The Great Commission
Matthew 28 : 19 - 20
19 Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
20 teaching them to follow all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
About Mark & Hilda Deavall
Mark's Testimony:
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 with no guidance, no 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 somehow, I was always conscious of God, even if I didn’t understand it.
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. Still, He had a plan… and I was part of it, though I didn’t know it yet.
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 toward 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 have never in my life been so grateful to another human being.
Three weeks later I collapsed on the golf course and was rushed back to hospital. The doctor told me I was busy bleeding to death and immediately started pumping blood into me. Lots of blood! They discovered that I had a tumour in my colon that was bleeding because of the drugs I was on to settle my stents. And so the journey of nearly two years of chemotherapy started interrupted by surgery to remove the tumour.
I was waiting in the pre-op room before my surgery, absolutely terrified. Desperate I called out to God, “am I gonna die in there?”, pointing at the operating theatre door. I never really expected an answer, but I was hoping that 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”. And with that all fear left and I was operated on. Today, my health is as it was pre heart attack and pre cancer.
But still, I just carried on with life as normal.
Until the 26th of September 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 realized it was the voice of God — the same voice I had heard once before in 2016, when I was waiting to be operated on for cancer.
I asked God what He meant. And He said: “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 sidewalk, 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 haunted me disappeared. The fear and guilt lost their grip. And I began walking on both feet: physical and spiritual. All the “stuff” that I had studied in the Bible, about the Bible, about Jesus, about God and about sin, all suddenly crystalised into a clear understanding and knowledge base of who I am in Christ and the responsibilities that go with that identity.
Today, my life belongs fully to Him. Through Christian Awake, my mission is to help others find the same freedom - to move from religion to relationship, from despair to hope, and from walking half a life to living fully in Christ.
Mark Deavall
Hilda’s Testimony
I was born into a “normal” Afrikaans Christian family. I was christened and brought up to believe in God—mostly “Liewe Jesus.” My parents were good people, artistic and naturally kind. I was taught to treat people well, and I loved Jesus and the Bible my paternal grandparents gave me as my first Christmas present. ( I was only 4 months old...) I grew up a good Dutch Reformed Christian, which gave me a strong foundation and deep respect for God.
At 19, a friend invited me to a “new kind of church” where everything felt different—the music, the preaching, and unusual things like prophecy and speaking in tongues, which at first seemed foreign. Yet, I felt at home. I committed to Jesus, joined a home cell, grew a lot 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. That 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 baptized but wrestled with whether obeying God meant disrespecting my parents, who had me christened. While in Israel, I responded to a call to be baptized in the Jordan River - a moment that remains deeply special to me.
From around 1986, life took a different course: marriage, divorce, wrong relationships, and returning to God whenever things fell apart. Then 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 - nd almost imagined Him sighing in relief, as though saying, “Finally, another child of mine not hanging on me.” As if God would ever say that!
For the next 20 years, I did my own thing and eventually called myself agnostic. I asked the usual questions agnostics and atheists ask, but never found answers. Still, I held onto certain principles, hated hearing people blaspheme, and whenever I felt the urge to pray, I stopped myself, thinking, I can’t dare pray if I don’t believe - that would make me a hypocrite.
Over time, my mental health declined. 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 my cousin, 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 Him.
The moment I spoke those words aloud, I sensed God saying, “Really? Are you sure you’re agnostic?” Something shifted. My cousin accepted what I told her, but began sending me things to read and listen to, which I resisted. Then one day, she sent me a voice note. She spoke slowly, measured, as though repeating what she was being told to say. And that was how God turned me completely around. He flipped me inside out and made me new. The questions that had consumed me faded into nothingness, and He set me right side up again.
This happened about two months after Mark had his own encounter with God while running.
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 - a out of His overflow, I long to help disciple others.
Through Christian Awake, my mission with Mark is to help others find the same freedom we’ve found - to move from simply knowing about God to truly being intimate with the Triune God.
Hilda Deavall