Watch: Debbie’s testimony

Debbie shares how she realised she needed to heal from childhood hurts and forgive others in order to have healthy relationships with those who have hurt her and with friends and family. Once she began her healing, she gradually learnt to trust God’s promises and provisions much more fully. Praise God! Watch her testimony.

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Video transcript

It says in Psalm 37:3, “Keep trusting in the Lord and do what’s right in His eyes. Fix your heart on the promise of God. And you will be secure, feasting on His faithfulness.”

And it was this security to has given me so much freedom.

Hi, my name is Debbie. I’m 38 years old and I was born in Malaysia. I left Malaysia for work, which I was happy to do because I felt I was able to leave behind unhappy childhood memories

But the reality of the matter is that childhood hurt grows up with you and becomes the same adult hurt.

And through all that time of trying to make my own future and trying to be my own person, I had so many broken relationships, whether it was with friends or others, whether it was at work. I was so easily hurt. And at the same time, I so easily hurt others.

And it came to a point of time when I asked myself; “If God is perfect, and I believe that He is, then if I can’t have a relationship with a God who is perfect, what chance did I have friends with family or with other people around me?”

I said, “God, I am going to have a proper long-term relationship with You.”

So when I was going through difficulties or when I had the same issues that I had with relationships, instead of distracting myself with parties or distracting myself with work, I went to God and I let Him speak to me about that.

I started having conflict of trying to understand God. “If you said, “honor your father and mother” and You talk about respecting those in authority, those are the ones that have hurt me. It just feels like such a conflict.”

God just told me, “Debbie, you have to respect, submit, and honor that position and release what you believe is your vengeance to Me. And let Me take care of that.”

So, it meant that I would not only release forgiveness, but also, because I was less defensive, I could also ask for forgiveness.

Whether it is going up to them and just saying, “You know what I didn’t mean to offend you, but I know I have. And I’m really sorry.”

So throughout this experience, it was a lot of humility, a lot of pain, a lot of humility, but a lot of healing, just confronting those childhood pain, stuff that I didn’t want to recognise existed, stuff that I said was not there, but really was and to allow that healing to come into my heart, not only from childhood pain, but also the mistakes I made as an adult.

Being single, I had a lot of dreams that I felt were unfulfilled.

One day, God asked me, “Debbie, you say that I am good. You say I’m great. But what if My plan for you is not to have all those desires and dreams that you have? What if it’s not to be married or to have kids? What if it’s not to be uber successful and to have that comfortable house?”

I struggled with God a really, really, really long time.

But you know, it says in Psalms 127:2, “It is really senseless to work so hard from early morning to late at night toiling to make a living for fear of not having enough. God can provide for His lovers even while they’re asleep.”

And it really gave me the encouragement to say, you know what, “God, I know that You are good. And I know that you were great and You have been great to me my whole life through all the difficulty and my sin, every time I repented, you know, You just redeem all of it. So, I’m going to trust You. God, I’m going to pray.

I’m going to pray a really difficult prayer. But I ask that my desires and my will is aligned to Your desires and to Your will for my life.”

And what this released me to is I felt that I didn’t have to work so hard for friends, I didn’t have to work so hard for influence or to be loved. And it was really this fear that kept me from using the gifts that God has given me, whether it is a passion for missions, the influence over the circles I had.

And God being so gracious gives us, you and I, to empowerment, to go beyond our natural ability, beyond what we say we think we cannot do. 

And I’ll be honest with you. It’s not perfect. There are days when I’m low and the days when I don’t see, but I can assure you that surrendering all of this fear gave me a freedom and that is a freedom of obedience to God alone.