Before Greatness, God will always want to heal your past hurts and give you a clean heart. A Heart of Flesh.
It was in this season of this time, whenever I read the Bible, I happened to read this verse repeatedly,
Ezekiel 11:19 And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.
Ezekiel 36:26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
Even from my Christian Books like “The Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren. This passage was highlighted
Rick says, “If a jeweller’s hammer isn’t strong enough to chip off our rough edges, God will use a sledgehammer. If we’re really stubborn, he uses a jackhammer. He will use whatever it takes. Every problem is a character-building opportunity, and the more difficult it is, the greater the potential for building spiritual muscle and moral fiber.” What God does is chip off everything that doesn’t look like Christ. Also remember that circumstances don’t last if we learn the lesson but character lasts for eternity.
And then another story:
Once a family bought a house, and in front of that lawn, there, a patch of earth will float up, making it uneven with the rest of the landscape of the lawn. The man of the house, would try to maintain the lawn, by digging, putting fertilisers and give his best to have that patch of earth to be aligned with the rest of the lawn landscape. However, nothing works!
So he went to seek help from an older gardener, the gardener with his experience said: “There must be something underneath this patch of lawn, you have to dig deeper and see what is making it uneven. So the man went back to his lawn with his spade, and started to dig and dig. When he dug, out came an old tyre that was buried by the former homeowner, then again he dug, out came bundles of plastic trash. After many hours of digging, he discovered a lot of old things being buried, he is tired and wanted to give up. But the gardener advice him, “Unless you dig until this hole is empty, then you will have a beautiful and even lawn.
The man took days to dig and dig, until every trash was dug out and lastly, an old plastic doll was taken out from the deep hole. His work was finished and he puts back the soil and added new soil into the hole and enjoyed an even and beautiful landscaped lawn.
Initially, I felt God was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t understand. I only knew He wanted to clean my heart. At that time (I was 19), I only had two emotions, being sad or suddenly go outraged on petty stuff. I couldn’t be happy or have compassion towards people who might be going through tough times.
My Heart was solid hard.
One day, I was introduced by my covenant friend to a place called Brisbane Healing Room, my cousin who was diagnosed with cancer in Malaysia, was in his 2nd stage and my mom asked me to pray for healing over his condition.
When I arrived into their ministry room, three ladies were there waiting for me. They open up the ministering time with words of prayer. Then one of them asked: “What can we do for you today?” I shared about my cousin condition, and we all prayed a prayer of healing over him.
Then, one of the intercessors shared: “Before you came in, we received a vision about 2 toys (a blue and a red) were fighting, it seems your spirit and your flesh is fighting, God wanted to grow you, but something in the past happened and it is stopping you from going deeper in the Lord, is there something you wanted to share with us?”
At first, I couldn’t think of anything. So the intercessors suggested I dig deeper into my childhood memory. I went back into my childhood memory, and came back out.
Then I reluctantly shared with them, something that I have kept really tightly about my past, that I did not want anyone to know – Because it was too shameful.
When I was young, I was being bullied by my classmates and friends and the teachers always punish me for petty stuff. For instance, once I forgot to bring my pencil, I was being punished by standing in front of the classroom for every one of my classmates to see, but the next day another of my classmate forgot to bring his pencil, with the same teacher, instead of punishing him, helped him sharpened a pencil she had and passed to him with a smile, I was just 6 years old – from there onwards I always had this perception that God hates me, because the kindergarten that I attended was a Christian school.
At a young age, my parents were very strict on my grades. If I get less than their expectation, I will get canned, but this does not happen to my siblings, only I was punished. Then this kind of abusive treatment accelerate, I was being put into a tuition center, the teacher would canned harshly to whoever her students did not hit the desired grade she assigned to each of her students. Then, there were a few times, she will take off the clothes of her students (boys or girls were being treated the same) and asked them to stand in public places to bring shame on them, because they did not get the assigned grade she gave them.
I was never publicly shamed in this extreme treatment (though I was also canned), but the whole experience of being exposed to nudity at a young age, was really overwhelming for my young little soul to accept. I even called that tuition center, ‘Hell on Earth’, because this teacher is insane and she has this evil desire to see her students hurt, shamed and broken. I have even seen how she used lighter to burn the skin of her students (because the parents of the student told her, she was playing with fire at home).
This part of the memory created ‘Great Fear’ in me and also cultivated a bad habit of pleasing people wherever I go, I would just ‘Fake It’ whenever I don’t feel comfortable but wanted to be accepted.
While sharing that part of my childhood memory, the three intercessors said, God wanted to redeem that part of my brokenness and gives me new hope for the future, and I do not have to carry fear anymore or I have to fear anything, because Jesus is the King of my Life.
Then I shared with them my wrong perspective of God to them:“God might have send those people to punish me to teach me lesson.” (This kind of thinking has always lingered in my mind).
After hearing my statement, three of the intercessors look at each other, and then the leader took my hands and say: “God, will never use abusive action to punish His people in this way, He is kind and gentle and He is always good. There are people in this world that are evil, and God will never use them to punish you in this way, it is never His Will and it is also against His Nature.”
Then, they lead me through a prayer of forgiveness towards my parents, the teachers in the past and asked me to willingly pass over my painful experience to God, and let Him be the Righteous Judge over the situation. As for me, they prayed that I will choose to look to God and not be distracted by anger and shame.
After the whole healing room session, I thought I would be ok.
Far from that, apparently after that session, something painful in me was awaken, I felt my heart was like a bag being open and emptied uncontrollably. After a few days, all a sudden I would suddenly have one of the painful memory float out and I had to remember the shameful event emotionally, and I would become angry and depressed, until the emotion passed.
On and on again, I would suddenly cry over a certain thing when another bad memory from my past float out. I shared this controllable emotion with my covenant friend, Linda, she shared with me that, emotional healing takes time, its really ugly and might make us miserably in the first place, but continue to rely on God’s strength to forgive the people in the past on and on again, until my whole mind is redeem and my heart restored.
However, I was not able to do it as smoothly as I thought I could, I felt a sense of unfairness has happened to me, how can I easily let those who have hurt me go, just like that!
I chose to continue to hide my brokenness and chose not to see that part of my imperfect past. Furthermore, I was still angry and not making Peace with God as well.
This is just Part One of my Emotional Healing Story
