It was midnight when a stranger walked into Pierre Ferreira’s study. Pierre was in his underwear. In the kitchen moments later, the intruder lunged for a knife. And yet that night ended with the man eating two bowls of pasta at Pierre’s table, and within months, twelve gang members had come to Christ.
Pierre is an engineer and former pastor from George, South Africa. In this episode of the God’s Truth Podcast, he tells Abigail Smith how Jesus first rescued him from eight demons on his bedroom floor, and how God taught him, step by step, to live without fear. What follows is his account.
A good Christian with a hidden life
Pierre grew up in a Dutch Reformed home and gave his life to Christ at twelve. He studied engineering, built a career with a major mining company and led praise and worship at church. But he lived with what he calls dualism: the belief that being a Christian meant being better than others because you did the right things. That belief left him no room to be honest when he fell into a hidden moral failure.
After six dark months, he prayed one night: Lord, please expose what I’m busy with. He was immediately thrown to the floor. He says he could sense eight demons, and one was choking him. Strong as he was, he could do nothing. He had always assumed that in such a moment he would rebuke the enemy in Jesus’ name. Instead, his shame was so great that his only thought was, you deserve this.
As he lost consciousness, he found himself standing before Jesus. “If only He would have punished me,” Pierre says. Instead, perfect love simply looked straight through him. Nothing was hidden. Neither of them needed to speak. Jesus showed him that if he kept going this way, his own unbelief would put him beyond help. When Pierre came to, the demons were still on him. All he could whisper was, “Jesus, help.”
Then the Holy Spirit walked in, a light that filled him as well as the room, and the demons fled screeching. “To this day, the most beautiful noise you could hear,” he says. He had grown up never being introduced to the person of the Holy Spirit. That night, his faith became personal.
Learning to hear God through money
What followed was years of unlearning. Through Myles Munroe’s teaching on the kingdom of God, Pierre came to see that the gospel Jesus preached was the gospel of the kingdom, and that believers are ambassadors carrying Christ within them. He left his corporate job and started a project management consultancy on mining projects across Africa, and the money came in fast. God gave him a rule: tithe the company’s income, take what the family needs, and give away the rest as He directed, until the account was empty each month.
One day, over two coffees costing R28, God told him to leave a R3,500 tip. Pierre had picked out a waiter he felt deserved a blessing, but God sent him a brash man who smelled of alcohol. Pierre was almost angry. Neither did you deserve it, the Lord replied. When Pierre sat down with the waiter, apologised for judging him and handed over the money, the man burst into tears. The night before, drunk and despairing, he had been about to take his life over two months’ unpaid rent. The amount was R3,500. He had cried out, “God, if You exist, stop me,” and just then his doorbell rang.
Faith instead of fear
Living in a crime-ridden area, Pierre watched even believers barricade themselves out of fear. God challenged him: Are you going to read the news and be fear-driven, or read My word and be faith-driven? Pierre began to study how God protected His people in Scripture. He concluded that the worst the devil could do to him was kill him, which would only bring him home to Jesus. “Fear is negative faith,” he says. “It’s the enemy’s faith.”
When his wallet was stolen, he sent a WhatsApp to his own stolen phone: he was a son of God, God knew where the thief was, and he could return it and be discipled, or go to jail. The next day, the thief’s frightened friend called, saying he had seen “angels or demons” and wanted nothing more to do with it. Pierre went with the police to the thief’s door and offered him a choice: be discipled, or face charges. He chose jail.
Midnight in the kitchen
Six months later, Pierre was lying in bed after teaching a kingdom class when the Lord told him to go downstairs because someone was in the house. Pierre looked from the balcony, saw only a neighbour parking, and went back to bed. “Then at least go down to your office,” the Lord said. Pierre did, opened his Bible, and heard footsteps. They were not his wife’s. A stranger walked into the doorway. “Can I help you?” Pierre asked. The man ran.
In the kitchen, the intruder spotted a knife in the moonlight and lunged for it. Pierre grabbed him from behind, and the two crashed across the room. Pierre had been praying for a new disciple, and he did not want the man hurt. He prayed for the strength of Samson. He says a supernatural peace and strength came over him. He set the man down “like a twig” and held him against the wall with one arm, his feet off the floor. Then, so as not to frighten him, he said, “The switch is behind me. I’m only going to turn on the light. I’m not going to hit you.”
When the light came on, the man’s whole facade collapsed. Pierre asked if he was hungry. He had not eaten in days. Pierre gave him a big bowl of leftover pasta, then a second, made coffee, and gave him the chance to run. He stayed. He had come with the very thief who had gone to jail six months before.
The next morning over breakfast, Pierre asked what had happened when the light went on. The man had lived on the streets since he was twelve, after years of daily beatings from a mother who told him she hated him because of how he was conceived. He had spent years in prison as part of one of the biggest gangs. “Sir,” he said, “for the first time in my life, I saw someone who wasn’t afraid of me.” Pierre wept. “You didn’t see someone who wasn’t afraid,” he told him. “You saw Jesus inside me. God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7). “Then I want Jesus,” the man said.
He brought the other thief to faith too. When three gang members stabbed him for becoming a Christian, he wanted revenge. Pierre urged him instead to sow the same forgiveness he had received. He forgave, and within three months he was discipling twelve former gang members himself.
Humility, the Christian superpower
Pierre is candid that his story is still being written. After twelve years in full-time ministry, he has walked through a painful season that taught him again about humility, repentance and the danger of gossip. “When you face Jesus,” he says, “there is never an ‘as well.’ It’s only you.” He has learned that the first words of real repentance are not panicked apologies, which so often come from the accuser, but honest confession: Lord, I’m struggling. Help me.
He calls humility the number one superpower God gives believers. “When we realise our dependence on Him,” he says, “that’s when the supernatural steps in.” And he reminds us that church is always we, never I. We need one another for discipleship and accountability, and the Holy Spirit is faithful to place each of us in the right family.
Connect with Pierre Ferreira
- YouTube: Pierre Ferreira
Mentioned in this episode
- Rediscovering the Kingdom by Myles Munroe
- Jamie Winship’s teaching on fearless living and confession as truth-telling
Scriptures in this episode
- 2 Timothy 1:7, not the spirit of fear
- James 4:7, resist the devil, and he will flee from you
- Matthew 28:18, all power is given unto Me
- Isaiah 54:15–17, no weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper
- Matthew 6:33, seek ye first the kingdom of God
- Colossians 1:27, Christ in you, the hope of glory
- Romans 1:19–20, the invisible things of Him are clearly seen
- Matthew 18:20, where two or three are gathered
- 1 Corinthians 13:9, we know in part, and we prophesy in part
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