As a young boy David Nasser escaped Iran with his family during the violent religious revolution in 1979. Coming to America, he faced his own revolution of religion and identity—eventually becoming a Christian. He describes his initial experience at a church, and the people who introduced him to the authentic love of Jesus Christ.
“I went to church for the wrong reason, but God was bigger than my reason. When I got to that church, what I ran into were a lot of authentic Christians. I didn’t run into a youth group, I’d call it a youth ministry instead. They were students from this church and when they saw me coming they were just like, ‘Wow, there’s the kid who always parties in school, and the kid who always is drunk on a Saturday night.’”
They took the initiative and began to reach out to David and his family on a weekly basis.
“They just started loving on me and my family; they started visiting me, coming to my house, and sharing the gospel with me. For the next eight weeks, these Christians from this youth ministry would come to my house on Monday night and talk to me about Jesus. Then, they would come to my house on Sundays and on Wednesdays and they would just put me in the car and drag me to church.”
“I say ‘drag me to church’ and I acted like I didn’t want to go, but honestly I really wanted to go because there was something very distinct, very different, about these people that I’d never seen before.”
Because of the time he spent with these students, his heart began to open up and he was able to receive the gospel message for the first time.
“What it was was grace; they were gracious, they were graceful, and they had something that wasn’t religious, they had something that was actually contagious. I went to the church and heard the gospel for eight weeks and that was the beginning of it for me.”
He recalls a major turning point in his life.
“The turning point for me was not a sermon, even though the pastor could preach. The turning point wasn’t the organ that they had at the church, even though they had an amazing organ instilled in a marble wall; it was a beautiful sanctuary. The turning point wasn’t the music cantata, even though they had an incredible music department.”
“What I remember was that we would go to eat after church and they would just buy my meal. I remember the generosity of the people, and that was the turning point for me.”
There were many people placed in David’s path to show him what it really meant to live out the gospel. It wasn’t until he experienced love and authentic grace in Christians that he understood what it truly meant to be saved.
“We talked a lot of theology, I heard a lot of sermons, I heard beautiful hymns, I had been impressed with a church that was built for the glory of God with a million dollar organ, but what I remember most is the way that these people lived out the gospel.”
David Nasser is a gifted speaker, author and minister, who’s greatest passion is to connect people to the living God. David uses relevant methods to communicate the life-changing messages of the gospel to more than 700,000 people annually. David and his family live in Alabama, the home of D. Nasser Outreach.
Authentic Christianity
