Jesus begins lawyer’s emotional healing
F grew up in a family where negative emotions were never addressed or discussed. Moreover, her belief in filial piety led her to submit to her elder generation at the expense of her own well-being and her relationship with God. As a result, she lived with severe emotional suppression until Jesus shone His light into her heart and began a journey of healing for her. Praise God!
(See Chinese versions: 简体中文 > 耶稣开始医治律师的情感创伤 | 繁體中文 > 耶穌開始醫治律師的情感創傷)
During a prayer session in 2018, a friend was prompted to ask me how I felt about my family.
I found it enormously difficult to talk about them. It almost felt like my throat was choked and I couldn’t say anything negative about my parents – to comment or criticise would have meant that I have no filial piety. Deep down in my heart, I knew they loved me a lot. Despite the struggle, I still managed to pull out an incident or two about my mother and we prayed together to ask God for the healing of my heart. Little did I know that my emotional healing was not complete yet.
At the beginning of 2019, the same friend pointed out that I may still need to deal with my emotional healing.
To be honest, I am generally quite a joyful person so I was not aware of what kind of emotional healing I needed.
I was oblivious to what wounds I had but was open to fasting and asking God. So I agreed to do an inner healing and deliverance prayer.
To my surprise, as I fasted, the Holy Spirit revealed quite a lot of instances where I had been hurt by people that I had come across, including relationships with men, friends, as well as members of my family. As I filled out the prayer form, the prayer counsellors also gave me quite a few follow-up questions that helped me dig deeper into my past.
At the inner healing and deliverance prayer session, I first went through repenting of all the occult practices which my family has participated in, for example, animal sacrifice, bowing down to Buddhist and Taoist altars at home, burning paper money for dead relatives, burning incense in temples as well as selecting dates using Chinese calendars (通勝).
We had to identify the spirits operating behind these idols and cast them out in Jesus’ name.
I travel very often and especially after I started working. I would go on at least five to six holidays a year and pick very adventurous and exotic destinations which are often far away from home. My mother disapproves of me travelling, especially when it involves going to places which she deems unsafe. She used to control me a lot and would attempt to prohibit me from travelling. Growing up, I had to rebel so as to get my own way and to break free from her. At the prayer session, it came to light that all my travelling may be rooted in a rebellious spirit that grew in me. I also had to deal with the pride I had with travelling because somehow, I think it looks glamorous to travel. It was good to have repented to God of this idol.
I also cut soul ties and commanded several territorial spirits to leave me as I’ve been to numerous places which are very defiled. This area is a constant struggle – I still find myself taking photos of idolatrous places. I have been convicted that these places are filled with idol worship and are not pleasing to God. So I have to continue to repent to God and to align my heart to be closer to His heart.
It was also pointed out during the prayer session that because I’m very rational, I may have a lot of inner vows.
Once those inner vows were locked in, it paralyses the heart. For example, if I keep on telling myself that I cannot be emotional, my heart will then be frozen up. If I keep on saying that I need to be independent, it may be difficult for me to rely on and depend on God. I had the opportunity to break a lot of inner vows and replace them with God’s truth in Jesus’ name.
I learnt that instead of stopping myself from being emotional, the truth is that God created all emotions and it is healthy to experience emotions. God cares about us when we feel angry or sad. I also learnt the truth that it is not a godly life goal to be independent, as if I’m the only one I can lean on. God is someone whom we can forever depend on and He alone is our provider and He will never abandon or forsake me.
I also asked God to heal me from all the instances where hurtful words had been said to me when I was young, particularly from fights with my sister and mother. I’m just one year apart from my sister and we used to fight a lot. Lots of hurtful words were said and my family is rather good at sweeping all this under the carpet.
We don’t address bad behaviour and we don’t talk about or process the emotional reactions from the family fights we have had. We never confront each other.
After we take some time apart, our family would then go on as if we haven’t fought and acted as if nothing has happened.
My prayer counsellor encouraged me to see my family beyond the physical. We looked at what was happening in their lives in the spiritual realm. Rather than judging bad family behaviour and calling them unreasonable, crazy, mean, and bitter, I was encouraged to look at the spirits driving such behaviour and also to look at their root cause.
I was able to identify a lot of fear, jealousy, hurt, and rejection that are harbouring inside my sister. The root had to do with generational sibling favouritism, hurtful words, and emotional wounds. Growing up, my parents would have inadvertently made comments comparing me and my sister and these have caused a lot of hurts for my sister. As a result, there would be a lot of fights at home where my sister would throw tantrums and hurl emotionally abusive words at the family.
I was able to verbalise the hurts that I felt and ask God to heal those emotional wounds.
Other than my sister, I was also able to deal with the emotional wounds from my mother and father, ranging from my mother being over-controlling to my father’s fear of poverty because his business was not successful.
As I was guided by the Holy Spirit, I was able to recall a childhood memory of my dad hitting his own head against the wall as he was so stressed about his business and money issues. Very heartfelt cries came up from deep within me, especially when I prayed about my father. This image of him being downcast brought out a lot of pain that had been buried within me.
I felt very relieved to be able to cry my buried hurts out.
On my end, other than praying over emotional wounds, I had to repent over judging my sister and my parents. I was able to see that they are hurt and wounded too. I need to look at them not with my own eyes, but through the eyes of God. I need to discern what is happening within the spiritual realm.
After the prayer session, I thought that I have been healed and I felt quite good to be able to pray to God about all the emotional wounds I had.
Little did I know that my healing journey had just begun.
A few weeks after the inner healing and deliverance prayer session, I had a conflict with a close friend who threw me a criticism which is quite similar to what my sister used to say. I immediately latched onto what my friend said and kept asking her why she said it. I didn’t know that deep down, I had a yearning to understand my sister more and I did not know that this touched on the wound which has not been healed.
The day after the conflict, I found myself crying non-stop for a whole day.
It was so bad that I had to get sick leave and not go to work. I have never cried as much as that day.
I reached out to my prayer counsellor as I was very worried. In my mind, I thought that with my emotional healing at the prayer session, I would immediately be a complete and whole person. I was totally not expecting that I would cry so much more than before and thought I was going mental. Funnily enough, my prayer counsellor congratulated me and said that she was happy that my heart is now revived and resuscitated so that I was able to release even more emotions. This means I can continue to receive God’s healing on a deeper level. (It turned out that the hurts from my sister were much intense than I had initially thought.)
Little did I know that all the emotional hurts that I have sustained have led to a lot of emotional suppression.
Once those emotional wounds are gradually healed, I am able to feel a lot more emotions compared to before. This includes sadness. To me, feeling sad is very scary. I realise that in the past, I’ve always prayed to God for joy, but I absolutely neglected processing sadness as an emotion. To me, I thought being sad is not good. Whenever there were things that upset me, I would sweep them under the carpet and ask God for joy.
I went to see a Christian psychiatric counsellor afterwards, who told me that I need to experience and be able to process sadness. It is still a learning process and a long journey ahead. I am sure I don’t know everything about emotions as yet – but I trust that God is journeying with me as I experience a more soft and revived heart, one that is able to connect with God more fully. For one, I find I can hear from the Holy Spirit more clearly.
If I have some distress or troubles, I can hear God better, maybe because I cry out to Him more from my heart now.
My heart’s desires are getting closer to God’s day by day, though I still feel the warring of my flesh verses the Holy Spirit’s leading. I continue to pray for a fully transformed heart, one that is soft and healthy in God’s eyes.