my testimony
not sure how to start this off... so i'll just list a couple of things that I have overcome.
Porn addiction/masturbation
Witchcraft
I'll start with witchcraft... I am going with my perception of the biblical definition of witchcraft, when i was practicing I didn't call it that...
My first spiritual encounter (and coincidentally one of my earliest memories) occured about the age of 6 (or so) I was walking through the schoolyard field it was raining heavily, everything was dark. I remember seeing lightning strike a man on the other side of the field, he was vaporized. After that I heard an audible voice
"you're getting really wet" it said (it was a downpour)
"yeah" i replied
"you don't have to get wet you know"
"oh yeah?"
"here, let me show you"
and I then saw myself walking through the field I then saw a bubble placed over me. I stopped getting wet, the rain no longer was hitting me, i was ecstatic. I went home dry that day. I didn't encounter that voice for years. I did hear another voice though, a voice that (to me at the time) was far more sinister than the first voice. It would harrass me on a daily basis, tell me about bad things that were going to happen. My life took a tearn for the worse during this time too, (my mother became physically abusive & the teachers at school became emotionally abusive) I had no safe place to go... when I was alone, this audible voice tormented me, and when i wasn't alone well, most of everybody else tormented me.
This went on for years, then we moved to edmonton (from winnipeg) and my "friend" came back.
"You don't like that evil tormenting voice do you"
"no i don't"
"do something about it"
and i was once again shown how todo the bubble... this time though i was able to see spiritual beings... and i could control the bubble... make it bigger and smaller... I made the bubble big enough to push the tormenting spirit outside my house.
I had peace
i got peace, from the tormenting spirits (and mom was bed ridden so she couldn't hurt me no more), school life got better too. You see my friend really helped me out, why would I want that to go away? shortly afterwards I was in winnipeg visiting family & friends... I don't recall how this began but i had been talking about the end times with my cousin, but I remember a spirit coming to me and showing me this awesome temple & city. I remember being led down perfectly strait streets and coming to a crystalline temple, inside the temple there was a river that led to an alter, it was perfectly strait. There wasn't any white light in the temple either, it was a complete rainbow. Precious Gems adorned the walls and i knew that people from every tribe were welcome here.
then it was over.
"beautiful isn't it?" my spiritual friend asked
"yeah, it is" i replied
"you will never go there" it responded
i knew at the time that i wasn't actually in the city or the temple. How i cried when i was told that, but how can you argue that? there isn't anyway. It would be like me showing you a postcard of the surface of the planet Mars, and then telling you you'd never go there. You'd be apt to believe me, people just don't go to mars.
I tried to forget the vision, it distressed me that much. Eventually i barely thought about it as i concerned myself with more pressing matters.
I had realised shortly before this (my last year in winnipeg or so) that i had no concept of what love was like. It baffled me, this whole concept of love. I beleived that girls could teach me this, so after the temple encounter I went searching for someone to teach me how to love (recipe for disaster - bad times)
I still occasionally practiced and listened to my special friend, but it wasn't a priority for a few years. Then my friend Ali & I would go for walks and share spiritual ideas and experiences that we were going through, and I became more involved as I had someone who understood such things to talk to. When I turned 19 I encountered a friend (mike) who started bugging me about spiritual ideas, he was hungry to learn. So i taught him, and because I was teaching him i was "re-discovering" abilities in myself. Throughout all this time, as i progressed I felt alone, utterly abandoned. Everything was colored by this. After i accepted God even the colors of the day became more vibrant, sort of like prior to God in my life i was looking at everything wearing sunglasses (without realising it). Life always had this bleakness about it. I "had" a lot of power at this time too (early 20's), I would talk to people on the internet and they would be like"it feels like he's right here beside me. I don't really want to list off my occultic sins here (i don't want to give glory to satan) but suffice to say I had my fingers in every concievable occultic activity. I started looking for people, who were "aware" (a term i coined for people aware of the spirit realm) with the desire to train and hone thier skills and set them up with spirit guides (like my special friend) I met a man at work, who asked me if i had ever seen a demon - at this time i was travelling quite extensively "out-of-body" and frequently encounterd beings that i would have considered demons.
I said "yes"
and said we should go out for tea/coffee sometime and chat.
it was during that chat, that started in the tea shoppe and ended in the house he was living in at the time that i gave my life to christ.
I was talking to the mans roomate about my temple experience and told him that I was sad 'cause i would never go there.
"you want to go there?" he asked
"yes i do"
"will you pray with me?"
"yes i will"
before that conversation took place i had already been "briefed" as to what was going to happen, so i wasn't shocked. What shocked me was that how life changing it was.
Comments
how i overcame masturbation/porn addiction is a bit more convoluted, currently I don't know how to bring the fractured elements together, it was only after I accepted Christ that things started coming together
when I was growing up there would be times when I would feel... strange, like there would be no one else around and there was still eerie stillness about the house... in those times I would go down into the basement, I had a diaper hidden down there (not sure how old i was but it was after the spiritual encounter happened - see above) I would put it on and play with myself, it was this extremely guilty pleasure I had, I don't know how long this went on for, but one day i went into the basement and the diaper was gone (i am also not sure where I procured the diaper from either) I transitioned from that into making cloth diapers out of my bed sheets and masturbating. By this time I had stolen pornographic material (playboy) from my father (i was 11-12_ and when i would look at it I would usually pretend I was the woman getting raped in the magazine... this went on for years (till I moved to edmonton at 13-14). From then on my fantasies usually involved having sex with a woman (at this time I beleived that only a girl could teach me love and sex was a part of that)
I always felt guilty about it, but my spiritual guide would tell me that with all that i was going through that it was ok. Despite this constant message I still hated that i did it. When I turned 18 I met a lady who was as unhealthy as I was and we got engaged and had sex (that quickly - and we had only dated a couple of days) Sex was pretty much the onlything we did together. After a while, we started having sex and viewing porn (i don't really beleive it matters as to the "type" its all equally evil). The relationship was terrible, as i pursued witchcraft she became more distant and demanded more from me ('cause she felt distant), i would 'get off" by watching her watch porn... that was my thing. Sometimes she'd get upset and ask me to perform witchcraft to see if the porn stars liked doing porn, which i never bothered to do (a spirit assured me they did). Sometimes i would let a spirit "take over" my (medium type junk) body and the spirit would have sex with my fiancee, which she had a love hate relationship with, on the one side they were more feminine and understood her needs on the other, it was just plain creepy. During this time she was offered a job to do porn, she needed money and thankfully (this about the best thing i did during our relationship) I said if you do this i will leave you.
When I asked Christ into my heart (see above post) I immediately moved out of my fiancee's house (and refused to have sex with her), It was a difficult time because my whole world seemed to be turned upside down, all the spiritual friends I relied on for guidance were my enemies, I remember seeing a spirit during this time and was like "is Jesus Christ lord?" and it opened its mouth and had blood red fangs, it just snarled and went away (praise God for 1 John ch 4), at this time despite no one telling me I new that all the rituals i used to do were not good things to do I also knew that masturbation & porn was not good things todo either. My main focus was ensuring I didn't do ritual (i had rituals for every aspect of my day from bathroom breaks to walking to sleeping - everything) at all, and it scared me, cutting out something that was so common place in my life.
On top of this I didn't want to masturbate any longer... I fell, one of the first things I did upon coming into the kingdom (of God) was cancel all my subscriptions, but one subscription that was cancelled didn't cancel properly and I could still access the member's only part, initially I was checking out all the sites to ensure that they were cancelled then I discovered this and the cycle continued (eventually the membership died completely and the site is no longer up and running) the house I was living in didn't have the internet or cable TV (we sat around and played board games, prayed, talked) so it was easy to prevent myself from accessing new material. However, after 10 years of viewing porn I had quite the catalogue of memories to choose from. Occasionally I would sneak off to an internet cafe as well.
After a time of repeated confession of masterbation/ accessing porn, I was asked to leave the house I was living in (everyone in the house was a recovering sex addict) I found that I wasn't very good at expressing my emotions well, and whenever I went through a period of extreme emotional duress I would almost literally go running back to porn to deal with it. When I go kicked out of the house, my world collapsed. I was totally isolated, alone. I felt ashamed and un-loveable. I purposefully didn't have the internet in my home. At this time I didn't want much to do with God either, I didn't quite turn my back on Him (as in didn't try ritual though i was tempted), but i didn't worship him either, I just went from work to home and played computer games and tried to block out the pain i was feeling. I still struggled with porn. During the falling out with the people I was living with I had gotten a couple of new subscriptions to porn sites. Occasionally I would go to a cafe and check them out, see if any of the new content was any good. Everytime I would convince myself that I was just checking to see if my subscrition had expired or some other lame excuse to go to a cafe, or if I was at a cafe doing some non-porn related activity something like a banner ad with a scantily clad lady would set me running to the websites.
Eventually I convinced myself that having internet in my home was a good idea(it wasn't) within 1 min of getting it hooked up I was on the sites. I remember praying to God during this time asking him to deliver me and then going to work. I came home and found my home broken into, they took all my computer equipment and broke a glass. I was elated. At this time I had been hanging out with a young lady (who is now my beautiful wife) to pray/ read the word. After a time she ended up going through a period of emotional duress, we had sex. Having sex devastated us! We were both a mess, but for a time we kept doing it though we didn't want to. Eventually we came to the decision not to spend anytime alone together (in private). During this time I still struggled with porn, this time I convinced myself that i was looking for outfits for her to wear once we got married, when she found out about this she broke off the engagement. I was devastated and went straight back into porn. She even warned me this would happen.
eventually I went back to "just" masturbating (to her usually - not recommended) and eventually we got married. And while we were married I would still masturbate to her (usually looking at sexy outfits on the internet while doing so)
Then one day I was on a website "shopping" for sexy outfits for her, and I picked up my cell phone and txt msged her telling her what I was doing.
And guess what? I haven't looked back
Thanks for taking the time to share that. It's an amazing testimony. I almost don't know what to say about the start of it but I did read a book once called "Death of a Guru" which was about how when Hindus meditated they would meet evil spirits (which took the forms of their gods), and sometimes they would get beaten up in the middle of the night by nothing (i.e. an evil spirit they couldn't see or hear).
Thankfully, Jesus has power over everything, demons tremble at the name of the Lord.
What you said last is so true, you hit the nail right on the head. Just that confession to another human, can change everything. I almost can't quite explain it.. but that is what I would like to do with the youth in my church, have a nonjudgmental place where we can confess every detail to each other. It takes guts to do it, but the guilt is gone immediately and the reward is great (and the tears flow mutually). You know this too well and Alan, you are a strong man!
God bless you and keep you and your beautiful wife ;o)
You (pl) will be in my prayers.
2 Tim 2:22