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-- © GodSpeak International 2004 --
-- Do not republish without written permission from <copyright@godspeak.org> --

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND CONTRIBUTING RESOURCES
Author: Teresa Seputis ts@godspeak.net http://www.godspeak.net
Editor: Kevin Nolan

Dreams, Visions And Experiencing God

Lesson 8
Inner Healing

By Teresa Seputis

This lesson is going to touch on something that I have learned through experience and through various doctrines. It is not strongly supported by the Bible. It does not contradict the Bible in any way, but you won't find strong direct evidence for it in the Bible either. So please feel free to disagree with me on this, or to discard this particular lesson if you do not get a witness in your spirit from the Holy Spirit. I want to cover this area because it seems to be the type of vision that non-prophetic people tend to experience the most.

There are many different types of inner healing ministries that are practiced today, and many of them seem to have rather powerful results in people's lives. I find it impossible to believe that God is not in inner healing, because Jesus said, in Luke 4:18-21 "'The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.' Then He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on Him, and He began by saying to them, 'Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.'"

According to Jesus, part of His job-description was to "proclaim freedom" and to "release the oppressed" and bring them into "the Lord's favor." That is, in a nutshell, what inner healing ministry does for people.

Inner healing ministers to people who are bound (in some degree) by things like unforgiveness, bitterness, sin, demonic oppression, wrong judgments and mindsets, ungodly vows, self-curses, past hurts, etc. It breaks off these things and sets people free from them. It removes "triggers" that cause hurtful or inappropriate responses by bringing the healing of Christ into that situation and taking away the power of the hurt over the person.

One of the most powerful elements of inner healing is helping the person to release forgiveness to those who have hurt or wronged them, then to break off any empowerment the enemy held over them to torment them because of previous unforgiveness. It is based on Jesus' parable of the unforgiving debtor in Matthew 18. The parable was that a man owed the king a great debt and was about to be sold into slavery and all of his possessions confiscated to help pay that debt. He begged the king for mercy and the king extended mercy to him and forgave his debt. Then he left the king and found someone who owed him a small debt and could not pay and who begged for mercy. But the man did not extend mercy and had the person thrown into debtor's prison. This story got back to the king who was very angry and the king had the man thrown into prison since he had been forgiven a big debt and then would not forgive someone else a small debt. Jesus ended this parable with a sobering comment in verse 34 to 35, "In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart."

Many people understand that to mean that when we hold unforgiveness and bitterness in our hearts, we become "fair game" for demons to torment us in various areas -- our heart, our finances, our relationships, emotional pain and torment, etc. And in order to take away the devil's right to torment us, we have to forgive the one who has hurt or offended us.

There are other elements to inner healing, such as breaking soul ties, breaking courses, renouncing vows, repenting of unconfessed sins, revisiting a traumatic past situation and inviting Jesus into it to bring His healing, etc.

Many of those techniques use some form of imagery in the process of revisiting past situations. That imagery may be guided in some way, or it may be freeform. The minister may request the Lord do certain things (such as show the person where God was when this happened to them, etc.) or they may simply invite Jesus into the situation and allow Jesus to do whatever He desires and show the person whatever He desires.

This type of ministry imaging can be very powerful and God may speak directly to the person receiving ministry via pictures, as per lesson two. But this is not a vision. It is a ministry session where God is using a human agent to minister His healing into the heart of one of His children.

On the other hand, God does sometimes send visions that are healing in nature, that are designed to move us from a place of brokenness and pain into a place of wholeness in Christ. These visions frequently come when a person has been struggling with something for a while and crying out to God in prayer in the midst of their struggles. Or it may come when the Lord's presence is strongly on a person, such as just after receiving some sort of prayer in a ministry setting and being allowed to soak in the Lord's presence.

Back in 1994 there was a powerful move of God in my area that we referred to as "renewal meetings." These meetings were different from a typical church meeting because the main focus was on encountering God instead of on being trained or taught. Intimate worship was a big part of these meetings, and would usually last for about an hour. Then there would be a time of testimonies or a short teaching. Then ministry time would begin. Prayer teams would pray for individuals and would invite God to meet them, to show Himself to them, to fill them, to come and love on them. And God seemed to show up in these meetings in a very tangible way and a lot of people had personal and powerful experiences with God during this ministry time, as they waited on the Lord and soaked in His presence.

I was on the prayer team and from time to time people who I prayed for would come back later and tell me about their experience with God. One lady shared a very powerful testimony of a vision God gave her. She had gotten pregnant as a teenager and had an abortion. She was saved in her twenties and married and now has children of her own. She has carried this incredible guilt for a number of years about the abortion she had as a teenager. She felt so guilty for "murdering" her unborn child that she could hardly function. She had a lot of self-hate and self- condemnation and cried and felt depressed much of the time. Her relationship with God suffered because she felt He was still angry at her for "murdering my unborn baby." And she had so much shame and guilt over this that she could not go to anyone for help -- she was so ashamed of this that she felt she had to keep it a secret and would not let anyone know what she had done.

That day she had had a particularly hard day and was overwhelmed by guilt. That is why she came up for prayer at the renewal meeting -- it was so bad that she had to take some sort of action; she just could not stand it anymore. She was afraid of what God would say to her in a personal encounter, but she was so desperate for help with this guilt that she risked coming to Him. The Spirit came on her after she was prayed for, and she had a vision.

In the vision Jesus was standing in front of her and He was holding a baby, which she understood to be her aborted child. She was terrified when she saw Jesus and was afraid that He would condemn and punish her. She squeezed her eyes closed in terror. Then she heard a voice say to her in a gentle and loving tone, "Look at me." She opened her eyes and looked at Jesus, and He was smiling at her. She was so amazed that He would smile at her because she was so sure He was furious with her for having the abortion those many years ago before she was saved. She could not believe He was really smiling, so she looked again to make sure. She went through a process in that vision where Jesus' love and forgiveness became real for her concerning her abortion.

Then Jesus asked her if she wanted to hold the baby. She did not... she was afraid that the baby could never forgive her for what she had done. She finally agreed to hold the baby, even though she was terrified to do so. It was a little girl.

The child told her mother something like this, "Mom, I want you to know that I forgive you for what you did to me. I really wanted to be born and I really wanted to be your daughter and to know you in that way. I wanted to grow up and to experience life on the earth. But I am now in my eternal destiny with Jesus and I am happy. And I want you to know that I love you and I want you to stop feeling guilty for what you did to me and I want you to start living the rest of your life free from all that guilt and shame."

That vision was an incredibly powerful healing experience for this lady. It changed her whole life. She stopped feeling the guilt and shame and the need to keep her past abortion secret went away. She did go through a grieving period over the loss of her baby girl, over the fact that she would not be a part of her life, that she would not be able to see her grow up. But that was not a hopeless sense of loss, she had an assurance that the baby was in heaven with Jesus and that she would see her again one day.

The Lord gave her a vision designed to break off her guilt and shame and restore her relationship with Him. He did something in that vision that could not have been done in a ministry session -- He allowed the lady to have an encounter with the dead child. It would be wrong for a person in ministry to try to facilitate an interaction between a person who is alive and a person who had died -- that would be akin to witchcraft and a big no-no.

But Jesus was not under any such restriction. He had allowed Peter and James and John to see the deceased Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration, so we do have a precedent for Jesus allowing a living person to see someone who has already died and gone to heaven. He seemed to feel the lady needed to know the baby forgave her in order for her to break free of the shame and guilt and to move on with her life. And that is how He choose to bring healing to this guilt-ridden mother, through a vision where she experienced love and forgiveness from Jesus and also from the aborted child.

Her story impacted me very strongly when she shared it with me -- I don't think I will ever forget it. I had a few healing visions of my own with the Lord, but they do not sound nearly as powerful or dramatic as this lady's testimony. Still, I will share one of mine with you as well.

Back in 1994 I still struggled with rejection and inadequacy issues. When I grew up, I simply could not please my father -- nothing I did was ever good enough. It is a common scenario that a lot of children face, and it effected me in the typical way. I felt unloved and unacceptable. I did not think I could ever be good enough for anything. One day I was at the renewal meeting where I served on the ministry team. I had spent about two hours praying for people and it was near the end of the meeting. I asked one of the other ministry team members to pray for me. God's presence came on me very strongly and I ended up having a vision as I lay on the carpet near the altar.

In the vision, Jesus came and stood near me and He picked me up and held me in His arms. Even though I was an adult woman, I felt much like a child in her parent's loving arms. I felt loved and secure as He held me; it was a wonderful feeling. Then Jesus told me that I belong to Him and that no one can take me away from Him and that He was pleased with me. (That felt very good!) Then He told me that He would like to give Me as a present to God the Father and asked me if that was okay with me. I nodded that it was. Then, in the vision, Jesus actually handed me to the Father (I could not see His face but I could feel His arms on me as He received me and held me). The Father told Jesus that I was a pleasing and acceptable gift.

I could literally feel the acceptance of God the Father pouring into me and I felt so loved and so desired. It was such a healing experience for the girl who thought she would never be good enough for anyone to want her or to like her. I realized that I did not need to perform, I did not need to be "good enough" with God because Jesus had already made me accepted in the beloved. That was the inner healing aspect of my vision. And it had a profound effect on me. It greatly decreased my feelings of inadequacy and my need to perform to win affection. God knew what I needed and He met me in a vision and gave it to me. And He seems to do that with many of His children today.


-- © GodSpeak International 2004 --
-- Do not republish without written permission from <copyright@godspeak.org> --

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