Watch: Vincent’s testimony
Vincent has been recovering from abusive childhood experiences and inbred fears to learn how God values and loves him firsthand. Praise God! Watch his testimony.
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Video transcript
Even though I could say that God is slow to anger and compassionate, deep inside I was still questioning, “Did I do something wrong to anger God?” I became very insecure in my faith.
Hello, my name is Vincent. I grew up in church, participating in church activities and obeying the church moral code. I had a so-called healthy young adult life with a marriage and career. But I wasn’t happy. A big part of my life was about pursuing worldly success. I wanted to create a billion-dollar company or so-called unicorn like the start-ups from Silicon Valley.
A few years ago, my life hit a roadblock. I got hit with a sudden sickness and had to stay in hospital for two weeks. It all started with double vision. The doctors suspected it was a mild stroke. After recovering, I spent a lot of time going to church, serving, reading the Bible, praying. But my motives towards God were all fear-based.
Not being able to surrender my fears to God caused me to be extremely self-focused and caused me to neglect my wife’s needs.
Our marriage didn’t work out and we had to separate. I became very upset with God. With my experience of unemployment, divorce, and sickness and many unfortunate incidents, I came to overly fear God and doubt His goodness. Just like the foolish builder who built his house on sand, my faith fell apart and I quickly went back to live in sin.
A few years ago, I learnt that I need to surrender my fears to God, and repent of all my sins, and allow God to show me a new way to live. This led me to a prayer where I confessed my sins that I had committed, including idol worship, witchcraft, and sexual sin. Apart from that, I also forgave my parents and those who had hurt me.
During the prayer time, the Holy Spirit exposed the lies I had been living under for many years.
Growing up, I was beaten by my mom and bullied in school quite often. So, I worked very hard on being accepted. My life before was based on achieving fame and success to prove my value. I also made a lot of vows to be successful. I even vowed to cut off one of my hands.
I guess I was never really into pursuing wealth but I was really into the business of proving that “you are wrong, that I am right.” That actually shaped my identity; the need to be right, to be successful, and to excel in the things that I do. I idolised the pursuit of my self-value so much that I became so lost.
Every time I met failure, the only thought I had was to work harder and one day, I will hit it again.
This turned me into a robot. When things went out of control, I started to hate myself. Then, Satan will come back and bring back all those bad, negative emotions from my childhood; bullying, punishment, and after that, I would strive even more.
It is the same way I viewed God. I had heard so many times that God is loving and full of grace, but I still had this thought, “I would be punished if I don’t behave in a certain way.”
The Holy Spirit showed me when I was a kid, when I was abused, Jesus was always there. He is just not standing there and no emotion, but He grieved for me as well.
He showed me how I am loved by God and how God viewed me – which is totally different from how others viewed me or how I viewed myself.
There is nothing better than the King of the universe telling that He longs for you, that He loves you. This experience freed me from the cage of self-rejection and fears. I am finally able to truly experience the love of God. God wants to have intimacy with me. Should I seek the success of the world still?
I remember that every time I used to watch a movie where there is a superhero or star, I would daydream about being that guy whom everyone respected. Later in my life, I actually met and dealt with quite a few of those guys. It turned out that they are pretty empty themselves.
Trying to be accepted by people has a price. Sometimes, you must sacrifice your values to be accepted or will be taken advantage of.
Sometimes, you must work very hard to prove that you deserve to be accepted. There are two things that come up with this achievement, one is bring glory to yourself, the other is disappointment when you fail to achieve your goals.
Most of my life problems came because I am fearful of failure and rushed into fixing those fears in my ways. On this healing journey, God has told me to rest, don’t be afraid, and that He loves me. Of course, sometimes there are things that make me fearful, but I have learned to rely on God and wait for His timing. Knowing that He has a lot of goodness for me actually helps me a lot in overcoming my fears.
I am not saying that I am a fearless man, it is a constant battle, but my faith is getting stronger after experiencing the encouragement of God. I am able to love again, including loving myself – not saying that I am a very loving person but at least I know what it means now.
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