GOD heard my prayers
I come from a family of five sisters and four brothers. We all followed our parents’ religion, Buddhism/Taoism. The Lord graciously brought me to know him through thyrotoxicosis during my A-levels in 1975.
Prior to that illness, I was always healthy and well. It was in hospital that I began to be troubled by the evil around me. Every morning, it was as if someone had pushed me to the floor in the night. Providentially, the Lord sent a pastor to visit a five-year-old girl in the same ward as me.
He recognised me even though I had only been to his church once in order to watch a Christian film. He prayed for me and asked me to read Psalm 23 from a bookmark. I did not understand what I was reading but I knew peace and was delivered from the sense of evil.
I prayed to know who was the true God and promised to read and find out about different religions in order to seek the truth. After being discharged from the hospital, I cycled to the pastor’s house. He shared the gospel with me and I prayed as a sinner for Christ to save me.
When I wanted to go to church, my mother forbade me and began to be very angry. She wanted to disown me if I did not give up being a Christian. I was not used to her antagonism, as I had been my parents’ favourite child. I used to excel in both academic and extracurricular activities in school. Spiritual war had begun! Satan, the devil, is a malicious foe to all God’s children.
In 1976, the Lord opened the way for me to further my studies in Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia. I had a vivid dream of my father dead in a coffin. I had great fear and anxiety at the thought of his going to hell. I did not know much about the Bible then and had just started going to church.
Through incessant fears and worries about my father’s spiritual well-being, I fell into a relapse of my thyroid illness, and medical depression soon followed. I have a genetic predisposition to this – three members of my family are afflicted by it too.
From 1994, I have suffered a depression almost every other year. Nevertheless, my heart often cries to God for help and he hears me. Many times the Holy Spirit has ministered to me from the truths of the Bible and healed me from my depression.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is meek and lowly and gracious in all his ways. He says, ‘Come to me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
‘Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light’ (Matthew 11:28-30). This has been proved in my experience.
Kim Eng Sherwood
