From Death to Life: A Testimony

By Christian Hawkins

My name is Christian Hawkins, and I lead worship and preach the Gospel as a member of the Four Winds Global community.

Jeremy asked me if I could share my testimony of how I came to know Jesus. I had died from a drug overdose, and after Jesus spoke to me amidst death, I came back to life forever changed.

I am now living a lifestyle of encounter with God, loving people, and sharing the same mercy with others that He showed me that day. As I share my testimony, I want you to note the word 'encounter.'

My life with Jesus has been a series of encounters that have transformed me and launched me into new seasons of looking more and more like Him. I want you to believe for your own encounter with Jesus as you read.

I want to begin my testimony with the encounter I had when I was eighteen. I was very lost in the world of drug addiction. I was in a hardcore band that toured around while I was in high school.

I was in conflict within my family, with the direction of my life, and within my heart. I carried so much excruciating pain around every day, and it fueled the music I wrote with my friends in the band, who also had similar struggles. Music was our way of expressing our pain.

Growing up, the memories I have of going to church were of a very, as I would call, "churn and burn" expression of church, meaning, "don't do what you want to do and do what he wants you to do so you don't go to hell", or "give your life to Jesus and follow him so you don't go to hell."

Even as a small child, this didn't carry much intrigue to me because I wanted to do what I wanted to do. I had no interest in self-limitation or denial of things I wanted or desired.

I came from a divorced household, and experienced severe trauma in my early childhood that brought very confusing thoughts and views towards things in my life and towards myself.

My family consisted of good people, and I grew up loved and cared for. However, my heart had always felt wounded by early childhood trauma.

Coming back to 2018, I was eighteen, and without realizing it at the time, I had reached the end of myself, and on a night in December of that year, the end of my life.

I was at a friend's house partying and using many different kinds of drugs, and we had been up all night. We were completely out of our minds.

Around three a.m. I walked outside and fell face down on the ground; my heart had stopped beating. As I laid there on the ground, I was completely aware that I had died.

Remember how I said the key phrase for this testimony is 'encounter'?

My heart stopped beating, and I felt my life leaving me. I was about to receive the penalty for my sin, and ultimately, what I had wanted for years.

I believed I deserved to die broken and alone. But as I lay there, I suddenly felt a heavy weight on my back. I could feel that it was a humongous hand; I could feel the heavy weight of all five fingers. I also felt heat all over my back.

During this encounter, while still on the ground, I heard an audible voice say, "I'm not done with you yet." I then entered into a vision where I saw all of my family's smiling faces, and I felt the love and support they truly had for me.

In my addiction, the enemy had very much convinced me that I was alone, rejected, no one could ever understand how I felt, nor help or accept me, and in one moment, all of that completely broke. God spoke the truth in me and effectively broke that lie.

I was then sent into another vision where I saw myself every time I was using drugs, and I thought I was alone. However, Jesus Christ was sitting "shotgun" right beside me.

After all of this had happened, I felt life surge back into my body, and my heart began beating again.

I have no clue how long I laid face down in the grass that night; it could've been hours. It was below freezing temperatures, but I do know that I had an encounter with the living God.

I met a man named Jesus, whom I had never met before.

After coming back to life, I got up off the ground and went home, completely terrified of what had just happened. Because of the drugs I had been using, my mind was completely destroyed.

I could not consciously process what just happened because of my inability to endure any strain on my mind other than watching TV and smoking cigarettes. The next day, I pulled my mom aside to talk to her.

I began to tell her every secret I'd held, all the lies I told her, all the pain I was carrying. I told her everything, and the supernatural part of it was that I was physically unable to lie; the truth was exploding out of me.

Five years or more of my life had come entirely out during that conversation. My mom looked at me in amazement and fear of what harm I had brought to myself.

Two years earlier, in 2016, my mom had an encounter with Jesus after coming to the end of herself, and gave her life to Him completely.

Since then, she learned about God and how to pray and be led by Him. Now, back to her psychotic, drug addict son telling her the unfiltered truth of the last five years.

She had said to me, "I've been praying over your pillow every night when I had no clue where you were, anointing your pillow with oil, and that you would come home and not be able to lie anymore," and God was faithful to answer that prayer.

I had treated my mom so poorly that she really struggled to want to let me continue to live there because I had broken her trust time and time again. Deeply convicted of how wrong I was, I asked for her forgiveness.

I was ready to accept being homeless and living in my car because I felt I deserved it for how I had treated her and betrayed that trust. She ultimately decided to let me stay and heal.

Very shortly after, I was going to my doctor to check out my mental state after all of the drug abuse and to ensure that I would be honest and tell the truth.

My uncle accompanied me to this appointment. My uncle had previously met the Lord after serving a twelve-year prison sentence.

He was sold out to God and lived in fear of the Lord in his conduct, but on top of this, he carried his roots, which were the streets, where God had called him to reach others in dark and hard places.

We were at this appointment, and I again "spilled my guts" to my doctor about the truth of what was going on and how I ended up in my current mental state.

My doctor had said to us, "He may always be like this; this may be irreversible damage to his brain and mind".

As we left my doctor's office, I could sense my uncle's pride in me for having done the right thing, which was all he had cared about.

And in his pride, he had said, "You're eighteen now, you're a man," with a smile on his face, utterly unfazed by any statement from my doctor, but with faith in a living God that he would heal my mental state.

It was that same month that my mom and I attended a worship and prayer meeting, and I was still in the same mental state I had been in since my encounter with God.

However, it was that night that I was to experience another encounter with God. A group of the team members at the event had pulled us aside and had laid hands on me, and prayed for a complete healing of my mind.

Within a month of that first encounter, my mind was completely healed, better than it had been before.

This marked the beginning of a new journey for me. A journey that God is real, but I don't know how to live for him. For the next two years, I would continue living my life to the best of my ability, but in the background, God was pursuing me to know Him, not just to know that He exists.

Over those two years, I would begin to smoke marijuana and drink, and sleep around again. While that was happening, I had begun my career in the HVAC trade and was attending night school to learn the job.

I was also working with my uncle seven days a week, selling and repairing used appliances. God had used my close proximity with my uncle, a man who lived in fear of the Lord, to point me higher and to call out the potential God had placed in me.

I began to attend church with him and his family, even though I didn't always live out what was being preached or what I read.

However, God continued to pursue me and was doing a work of sanctification in me, and taking hold of my life. I was baptized for the first time at my uncle's church.

A year later, on June 17th, 2020, I experienced a profound shift through a moment of complete surrender to God, a moment that would change my life forever.

My uncle had called me into the shop with his family to have a talk, because they knew something was going on. Unless I stopped using whatever I was using, I couldn't come around his family anymore.

And I loved him and his family very much, and I knew enough is enough. I needed to live out following him.

On that day, I completely surrendered my life to God, and He went from merely existing to becoming Lord of my life.

I got into my car, uncontrollably crying and screaming. I had cried out to God for change, and in that encounter with Him, I prayed things I only now understand.

However, at the time, I was not praying by my own understanding, but by His Spirit in the overflow of my heart, crying out to Him for change.

I had prayed, "I will go anywhere, I will do anything, I'm tired of being king of my life, I want you to be Lord of my life. If you want me to be sober, I need a new job where it's a better environment." That day, the living God had encountered me again.

That encounter sent me from darkness into light, yet again leading me to repentance. I became a new person; my thoughts, heart, and relationship with him changed forever.

Within twenty-four hours, I had a new job and was delivered from drugs. I had been honest with the person I rented a room from about what I had been doing and apologized.

That week, she said she needed her space back, and I understood. Within two days, with no credit, I had found a place, toured it, signed the lease, bought everything I needed to move in, and was completely moved in within two days of needing it.

God began proving to me during that time that I was made to do life with Him, never apart from Him. I didn't need to run away; I needed to run to Him.

I didn't do that every single time, but as I write this now, I run to him much more than I run from him now.

After this encounter, not only was I living brand new, but I had joy I had never had before. Within three months, I began leading worship in my local church, as well as in many other settings that the Lord opened up for me.

I had the privilege of leading worship at my sister's wedding with a group of people that would end up becoming my spiritual family and community for many years, even to this day.

They had formed a ministry centered on the presence of God and carrying Him everywhere we go.

God brought us all over the United States in the name of the Gospel. We led worship in the worst neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, which bore the fruit of peace talks between rival gangs, salvations, healings, and over thirty baptisms.

We also conducted prayer, worship, and evangelism on the Mall in Washington, D.C. God also poured out His Spirit in New Jersey at a Brazilian church, which led to evangelism in Times Square in New York City.

The most important thing we learned and taught during that season was to follow God as Lord, but also as friend and teacher.

And God is faithful to teach His children His will and ways, and how to follow Him. God may have led us to go places for His name's sake and to preach the Gospel and worship Him, but we did not do these things out of obligation to God or to the ministry that sent us out to do these works.

We did these things because we had the opportunity to do so; it's a joy to follow Him and do works for His kingdom.

Since these encounters I have had with God, He continues to pursue me for greater transformation of my heart and the renewal of my mind.

To think as he thinks and see as he sees, and for love to motivate me, and compassion for the lost and broken to know Him and know His created value for their lives.

There are hundreds more stories and testimonies of healings, freedom, restoration, humbling, and tests that I have seen and experienced, which I won't include in this post, but I may share some of them in future posts.

I will conclude my testimony of encounters with God that transformed my life with a challenge to read and meditate on Psalm 16.

This Psalm expresses David's heartfelt cry of love and affection towards God, as well as his thankfulness for God's tender love, protection, and care.

No matter what situation you find yourself in, God is strong enough to rescue you. I pray that your life will be filled with transformative encounters with a living God who loves you and gave His life for you.

"You are my lord, apart from you I have no good thing"-Psalm 16:2 (NIV, 1973/2011)

"Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken. You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand." Psalm 16:5-8, 11 (NIV, 1973/2011)