“So You’re the One With the Back Pain?”

Do you believe in miracles? Our friend A shares an incredible testimony of how God instantly healed her back after more than 10 months in constant, overwhelming pain.

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate” - 1 Corinthians 1:19

It’s been a long hard 10 months of extreme back pain and not sleeping through the night… and as silly as it may sound, I knew there was something seriously wrong with my back pain issue when I had to stop wearing heels because my right leg became very weak and unstable.

My back pain stems from my past of extreme child abuse from my step-mom from the age of 5-17. Doctors have told me that every ligament that holds my spine together from the base of my neck to my tailbone is completely covered with scar tissue and therefore unstable.

At 17, I mustered up the courage to run away from home and soon became involved with humanitarian work and fought hard for children’s welfare issues; I helped build national campaigns for human welfare issues with organizations like The ONE Campaign, World Vision, Unicef, etc. A few years later, as a 3rd year undergrad at UCLA, I met God in power and truth and was baptized in the Holy Spirit….and I experienced a healing miracle - I was healed of asthma through a prayer from a pastor!

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Led Astray

Sometimes, we are led astray by our own negative experiences and can’t find the way back to our Father without encouragement. But God always shows us His love and grace in the end.

“He has made everything beautiful in its time…” Ecclesiastes 3:11

I spent my childhood as a Christian as my father was a Born Again and my mother introduced to Jesus through him. A lot of my life, I was melancholy and introverted with a strange fatalistic view of life. My father’s perception of the world and his faith was strange to me, as he was so very focused on other people but rarely took any real interest in my development nor the faith situation of his family. I really despised and pitied him all at the same time. I also learned how to have strong ‘godly’ relationships with everyone other than my nuclear family. Needless to say, I have daddy issues, but who doesn’t?  

Upon the divorce of parents, my mother dropped Christianity like a hot potato, but never forced me to. I decided to disown God in an effort to show solidarity with my mother. She retreated into Buddhism, then Catholicism and then back to Buddhism, which is currently her religion of choice. I also had often felt like a day player in my father’s story, akin to the concubines that the Bible often makes only brief mention of in passing, because the story is really about David. Thus, as it was already so easy for me to write myself out of the Bible, I couldn’t see how writing myself out of the Kingdom should reap any more negative consequence. It was never my place anyway.

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Revelation of Family

Last month I saw my parents kiss (for the first time in my life).  It’s funny I’ve always prayed for reconciliation in their relationship, but when it happened I honestly felt kinda weird.  I rationalized that people who are married are supposed to be that way and I left it at that. Anyhow, God had just radically changed what was “normal” in life.  But, before talking about my family let me introduce myself.

My name is Ed. I just moved back from Taiwan last year.  I spent the last couple years of my life doing ministry in Taiwan.  While out there I’d pray, “God give me Taiwan or I’m gonna die!”  There was about a three month season where everyday I did treasure hunts and prophetic evangelism.  I’d go out on the street and pray for the sick and do all kinds of crazy things.  I was so zealous for God, all I thought about was revival. 

Coming from the entertainment industry, I had a heart for the entertainment mountain.  My heart’s cry was for people in entertainment and to see those of “influence” come to know Jesus Christ.  One of the desires of my heart was to see a church planted in the largest clubs in Taipei.  To my surprise, God answered my prayer a year later. We started a GBS in Taiwan and saw many people inside entertainment come to know the Lord.  In that season I saw club owners, celebrities, and just random people off the street get radically saved by Jesus.  God was moving so powerfully.

Life became even more amazing when I started traveling with a group called Asia for Jesus.  We toured all around Asia and saw tens of thousands of people come to know the Lord.  It was such an awesome move of God.  One of the main pastors, Philip Mantofa, moved with such authority (and love) you couldn’t help but feel God’s presence wherever he went.  If you’ve seen 1040 or Furious Love you’ll know who I’m talking about.  Being around him I saw people healed, delivered, and radically saved by the thousands.  At that time, I couldn’t possibly think of anything more important than this.  But God had something else in mind…[click “Read More” below to continue]

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God Before Us

Have you ever felt that God is literally your forerunner, going before you and preparing the way?  I’ve seen recently that when we make a commitment to pray for something in advance, we are literally laying down a spiritual foundation and that God is already present in our future situation, making arrangements - our God before us.

A few weeks ago, I had dinner at Chosun Galbi in Koreatown with my sister Pei Pei, who is about to move with her family from Los Angeles back to the Bay Area.  Before we ate, I prayed for her upcoming move and said “God, go before Pei Pei and her family up to Lafayette.  Lord, be present in their new house, make all the arrangements necessary and get everything in order, ready and waiting for them when they get there.” 

After we ate, my sister told me how funny it was that I had prayed those words.  Earlier that afternoon, she had been raking leaves in the backyard with her five year old daughter Maia, talking about something totally unrelated to her move.  All of a sudden, Maia got really quiet and stopped raking.  With concentration on her face, she said “Mom, don’t talk to me right now, I’m praying.”  Amused, my sister asked Maia what she was praying about.  Maia said “I’m praying that God is going to go before us to our new house in Lafayette and get everything ready for us before we get there.”

Without knowing what Maia had said that afternoon, I ended up praying the exact same prayer, on the exact same day, led by the Holy Spirit.  God was already moving, already present in my sister’s situation, and wanted to encourage Maia and her through this total God coincidence.

What happened the following weekend blew me away even more.  [Click “Read More” Below to Continue]

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“Lord, Why Was I Born Into This Family?”

Where is God when we are born into a family of abuse?  There are some wounds so deep that we can carry them with us our entire lives without knowing it.  But God has a plan for redemption and restoration for each of us.  Our friend Johnny shares a powerful testimony about abuse, anger and withdrawal, a search for meaning that led him across the world, and ultimately, radical and unexpected healing and forgiveness.

Matthew 6:14 “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. “ 

My testimony is about forgiveness.  It is something that I have struggled mightily with for decades.  Especially when it comes to my family.   

I had no relationship with my father growing up.  He was an old school Confucian raised in wartime Korea that didn’t believe in God. Anything but absolute obedience to his will wasn’t tolerated.  He was very cold.  One time, when I was ten, I went to the neighbors’ to play with their toys on Christmas morning. We never really celebrated Christmas.  I couldn’t resist playing with all my neighbors new transformers.  “Oh boy! Optimus Prime, Megatron?! Oh man!” The phone rang at my neighbors.  It was my parents.  They wanted me home.  So I went home.  Right when I walked in the door, my father smacked me, knocking me out.  When I regained consciousness, I looked in the mirror and saw that I had a black lip. He thought I was being disobedient.

My mother was a devoted Catholic bordering on fanaticism.  I can’t remember ever having missed mass. She was obsessed with the legalisms of Catholicism and never allowed me to miss mass, confession, or doing the rosary for that matter.  No exaggeration, I think I did tens of thousands of Hail Mary’s during my youth.  She was a submissive wife, obsessed with work, that enabled the mood swings of my father dominate the house.

I had an older sister (she’s no longer with us) who was very cruel and ignorantly abusive.  It probably didn’t help that my parents gave her full reign to do whatever she wanted to me, being the older sibling.  I remember always being hungry after school waiting in the library until my mom got off work to pick me up, while she would go and feast with her friends at some hamburger joint.  Slamming the door in my face was a regular occurrence.  That’s not a metaphor. (Like, physical door in my physical face) But I got used to it along with her beatings and name calling. It was a family where I just didn’t feel love…[click “Read More” below to continue]

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