Inner Healing Prayer
Inner Healing PrayerInner healing prayer is a powerful tool for bringing relief to our deepest hurts. Emotional pain, traumatic memories, tormenting thoughts, and relationship issues are all things that inner healing can help.
There are many models of inner healing out there, so sometimes it can be confusing what exactly inner healing is and what it is not. This post will clear up much of that confusion and help you get a sense of which approach may be right for you.
What Inner Healing Is
Inner healing is bringing the good news of the gospel to every part of your heart.
Salvation positionally is once and done and cannot be lost, but we are also told to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. How often do you feel the disconnect between what your head knows to be true and what your heart knows to be true? Much like the man in Mark 9, we believe, but we need help with our unbelief.
Inner healing is a way of helping those unbelieving parts come into belief. The more we come into belief in every part, the more we are able to truly walk in the freedom and peace God has for us.
Inner healing is speaking God’s better word over the hurts in your life.
Even as Christians it can be so hard to see where God was in our painful moments of life, and so easy to believe lies about how He felt about what happened.
Through inner healing we invite God into our deepest hurts and are able to bring healing not only to the painful experiences but also to the faulty ways we have viewed God because of those experiences.
Inner healing is binding up broken hearts.
Isaiah 61 speaks of setting captives free and binding up the broken hearted. Inner healing goes to those broken places, the hurts, the painful emotions, and binds up the broken heart.
Inner healing is a tool for sanctification.
Processing through issues of forgiveness, repentance, and rejecting the lies we’ve believed is a very sanctifying process. As we strip away all the broken ways of thinking and the faulty foundations, a redeemed mind, healthy life patterns, and firm foundations begin to develop.
What Inner Healing Prayer Is Not
Inner healing is not a substitute for counseling or medical care.
Each approach has their own place and they do complement one another. While inner healing may help counseling be more effective, it should never be seen as a substitute especially when dealing with mental health issues and medications.
Inner healing is not the same as new age visualization.
I’m sure you can find an inner healing practitioner out there using a questionable model that does include visualization that is outside of healthy spiritual boundaries. However, the consensus among most inner healing practitioners is that such uses of visualization are out of bounds and dangerous.
In inner healing there is the use of your sanctified imagination and letting the Holy Spirit speak prophetically through pictures and visions but the crucial difference is that such visions are brought by Holy Spirit, not by the implanting of a practitioner.
Inner healing is not deliverance ministry.
Many people have been burned by the aggressive approach of some deliverance ministries. Inner healing may sometimes include aspects of deliverance ministry: praying oppressive spirits off, identifying strongholds, breaking generational curses.
However, the shouting, intense physical reactions, or manifestations of demons that are common to many deliverance ministries is not what inner healing is about at all. Inner healing is a gentle, honoring approach that should put you at ease and bless you.
Main Components of All Inner Healing Prayer
No matter what tools or approach is used, every inner healing model includes these four main components:
Forgiveness
Scripture tells us that we will be forgiven as we forgive others. We aren’t just told forgiveness is a good idea, we are actually commanded to forgive.
In inner healing, forgiveness is not about what the person did to you (or didn’t do). It’s about the resentment you are holding in your heart.
Forgiving doesn’t mean you have to feel it, or that what the person did was ok. It just means that you are choosing to hand all that bitterness and resentment over to God to set yourself free and allow Him to be the righteous judge over the situation.
Repentance
For some reason we often get scared at the thought of repentance. In general we as humans tend to be afraid to admit when we’ve done something wrong or just didn’t know what we were doing.
With inner healing repentance we simply are breaking agreement with faulty ways of thinking and living, asking that God would forgive us, and asking that He would replace what ever counterfeit we were trusting in with His real version.
Replacing Lies with Truth
We all have lies we believe and operate under throughout life. One of the primary components of inner healing ministry is uncovering these lies and replacing them with God’s truth. Most of the lies we live under are so covert we don’t even realize they are lies.
A good way to begin to identify the lies you are under is looking at things you believe are true for yourself that you don’t believe are true for everyone else. Just identifying a lie is a big step, but when we displace it with truth it is very difficult for that lie to take root again.
Prayer
A major distinctive of all inner healing ministry is its use of prayer. Depending on the style of inner healing the practitioner will pray over you, lead you in praying, or both. Listening prayer is also a major component of inner healing as the practitioner works to help facilitate an environment for you to hear from God clearly for yourself.
Types of Inner Healing Ministry
There are many types and models of inner healing prayer ministry and some approaches may appeal to you more than others. You can find practitioners trained in a variety of inner healing models in the directory at ChristianInnerHealing.com.