Jesus leads teacher on journey of inner healing from shame
W struggled with shame for decades, beginning with being an unplanned child. This led him into bondage to various addictions. Here, he shares about how Jesus has led him on a journey of healing and has been transforming how he sees himself, his relationship with God and with others. Praise God!
(简体中文 > 耶稣引领教师踏上医治羞耻之旅 | 繁體中文 > 耶穌引領教師踏上醫治羞恥之旅)
I’ve been a Christian for less than four years, since the day I realised I needed God’s help.
I grew up with a deep-rooted sense of shame that started in the womb as an unplanned child and developed in early childhood through various wounds of unmet needs, such as being ignored and lacking proper comfort and preparation for the challenges of life.
Then from a young age, I began to seek love and comfort in the wrong places, starting with looking at nude images and drinking alcohol, before moving onto pornography and drugs in my later teenage years.
By the time I started my relationship 10 years ago, I was addicted to looking lustfully at women in public, and my loneliness was driving me to spend time with similarly lost people at bars and parties. I managed to immediately give up smoking and taking drugs after I started dating, but lust was a habit I couldn’t shake. In shame and fear of losing my girlfriend, I tried to cover it up, along with so many other secrets, which seriously blocked intimacy and was a source of anxiety for many years.
It was this battle with shame and lust that brought me to my knees.
I realised I couldn’t heal and show up in my relationship without the help of God. The shame didn’t go away overnight – and it’s still an ongoing process – but when I started to believe in God, it was the first time I had hope for my future. I finally had a reason to believe that I could change, because I was a new creation with the Holy Spirit’s help and Jesus as my guide.
God has been so good in leading me down the path I needed for my recovery. First, He brought me to a local church, where I experienced unconditional love at my lowest. As soon as I stepped in, I felt like I was appreciated just for being there. At that time, I wanted to do as much as I could at church, and attended everything available to me because I felt at home there.
Half a year later, I was called to move countries and went through a period where I stopped going to church due to work commitments and faced many spiritual attacks and conflicts in my relationship. Eventually, God cleared up my Sundays, and I could find a new church to attend and become active again. I started hearing God’s voice more. My relationship slowly started improving.
It was at this point that I first truly believed in Jesus’ resurrection and could call Him Lord.
After a while, however, I developed a sense of familiarity and comfort in my spiritual walk. I was attending church at least twice a week and enjoying fellowship, but it had been a while since I felt the Holy Spirit moving in my life. I was also aware that my heart still needed healing.
That’s when I attended a workshop on heart-healing and deliverance. On that day, the instructor heard part of my story about my mother-wounds, and she prayed for me in the Holy Spirit. Both of us were moved to tears as the Holy Spirit gave her words I wished I could hear from my mother.
After that, I prayed to forgive those who had hurt me earlier in my life, resulting in a feeling of freshness and cleansing.
Later in the session though, I started to get spiritual attacks and felt a sense of fear of the instructor, receiving thoughts that she reminded me of someone involved in some past trauma. These thoughts turned out to be from demonic spirits in me that could sense their time was coming to an end.
Not long after that, God led my girlfriend to be prayed over by the instructor, and delivered from spirits involving witchcraft. When she had finished, she was like a new creation! She was beaming from ear to ear and praising God, telling of the newfound freedom she was experiencing. I was happy for her, and I could see how deliverance would benefit me too, though I was also nervous about whether it would work for me in the same way.
But God is faithful in our doubts, and He led me to also be delivered a couple of weeks later.
I renounced and repented of a large number of past sins, including lust, voyeurism and objectification of women, drinking, drug taking, lying and self-abandonment for the sake of fitting in. I also broke agreements with lies I had been believing about being dirty and shameful, and that I need to rely on other people. As each burden was removed after repentance, I could feel a tangible sense of relief, like I could breathe better than before.
In one of the most memorable moments of the session for me, the Holy Spirit revealed the name of my maternal grandmother to the instructor when I had never told it to her. As a relatively new Christian, I found this to be powerful and valuable evidence that God is with me. God told me to forgive her along with my mother for where she was unable to show up for her daughter, but I also found that revelation to be prophetic for the future, as a month later I was hurt by my grandmother’s lack of understanding for my distance from the family, and I needed to forgive her – again.
As the prayer was coming to an end, the instructor heard the Holy Spirit saying there was a river of living water flowing to me from the Father’s throne in Heaven, which I take as evidence that the Holy Spirit is always with me and no evil spirits can separate me from the love of God. Then when we were done, I was exhausted but I felt lighter and more peaceful.
Upon meeting my pastor afterwards, she told me I was glowing!
Since the deliverance, I’ve been able to hear the Holy Spirit with much more clarity, and I’ve felt guided by Him every day. I’ve also been more honest and willing to confess when feeling shame, and while the temptation to lust remains, especially during stressful periods, I’ve been better able to give myself compassion and trust that God loves me where I’m at.
Things in my life started to move quickly after the prayer. Having waited over a year for the necessary humility, I was invited to join the worship team at church, and I continued to attend the instructor’s courses. Here, I would repeatedly come into close contact with God in powerful ways during activities like being guided by the Holy Spirit to worship with my body, and giving and receiving prophetic words.
Within a short while, I was led to be baptised as an outward show of my ongoing commitment to Jesus.
Much like the deliverance, I didn’t feel profoundly different afterwards, except to say I could sense God continuing to irresistibly work in my life.
I was feeling pretty good at this point and enjoying a relatively free life of fellowship at church, but I had been ignoring some warning signs from the Holy Spirit about pouring too much into my relationship with a female congregation member other than my girlfriend by actively listening to a group she liked. At first, it didn’t feel like a big issue, but when I was questioned by my girlfriend, the Holy Spirit revealed the truth I was covering up: that I wanted to connect with someone outside of my God-given partnership to meet my needs.
This was a significant betrayal, and it threatened my relationship with my girlfriend to the point that it might have ended without the grace of God, but praise Him that He turns all things for good!
It was from this conflict that I had a spiritual awakening to my need to take an active role in my healing journey.
I had been believing the lie that God would fix my life regardless of my input, and in all fairness, up to this point, God had been patiently working on my recovery with very little planned action on my part, but it was clearly time for me to be less passive. Thank God that I had received enough of the Father’s love to truly desire healing for myself, empowering me to take bolder steps forward, such as asking for help where I needed it, and seeking new avenues for healing and spiritual growth.
One of these included attending a Christian retreat, which provided me with opportunities to experience even more of God’s grace and love. There, I was struck by the huge time and effort the team put into praying for me and making the weekend memorable. The most impactful surprise was receiving a huge envelope filled with cards and letters containing kind, encouraging words from loved ones and strangers from around the world. I also left the retreat with a wider circle of fellowship and more opportunities to obey God by answering His call to meet with people.
Since then, I’ve been experiencing more and more of God’s loving presence in my life.
I can feel the Holy Spirit more when I worship, and I’ve learned to more deeply trust the power of prayer as I see God working in my life and in the lives of others. As a result, I’ve found I have more genuine gratitude and resilience during trials.
Looking realistically at my journey, I know that I still have a long way to go, but I can see how faithful God has been. He has provided me with so many ways to grow and learn who He created me to be. I know He wants to restore me and bring about more freedom in my life. Thanks be to God!