Two Sisters in Christ
The following article has been written by two sisters who are originally from Iran.
Ghazal (pictured above, left) and Maryam (pictured above, right) are both very active members in their church in Athens, Greece, and they also devote much of their time to ministering to other refugees who are making their way through Athens.
This is just a glimpse into the work God has done in and through them.
Hello, we are Ghazal, 29 years old, and Marym, 31 years old. We are so excited to share with you some of the challenges of our Christian life.
Where do we start to give you clear insight? We are sisters born into a Muslim family in the Muslim country of Iran. We were looking for God everywhere our whole lives, and nothing made sense for us about the god that Islam introduced to us. So, it was such a blessing for us that we could find Jesus as the real God in our lives when we were just teenagers! Today, as we are sharing this testimony with you, it has been 11 years since we began to believe in Jesus, and it is still so fresh in our minds—it is a joyful memory for us.
We want to ask you this: Imagine being in Iran as a participant in an underground church! Being a follower of Jesus is illegal and so dangerous—so much so that you may be killed if you change your religion from Islam to something else. Following Jesus has a high price in Iran: the price of your life! But there is something stronger than fear that can help you to grow in your faith: to believe that God is faithful about what He promised us. This can all be summed up with the word hope! When we look to our lives and our backgrounds, we can see this amazing hope which worked in our lives and walked with us. We can see God’s work in the underground church (or house church; we met in our homes). Here were new fruits and new believers, which was a beautiful encouragement for us in a scary situation where police were looking for underground churches and pastors. This persecution helped us to be sure that what we believed was correct, that what we have hope in is real, living, working, and that this hope—Jesus—will lead us and protect us.
After seven years, the government learned about our house church and we, along with our mother, were forced to make a decision. We had to leave our house, our city, our culture, our friends and family, and our language—with no place to go! At that time, Ghazal was studying law at a university in her last year before graduation. She had to leave her university studies and go out of the country with Maryam and our mother, because the government discovered our house church. Can you imagine how painful that was for her?
We trusted God, and He led us here to Greece. We did not know anything about this country, and no one was waiting for us here, but what led us was stronger than fear—and that was hope. This hope was found in the living God, who showed us many miracles during our lives. Even though we went to jail because of our documents in Greece, and it was a very difficult situation for us, we can tell you honestly if there was not hope in our hearts for God, we could easily have lost our faith.
In jail, we were so upset with broken heart. We cried just like the other people, but there was something different. We had to make the decision to stay in our grief or to trust in God and let Him use us even in that difficult situation. In fact, it was our faith in Jesus Christ, who is the Living God, that gave us strength. Our hope in Jesus encouraged hope for other people in the jail, too. Our happiness made them happy, and we became light and salt for all to see the glory of God.
We remember the first day in jail. The other prisoners told us we don’t have anything here. The people were in need so much for even simple things like toothpaste, warm water for showers, and heaters in that cold winter weather. But we had hope in the God who can protect us. God worked again and again in our lives while we were in jail. He blessed us in different ways. People who we didn’t even know brought things for us as gifts, so much so that we had plenty to share with the others in jail. We could see that every day the situation of the jail changed for the better as we started to encourage others who were there. God started to use us to share the Gospel in jail and talk with hopeless people there. We gave many Bibles to people in jail, and the result of this was new believers and fruits. These people started to find hope in their lives, they started to live for God, and many received new life with hope.
Today our lives as refugees in Greece are not easy. We do not have all the worldly riches of this world like we had in Iran. But here we have peace, joy, and hope. Today we are God’s lawyers, working and serving in the church to help the people who have lost their hope and are looking for a savior. We learned that hope is never lost. We have learned to trust God, and we have learned to surrender and wait for God’s plan. And still, we have this amazing word to remind us to be faithful to Lord and that is… hope.