The previous episode was part 1 of my conversation with Rebekah Wen as she shared her testimony of finding identity and purpose. This episode is part 2 of Rebekah's story. She reveals not only how she found her identity and purpose but how you can find yours too.

Here are some helpful books from this episode:

The Bondage Breaker: https://www.amazon.com/Bondage-Breaker-Neil-T-Anderson/dp/0736918140?fbclid=IwY2xjawGsYkdleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHcPkI8FtEzjF-9riwx8WzK7QaKJ1bStRy1_-8uuQjC7bEikcDE2tIM4bTA_aem_Xgu6WbZSX9WSL9wGiLHqCQ

Your Spiritual Toolbox: https://www.amazon.com/Your-Spiritual-Toolbox-Sit-Down-Christian-ebook/dp/B01KW3LRWE

Create your podcast today! #madeonzencastr

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Transcription - From Torment to Identity and Purpose

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Welcome to the Fatherhood Challenge, a movement to awaken and inspire fathers everywhere,

to take great pride in their role, and a challenge society to understand how important

fathers are to the stability and culture of their family's environment.

Now here's your host, Jonathan Guerrero. Greetings everyone!

Thank you so much for joining me. We are continuing part two of my conversation with Rebecca

Wynn as she shares her testimony of how she found her identity in purpose. If you missed part one of

her story, you can go to thefatherhoodchallenge.com. That's thefatherhoodchallenge.com. And if you go to

the last episode, you'll see it label as part one, you can hear the first part of our testimony.

Now we're going to go ahead and continue with part two of her testimony.

So as I was sitting there, I just thought to myself, "God doesn't want broken people like me."

And I heard an audible voice say, "I came for the broken." And I felt these huge warm arms

wrap around me. And I felt the ground in this concrete basement and I cried. And I felt,

I felt a father holding me for the first time. And I knew that God was there with me. And that he

had come for me on that every single speck of my brokenness could be healed by him. And in that moment,

I decided that I had to become a Christian. I needed this comfort. I never felt anything like that

before. I was so excited. I wanted to tell everybody all about it. You know, I ran upstairs and I told

my mom, "Mom, guess what? I'm going to be a Christian now." And she was kind of like,

"Yeah, great." But she didn't have the reaction I expected. And I wish that I could say everything

after that just immediately got better, but it did not.

Somethings did. So I'd had, for those 13 years, as I mentioned at the very beginning,

I had been sexually and physically abused by a female relative almost immediately after I

became a Christian that the sexual abuse, the verbal abuse completely stopped. It was, for me,

a hugely eye-opening moment because I thought, "I understood for the first time that there's

something really wrong with me. And I need some kind of deliverance from this. I understood

the first time that these entities that were attacking me were demonic and that they had a purpose

when they were coming. But I had no idea how to deal with it. I didn't know what an event meant.

And I still hadn't told anybody about any of them. My, my mother remarried when I was seven.

And the man that she married was a very stable, good man who had a good job and took good care of us

and enabled her to be a stay at home mom so that she could homeschool us. And by all accounts,

he was a good, solid man. But he was not emotionally available. He was not interested in,

in really being a dad to other people's kids. And so I, he would work most of the time and then,

you know, maybe we'd have some kind of a philosophical conversation or something, but he wasn't

really interested in discussing God. He was much more interested in discussing science and mathematics

and philosophy. And yet there was, there was a moment that had a major impact on me.

There was one day where my mother was just tired of it, you know, and she was just,

she was test tired. And at the same time, also, as I mentioned, I have been having anorexia

and it had progressed to the point where, where I had, I would stop eating and I was noticeably

underweight for my age. My mother would, every single meal she would have to trick me into eating.

And she would do that because she knew that I had such a strong feeling of guilt about the idea

of making anything else feel as worthless as I felt because I felt I was trash. I didn't want

anything else to feel that way. I don't want to be the cause of anyone else or anything else

to feel that kind of suffering. And by this point, I was, I was hoarding. I mean, I had, I wouldn't

even throw away trash. I would have hundreds of candy wrappers and stuff around my room is stacked

up and everything, which I know sounds strange for anorexic, but whatever. But I would have, I wouldn't

throw away anything because I didn't want it to feel like trash, even if it was trash. I couldn't stand

the idea of acknowledging that something didn't have any more value. I had to prove it had value because

if it didn't have value, then maybe I don't have value. So I would cling to everything. And so my mother

figured that out and they, she had realized that my hoarding was because of this, because of this

deep feelings in me. And so she would get me to eat by guilt tripping me. So she would use this cute,

tiny little voice, you know, and she would, she would literally take one bite of like vegetables or

something and she would be like, Oh, please eat me. If you don't eat me, I'll be so sad. You know, she

would make it like this, this thing that I, if I didn't eat this food, I was making it, I was making

it miserable. I was, I was causing it the same harm that been caused to me on some level. And that

was the only way she could get me to really eat. And so she was doing this every single day and she was

tired. And one day she, she talked to my stepdad and he came over to me and and I'm just, he was just,

he sat down on the floor next to me and I was not even making eye contact. I'm just saying they're

doing my homework pretending, you know, to be the kind of daughter they wanted. And he was trying to

talk to me about it, about what was going on. And I just told him like, Look, I don't know why you're

talking to me. You don't love me. I just remember glancing overhead him because he didn't say anything.

And I glanced over at him and I saw that he was crying. And I felt such immense guilt, you know,

when you make your dad cry like that, such immense guilt. And all he said was, I'm so sorry, you feel

that way. And if that for me was a major turning point because I realized, I really realized that I should,

I want to be able to feel that human love and connection and to recognize it and to live in it,

like they think they do, like my family does. And I couldn't. So it was a major turning point for me.

So a few months after that, I'm a, I'm a baby Christian. I'm super excited. I'm still living my

goth life, you know, all black from head to toe. But even though I, I had gone through this and I was

still continuing to try to cling to my, to my faith and to grow as a little baby Christian, the spiritual

attacks that I was undergoing just became more and more intense and they became constant

anxiety to the point that I would create rituals that had to be completed throughout the day.

Or I had a real fear that my family was going to die. These rituals start off as something really

simple, like, oh, before, you know, before my parents leave the house, they absolutely had to give me

a hug and say goodbye because I was afraid that the last thing we would say before they died would

be something terrible. So we had to leave on good footing, right? It had to be a hug and we had to say

specific phrases. And right before I went to bed, we had to have a hug and we had to say specific

phrases and it grew over time to the point where before I would go to bed, there would be like a five-minute

speech, a five-minute dialogue that my parents and I would have to say every single night perfectly.

If they'd messed up, if I messed up, we had to start over because I was so aptly sure that something

catastrophic would happen if we didn't do these rituals. And so they became more and more,

they became larger and more repetitive and more all-consuming as time went on. My sleeping habits and

everything, they just became more difficult because I, even though I was taking these precautions,

you know, with arranging of the bed and the room and the lights and everything, it wasn't helping at

all. And these entities were becoming more and more aggressive. And I was to a point where I could see

them all the time. So I could see, I mean, I could just be walking around outside and see them,

you know, hanging on somebody's shoulder or something. This idea of like, oh, if I look at a mirror,

the image, one more of it began to become, if I just look at your face, it's going to more. So I couldn't

even look at my own family without constantly seeing these things that would say and do whatever

they wanted. I, because I'm also still having these out-of-body experiences, they started to become

part of just every day thought for me where I could just be having a pleasant conversation like, oh,

yeah, I'd really love to have mac and cheese for dinner. And what I would be seeing as I'm saying

that would be myself holding a knife and cutting their throat and then bleeding everywhere. Like

horrible, horrible things that I had no actual desire to do, but I would be seeing these visions

all the time. And they became more and more graphic and more violent and more consistent.

And at the same time, these entities would come into my bed. So they would climb under the blankets with

me and they would just, they would start to hurt me. I would have cuts and bruises. And I got to a point

where I even started to disassociate from my own body. And I believe that's because I was having

so many of these out-of-body experiences. I started to disassociate from my own body and it began

with my right arm. I would start to, if I looked at it or thought about it, even just pondering

something else, but I would just kind of stare at my arm, my arm would begin to sort of become numb

and heavy. And I would have this knowledge that I was not in control of it. And it could move by

itself. And so I would see my arm move even though I wasn't telling it to. And I really started to become

afraid of it. And it got to the point where I really felt like it was going to spread and take over

my whole body. But before it could even do that, it started to cause me real physical harm, like trying

to strangle me and leave marks. It would leave marks on my neck because for these actions or scratch

marks across my whole chest and everything. And I wouldn't do this to myself. I'd never been a person

to nest their self-harm. But I just, I was so, so sure that they were gaining control of my body

as time went on. That I started to look into how I could have my arm surgically removed before it

would spread to the rest of me. So that leads me into being 16 years old. And my mother at this point

has noticed that these things are something is seriously wrong. And she has come across a book called

The Bondage Breaker. At that time, you know, every morning before we start our homeschool routine,

she's reading passages, a scripture, and praying with us. And she decides like,

enough Elizabeth Elliott, let's try this. And so she, I love Elizabeth Elliott, by the way, but she,

she sits down and she's like, okay, girls, I don't know if this is going to work. Like, I don't know what

you guys will think of this. It's kind of, we've never really talked about demons and stuff. But, you know,

let's just read it. Let's just read it and see what happens. The first day she read it, I remember

having some kind of a feeling that was just like, no, don't listen to what she say. Don't just

don't listen, don't listen. But I did pay attention. And this book is amazing because it actually gives

you specific prayers that you can say word for word. And this book, it is about spiritual warfare.

It is about fighting the enemy and the idea that you could, for me at that time, the idea that I

could have power and could, could stop what was happening to me was like, was beautiful. It was

incredible. And I just latched onto it. So I memorized one of the prayers from that book. That was the

first time I actually sat down. I told my mom, like, mom, I'm seeing things at night. Where, what does

it look say about that? And so I memorized a prayer. And I thought, okay, next time these things happen,

next time they come, I'm going to, I'm going to say it, right? So that night, I go to bed and I wake

up and at that day, it was some kind of like, there were like three of them. It was like a, I sort of

a black shadowy man. And then some kind of like an alligator thing that was like floating next to my bed.

And there was, I want to say almost a woman like trying to play with my hair. And I wouldn't,

I didn't want to look over at her because she had a really disturbing face. But so they came and I

remember, thanks to myself, okay, you, you got to fight, you have to fight. Like this is your chance.

Do it. And it was one of them physically most difficult things I've ever done in my life just to

open my mouth and speak. It was like my mouth was wired shut. I couldn't, I mean, I was just

clenching my teeth, just trying as hard as I could to get my mouth open and say the prayer as

best as I could remember. And I did. And you know what? They went away. They literally vanished. And I was

like, what this works? This can work. There was a solution this whole time. I was so excited.

The next morning, I was like, mom, you're not going to believe this. You're not going to believe

what happened. I need to tell all my friends, like I just dove into the book. I even brought friends

over and I was like, you need an exorcism too. And so I'm just diving right into it. And because for me,

it was incredible. What happened? I started praying this every time I had a vision every time they

came to me every time I even felt their presence before I could even see them. I would start praying.

And I had to pray it out loud. It didn't work if I prayed it in my head. I had to pray it out loud.

So I would start praying. And they would leave every single time they would leave. And the result was that

I completely, I mean, I regained control of my hands. I stopped having nightmares. I was able to

sleep on my back for the first time in almost a decade. Like I'd always slept on one side. And it couldn't

move. Now I could sleep in other positions. I could look in people's faces again. I couldn't even look

in like look in a mirror, you know? That took a really long time though. But I could do these normal

things like they were just gone. And the out of body experiences disappeared as well. I haven't had

any of those since that time. So here I am. I've been amazingly healed. I know 100% is through the

power of God. I know that it's through Jesus Christ. And through the identity that they have given me

as a daughter of the king. Because the way these prayers work is that you claim your identity.

I am a daughter of the Lord God Almighty. And you cannot touch me. You claim your identity. And you say

on the authority of my father, you cannot be here. There's nothing to do with my grace, my goodness,

nothing. It is all his power. And because it's all his power, they have to leave right away. And so

that gave me this idea that I needed to consider my identity was I really living like God's daughter.

Not my mother, my mother's daughter, not my father's daughter was a living like God's daughter. But with

my father, I mean, he actively encouraged me to dress in, you know, to dress as a slut, to wear tiny,

tiny outfits whenever we went out, you know? But the time I was in my teens, you know, he would, he

would use my debit card and his ID to go, to go buy alcohol for us. And every minute of time that I

spent with him was centered around playing, was centered around around D&D or witchcraft or,

or these kinds of other things, nothing was centered around right here, right now. Who are we? Our

relationship, this world, what's actually happening? Everything was just play and feel good. And so I had

this complete disconnect between these two people because my father did not want a good little Christian

girl. He was very happy to have a teenager who was open about her pornography addiction and loved

drinking alcohol and all this stuff. Whereas my mother, she needed a good little Christian girl.

So I had to reconcile this, these two different people that took a long time. But I was able to do it

because my foundation was no longer making my mom and dad happy. It was what is my God want? The

person who's saving me. And I think that's a core of of my life. If I could take this and make it a

message for any, any parents, protect your kids. If you see something that's strange, if they're

having a lot of nightmares, if you see them acting in a strange way, don't avoid conflict, don't

try to sweep it under the rug. Like after I was healed and I started opening up to family members

about what I had been through, the number one reaction I got was, oh, well, we knew there was

something wrong with you, but we didn't think we could say anything. It blows my mind because I was

a child. What was I going to do if you said something? I don't know, maybe rethink my life, you know,

where, where was the backlash? Where was the potential for them to have problems? But because nobody

spoke anything, I had no protection from any of the things that I went through. I had zero protection

in that way. So if I could say anything to, to parents is that protect your kids, not just from

these physical things, but be involved in the things like what they're scared of, the nightmares

and these things protect them from those. I had a significant healing, but I wasn't really truly

born again until a few years later. I never went to a church because I had such bad experiences with

other believers when I was young. And even though I was healed and everything, I was still 100%

of God, then I was very happy to maintain that image. It wasn't until I was an adult in about 21

years old, terrible situation happened and the family sort of exploded. And in that time, I ended up

homeless and it ended up by myself. And I only had God to cling to every single day, all day long, I would

just tell myself, God is love, God is mercy, God is love, God is mercy, God is love, God is mercy.

And that was how I got through that time. But because I clung to the Lord so much, I realized,

I literally just wanted to be sequestered. I wanted to become a nun. And my grandmother said,

why don't you try a missionary instead? And so I was learning Russian at the time. And so my

grandmother said, well, why don't you try and go to school? You know, there's this missionary

school in Russia. Why don't you go there and check it out? And so without thinking about it, I was like,

yeah, I'd love to be in Russian, everything and be closer to God. Sure, let's do it. So I signed up

and everything. And then when I'm on the plane, I had a realization that I was literally going to live

with other Christians. And I don't think hate would be too strong of a word. I hated being around

Christians because of my past experiences. And I also hated kids up to this point. And the reason

I hated kids was because I was still so dirty from all the things that had happened previously.

I still believed and lived in the enemy's lies that I was a creature of shame and that I was filthy.

And I did not want to get my problems. I didn't want it to spread to any kids. And so I just decided

that they were terrible. And I convinced myself to stay as far away from children as possible

because I did not want my filth to spread to them. So here I am on the plane on the way to Russia.

And I suddenly have this realization, I'm going to go in live with Christians. And I panicked.

I was like, I'm going to stay on this plane because Moscow is just a stopover. Then it's going to

Malaysia. I'm just going to get off on Malaysia and deal with everything then. Call everybody and

be like, hey, I'm here now. You know, I'm like, run away. And but then as we landed in Moscow, they said,

everybody has to get off and we're going to bring on the search dogs. Well, I was like, okay,

all right, I will get off. I don't want to deal with any dogs. So I get off and they pick me up.

We go to the house and we open the door. And what's the first thing I see is a baby. So now I'm

surrounded by Christians and babies. And then they lead me up to my bedroom. And what do I see?

My roommate, she's just, I just, hi, you know, she's just this preppy blonde hair, blue-eyed,

little valley girl. And I'm like, oh, Lord, why do you torment me? Why would you do this to me?

Every, this is going to be the worst mistake I've ever made in my life. What is happening?

And so I tell them, I tell everybody like, yes, I'm so tired. I just need to go to bed. So everybody leaves

except for my one German roommate. And she's sitting there and I'm laying down my bed and she says,

you know, I am so glad you are here because before you were not. And now we are complete. And my heart

completely broke. And the Lord spoke to me audibly. I brought you here to heal you. Let me do it. And I

said, okay, my heart is yours. This is the first time I've been wanted. Do your will. And what he did,

I would became truly born again in Russia a couple months later. We were going through a program

where every week we would have teachers teach us about a different topic. And that particular week,

we were learning about God as a father. I always, I'd always known about Jesus and, you know,

the great warrior and loving, you know, typical church things. But I'd never thought about God as an

actual father who actually loved me. And so during that week, the culmination of that week was for us to

to have a public confession where we would confess everything that had been done to us. We would name

names, list deeds, and we would confess everything that we had done. And throughout the whole week,

the Lord was telling me, this is your chance. You've got a lot to say. At the end of the week, that

morning, because this was a mixed group, there were adults and children. I went to the leader of the group

and I said, you know, I feel like I have something to say, but I feel like it's a really heavy topic. And

I don't know if it's appropriate to talk about in front of the kids. And up to this point, I literally,

I had not thought about what I would actually say. I didn't know. I just knew I had to say something,

but I didn't know what it was. And I had never thought about what came out of my mouth because she

asked me what you want to talk about. And I'd never thought these words or made this sentence

ever in my life. But I looked her dead in the eyes and I said, I was physically, emotionally,

and sexually abused for the first 13 years of my life. And that to me was like, I was? Where did that

come from? I never thought about it ever. And she said, bring it on. Let's do it. That day, I think I

was the third person to talk. I publicly confessed what was done to me and what I'd been done. It took

hours because I realized as I was going through names, I couldn't even remember all the names of the

people who had, quite sexually assaulted me. I could see faces and things, but I couldn't even remember

the names. And it took hours and of just sobbing and telling it. And here I'm sitting in front of a

room of 20, 30 people and they're all just listening in silence and asking me these patient questions

and praying the whole time. And by the time I finished, I can say that I had been completely,

completely washed clean. White as snow. Everything that had any power of shame over my life was in public

and it was forgiven. And I was completely free. And that afternoon, as they were making dinner and

I'm sitting there doing some homework in the living room. Some of the children of the households

are playing there. And for the first time in my life, without even thinking about it, even as a child,

I didn't play. I didn't play with other kids. I only spent time with adults as much as I could.

But for the first time in my life, I put down my pencil in my homework and I played with them.

And I can't express how beautiful that freedom was to finally be, to truly be free with nothing.

No shame, nothing held over me. If you ever have a chance to do a public confession, I have

fully encouraged it because that was what broke the final curses over my life and gave me

a stability in who I am. And that the Lord would patiently and carefully take me to a place

where he would dig out every piece of junk that had been put onto me so that I could be free.

So I could fly above everything. I think the last step in my completely being free was I realized that

when we went to that Mayan temple when I was a very young child, whatever clung to me came in

through an open door. In the deliverance ministry, I figured out exactly what entity it was. And I

could tell it to leave by name. And that was the moment when I really lost a lot of fear for it.

You're not so spooky if you got a name and I can just be like, hey, dude, go. Not that they're not

powerful, but that they're limited. They're limited. And that was something that I happened really

recently because for many years, these entities hadn't bothered me, but they'd started to come back

with my daughter, with my daughter. And she started to have nightmares and to say things that little

tiny toddlers should not say. And so I realized that I had to learn how to fight for her. I had to

learn how to fight as her legal guardian on a spiritual level. So that's why I went into,

went back into this and said, okay, what is it? What entity is clinging to me that could potentially

be affecting her or could still be clinging to me? And when we identified it and went through and

prayed it away as the saying goes, I'm happy to say that my daughter did stop having nightmares.

That is my story in a nutshell. So I would say to fathers, base your identity in the eternal

things. Build yourself onto that. And for your children, encourage them. Bring them along to do

the same, especially for young kids or teenagers, especially with this era of social media.

There are so many influences, so many things that seem so important and so amazing and so

life changing and so necessary. So for your children's sake, redirect their interests. Remove those

influences, redirect their interests and their concept of strength on the same thing the

rocket pages. If they can stay on that, they will stay with you. Rebecca, thank you so much for

coming on to Father and Challenge and sharing your testimony with us. Thank you again for having me.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Fatherhood Challenge. If you would like to contact us,

listen to other episodes, find any resource mentioned in this program or find out more information

about the Fatherhood Challenge. Please visit thefatherhoodchallenge.com. That's thefatherhoodchallenge.com.

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