Finding Healing Through Faith: An Interview with Mirtha Coronel

Discover a powerful testimony of faith and healing on this episode of The Prodigal Daughter Podcast. Host Sharon welcomes Mirtha Coronel, a distinguished author, coach, international speaker, mentor, and sexual responsibility educator. Mirtha speaks about her transformative journey with Christ, her struggles, and the importance of discipleship and protecting one's spiritual growth. Learn about her book 'Abortion Hurts: Healing is Possible' and find inspiration to live a purposeful, authentic, and God-honoring life. Don't miss this heartfelt conversation designed to empower and uplift. Connect with Mirtha at growthmindsetnow.ca.

00:00 Introduction to Mirtha Coronel
01:24 Opening Prayer
02:10 Mirtha's Background and Upbringing
03:57 Journey to Faith
08:21 Struggles and Transformation
12:56 The Importance of Discipleship
22:42 Advice for New Believers
26:33 Conclusion and Contact Information

Looking for a Christian community where you can come as you are?
https://mykingdombiz.com/prodigaldaughtersp

All are welcome here! there is no competition in the Kingdom!

Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Prodigal Daughter Podcast  today I am excited to bring you a beautiful woman of God Mirtha Coronel.

She is an author, coach. International speaker, mentor, and sexual responsibility educator. She is dedicated to guiding individuals through a holistic approach to healing. She is a wife and mother of three.  She draws on her own personal experience, training and love for biblical truths.  She recently released her book called Abortion Hurts: healing is possible. 31 day start to healing and spiritual growth. Available on Amazon. Through her writing and speaking,  Mirtha empowers others to live purposeful, authentic, and God honoring lives.  And you can connect with her at growthmindsetnow.ca. And that will be in the show notes.

Welcome, Mirtha.  

Thank you Sharon. It is a privilege to have met you first and foremost, and to be here today. 

Yes.  Would you like to open us in prayer.  

Heavenly Father, come before your throne of grace in the name of your son, Christ Jesus. I thank you for the gift of eternity that we have in you through his finished work.

I thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit. And I thank you for the gift of your word. Your word says that your word is the bread of life and it is the river of living water. So we invite you bread of life and river of living water to feed us and to satiate the deepest thirst of our souls.  May your presence be made known here and felt here and may you draw each listener to yourself in Jesus name.

Amen.  Amen. All right. Thank you so very much.  I would like if you could just give us a little bit of a background on you, how you grew up, where you grew up a little bit of background. So we know a little bit more about you.  

So I live in Canada.  I grew up in the city of Toronto.

I was born and raised here. My parents were born in Ecuador  and so my blood, I like to say my, the blood that runs through my veins is Ecuadorian but they actually met in the city of Toronto in the 1970s. It was quite interesting growing up. My parents  wanted to learn the English language.

So in our home, we spoke English rather than Spanish. Thankfully, Spanish is the first language that I learned. I do speak that as well. Growing up, I would say  I was raised in a loving home. I never did feel that mom and dad didn't love me. Our home was far from perfect. There were a lot of things that disrupted  my life and my perspective on myself. 

One of the things that contributed to that was that I came from a family of low economic means. And so what that meant is one of the things that my parents did to bring an income,  also because they were just generally good people and like to help wherever they could,  is they would often rent a space in our home or make a space available to a friend or relative. 

But one day after I encountered Jesus and came into a relationship with him, I reflected over the course of my life. There were over 18 people that lived with us, whether they were there for a few days or a few years.  

You said that you gave your life to Christ. Can you expand on that what was your life like before? What  brought you to Christ? And how has your life been different since? 

 Sharon, I love that your show is called The Prodigal Daughter  because it so resonates with me.

I would say that my walk had two  phases to it I'll explain.  I have a grandmother who was a very prayerful woman. And very biblically founded. She spent a lot of time in the word I don't think there was ever a time I showed up to her home that there wasn't a Bible open somewhere or there wasn't worship music playing in the background. 

As a child, we went to church until I was around age 7, then there was a disruption that occurred in the church. And people started to go their own way.  What that meant for me was that  as it relates to church was that I would only go on special occasions, by special invitation. 

So at age  15, I was invited to a service with my grandmother and I went at that point in my life, quite frankly, though I was a young teenager, I had already lived and experienced a lot of things that the average  24 year old woman had never experienced.  I recognized that I needed to shift  my life because the track that I was on was going to lead me to a very dangerous down a very dangerous and dark road,  or it was actually going to lead me to death.  And so my heart genuinely wanted something better for myself. I didn't know how to go about it. So I went to church with my grandmother on this invitation. I'm not going to name denominations, but it was very religious in nature.  I went to the service, I'll never forget, and they did an altar call.  If you want to accept Jesus in your life, come forward. So I stepped forward and, I prayed.  The prayer of faith, people prayed for me and then I went on to my life. The thing is that I was living in such darkness everything about me was so worldly, the way I spoke, the way I dress, the way I spend my time, that  suddenly I've made this decision. And now all of a sudden I was wearing, long skirts, long blouses, high necks. This was in the middle of the summer I went from wearing daisy dukes, and cut off tops to very  modest clothing. With a, black leather bound Bible under my arm, in a version that I couldn't read or understand I was going to church. That lasted. About three months  because the shift was so dramatic  and so unnatural  that it was so only superficial  that I couldn't do it anymore. So I just stopped going to church  fast forward. I can say today and I understand the importance of discipleship.  Because that was a gap and that was, I'm going to say the gap, of course my grandmother loved me and prayed for me, but I needed someone that recognized where I had just come from  and where I was headed. I needed someone to stand by me and hold my hand 

and walk me through this transition. That is  a huge gap that  still exists today.  The discipleship  part of leading people into this relationship with Christ is so  lacking. I don't want to say it's absent, because I know I've seen it in places, but is lacking.

I'm glad that you brought that up. Discipleship is so important, and I believe that we lose a lot of people for lack of discipleship.  So  you came to Christ. It was this drastic superficial transition.  You walked away again. Let's continue the story.  

Yeah, so I walked away and I knew that I didn't want to continue the lifestyle that I was living. I started to date someone, got into a very serious relationship, we dated for 10 years, we got married, we have 3 children together, I did end up marrying my husband. Sorry, the one that I started dating immediately after and so that part, all good. It was quite a bumpy road and maybe we'll leave that part for another day. But here's what happened  in the midst of  doing life, so I was 14, 15 when I made that initial decision and walked away, then another 15 years passed  and I was still making unhealthy decisions. 

Unhealthy decisions, actions, words, thought frames. And so I remember one day,  however, on the surface, my life was looking pretty good because despite the fact that my highest level of completed education was high school,  because of my work ethic. My career had taken off. 

I was a high achiever, and it was recognized not only through salary increases, but also through promotions. I got to the point where I was leading the marketing department for an omni channel. Retailer biggest retailer in Canada in that space, it was a billion dollar business.

I was responsible for a hundred million dollar budget  I was experiencing things that I never had it as a child, experiencing upscale restaurants and visiting exotic places in the world, I got to wear, certain brands or types of clothes that I didn't get to wear when I was younger, and eat different types of food.

Like it was just very different from what I had grown up with.  I remember one day I was 30 years old on the surface. Everything looked like my life was going great,  but there was this void I was feeling inside. There was this gap. In my soul. On this particular day I remember my husband had gone out to play golf with his buddies.

At that point, we only had one daughter. She was three years old and my sister had taken her out for, a day together I was home alone.  I had nothing to do because the house was in order, laundry done house clean, meals not needed that day.

I remember that emptiness was so present.  I went into my daughter's bedroom knelt at her bedside and prayed god, if you're out there  and if you really care,  release me from the shackles of this world.  I want to know you more.  If you're real and you hear me, send me a sign.

 

At this point, were you and your husband involved in a church. 

 No, I would only pray if I was in trouble or thought I was going to get caught doing things I shouldn't be doing. And then we would go to church like Christmas, Easter. Every now and then there'd be special services that we'd get invited to. Thank you for asking the question, Sharon, because that year where I prayed that prayer. Was a transformational year for me. The year was 2007.  And that whole year,  it's like everywhere I turned, I would see , I didn't recognize it at the time, but something supernatural. I would see this brightness, this presence in the natural, like the sun would shine brighter than normal, or would reflect off of something more brightly than it normally or naturally would. That particular year, I went to church several times accepting these invitations to special services. Every time I went into one of these special services, I found myself falling uncontrollably crying, wanting to take a step forward when they did an altar call wanting to say yes to Jesus  I just couldn't move.  It was as though I was wearing cement  shoes, like cement blocks as shoes. And I could not take a step forward. And so I came to realize afterwards, the Lord showed me that it was on account of the sinful nature in my life  that I had opened door and made way for  the forces of spiritual darkness to hold me back.  Okay. But fast forward. Yeah. The Lord, was calling me  and he answered my prayer. 

That is awesome.  So  in this gap that you felt this discipleship piece,  tell me a little bit about how did that come into your life? Where did you find the discipleship? And where did you learn how to  set off those  sinful inclinations that you had and to put on more Christ like thinking and more of a Christ like  attitude. And just really deepen that relationship that you had opened up for Christ.

 It started with my genuine prayer, God, I want to know you more. It really started there. He brought me directly to the Bible  because the Bible says in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. Meaning that if we as individual human beings want to know God and we want to know him directly, it's actually right here in his word where we can discover him.  So for me, my journey was three years,  self discipleship with the Holy Spirit, because my circle had no believers.  Thankfully there was a lady and her daughter who I could lean on and, ask questions every now and then, but really it was something that I had to take up on my own.  However, that was the first three years.  I remember crying out to the Lord saying, I need friends, God. I need God loving, God fearing friends. I need girlfriends that love you.  And he's faithful to answer those prayers. After, I don't know how long I prayed that for, crying out to him, I need friends. I need a human being to talk to. I love you, Jesus. This is cool, but I need friends. He brought God loving, God fearing women into my life. And we grew together through prayer. So then I did join a discipleship group, and Bible studies. For me, it just became a part of my life. And that's just something that I'm continuing I continually choose to grow. I have mentors in my spiritual development and growth. Plus I have my pastor, if I have certain questions that I can go to, plus I'm part of a community where the foundation is discipleship and causing disciples too.   Creating an environment where we can grow as disciples of Yeshua so that we can create disciples of Yeshua because that was the mandate, right? 

Just go into all of the nations and make disciples . 

Yes, that it definitely is. And I love that  you  Had the  tenacity to  seek out  and learn about Christ, despite the fact that the people around you were not  cultivating a relationship with Christ. I don't know exactly how you're  immediate circle was, but it's sounding to me like they really weren't  cultivating a relationship with Christ. The fact that you chose of your own free will to go, okay, I've got to figure this out. And chose to go to the word. And from there, God showed you and eventually brought you into  community with other,  God loving, Jesus fearing women. And that is just such a beautiful, Part of the journey that we all take, the reason I called this podcast prodigal daughter is because  that is how I felt for so long. I knew he was there, but I had no clue. I just, nobody in my circle was there. And  unlike you,  you  intentionally pursued that relationship.  I, on the other hand, just did this slow walk, and then  I hit this brick wall when my father died  it threw me into this spiral down, I love the fact that  through your story, you  consciously chose not to go down that path that was going to lead you to death and destruction. And I guess  my ultimate burning question is  do you feel like God was speaking to you in those moments, even though you weren't  in a deep relationship with him, or what was it that kept you from  taking those wrong roads and going down into that deep path? 

 I genuinely believe in the power of prayer,  and I'm so thankful for those who take on that responsibility, to pray for the people that we don't even know, that we've never met on planet earth, that we are never ever going to meet  on planet earth. Those people that are choosing, because that's what I love about our relationship with God, is that it's a choice. To read the Bible is a choice  to grow in faith is a choice  to mature in our faith. It's a choice. God, he gives us the invitation,  but the decision is ultimately ours. That's the beautiful thing about this relationship we're not manipulated into it. We're not forced to, it's freely by choice.  

Unlike the relationship with the devil, who is the father of lies and manipulation and  that's his domain. One of the things that I have  come to learn is that  in your quest for hearing God,  it's understanding the tone  of who it is that you're listening to. If it is in any way, shape or form, a negative tone, if it is a manipulative tone, if it's in a controlling tone, that is not God. God is never going to do that. try to manipulate you he's going to be that  this is what you can do and you choose it. Like you said it is all a choice. And  if you hear something that sounds to you like it is a choice, then yes, that's from God. Because that was one of the things that I struggled with  and that's where I want to go next is  what were your struggles.  In developing your relationship with Christ, were there, theological things that you had trouble understanding? Was it hearing from God, knowing how to pray? What kinds of things did you struggle with in your walk and work coming back to Christ?  

Yeah, so I'm going to say this, that in the journey, so I've been journeying with the Lord for 17 years now. And so the struggles have been different in different seasons. As we mature and grow, but I'm going to focus on the initial part, like when, what was my initial struggle? And I would say it was the pull of the flesh,  the pull toward the known, for me personally, some of my struggles where I really enjoyed drinking, to the point of at least catching a buzz, when I was gathering with friends. And so when I would be in that environment,  how do I say no  when my flesh wants it fully and not just one glass of wine those were some of the struggles that I had.  I can go a little bit deeper, some of the struggles that I had that stem from my teen years is fidelity.  So you know, and fidelity, I don't just mean in the body because fidelity actually starts in the mind.  Even understanding faithfulness and fidelity is in the mind. I could preserve my body all I want,  but if my mind's running away to other places, I'm not being faithful to God and I'm not being faithful to my husband. So it was in the things  that were familiar to me and because they were familiar to me, they were comfortable to me. Because we could be in slop, but if we've been in slop our whole life, slop is comfortable  and being clean is uncomfortable, right? 

I love the way that you articulated that, It is so much of  getting out of your comfort zone, especially if you have  led a life in the world doing worldly things for so long that it is really hard to break those chains and to get those shackles released off of you. So I am so glad that you said that. Now were getting down to the last few minutes here. What I would like to end with is  what would you say  if  someone came to you today and said,  I just accepted Christ and I don't know what to do.  What does that mean?  How is that supposed to change me? What do I do next? How would you answer them?  

I would start with  faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God.  And so  practically, what would that look like every day? I would say, read your Bible out loud every day.  A simple start is the book of Proverbs. There are 31 Proverbs, meaning that on the first day of the month, you would read the first Proverb or read one verse in the first Proverb and just ask the Lord,  how do I apply this to my life? What does this mean? Be intentional about  protecting your relationship with God.  More than anything else  like a newborn baby needs to be protected by being held close to the mom.   In the same way you need to guard your relationship with God.  A way to  do that is to be hidden in his presence and the way to hide in his presence is to spend time in his word Even if it's five minutes a day to start  or one verse a day. 

Oh beautiful.  You cannot  emphasize too much  just  how important it is to  actually read the word,  get into the Bible, read it for yourself.  It's great to go to church or to listen to podcasts where they're preaching the sermons but until you  really start reading the word for yourself,  To know, is this person that I'm listening to, actually talking from the Word of God? You can't do that without reading it for yourself. That is what I would like the listeners to walk away with, from this episode, is the importance of actually reading the Word for yourself.  Because  Mirthha is a perfect example of how powerful the Word of God is. Because she said herself she had no one around her that was discipling her.  It was the choice that she made and she started with the Word of God.  And is there anything else that you would like our listeners to walk away with? 

Yes, I just want to highlight. So when I first said yes to Jesus in my teen years,  there was a transition. I described that it wasn't being helped with,  but what the Lord wants for us. Is transformation  and that transformation comes from the word  in him. He tells us, I believe it's in second Corinthians, chapter five, verse 17 that we are a new creation in him, old things have passed, behold, all things are made new.

So regardless of what your past has been or what that looks like in Christ, you are new. Each day, his word says that his mercies are new.  It's plural. So let's take it, man. 

Amen. And thank you so very much, Mirtha. I'm going to drop the links in the show notes. How do people get in touch with you? 

Yeah, hello@growthmindset.ca, if you want to send me a note. I'm live on Instagram several times a week, Mirtha A. Coronel, Instagram Facebook, or if you're in the corporate world, follow me on LinkedIn. I share on different aspects of life and faith. 

 Perfect.  Thank you so very much. And really quick, I would just love to say a quick prayer of blessing and send us on our way.  Father God, Lord, we thank you so much for the work that you have done in Mirtha's life. We thank you for the work that you do in each and every person who hears this broadcast. 

I thank you for the work that you have done in my life, and I ask that  this podcast falls on those ears that you want to hear, and that will benefit from this message today. It is in your son's mighty and precious name that I pray. Amen. 

Updated contact information for Mirtha:
website: abortinhealing.ca
email: hello@abortionhealing.ca