Delivered From Years Of Guilt, Shame, Condemnation By God’s Grace

I am a 43-year-old woman with a wonderful husband and six amazing children. I gave my life to Christ when I was about 12 years old.

I was brought up in a very religious background and had experienced a lot of abuse. This caused me to grow up very confused, angry, and rebellious.

My parents forced my siblings and me to attend church every Sunday, even though we could not really understand the language spoken there.

Despite the language barrier, I knew that everyone in the church seemed to know about our family’s business, and believed they had a right to talk bad about my family. They would talk about how my father was a gambler and drunkard who would beat up my mother and his children, and how some of my brothers were in trouble with the law.

Year after year, I could always hear the same Sunday school teachers gossiping about our family. They would run my father and siblings down in front of me, saying, “Look at her, she doesn’t understand what we’re talking about!”

I was also abused by some of the older men in our church and I would pull away from them and run off feeling angry, confused, horrible, and scared. I did not know what to do or how to talk about this because I was brought up to never speak out—my father often told me that I had to listen to my elders and not ask any questions. Being the youngest of nine siblings, I resigned myself to the fact that this was a “closed case” never to be spoken about for the rest of my life.

Although I grew up under such circumstances, I will always remember the song—Jesus Loves Me—taught by a little, old lady in the Bible studies class of my school when I was five.

That song stuck with me for many years and I held on to this Jesus, hoping He was real. I never told people my problems, but I would talk and cry to God even as a frustrated child, behind closed doors, begging Him to help me.

As a young adult, I would still attend the church that my parents brought me to. I would constantly tell God that I could not feel or see His love for me in that place because of how the people in the church had hurt me. My heart broke as I told God how I knew He was a kind and loving God, and how I would find Him no matter what because I knew that He loved me.

Eventually, in my adult years, I was privileged to have found a good church to grow and learn more about God, and my life was transformed. However, during that period, my family and I constantly travelled and moved from country to country, and then to different states, so we moved from church to church.

I ended up listening to television preachers with my children, and I would seek after God, asking Him to help me read and understand the Bible. Through television, He would always send these great men and women of God to spread the Word of God, break it down, and make it simple for me to learn.

So as I watched television preaching, during the advertisements or breaks, I would notice an Asian preacher on the screen, and he would yell out, “God is righteous in making the sinner righteous!” This was followed by a short preview of his broadcast message for that day. Something inside me desperately wanted to listen to him because everything that was coming out of his mouth was unbelievable. But for some reason, I changed the channel when it was his turn to preach.

I brought the matter up to God and a few days later, when I was looking at the daily broadcast, I saw that Pastor Joseph Prince’s program was on next. This time, I decided to watch and listen to him. After my first time watching him, I switched off the television and sat in silence because I was in awe.

I have never seen or heard anyone present Jesus the way that Pastor Prince did and I learned so much more in one broadcast than my entire Christian life put together. I saw Jesus on the cross with all my hurt, my pain, my guilt, and shame, bearing all my sins. At that very same moment, I knew that I was forgiven forever.

I was crying, asking God, “Lord, is this true?” I was in awe of my amazing God. Crazy as it sounds, it’s true! God is righteous in making the sinner righteous! It was as though a weight was lifted off my shoulders, and freedom came upon me. It felt like a veil had been taken off and I could see clearly for the first time.

Since that encounter that happened five to six years ago, I have never stopped listening to Joseph Prince’s teachings on grace and the power of right believing.

I can’t stop thanking God that He used Pastor Joseph Prince to reach out to people like me all over the world, to share the good news about Christ Jesus Himself! Hallelujah! We serve an awesome God!

Thank you, Pastor Joseph Prince, for allowing God to use you to unveil the beautiful person of Jesus Christ. God bless.