Let Jesus Heal Your Hidden Wounds: Cooperating with the Holy Spirit in Healing Ministry

By Brad Long and Cindy Strickler

Most people get hurt and suffer painful memories as a result of living in an imperfect world. But God's original plan for humanity included spiritual, emotional, physical, and relational wholeness. Through the example of Jesus, who heals from the inside out, readers will learn how to experience this wholeness and assist in the healing of others.

Let Jesus Heal Your Hidden Wounds speaks to the individual who wants to be or already is involved in healing ministry. This is not another technique for doing healing, but a description of how the prayer minister cooperates with the Holy Spirit to bring healing and deliverance to people with hidden wounds. Each chapter includes several questions for use in a Bible study setting or to provoke further personal reflection.

Those called to healing ministries will be taken to a new level of understanding and greater effectiveness from reading and studying this book. And those with hidden wounds will find new hope for restoration and freedom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 1, 2001
• ISBN: 9781441215307

Brad Long

Dr. Brad Long (DMin, Union Theological Seminary) is the Executive Director of Presbyterian Reformed Ministries International (PRMI). In 2000 he founded the Dunamis Fellowship International - a prayer community and seminary designed for equipping believers. Zeb has three children and lives in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

Book preview

LET JESUS

HEAL

YOUR HIDDEN

WOUNDS

LET JESUS

HEAL

YOUR HIDDEN

WOUNDS

COOPERATING WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT IN HEALING MINISTRY

BRAD LONG & CINDY STRICKLER

© 2001 by Brad Long and Cindy Strickler

Published by Chosen Books

A division of Baker Publishing Group

P. O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.chosenbooks.com

E-book edition created 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

ISBN 978 - 1 - 4412 - 1530 - 7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Scripture marked NASB is taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE ®. Copyright © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission. www.lockman.org

Scripture marked NRSV is taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.

To our parents, Peggy and Rufus Long and Connie and Jim Plumstead, who brought us into the world, loved us into adulthood and pointed us to Jesus, where we have found life and healing. Thank you!

Contents

Preface

1. Why Read One More Book on Healing?

2. Why Human Beings Get Hurt

3. Jesus Restores God’s Vision for Creation

4. The Threefold Dynamic of Jesus’ Healing Work

5. Jesus Works with the Holy Spirit

6. From Healing to Discipleship

7. The Three Phases in Our Own Healing Ministry

8. Healing and the Power of the Holy Spirit

9. Cooperating with the Holy Spirit

10. When Healing Does Not Happen, What Next?

11. The Power of Memory: Our Living Past

12. Forgetting Our Past Hurts

13. The Formation of Vortex Memories

14. Healing the Inner Child of the Past

15. Confronting Evil Spirits that Obstruct the Healing Process

16. Flaming Darts and Inner Wounds

17. Preparing for Spiritual Battle

18. Praying for Deliverance

19. Integrating Inner Healing and Deliverance

20. Where Do We Go from Here?

Notes

Preface

We have written this book for a specific purpose: to equip you to join in Jesus’ work of inner healing and deliverance. We also believe that reading this book will result in healing in your life.

We do not present a technique for doing healing. Instead, we describe the dynamics of a relationship between the prayer minister, the person being prayed for and the Holy Spirit who is mediating the presence and working of Jesus Christ. Offering a technique would be a lot easier! Our approach is more complicated, but we believe it is true to reality as revealed in the Bible and will lead to the extraordinary fruit of inner healing and deliverance.

Our theological framework for understanding healing ministry is to restore the original relationship between human beings and God their Creator. This first step results in spiritual healing. Second, we discuss inner healing, which includes the emotional, often hidden wounds that result from living in a sinful, fallen world. And third, we integrate this process of spiritual and inner healing with discerning and removing evil spirits that interfere with Jesus’ restoring work.

Throughout this book we use alternating voices, identified either Brad or Cindy, and present testimonies and cases that demonstrate our approach. All of these stories are real and represent the firsthand experience of the authors. We have tried to link the reported results to objective verification as part of our process for discerning the reality of the Holy Spirit’s work. But these testimonies are not intended as scientific studies of the effectiveness of healing prayer ministry. Some of them have been shared publicly and are included in the text with permission, but most of the time, in order to protect the confidentiality of those involved, they are composites of actual cases put together in order to demonstrate specific aspects of the Holy Spirit’s work.

We are indebted to many friends and colleagues who aided us in the process of writing, editing and producing this book. The PRMI Dunamis Project teaching events have provided a living laboratory for developing the principles taught in this book. We are grateful for the Dunamis teachers and participants who walked with us in learning how to cooperate with the Holy Spirit. I (Brad) want to express my thanks to my friend, Reverend Richard White, whose prayer ministry enabled me to experience Jesus’ healing work from the inside. He also reviewed the theological framework for healing ministry for consistency with the witness of Scripture. Dr. Steven Overcash was especially helpful in the development, refinement and accuracy of the psychological concepts that provide the theoretical basis for inner healing and deliverance ministry.

In particular we would like to thank Jeanne Kraak, Marge Mills and Portia White, who generously volunteered their time to work with us on the original manuscript. We are also grateful for the Reverend Sandy McClinton, who edited the final manuscript, and for Jane Campbell of Chosen Books, who caught a vision for this book and encouraged us to write it. Finally we want to thank our spouses, Laura and Steve, and children, who lived with us through this process and still love us!

1

Why Read One More Book

on Healing?

On the surface most people look happy. Stand on any busy street, look over any crowd at church or a sports event, and what can you read on the people’s faces? Joy? Loneliness? Involvement? Stress? Usually outward appearances belie the pain that, like a subterranean river, runs through human history and in the human heart.

Christian faith in Jesus Christ crucified meets and joins this hidden river of pain in order to bring into it the extraordinary promise of healing. Jesus has come to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners (Isaiah 61:1). He works within us to heal us from the inside out. He also sets us free from the bondage of our hurt to share with Him in the healing of others.

Some of you who read this may be dealing with hidden wounds so deep, so embarrassing, so debilitating that you cry out, Oh! If only this were true! Others of you may love people who are crippled from hurts that are long since forgotten. You see their potential and you yearn for them to be whole. Nevertheless, you despair because your love does not seem to get through. Their self-destructive behaviors continue and their relationships are slowly destroyed. If only, you pray, it were possible for Jesus to get past all the barriers that I cannot seem to overcome and do His healing work from the inside out.

We have discovered from the witness of Scripture and from our own personal experience that Jesus Christ is the Healer. He is also the one who calls and empowers individuals, even those still in the process of healing, to share with Him in healing ministry.

Brad’s Story: Facing Shattering Hurt and Rejection

My inner hurt came from learning disabilities. In elementary school, before they had such terms as dyslexia or ADD, I had a very hard time learning to read, write and spell. I failed third grade.

All this hurt. But what hurt the most during elementary school were Fridays. All week, every week, my mother would work with me on spelling. By Thursday night I was able to spell most of the words through memory and sheer willpower. But on Friday morning it was as if the words I had struggled with all week were some foreign language I had never seen before. Week after week, I failed the spelling test.

To top off my misery and embarrassment, a spelling bee always followed the test. At least the spelling test was private—the spelling bee took my inadequacies and paraded them before the whole class.

Doomed to lose with me on his or her team, no team captain ever chose me. Therefore, each week the teacher had to assign me to a team. Her decision was always greeted with shouts of Not him! from the unfortunate team that got me and by cheers from the team that had been spared. In the face of their jeers I usually cut up and made light of the situation, but the moment school was out I would hide in the woods and walk home alone so no one would see my tears.

My humiliation was not confined to spelling bees and tests. When I was ten years old, in the middle of class I developed a case of diarrhea. I asked permission to leave to go to the bathroom, but when I got there I could not read the signs on the doors and was afraid I would go into the wrong one. My normal tactic for knowing which bathroom was which was to observe who came out of each door, but at this time there were no other students in the hallway. I waited outside the bathroom doors for a few moments, hoping a girl or boy would either come out or go in, but no one did.

Seeing no other option, I walked quickly back to the classroom and said, Teacher, I’m sorry, but I’ve forgotten which one is the boys’ bathroom.

The teacher looked incredulous and mockingly asked, Can’t you read? Not daring to admit that I could not, I just shrugged my shoulders, hoping she would give me a hint. Instead, she merely said, It’s down the hall, on the left.

I went back down the hall, but being dyslexic, I could not tell right from left. Finally I went back to the classroom where, to the delight of my classmates and to my acute embarrassment, I ended up messing in my pants. I was sent home in disgrace.

As I walked the half mile to my house in dirty, wet pants, the laughter of my classmates fresh in my ears, a lasting memory of my wretched days in elementary school lodged in my spirit. The emotional intensity of this experience formed a vortex memory. This type of memory has the power to shape a person’s personality and behavior. If it is a memory filled with hurt, as this one was for me, it becomes the basis for an inner wound.

Thank God, when I got home I walked into the warm embrace of my mother, who welcomed me and gave me a hug (even though I smelled bad). I cried as I told her I could not read the sign on the bathroom doors. If she had not loved me and believed in me, I have no doubt that the wound would have been even more destructive to my personality.

This hurt from teachers and classmates was surpassed only by the inner torment of my inquisitive mind. I felt strangely driven to read everything I could, and had an even stranger desire to be a writer, though I could do neither without great effort. The inner frustration of my inability to express myself in addition to my outward failures in school left me convinced that I was useless to God and my life was meaningless.

Over the next fifteen years, by force of will, the grace of God and the help of others, I was able to overcome at least some aspects of my disability. I got through high school and was accepted at Davidson College. I then answered God’s call to the Gospel ministry, attending Union Seminary in Virginia, where I earned a Doctor of Ministry degree. Throughout all of this I still could not spell, reading was slow and writing was a huge struggle.

Over time I learned to compensate for my disability and it became less and less of a problem. The greater problem was the bitterness and resentment left over from the unhealed hurts of my childhood experiences. These feelings were eating me up, stealing the joy out of my life and destroying my relationship with my wife, Laura. My wife was growing afraid of me, and I became afraid of the irrational anger inside of me.

Jesus Heals from the Inside

I knew I needed help. People prayed for me and I got some counseling, but nothing worked. Ironically, by this time I had actually forgotten the spelling bees, the confusing signs on the bathroom door and the jeers of my classmates. Since I no longer had access to these memories, they could not be healed, but their effects lived on into the present and were holding me in bondage to my past.

Then Jesus healed me from the inside! It happened at a missionary prayer meeting while Laura and I were serving in Korea. Laura received guidance that God wanted to do something that very night about my dyslexia. Therefore, she gathered a group to pray for me.

As the group prayed, I started to remember and to relive the feelings associated with the spelling bees and messing in my pants. I was no longer feeling and acting as a twenty-five-year-old; I was a ten-year-old boy being jeered at by the class. I found myself overwhelmed with anger. Then, in an inexplicable way, Jesus was there, holding me, telling me that He loved me, calling me to follow Him despite my learning disabilities. I was in tears, weeping away the bitterness that had taken root in the depths of me. Then, as my wife and friends held me, I was able for the first time to forgive those students who had made fun of me, as well as the teachers who had misunderstood me. I was able to forgive God, whom I had blamed for making me dyslexic, and I was able to forgive myself for blaming God. I let go of my striving to overcome my disability and began to trust that God would empower me to do what He had called me to do.

I still cannot spell! God did not heal my learning disabilities, but He did heal me from my hidden wounds. Now the hurts of the past no longer have power to hurt me in the present or to trigger the anger that had once so filled me. This healing has made a tremendous difference in my relationship with Laura, with others and with God. Jesus healed me so that I could follow Him more fully.

Later, in ministry, I saw many people who, like myself, were eaten up with anger, still hurting from events in the past. I had no idea, however, how to help them receive the healing that I had experienced. It was only after being filled with the Holy Spirit that I discovered it is the Holy Spirit’s job to get Jesus’ love and power into the hurt places hidden inside people. I began to learn how to pray for others in the gifts and guidance of the Holy Spirit, and they started to have the same kind of deep healing of inner wounds through Jesus Christ that I had received.

This Healing and Ministry Can Be Yours

Our purpose in writing this book is to extend to you an invitation to join with the Holy Spirit in the adventure of following Jesus into healing ministry. Here are some of the topics we will address:

The Inner Healing Ministry of Jesus in Your Own Life

Most of us have been hurt in life. We have sinned and we have been sinned against; that is just the way it is when we are born into an imperfect, sinful world. It is the message of this book that Jesus does heal us from the inside out. Case studies will show how the practical steps given in this book can help you enter into the reality of Jesus’ healing ministry. Although we hope that each person who reads this book will experience healing in his or her own life, this is not intended as a self-help book. We want to equip you to enter into Jesus’ healing ministry, for we are healed in order to bring healing into the lives of others.

A Biblical Model of the Human Psyche

To understand how Jesus works within us, we must first gain an understanding of how God says the human psyche works. We need to know how inner wounds are formed in the first place and how and why certain things hurt us.

Cooperating with the Holy Spirit

in His Dynamic Work of Inner Healing

By looking at the example of Jesus we can learn to cooperate with the Holy Spirit. When we do, we will find extraordinary new vistas opening to us. We will be able to join Jesus as He works to bring healing to our hidden wounds.

Discerning and Casting Out Evil Spirits

As we engage in the process of inner healing we may in some cases encounter an unpleasant reality: the presence of evil spirits. These fallen, evil entities work from both inside and outside of a person to block the healing process.

We know that this dimension of this work will seem foreign to many readers, but we have found it an essential part of the process of sharing in Jesus’ work of restoration. As you enter this journey of inner healing ministry, you will grow in your experience of the Holy Spirit, which will deepen your faith in Jesus Christ and His power to remove obstacles to the healing process.

The Variety of Contexts in Which Inner Healing Ministry Takes Place

It is the purpose of this book to help you learn to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the healing ministry of Jesus in a variety of different contexts. Some of these contexts may be a healing service at church, a visit with someone in the hospital, an emotional hurt experienced by your child or a chance encounter with a stranger. Hurting people are everywhere. So, too, the Holy Spirit is working everywhere to bring Jesus’ love and healing presence to our lives.

Our lives have been changed as we have learned to work with the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ ministry of inner healing. We believe your life can be changed as well. Jesus can enter into your darkest, most terrible experiences. He will not just heal and restore you; through the gift of the Holy Spirit, He will use you for the healing of others.

Questions for Reflection

1. What, if anything, in the story of Brad’s struggle with learning disabilities connected with your own experience?

2. What past experiences still live in your present and continue to hurt?

3. What area in healing ministry excites you? What area is threatening?

2

Why Human Beings Get Hurt

Why are human beings capable of inner hurt? To find the answer we must turn to the opening chapters of Genesis. This may seem like a strange place to start a book on healing, but to begin at the beginning will bring a biblical understanding of the full extent of our brokenness and the extraordinary depth and breadth of Jesus’ work of restoration.

God’s Vision for Human Beings

To get to God’s vision we must go to the creation story contained in Genesis. We know that a cloud of debate hangs over this story, but we believe that the Genesis account of creation is inspired by the Holy Spirit to give us a glimpse into God’s heart so that we may see His original vision for humanity. From this perspective, the creation story is profoundly true and consistent with what we know to be the actual facts of the human condition.

The creation story teaches us that God’s original intention was to have on earth a divine, interconnected community of angels, humans, animals and plants. God created human beings in His own image so that we could play a leading role in this community. The key to harmony among these relationships was their proper ordering under His sovereignty. The setting for this ideal community was the Garden of Eden, which God commanded human beings to oversee (Genesis 2:15). Taking this original vision of creation seriously allows us to understand our capacity for spiritual, emotional and physical wounding.

Created for a Loving Relationship with God

Human beings alone were created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26–27). What makes us like God is our capacity for reasoning, making decisions, feeling and being in relationship with others. Our relationship with God defines the ultimate purpose of our existence, and is the ultimate source of our