Most people who come to me for deliverance from demons have been through various spiritual procedures to heal the soul. Even though they go through inner healing, they continue experiencing torment. Why? The source of the problem – demonic invasion – remained unaddressed. Don’t do inner healing unless you intend to cast out the demons that damaged the soul.
WHAT IS INNER HEALING?
What is inner healing? It’s a process of addressing emotional wounds, negative thoughts, and past traumas by facing them and bringing spiritual resolution. The methodology purposes to give inner peace, emotional balance, and a restored relationship with Christ. The healing can involve practices like prayer, extending forgiveness, scripture reading, and the breaking of generational curses. The goal is the healing of the supplicant’s soul and the restoration of broken relationships. The process confronts and purposes to resolve past experiences, issues of guilt, grief, anxiety, and feelings of abandonment by God.
But beware. Similar concepts of “inner healing” exist with various occult and New Age spiritual practices and New Age psychological approaches. The occult goal formulates an ill-defined “inner peace” and connection with the universe or some ambiguous inner wisdom. New Age inner healing is all about shedding limitations of false beliefs, such as taught in the book “The Secret” and Mind Science cults. Non-Christians may employ mindfulness meditation, guided inner reflection, energy healing like Reiki, and chakra cleansing. Many Christians who haven’t sought a biblical way of inner healing end up deceived by demons during such occult approaches.
WHAT DANGERS ARE THERE WITH CHRISTIAN INNER HEALING?
Christian inner healing can be a wonderful thing when grounded on a solid biblical basis. But there are dangers that people need to be aware of. Let me list 7 of them:
1) An inadequate understanding of psychological problems. Well-intentioned individuals may not recognize serious disorders such as bipolar or borderline personality disorder. This doesn’t mean that a sincere person shouldn’t attempt inner healing just because they don’t have a degree in psychology. However, they need to be careful about how they handle the human mind if the person needing healing is mentally unstable.
2) Limited knowledge of mental health issues. Some people do need to see a therapist or a psychiatrist. Some need medication for stabilization before they can go through an inner healing process. Intake vetting is crucial to distinguishing between emotionally woundedness or true psychiatric destabilization in persons seeking help.
3) Failure to detect physical problems creating mental disturbances. Strange things can happen to a person’s mind and emotions as a result of certain physical conditions. Inflammation, for example, can affect mental acuity. A person could be suffering from brain damage or have an undetected stroke and thus need medical attention as well as comforting prayer.
4) A heavy reliance on subjective spiritual revelations. I do believe that supernatural revelation can come through inner healing processes. I’ve experienced this myself during times of healing prayers and have been grateful when God shows me something supernaturally. Approach instances of divine intervention cautiously with the understanding that such an approach should not be normative.
5) Improper diagnosis of past trauma. I have known of many cases when people came to me having been told that certain traumatic incidents happened in their past, such as sexual abuse. If this information is just a hunch or supposedly divinely revealed, what if it isn’t true? The individuals seeking inner healing may experince further damage. Always check the facts and don’t jump to conclusions just because it appears that an individual suffered a certain trauma.
6) Suggesting that unknown events in the past have been spiritually revealed. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s there was something called the satanic panic. Individuals came forward claiming abuse by satanic cults. I debated this on some of the top talk shows of the time such as Sally Jesse Raphael and Phil Donahue. In certain cases, the abuse was very real but in other instances it was apocryphal. The person diagnosing a past event in someone’s life with inadequate investigation could be doing them a disservice rather than bringing healing.
7) Failure to properly discern the presence of demons and forcefully cast them out. In my opinion this is the biggest fault of some approaches to inner healing. In my experience most mental and emotional damage that has a spiritual root also involves demonization. No matter how much healing a person receives, if the source of the problem is a demon and the demons are not removed, complete healing is not achieved. The worst consequence of this is that the person might have a false sense of security and end up being worse because the emotional problem returns with greater intensity due to undetected demons.
FINAL THOUGHTS ON INNER HEALING AND EXORCISM
Inner healing done properly within a Christian context is a good thing. We encourage this in all of our DO WHAT JESUS DID deliverance teams. Bob Larson University teaches that inner healing is an important aspect in the overall picture of deliverance. By following the seven guidelines I just listed there is a reasonable chance of good success and at least partially resolving past trauma – and the healing of issues such as rejection, abandonment, bitterness, and a negative self-image. But here’s the problem. In the 50,000 plus case studies that I have encountered of people needing deliverance from demons, the majority have had some prayer approach approximating inner healing. It helped. But they all tell me the same story. Solving their inner issues made life better, but the torment did not completely end.
There will be limited results as far as bringing spiritual restoration to someone’s life by the exclusion of exorcism from the inner healing process. Inner healing, especially in the case of dissociative disorders, is indispensable to the total deliverance process. But as a stand-alone approach to spiritual resolution, it’s usually a partial success. Healing the brokenness of the heart is important to force demons into the open where they then can be confronted and cast out! By all means bring healing to people but don’t forget to take the final step of the deliverance process. Rid that person of the demons that caused the trauma, the emotional pain, and the unstable lifestyle. Inner healing without casting out the demons responsible for the emotional problems will leave tortured souls short of the goal for true freedom in Jesus Christ.
