Our generation is in need of deep healing, as a pastoral concern in a complex, fragmented, isolated generation. When we resist surrender and withhold worship, we resist the streams of healing that flow from a very present and living God interchanging with us.
I’m not going to post too many notes here, because I won’t get down good material on some controversial ideas. The following are some simple notes only.
Often our intuitive “Pain-Meter” will sense that someone is needing a deep healing work by God. A sense of them being “stuck,” or incapable of finding forward motion.
The raw material we have to work with:
Pain (emotional)
Distorted images of God
Dysfunctional pattern of relationship
Traumatic memory
When these things are there, inner healing prayer is an appropriate response.
While there are tons and tons of books on inner healing prayer, all of them are “popular” books, and non-academic. This is because they are often written by folks from similar faith streams, that emphasize the right brain and experience, and often make claims that the more academic or left-brained people question whether they can make.
Dangers. Inner Healing Prayer sometimes brings and esoteric quality that scares many people because of the possibility of excess.
Training non-professionals to do this kind of therapy, where some highly trained people in many situations won’t touch it, may be like allowing a few lay-trained people to do brain surgery.
Educate your gifts and intuitions. Don’t just practice folk-counseling.
And yet, the equipping of the saints to do all the work of ministry. We all get to play.
But, growing in skill is vital to work that can be dangerous.
In many cases, an ongoing experience that is very painful can be dealt with in a time of inner healing prayer, and people (even in my present class) have come away with the entire sting of that situation completely removed from them. The sting is not there the next time they deal with it. (Wow. I’d love that kind of healing in a few areas of my life).