There comes a time in a man's life when you just have to say something; you can't let this one go by. To do so would be a missed opportunity at, best, and cowardice at the worst.
This, for me, is one of them.
Almost 2 weeks ago I was at a "school" of sorts held over a long weekend in southern Connecticut. I'd been invited by a friend to be a part of the worship. I was glad to do it . . . always a chance to play the instrument God fashioned me for.
During the course of the extended teaching, the speaker (who has a growing influence), at least 5-6 times denigrated and mocked a mode of healing Tricia and I've been closely associated with for 25 years. Some history:
In my 30's, through a series of God-orchestrated "circumstances," I spent a year going through inner healing with a very brilliant and spiritually gifted Episcopal priest. I went weekly for the duration. God let me know in no uncertain terms, I was going under the "spiritual" knife over issues which dogged me since my teens. Prior, I doubt I'd heard of inner healing. If I did, it registered little meaning with me.
My year of emotional, psychological and relational healing set me free to such a degree if I'd not gone through it, I'd have never been a counselor, or spiritual director. I wouldn't have led retreats or been sitting at my desk writing this blog about my thoughts and experiences planting imagine/Northampton. Ministry, at all, would have been a distant and far off land traversed by others.
The healing I received through the Holy Spirit from stifling memories and quietly suppurating heart wounds liberated me in a manner nothing else had. It was a redemptive, internal unbinding which opened authentic emotional manhood to me. Prior, I was a boy inside, a 35 year-old boy. He died when I could finally forgive my father for what his brokenness did to me. My anger was cut from its blood supply and I unlocked. I healed.
In fact, I so unlocked that God soon sent folks to me for inner healing. I was so enthusiastic about my experience of the process that I studied with this priest after our work together, and did extensive reading. Studying with him felt akin to being in graduate school, so extensive was his mastery of theology, biblical and cultural anthropology, psychology, and Christian spirituality, especially related to healing. I was able to trust the Holy Spirit, access my own healing and what I'd learned to help people overcome sometimes devastating wounds.
For the last 25 years to the present I can testify God works through deep healing in ways only he can.
I'm not sure what experience the speaker had to so categorically mock the inner healing ministry, but he must have seen abuses or gross ineptitude. From my experience and watching Jesus use Tricia brilliantly to heal deeply scores of women crushed by the sin of others committed against them, I'm bewildered by his position. Frankly, this teacher is completely in error with his blanket denunciation.
So in defense, I need to lay out a few key inner healing principles:
1. Healing, in general, has always been a critical component of the Gospel message: healing of the catastrophic separation from God because of sin, healing of relationships, healing of the body, and healing of the heart and mind, of nations: (Ps. 103:1-4; Mt. 10:8; Lk. 9:6; Mt. 14;14; Mt. 24:14; 1Cor. 12:9; Rev. 22:2) A key reality of the Kingdom of God is access to healing. Jesus demonstrated it in the Gospels as a means of establishing his identity as God's Anointed One ushering in a new way of life; the way of the Kingdom of God included healing.
2. Inner healing applies the Gospel to the experience of, and how a person thinks about or responds to his or her most emotionally crippling experiences in life. Biblical truths about forgiveness, salvation, redemption from sin, and the radical love of God illuminate a person's perception of his or her intrinsic worth. Wounding experiences always threaten to steal the truth of how God values each one of us. What happened in the past obstructs our ability to apprehend the beauty God sees in us. As that occurs, we disengage emotionally from the wonder of God's gracious gift, and settle into living an emotional half-life preserved by a noxious tangle of lies. Worse, we disappear and pose or find an acceptable persona behind which to hide. The authentic self is suppressed and held at bay for to avoid true intimacy and vulnerability at all costs.
Here's what inner healing accomplishes:
Isaiah 53:4 asserts Christ bore our griefs and carried our sorrows on the cross. He took them completely and opened the possibility of healing from their deleterious effects in our hearts so we might be freed from re-living horrors for a lifetime. Miracles occur through inner healing because what he bore on the cross and accomplished through the resurrection; miracles which overturn the emotional lordship of abuse, neglect and violation.
Psalm 247:3 states simply that God "heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds," because of human cruelty, indifference, lust, oppression, and deceit. It's not hard to break a heart or crush a human spirit, especially in the tender and trusting years of life. A broken heart dims the light of life in a person, muting their unique voice, and subverting their power to truly live. Through inner healing the Holy Spirit neutralizes the domination of evil and restores a person's ability to pursue living life to the full, a gift Jesus said he came to give (John 10:10).
In Luke 4:18, Jesus quotes Isaiah, declaring in the synagogue, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim the good news to the poor; he has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those that are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." People who need inner healing are held captive to what others have done to them, or to the sin for which they are most deeply ashamed. Inner healing through the Spirit gradually unbinds people to live at liberty from the wounds they suffered or oppression they lived under. They don't pretend it "never happened," rather Jesus confronts and removes the fear, shame, unforgiveness, anger and condemnation infecting and ruling their hearts. His love helps them internalize God's favor.
One of the most powerful passages undergirding the efficacy and practice of true inner healing is 2Corinthians 10:4-5, "For the weapons we fight with are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ." What it says regarding the inner healing process, although admittedly in the context of Paul's letter he's not addressing the process of inner healing per se, is that even lies which grow from being hurt, defiled or abuse by others must submit to the lordship of Christ through inner healing. There, he asserts authority over the distorted, anguished thinking of people who've had their sense of self radically altered by sinful acts and the lies attached to them. When terrible memories are healed internally it's because Jesus makes them submit to him and replaces what occurred with love and utter acceptance for the wounded one. Emotional a re exposed and strongholds are destroyed.
Romans 5:1 "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Not only is the person made spiritually whole from the substitutionary atonement of Christ on their behalf so that positionally they're at peace with God by faith, but they experience peace from tormenting memories of terrible things. Inner healing leads to peace because the destructive power of what people did to (or withheld from) them loses its force through Jesus taking authority over it. Subsequently, peace with the past settles in over time.The peace given through justification sinks more deeply into the heart of the wounded because it can be more clearly seen. Guilt, shame, and fear can't stifles its presence.
Paul speaks of an existential/spiritual transformation in 2Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold all things have become new." The healing is so existentially profound and complete that a new way of being is created by regeneration. Inner healing revives the grasp and deepens the reality of being a new creation to the person devastated by abuse, neglect and hatred. This transformation from old to new to which Paul refers occurs instantaneously at the point of new birth. However, sanctification is the process by which we grow into our new creation relationship with God and others; we learn to live love and service as our primary way of being. Inner healing becomes necessary when people are emotionally, physically or spiritually traumatized and can't embrace fully this new creation way of living. They need to be freed and settled into the new way.
Ephesians 3:17-9, "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness of God." At the heart, inner healing slowly opens people to being firmly established in the passionate, affectionate love of Abba Father. Being filled with the fullness of God is his longing for his Beloved that we might be unleashed to receive and share such love from what we've experienced in him. Inner healing lowers a person's guard so he or she better receives love and gives it with growing generosity and abandon. A guarded heart is a heart rooted in the shallows of God's healing love. Healing helps people be less defensed and protected; less hidden and opaque. They become conduits for unconditional love in ways never imagined because that same love freed them to healthy vulnerability.
Inner healing exposes and defuses the toxic, cancerous fear that overtakes the heart of someone who's been terrorized and dehumanized by human evil. 2Timothy 1:7 proclaims, "For God hath not given us a spirit of fear; but of power, and love, and of a sound mind." God himself has graced us with an ability to think soundly (from a firm grasp of the truth), love well and live in the vivifying, fructifying power of the Spirit. Inner healing attacks and exposes the sources of malignant, abiding fear. Fear is a cruel taskmaster keeping people enslaved and irrationally confined to what appears safe, but actually just imprisons them in an illusion of self-guarded safety. Inner healing opens people to the unparalleled power of Christ over life and life's enemies. It also opens people to the power God has placed in them to live their lives in freedom and life-giving enterprises. Crippling fear teaches people to stay away from life; inner healing unchains and beckons them to an authentic present and promising future. Fear is gradually silenced by the gentle, peaceful, but authoritative voice of the Spirit in the jangling memories of pain and terror.
3. Inner healing takes advantage, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, of the incredible power of imagination. It's that creative faculty of the mind which makes mental images, creatively formulates or signifies the minds conversation. Ideas, concepts, experiences, mental constructs and thoughts of all kinds can be pictured through the imagination in some form. It is the imagination that the Spirit employs to vividly depict memories, painful or otherwise, and then provide a way the mind can bring Jesus into the middle of the painful remembrances such that people "see" his Lordship over the offenders, and offenses against the person. Being able to put ones self back into the horror and "see' Jesus in the midst of it powerfully makes real the healing of the ordeal which has paralyzed the person sometimes for decades. Not only that, but healing actually occurs. The terrible sting and binding power of what happened is neutralized, and the person gradually emerges authentically from it's taint.
Tricia and I've witnessed this hundreds of times as counselors, and we've kept a pile of cards and letters from over the years testifying to the lasting effect of God's work in the deep heart. Inner healing is a powerful means by which God frees the captive. While there are all sorts of counterfeits and inanities practiced in the name of inner healing, to be sure, the inner healing we've experienced, were taught, and practiced is at the heart of the applied Gospel of Jesus Christ
We also know many gifted and spiritually mature Christians around the country who are serving the Kingdom of God beautifully by helping heal crushed hearts through inner healing. They are hard-working bringers of the Good News and bearers of hope to the voiceless, feeble, maimed, and broken in our midst.
The teacher I heard recently denigrate this ministry of healing just doesn't realize how sadly far off the mark he is, and what a disservice he does to the Body of Christ.
May Jesus open his eyes.
15 comments:
How sad that when we religious leaders get opportunities to teach and speak we often can not resist the temptation to speak against other movements of the Spirit. Would it not be so much more uplifting, so much more an example of grace to simply say; "I do not understand it...I have not experienced it, but who am I to limit the working of my God."
Thanks for your grace filled response Kit.
so-called inner healing is not all it's cracked up to be. I've sought after it for many years, far and wide, even driven many hours to get to just the right person, or program. It's a package, that is not a one size fits all. I don't deny the fact that you were healed in the way you describe, and certainly healing is in the bible. But how does it come? Is it not different for everyone? Do you combine dirt plus saliva to heal every blind eye? Surely not. You can implement the steps you experienced to me, but can you guarantee me the same results? I personally have found that seeking after Jesus is the priority and answer to all. To experience an encounter with the living God, to be overcome by the presence of the Holy spirit, to be in an atmosphere charged with the glory, in a moment, emotional and physical healing can take place. It's all about encounter, and not at all about a program, and that applies to Christian drug rehab programs as well, 12 steps, recovery, whatever. Receiving the love of Jesus in a deep way is when healing takes place. If you want to teach people how to enter into the realms of the kingdom and encounter the thick weighty glory of the Holy spirit, He will do the rest. Without this, “inner healing” perse is no more than glorified cognitive behavioral therapy. As a worship leader recently said, Jesus healed everyone who came to Him, He never had to figure out what the spiritual root was.
"It's all about encounter, and not at all about a program, and that applies to Christian drug rehab programs as well, 12 steps, recovery, whatever."
I, respectfully, disagree with this thought process. My experiences with addiction, Christianity, and recovery have led me to the conclusion that this is well meaning but potentially fatal advice.
My name is Mike, and I am both a recovering addict and a Christian. Briefly for a background, I grew up very Christian and remained so until my drug addiction kind of took me out of the spiritual loop. I went on existing for many years on the dark side, until it got really dark. Suddenly, it seemed, my life was in danger. If I could not stop using drugs, I was surely going to die. Not in a theoretical way, it could have been months, weeks, or days – regardless, death was my bedfellow.
Having the strong Christian background that I did, surely in my times of deepest anguish and depravity, I turned to God to remove my affliction. This didn’t seem to work. I begged God to take it away from me - not once, but for years. People laid their hands on me, prayed for me, tried to drive the demons out, etc.
“Many of us ended up in jail, or sought help through medicine, religion, and psychiatry. None of these methods was sufficient for us.”
This is something that is read at the beginning of the 12 Step group that I attend several times a week. I couldn’t have prayed harder or done anything differently with regards to religion that would have freed me from my addiction. Indeed, it was not God’s plan for me.
A 12 Step program saved my life, or, put differently, God working through the 12 Step program saved my life. I believe that recovery is a process. It is a very deep process, and many people come to God through the program, including myself.
I am certain that, numbers wise, this is by far the most efficacious recovery modality available today. God is by no means devoid or lacking in the programs or in the rooms. Indeed, it is a beautiful place where people can relate in their brokenness, openly. If only church were like this!
God pops up in the steps many times, e.g.
2nd Step - We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
3rd Step – We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him
5th Step – We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
6th Step – We became entirely ready to have God remove these defects of character
The list goes on. My point is that, through the 12 step programs that exist, an addict, any addict, can find freedom from the horrors of active addiction, loose the desire to use, and find a new way of life.
P.S., Kit, I thought this blog was your most thoroughly thought out and articulated blog to date. It was a lucid and a pleasure to read. I am thankful for your many years of dedication to this ministry and the impact it has had on so many lives.
I am certain that, numbers wise, this is by far the most efficacious recovery modality available today. God is by no means devoid or lacking in the programs or in the rooms. Indeed, it is a beautiful place where people can relate in their brokenness, openly. If only church were like this!
God pops up in the steps many times, e.g.
2nd Step - We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
3rd Step – We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him
5th Step – We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
6th Step – We became entirely ready to have God remove these defects of character
The list goes on. My point is that, through the 12 step programs that exist, an addict, any addict, can find freedom from the horrors of active addiction, loose the desire to use, and find a new way of life.
P.S., Kit, I thought this blog was your most thoroughly thought out and articulated blog to date. It was a lucid and a pleasure to read. I am thankful for your many years of dedication to this ministry and the impact it has had on so many lives.
Obviously your blog on this subject has generated some diverse discussion. I do believe that inner healing is possible. I know several people who have benefited from such a ministry. Is it always succesful? I am not sure. But for those whom God has healed through this process, it has be undeniably helpful. I have encouraged people over the years to seek this out. The reaction of most is fear. They are afraid that it won't work/happen for them. As a result, they usually don't follow through. The tragedy, in almost each one of these lives, is that they are still stuck where they were. I guess I'll never know if the opportunity for inner healing would have benefited them.
Kit, thanks for you thoroughness on this subject. I appreciate all the thought and research put in. I trust that it might help someone to consider the possibility of inner healing for them. May God continue to use you and Tricia powerfully in the lives of others.
Thanks everybody for responding! The attack I was defending against came from a man acting in a way unbecoming a teacher of the Gospel. Believe me, I have more unsettling problems with his teaching and methods, the gist of which I will not disclose here. What he said and the way he said it regarding inner healing was mean-spirited and foolish. For my own reasons, I needed to defend the inner healing encounter with Jesus because of his egregious errors regarding the practice.
I agree that God uses all manner of ways and means to heal people. I also know that beyond salvation, the healing of a person's eternal being through the death and resurrection of Christ, God does not always heal his followers of afflictions during their sojourn on earth. Christian history is replete with the heroic stories of believers who endured their suffering in grace, humility and patience. Their testimonies shout forth courage and profound faith.
And yes, the encounter with Jesus is the sole source and means through which any Kingdom healing of the broken heart occurs no matter the technique, gathering or theological bent.
so, what? disagree with what I said about recovery?
No, Michael I'm sure Kit was not disagreeing with you, but let him reply to that. I personally respect your view and commend you for persevering in the 12 step program. I am happy it worked for you. I have seen those whose addictions taken away when they asked, and I have seen where it was taken away when the person didn't even ask, they were just experiencing the power of Jesus in their life, so it got taken care of amongst other things. Perhaps the 12 step is needed for some, to walk it out, where they would not maintain their healing if that were not so. But, my point was, one package does not work for everyone. What worked for Kit may not work for you, and too often a program is implemented because it worked once, twice, but God created us to be very individual, and even He relates to each of us on an individual level.
Sometimes healing (of any kind) is instantaneous, sometimes a process, but that process can also be daily walk with Jesus. The Holy Spirit is faithful to point out things within our heart that need to be dealt with, in the proper time, in His own gentle way. At least in my experience, of the many packages I've tried, I'm touched in the deepest places in the way I just mentioned, sometimes in corporate worship and prayer, sometimes in private worship and prayer. Only then can I release the heartfelt forgiveness, or come out of agreement with a lie that God shines His light on. Somehow, someone reciting something from a book or card, and having to repeat it seems too heartless and mindless, and ritualistic.
I am familiar with the minister and conference in which this was spoken. This person may come across as offensive in order to bring down religious spirits, killing sacred cows so to speak, and that is the method in which they minister. Those who were offended may have a religious spirit lurking about. "we religious leaders" in the fist comment speaks volumes. Just sayin...
It is also a process of time. Kit's was a year. I believe God takes these "surgical" chapters, and redeems (while rooting out the stuff that has caused darkness) what was shattered. I appreciate anyone's weariness on whether or not "it works". However, what held me back for so long was my perception of God. Once He moved in powerful healing ways in my life, I sought it out more clearly and readily let go of my perception (especially mental) of what I felt His healing would do for me. All of these comments are refreshing to me, as they are a result of people seeking out truth and choosing not to be still. The closing of a chapter for me has been the overwhelming sense of how much God longs to see me free...
Thank you for sharing Kit...
Hey Michael. Terri is right. I don't disagree with what you said about 12-Step recovery. It's a gift of God to humanity.I know it frees people and I know inner healing frees people. I'm not sure anything I said in my initial post denigrated any other healing practice. So I'm a little confused as to your question whether I disagreed with anything you said about recovery.
I agree that encounter with everyone that Jesus is essential to healing the heart and soul. Inner healing facilitates that encounter by one of the most intimate ways we can encounter him, I think. It's not a program or method the way we experienced, and were taught to minister it. To the contrary, it's real-time healing love transforming horrific memories. Jesus sovereignly exerting lordship over the power of death because of the sin of others in the past. It can happen in an instant; it can happen over years.
BTW: I see inner healing not as superior to recovery or vice versa. You and I may see it differently in that regard.
I'm glad they both exist.
Another post i love most. Comments so inspiring and so worth my time reading it.Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for your words of encouragement, Michelle! Encouragement bestows life!
Kit, you mention that Jesus quoted the passage from Isaiah in Luke 4, but part of it got left out -- part that might be helpful to emphasize. Luke records Jesus as saying that part of the reason he was sent was "to heal the brokenhearted." The commentaries I've read say the discrepancy between Jesus' quotation and the actual words in Isaiah have to do with the tradition of paraphrasing (of which there are several other instances in the NT). Certainly if anyone has the right to quote Scripture the way they want to, it is Jesus.
I'm not sure how mockers believe Jesus heals the brokenhearted without "inner healing," but they have more than an attitude problem. As the heart is "inner," they also have a tremendous problem with logic.
Yes, may Jesus open the eyes of him and his ilk.
Hi Kit
Thanks for the thoughtful post. I was wondering if you know anything about EMDR? It sounds a lot like Inner Healing from a secular perspective?
http://www.emdr.com/
Bless you as you continue to minister Jesus' life.
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