Deena’s Story
In His Love
As I sit here writing this, my husband is rocking our newborn daughter to sleep. Watching him fills me with awe—the kind that quiets the soul and gently lifts my gaze to the One who authored this moment: God. I am reminded of a song I once heard, “Look what the Lord has done.” Five years ago, when I met Jesus, I could never have imagined—nor dared to hope—what He would do with a broken, desperate, and lost woman. Today, I am His fully: His chosen daughter, His purified bride, His redeemed disciple, and His banner of praise.
I did not grow up Christian.
I was born in Pakistan and raised in Dubai, where religion often functioned through guilt and shame and was something to rebel against. Though we practiced Zoroastrian traditions culturally, my parents were not religious, and belief was never enforced. By high school, I had concluded that God did not exist.
In my final year of university, a hunger for truth awakened in me—a longing that would not be silenced. I searched for healing and meaning through Hinduism, Buddhism, the New Age, and indigenous traditions, traveling the world and studying under teachers and healers. That search eventually led me into church, where for several years I attended Christian services while practicing other spiritual paths, convinced that all roads led to God.
Yet something kept drawing me back. Though I spoke to no one, I returned week after week. I now know it was the Holy Spirit. His presence stirred my heart, and worship music became the language of my longing. Songs like ‘Wreckless Love’ awakened something I could not yet name. My search, I now see, was never about religion—it was about relationship.
In 2020, during a dark night marked by COVID isolation, depression, and suicidal thoughts, I finally encountered the One I had been seeking for over twenty years. As my friends began leaving the New Age and surrendering to Christ, one ministered to me daily, reminding me of the quiet pull I had always felt toward Jesus.
After months of prayer, Jesus came to me in a dream and held me in His arms. When I woke, the darkness was gone—completely. I felt free, restored, alive. Soon after, I opened the Bible for the first time and began with Matthew. When I reached the parable of the lost sheep, I encountered Jesus Himself. He leaves the ninety-nine to find the one. At that moment, I understood that He had been pursuing me all along.
Overwhelmed by His relentless love, I surrendered my life to Jesus Christ. In the years that followed, His blood washed me clean. He healed my trauma, restored what had been broken, and rooted my worth not in performance, but in His unchanging love.
In 2023, I left everything behind—my business, my home, my life in Dubai—to follow Him to the United States, trusting His Word: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matthew 6:33).
I landed in Redding, California, at Bethel Church. Over the next two months, God deepened His work in me, revealing that I had made an idol of marriage—a dream I had carried since I was six years old. One evening during worship, I lay prostrate at the altar, sobbing as I repented and laid my dreams of marriage, children, and family at His feet. I was terrified that surrender meant loss. In that holy moment, I heard Him say, “your dream is safer with Me than it ever was with you.”
Three days later, I met the man of God who is now my husband.
Our love story was written by the hands of the One who created us both. There were countless confirmations, but one stands out. During our courtship in November 2023, the Lord reminded me of a journal entry I had written earlier that year while still living in Dubai. In it, I had prayed for my future husband and had written down a verse He gave me, 1 Samuel 16:13—then I had forgotten it. The verse reads: “So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon David.”
David is my husband’s name.
We married in August 2024 and devoted our first year of marriage to the Lord as students at Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. Together, we walked through refining fires, yet God joined us in every flame, just as He did with Azariah, Hananiah, and Mishael. He left us unscathed and stronger in faith. He stripped away selfishness, confronted broken thinking, led us through deliverance, and taught us deeper dependence on Him. He unlocked prophetic gifts, drew us into lives sold out for His Presence, and gathered me into a sisterhood of women now publishing our testimonies for the world to hear of His goodness. Through it all, He reminded me again and again that He keeps His promises—and that I would have a family.
That Christmas, I prayed simply for His help in preparing my body for a future pregnancy. He answered, “You do not need to do anything. Your body will not hold your baby—I will.” In January 2025, we discovered I was pregnant, despite a lifetime of doctors telling me I likely could not conceive. When I had prayed on Christmas day, I was already carrying life.
Though deemed high-risk, rejected by midwives, and sent for countless tests, the Lord ensured every scan was clear and every report favorable. He sustained me through one of the most beautiful seasons of my life. In September 2025, at thirty-nine years old, after twenty-four hours of labor, without medication or intervention, He gave us our daughter, Azariyah.
I could go on forever about His goodness—His faithfulness, the power of His redeeming blood, the completeness of His mercy, the boundlessness of His love. He took a desperate, desolate, broken girl and raised her into a redeemed daughter, a godly wife, and a blessed mother.
His Love is a covering in which all things work for good.
His Love is an oil by which all things are renewed and restored.
We need only to live
In His Love.
