What Is Inner Healing Prayer?
/Dan Hitz is the director of Reconciliation Ministries of Michigan, Inc. He is a Licensed Professional Counselor specializing in helping men and women overcome sexual brokenness, sexual abuse, and trauma. Dan is the creator and teacher of the Breakthrough Prayer Ministry series taught at Reconciliation Ministries. You can find more recovery articles and testimonies on the Reconciliation Ministries website at https://recmin.org/newsletter-archives.
This article presents a brief summary of the inner healing prayer process. These basic steps can be practiced in your daily devotional time when facing minor emotional challenges. If you’re experiencing more significant challenges, it’s best to work with a trained caregiver to help you navigate the many nuances that may arise in more challenging life experiences. Reconciliation Ministries is here to help you in your healing journey. Our trained caregivers have years of experience in offering inner healing prayer, and have greatly benefited from inner healing prayer in their own lives. Call us today at 586.739.5114 for more information.
What is Inner Healing Prayer? Inner healing prayer is a process where we ask the Lord to heal the wounds and voids in our hearts that cause us to have emotional struggles. As the Lord continues to heal our hearts, we begin to experience more peace and have more emotional strength. The increased peace and strength help us to interact with others in a healthier manner and make better life decisions.
Where Do the Wounds and Voids Come From? Many of us were wounded by early childhood experiences. We interpret those experiences based on the limited understanding we have as kids and the misperceptions and lies that we believe about ourselves. For example, a young boy who watches his parents’ frequent fights may think that he is the one causing their fighting. “If I were a better little boy, Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t fight so much and wouldn’t be getting a divorce.” The boy may grow up spending decades codependently trying to appease others out of fear that they will abandon him at any moment. Another example is a girl who grows up and is continually told by her angry stepfather that she is lazy and stupid. As an adult, she may have two Master’s degrees and be the CEO of a large corporation, but she still has to battle thoughts that she is stupid. We can grow into adulthood believing the lies we interpreted with our childhood logic. Eventually those lies move out of our conscious mind. Unfortunately, their effects continue to be active in our hearts while we try to interpret life through the adult logic that is running in our brains. Some days we’re successful. We feel okay and we can make the right decisions. Other days, something triggers that childhood logic and we respond to current events in a way that doesn’t make any logical sense to our adult minds.
How Does Inner Healing Prayer Work? Inner healing prayer is much more than simply praying for the Lord to help us feel better or avoid temptation. It’s asking the Lord to resolve the emotional wounds in our hearts fueling whatever type of struggle we’re facing. During the inner healing prayer process, we invite Jesus into the troubling memories in our lives, where those wounds were inflicted and the lies took root in our hearts. We then ask the Lord to speak truth to counteract the lies and heal the wounds. Once those lies and wounds are resolved, it is easier to interpret life from the Lord’s perspective. We start to feel better emotionally, we understand our true identity in Christ, and we begin to relate to others with more confidence.
One of the most important principles of inner healing prayer is that we feel the emotions of what we believe in our hearts, not what we know to be true in our brains. This is the classic struggle between head knowledge and heart knowledge. Simply put, we feel what we believe in our hearts, even if our brains believe the truth. For example, we can find ourselves feeling like God doesn’t really love us, immediately after we get done telling our friend that Jesus loves her unconditionally. We feel confident in God’s love for our friend, because we truly believe in our hearts that He loves her. The problem is that sometimes we don’t fully believe God loves us in our own hearts. Those are the times when we feel like He’s merely putting up with us and doesn’t really love us as much as He loves everyone else. Through inner healing prayer, the Holy Spirit replaces the lies we believe in our hearts with the truth. He shows us where we first began to doubt His love for us in our hearts, and reassures us of his true love for us in the core of our being. Since we feel what we believe in our hearts, we now feel like God truly loves us and we begin to relate to others from that place of love and acceptance.
Step One: Identify the Current Trigger. A trigger is something that bugs you and starts you down a negative emotional and/or behavioral trail. For example, imagine that something happens and you lose your peace. You may want to become invisible to avoid additional problems, or you might want to get a bit ornery to make sure no one else messes with you. The first step in the inner healing prayer process is recognizing that you’re triggered and ask yourself, “What happened?” Did I get into an argument with my wife because we disagree on how to correct one of our kids? Did my boss correct me at work because I’m behind in a project or made a mistake? Sometimes we can get on a negative emotional roll and it takes us a while to recognize it. Somehow, somewhere, something happened to put us in a funk. Instead of trying to ignore your emotions and plow your way through whatever challenge you’re facing, take the time to step back emotionally and recognize what’s going on. Ask the Lord to help calm your heart and show you the specific thing that triggered you and sent you into your current funk.
Step Two: Allow Yourself to Connect to the Emotions of the Trigger. Once you realize that you’re triggered and identified what happened, ask the Lord to help you feel the emotions that are happening in your heart. Remember, we feel the emotions of what we believe in our hearts. It’s best to hand your intellect to Jesus as you ask Him to help you connect to your heart. Resist the urge to reason your feelings away. Don’t try to escape them. Instead, invite the Lord to meet you in the memory of the trigger while you allow yourself to feel the emotions of the trigger. As you do this, He may reveal some insights about the trigger that help resolve the problem. He may also invite you to follow your emotional trail to an earlier time when you felt similar emotions and similar lies took root in your heart. These lies caused wounds that He wants to heal.
Step Three: Follow the Emotions to the First Time (or a Significant Time) when You Felt Similar Emotions. Remember that most of our current triggers happen because of lies we believed during childhood. Even when we have legitimate issues to deal with as adults, those issues are more challenging if we haven’t resolved our childhood lies. Once the childhood lies fueling our negative emotions and reactions are resolved, it becomes much easier to address the current challenges appropriately. As you connect to the emotions of your current trigger, pray and ask the Lord to lead you back to the first time, or a significant time, that you felt similar emotions. This is called the originating memory. Resist the urge to rationalize your way through this process. This is an opportunity to learn to trust the Holy Spirit as He leads you. Most of the originating memories happened somewhere in our early childhood. The Holy Spirit will usually start with the current trigger and go backwards in time. It’s not unusual to stop at a few different memories that happened as you were growing up. As each memory comes up, connect to it and notice the emotions that you feel today rather than focusing on what you felt during the original event. Remember, we feel the emotions of what we believe in our hearts. The negative emotions that you still feel in childhood memories will show you what remains unresolved in your heart. After you’ve felt through each the memory, ask the Lord if this is the originating memory that He wants to show you, or if there’s an earlier time when you felt similar emotions. After visiting a few memories, you’ll get a sense that you’re in the originating memory.
Step Four: Identify the Lie(s) or Wound(s) that are Active in the Originating Memory. Once you sense that the Lord has brought you to the originating memory, continue to connect to the emotions that you feel in that memory today, and ask the Lord to show you the lies or wounds that are fueling your current challenges. In our example of the man who had an argument with his wife about correcting their child, he may go back to the originating memory of seeing his parents fight when he was a small child. As he focuses on the feelings of guilt and fear, he may recognize a belief that his parents’ fighting and divorce are his fault. He may notice that he made a decision that he will do whatever it takes to make other people happy so they won’t fight and leave him. This decision set him on a course of codependency fueled by fears of abandonment. The lie he believed about himself in this memory is that his parents’ fighting and divorce are his fault. The unhealthy solution that he adopted at the time is to do whatever it takes to make others happy. Both the lies and the unhealthy solution from this originating memory contribute to his emotional distress and unhealthy behaviors today.
Step Five: Ask the Lord What the Truth Is. Once you’ve connected to the originating memory and recognize the lies that were planted in your heart, ask the Holy Spirit what the truth is. We may already know the truth in our heads, but we need the Lord to speak truth to our hearts. Think about a wife who has been telling her husband the same thing for years, but it just doesn’t sink in. All of a sudden, his lifelong friend visits from out of town and tells him the same exact thing. It finally clicks in the man’s heart and he is overjoyed to tell his wife the great idea that his friend just told him. The wife sits there in shock as the husband finally understands what she has been trying to tell him all these years. That’s how inner healing prayer works. Our brains may have been trying to tell our hearts something for years, but it just doesn’t sink in. The Holy Spirit comes in and speaks truth in an instant, and everything finally makes sense. As the Lord speaks the truth to correct the lie, the negative emotion fueled by the lie is replaced with a sense of peace. The man who believed that he was responsible for his parents’ fights and divorce hears the Holy Spirit speak truth to his heart. He was just a little boy and his parents were responsible for their own bad behavior and angry emotions. Since he now believes the truth in his heart, years of guilt and shame are lifted off his shoulders. As he asks the Lord about his decision to do whatever it takes to make other people happy so they won’t leave him, the Lord speaks truth that it isn’t his job to control how other people react. He is then set free from the false responsibility to make everyone happy. He can rest in the truth that Jesus will never leave him or forsake him, and that he was never responsible for his parents’ poor behavior.
Step Six: Once the Truth is Received, Check to See if the Negative Emotions are Resolved in the Originating Memory. Once you’ve addressed all the lies in the originating memory, you should notice a sense of peace and calm. This is almost always the case. If you still sense some negative emotions in the originating memory, ask the Lord if there is another lie in that memory or if He wants to reveal something in a different memory. Usually, there are only one or two lies in each originating memory. The beautiful thing about inner healing prayer is that the emotional peace that comes as the Lord speaks truth in the originating memories flows through all the memories that the Holy Spirit showed you in the process. You’ll notice that your negative emotions are resolved in the triggering event that began the inner healing process. You may still have some legitimate challenges to address, but you can do so out of an improved sense of peace and inner strength rather than a place of emotional distress.
An Invitation to Go Deeper. This article summarizes the inner healing prayer process and offers an excellent starting point to begin experiencing freedom in your own life. We’ve looked at the very basic steps that you can use in your own prayer time to ask the Lord to help you process some of your own wounds and temptations. Think of this article as flying over a forest for a bird’s eye view, rather than taking a footpath through the forest to see all the intricate details. Here’s a list of resources if you’d like to take a deeper dive into the inner healing prayer process.
Breakthrough Prayer Ministry classes are available through Reconciliation Ministries annually.
Transformation Prayer Ministry – https://www.transformationprayer.org/
Sozo Prayer Ministry – https://www.bethelsozo.com/
Inner healing in Scripture – https://recmin.org/s/Inner-Healing-In-Scripture-260701.pdf
An Extended Example of Inner Healing Prayer
Bob and his wife get into a minor disagreement about how to discipline their son who has disregarded Bob’s multiple requests to finish his homework. They eventually sit the son at the table and he begrudgingly completes his homework.
Even though they figured out a solution, Bob feels unsettled and kicks into “autopilot”. He begins smothering his wife with attention and repeatedly asking her if she is upset at him. Although she wasn’t upset initially, she becomes frustrated with his repeated inquires.
Bob realizes his behavior is causing problems, but he can’t consciously recognize what’s wrong. He goes into a quiet room to pray.
Step One: Identify the current trigger. After he quiets his heart, Bob realizes that his negative feelings began when he and his wife disagreed over how to address their son for not doing his homework.
Step Two: Allow yourself to connect to the emotions of the trigger. Bob recognizes that he is feeling fearful that his wife is upset about the disagreement that they had earlier and worried that she might abandon him (feelings of insecurity). He’s also worried (anxiety) that his son will reject him after being corrected for not doing his homework. He notices that his mind is nervously trying to figure out how to appease them both. Bob notes the feelings of fear, insecurity, anxiety, and rejection.
Step Three: Follow the emotions to the first time (or a significant time) when you felt similar emotions. As Bob sits quietly, the Holy Spirit brings up a memory of his first crush in high school. They had a minor argument about a school project they were working on together and she broke up with him. In this memory, he feels similar fear, insecurity, anxiety, and rejection. He then asks the Lord if there is an even earlier memory, and the Lord reminded him of the time when he was supposed to draw a simple picture for a first-grade project. He failed to turn it in and the teacher sent a note home to his parents. When his parents read the note, they got into a terrible argument. His father blamed Bob for making his mother cry and shouted that Bob was the reason they argue all the time and are getting a divorce. Bob senses that this is the originating memory.
Step Four: Identify the lie(s) or wounds(s) that are active in the originating memory. Bob recognizes that he believed his father when he said that it was his fault that his parents fought and were getting a divorce. He can recognize intellectually that it is a lie, but it feels true in his heart. As he sits in the memory, he remembers being fearful that others will abandon him too. He made a promise to himself that he will do whatever it takes to make people happy so they won’t leave.
Step Five: Ask the Lord what the truth is. Next Bob notices his negative emotions, prayerfully offers the lies up to the Lord, and asks what the truth is. The Lord then tells Bob that it wasn’t his fault that his parents fought so much and it certainly wasn’t his fault that his parents got divorced. Bob now realizes in his heart that his parents were responsible for their own behaviors. The Lord also tells Bob that it isn’t his job to make everyone happy, and that even if others leave him, the Lord will never abandon him. Bob feels relief as he prays and surrenders his false responsibility to make others happy.
Step Six: Once the truth is received, check to see if the negative emotions are resolved in the originating memory, and in the current event. Bob sits in the originating memory for a few more moments and notices that it now feels peaceful and calm. He revisits the high school memory which also feels peaceful and calm. He then connects to the memory of the current trigger and notices that he now feels peace in his heart. He feels better equipped to talk to his son about completing his homework in a more productive way without feeling like his son will reject him. Bob can now interact with his family from a place of peace.
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