We are two ordinary people who have been saved by an extraordinary God

Mark's Story

I grew up in a home marked by physical and emotional abuse. My parents were regular churchgoers and insisted I attend with them. Attending church was itself part of the abuse — sitting through sermons, only to be reminded for the rest of the week that I was failing to measure up to God’s standards. From an early age, church was part of my life, but it was not a place of life or love.

 

At 13, pressured by my father, I “accepted the Lord.” But without guidance or discipleship, I never truly grew. I threw myself into studying the Bible, learning about Jesus, God, and sin. I joined youth outreaches, did all the right things, and learned all the right words — but I wasn’t living in Christ. I knew about God, but I didn’t know Him. My life was full on the outside, but spiritually, I was dead. Yet even then, God remained present in my awareness, although I did not understand Him or His purposes for me.

 

By 2005, I was exhausted. I had been striving, striving, and getting nowhere. I was done. I decided to take a “sabbatical” from the Christian life. I thought it was temporary, a pause — but in reality, I was drifting further from God. Yet God had not finished with me. His purposes were still at work, even when I could not see them.

 

On September 26, 2016, I had a heart attack and was rushed to hospital for two stents. As the orderlies came to take me to theatre, I looked towards the door and saw a dark, human-shaped figure standing there. I knew without a doubt: I was staring at death. If I went through that door, I wouldn’t come back.

 

I did the only thing I could. I called my wife over, held her face in my hands, and said, “No matter what happens from here on, I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” We kissed. She stepped back, the orderlies moved me forward — and when I looked again, the figure was gone.

 

In the theatre, the surgeon told me that if I had not been on the operating table that Thursday, I would have been dead before Saturday. He put two stents in my heart and sent me home to enjoy my life. I was profoundly grateful to the man who had helped save my life, but I could not yet see what God still had in store for me.

 

Three weeks later, I collapsed on the golf course and was rushed back to hospital. The doctor told me I was bleeding to death and immediately started pumping blood into me. Lots of blood! They discovered a tumour in my colon that was bleeding because of the drugs I was taking to protect the stents. And so began a journey of nearly two years of chemotherapy, interrupted by surgery to remove the tumour.

 

Before that surgery, I was waiting in the pre-op room, absolutely terrified. Desperate, I called out to God, “Am I gonna die in there?”, pointing towards the operating theatre door. I never really expected an answer, but I hoped that perhaps, by some small chance, God had heard me.

 

Then I heard a voice. I looked around in confusion because, besides the duty nurse, I was the only one there.

“My son, do you really think I would have brought you through everything that you have been through in your life, just to let you die on an operating table? No, I’m not finished with you yet and you haven’t yet completed my purpose for you.”

With those words, all fear left me, and I was operated on. Today, my health is as it was before the heart attack and cancer. Looking back, I can see how much I had been brought through, although I still had not understood what God was calling me to do.

 

But I simply carried on with life as normal.

 

Until September 26, 2024, when everything changed.

 

While out running that afternoon, I was suddenly drawn to a stop by a voice that said:

 

“When are you going to walk on both your feet?”

 

I looked around. There was nobody near me. Then the voice came again. I realised it was the voice of God — the same voice I had heard in 2016, while waiting to be operated on for cancer.

 

I asked God what He meant.

 

“For all these years, you have been walking on your physical feet. It’s time to start walking on your spiritual feet as well.”

Right there, on the pavement, I dropped to my knees. And for the first time in my life, I totally surrendered to God.

That day, chains that had bound me for over 70 years — chains of abuse, self-hatred, sabotage, and despair — broke. The suicidal thoughts that had haunted me disappeared. Fear and guilt lost their grip. God was not merely calling me to know more about Him; He was calling me to live in the reality of who I am in Christ.

 

All the things I had studied in the Bible, about the Bible, about Jesus, about God and about sin, suddenly crystallised into a clear understanding of who I am in Christ and the responsibilities that go with that identity.

 

I had spent years learning about the Christian life, yet I had not understood what it meant to surrender fully to Jesus and live as His disciple. Now, the call was clear. It was time to stop merely knowing about the life Christ offers and start living it.

 

Today, my life belongs fully to Jesus.

 

Through Christian Awake, my mission is to help others discover the freedom that comes through surrendering to Him — to move beyond knowing about Jesus to living in relationship with Him; beyond merely believing to becoming His disciple; and beyond walking half a life to living fully in Christ.

 

My story is not about what I achieved, how hard I tried, or how much I knew. It is about the faithfulness of God, who did not abandon me even when I drifted away, who brought me through circumstances I did not understand, and who called me to surrender my life to Him.

 

The Lord be with you!

 

Mark Deavall

Hilda's Story

The God Who Never Lets Go

 

I was born into an average Afrikaans Christian family. I was christened and brought up to believe in God.

 

My parents were good people - and I was taught to treat people well. I loved Jesus and I loved the Bible my paternal grandparents gave me as my first Christmas present when I was only four months old.

 

I grew up as a good Dutch Reformed Christian, which gave me a strong foundation and a deep respect for God and His Word.

 

At nineteen, a friend invited me to a “new kind of church” where everything felt different -the music, the preaching, and other unfamiliar things.  Yet I felt at home. I committed, joined a home cell, grew in my faith, and learned to listen to God and dig deeper into His Word.

 

In 1984, I volunteered at the annual Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem, arranged by the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. It was the only time I clearly heard God as an audible voice, telling me to go. 

 

Before that trip, I had felt a growing desire to be baptised but wrestled with whether obeying God meant disrespecting my parents, who had had me christened "in good faith". While in Israel, I responded to a call to be baptised in the Jordan River - a moment that remains deeply special to me. I couldn't wait to share it with my paternal grandfather, who had left the Dutch Reformed Church, joined the Apostolic Church and been baptised at the ripe old age of eighty!

 

Later on, my life took a different course: marriage, divorce, wrong relationships, and returning to God whenever things fell apart. A bit like the Israelites did.

 

During one of those returns, I met Mark, who had also rededicated his life to God. We were Christians, but as life happened, we drifted.

 

Around 2004, I told God I was going to do life on my own. I even told people that I imagined God sighing in relief, as though saying, “Finally, another child of mine not hanging on me.”

 

At that time I became godmother to my sister's triplets and I remember saying "the only problem now, is that I cannot pray for them, as that would be hypocritical!"

 

For the next twenty years, I did my own thing and eventually called myself agnostic. I thought I needed some label because I believed that, once I had walked this road, I would never be a believer again. I asked the usual questions agnostics and atheists ask, but never really cared about answers. In the back of my mind, I had it all sorted.

 

Still, I held onto certain principles like hating hearing people use the name of God or Jesus as swear words, even telling them that there are others to whom He is their Saviour!

 

Looking back, I can see that God let me run to the end of my rope.  I can also see how He kept me within certain parameters. How amazing is our God!

 

Over time, my mental wellbeing declined, and with it my joy and creativity. On two occasions Mark and I cam very close to divorce. One day, I admitted to myself that I wasn't in a healthy state. Still, I tried harder - in my own strength.

 

In November 2024, I finally told one of my many cousins, Stephanie, who has a strong and beautiful relationship with God, that I was a confirmed agnostic. I needed her to understand why I never shared her excitement about God and what He was doing in her life.

 

The moment I spoke those words out loud, I sensed God saying, “Really? Are you sure you are agnostic?” Something had changed.

 

Stephanie accepted what I told her, but began sending me things to read and listen to. She said, “I can hear that you are searching.”

 

I resisted, but I knew that something deeper had changed in me - all in the space of three days.

 

Then she sent me a voice note. She spoke slowly and deliberately, as though she was repeating words fed into her ears.

 

And that was how God set me right side up again. 

 

Since then, I've been on an accelerated journey with an insatiable hunger - not for things from God, but for an intimate relationship with God Himself: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I want to know Him, and I have been devouring His Word from Genesis through to Revelation.

And out of that overflow, I long to help others cultivate their own intimate relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, so that our lives bear visible fruit.

 

My story is not about me finding my way back to God. It is about the God who never lets go of the work He started.

 

God is sovereign. God is faithful. And He is far more committed to us than we could ever comprehend.

 

Hilda