Emily's Story

Age 20

For about eight years, fear and anxiety followed me everywhere. They began when I was around twelve, about the time my dad passed away. During high school, self-doubt and low confidence joined them. If I couldn't reach my mom, my brother, or another close family member right away, panic attacks would start, because my anxiety convinced me that the worst possible thing had happened. I overthought constantly. I would convince myself that everyone around me hated me, or that I was worthless, and that shaped how I built relationships.

Eventually it reached my faith. I blamed God for the emotions and situations I was facing. Even when I was in church on Sundays, I couldn't focus or build a personal relationship with Him. My lowest point came around the time I graduated high school and through my first two years of college. Once I moved away and could decide for myself, I chose not to go to church at all. I had been attending again for about eight months before I started the healing sessions described below, but I never spent time with God outside of church.

At first, I thought about all of this in worldly ways. My family and I believed these were simply mental health problems, and I was about to begin professional counseling for my fear and anxiety. Then I talked with Pastor Josh, filled out the forms for the healing sessions, and read about what healing ministry is, a ministry in which people seek healing from God. After that, I was convinced that counseling might help with the symptoms but would not reach the underlying condition. My struggle was not only emotional. It was also spiritual.

So I began the healing sessions, meetings built around prayer, repentance, and reflection, with readings alongside them. After my first healing session, I started truly spending time with God. I remember apologizing to Him for not giving Him even a minute of my day. I repented of always asking, "Why am I feeling like this?" and "Why are You doing this to me?" without ever examining my own heart. I had never been taught how important repentance is. I learned it is the first step toward drawing closer to God. I also found I was carrying unforgiveness I hadn't realized was there, and that it was a serious barrier to growing spiritually.

One turning point surprised me. Every time I left a healing session or a one-on-one meeting with Pastor Josh, I felt inner healing. Yet within a day or two, something would happen that triggered my fear, anxiety, self-doubt, or low confidence. This happened after every meeting, and eventually I realized it couldn't be a coincidence. I even became afraid to attend the next healing session. That was when I understood there are real spiritual battles that try to keep us from growing closer to God. I had always said I believed in spiritual warfare, but I had never truly believed it in my heart.

During the healing sessions I prayed more than I ever had, and I began to sense God speaking to me. I struggled to hold onto worldly things, such as certain entertainment, music, and habits, while wanting to grow in my faith. Whenever I was tempted, I felt a strong conviction telling me not to. One week, Pastor Josh shared that he felt God was saying I still loved many worldly things. It confirmed exactly what I had already been sensing in prayer. Before this, I honestly didn't know how to pray or hear from God.

My healing came gradually. The more healing sessions I attended and the more time I spent with God, the deeper it went. By the end, I was no longer struggling with these emotions the way I once had. Friends and family even commented that I seemed more peaceful, and that was one more confirmation that God had been healing me.

Before the healing sessions, God felt distant. I believed in my mind that He was my Father, but not in my heart. I treated faith as a lesson to learn rather than a relationship to experience. Now I understand that He is holy and worthy of reverence, and also a loving Father I can trust, lean on, and talk to. Instead of blaming Him for what happened in my life, I learned I should have been running to Him all along.

The verse that anchored me was Luke 12:25–26. While researching anxiety during the healing sessions, I came across the question of who by being anxious "can add a single hour to his span of life." It showed me that anxiety comes from a lack of trust in God's power and goodness, and that I had been worrying over things that were small, or even nonexistent, compared to His glory.

If you are still waiting for healing, don't limit what God can do. Sometimes our struggles run deeper than we realize. There are situations where professional help is needed, but there is nothing God cannot heal. I found sins, wounds, and unforgiveness in my heart that I never would have recognized on my own. Healing began when I let God reveal them and surrendered them to Him. I still have room to grow, but I truly believe I am closer to God than ever before.

Daniel's Story

Age 43

I still remember the night before my Medical School Admission Test (MCAT). I felt like I had been left alone in the wilderness. I sat in my living room looking out the window, with no idea what more I could do or where to turn. I had been a musician, but I decided to change careers so I could protect my family and provide for it. I made that decision together with my wife at the time, and I deliberately left God out of it, because I was afraid He might stop me. I wanted Him only to help me succeed at what I had already chosen. After five years of pre-med study I took the MCAT and scored poorly. I prepared for another year, but the language barrier stood in my way, and all I had left was hope for a miracle.

A month after the second exam, my score came back lower than before. I resented God. I had begged for His help, and it felt as though all my prayers and effort had come to nothing. Every medical school I applied to rejected me. I had been away from music too long to go back, and my ability seemed far too small to keep pursuing medicine. God seemed silent.

Still, I kept praying. In prayer I was led to apply to a master's program, and through it I was accepted to medical school a year later. I can only explain that as God's grace. But getting in did not settle my fear. The language barrier made me feel small, and I wanted to run away every day. I chose to go forward anyway, trusting that the God who brought me this far would keep opening the way. I repeated to myself, almost like a spell, that everything would be fine now.

It wasn't. In my second year of medical school, my wife asked for a divorce. It was the hardest year of my life. Nothing I did changed her mind, and I had to carry my studies and my home life at the same time. I held onto God as tightly as I could, but the divorce went through, and it was finalized as the year ended.

I lost my reason to keep going. I had started all of this to protect my family, and now that family was gone. Everything I had tried to hold together by my own strength fell apart. I tried to hold onto the will to live, but thoughts of wanting to die kept coming, and I could find no reason to refuse them. I had fought similar thoughts during my pre-med years, though, and that experience helped me see that I should not simply accept them as my own true desire. I needed to be restored.

I hoped God would become my reason for living, but restoration did not come right away. Looking back, I think He was leading me deeper. The board exams were another test I could not pass in my own strength. I had fallen behind during the divorce and legal proceedings, and I went into the exam under-prepared. Once again, the night before, I came to the Lord in a poor and humbled state and asked for His grace.

By His grace, I passed. I could not deny that it was His doing, and I assumed I was finally restored. But the fear stayed, and so did the wish to die. I doubted whether God would help me again with the pressures ahead, and I feared more hardship was coming. I was afraid when I succeeded and afraid when I failed.

That was when I realized that solving my problems was not the answer. What I needed was not another success or another solved problem, but a heart restored to trust God in any circumstance. I just did not know where to begin.

After talking with Joshua, a ministry leader at my church, I concluded I needed a healing process. I came to see that my spiritual struggle and my emotional pain were connected, and I longed for restoration. I truly wanted to live, not just survive each day but be filled with God. Like the people of faith in the Bible, I wanted to face hardship with joy and dependence on the Lord. I attended the church's Thursday healing service almost every week and asked the Lord to touch me. I understood the thoughts of wanting to die as the whisper of Satan trying to bring me down, and I tried to resist them, but they were still hard to overcome.

Then my heart wavered. After I passed the board exam, my desire for the healing process began to fade, and part of me wondered whether I even needed restoration. But more difficulties followed, and the healing process was delayed by about a month. In that time I sought God earnestly again. Looking back, I confess that all of it was God preparing my heart. I also let go of a standard I had held, that healing had to come in a particular way, and that something supernatural and dramatic had to happen. I was able to place all of it in the Lord's hands. He had seen everything.

The healing process that followed went smoothly. What surprised me was that beneath what I had called fear lay anger I had carried for a long time. That anger had been rooted in my heart since childhood and was connected to many sins in my life. God led me to see sins I had not recognized, to repent of them, and to put down the anger I had lived under. My body felt lighter. It was not the overwhelming emotion I had expected, but a quiet peace and joy began to flow from the deepest part of my heart. It was a stability I had never felt before, and it felt like the Lord's love driving out fear. The change was not dramatic, but my life was clearly different.

Now I can only confess that the Lord was good at every moment. He was good on the night I despaired over the MCAT, throughout the divorce, and when I asked for His grace before the board exam. He was with me through all of it. I think I used to believe God was good only when He gave me the results I wanted. Now I say He is good even when I don't get what I want, and even in difficulties I cannot understand.

God works all things together for good, and He is doing it still. My Lord is the living God, and Jesus Christ is interceding for us even now. The Holy Spirit is with us and wants to guide us every day. I no longer want to live trying to achieve and protect everything by my own strength. I want to entrust all of it to the Lord, and to trust His goodness whatever the circumstances. I want to be freed from the fear that I must prove and defend my own life, to live faithfully the day I've been given, and to live as a new child of God, renewed in Him.

Kim's Story

Age 60

I have followed Jesus for over forty years. I truly met Him personally, and I never neglected church life. Yet I always carried a worry I couldn't resolve.

Prayer felt like homework. I often felt my prayers went unanswered, and above all I couldn't pray the way you talk with someone youre close to. From Scripture I could understand with my head what God's will was, but I couldn't feel His heart. As the years passed, a desperate question grew in me: "Is this really the right way to live my faith? Is something deep inside me sick?"

Then I had a chance to visit my daughter's family in the United States. A pastor there led a healing ministry, a ministry where people pray, discover the pain, sin, and wounds hidden inside them, and bring them to God one by one. From the moment the trip was set, I prayed earnestly: "Lord, heal me. What if I stand before You someday and realize that You and I were strangers?" I knew, of course, that He knows me. But deep in my heart I had long sensed that something was wrong between God and me.

On the first Thursday after I arrived, I received healing prayer. About two days later I realized that the reflux esophagitis I'd had, which gave me a feeling of something stuck in my throat, was gone. I hadn't even prayed about my body, because I was so hungry for spiritual healing. But God touched my physical weakness first, and it gave me greater hope for the rest.

Before receiving the healing ministry, I was instructed to read The Bondage Breaker by Dr. Neil Anderson. As I read, the words "the truth will set you free" came to mind, and I wondered whether I had been bound for a long time by something I couldn't see.

On the day I received the healing ministry, I was led to look at the root of my problem. At first I was shaken. I had always believed I grew up deeply loved by my parents. But as I walked back through my childhood, I saw that I had not stood in the place of a loved child. I had stood in the place of someone who had to carry my parents' pain and emotions. I was born to parents who had each remarried, and I had older half-siblings. When my father came home drunk, I had to bear his drunken ranting and the endless stories of his past, his wounds, and his suffering. I believed it was my role and my duty to embrace and endure my hurting family. His depression and lethargy were crushing for a young girl, but I comforted myself: "They're my parents, so they must love me."

The roles had been reversed. I was a child who needed care, but I had become the one carrying my parents' feelings and pain. And the thoughts and emotions formed in that relationship had been shaping my relationship with God. Without enough of a parent's protection, I learned first to endure alone. Outside the home I was always cheerful, but at home the stress of discord and anxiety waited for me. My moods swung, and anger rose up often because I didn't know how to handle it. It was such a familiar life that I never imagined it was affecting my faith and the way I saw God.

Looking back, I realized I had never fully trusted God. For years I listened to my father's sighs, sorrow, and bitter stories, and when he finally took his own life, that pain stayed in me more deeply than even the loss of my husband. Of course, my earthly father cannot be compared with God the Father. But at some point I had begun projecting the wounds from my earthly father onto my Heavenly Father. God does nothing for me. He asks a lot of me but never gives me what I want. He says He loves me, but in the end I have to endure on my own. Without realizing it, I had misunderstood God this way. Yet outwardly I spoke the language of faith and prayed graceful prayers. I never told God my real heart. I only repeated religious prayers. How could that ever become an intimate relationship?

I laid myself bare before God and wept: "Father, forgive me. I was deceived by false thoughts that came in through my wounds, and I repent of the pride of judging You as someone who does nothing for me. And I forgive my parents for the weaknesses that hurt me."

The healing ministry was, quite literally, a time of finding the pain, sin, and wounds hidden inside me and laying them before God one at a time. Along the way I saw fear and anger in me, a need to control, rebellion, sexual immorality, a defiant heart, and a habit of promoting and praising myself. "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble" (1 Peter 5:5). Before that verse, I had to admit that for a long time I had lived by what I thought was right instead of God's truth. With my mouth I always said, "I want to live according to Your will," but in real life I felt at ease only when I was the one judging, deciding, and taking responsibility. Once I understood why I had lived that way, I never wanted to go back. I am grateful that God let me look inside, before it was too late, at a heart that could only repeat religious habits without intimacy with Him.

After the healing ministry, my body and heart felt lighter and steadier, as if released from something that had held me for a long time. When I watched my two granddaughters, the words "unless you become like little children" struck me in a new way. A child doesn't try to take responsibility for everything. A child trusts and depends on her parents. So I began to pray: "Father, make me a child who relies on You and trusts You with everything."

Now, to me, healing means trusting God and living by faith. When I couldn't trust Him, the fear that I had to decide everything and carry everything myself ruled me. Now I have the peace of asking my Father about what I can't do and entrusting it to Him. These days, when I pray and meditate on the Word, I ask the Holy Spirit first and wait. I wait for what He helps me understand as I read, and I pay attention to the assurance He gives my heart in prayer.

A few days after the healing ministry, while I was praying, God's voice came to my heart very clearly: "Shuv, shuv, shuv." Hearing His voice felt like something I hadn't experienced in so long, and my heart overflowed. Shuv is a Hebrew word meaning "return" or "turn back," and its meaning went deep: turning from a road away from God and facing God again. It felt like an invitation to my whole past life.

My life begins again now. I want to turn from the life where I was the master who judged and decided everything, and live under God's rule. I am only 58. I don't know how God will use someone as insignificant as I am, but I want to live with a child's joy, united with others, for the gospel and God's Kingdom. I pray that those bound by wounds, fear, and false thoughts will find freedom, and that they will be restored, not only from physical illness but from the wounds of the heart and the weight pressing on the soul.

To the God who gave me healing and freedom so that I could walk this road again, all the glory.

Michael's Story

Age 37

I was born into a Christian family and grew up serving in the church. On the outside I looked put together, but inside I was rotting. Among other sins, I could not defeat the habitual sins of lust, pornography, and masturbation. Like many men who struggle with this, I was a helpless, ashamed hypocrite. Marriage didn't change it. Again and again I pushed myself to read the Bible, pray, and join church programs, hoping for the life change promised from the pulpit, but my willpower always gave out in the end.

On top of that, for eight years my marriage was marked by constant fighting and by emotional and physical abuse from my spouse, including gaslighting. Even my in-laws agreed that divorce was justified given the pain I had suffered. I felt helpless and lost, with no hope that anything would change. I kept asking faithful church leaders for help and prayer, but they all stood by, unable to bring any lasting change. My life wore down to the point where I found myself wishing my spouse would die in an accident.

I am sure of my salvation, and God is the Lord and Savior of my life. He called me into missions during my first year of college. I was heavily involved in church and worship, but I was going through the motions, and for years my relationship with God was stunted and unable to grow deeper. It was as if I could see and recognize God from where I stood, but endless layers of glass kept me from interacting with Him directly. Between the struggles in my spiritual life and in my marriage, I reached an impasse. I told God that if He did not work and change my life now, I would give up my faith, leave my spouse, and live however I wanted.

A major turning point came when I began to look at my situation through a spiritual lens. I could not overcome lust, pornography, and masturbation because the demonic influences behind my acting out required a spiritual cure: deliverance, which is prayer for freedom from those influences. I also came to see that the problems in my marriage were coming from the work of the enemy, whose demonic forces were driving my spouse to act sinfully. And the layers of glass between me and God turned out to be unforgiveness toward people who had hurt me throughout my life. In my pride, I could not forgive. I cut people out of my life and buried the pain, but the wound festered into resentment.

In desperation, as a last resort, I entered a healing ministry led by Pastor Josh, grasping at anything that could stop me from destroying myself. By then I could not take one more day. God had to be real, because there were no human alternatives left.

The healing came in waves over the course of the healing sessions, the meetings of prayer and ministry that make up the program. The layers of unforgiveness were shattered as I reconciled with my spouse and others who had wronged me and took steps to truly forgive them. It wasn't just saying "it's okay" when it wasn't. It was total forgiveness: choosing not to remember the offense or hold it against them, and removing the guilt. Generational sins, the patterns of sin passed down through my family, and the ungodly beliefs that distorted my perspective and fed my depressive thought patterns were restored by the truth of God's Word. My soul hurts were redeemed as I recognized God's presence in the most traumatic moments of my life. He truly feels and knows our pain. During the deliverance session, the demonic influences that drove me to sin through pornography and masturbation left quickly, once they realized they had no legal right to remain with me. I have been free from their influence ever since. Temptation still comes from time to time, but I went from being helpless to stop myself from sinning to not even having the desire, as if a layer of protection covers a major weakness and gives me a natural resistance to sin.

Two key verses came to me during the healing sessions. The first was Matthew 6:33: "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you." Instead of focusing on my problems and wallowing in strife, I heard God telling me to make Him first and foremost in my life. The second was Philippians 1:6: "He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." For eight years, giving up in defeat had been disguised as "waiting," doing nothing until something happened. Pastor Josh somehow already knew about my calling into missions. He had received a word of knowledge, a message from God about something he could not have known on his own, and he asked to meet with me. He told me straight out, "God remembers your vow, and you should do what you can to fulfill it rather than waiting for God to do something about it so you can pursue it." After the healing sessions, I realized I am to live with faith in action: God will move as I obey. I am taking steps to live out my calling as a missionary instead of waiting around for my wife and family members to change. My spiritual authority in my family is being restored as we have started our weekly family worship and prayer times again.

There is a clear shift in my life and in my relationship with God. God is no longer an ethereal, faraway being I have to invoke. He is my closest friend, someone I can confide in with real intimacy. I used to treat the Holy Spirit as a thing, an "it." Now I speak to Him and pray to Him, and I treat Him as a partner in my walk with God. Instead of being crushed by the weight of my problems, I take them to the cross in full worship and find the satisfaction and release that only God can give. Through worship and prayer, I am able to handle them, not by my own strength, wisdom, or power, but through God's sovereign hand.

I strongly recommend the healing ministry. To anyone on the fence, my motto is "if it doesn't work, make it work." I tried every possible thing in my power to overcome the sin and pain in my life, and I ultimately came up short. For decades I questioned whether my faith and God were even real, because I did not experience God the way the people around me so confidently testified they did. I urge you to give up and let God take over entirely. God cannot work through this healing ministry if even a hint of you still believes there is any alternative to His redemption.

From a human perspective, so much in my life makes no sense. That is why my life verse is Proverbs 3:5–6: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight." My job is not to know, understand, or decide whether or how things should be in my life. It is to trust, submit, and obey. Our God promises He will come through. He will do in your life what He did in mine.

Rachel's Story

Age 42

Before I met Jesus, I thought I was a pretty good person. I had worked hard to survive in America, and I mean hard. Since I was young, I worked and studied through every school break and every weekend to reach my goals. But the harder I worked, the less my situation improved. Every time I solved one problem, another one came crashing in, and each one hit harder than the last.

Here is the irony: apart from chasing my goals, I had no restraint when it came to sin. I was very easy on myself, as if living faithfully toward my goals had earned me that reward.

I vaguely believed some kind of god existed, but I had never met Jesus. Then I visited my home country. The day before I flew back to America, my father's side of the family, my grandparents, my uncle, my aunts, and all their kids, gathered for dinner and goodbyes. In the middle of it, they asked me to sit down, and the whole family began praying out loud over me. Even the oldest of my younger cousins was only in elementary school. Six children were crying and praying, and the adults were praying loudly too. It all felt so strange, and I started getting angry. Mine was the only family that didn't believe in Jesus. All I could think was that when I got home, I would tell my father everything and not let this go.

When the praying ended, my uncle read John 1:1–5 and asked me, "Do you believe God is alive?" I vaguely believed in some kind of god, so I figured it could be God, and I said yes. Then he asked, "Do you believe Jesus died for our sins and is our Savior?" I snapped at him: "I've never seen Him, and I don't even know who He is! Why are you asking me this?!" My uncle said, "Let's pray again," and the loud prayer started up again while I sat there fuming, hating every second of it. The same question came two or three more times. Finally I blurted out, "I don't know who He is, and suddenly He shows up and all I have to do is believe? What about the people who have never heard any of this? That's so unfair! I haven't done anything, I don't even know Him, and I'm supposed to just do this? How shameless is that?!"

My uncle answered, "God the Father said He is your Father. When you go home to America, you just go home, open the door, and walk in. If you believe that house is your Father's house, and your house, you can open that door and go in."

At that moment, I felt a thin film fall away from my ears. I can't explain it. A flood of feelings rose up from inside me, and a love I had never recognized hit me so hard that I fell out of my chair onto the floor and wailed. My much younger cousins were right there, but I felt no embarrassment. I just wept. I met God in that moment, and I was truly converted.

When I got back to America, I started going to church. There was no one around me to hold me up in faith, so I asked my mom to come with me. On the very first day, while singing praise, I received the gift of tongues, a spiritual prayer language, and I talked my younger sibling into being baptized with me. But I told myself I had to study. "I'll finish school, succeed, and then come back," I promised God, and I stopped going on Sundays. After I finished school and started working, I prayed and repented again, kept the Sabbath, and even served in church leadership. I lived like that for about ten years. For three or four months after meeting God, I cried and repented a lot. To anyone looking, I was just another sister in the church. But I kept asking myself: "Why do I always feel like something is missing? Those people aren't doing anything special, and yet they look peaceful and holy. Why don't I have that? What's different?"

I carried that question alone for years. Then I attended a year-long series of teachings at my church on Spiritual Warfare, the Bible's teaching about the unseen spiritual battle believers face, led by Pastor Josh. Through those teachings, I realized this was tied to a problem I had never fully dealt with. I knew God, but there were things I had only sloppily covered over instead of resolving, and there were problems I hadn't even realized were there. All of it was getting in the way of coming before Him.

I thought I had dealt with these problems on my own, through self-deliverance, praying by myself to be set free. But I was still falling into the same sinful patterns. So I asked to meet with Pastor Josh to make sure my problems were really gone. On a Zoom call, he and I both knew it hadn't been dealt with completely. That is how I came to pursue the healing ministry, a ministry where people, with a pastor's guidance, bring the hidden sins and wounds that keep them from God before Him in prayer.

One day while I was praying, God pressed this on me powerfully: "There is a land I have prepared for you. But if you are going to go there without wavering and without leaving Me, you must complete this process. If you go to that land without finishing it, you will leave Me."

Conversion… it looks like such an easy word. I only found out how hard it is to actually live it out once I truly started. Shortly after I had my baby, my whole body ached, and still I went to church to pray, to repent, to understand, carrying my baby back and forth. That was when the physical battle began. Both shoulders hurt so badly I felt like they would fall off, and I woke up in pain every night. But I could not quit halfway. If I didn't finish this now, there would never be another chance. Even if my arms never came back, I would finish it. With that desperation, I prayed every day, clinging to God, begging Him to show me my sin, crying, fighting alone and calling on Him to wake up. Some days I prayed and felt nothing at all, no emotion and no insight, only silence, and I was exhausted. Truthfully, there were more of those silent days, and that was the hardest part.

Then I saw my sin… and after that my family's sin… and humanity's sin… Every sin I had thought had nothing to do with me turned out to be mine. And I was filled with gratitude for how precious, holy, and gracious the blood of Jesus is.

"God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).

When I see how great a sinner I am, I can't even love myself. But Jesus died in our place. God loved us so much that He gave up His own Son. It is a love I can't explain.

I came to understand how holy God is. God is truly just, and His justice is perfect, never leaning to one side, and that filled me with gratitude. We would have to die under that justice, but Jesus covered us with His love on the cross, and I came to know that love more and be more thankful for it. Every day I put myself to death again and again, and I don't stop trying to become more like Jesus, because I truly want to know God more and I am grateful for Jesus's love. I can't tell you how thankful I am that He showed me there is nothing I can do on my own. And I am thankful that I get to stand beside Him as a witness to what He is doing.

Anna's Story

Age 41

I have always been physically healthy. I have good stamina, I recover quickly, and I have rarely struggled with illness. Yet despite being healthy on the outside, I was fighting a battle that no one could see. For years, I was tormented by thoughts I simply could not control. They came day after day, relentlessly.

Some days my heart was consumed with hatred, jealousy, and envy. Other days my mind was filled with judgment, criticism, and condemnation toward others. Once those thoughts began, they seemed impossible to stop. They built on one another until they ended in bitterness, or even hatred. Only then would the cycle end, until it started all over again. What made it more painful was that the people I was thinking about had done nothing wrong to me. They had not hurt me, betrayed me, or treated me unfairly. Yet I kept entertaining these sinful thoughts over and over.

As a child of God, I could not understand how my heart could hold such darkness. I felt ashamed before the Lord and deeply grieved that I kept offending Him. Time after time, I came before God in tears, confessed my sins, repented sincerely, and promised I would never fall into them again. But whenever another difficult situation arose, I was trapped in the same cycle: envy, jealousy, hatred, judgment, condemnation, repentance, another promise to change. I lost count of how many times I repeated it. It was exhausting. I desperately wanted to be free, yet no matter how hard I tried, I always returned to the same place.

As a registered nurse for more than ten years, I cared for many patients who struggled with emotional and mental health issues. I saw countless people receive counseling and psychiatric treatment. Those services can certainly help many people, but I also saw how difficult it was to reach the deepest root of the problem. So I knew my struggle could not be solved by human effort alone. Still, I turned inward. I constantly examined myself, searching for the source of my sin, and whenever I failed, I became my own harshest judge. I criticized myself, punished myself emotionally, and demanded that I do better. Instead of bringing freedom, my self-condemnation only wounded my soul more. It produced discouragement, hopelessness, self-hatred, shame, unbelief, and doubt. The harder I fought in my own strength, the more defeated I became.

Eventually, I realized this was no longer just a repeated habit of sin. It felt as though I was being held captive by a force far greater than my own will, a power that kept pulling me back into the same darkness no matter how desperately I wanted to escape. I carried this burden almost completely alone. Other than a few trusted spiritual leaders, I felt I could not tell anyone, because I believed this battle was deeply spiritual.

One day, completely overwhelmed, I opened my heart to a close Christian friend. I told her how miserable I was and how much I wanted freedom from these sinful thoughts. Her response caught me off guard. She said, "That's what you're so troubled about? You're upset because you keep sinning? I guess your life must be pretty comfortable if that's your biggest concern." I know she did not mean to hurt me, but I felt completely misunderstood. I walked away thinking, "There is no one around me who truly understands what I'm going through." I could not keep living this way. My family and I made the difficult decision to leave our church to find someone who could give us genuine spiritual guidance and help.

Looking back, I can see that God was already preparing the way. During this season He led us to Pastor Josh, who welcomed us with compassion, listened patiently to our pain, and gently guided us into a ministry of healing. I had no idea that God was about to begin one of the greatest works of restoration in my life.

Over several healing sessions, meetings of confession, repentance, and prayer led by a ministry leader, God began restoring me little by little. It was not an overnight miracle. He patiently led me through a journey, revealing what had been hidden deep in my heart and teaching me to bring everything into His light. One of the most powerful moments came as I honestly confessed my sins before God. As I acknowledged them without excuse and brought them to Him in sincere repentance, I experienced a freedom I had never known. During times of prayer and inner healing, I felt the greatest release from the burden of sin. I longed to repent completely and leave nothing hidden. Again and again I prayed, "Lord, please reveal anything in my heart that still needs to be surrendered to You. Show me every sin that I need to confess." Then something remarkable began to happen. The thoughts that had controlled me for so many years gradually lost their grip. For the first time in a very long time, I had days when I was no longer held captive by that endless cycle.

During one of my times of prayer, the Lord impressed something very clearly on my heart: "Desire what is good. Seek what is good. Pursue what is good." Those words became a new direction for my life. Rather than constantly focusing on the darkness within me, I learned to fix my eyes on His goodness. He was not only removing what was sinful. He was filling my heart with what is holy.

As the healing continued, I became convinced that there truly had been spiritual forces holding me in bondage. I did not reach that conclusion because someone told me to. I recognized it because, as those bondages were broken, the oppression that had weighed on me for years simply disappeared. Its absence became undeniable evidence of the freedom Christ had given me.

During some of the healing sessions, the ministry leader prayed with authority in the name of Jesus and commanded every unclean spirit to leave. As this happened, I experienced something I could not explain naturally. A strong resistance rose up within me, and thoughts flooded my mind: "I don't want to hear this anymore. Make it stop. This is unbearable." Yet at the very same time, the deepest desire of my own heart was completely different. I had come because I desperately wanted Jesus to heal me. That conflict showed me that those resisting thoughts did not reflect the true desire of my heart. During prayer I also experienced repeated coughing, gagging, and the release of thick saliva and mucus. Before that healing session, I had prayed a very simple prayer: "Lord, if there is anything that needs to leave me, please let it leave in whatever way You choose. Whether through tears, sighs, coughing, yawning, sweat, or anything else, let me recognize that You are at work." I witnessed God answering that prayer in ways I had never expected.

At first, I was only seeking freedom from my sinful thoughts. But God was doing much more. He was revealing His heart. As He exposed the depth of my sinfulness, I began to understand the immeasurable depth of His grace. My healing was not something I had earned through enough repentance or enough tears. It was a gift. For the first time, I truly understood how deeply my Heavenly Father loves me. He was not waiting for me to become perfect before drawing me near. He had been pursuing me all along, and even in the middle of my failures and my shame, His love had never changed.

The way I saw myself began to change. For so many years I had defined myself by my failures and believed that my repeated sins were my identity. But God showed me that my identity was rooted not in my weakness but in His love. I was His beloved child. That truth brought healing to places in my heart I did not even know were wounded. He also changed the way I looked at other people. For years I had viewed them through comparison, jealousy, criticism, and judgment, measuring them against myself and often finding reasons to condemn them. But as I experienced God's mercy, I could no longer look at people the same way. I began to see them through His eyes. Every person is precious in the sight of God, because every person bears His image and is someone for whom Christ gave His life.

Two passages of Scripture became anchors for my soul. The first was Isaiah 43:19: "Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert." The Lord gave me this verse years before my healing, and for a long time I wondered, "Lord, what is this new thing You are preparing?" Looking back, I believe one of the greatest "new things" He has done in my life was not changing my circumstances. It was spiritual healing. The second was Matthew 6:33: "But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." I told the Lord, "If You truly set me free, I want the rest of my life to be centered on seeking Your Kingdom and Your righteousness above everything else." That prayer has become the direction of my life.

If you are waiting for healing, there is hope. Our lives are far too precious to remain bound by fear, shame, guilt, bitterness, or sin. True healing is much more than the removal of pain. It is the restoration of our relationship with God. Healing is not the destination. It is the doorway. If you find yourself fighting a battle that no one else can see, please do not give up. Keep seeking Him. Cry out to Him. The Lord never turns away those who sincerely seek His help. I waited much longer than I wanted to, but He answered at exactly the right time. His timing was never late.

I am not sharing my testimony to persuade anyone. I am sharing it because I have personally experienced the mercy and faithfulness of God. My prayer is that, through my story, you would hear not my voice but His invitation. If He could heal someone like me, He can heal you too. To God alone be all the glory.

Eric's Story

Age 39

I struggled with lust and pornography from my teenage years. I think it started when I watched too much TV and played too many video games, particularly Japanese anime and video games with suggestive sexual themes. I became so addicted that I kept my own stash of digital pornography on my computer, and I masturbated to it to relieve the stress of everyday life. I did it often, about two to three times a week. I don't drink alcohol, smoke, or binge-watch TV like other people do, but pornography was my way of escaping the daily stress of life.

Growing up in a Catholic household, I knew pornography was wrong. I acknowledged that it was a sin and that God was not pleased with me when I did it. After I masturbated, I felt so guilty that I thought I was the worst person out there. It also affected my marriage. Hannah knew I was looking at pornography. Once, I asked her to hold me accountable and to pray for me, but we could not keep that up. She told me she was offended that I looked at other women in a sexual way. I felt bad about my sin. I promised myself I would be more disciplined and control myself, but I still could not stop. When the urge came, I felt I had no choice but to give in, because resisting meant spending more time in a sexual trance, which I believed could lead me to worse sins. The only way to end it was to look at pornography, masturbate, and give myself that temporary relief.

For many years I prayed and asked God to help me stop, because I knew that if I kept doing this, I would go to hell. But my prayers were not effective, and I did the same thing again. Sometimes I prayed as an automatic reaction after relieving myself. I felt trapped. I even challenged God: "You are powerful and loving. Why aren't You helping me with this problem?" I didn't get an answer. Over time I gave up fighting, and I even doubted that God was real. I had known Pastor Josh for a long time. We were coworkers, both working as pharmacists, and I was a member of Anointing Church, where he served. Even after I started Bible study with him and grew closer to Jesus Christ, I continued this habit.

One day, Pastor Josh talked to me at church because Hannah had missed Sunday worship. As he prayed over me, asking God for guidance for our family, I had an inkling in my heart to confess this secret sin to him. I knew that confessing sin is necessary for a Christian. I said, "I think the Holy Spirit wants me to confess my sins to you," and I confessed my sin of pornography and masturbation.

Pastor Josh had also had a radical encounter with God. He told me that before that encounter, he would have told me to be more disciplined and to pray more to God for healing. But now he gave me a totally different answer. He said, "You are afflicted by evil spirits, and the only way you can be healed is through God's deliverance."

Pastor Josh gave me a summary of how deliverance, prayer in Jesus' name commanding evil spirits to leave a person, works, and he explained the existence of evil spirits and the spiritual realm. But I had a lot of doubts. I had heard of demonic possession in documentaries and seen it in previews of popular scary movies, but I thought those were works of fiction. I had even heard of actual exorcisms in churches, though I had never seen one. I believed in evil spirits no more than I believed in ghosts, witches, haunted houses, ghouls, and monsters.

I did believe a little in the conscience. At Catholic school in elementary school, I had learned the idea that angels tell your conscience to do good things while demons tell it to do bad things. But I felt this was an oversimplified and, for the most part, farfetched view of the mind.

Pastor Josh invited me to a deliverance session. He asked me to confess any other sins that might be contributing to this habit, and in addition to lust I confessed my laziness. I thought laziness was also my way of relieving myself, which led me to look at pornography and masturbate. I agreed to the session.

On a Saturday in December 2025, in a quiet room of Anointing Church overlooking the sanctuary, Pastor Josh performed the deliverance. We prayed for the presence of the Holy Spirit, and I confessed my sins of lust, pornography, masturbation, and laziness. Then Pastor Josh laid his hands on my head and cast out the demons.

I didn't know what to expect, and I was genuinely curious whether something would happen. I had asked beforehand what I should feel, but Pastor Josh told me to relax and let everything be. As he prayed and cast out the demons, I didn't feel much. I felt a bit cold in the room, which could have been a coincidence, since it was December. When he prayed to cast out the demons of lust, I saw a subtle image in my head of lewd, pornographic images. When he prayed to cast out the demon of laziness, I felt a little sleepy. Other than that, I didn't feel much.

Pastor Josh said he could feel the evil spirits in me, but that they would not budge. He said they did not want to leave because they had a binding contract with me that they were welcome inside me. So the session ended.

I had doubts. Did Pastor Josh really feel the demons inside me, or was he just saying that? Was all of this real? At the same time, I genuinely wanted the deliverance to work, because I was tired of living in this sin.

Emotionally, I was frustrated. I wondered what had happened. Did God not want me to be healed? Or did He not believe I was sincere? Pastor Josh was also baffled, and he prayed to God about it. The following day, Sunday, he told me that laziness is not just the absence of activity but having the wrong priority. I was not prioritizing the right things.

I had to contemplate this deeply. What was the wrong priority in my life? At that time I was obsessed with looking at the travel pictures on my phone. Not pornography, not social media, just the pictures I took during our travels, of places like the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Canyon, and many other famous landmarks.

I asked Pastor Josh, "Is it sinful to look at my pictures like this?" He said that anything that comes before God is sin. It is idolatry. I thought, "I'm just looking at my pictures. People look at their pictures all the time. How is that sinful?" But for me this was different, because I looked at these pictures for hours, even to relieve my stress.

I prayed and asked God to reveal what was wrong with me. I had only just learned how to listen to God's voice and accept His message without my own biases. That same day, I received a message from God: I was looking at these pictures because of something deeper. I was seeking validation from my accomplishments, perhaps because of the emotional abandonment I went through growing up. I felt left out by my parents, by my brothers, and by my classmates in school. Looking at the pictures was not itself the sin. It stemmed from pride and the need to be recognized. I also posted these pictures on Instagram because I wanted to show other people that I was good and that I had accomplished something, which gave me an attitude that I did not want to admit. I wanted people to be jealous of me and to recognize that I had accomplished more than they had.

I also admitted that this was a response to people who had told me I was alone and that I should travel, and that if I didn't, I was some kind of outcast. I didn't want to be labeled an outcast, so I posted these pictures to show people I wasn't one. When my cousins told me to travel, that is exactly what I did. Not only that, I made it my life's purpose to surpass them in the places I had visited, to show them I was better than them and not an outcast.

My assessment of my reflection was that I was committing not just lust and laziness but also pride, jealousy, and idolatry.

I still struggled with masturbation. Pastor Josh told me that when I had lustful thoughts, I should pray and cast out the demons in Jesus' name. He even told me to call him whenever these attacks came, and he would pray for me. I called him two or three times. He prayed for me to cast out the demons of lust, but nothing happened. I still fell into the same sin.

One time when I called, he prayed for me over the phone and told me to repeat the phrase, "Father God, You are my Lord." Surprisingly, I could not say these seemingly easy words. I cried because I couldn't say them. I felt deep in my heart that I was holding on to something, and that if I said these words, I would have to renounce it. I didn't want to do that.

Many months passed, and Pastor Josh went to Korea for ministry. When he came back, I told him that nothing was working and that I was still in bondage to sin. I was starting to think that God either didn't care about me or was not powerful enough to heal me of my sin. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

But Pastor Josh told me he would not give up praying for me. He said God had told him He would heal me. I didn't believe that, because I didn't feel any different.

One day that summer, my parents invited me to attend St. Peter's, a Roman Catholic church, to commemorate my grandfather who had passed away. I agreed, and I messaged Pastor Josh that I would spend the Sabbath (Sunday) at St. Peter's instead of Anointing Church.

Pastor Josh messaged me: "What is your priority?"

I responded that I was keeping the Sabbath by going to praise God at St. Peter's. I was still praying, and Jesus Christ is in the Catholic church too. Why couldn't I spend my Sabbath there?

He eventually called me and said he felt the demons were afflicting me, because I was approaching this with the wrong heart. I said I would stick to my decision. I didn't see the difference between going to Anointing Church and going to St. Peter's.

What Pastor Josh didn't know was that the mass at St. Peter's was at 10:30 a.m., the service at Anointing Church was at 1:30 p.m., and I had work at 3:30 p.m. So I could have done both. But I would rather go to St. Peter's, which fulfilled my Sabbath commitment and still gave me time to rest before work in the afternoon. So I decided to stick with it.

But by the end of the day, I was bothered. Should I go to Anointing Church after all? I had to decide soon, because I needed to prepare for the next day. In the end, I decided to go to both. Pastor Josh was surprised when I showed up at Anointing Church. I cried before the service, saying I didn't want to disappoint God. I attended the service and went to work afterward. Surprisingly, I still had time to pray after work.

The following day, Monday, I felt different. I didn't have the urge to look at pornography. I wanted to pray, and I wanted to finish my household chores. I told my wife I felt different. Long story short, I never looked at pornography again from that point on. I waited for days, watching to see whether I really would, and I never went back. Then I realized that God had fulfilled His promise to heal me. There was no deliverance session, just healing. It felt like a switch in the back of my spirit had been flipped. God did this so easily, when my whole lifetime of effort and self-discipline could not match it. God's healing was real, and for the first time in my life I felt that God was more real than ever.

This healing reminded me of the faith of the centurion in Matthew 8. A Roman centurion, a Gentile, asked Jesus to heal his sick servant, and Jesus was about to go to his house to heal him. But the centurion replied, "Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed." Jesus was amazed by the centurion's faith, and the servant was healed instantly, from a distance. There was no formal deliverance and no ritual. It was just pure faith.

I thank You, Lord, for this amazing healing and experience. For the first time in my life, I felt God's healing to be more real than before.

Going back to the start of 2026, Pastor Josh, who had served at Anointing Church, started Ark Church, which Hannah and I are part of. We still used the same building as Anointing Church, but we were to act as a separate church. Pastor Josh said he was obeying God's command in starting this new church.

One thing Pastor Josh said the new church would include was a healing ministry. At that time I did not know what that meant, although he shared a packet with us on the steps of how it would work.

Pastor Josh invited Hannah and me to start the healing ministry as a couple. I was hesitant because I didn't know what to expect. Although I had experienced God's deliverance from the sin of pornography, I still had a lot of questions. How do I get healed? How is this different from my deliverance? If I do get healed, how do I stay healed? I felt I would have to work hard to maintain my healing, and I didn't want to work hard.

Pastor Josh said this healing ministry was holistic, meaning it would heal me as a whole person: searching for open doors in my heart (the places that gave evil spirits a way in), identifying the demons, doing focused healing, and casting out the demons. It would include five sessions. The first was the interview, the second was Sins of the Forefathers and Resulting Curses, the third was Ungodly Beliefs, the fourth was Inner Healing, and the fifth was Deliverance. He also told me that being healed did not mean I would never sin again. I would still sin, but I would not be bound by sinful desires and sinful habits.

Although I had been healed of the sin of pornography, I still struggled with other sins: fear, anxiety, impatience, doubt, and masturbation. Yes, I was still masturbating, without pornography. Hannah and I took turns caring for Lily, so we had little time for each other or for intimacy. We also had arguments that needed healing in their own right, and we were slowly drifting apart. Because I had not been fully healed of lust, I doubted whether a full, holistic healing was possible.

Fear and anxiety came automatically. I didn't have to think about it. I just fell for it. I had struggled with this since puberty. I developed social anxiety when I started high school, with sweaty palms in social settings, and I did not have many friends. When I faced life-altering decisions, like going to college and living in the dorms, I was so anxious that I could not sleep properly for days beforehand. No amount of willpower could overcome these things. I believed that fear and anxiety were the reason I had been looking at pornography in the first place. In short, fear and anxiety were stronger sins than pornography.

I had my doubts, and I told Pastor Josh I would consult Hannah. She was very doubtful and did not want to take part, because she was not ready. After a few weeks, Pastor Josh invited me again. I told him Hannah was not ready and I could not come to the healing ministry without her. He said I didn't have to come with her. I could go by myself.

I said again that I was not ready. I thought I didn't have the discipline to work out my sins, that I was too messed up to be healed, and that I didn't feel like working hard to keep up my healing. Pastor Josh told me I didn't have to work out my life before coming to the healing. I could go to God for healing as I was, and God would take care of the rest.

Pastor Josh encouraged me. He told me that when God called him to start Ark Church, he had told God he was not ready. Despite lacking money, resources, and manpower, he obeyed and submitted to God for guidance.

I still had doubts, but I reluctantly said yes. I thought of it as something I had to do as part of the church. Pastor Josh also exhorted Hannah and me for putting travel before God. I was a bit offended at the time, but in my heart it made sense. Even if I had the will to put God first, I didn't know how.

Since I worked evenings, I scheduled the five sessions on my days off, alternating Thursdays and Tuesdays. The first step was the application, which was long and took me almost an hour to fill out. It took willpower, because I was not interested in going through the process. The interview was like filling out a medical history form at a doctor's office, but it covered my spiritual background, my family background, and the sins I struggled with. The first session was mostly putting all this information together.

I learned a few key points in this session. I needed to forgive those who had offended me, just as God forgives me of my sins. This involved three steps: asking forgiveness from God (the vertical aspect), forgiving others (the horizontal aspect), and forgiving myself (the inward aspect). I also learned that I needed the will to put myself away from temptations, including getting rid of addictive materials such as media and worldly things. Fortunately for me, I was open-minded enough to agree to get rid of worldly things, which I could not do before my first deliverance.

Another thing I learned was to acknowledge the existence of the spiritual realm. Evil spirits and demons are real, and they were the ones giving me negative thoughts, instilling ungodly beliefs, and causing me to sin. The only way to fight them was to cast them out in Jesus' name. I had tried this before, but it did not seem to work on my anxiety and fear. But Pastor Josh continued praying and casting out the demons, and God would work with me in the process. I agreed.

Lastly, I had to exercise my faith throughout the process. I had a lot of doubts and had to fight against them. When doubt came, I would rebuke the spirit of doubt and cast it out in Jesus' name. Faith was probably the most important part of the healing process. Without it, the healing might not come.

After the session, Pastor Josh instructed me to read a packet about the sins of the forefathers. He also told me to gather as much information as I could about my family's sins, including those of my grandparents. I wanted to prove myself this time and show that I was actively participating in my faith, so I decided to meet with my parents and ask them.

I was nervous. I saw this as a way to talk to my parents about God, and I didn't know how to approach it. I prayed to the Holy Spirit for guidance, but I forced myself to believe it was something I had to do. I met up with my parents and told them about the healing ministry. I was met with doubt and mockery. They asked why I had to go through this, and my answer was simple: I was anxious. My mom said, "You guys don't know what you're doing? You don't need to go through this. All you have to do is pray to God and ask for strength." My dad said that in all his years he never had to feel anxious, even though he went through many hardships in life. The conversation was not easy. I had to end it quickly, without getting the information I needed.

I was sad about this conversation. One day I even called out from work because of the stress of it and of work. But Pastor Josh called me and encouraged me, saying that I had a whole church praying for me and was not on my own.

I finished the packet, and we went through the second session, Sins of the Forefathers and Resulting Curses. In this session, we went over the sins running through the family. I learned the term iniquity, which is the tendency of people to sin because of the sins of their forefathers.

In this session I confessed the sins of rage, impatience, and emotional abandonment. Rage and impatience were the most common culprits, and they ran deeply in my mom and my second brother. We prayed over these sins, and I forgave my parents, my brothers, my ancestors, and even myself. By the end of the session I felt lighter, but more or less the same as before.

The third session was Ungodly Beliefs. I read a packet about ungodly beliefs and made a list of the ones I struggled with. They included the belief that God didn't love me, or that He loved selectively, only certain people. They also included the belief that God didn't want me healed. I learned that these lies come from the devil and are instilled in us through various means: family, school, social media, and cultural expectations. The goal of this session was to replace these ungodly beliefs with godly ones.

One of the two pivotal moments of the healing happened during this session. When I listed the ungodly belief that God didn't love me because He didn't care about my healing, I learned that God loves me the way I love my daughter, Lily. God loves me not because of my past, my talents, or what I have accomplished, but because of who I am to Him. I am a child of God, and God loves His children no matter what they accomplish.

When Pastor Josh prayed for me to reject this lie and accept God's truth, I cried. All this time I had thought I needed to perform to be seen by others, that I needed to do certain things, rituals, and church activities to be loved by God. Accepting this truth totally changed the way I think. I accepted that God loves me as I am, and in response to His love I obey Him and take part in church activities, rituals, and so on, not the other way around. I went on to reject the other lies and included them in my daily prayer.

I held on to an important verse: "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:38–39). This verse touched my heart, and I wanted to be close to God because of this realization.

The fourth session was Inner Healing. We spent most of it praying over my past trauma and the emotional abandonment I experienced from my parents and siblings, focusing heavily on forgiving those who caused these wounds and letting go of bitterness. Forgiving people made me feel lighter and more joyful, but I still struggled with my sins.

The last session was Deliverance. Pastor Josh told me this was the most important step. He recommended that I pray the Prayer of the Holy Spirit every day to prepare for it, a guided prayer he gave me for that purpose. I had been in a deliverance session before, and although I didn't experience anything in that session, I did experience deliverance outside of a formal session. As Pastor Josh instructed, I prayed the Prayer of the Holy Spirit daily leading up to the deliverance session.

The day of the deliverance session came, and I was ready. The session was online. Together we prayed for the presence of the Holy Spirit, and Pastor Josh cast out the demons. Nothing happened. Pastor Josh ended the session, and I was left wondering what had happened. I had experienced a deliverance before, so I knew this was real. But now I was stuck with a question: why didn't God deliver me this time?

I felt rejected. I had done everything Pastor Josh instructed, and I felt that I wanted this enough that God should grant my prayer. I felt that God didn't care about my healing. But Pastor Josh said we should do the deliverance in person, in church, where he could lay his hands on me and pray for me. We scheduled the next session at church, but because of work and church schedule conflicts, we couldn't do it in the next two weeks. The week after that, I had a family trip to England. By then I didn't want to hope for a deliverance, because there had been too many interruptions.

A week after I returned from England, Pastor Josh called to check on me. He recommended that I read The Bondage Breaker by Neil Anderson. At that point I didn't believe deliverance would work on me, but I figured I might as well read the book. It was surprisingly easy to read, though I don't usually read books. It made sense in many parts, and nothing in particular stood out to me. What stuck with me was that many people had been delivered from much bigger sins than mine. Because of this, I felt even more left out.

A week after I finished the book, I was overwhelmed with anxiety and fear stemming from a car accident at the beginning of the previous year. Coincidentally, Pastor Josh called to check on me, and I told him how I felt. I said my sins were too strong to overcome. God could probably heal me, but He didn't care whether I got healed, and that was why the deliverance didn't work.

Pastor Josh told me to rebuke these thoughts, because they were coming from the enemy. I cast out the demons in Jesus' name, but it was not working. Then came the second pivotal moment of the healing. One thing I struggled with was the belief that God would eventually stop forgiving me for my habitual sin, because I could not stop offending Him. I asked Pastor Josh whether God would continue to forgive me even though I was committing the same sins. He said God would continue to forgive me, because God could see the orientation of my heart, and that in the process God would work and heal me.

That was an epiphany for me. I still held an ungodly belief of self-condemnation. In light of God's mercy and patience, my response would be to try harder to stop the habitual sin and to work with God to be free of it. I looked up a Bible verse about this: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:1–2). I was happy that God was infinitely patient, merciful, and loving toward me, and that I could keep working hard to be free of that sin. If I fell into it again, I would remember this truth and persist in fighting the evil spirits until I was free.

Two days later, I felt unusually different. I felt lighter. I felt like doing chores and cleaning up the house, and I felt like stopping what I was doing to worship God. So I did. While I was folding clothes, I stopped and prayed to God, and I did it with a genuine heart. I was so happy that I could not explain it. At work I invited one of our techs to a Bible study. At the end of my shift I helped a coworker with her assignment twice, although I didn't have to, and it took enough of my time that I left work half an hour late.

I called Pastor Josh the following day and told him how I felt. It was a perplexing feeling. I called it a spiritual high, like being spiritually drunk. Pastor Josh was happy for me. I even asked him how I could pray longer, and he encouraged me to ask the Holy Spirit for the gift of tongues. I didn't know if this was the healing we had been waiting for. One thing was certain: God's presence was in me, and it was an intoxicating feeling.

But despite what I felt, Pastor Josh said I was not fully healed yet. He explained that the demons had been severely weakened and that the Holy Spirit had taken a larger part of me, which was why I felt this spiritual high. He still wanted to schedule a pre-deliverance session (a preparation session) that Saturday, and the deliverance the next day, Sunday, after worship. I was so filled with joy that I had no reason to refuse.

That Sunday, the day of the formal deliverance in the sanctuary of Anointing Church, was the most supernatural experience I have ever had. I want to describe it with as many facts and as little interpretation as I can. As Pastor Josh prayed over me and commanded the spirits to leave, I cried and screamed for about an hour. I screamed "No!" and "Why?" and "Ohhhh!" Picture being tortured, except without feeling physical pain. My cries and screams were similar to the media portrayal of souls in hell being tortured. Then I had to spit and sneeze a lot of fluid into a plastic bag, as if I had severe congestion or pneumonia. I was not sick or congested at the time. At one point Pastor Josh laid his hand on my head, praying in tongues, and I looked straight at his left eye. Within about five seconds I cried louder and louder, to the top of my lungs, "Aaaah!" and eventually spat something out. The reaction to the speaking in tongues was astounding.

Pastor Josh told me to loosen my control and let things be. When I loosened my control, all these things happened. But I felt that I could still control my reaction if I wanted to. While I was crying, Pastor Josh told me to verbally renounce the evil spirits. I said, "Spirit of Lust, depart from me, in Jesus' name," and eventually spat something out. I could still exercise my will throughout the process. I had thought I would be in a trance, or under anesthesia as in an operation. I was not. I was fully awake the whole time, and I could still judge time and place.

After the deliverance, my upper back hurt from the yelling and crying. If a nurse asked me for my pain scale, I would say 4 out of 10. The physical pain continued until noon the following day.

But the following day, I felt great spiritually. I had no urge to sin, and I had an urge to pray. I didn't have the urge to look at social media or do mindless entertainment like I used to. At the same time, I had temptations. I felt the enemy tempting me to relax and take it easy, telling me I didn't have to pray and do God's work, that I had done a good job through the healing process and it was time to take a break. The enemy was also tempting me to call out from work because of the pain in my upper back.

The deliverance was a supernatural experience for me, but it was also an exercise of the will. I retained control. It was still up to me to decide whether to expel the demons, and it was up to me to turn to God, just as I had before I started the healing process. I had had an inkling that once I was healed, I could go on autopilot and the Holy Spirit would carry me. It was not so. What Jesus said still holds true: "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23).

After the deliverance, I felt closer to God than before. For the next forty days I continued to pray against the ungodly beliefs and cast out the demons. From this time on, I could pray every day without giving in to distractions. I am convinced of God's love, of His faithfulness to keep His Word, and that He still works in my daily life, instead of being a distant supreme being who doesn't care about people's lives.

I also genuinely cared for souls. I followed up with some friends to join our worship, and I wanted to share my experience with others, especially a friend whose family was afflicted by mental, emotional, physical, and financial attacks. At work I was criticized for making a mistake, but I did not get offended like I used to. I could control my sexual desire and my impatience, and I could pray out loud with a better connection with the Holy Spirit.

I also believe in the importance of intercessory prayer. I struggled with habitual sins and my individual prayers did not work, but after I confessed my sins to Pastor Josh and other believers prayed for me, I was eventually released from them. This was a life-altering experience for me, because I used to think intercession was something we did to care for others, and that it might or might not work. From this point on, I take intercession seriously, because another person's life can change through my prayers for that person.

The healing was a combination of emotional, relational, and spiritual. I am healed spiritually because I no longer have the compulsion to sin like I used to, and I can resist the urge to sin much more strongly. I can also control my irrational fear, worry, and anxiety, which has made me more emotionally stable. And I feel my healing has restored my relationship with my wife, with other people, and with God.

I learned many things on this journey. I learned that God is a loving God who wants His children to be healed from the chains of sin. I learned that He is faithful: if He says He will do something, He will do it and fulfill it in His time. I also learned that He is persistent. He does not give up on His children, especially those who seek Him.

The experience changed how I minister to others. I can teach others specific verses and stories in the Bible, but I can also tell them about my struggle with sin and how God healed me and didn't give up on me. My testimony is a more personal part of ministry that I think other people can relate to more easily than theology, especially people who have the same struggles I had.

Faith was a very important part of the healing process. If I hadn't believed God could heal me, I don't think the healing would have come. I had several doubts, but a small part of me still believed, and God was able to work on the small faith that was left in me. Also, I didn't think I needed healing when Pastor Josh invited me into the healing process, and I didn't know how to prepare for something like this. He simply said, "Go to Jesus as you are." And so I did.

Although I still find myself sinning here and there, I am no longer bound by anxiety and fear like I used to be. I pray that my healing will encourage others who are struggling as I did to come to Jesus for healing. Jesus is real, and His healing is real.

But there is still work for me to do. I have to maintain the healing. At first I saw it as something I had to maintain, but now I realize I cannot do it by self-discipline alone. I keep a verse in mind: "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). I need Jesus every day, and I need to connect with the Holy Spirit every day to keep my healing.

At this time, Hannah decided to take part in the healing ministry as well. Although it is still early in the process, I can already see a positive change in her, and I feel the healing coming to her and into our marriage. I am starting to feel close to Hannah again, and she is starting to show me the affection she used to show before we got married.

This journey was full of ups and downs, victories and defeats, regret, fear, joy, and hope. But God worked on me in unexpected ways. I want to encourage those who are struggling and want to seek Jesus for healing not to give up on God. God heals based on faith and also in His time. Our job is to believe in Him, to obey Him when He gives specific instructions, and to be part of a church that genuinely prays for those who need healing. Pastor Josh was on point with his ministry. I could not have reached this point without his persistence and prayers. For others, I would recommend a minister like Pastor Josh, who truly cares for souls and wants people to be healed.

My prayer is that many more like me will find deliverance in God and know that God is a loving God who will never abandon His children.