Why I Changed My Position on Inner Healing
You may have heard of a popular Christian teachers using inner healing methods to bring about freedom from hurtful past experiences that would be described as traumatic. Many times the teachings address some form of forgiveness. Unforgiveness is such a huge area of bondage to Satan that we as Christians don’t realize we are in. Most of the time we are not aware of how he is using the hurt in unforgiveness to destroy us.
I’m a bit careful when it comes to spiritual signs and experiences such as healing and deliverance. I want to see it supported in Scripture. Just because something is supernatural and spiritual in the church, does not mean it originates from God. Now, I wasn't always thinking much of anything when something spiritual would occur. I yearned for anything spiritual that could give me an experience and make me feel good in church. I was an experience junky at church. And that is what we see in churches today. Anything a pastor, preacher, teacher, evangelist did or had me do, I would do. I would see them as a leader of God and so I never expected anything that occurred in the church to be anything but from God. I was a bit naive and so are many that go to church looking for an experience and not making sure it lines up Scripturally. From this I became more infected with religious spirits and so we see the same in many Christians in churches becoming infected with religious spirits.
Where there starts to be concern in many Christian teachings are in connection to inner healing. This is where I changed my position. The short of it is at one time, we practiced inner healing type ministry, but after some prayer and research on it, we changed course. Once I was a strong supporter of inner healing, but I was deceived like so many still are. Now while some Christians' teachings may not be straight out inner healing, it is usually connects to it in some way. That is where I may be more conservative. I don't mention specific teachers' names to blast. You could easily have put my name here as I was practicing and ministering inner healing to others. It wasn't just myself I was ministering to, but to others.
Inner healing teaching is very connected to the term soul wounds. You can be opening doors you do not want to open you are ministered to with methods of soul wounds, inner healing, fragments of our soul, and alters (not to be confused with a place we worship). How we are ministered to will likely be how we minister to others.
When I first started in deliverance, I used these methods and other similar methods regarding soul wounds and inner healing. At some point, I could not find specific Biblical support for inner healing type of ministry as it is practiced in most ministries today. I do see the wounded spirit in Proverbs 18:14, but not a soul wound. How most churches minister to what is referred to a soul wound through inner healing in churches is really connected to Carl Jung. You may know of him as a psychologist. He was also connected very closely with Sigmund Freud. Carl Jung had spirit guides give him the teaching of inner child psychology. This paved the way for inner healing. Mixed in with this is the idea of soul wounds. This practice sometimes intends to help those suffering from many things of which some are DID (Dissociative Identity Order) and SRA (Satanic Ritual Abuse). From Carl Jung came others that built on his ideas which were really not his ideas, but those of demons.
Agnes Sanford took Jung’s teaching as her son Jack was a Jungian psychologist. Mary Baker Eddy of Christian Science influenced her, went to seances, and was considered a faith healer, however, I see her ministry as new age and occultic. She is considered to be almost like a founder of inner healing type methods. After Agnes came John and Paula Sanford (not in any way relatives), which took inner healing even further. One weird and false teaching they had in connection with inner healing is that animals have spirits and some animals need their memories to be healed through inner healing.
For us, there was a lot of confusion around inner healing. At first, we were very excited as there seemed to be a breakthrough, but over time many issues did not go away. They would even become worse. I believe we can be hurt, but I stay away from inner healing as I can’t find Jesus practicing this as it is practiced in churches. Jesus outright cast out the demons. We thought inner healing was a better and more concise way of dealing with peoples' problems or spirits, but we found that spirits would be connected with the practice. Often, a false Jesus spirit or spirit of divination was working with the methods. The spirits were also not leaving. We thought they were, but they would resurface later. I did not see enough fruit while practicing inner healing type ministry mixed in with deliverance.
After praying on inner healing and soul wounds for a while, I decided to go with what I could see more plainly in Scripture and what Jesus did. After deliverance, we ask God to pull together all the parts of someone's soul that may have been broken from what the person has experienced, so they can be whole. This is still something I am looking for clear confirmation to determine I am going in the right direction. I am ok with God helping me change positions on something as I pray and have Him show me in Scripture. We have found a lot of spirits that cause deep, deep hurt.
Unfortunately, everything that is spiritual is not of God. I know that God will help us to do better for people with their hurts through ministry, prayer, and support methods that can be seen with Scripture. I see clearly demons work hard for traumatic memories to be replayed over and over again. Once You get rid of the demons, you will not have those traumatic PTSD playbacks over and over. Once you get rid of spirits of abuse and fear, you will not feel and experience the torment everyday. Demons are very intelligent. If they can get people off track of casting them out of people, then they can make it seem as if they have left for a time, and then when the person is vulnerable, they can continue to harass them over and over again.
Demons are always making people have a bad feeling for deliverance from the strong manifestations when they are forced to leave. They tempt people with a desire for easier solutions that are not so dramatic. But we must remember what the Bible shows us when people were delivered. There are enough mentions in the Bible of demons being very extreme when confronted. We should not expect anything less for ourselves when we confront demons to cast out.
Matthew 11:12
And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.
We must be afraid to take on evil head on. Luke 10:19, 20. Satan is a bully and we must be determined to not let Satan water down or even make us less ready to drive him out of us and others needing deliverance.
I’m not an expert by any means, and I don’t think anyone that does ministry can be an expert. We see Jesus ministering differently to people. He did not always minister the exact same way. For myself and anyone on our team, I stay away from anything that is close to inner healing and work more with casting out the demons and ask God to show me what the person needs to be set free with the Holy Ghost. Discernment of spirits is essential and I ask God to continue to help me in this area.
I hope this is helpful and gives you some more of my our own personal experience with ministry and that of inner healing.