Inner-Healing Prayer

Inner-healing prayer focuses attention on emotional wounds, needs, lies, vows and dysfunctions. Issues like self-hatred, fear, addiction, depression, the inability to give or receive forgiveness, bitterness, the need to perform, defensiveness and obsessive-compulsive traits commonly surface in prayer for inner wounds. Many of our dysfunctional coping mechanisms are ways of addressing our longings to be significant and loved. To handle the pain that comes from not feeling significant and loved moves us into unhealthy coping patterns. Richard Rohr suggests that pain that is not transformed is transmitted. Untransformed pain leaks onto others. We kick the dog, yell at the kids, oversleep, overeat or numb ourselves on TV—but the pain is still there.

Inner wounds can be so painful that we can’t name and face them alone. We need the presence and encouragement of a healing-prayer partner who can take the healing journey with us. Jesus often asked people to cooperate in the miracle of their healing: a blind man had to wash mud from his eyes in the pool of Siloam (John 9:11); an invalid by the Sheep Gate had to answer the question, “Do you want to get well?” Then he had to get up and walk even though he hadn’t walked in thirty-eight years (John 5:6-9).

Healing prayer assumes that wounded souls will cooperate with Christ in the healing process. It assumes that the wounded have choices to make. They must choose to be honest and humble and surrendered. They must choose to share their thoughts, feelings, experiences and what they do to numb their pain.

A ministry of inner-healing prayer brings the wounded to Jesus in a place of safety and love. Healing-prayer ministers accompany those who honestly want to open their souls and griefs to Jesus. Together they enter Christ’s healing presence. Together they listen for the word Jesus has to speak. Together, in the light of Christ, they open the darkness, lies and stresses that damage and bind. Jesus is available. He is ready to be with the wounded in their pain.

When those in pain do not know how to live with or where to put their pain, Jesus invites them to put their wounds in his own bleeding hands. In Jesus, pain has somewhere to go. On the cross Jesus absorbed and died for all the wounding and sin of the world. In him all pain can be transformed into something redemptive. The light of the presence of Jesus is a transforming ray that can radiate cancerous wounds of the soul. Prayer for inner healing rests on this reality. There is hope that even now we can begin to taste the wholeness that awaits us in heaven.

Healing prayer depends entirely on the healing availability, presence and goodness of Jesus. And the presence of Jesus may be experienced in a variety of ways: appropriate touch, anointing with oil or holy water, receiving Communion, tears, words of forgiveness and absolution.

Reflection Questions

1. How has healing prayer intersected with your life?
2. What emotions surface in you when you pray for healing for others?
3. Where might healing prayer address wounds in your own soul?
4. What is it like for you to have someone pray for you?

Spiritual Exercises

1. Take a “needs mending” inventory. Set aside time for several days or weeks to be in the presence of Jesus with your wounds. Gather a list of wounded places and tender relationships that need mending. Simply gather the list. Let it grow as other wounds come to mind. Leave it with God. • At another time, come to God in a safe and quiet place where you can attend to the list in the presence of the great Physician. Breathe deeply. Inhale the closeness of Jesus. He is nearer than your own breath. Don’t hurry. Wait in his presence. • When you are ready, set the list before the Lord and wait. What one item seems to have your attention? (Attend to one wound at a time. Don’t move on to another wound until you sense that the time has come to do so.) Ask Jesus what he wants to tell you about this wound. Listen. What do you sense the Lord is saying to you? • Respond to Jesus. Trust Jesus to do what he needs to do. The fruit of healing may not be a big feeling of release at the time of prayer, but changed internal responses as time goes by. Over time you may notice that your internal responses to people and situations begin to shift. Talk to God about this.
2. Seek out someone who is comfortable with healing prayer. Ask them if they would be willing to pray with and for your healing. • In preparation for this time ask yourself the following questions: (1) What lies or vows have shaped my life? (2) Where am I unable to forgive another? (3) Where do I find it difficult to give and receive love? (4) Where am I unable to forgive myself ? Your answers may help reveal the roots to some of your woundedness. • Share your insights with your prayer partner. Open yourself to God and to receiving his healing touch.
3. Read Lamentations 2—3. Allow Jeremiah’s painful cry to become your own prayer. Write a lament of your own to God. What do you want to tell him about your pain? Where do you want to find him in your pain?
4. Attend a healing-prayer service or a healing-prayer ministry.

Resources of Inner-Healing Prayer

Healing Light by Agnes Sanford

Healing Care, Healing Prayer by Terry Wardell

Restoring the Christian Soul Through Healing Prayer by Leanne Payne

Dr. Karl Lehman www.kclehman.com

Redeemed Lives Ministry www.redeemedlives.org

“To intercede for another means that in our prayer we stand between—or next to—them and God.” —Brian C. Taylor

Intercessory Prayer