In the Eye of the Storm

In 2010, Farshid and several other pastors were arrested in Iran. Farshid initially managed to escape. He was already on his way to the Turkish border. But then he thought of the Good Shepherd and remembered the desperate eyes of the arrested pastors. They were his spiritual children, and he was responsible for them. He couldn't just run away. So he turned back and turned himself in to the authorities, who imprisoned him in the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran. During the first year of his five-year imprisonment, he sat in complete darkness in solitary confinement, with nothing to occupy his time.

One day, he suddenly heard a heavenly melody in his cell. A deep joy filled his heart, and he began to dance. The guard noticed this and stormed in. He thought the prisoner had lost his mind. But Farshid beamed at him and asked with a broad smile, “Sir, how are you today?” The guard looked at him in astonishment and replied, “I think you're doing better than I am!” Then he slammed the door shut again and left. Later, Farshid said, “I was certain that at that very moment, someone somewhere was praying for me.”

At the King's Table
Josh was held captive in Afghanistan for more than seven months. He had traveled to the country to help people but was arrested by the Taliban. They accused him of being a Muslim convert who wanted to spread the Christian faith. “That was the biggest storm of my life,” Josh recalls. The hardest part was the fear of never seeing his family again. In solitary confinement, his guards tried to break him. He often sat in his cell for hours, crying. One day, while he was crying, a wave of warmth suddenly washed over him from head to toe—like a hug. In that moment, he knew: I am not alone.

His imprisonment dragged on, and there was no hope of release. Fear, exhaustion, and isolation sapped his strength. But then something happened that changed his life forever: “Jesus Himself came into my cell,” Josh recounts. “He walked around me. I saw the wounds on His feet.” From that moment on, nothing was the same. “I wasn't the prisoner—the others were,” he says. “I was at the King's table, just as Psalm 23 promises us.” Shortly afterward, he was released.