Jocelyn (Daher)
Lekkerkerker.
Former New Age Teacher
to New Life in Jesus.
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My Testimony in Jesus.
It has taken me many months to write this article, I have needed time to gain spiritual strength before publicly sharing my story with you. While I would love to sit down with each one of you that is not possible. Since I have no idea how much you know about me, or if you just found me today, I want to share my life story with you so that you can understand the significant impact Jesus continues to make in my life.
Did you know that when a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly,
it turns to mush first?
It is wholly deconstructed …That sums up my journey in a nutshell.
I am a new person, but I was not remade by my own hands.
I have been transformed by God’s son, Jesus Christ.
No, I am not talking about Christ’s Consciousness, Metaphysical Jesus, or the Gnostic Christ. Many of you who are familiar with my previous “teachings” know that I already believed in those forms of “Jesus” or “Yeshua.”
I am talking about the Jesus Christ
described in the Bible.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation;
the old has gone, and the new has come!”
– 2 Corinthians 5:17
I grew up hearing of Jesus
but never truly knowing him...
I was raised half of the time in progressive Christian church and the other half at Disney World. Annual trips to Disney caused me to see the world through rose-colored lenses. Sporadic trips to church left me never really understanding the Bible and never fully appreciating the Christ of its pages.
"And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it." - Matthew 7:26-27
My family began to fall apart as we slowly drifted away from the biblical values that had once held us together, my parents’ marriage ended in divorce when I was 13. During this time of turmoil, I started seeing spirits and dark visions in our home. Looking back it most likely was spiritual oppression through demonic influence.
The shock of my parent's divorce felt like I was a fledgling forced out of the nest with half-developed wings. The snowballing results of this life event shaped my teenage and adult years, since I had little guidance in my developing years and rapidly lost a sense of self.
After my parent's divorce I got more & more lost...
I began to be influenced by the overtly sexual nature of women portrayed in pop culture. I noticed these women had mastered the art of seduction. I began researching the occult to learn the secrets of seducing a man. It started with astrology. Zodiac personality charts were a common ploy at my high school parties. Thus, my seduction game started.
I wanted to be like the sirens I had read about in old Greek literature, singing the perfect song to my unsuspecting male victims. Even if they had genuine feelings towards me, I would lead them on to receive nothing. It was con artistry. However, this game I had created only left me feeling increasingly lonely.
Eventually, the seduction game wasn't enough. I started to date a very kind-hearted young man from my high school. This hyper-sexual attention-seeking behavior led to losing my virginity at 17. This simple act of betrayal against God's law triggered the start of an anxiety disorder that would haunt me for years. At first I associated this gut-sinking feeling with just being with the wrong guy, but the nagging weight on my conscience never went away despite relationships with other young men.
Severe panic attacks were common, and I started to smoke cigarettes to cope. I became transfixed with the idea that I was a broken "artist" one of the only ways I felt I could express my inner pain. At age 18, all of my feeling compounded and I dropped out of high school and decided to run away to New York City with our town’s biggest “bad boy” in an attempt to start my "art" career. I foolishly hopped on a bus from North Carolina to New York dreaming of becoming a Broadway star.
I was pregnant by age 19...
In C.S. Lewis's book The Screwtape Letters, which is about two demons revealing their schemes to derail a Christian's faith: he writes, "Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."
All my expectations were shattered when I learned I was pregnant only a few weeks later. My boyfriend was quickly deteriorating into a severe drug addict, we were homeless in New York, and couch surfing became quickly exhausting. I was terrified of being pregnant and not ready to be a mother. But God used this tiny life growing in my womb to change my perspective, change my direction in life and take us back to North Carolina.
The pregnancy was difficult; I would go days without eating because my boyfriend had been spending all our money behind my back on drugs.
Despite all the suffering, I gave birth to a beautiful healthy baby boy with Down's in 2008. I didn't know he had Downs Syndrome until he was born, although that wouldn't have changed my decision to keep him. I had asked God throughout my pregnancy to give me a healthy baby.
That was all that mattered to me.
Being a young single mother drained me emotionally.
I felt numb after all the abuse, and it was hard to muster the energy to care for this new little one who needed so much from me. And I was desperate to find some sense of self-worth and self-love and I thought it would come through a relationship.
But after another failed relationship, I realized that the formula of trying to fill this void with a relationship wasn’t enough.
Around the same time I unconsciously shifted my inner goals to find my self-worth and happiness through a career. I decided to volunteer to write for my boyfriend's (at the time) online spirituality blog and eventually moved to the South Island of New Zealand to live and work where he lived. Soon I was getting recruited to write for other New-Age spirituality blogs and was gaining public notoriety for my writing.
Became New Age Teacher & moved to New Zealand...
My writing inspiration came from a mixed bag of New-Age beliefs My writing was a mixture of self-help sprinkled with occult teachings, unique in its ability to portray an individual's pain as a form of cosmically purposed mission. When thousands of people quickly followed my work, I decided to become a teacher of occult philosophies and practices. Most of these practices came from the belief that you can create your reality from your thoughts and emotions.
Fast forward two years and I needed a getaway during the quickly deteriorating state of my relationship with my New Zealand boyfriend. My friend and his fiancé invited me to stay on their farm on the opposite side of the island from where I had been living.
I met the Love of My Life...
When I arrived, my friend's brother was outside raking leaves. As soon as I saw him, the hopeless romantic in me took over...
Let me introduce you to him:
Rune Lekkerkerker was visiting New Zealand to mend his broken heart after a break-up and attend a qi-gong retreat. Rune had been a well-studied Chinese medicine practitioner and healer for 15 years; he had undergone years of training in Martial Arts, Acupuncture School, Qigong, and Esoteric Psychology. Very intellectual, mostly disciplined, well-put-together and the exact opposite of me.
He was skeptical towards me at first and rightfully so. At that time, I was about to embark on the worst of my New-Age "explorations". I was on the verge of becoming a "tantric teacher", which is someone who teaches others about "sacred" sexual practices. Rune was certainly not interested in those kinds of communities.
And then, one day he invited me out to an open field on the farm. He said he wanted to be romantically involved with me. Between his deep interest in my emotional health and his care for my son's physical and well-being, I fell quickly in love with Rune.
For several months it was like living in a daydream.
It was the most profound love I had ever known. And I finally felt I had found the right man, the right home. Life was idyllic until the wake-up call from the New Zealand government saying they had denied my son’s visa and we had a month to leave the country.
We decided to all move to USA together.
After moving, I started my New-Age business again holding online meditations. I had heard that a prominent meditation teacher was staying not too far from Phoenix in Sedona, Arizona. He showed interest in my group meditation project until life took another unexpected turn. He began to have a romantic interest in me. At that time, I knew I only wanted to be friends with with this other man because even though life was financially difficult, romantically I had everything I wanted in Rune.
My life fell apart again when I joined a New Age Cult.
With Rune’s reluctant "blessing", I met with this "spiritual teacher" alone one day where this other man explained that if I were to stay with Rune, I would likely get physically ill and die earlier than expected. What this man could not have known at the time was that had been ill for a few months and was terrified of getting checked out by a doctor. I started to believe what he had told me, and since I had been prone to fearing for my life since I was a child, his suggestion started to feed my fear of losing my life again.
He also explained that I deserved to be with someone who could financially give me a leisure-filled life. He said it was unfortunate that I had been pregnant so young and deserved a chance to focus on myself for the first time. He said that with my teachings alongside his, he could see us healing the world together.
Unfortunately, I caved. I left Rune to be with this other man.
Genesis 3:4-6, “The serpent said to Eve: "You will not surely die," the serpent told her. "For God knows that on the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom, she took the fruit and ate it."
He was a very wealthy man who delivered what he could in worldly terms: I traveled the world, had a full-time nanny in the states for my son, stayed in luxury hotels, hung out with New-Age celebrities and spoke in front of hundreds of people several times. But even while I had the external life most people would dream of; I felt the emptiest I had ever felt and the most psychologically twisted I had ever been.
Only a few months into our relationship, he was publicly labeled a cult leader and sought after by the police. I thank God that my son was providentially sheltered during this time: staying in the US with a full-time nanny.
Thankfully, God delivered me from the relationship within a year.
This was the spiritually darkest period of my life I had ever experienced. Because of this, I have chosen not to share more publicly and instead move on with my life.
Rune & I reunited.
But with our past, we didn't last long...
I thought leaving the cult and this other man would bring some form of relief, but I felt entirely spiritually dead inside. To heal emotionally, I contacted Rune. I wanted to have at least one conversation to apologize. Again, Rune was completely against wanting anything to do with me other than make peace and move on. But I deeply apologized for leaving him and explained the lessons I had learned from making that unwise decision.
Over several months of talking our love rekindled, and our relationship grew to the point that Rune would return to Sedona, Arizona with me to try our relationship for the second time.
We were married in a pagan hand-fasting ceremony on a beautiful mesa overlooking Cathedral Rock in Sedona. But the fairytale didn't last long. I had anxiety attacks every day, developed an eating disorder and had night terrors every night. My life was haunted by the demons of my past.
I was deeply emotionally and spiritually disturbed and began to have angry outbursts at my husband. This took a toll on the one genuinely loving relationship I had in my life, and my marriage ended in divorce only two years later.
Then Jesus Rescued Me.
I moved into my own place and the anxiety and night terrors continued. For a year, I was juggling teaching occult practices for women and being an interior designer for my friends in town. And for the first time thriving financially. All was seemingly going well until it all came to a screeching halt.
I became very ill with what I think was COVID. I had never been so ill in my life. After several days of my fever not improving, I started to deeply fear for my life. I began to recall the biblical teaching I learned as a young girl and sensed that I was afraid to die because I could feel imminent judgment from God for the things I had done wrong. It was a terrifyingly profound realization, and I cried out for Jesus to heal me and give me a second chance at life. I promised to change my life if He would heal me and to walk away from my New-Age beliefs and practices and share my testimony publicly. My health immediately began to improve.
Let me tell you who Jesus is, and what he did for you.
Before I explain the radical change that God continues to bring in my life, I first would like to share what Jesus, did for people like you and me.
There is a holy, absolutely perfectly good God. He is the creator of the world and everything in it. When He created mankind, He began with Adam and Eve. A perfectly made male and female in the image of God Himself without ignorance or error. However, Adam and Eve chose to disobey the only command God had given them to be able to live eternally in paradise. When Adam and Eve made their decision, they were exiled both from God and the lush Garden of Eden and sentenced to death. Not just a physical death but a spiritual one.
As descendants of Adam and Eve, Romans 5:12 tells us that “just as through one man (Adam) sin entered into the world, and death through sin, so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” This is why no matter how much any of us try by our own strength to be perfectly good, we will always fail. We are born wired to make mistakes. We will never meet the standard of perfection that God has.
Even if you were not raised knowing the Bible, God has given you a conscience, (the innate knowledge or instinct of what is right or wrong.) That innate knowledge is a compass of whether you are following God’s laws or not. Because we know what is right from wrong innately, but still choose actively and willingly to do wrong, we are sentenced to spiritual judgment.
We have all been sentenced to death both physically and
more importantly spiritually.
But God in His great mercy and love for us sent Jesus, God in human form, to come live the perfect human life that no one is capable of and then to die on the cross to “pay” the penalty for the wrong choices we have made in life. His death and resurrection satisfied God’s judgment towards each of us.
“God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” - John 3:16
Jesus, the holy, sinless God/man gave His life as a sacrifice and conquered death when He was raised from the dead three days later. He conquered death for us! He returned to walk among his devoted followers (called disciples) and continued to teach them God’s holy ways of living until God took Him to heaven.
When we turn away from of our our wrong-doing biblically, it is a total redirection—turning away from sin and self to God, desiring to change and follow Jesus. God Himself is living within us to change our hearts in a constant process of transformation.
Faith in Jesus is what saves, not just believing His promises or accepting facts about Him. Believing in Jesus means receiving Him for all that He is. “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name.” -- John 1:12
It means both confessing Him as Savior and yielding to
Him as Lord over your life.
And contrary to what many believe, the God of the Bible doesn’t require us to work our way into His favor. What other God would send such an immeasurably and simply accessible gift to anyone who simply chooses to believe? If God were to judge each of us solely by our own actions, we would all fall short! However, because He sent His holy Son to earth to become a man and die for our sins, God sees those who repent (want to change) and believe in Jesus as already being made holy. We have been given Christ’s righteousness and declared new creations in Him.
Every other religion, as well as the “path of enlightenment” in many esoteric teachings, requires followers to earn their salvation or earn favor with god by performing good works.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” - Ephesians 2:8-9
The free gift of salvation from the God of the Bible is as easy as acknowledging before a holy God that you have done wrong in life and deserve to be separated from Him forever.
Accepting God’s free gift of salvation means genuinely asking God for forgiveness, being open for him to help you to change your old patterns of sin and acknowledging that Jesus Christ has already paid the price for your sin through His death on the cross and his resurrection. Faith is not merely an intellectual exercise. It is a complete 100% surrender to Christ.
When I put my trust in Jesus there were changes that began to happen that could never have happened by my own strength. The technical theological term for this spiritual transformation is called sanctification.
It is the life-long process of being cleansed of the ignorance from the disobedience against God that lives in us all. God began to give me a desire to read His word, the Bible and learn as much about Him as I could. The more I attended church and listened to biblical teaching, the more God began to change my heart. He gave me the strength and desire to do the heavy lifting that I could not without Him.
But I want to add an important detail: Being a true follower of Jesus does not promise perfect health, wealth and happiness as the world would define those terms. What it does promise is that your relationship with God, the holy Creator of all mankind and the universe, will be restored. The peace that only God can bring from making You His child is everlasting. Jesus Christ offers the forgiveness, the peace, the joy, the meaning, and the purpose that every human being is looking for.
Salvation is described in the Bible as “living water.” Jesus nourishes parts of the spiritual body that without Him would simply wither away. He refreshes every part of the soul, including perspective. Some of this transformation will likely remain a mystery to me until I see Him face to face in heaven. But much of what He teaches in His Word (the Holy Bible) transforms my heart through genuine understanding and spiritual insight.
What I do know is that despite all my efforts to be a perfectly kind and loving human being I have continued to fail. A world without Jesus left me in an on-going ebb and flow of existential crisis, constantly putting the pressure on myself to save humanity all the while trying to be the best human I could, and frankly failing consistently.
I was trying to be what Jesus has come to be for me and for the world.
So, you may be thinking, “Jocelyn, if I just trust in Jesus, will that mean I completely let go of my desire for self-improvement and philanthropic pursuit?” The answer is NO! I don’t use my new relationship with Jesus to let go of responsibility for the good work Scripture calls us to: self-examination and service to others. In fact, Jesus calls me to a higher level of service, to glorify Him through my actions to the best of my ability. But it is the greatest joy in walking as His child is knowing Jesus helps me because He lifts the load I could never carry on my own.
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
- Matthew 11:28-30
So now you can see, it was by trusting in the power and hope of Jesus,
as revealed through Holy Scripture, that my life started to transform.
After Jesus saved me all of my life started to change...
Rune and I had been separated and divorced for almost a year by the time Jesus saved me. But we reconnected about a month after I recovered. As we began talking, it turned out that during our separation Jesus had come to him months before my illness. Rune and I became friends again and he helped guide me to biblically sound resources to get to know the God of the Bible and to understand how to live a godly life.
Over the next few months I gave up my New-Age life and beliefs entirely, quit teaching about the occult and eliminated anything that would not glorify God. Rune continued to help me find reliable Christian resources and I found a Bible-based church. I started to attend The Master's Bible Church in Sedona on Palm Sunday. I met with the Pastor and his wife that week. Finally, on Easter weekend of 2022, I asked God to forgive me for all of my ignorance and unholy, ungodly decisions I had made throughout my life. I finally understood that Jesus's sacrifice on the cross, dying for my mistakes, was the only way I would ever be forgiven.
It was from that point forward that Rune and I decided to work toward reconciling our marriage. We began dating again but chose to stay chaste with one another and continued to live separately. We started meeting weekly with Pastor Dean and his wife, Jane. We were spiritually discipled and guided through God’s Word. We made our faith public by being baptized in June and we were remarried in a wonderful, God honoring, church wedding in October 2022.
I’m excited to share how Christ has transformed every aspect of my life: my relationship to my family, my community, who I am as a woman, a wife, a mother and most importantly how I think
and see this world.
So how is life different now with Jesus?
He gave me the best community I have ever known.
In every other experience of my life before Christ, I felt that everyone around me (including myself) was so preoccupied with having their own needs met or “being seen” that the community deteriorated into a self-serving focused gathering which always seemed to end in some form of turmoil.
When I attend worship services at church there is a sense of family that I have never experienced before. I have been in many different types of “spiritual communities” before, but none of them have resembled the church. I see first-hand the most loving and others-serving-oriented gatherings I have ever been a part of. Why is that? Because God is dwelling in each of its members.
Rather than abstract, my relationship with God is personal now.
My former relationship with God was abstract. God in my past perspective, was woven throughout all of creation. But that always left me with a sense of emptiness, Since God was everywhere and everything, He was no one and nowhere to build a personal relationship. Now that I understand that God is not only revealed through creation, but more importantly through the unchanging, eternal truth of Holy Scripture, I can intimately know Him as my Savior and Lord and actively build a personal spiritual relationship with Him.
The Holy Spirit helps my soul grow by dwelling in my heart.
I used to be on an endless spiritual development hamster wheel of trying to heal my trauma or
“manifest my perfect life” only to end up disappointed with how empty I felt at the end of each spiritual high. I used to blame all of the misfortunes or non-synchronicities on the astrological forecast or past life karma, but now I know I would never truly be regenerated in mind and spirit without the help of God actively working on my heart and mind. After I believed in Jesus and was given new life, I can see measurable, active, gradual change happening in my mind and life circumstances. It's the true magic I have always seeked in life!
Another area I used to be obsessed with "self-development", a process that sucked every ounce of time away from my family and put all of my focus on self-glorification. My "self-healing" and my “service to the world" (my online work) was my priority and it came before everyone, including my family. I can see now "self-healing" and "my service" was really just self obsession and self worship. A significant change is that I can see my most important role is being a wife and mother. I always used to see both of those roles as sacrificial. But now I crave each day to be a good mother to my son and a loving wife to my husband. By fulfilling those roles in the way God designed them, brings me the deepest sense of reward in life. Life is more about what I can contribute rather than what I can recieve.
He healed my relationship with being a wife & mother.
Rune and I always were “boundary” and “personal needs” oriented in our previous marriage. We constantly focused on getting our own "needs" met and really emphasizing that to one another. But when we gave our lives to Jesus and began reading and understanding the Bible, we started to pay attention to the needs of one another instead. Through Jesus's example, we both desired to make one another happy, and because of that shift, we naturally meet each other’s needs.
There is also a deeper sense of trust I share with my husband knowing that God is helping him to exhibit Christ’s love and care for me. Jesus gave His life on the cross for the church and Rune lives from a place of giving every part of himself to our family. There is a deepening sense of safety in our marriage and relationship because of Rune’s selfless actions for our family's good. In response, my heart fills on a continual basis with a deep feminine love that is ready to serve him because of his love for us. This is the family unit I always dreamed of but could never achieve without the help of Jesus in our lives.
Every part of our lives has changed for the better. I am not saying that every part of your life will
completely improve if you give your life to Jesus, because that’s not what believing in Jesus is about. But my life did change in every way for the better, not by some emotional revelation, but a consistent and gradual understanding of God’s will for my life revealed through the Word of God and through the mystery of God working in
my mind, heart and spirit.
The Living God can dwell in you, if you just believe.
In closing, many people talk about being saved by Jesus as a mystical and mysterious process. In the words of John MacArthur, "A Christian is someone who understands the truth, who has been delivered from Satan's lies to God" truth. According to 1 Timothy 2:4, "to be saved is to come to the knowledge of the truth.” … Being saved is not some kind of mystical cryptic, some kind of inexplicable feeling. Being saved is to come to the knowledge of the truth."
And while I cannot deny that there are mysterious aspects in the salvation of souls through Jesus, the most noticeable shift has not been merely the logical education through moral values that the Bible provides, but truly knowing God. Being adopted as His child because of Jesus's sacrifice for my sins. Going from darkness to light, as the Bible talks about often, is not just a metaphor but is about coming into a right relationship with Jesus Christ that can never be broken. That truth has helped guide my mind and comfort my spirit. The more I learn about God's laws and grace, the more I experience lasting peace. My heart continues to feel the loving guidance and support He offers.
I will be forever grateful for my Lord & Savior Jesus Christ.
Want to be "born again" like me?
Here are the steps that would be best to take:
01
Find a Biblically based church.
Click this: "Find a Church" to find a biblically based church nearest to you. You can also find other solid churches in the christian resources below.
02
Talk to an elder of the church face to face.
It is important that you don't go about this alone. Find a pastor that will help you come to understand Jesus and help in your journey to come to faith.
03
Go to church regularly &
read the Bible.
Learn about who Jesus is.
Attend every Sunday to a biblically solid church, get a bible to read scripture to understand what Jesus did for you.
