Inner Healing
"Sometimes things are too big for us to get a grip on, and as soon as you get into a room with two other people and they start asking God to reveal things, things change. God often responds more powerfully when we are together and being more vulnerable."
Laura Lopez, HOP
It’s the process of dealing with the sinful reactions and false beliefs that get lodged in our hearts during the painful episodes of life. Those sinful reactions can be to anything that happens, but mostly it has to do with our parents or lack thereof. Our reactions are often not good, mostly because we don’t know how to react at an early stage of life. We don’t know how to handle the things that hurt us, so we end up making ungodly statements or judgements. However, sometimes this can happen later in life, in adulthood, where painful episodes of life impacted us.
Everyone needs inner healing because everyone has been hurt in life. Unless you process your hurts quickly and properly, then you end up having pain. That pain gets locked into our memories, even if we forget it’s there. It hinders our earthly relationships, but it also hinders our relationship with God. It stops us loving God and others as we should. You can think that God is loving and know the theology, but actually deep down, if you unconsciously believe something else, and you act out of that instead.
We know something isn’t working in our heart by any one of three things:
- We have fresh feelings whenever we think about people or events that occurred a long time in the past
- When we have a strong over-reaction to something
- When we keep encountering similar negative situations or events in our lives.
. It when you recognize that something is consistently not going well in your life. For example, “Why do I end up yelling at my husband every week?” Or “How come I fight with every boss I’ve ever had?”. Once you know something isn’t working right, then ask God to show you what is going on and perhaps where it started.
The process is never the same because you're generally following God who knows everything and is not always going to be contained to a method or formula.
When I’m doing inner healing with someone, I usually talk to them to find out what’s going on: “How does this happen? Where do you notice it? Did you ever notice this happening in your family life?”
Then we ask Jesus, “what do you want to say about this? What do you want to show? What do you want to do?” And it doesn't necessarily have to be the originating event, but sometimes God shows the person something symbolic or representative.”
Honesty is important. Often, we want to not dishonor people, especially our parents, so we don’t get down to how we actually felt in the moment about the event or events. The process can only really work if we express the ugly truth of the moment, how it felt to us.
Then we can finally move on to forgiveness and repentance. You’d say something like “God when X did Y, I felt so Z! (It’s ok to yell, cry, scream, etc… at this point.) Then, eventually, you’d move on to “I forgive X for Y and release them. Lord, please forgive me for (how you reacted in an ungodly way)…” We can then command any unclean spirit that came in through the wound to be cast out of your soul.
I'm a firm believer that it does not need to be complicated. It's all about forgiveness and repentance.
After a while, Jesus usually indicates a point of solution. Sometimes it ends with this incredible revelation and healing of the heart, with weeping and snot. It’s often great to leave the person to soak in the moment, in the love of God and the presence of the Spirit. Once you've learned the process you can do that on your own.