Healing Spirit, Soul, & Body (plus a lil’ freaky stuff)

 

One woman had come out of a criminal background not many years earlier and was asking for prayer. She was walking with the Lord now but still carrying pain from her old life. Right before she could begin to share what she wanted help with, she began to be tormented by pressure and pain around her head.

I saw this as a likely spiritual attack against her and took authority over it. The pain didn’t leave but moved to a different area in her head. This got my attention since I’ve seen it numerous times. It is a typical sign of spiritual resistance from the demonic, where pain will move to different parts of the body when prayed against.

I continued commanding the source of this pain to leave. It would just move around to different parts of her head no matter what I did. The pain would even move around her head to face me as I walked a circle around her. The spiritual source behind this must have had rights of some kind to be there, or it would never have been able to resist authority in Christ like that.

Usually, I tend to be more focused on the person and their needs than on dueling back and forth with a spirit like this, but that day, I was going after the thing. I didn’t like how it was interfering with her trying to get help, and I wanted to make it clear that this wouldn’t be allowed. I asked the Lord to show me what rights it had to resist so stubbornly.

I first had a sense of a time when she had been much younger, had been left alone by loved ones, and feeling very abandoned. I asked her about this, and she told me that she wasn’t aware of such an experience from her very young years.

However, the issue she wanted help with was an issue of feeling abandoned by people and by God more recently, when all her drug and crime buddies had been killed or sent to prison. This had taken place some years ago, not long before she had recommitted her life to Christ.

She had trusted God to take care of her, had prayed for his protection for her and her friends, but obviously hadn’t been following him fully. She felt a lot of pain and anger at the Lord for the devastation that had happened to all her friends’ lives, and how she was left lonely even when she had trusted in his protection.

Interesting interpretation of events, right? Nevertheless, it was how she felt. I wonder if there really was an earlier episode of severe abandonment which colored her perspective to focus on the loss rather than to focus on how, after praying for protection, she survived a lifestyle that none of her friends had, and then was delivered from it.

I had her confess her anger at God as sin and trust him to take it from her based on the promise that Jesus is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). She did so, and he took the anger out of her immediately along with her feelings of abandonment.

Sometimes (like this time), various painful emotions will leave along with the anger without even needing to be addressed. In other instances, you will need to specifically take the other emotions to the cross. He removes them completely either way. This is what he died for.

I once more commanded the spirit causing the head pains to leave, and the pain only moved around again without leaving. Apparently, the spirit still had some kind of “right” to be there.

I tried an old approach from back in the days when I had learned more deliverance-based work. I put the spirit on trial before the throne of God (by a simple declaration of faith that I was doing so) and commanded it to confess what right it still had to be present. I instructed the woman to listen for whatever thoughts came to her mind and to simply tell me the first thing that popped into her head as I “interrogated” the spirit. The answer she got was “pity.”

It was true. She had become full of self-pity over that situation we had just prayed about. She had always been talking about it to whomever would listen. I had her repent for the self-pity and trust the Lord to remove the grief/sorrow from her heart based on his promise in Isaiah 53 that he bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. The sorrow was immediately lifted from her along with the pain which had been manifesting in her head. There would be no more “smart headache” to contend with as we continued.

In only trying to get rid of a hindrance to doing ministry, we had done quite a bit of the ministry already. So far we had dealt with her anger at God over the tragedy of losing her friends to death and prison, along with her feelings of abandonment. She had come out of agreement with self-pity and had been freed from the grief she had carried over the years.

She shared that she still felt “shattered” inside though, and had felt that way ever since the tragedies in her friends’ lives took place. I asked the Lord to show me the condition of her human spirit so that I could pray healing over that area.

I saw her spirit poured out on the ground like water. It was not only shattered but shattered into so many little bits that it was now a liquid. This liquid spirit was lying face down, prostrate on the ground in brokenness. I was led to speak to her spirit and call it back together, to call it back into an upright position, into a solid form again. The woman began to exclaim, “I feel like I just found myself! I feel solid inside again after so many years!”

Not only was it important to minister to the issues of the soul related to this tragedy (anger, abandonment, grief, and self-pity), but it was important to heal her spirit too.

This may all sound like shockingly and unbelievably quick and easy solutions to such serious pains. It is true, though, and is even repeatable. The gospel is that good. The work of the cross is that real and effective for even the deepest areas of our being.

Self-pity will get us feeling sorry for ourselves and making our issues out to be bigger than God, as if they are so special they could only ever be helped by some long and difficult process. We may have settled into hopelessness, choosing to believe that freedom is impossible, maybe even getting much of our identity from our problems. We become trapped in a victim mentality with no awareness of our authority in Christ and no hope or faith.

Our issues are not bigger than God. They are less than a speck of dust to him. There are so many things which can easily and quickly be healed or removed, even many things which seem overwhelming and life-defining at the time.

This has been an excerpt from a soon to be released book, “Divine Healing for Spirit, Soul, & Body,” and has been edited by the mysterious literary figure known as “Anonymous Moth.”

In no way is this story meant to discredit those who are in a more complex healing process, who legitimately need more time to resolve the various twists and turns they must navigate as they learn to allow the Lord to heal many issues. The broad point I’ve made here is not that our lives should always be simple and easy or else we’re wrong (how ridiculous), but that when one’s process is simple or complex, major hurts and strongholds can be miraculously resolved much faster than we would ever tend to think.

Even when someone’s healing process is more complicated, we can still trust the Lord to do things far beyond what any human method could accomplish. We don’t give up on the promises and faithfulness of God when it appears to not be getting results right away, but we find the loophole, the reason for the hold-up, and we apply God’s faithfulness and some more of his promises to resolving that, and then we do see the results. This lesson was demonstrated in the healing account above in several places, despite how I expect some in rougher, more frustrating processes to take this all the opposite way at first. My heart goes out to them and I include this qualification/explanation for their sake.

The book, written by Diane Moyer and myself,  goes deep into exploring different aspects of miraculous healing for various parts of our being, and how they all interrelate. Beyond that, many foundational “why” questions about the subject are answered from our personal revelations and experiences, our own journeys are shared, how God has revealed his heart to us over the years in very different ways, as well as how he has freed us from many religious mentalities that typically sabotage healing.

If you liked “Broken to Whole,” this one speaks to some of the same basic subjects such as parts and Core Identities, but goes more broad into other areas of divine healing, laying a foundation of understanding and revelation of the Lord’s heart and ways. This is important for effectively receiving healing, as well as for ministering at this level.