Jesus shows lawyer her true value

E is a Christian who was unsure if she had a real relationship with God. Here is her testimony of renewed faith and joy after God showed her how much He values her, once she repented of her personal spiritual strongholds in Jesus’ name. Praise God!

(See Chinese versions: 简体中文 > 耶稣显示律师自己的真价值 | 繁體中文 > 耶穌顯示律師自己的真價值)

My faith used to be shallow and judgmental.

Since young, I had “believed” in God. I went to a Catholic primary school and attended church with my mum. I didn’t see a problem with being the type of Christian who simply obeyed the rules (that I wanted to obey) and judged other Christians.

That started to change when I was reunited with a childhood friend. She seemed to really love God and had changed so much after accepting Jesus Christ as her Saviour. It made me see the shallowness of my faith. 

Over the next few years, I struggled to decide whether I actually believed.

I read and read many apologetic books. When I finally decided I did believe in God, I realised I didn’t love Him. God seemed very distant to me.

So I tried almost everything; church, mission trips, serving, Bible studies, conferences, inner healing prayers etc. Yet I felt like I wasn’t getting any closer to God. It was like I had a lot of knowledge about God from reading about Him, but I didn’t know God personally.

I began to lose hope. I had tried so many different things but didn’t feel any closer to God.  

I questioned the purpose of attending Christian activities altogether. Should I just stop everything church-related? I knew God is real and was afraid to leave the faith. Selfishly, I was afraid to go to hell. So I was stuck and feeling very hopeless. When friends shared what God was doing in their lives, I would feel very hurt. Why wasn’t God doing the same in my life?

I started believing that God didn’t want me. I wasn’t one of His chosen.

At the start of my renewal prayer session, I was fighting my doubt, condemnation and unbelief so much that I started crying even before we began. I did not believe it would work for me. 

During prayer, I learnt to break spiritual links with family members with ties to freemasonry and fraternities, men I had sexual fantasies about, and people who hurt me and influenced me in an ungodly manner. I also repented of participating in pagan spiritual rituals, including qigong, yoga and Catholic rituals, such as praying to patron saints. 

We also prayed over generational curses and commanded certain spirits to leave my life. This included spirits related to guan yin and freemasonry that were tied to my grandparents or parents. As I repented of my occult practices, I felt a slight lurch in my heart as Jesus set me free and forgave me.

I grew up with strong resentment and bitterness towards my mother. 

On several occasions, my mother started dramatic family quarrels that I was ashamed and angry about. I thought I had forgiven her completely and healed from past incidences. However, when I was told to go back to certain memories and express my feelings at the time to her, I was surprised to find myself crying. It made me realise that I was not as healed from those incidences as I thought I was.

Renewal prayer helped me recognise the reasons for her behaviour and sympathise with her brokenness. I am now able to view my mother in a different light. 

Due to my unhappy childhood experiences with my mother, I would occasionally contemplate suicide or self-harm. This brought a spirit of death that started to turn my thoughts towards hopelessness and a belief that God would no longer want me. 

As we prayed, the Holy Spirit revealed three specific adjectives about my identity. I no longer fantasise about suicide or self-harm. 

To God, I am very good, precious and valuable.

After the session, I still had doubts as to whether it “worked”. I actually slept quite badly that night and doubts tried to creep in again. Regardless, I decided to listen to worship music when I woke up. 

Wanting to get a hug from God, I lifted my arms up. Somehow, I just had an image of God enthusiastically jumping over me and giving me a hug like a father would. In the past, I would probably think that was too undignified or disrespectful to God. However that morning after I saw it, I just started having this low simmering feeling of joy bubbling within me.

I wanted to sing super loudly to the worship music and just dance. 

This was the first time I felt this way with God. Later, one of the prayer counsellors reminded me that that was how the prodigal son’s father welcomed him back home.

Luke 15:20 NLT “So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him.

In the weeks following, I found that things that I knew before as head knowledge, I somehow am able to understand more deeply. I just have faith that God is good and wants a close relationship with me. The concept of focusing on God was very vague to me before. Now, I know I can go to Him for every problem or trial.

My previous unbelief in God was a distortion of His character. I had bought into Satan’s deception.  

Now the truth has set me free. God has actually been the One who has done everything to draw me closer to Him, rather than me working hard to get to Him. I no longer consider myself a victim, but realise how blessed I have been. 

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