At the age of nine, David Nasser had a gun to his head.
The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was erupting around him, and his father’s military office put him and his family in the middle of the Islamic rebellion’s red crosshairs.
The rebel standing over Nasser had been sent to David's school to send a message to those in power that they, and their children, were not safe.
Nasser took it as divine notice of God’s animosity.
“I felt like God hated me, so I was just hating him back,” Nasser recalled. “People who represented his name brought a lot of harm and confusion and trauma onto my life. That was the beginning of my earliest memories of God.”
Hear how David Nasser found refuge in Jesus through his family's escape from the Iranian revolution and a local church's faithful presentation of the Gospel in our full conversation:
Young Nasser’s loathing was mixed with terror as he ran home to tell his family what had happened. Days later, his father was dragged off by more soldiers. Miraculously, he was spared, though a similar ranking officer had been tortured to death before him.
An escape plan was quickly hatched as the Islamic Republic and Ruhollah Khomeini seized power in the Persian Gulf state.
The Nasser family handed over nearly all of their earthly possessions to those who could smuggle them to Europe, using the guise of his mother’s heart condition to flee. The ruse worked, igniting a whirlwind of life change for the now-refugee family.
“I was just thinking, ‘We’re getting away from God,’ but God is going, you’re not getting away from me, I’m actually the one holding you,” Nasser said.
The first time Nasser remembers using the name of Jesus was when his mother, who was the only devoutly religious member of his Muslim family, gathered the children to pray to Jesus, whom she called “The American God.”
God is bigger than bad theology, as Nasser puts it, because a door quickly opened for the family to gain entry into the U.S. They settled in the military Texas town of Killeen, their lives intact, but their livelihood gone.
“I remember there were parts of me where I just felt like it was God’s fault that all that security had been left behind,” Nasser explained. “But at the same time, I had this gratitude for Jesus, because we prayed to his name and he opened the doors for us to come to America.”
New land, new life
The early days were far from frictionless. Many Americans held a fear or resistance to Iranians as they watched the country torn by war on their television.
The picture slowly began to refocus for Nasser, now in high school. He had trudged through long days at school marked by bullying and alienation. But God’s “drop of grace” in a hurricane of confusion still fell on his head.
A social invitation to youth group gave Nasser a first look at Christianity. He continued to go despite some mild annoyance from his Islamic parents. Little did he know, Nasser was locked in a different set of crosshairs.
Members of the youth group visited the Nasser home for eight straight Monday nights, each time bringing a different depiction of the Gospel with them to show David who Jesus really was: John 3:16, the Roman Road, beaded bracelets, and on.
After two months of incessant Gospel volleys, Nasser gave his life to Jesus.
“They just saw missions,” David said about the experience. “They saw me as an opportunity to love me and my family. Love is a magnet. And after eight weeks, I finally gave my life to the Lord.”
It was another grinding transition for Nasser as his Muslim father kicked him out of the house for getting baptized. He found a one-bedroom house where five other believing young men lived, and his life of evangelism began. It started with his family.
Over the next two and a half years, one by one, his family gave their life to Christ.
“To me, I was actually honoring [my parents] by disobeying them by coming to the ultimate Father,” Nasser said. “I’m a testament of, sometimes God will use the child to be the missionary, to be the first to go. And then... leading them to Christ.”
“That’s what God does. When the Lord saves you, he immediately calls you to missional work. We’re all evangelists.”
Enduring in the Refiner’s fire
More than 40 years after he was a trigger-pull away from death, living under the gaze of a God who he believed hated him, Nasser carries a message of the God that is love.
He holds up hope for those who understand salvation as he used to, as something to be earned.
“God comes down to us and says, ‘You can’t be good enough. You can’t climb the ladder. You can’t earn it on your own,” Nasser said. “It’s upside down in the sense that God does for us what we can’t do for ourselves. In Islam, there’s mercy, the opportunity to earn heaven. But in Christianity, we get grace. It’s unmerited, unearned favor.”
As war again has found his embattled home country, Nasser again points to God’s work in the face of violence, death, and despair.
Recent data tells us that Iran is home to the fastest-growing underground church in the world. How can this be?
“In desperate times, people tend to look up,” Nasser said. “Life feels more desperate. They’re awakened. In the valley of the shadow of death... that’s when they look up.”
There are an estimated 4 million Christians in Iran, with the number growing daily even as war rages around them. Nasser wants his Iranian brothers and sisters to know what he learned through much of the same.
“You don’t have to come all the way to America to get the best thing I got in America,” Nasser said. “God loves you just the way that you are. He just loves you too much to leave you that way.
“He gave his one and only son, Jesus, for you to live the perfect life, die the sinner’s death, and then rise from the grave. He will give you so much bigger than the American dream.”
Making sense of a war-torn world
For American Christians, Nasser’s message is the same: God is good.
A yearning for peace and injustice should move you to the Gospel instead of away from it, Nasser explained, because it’s the only place of real hope in the face of such evil. Economic ramifications, fear, and sadness for those hurting shouldn’t be ignored.
“It's okay to have those emotions and those opinions,” Nasser said. “I recommend that if you’re right-handed, hold it in your left hand.”
“God is up to something bigger. You have a local church, but it represents a global body of believers. You can hate war, but go, ‘God will use it to wake people up to want the Gospel.’ In a world that is torn with war, God, let it not be wasted.”
Nasser and other partners recently started Revival Iran, an organization working daily to advance the Gospel and contribute to the flourishing of the church in Iran.
Through these efforts and more, amid sin and war and death, Nasser wants the world to know that God’s kingdom is still being built, and the work of Christ is still being completed.
To learn more about Revival Iran, click here. For more information about David Nasser and his work, visit his website.