I Never Preach a Gospel I Haven't Lived Myself
Twenty-six years ago, I signed a piece of paper for the Assemblies of God church of Iran. It was a simple act, but it meant everything. I was committing to a full-time calling from God, with no salary, no institutional safety net, and no guarantee of what came next. That decision became the foundation of a principle I've carried into every sermon, every house church, every prison cell, and every speaking stage since: I will only give people what I have first received myself.
That's not a slogan. It's a discipline. When I converted to Christianity at age 20, I knew it was a capital offense under Sharia law. I didn't convert because it was safe or strategic. I converted because it was true. And from that moment forward, I made a commitment to myself that I would never ask anyone to bear a cost I wasn't willing to bear first. That commitment shaped everything that followed.
It showed up in how I built the house church network in Iran. I wasn't directing people from a distance. I was present, I was known, and I was at risk alongside them. The Iranian regime didn't sentence me to eight years in Evin Prison because I was running an abstract organization. They sentenced me because the work was real and local and personal. The churches existed because people trusted me with their lives. You don't earn that kind of trust by teaching from behind a safe wall. You earn it by showing up first.
I've carried that same approach into the Christian Zionist work I'm doing now. When I felt called to found the first Persian Christian Zionist church in the history of Iran, I didn't write a position paper and wait for consensus. I started building. I traveled to Israel. I sat across from Israelis and Iranians and began working toward something most people consider impossible: reconciliation between two peoples who have been told for decades that they are enemies. I believe the Bible points to that reconciliation. But belief without action is just theory. So I moved.
The same principle guides how I pray with people. At a recent Christian Zionist conference, I was praying for individuals in the room and something happened that I can only describe as the weight of the Holy Spirit falling. Almost everyone in the room went down. My cameraman stayed standing. My bodyguard stayed standing. Nobody else did. I share that not to make a claim about myself, but to make a claim about what happens when ministry is genuinely Spirit-led rather than performance-led. The power wasn't mine. But I had to show up for it to move.
Here's where many leaders go wrong. They build systems designed to protect themselves from the cost of their own message. I understand the instinct. After what I experienced in Iran, after the torture and the beatings and the years inside Evin, there is a part of me that knows exactly what exposure costs. But I also know what it costs to close yourself off. You lose the ability to reach the people who need you most. The people I minister to, Iranian believers, refugees, those whose faith puts their lives at risk, they can tell the difference between someone who has suffered and someone who has only studied suffering.
I also work with the U.S. government's religious freedom branch and have helped people whose lives were in immediate danger escape persecution to safe countries. That work requires credibility. It requires that the people I'm advocating for trust that I understand what they're facing. My history gives me that. But only because I didn't walk away from it or sanitize it. I brought it forward into the work.
If you want to understand what I do and why I do it, that's the core of it. I preach a gospel I have lived, and I only ask of others what I've already asked of myself. That's the standard I set in Iran decades ago, and it's the standard I'm still holding to now, whether I'm preaching in a conference hall, crossing into Israel for the fourth time, or writing what I believe on pages like this one. The calling doesn't change. Only the geography does.