My past remains close in my mind. I still remember the struggle and suffering of a life lived in a gray area, not knowing why I was alive, where I was going, and what I was supposed to be doing. During the years of my childhood and adolescence, my life was full of sorrow and pain. One bright, cold day, a shadow came over my life. With a downcast heart I screamed a question that burned in my bones and soul: Does God exist? I asked this question not of myself because I had no answer. I asked the question of God himself. During the next twenty-three years God took me on a very long journey, a wilderness journey, to prove to me that “I AM.” * One day in February, 1999, the great I AM came into my life and accepted me for who I was.

Sweet Aromas

In the spring of 1966 in a village northeast of Tehran in Iran, I was born into a Muslim family. My father was a shepherd just like his father and grandfather. Today I can still remember the sound of little lambs searching for their mothers after they returned from the mountain. I remember the smell of fresh milk, the fragrance of fresh bread which my mom baked over fire, and the smell of goat hair after rain. I can still see the steadfast and bold cliffs and hear my father’s voice as he talked to the flock and they responded as though they understood every word.

Strange Voices and Change

As time went on, I eventually had to go to school, so our family moved to the city. But the city wasn’t as it used to be. Everything was different. It was the spring of 1979, and strange voices were in the air. There was talk of a protest, and people were being killed in other cities. One night my older brother Ali escaped from the army and came home. He explained the situation to us. It was a revolution, he said, against the “Shah.” Soon afterward, in the winter of 1979, my country totally changed from a kingdom regime to an Islamic regime.

Ali began giving me books to read and inviting me to join some meetings after school. Voices from these meetings were very different from Islamic teaching. They were communists. I aligned myself with this group—the youth group of the communist party. It wasn’t easy living in an Islamic country and not believing in God. A couple of times I was warned and my parents were called in to discuss my activities with my teachers. Later I was kicked out of high school, arrested, and kept blindfolded for a period of time in order to be scared. But instead of frightening me, these treatments emboldened me and produced a feeling inside me of great energy. I would fight for a better future, one that promised peace and success. God? Who was God? God was my knowledge, my ability. I was God.

Shattered Dreams

By 1980, everything in Iran had changed. As a result of the war between Iran and Iraq, our country fell totally into the hands of Islamic radicals. Political parties one by one became illegal and party members were arrested and imprisoned. At first my dream for a bright future remained strong and my hopes high, until one day Ali came home and strangely hugged us and left. After that, I watched leaders of the communist party go on Islamic court TV and renounce their beliefs as wrong, even admitting to spying for the Russian government. I didn’t know how much of what they said was true, if they had been tortured or not, but I know that on that day, my world collapsed on me. My dream was shattered, my hope was gone, and my strength ended. Deep within my soul one question stood like an iron wall to the sky in front of me: What was I to believe now? As an atheist, I had been holding on to the ideals and beliefs of communism, but what now? What was a destination to walk toward? What was a dream to hang on to? What joy would help me endure suffering? Everything was gone. Everything! To escape from myself and I started smoking cigarettes. From there I moved on to grass and then to alcohol. At nineteen years of age I felt lonely, lost, depressed, and empty inside.

A Drink of Fresh Wine

Then one day at dusk I was sitting on the grass in the city square reading by the light shed by the street lamps. The book was one by a famous writer who had collected famous poems from around the world. A particular poem was written by a black communist writer whom I knew very well named Langston Hughes (1902~1967). The title of this poem was “Jesus Christ.” I knew very little about Jesus, only that he was a prophet, a good teacher, and a kind man. I did not know how he died or why he died, or who he was—really. But as I read, in my exhausted mental state, this poem was like drinking a glass of fresh wine.

Jesus Christ

(Translated from Farsi to English)

I met you on your death road
The road which I was on by accident
Without knowing
You were passing by.
When I heard the sound of the crowd
I decided to turn back
But my eagerness did not let me.
From all the sounds and screams
I became very strangely weak.
But I stayed and didn’t turn back.
The people screamed with all their power
But their entire scream was so weak
Like a dead and sick ocean.
You had a crown of thorns on your head
But you didn’t look at me.
You passed by me
And took on your shoulders
All of my pain and sorrow.

My eyes locked on the words, which I read again and again. The name of Jesus shone on me and produced a calmness in my soul. I thought about how Jesus could be so close to take the pain and sorrow from Hughes and wondered if he could take my pain away too. Could I meet Jesus on his death road, and he, without looking at me, take away my distress and pain?

A Stranger to God

During the war between Iran and Iraq, I had to fulfill my military duty, so I spent 26 months along the southern borders. Here I experienced a totally different touch of God in my life. There were dead bodies and blood, ghosts of dead youths scattered in the desert, and the voice of the death angel flying over my head. I questioned: Is this God? They tell me we are fighting in his name. They tell me we are Muslim and they are infidel, and they should die. It is in our book and this is our faith and we have to die for it. But I didn’t see God among us. I didn’t see his presence or feel his spirit. Even when I read the Quran and prayed, I did not feel God close to me nor did he take away my pain like Jesus Christ did for Hughes in his poem. I was far away from the God of the Quran. We were strangers to each other. I was dirty and sinful to him and deserved the fire of hell, and he was too angry and unapproachable to me so that I was even afraid to call his name.

A Book in God’s Hands

When army duty was over, I rented an apartment in Tehran with a friend who was a communist. This friend wasn’t a practicing communist but he had the same mind and thought. One day I asked him the question that had been in my mind for a long time, “Who is Jesus?” He gave me a book and told me to read it. Its title was The Last Temptation of the Christ written by a Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis and was translated into Farsi. This book was amazing to me; the writer wrote so forcefully and with such feeling. Throughout the book, the writer used scriptures from the Bible, and I started making notes of them, reading and rereading them day and night. The book in its entirety was actually anti- Christ and sacrilegious, but God used the Bible verses in it to produce faith in me. And these verses made me fall in love with Jesus. In Iran I couldn’t find a real Bible to read, but it was enough for me to know that Jesus died for me and that he loved me. That was what I needed to know. During the following years I got married, had children, and worked for a living, but there remained a great fire in the bottom of my soul which never got cold.

Home at Last

Because the conditions in Iran were not good for raising a family, we decided to move out of the country to Turkey where we lived for three years. I felt betrayed by my country with a government and faith characterized by suspicion, anger, and revenge. Again, as I lived away from my homeland, I felt pain and sorrow, and I longed to see and have the touch of Jesus.

Then one day my family and I were in a plane traveling to the country I never dreamed to come to, The United States of America—Hughes’ country! In the winter of 1998 in a rented apartment in Dallas, Texas, I received a Bible in the Farsi language from an Iranian church. After twenty-three years, I was holding my first Bible! It was like holding my heart! I didn’t read far before I discovered the verse, “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-29). At last, I was home!

In February, 1999, an Iranian pastor was standing over me as I sat before a baptismal pool at Gaston Oaks Church in Dallas. I heard his words,

“Do you believe you are a sinner?”

“Yes!” I responded.

“Do you believe Jesus died for your sin?”

I shook my head heavily and with tears in my eyes answered, “Yes, indeed.”

“Hassan, now I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

Eight years have passed since I came out from that water, and God’s grace and love, so deep and so joyful, have touched me every day during these years. Now I know who I am. I know what I want. I am a person who has been touched by God’s grace and I am dancing in his grace. I want to bring all those who love to dance into his grace.

Hassan Golhahsem currently works full-time at a department store while planting a church in Plano, TX, where he lives with his wife and two daughters. For more information regarding his ministries, please visit: www.feyz.org.

“I AM” is the name given by God Himself in Exodus 3:14.