Forgiveness is not inner healing

People, dear friends of Christ, do remember what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is removing one barrier between us and God - the sin barrier.

By confession of sin we overcome one of the problems with sin. when we hide our sin we also hide from God. Confession is opening up the conversation and being real. You need to be real to have good communication. Right?

The same applies to our relationship with God.

Imagine you are in your teens and you are allowed to drive dad's car. While driving you do some serious damage to the car. Now several things need to happen. 1. You need to tell your dad. (Confession.) 2. You need to ask for forgiveness from your dad. (reconciliation and freedom from guilt). 3. The car needs to be fixed and you might be asked to take some of all responsibility for that.

Note: asking forgiveness does not fix the car.

Similarly with sin. You may have made a dangerous decision such as visiting a psychic, playing with a Ouija board, going to a seance to consult the dead or attend a conference that put you under the spell of some group. This entangled you with the enemy.

You need to: confess the sin to God (open communication), ask for forgiveness from God (reconciliation) and getting inner healing or deliverance to set you free from the occult ties you have established. The forgiveness is good but does not accomplish inner healing or deliverance.

Agnes Sanford was challenged many years ago to pray for a Christian's rages. She did, and he was healed. This broadened her understanding of the kind of healing available through prayer.

She had come to believe, learn about, practice and eventually teach how to pray for others for physical healing. Being fully equipped and equipping others in this, she then had to wrap her head around the fact that she had prayed for an emotional issue and it, too, has been healed.

Physical healing is for something wrong with the body. Inner healing was related to the mind, emotions and memories.

She understood that all healing was released through Jesus and especially through his sacrificial death for our healing and for the forgiveness of sins. We know from one story that Jesus did not make a big distinction between physical healing and forgiveness of sins. See Luke 7:17-26.

This is the background to Sanford's statement that inner healing is forgiveness of sins. Inner healing is possible, as is physical healing, as the result of the completed work of Jesus on the cross.

We are now much more clear as to how inner healing can occur. It is related to the healing of memories and there is now psychological research about how memories are healed. The inner healing movement, if it embraces to revelations of Dr. Ed Smith, will become equipped to do the healing of memories through listening prayer.

This means we will no longer confuse confession, forgiveness of sins with inner healing. Each part has a place in the action.

Inner Healing can lead to Gentle Deliverance without a lot of invoking (naming) demons and why that is very important.

You are in a process

You are in a process of learning about yourself and life. In that process you change.

A marriage is a process. If you are married and living with your partner then you are learning about yourself, love and another. Marriage sets up a process of learning and growth.

Psychotherapy is a process. In that process you learn about yourself. In that process you change. 

Being born again spiritually also starts a process of learning about yourself and growing. That process of change is a function of our increased commune with God.

In many different ways you are in a process of learning and growing. From this there will be a time when your life will bear fruit. Your job is not to produce fruit - that is an outcome of the process you are in. Your job is to benefit from the process.

Quiet, calm and rest after inner healing

Did you know that quiet, calm and rest is helpful after inner healing?

In depth inner healing is the result of correcting unconscious core beliefs. This happens best at those times when the key memory is brought to recall. That is when the heart is open.

In prayerful inner healing we use listening prayer to receive the truth from God that will replace the core belief. We are listening for God's spoken word to us - a living word. If the memory is activated when God's word is given to us then our heart will be changed.

There is an advantage to being in a quiet, calm and restful state after Christian prayerful inner healing. This is a time of consolidation and you are allowing the change to be accepted into your memory. You are reducing interference with this process.

This is one example of soaking prayer. You are taking time to let the truth of God sink into your heart.