Today’s blog quotes from Tom Sappington, who teaches New Testament and missions at Biola, and is very experienced in deliverance ministry. His approach to deliverance and inner healing is very much like ours.
“The problem with the term “inner healing” is that it can mean almost anything in today’s world. I would define it as a ministry in which we bring fellow-believers to the Lord in times of healing prayer, asking the Spirit to bring healing to their deepest emotional wounds, to establish His truth in their hearts, and to set them free from the internal consequences of their sin, of the sin of others against them, and of their unhealthy or sinful responses to the sins of others.
This multi-dimensional ministry involves times of discussion, informal biblical teaching, healing prayer for various traumatic experiences, prayer for the revelation of God’s love and grace, confession of sin, receiving forgiveness, extending forgiveness to others, repenting of ungodly responses to the sins of others, praying for God to reveal his truth in a person’s heart, and renunciation of controlling deceptions, just to name a few of the things that can take place in sessions of inner healing.
The specific ministry process always begins with an extended interview, but what happens after that depends on the Lord’s leading and the needs of the person receiving ministry… Once the Lord works in answer to our prayers, we then move into deliverance to deal with any secondary demonization that is present.”
