This testimony includes childhood abandonment, abuse and pregnancy loss.
Sandielyn Taylor was five years old, living in one of the most crime-ridden neighbourhoods in Manila, when she heard music unlike anything on earth and saw heaven open. Decades later, after abandonment, witchcraft and a year of crushing losses, Jesus appeared to her and said something she never expected to hear: “My daughter, you need to forgive Me.”
In this episode of the God’s Truth Podcast, Sandielyn tells Abigail Smith how that moment set her free. (You may also recognise her from Jennifer Bagnaschi’s testimony, She Saw Jesus Face to Face, in which Sandielyn saw Jesus walk down the aisle as she led worship at A Night With the King.) What follows is her account.
Music from heaven, and the river of life
Sandielyn was not raised a Christian. Her mother left when she was a toddler, telling her she was going out to buy candy and never coming back. Her father was a drug addict. She was raised by relatives, surrounded by neighbours who practised sorcery, and was vulnerable to abuse of every kind.
One morning at five years old, she woke to music that sounded like birdsong and an orchestra together, “happening on the grand scale of heaven,” and it went straight into her soul with joy, healing and peace. Following it to the window, she saw a man in a robe. Men in the Philippines did not wear robes, but she could never forget His eyes. “They said, ‘I am that love, and I know you, and I’m going before you,’” she says. “You felt like you were being held by eternity.” She was fully awake. It was, she says, an open vision.
Some time later, standing at the gate of her apartment block, she watched the clouds gently part and golden light burst through. Beyond it flowed a crystal-clear river, simple, endless and full of life. It felt like home. She now believes it was the river of life (Revelation 22:1). She ran to tell the adults. No one believed her.
“God can be your father”
From then on, she says, the enemy tried to erase that memory through years of abandonment and abuse. She was raised under strict military discipline and learned to fight in the streets. At twelve, a former troublemaker in the neighbourhood, now transformed, shared the gospel from his balcony. One sentence captured her: Did you know that God can be your father? Longing for the father she had never had, Sandielyn prayed her first prayer: “Jesus, whoever You are, if You’ll be my father, I will follow You and serve You for the rest of my life.”
Her family did not approve. She would hide her Sunday clothes, toss them out of the window and sneak to church, until she was caught, beaten and locked in her room without food. When the church leaders told her she had to obey her guardians, she felt God had let her down too. “If You don’t want me,” she told Him, “I’ll do it my way.”
A chant that opened a door
At college, a popular friend who practised Wicca gave her a chant to read at night if she wanted “power.” Nothing seemed to happen at first. Then, over the following months, Sandielyn began slipping out of her body into vivid, hyper-detailed realms where a spirit urged her to stay, telling her she could choose her own reality. She felt she was losing her mind and dropped out of college.
Her father appeared for the first time when she was seventeen, at her grandfather’s funeral, and tried to apologise. She elbowed him away, screaming in the funeral car that she hated the world and everyone who had abandoned her. Fortune-tellers in her neighbourhood had told her she would always be a nobody. She ran away from home.
A mop before a microphone
Beaten and swollen from a street fight, she ended up at a pastoral house beside a church. A prophet there looked at her and said, “I’m very honoured to know you.” He told her she would teach in many nations, write a book and be used powerfully by God. Then he said the words she held on to: “It doesn’t matter how dark or how ugly you begin. What matters is you will have a beautiful ending.”
For three years, her only ministry was mopping the church floors in exchange for food. “Before I held a mic, I held a mop,” she laughs. Through constant prayer, worship and the Word, she went through gradual deliverance. One morning, after cleaning, she heard an audible voice: “My daughter, you will finish.” Not long after, filled with the Holy Spirit as she cleaned, she prayed: “Even if my parents forget me and my dreams never come true, I am the richest person in the world, because Your presence is with me.” It was a prayer of full surrender, and her life accelerated.
She finished college, was promoted within a year and was sent as a missionary to South Korea for three years, where a children’s ministry grew from four to hundreds. Before she left, she visited her father and found that after 23 years of addiction he had become a pastor and founded five churches. She embraced him and asked him to forgive her. “Forgive me too,” he said. Her mother later came to faith as well, and Sandielyn hugged and forgave the people who had abused her.
Five losses in one year
Sandielyn thought her healing was complete. Then, after moving to America, she faced five blows in a single year. Her husband lost his job, and they had to move in with her in-laws. Her baby daughter had a frightening seizure. They were in a car accident. She suffered a miscarriage. And her father died of an aneurysm while preaching from the pulpit, just as her first book was about to be published.
She went into her closet and said, over and over, “I praise You, God, because You are a good, good Father, and Your goodness doesn’t depend on my situation.”
That night she dreamed that her heavenly Father carried her on His shoulders over a giant waterfall and through a wall of ocean, holding her gently the whole time. On the shore He became Jesus, who said, “My daughter, when you were in those troubled waters, when did I ever leave? I never left you.” She saw her life flash by: every time she was beaten, every night she cried as a rebellious teenager, and this terrible year. Each time, He had come and held her.
“You need to forgive Me”
Then Jesus came to her with the whole universe at His feet, the stars bowing before Him, and said, “My daughter, you need to forgive Me.” She protested. How could she forgive a perfect God? But she realised she had been asking Him the very same question she had once asked her earthly father: Where were You when I was being abused? Where were You when I needed You to defend me? She had forgiven others and forgiven herself, but she still carried a false story of a God who had let her down.
“I forgive You for the wrong version of You that I created in my head,” she prayed. And she was set free.
In time, she says, God restored everything. Her husband was promoted and they bought their own home. Her daughter grew up healthy and has had her own encounter with Jesus. A stranger donated a truck to replace the one lost in the accident. God gave them two sons. And the young people her father had discipled now carry on his prison and homeless ministries.
Five tests, and total dependence
Sandielyn teaches that God trains His children through five tests, again and again, until we look like Jesus: the test of time, as Abraham waited for a son; the test of faith, as he offered Isaac; the test of purity, as Joseph fled temptation; the test of forgiveness, as Joseph forgave his brothers; and the test of love, perfectly passed by Jesus at the cross. When we fail, she says, the Holy Spirit patiently gives us the test again.
Her advice to anyone who feels God has let them down is to ask Him honestly: Is there a false image of You in my heart? Was there a moment I felt You abandoned me? Heal me. Honesty, she says, is not blasphemy. It is the first step to healing. And to those who have never had a supernatural encounter, she points to Jesus’ words: “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29). Keep desiring Him, she urges, and delight yourself in the Lord (Psalm 37:4).
Above all, the thing God has taught her is total dependence on the Holy Spirit. “He will not let you depend on any formula, method or human strategy,” she says, “because when we depend on Him, we understand His heart.”
Sandielyn Taylor’s book
- Before Eternity: The One Who Dwells in Zion, available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and in Christian bookstores
Scriptures in this episode
- Revelation 22:1, a pure river of water of life
- Psalm 68:5, a father of the fatherless
- 1 Corinthians 15:33, evil communications corrupt good manners
- Jeremiah 29:13, seek Me with all your heart
- Isaiah 43:2, when thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee
- Genesis 22:1–2, the test of Abraham
- Genesis 50:20, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good
- John 3:16, for God so loved the world
- John 20:29, blessed are they that have not seen
- Psalm 37:4, delight thyself also in the Lord
- Jeremiah 33:3, call unto Me, and I will answer thee
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