Redemption in Action: Coaching That Gives Your Past New Meaning
On Wednesday evening, during our first 2025 Destiny Activator session, I shared a little of my testimony. I spoke about my Christian upbringing, which I feel privileged to have.
Church was a very big part of our lives. As a child, I went three times a week—twice on Sundays and once to a homegroup during the week. Naturally, my closest friends were those I knew in church. We even went on holidays together with our church fellowship. It was a very close community, and both of my parents had leadership roles.
When Church Became Painful
I also shared about some negative experiences. My parents left various churches because of disagreements with leadership. At one point, they were even thrown out of a church for wanting to bring a new level of connection to the Lord through being filled with the Holy Spirit (something they had experienced at a revival meeting). The church leaders were strongly against this and “suggested” they find another church.
When we left churches and I lost contact with my friends and the community that had felt like family. I was deeply affected. As a result, I had walls toward Christians and, especially, Christian leaders, that I had put around my heart to protect me from future hurt.
When I left home in my late teenage years, I failed to find a church to attend. I was not motivated. I had stopped trusting church and church people.
A Decade Away From Fellowship
Something had shifted in me—I had lost faith in church community and leadership.
But this all changed in ways beyond what you can imagine. God already had a redemptive plan. He had already worked out how to use these childhood experiences for His good and glory.
I spent my twenties exploring the world, no longer under the strict rules of my upbringing. After a decade of being outside of Christian fellowship, I finally had had enough! I wanted to come back to putting God first and being in Christian fellowship, like the prodigal son story. My small intention to begin making my way “home,” not knowing how on earth I could find my way back to living as a Christian again, was met by God in a modern-day prodigal story. His arms were wide open to welcome me.
He led me to an incredible church, which honestly felt like a bit like a big party. In case you wondered, it was HTB in London, and I was on an Alpha course. I already knew the teaching from childhood, but seeing people my age enjoying themselves—and even drinking wine over supper (something considered inappropriate in my upbringing)—caused me to rethink what I had been led to believe was “the Christian life.”
Of course, the Lord brought me fully back into His fold. My passion for Him grew and grew, followed by a growing dissatisfaction with my vocation and how meaningless it felt.
Discovering Purpose Through Coaching
In 2006, I began pursuing purpose with God. I prayed for Him to show me how to step into a vocation that felt more meaningful and aligned with His will for my life. This is when God introduced me to the realm of coaching and personal development.
The more I explored it, the more it resonated with my heart. I loved the growth, the transformation, and the whole process of how people can be developed.
I left my job and career and started a coaching company.
The Lord’s plan was not only to restore my broken trust in Christians and church leadership—He was designing a purpose for me redeeming this experience into something good.
Many of the clients the Lord brought into my practice were Christians and Christian leaders. What I didn’t realise until a decade later was that He was training me, shaping me to coach in a unique way. He was leading me to coach at a deeper level, showing up Himself and bringing encounters with Him into the coaching.
From Coaching To Training Others
But it didn’t stop there. After attending a School of Ministry in California for five years, He led me to begin training other Christians to coach in the way He had shown me. The demand was strong, so I created a training school to equip Christian leaders in this same way.
My own story—my experiences of tumultuous church relationships, painful exits, and my lack of clarity on purpose and assignment—were turned around by God. Despite growing up in church, I had no idea what I was meant to do with my life. God redeemed all of it and anointed me to help leaders with tools to bring others into clarity of purpose and identity, and to connect deeply with Him. All of it working with the Holy Spirit.
Redeemed Pain Becomes Purpose
Since 2012, He has been using me to bridge a gap and equip Christian leaders in their own leadership, purpose, and walk with Him, along with equipping them with tools to lead others in this too. He has given me a heart and passion to do this.
From the pain and trauma of childhood—what the enemy meant for harm—God turned around for good! A big part of my purpose has become serving the Church, equipping it in the very areas where I once lacked.
This is the way God works out His redemptive plan in our lives.
The very areas the enemy seeks to destroy are the ones God restores and redeems into our purpose. This brings Him glory as the kindest, most redemptive God imaginable. It also brings us the deepest fulfilment when we operate in these areas. It turns our pain into purpose. It gives us an assignment to impact the world in the way only we can.
What About You?
I don’t share this part of my testimony often, but I felt to share it now for you.
Maybe you are reading this and thinking, Yes, I can see a similar pattern in my life. Maybe God has already led you into something connected to a painful area you once experienced. If so, I hope my story encourages you that what you are doing is an important part of your purpose.
Or maybe you’ve written off certain dreams or ideas—perhaps even dismissed opportunities to impact lives in the very area you once struggled. Ask God to show you these redemptive paths you haven’t yet walked. These may be unfulfilled purposes, unfulfilled potential—areas still waiting for His redemptive power.
Walking these paths, may feel scary and involve risk. For me, it meant setting up a ministry (Destiny Coaching Ministries). For you, it may mean starting a ministry, a business, a non-profit—or stepping into something else entirely.
It may mean the Lord connecting you to a need in the world through voluntary service or a job role.
An Invitation
The coaching model God has entrusted me with includes tools to help draw out your story—your experiences, both positive and negative—to find the parts of your life He wants to redeem into purpose.
If you’d like to start exploring this more, contact me.