swear on the Bible and with God as my witness that I am not telling a lie,” Shahrokh replied. “If I or my friends were in contact with these 400 people, we would have certainly told you.”

Shahrokh then challenged the official, hoping to get more information about the Christians so he could connect with them. “You give us the addresses of these people so that we can identify them and ask them how they became Christians,” he said.

Surprised by his boldness, the official was finally persuaded that Shahrokh didn’t know the people on the list. He then asked Shahrokh to help him understand who was leading so many Iranians to abandon Islam for faith in Christ. The rapid increase in Muslims turning to Christ is well documented, with an estimated 750,000 to 1.2 million Christian converts living in Iran in early 2021.

Shahrokh gave the official an inspired response. “You cannot stop the work of God,” he said. “If a person has a dream of Jesus or [if] God directly reveals Himself in a vision and draws them to Himself, or if he has seen a miracle of Christ and follows after Him, then no one is at fault here. You cannot block the divine methods God uses to meet human beings. You can close Christian social activities and house groups or put Christian workers in prison, but you cannot stop people seeing dreams or visions. You cannot put Jesus Christ in prison. You cannot stop the work of the Holy Spirit. He is at work, and in different ways He reveals the truth to people. Can you change the hearts and inner lives of people where the Lord dwells?”

“You can close Christian social activities and house groups or put Christian workers in prison, but you cannot stop people seeing dreams or visions. You cannot put Jesus Christ in prison. You cannot stop the work of the Holy Spirit.”

Affected by Shahrokh’s testimony of God’s power, the official — with a sense of awe on his face — immediately dismissed him.

After the interrogation, Shahrokh heard nothing more from Iranian security officials. And while he knows he could be called in again at any time, he has continued leading Iranian Muslims and atheists to Christ as he helps them find freedom from addiction.

Beyond the Enemies’ Plans

Shahrokh is one of many former addicts in his part of Iran who have come to faith in Christ and begun work among those struggling with addiction, but not all show his boldness. “There are many others who have been delivered from addiction and who are believers,” said a pastor who works with Shahrokh, “but for family, work or personal reasons [they] prefer to keep their fellowship as individual believers or as families or only with the leaders of the group of 80 [Christians in the recovery group].”

Shahrokh is thankful that the Holy Spirit helped him respond wisely during the interrogation and that he is able to continue his work. Iranians are being freed from their addictions, and God’s kingdom continues to expand throughout the country.

“Glory be to the name of the Lord,” Shahrokh said, “for His wide, great and unlimited work that takes place above the plans of the enemies and politicians.”

Click here to find out about Christian persecution in Iran and learn how to pray.

Post a prayer for Narine and family on iCommitToPray.com

Click here to find out about Christian persecution in Iran and learn how to pray.

Post a prayer for Iran on iCommitToPray.com

Click here to find out about Christian persecution in Iran and learn how to pray.

Post a prayer for Iranian pastors on iCommitToPray.com