One Life

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Good morning, Awakening.

You can find your seat.

Good morning, good morning.

Oh, I'm so glad to be here with you this morning.

If we haven't met, my name is Ashley, and I get to serve as one of the pastors here.

And I'll introduce my friend to you, and then I'll give you a little glimpse of where we're headed this morning, since you can tell already that our teaching time is going to look a little bit different than normal.

This is Shadi Khalili.

She's a longtime family member at Awakening, as you can tell by that cheer.

Shadi is a core member of our prayer team, amongst other things.

She dedicates significant time and energy to praying for our church and praying for all of us in this room.

So thank you for that.

She's also married to Saye, who is going to be up here.

Yeah.

He was going to be up here with us this morning, but he fell sick.

So we get all of our attention on you and we get to hear your story.

Um, just you.

Uh so thank you so much for being here this morning and bringing the gospel to us through your story.

Thank you for this opportunity.

Yeah.

So to begin the year, we are in a series called Awakening Vision, where we're exploring this question: what would it look like for us to pursue the heart of God?

One way that we're doing this together, we're starting off with this, one way that we're doing this is by having a weekly memory verse.

Now, this was introduced last week, and Ryan was very kind for the first one and gave us two weeks for this weekly memory verse.

If you weren't here last week and you missed it, or if maybe you were here and you thought he was kidding, here is the verse.

We're memorizing it by next Sunday.

So let's read it together and practice it.

We're gonna read it all together.

Ready, go.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

The second is this love your neighbor as yourself.

There is no commandment greater than these.

Mark 12, 30 through 31.

Good job.

Good job.

Okay.

Our kids' ministry actually has monthly memory verses.

Um, they've been doing this for years, so our kids know tons of verses, including this one.

Uh, this is part of their weekly flow that they do when they're in their class where they just went.

Each week they play a different game to help them remember these verses, um, because that helps it to sink into their hearts and into their minds.

So, to help us out a little this morning, we're gonna do a version of something that they do because they're so good at memorizing these verses.

So, this could be a tool that will help you as we continue to memorize verses this year.

So, we're gonna read this verse two more times.

The first time, we're gonna read it as is.

Some of you, that was your first introduction to this idea of a memory verse for this year.

So, we're gonna read it one more time as is, and then we're gonna read it again, but some of the words will be missing, and we're gonna have to fill them in as we go.

All right, I think we can do it.

So, let's read this verse again.

Ready?

Go.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

The second is this love your neighbor as yourself.

There is no commandment greater than these.

Mark 12, 30 through 31.

All right, now we're gonna take out six words.

I know it sounds like a lot, but it'll be okay.

And all of us are gonna do our best to read it all together, filling in those words, okay?

And I'm not gonna say them in the microphone so that you guys have to say them.

All right.

I am confident that we can do this though, okay?

See, not too scary, not too scary, right?

All right, here we go.

We can do it.

Ready, go.

Love.

The second is this love your neighbor as yourself.

There's no man greater than peace.

Yeah, look at that.

Good job.

Ryan's gonna be so proud.

So, what we're doing right now is part of this discipleship and walking with God.

When we memorize scripture, the Bible calls this hiding the word in our hearts.

When we do this, we're actually more attuned to the ways of God because the word lives within us.

I actually don't know anyone more devoted to this practice than Saye, who has worked diligently to memorize these long passages of scripture where it just flows out of him.

But before I get ahead of myself, before I get to their story, let's center on Jesus and pray.

Jesus, thank you so much for what you have already done this morning.

May you be glorified in our church.

Thank you for your word and your direction that guides our path.

Lord, thank you for what you have done in Shadi's life.

God, I pray that you would speak through her, that you would speak to each of us, and we would encounter you and your gospel and your good news and your salvation through her story.

God, thank you.

In Jesus' name, amen.

So each week of this Awakening Vision series, our teaching is centered around one of the pieces of our discipleship pathway that Michaela just walked us through.

This week, we're going to focus on growing as a disciple of Jesus.

So the main way that Jesus taught his disciples was through stories called parables.

He would encounter someone or some situation, and then he would teach by telling a story.

So this morning we're doing something similar.

We're going to hear what the Lord has done in someone's life, in Shadi's life, and we're gonna turn our eyes toward Jesus.

Shoddy is gonna share her journey, how God pursued her, the pivotal moments that changed everything, and what it looks like now on the other side of obedience.

Her story is a reminder that God is still at work, he's still awakening hearts, and he's still inviting ordinary people into extraordinary purpose.

And as you listen, think about this question: what might God want to do with my one life?

So, thank you so much for being up here this morning and sharing your story with our church.

It's been such an honor to know you for so many years now, and your faith has inspired me personally in this process of growing as a disciple of Jesus.

And so I'm so thrilled for our church to get to hear your story and for all of us to learn from you this morning.

So let's start at the beginning, okay?

Where did you grow up and how did that culture shape your understanding of God?

Where did you start?

Where did I start?

Uh I'm from Iran originally, and uh growing up in Iran, uh I remember I believed in God.

I was brought up in a Muslim uh family, non-practicing Muslim family.

And uh I left Iran when I was 18 in 1978, right before revolution.

So Iran was a secular country at that time and uh you were not forced to pursue Islam and practice it.

Uh so that's when I came here, and interestingly, I had a uh acceptance letter from a college in Oakland, California, a Catholic college and uh Holy Names College and uh I started going to school there, and uh I was actually never told about Christ in the school, even though we started every class with a prayer, and uh there was a chapel in the school, and I attended chapel, but interestingly or ironically, I actually never had a curiosity to ask about Christ, to ask about the cross on the wall.

Uh I just came and went and never pondered about that.

So, what began to open your heart to Jesus then?

I have a short answer and a little longer answer.

The short answer is my realtor.

Okay.

And my husband are realtor because I want to give you a little background story there.

That uh when I came to US at when I was 18, uh, just like any other uh young person, uh, I went about my life and school, and when we were in our early 20s, Saya and I we fell in love and we got married when I was 23 and he was 24.

And life was good and interesting.

And eventually we both separately got this question in our mind in our mid-30s, late 30s, and we were kind of like asking ourselves so what is the purpose of life?

Is it just us growing up and going to school, graduating, getting a job and getting married, buying a home, having kids, going to a few trips, and just living the life and eventually uh dying.

That's that's what we were uh realistically asking ourselves.

And that question actually came out to be a little bit more pondering upon us as our Sawyer's parents actually came from Iran.

We were in our 30s and they were in early 60s, and we were looking at them and they were getting older, and this question was kind of like more relevant.

What is the purpose of life?

And it was during that time that we were actually selling our home to buy a different home, and that's where our realtor comes into the story.

He was also from Iran, and this was during the time that the market of real estate was as hot as it is today.

We sold our home and we couldn't buy another home because we would we were writing offers right after the other, and none of the offers were getting accepted.

And um, so we got to see a lot of this realtor.

He would stop by a lot.

And one of those days, after filling out the forms and all the transactions, he invited us to go to church, to Iranian church.

And uh Say and I thought about it.

I want to mention that I at this point in my life I was kind of agnostic, and Sae was totally an atheist.

He was reading books about cosmos and Carl Sagan and completely thinking about the Big Bang and the creation and all that.

So we just thought maybe it's a good idea to go to church, not because of us, because we knew all there is that we needed to know, and there is no God.

But for our kids, and we thought, you know, they're gonna just kind of like learn good values.

Yeah.

And then when they are older, we are gonna tell them the Santa Claus is fake.

Right.

So that's what you do.

Yeah, that's what we were thinking about.

So, and I was working a lot of weekends, so Saya started going to church, and one Sunday when I came back, he was sitting in the kitchen and he looked really pale, and he told me, You are not gonna believe what happened.

And I said, What happened?

He said, uh the pastor of the church asked who wanted to give their heart to Christ, and he said, I really don't know why, but I raised both of my hands.

He said, as I raised both of my hands, there was this sense of peace that went through my fingers, through my hands, and just filled my body.

And I just walked to the front of the church and prayed with the pastor, and he looked at me seriously and he said, I'm praying that you would experience the same thing.

Wow.

I was really honestly annoyed because I really thought and I told myself, I said, I didn't say it out loud, but this is what I was thinking.

He feels so holy and religious all of a sudden that he wants to pray for me and uh for me to also believe in what he is believing right now.

So, but throughout that week and the week after that, I saw a lot of change in Sayah dramatically.

You know, when your husband changes, you know when your wife changes.

He was really, really peaceful, and there was something different about him.

And I honestly thought that, you know, Saye is very emotional, and he was probably brainwashed.

I'm more analytical, and I need to go to church and figure out what's going on.

Yeah.

At the same time, because of all the questions about the purpose of life, our parents not being here, not having the relatives around us, I was dealing with a lot of anxious thought and a lot of anxiety in that season of my life.

So I go to church, and at the end of the service, I just decide to walk to the front of the church and just say, you know, I'm gonna ask the pastor to pray for me to overcome anxiety.

And I did that.

He prayed for me, and at the end of the prayer, he told me, I want you to meditate on this verse.

That was 2 Corinthians 5, 17.

And it says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.

The old has passed away, behold, all things are become new.

And I just wrote it down somewhere, and I came home.

Did I answer the question?

Yes, yes, very much.

So we're we're at the point where you're open to this.

Um tell us how you accepted Jesus, how you finally went went over that hump for yourself, um, but also what changed when you accepted Jesus as your savior.

So I remember one day I sat in my bedroom floor and I just started praying, and I said, Lord, I really don't understand what the Son of God means.

And I just want to just mention something here.

For us from a country that is not a Christian country, uh there were a lot of wording or phrases that were not familiar as uh someone who was brought up in a Christian family might be.

Sure.

And a lot of things were just kind of like I I even was asking God, what does it mean that Jesus went on a cross for my sins?

And what does it mean that he was resurrected?

I really don't get any of that.

I know Jesus as a prophet, as it was teached in the high school, just like Moses, just like Abraham, and I don't get any of that.

And I just prayed and I said, God, please show it to me, reveal it to me the way that I would understand and I would get this.

And nothing like what happened to Siah happened to me, just the feeling of peace going through the fingers.

But what happened was amazing.

What happened was amazing because this verse that it says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.

Like in days to come, in weeks to come, in months to come, I realized that I was changing, not because I was doing something, not because I was disciplining myself, but as I was pondering on the new Bible that our realtor gave us, and was just kind of familiarizing myself, reading the book, just remaining in him, just just sitting and just looking at the words of the Bible, just praying and asking.

I realized that a lot of the feelings that I was dealing with, like envy, like I was dealing with a lot of comparison traps, a lot of jealousies, a lot of control, a lot of anxious thoughts.

I just day by day I felt that they are shifted away.

And going back to this verse, it feels that the old was coming off of me.

And words that I was not familiar with, like forgiveness, humility, words like grace, words like peace, the peace of the Lord, was just kind coming and just sitting in my heart and just touching me in so many different ways that it's really hard to explain.

I was just experiencing a miracle that no one could probably know from outside yet, but I was feeling it from inside of my heart, and that was the change that Jesus was bringing into my life.

Yeah, oh that's beautiful.

So he changed everything about you, it sounds like what did it cost you to say yes to Jesus?

Um Asia and I we gave our heart to Christ.

We started serving at Iranian Christian church in Sunnyvale, very close to here.

Uh we found that a lot of other people, just like us, Iranians, are giving their hearts to Christ.

But at the same time, we knew that Iran is one of the most persecuted churches around the world.

Uh we uh started serving and got connected to groups, we started a group at our home, we had prayer times, and uh eventually we were asked to lead some programs that were uh through satellite broadcasted to Iran and Middle East.

These were right uh life uh live programs that people from Middle East or Iran would call and they would ask about Christ.

They would ask questions about the Bible.

You see, it's illegal to have Bible.

In Iran.

So it was really touching to see that those people who were calling us were relying on the verses that we were sharing.

And this is like really emotional to me because they would write it down.

There was this one person whose refrigerator was his Bible, because he would attach all these verses to his refrigerator.

And many people would memorize the verses because if they would be caught with those verses even written anywhere, they would be in huge trouble.

And eventually it's a long story and I don't want to get into it because we don't have time, but eventually Saya's dad gave his heart to Christ.

He came here and he had to go back because he was dealing with cancer, and unfortunately, he passed away.

Both Saya and I were not able to attend and see his mom and his dad before they pass away.

And we knew and we heard from some other people who were taken and put to prison that they had specifically asked about us.

They had our names, they wanted even to know our whereabouts, where we live.

And but it's totally worth it.

When we had the opportunity and the pleasure of praying with people over satellite to give their hearts to Christ and hearing the testimonies of how God is working miraculously in Iran and in so many different parts of the world.

It's totally worth it.

That's incredible.

That is incredible.

So what are you learning today?

How's God working in your life right now?

God is working in so many different ways.

Of course, we live in a broken world, and uh many of you know that I've been diagnosed with Parkinson's a few years ago.

It's very challenging.

It's not easy emotionally, physically, but uh and I'm not saying this in a cliche way, it's just God with the hope every day and just shifting our minds from things that can bring us down to what is more eternal and to even healing here on earth, that we can experience that on a daily basis.

And um as I'm getting older, I just feel the call uh so much more.

I was mentioning it to you earlier, to share Christ with so many other people as my realtor shared it with us.

I'm just like anytime I think about him, and Saya and I, we both think about him, our hearts are filled with gratitude of him taking the step of wanting to share with us and inviting us to church.

So this I think last week, the new year was last week or two weeks ago.

Two last week, yeah.

So we went to Portland, Oregon, to visit our daughter who pastors, one of the pastors at church that Chris Nye, our dear Chris Nye, is a pastor, senior pastor of.

We went there to visit them and the lovely Nye family, and we were doing a lot of shopping there for our daughter.

She wanted different things for her apartment.

So in one of the outings, as we were, yeah, as in one of the outings, we were at Home Goods, and people in Oregon or in Portland, they are absolutely so friendly.

You enter a store and they start talking to you, they are so um conscientious about listening to you and asking follow-up questions.

So I started talking to this lady at the cash register, and she had mentioned that she used to live in Fremont, and she started having conversations with us, and she said since she moved to Portland, she hasn't had the community that she wanted.

And I I mentioned to her, we are gonna be at Amago Day Church on Sunday.

Do you want to join us?

She just wrote it down on a piece of paper, and she said, Yeah, maybe.

And on Sunday, as we were worshiping, someone touched my back.

I turned around, it was Kat, this lady who came to church.

She got introduced to the lady who was sitting next to me, and they found out that they live in the same neighborhood.

They started exchanging phone and talked about the group, and she looked at me, this lady, her eyes were filled with tears.

And she said, I just want to thank you for inviting me to church.

I've been wanting to go to church for five years, but I have never come across it.

Yeah.

So I think I feel in this season in my life I want to be more intentional about sharing Christ the same way that my realtor shared Christ with us.

That's beautiful.

It's so simple, but it takes so much courage to do that.

Yes, right?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Did you have any final words for our church this morning?

You had mentioned one thing to me, but whatever you would like.

As I was praying for awakening and for us, I want to invite you, if you are comfortable, just close your eyes for a minute.

And I want to recite and read 2 Corinthians 5 17 one more time.

And I want us to just listen to it as we are praying this verse over us and our lives.

As it says, therefore, if anyone, if anyone, this anyone was a key word for me in this verse, that I felt like God is talking to me.

He cares about me.

I'm important to him.

I am that anyone in Christ.

In Christ, intimate with him, close to him, hanging out with him.

God says he is a new creation.

All things that we all struggle with them.

This is the word of God that he says all things are passed away.

Behold, all things are becoming new.

I want to encourage you, if you have never really invited Christ into your life, maybe today is the day that you want to just ask him to come to your heart and to your life.

And if you have already Christ in your life, maybe there is something else in your life that he can renew it.

He can change it.

This is his promise for each and every one of us.

God Lord, I want to thank you, Father Lord, for being our Father, for being our God, for loving us, for caring about us, caring about every detail in our life.

God, Lord.

That big thing in my life, or your or anyone who's sitting here in their life, or that small thing, you care about it.

And you're mighty, you're able, you're powerful, you're good.

We trust you, God.

And we thank you, God, Lord, for placing us in your body awakening in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you for sharing your life and your story with us this morning.

Church, can we thank Shadi?

That was so beautiful and inspiring.

And we're gonna transition back into a time of worship now.

So as you sing to the Lord, as we sing, or as you're simply sitting in God's presence, reflect on what the Spirit of God might be speaking to you this morning through this testimony of God's faithfulness and the new life that He brings.

Where were you encouraged or inspired?

What's one thing that you want to do this week as a result?

As you heard a story of what God has done and what he's still doing, what might God be showing you that he wants to do with your one life?

I'm gonna pray and we're gonna worship.

Would you stand with me as we pray and then we will sing?

God, thank you for your faithfulness.

Thank you for the way that you bring new life.

God, would you guide each of us?

Would you speak to each of us to show us what you have for us this week on this day?

Oh Lord, thank you.

May our hearts be focused on you.

May our minds be focused on you.

Lord, teach us how to love you with all of our heart, with all of our strength, with all of our mind, with all of our soul.

Amen.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

Please subscribe to our podcast for access to every episode as they're uploaded.

And hey, we'd love to connect with you.

Take a next step by filling out our virtual connection cards at awakeningchurch.com slash card.