Watch: Paul’s testimony

Paul found himself stuck in sinful patterns that keep recurring. Praise God that he persevered in prayer. Through a time of prayer ministry, the Holy Spirit revealed to the root of his explosive anger to Paul, who is now on a journey of recognising his anger triggers and becoming more loving and patient towards his family. Praise God! Watch his testimony below. 

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Video transcript

We accumulate so much garbage over the years.

We can go to church, we can say prayers as much as we like, but sometimes we need to go a lot deeper to reveal things that we’re in bondage to.

My name is Paul Jackson. I’m 53 years old. I’ve been in Hong Kong for 22 years. I came on a six-month secondment and overstayed legally. I met Irene after nine months and she’s now my wife and we had our firstborn son, Aidan, in early 2004.

I was born into a Catholic Christian family. We had prayers before meals and every evening. But I guess the faith became my own as I went on a very long bike ride and by the end of which, I been through lots of questions in my mind and was just appreciating the beauty of God’s creation and everything fell into place. So, I became convicted by His creation, I would say.

At the age of 10, I already had fallen into two very serious patterns of sin.

One was an addiction to pornography and the other was, not exactly an addiction, but, a habit of extreme explosive anger, always expressed against those I loved the most. My prayer life kind of waxed and waned over that time. I was always praying, always involved in church, ranging from Bible studies to co-hosting or leading Alpha groups and similar kinds of things.

Over the span of about two years, four events hit me very hard.

The first was a sexual and corruption scandal at the top of my church, which hit me, yes in the chest literally. And then, my siblings and I fell out over a will. And then a few months later, one of my best friends was out jogging and just collapsed with a heart attack. Within one week, he died. He never got a chance to say farewell to anybody.

And fourth was that I found a couple of months after that, that I had cancer and the cancer had spread fairly quickly.

I needed fairly intense treatment. They warned me of side effects. And I signed the waiver and then got more than double the number of side effects they’d warned me about, including one which was very serious, which was loss of 50 percent lung function.

But on the good side, and as a blessing, this suffering softened my heart, softened my siblings’ hearts, so that my sisters and my brother and I are now fully reconciled.

Because of the sexual corruption scandal and because a good friend had said, “Right, we men have to pray and confess our own sexual sins before we get too roused by what’s happening at the top of our church.”

So, I prayed hard for one month and at the end of that month, I was completely rid of my addiction to pornography. I’ve never looked back since.

I began to understand the nature of suffering and prayer. I was praying a lot, very intensely but I was never getting any, I was never receiving anything from God.

So, during this time, a friend actually gave me a book, said he’d been praying for me for some time. And the book was over 50% scripture quotes. More than the book, there was a course to do and this was going to be 14 sessions of three hours. This combination of, you know, a scripturally based book and an intense course, really made a difference in my heart and also revealed many things to me, which I didn’t know about myself. Or maybe had I known them, I must’ve suppressed them for a long time.

At the end of the course, there was a prayer ministry session, which was extremely intense.

At the beginning of which we started with some worship, but then, I asked the Holy Spirit to guide me or to guide us, to lead us to find out the areas of my life which had contributed to these bondages to sin, basically.

The Holy Spirit revealed to us that I’d been under the burden of a controlling spirit of domination and control passed to me, from my family, probably my mother mostly. 

She’d had a very traumatic childhood. She lost her mother when she was very young, so she grew up without any mother and as a result, she had become very fearful of two things. One; losing control, losing money as well. But that spirit of domination and control, had meant that my mother was acting as the head of the household, not my father. It meant that my mother was very critical of me, but in polite ways, but still very critical, as being “totally lacking in common sense; I would never have spoken to my father like that; you’re hopeless, you know, you can’t even cook a boiled egg.”

All these kind of polite, but very critical, and very cutting comments actually, were rife in my home that I grew up in and unfortunately, I’ve passed them on to my wife and to my son.

So, I had to repent of those during this prayer ministry.

And as we prayed for certain things to depart, I physically felt or even heard things departing, but also felt unburdened, lighter, happier, more fulfilled. And even towards the end of that session, I even had an encounter with God, the Father, God, our Father, who I have never encountered before – I mean, in a vision – and He said some things to me that very much encouraged me and so I got my answer.

The day after the prayer ministry, I was very energised.

I actually went on a very challenging, marked as very difficult, hike on Hong Kong Island; Violet Hill and the Twins down to Stanley. And my partner on that hike didn’t think I could make it on half-lung capacity.

I’ve had some sweet times with Irene, some very sweet times, like going back to the time we were dating, that kind of sweetness, which is, a real blessing.

But it’s only 12 days now since the prayer ministry and I have had some setbacks but I have to be humble before the Father, ask for the Holy Spirit to guide me and also pray to Jesus. So, I start every day thanking God that I’m alive and also offering to God the Father, all my thoughts and prayers, words and works, joys and sufferings of that day for His glory only.

So, I’ve described some of my journey to you, some of the challenges and sufferings. I know that you have your own burdens and sufferings. I would strongly encourage you to seek the help of others who can counsel how to pray to the Holy Spirit, how to get the guidance to reveal what are the origins of the patterns of sin in your life.

It’s not a simple process. It’s not a short process. It’s not just queuing up and asking for someone to pray and lay their hands on you.

But, if you persevere in this and if you ask the Holy Spirit to lead you and guide you, and with others’ help, also praying for you, what will need to be revealed can be revealed to you and you can be unburdened of your sin, and your grief, and your fears.