My personal testimony and God’s deliverance

I will continue to update this thread with testimonies I have not yet shared and new praise reports.

This is kind of long and detailed! And my apologies for any typos or poor grammar.

It’s amazing after you come to the Lord and look back on weird, unexplainable things that have happened before knowing the Lord, you now can see where those things actually come from. There have been moments in my life where demons have tormented me and I had no idea demons even existed. I haven’t shared a couple of these things with anyone so I will be sharing them for the first time with you all. Back in my childhood when I was around 9 or 10 years old, my great-grandma started taking my sister and me to church. That was the first exposure to Christianity I had really experienced (I only remember one other time in my life where I went to church with a neighbor but I was really young then and don’t remember much about it). I can say that I always had a belief in God. I didn’t know who He was at the time, but He very much gave me grace even then to know He was real. Everything I learned in my Sunday School classes about Jesus and the amazing miracles He did, I never once questioned. I believed everything and still did even through middle school/high school/college (although, I had stopped going to church after some time after I was 13 or 14 and had never really gone regularly with my great-grandma). Anyway, back to my 9 or 10 year old self…one day, after church and learning from my teacher that we should ask Jesus into our heart, I did just that. I said a little prayer to Him and asked Him to come into my heart (praise God. I hadn’t known Him but He knew me and loved me and knew I would be His.). Well, something started happening after that prayer. At the time, I didn’t know what was going on, I wondered what was wrong with me for thinking these thoughts, but I know now that these were evil spirits planting these thoughts in my head because they knew God was with me. I won’t give the exact sentence but it involved a very bad curse word and was directed towards our precious Savior). They would repeatedly enter my head and I didn’t know how to step them. Every time the thought would enter my head, I would tell God “I’m so sorry, God. I don’t mean it”. And I didn’t! I couldn’t control these repeated thoughts. Deep inside I knew they weren’t from me because I respected God and knew He loved me. These thoughts had tormented me all the way up to my early college years. That’s a long time. Although, I was able to control them more as I got older, praise God. And I never meant it when it entered my head, I had absolutely no idea these were demons. I felt so guilty every time this would occur and I would continue to apologize to God. There were also 2 or 3 moments in my life where I would wake up from a feeling of real terror, doom, and dread and I would see images of evil in my head. Again, I hadn’t know really known that evil actually existed on that level so I didn’t know this was again, evil spirits tormenting me. I do remember after the last time I had one of those dreams over 5 years ago, a question entered my mind if I would be going to hell if I died, since I know those dreams were of some evil presence, and if I was having dreams of the presence of evil, that couldn’t happen to someone going to heaven. It’s interesting looking back now, having no knowledge of the supernatural, yet still having some kind of awareness of something.

Fastforward some years later…it was 2006 that God was starting to draw me to Himself. I still hadn’t yet read the Bible, was still in sin, still didn’t really KNOW God, and was ignorant towards the Bible (and didn’t believe it was written by God). So it would be a long way before I would repent. But He was working in me and placed me in living quarters with other Christians in the on-campus apartments (it’s so amazing to look back at all those little signs that show me He was there, working in my life and me being just totally oblivious, lol). One thing I like to look back on is during a course of mine (language and speech communication) where we had to write a paper about what we wanted to be doing in 10 years. I remember writing, although not in these exact words, that I desired to have a right relationship with God and felt like I was disappointing Him at that point in time of my life (I was specifically thinking about those thoughts that Satan had been planting in my head but I didn’t mention that in my paper). I wrote that my desire for the future was to be reading the Bible, marrying a Christian husband, and going to church. Keep in mind that I wasn’t yet a Christian and still didn’t really know God, although I think I must have started believing the Bible was the Word of God, otherwise I wouldn’t have had the desire to read it. But it’s just totally awesome. The Bible says God works in us to will and do of HIS good pleasure and boy, was He already doing that with me!! And 2 of those things have come to pass! I have read my Bible multiple times and am continuing to read it daily and am going to church right now…not a building anymore because the one I was going to didn’t really get into the meat of the Word nor did much to build my faith (but I will always love the people there!). Now I have a church family (my prayer group on SKYPE) who I am able to fellowship with daily, pray with and for, and I have never felt more accepted and loved than I do now in my life. Praise be to God. And I’ve also been blessed by a brother named David Eells who has some amazing Bible Studies on his site that have taught me more of the Word in one single audio study than I ever learned at church. God has given each of us the responsibility to seek out our own salvation with fear and trembling and I have outgrown the teachings at my church from absorbing the teachings on brother David’s site. God is bringing me out of religion and the traditions of men into His pure unleavened bread of the Word. The Lord and I have a deal going on that if I ever believe in a teaching that is false, He would give me the truth. And He has been very faithful in this. I desire truth.

Now I’m waiting for the Lord to bring me a godly husband, and I’ll have fulfilled all my desires in my paper!

To kinda fast-forward a bit, in July of ’08, I finally told the Lord, “I can’t do it anymore, God. Help me” after a bout of depression and that’s what really started my faith walk with the Lord. I finally started reading the Word and God delivered me from a lot of bondage (that I’ll specifically share later), although I still hadn’t completely surrendered my life to God. That happened in June of ’09 when the Lord gave me a chastening (I sprained my ankle on a day at the zoo and know for sure that was by His hand. The Bible says He chastens and disciplines those He loves and He did that for me. I knew it was Him, (although not at the moment it happened obviously)before ever having read those verses.). It was 3 days later, after spending all my time on the couch off my ankle and watching tv shows endlessly that the Lord was heavily convicting me. Guilt was heavily on my conscience and I knew that I needed to be spending time with God and reading the Bible (at that time, I hadn’t yet read anything past the 4 Gospels). So I went online to look for a Christian site, or rather the Lord was leading me online, and He lead me to Christian-Faith, and it has been a huge blessing for me. The site, it’s members, and blogs were what convicted me and lead me to repentance. One person’s blog in particular finally lifted that veil from my eyes and I suddenly understood the significance and magnitude of Jesus dying on the cross for me and it was at that point that I knew it was time for me to deny myself and sacrifice my idols for Him. He delivered me from the idolatry of my addiction to tv shows (both on dvd and regular tv) and my favorite music group. God’s power is amazing. Those are things I never would’ve been able to give up on my own but His power was made perfect in my weakness. I made the decision to give up watching tv for good, took that first step (after tears of sorrow from my flesh) of skipping the show I had been excited for weeks to watch, and He completely delivered me from the temptation to watch tv, watch movies, or listen to secular music. I have been tv-free since June! Of course, it’s impossible to get away from those things completely when family still has them on. But I don’t willfully turn them on and try to do other things when my family has them on. PRAISE THE LORD. Now He’s given me desires to focus on Him. He has become my hobby. I have hours of pleasure just spending time with Him in His Word, bible studies, talking to Him, and fellowshipping with believers!

He’s also delivered me from spirits of anxiety/fear/insecurity/self-doubt/low confidence/etc. I grew up a very shy, insecure, hyper-sensitive person. I didn’t know what I could offer anyone, felt inferior to everyone around me, and had fear in just about every area of my life from communicating with others, looking for a job, driving, etc. This deliverance didn’t happen overnight. It was a journey for me. Strongholds were broken every month. I am now free from those spirits (still have some strongholds when it comes to driving though but God is working with me) and He has given me confidence (God confidence, not self-confidence. I have no self-confidence and I can now boldy say that I am GLAD I have no self-confidence because God confidence is way better and far more powerful) and boldness. I’m still a quiet person but I think that’s just part of who I am. And there are moments where anxieties or self-consciousness will creep in me but now I have the power to cast those thoughts down in the name of Jesus. Praise be to God.

Jesus is our Savior in all things whether it be deliverance, healings, or provision. And He is a faithful God. He’s done some wonderful things in my life that are only by His works, not my own. It’s only by His grace that I’m where I’m at today. Praise the Lord.

Btw, yes, God delivered me from those thoughts that tormented me for years. 🙂 Praise the Lord.