Deep Wounds, Deep Healing , livre ebook

D EEP W OUNDS , D EEP H EALING

© 1993, 2010 Charles H. Kraft
Published by Chosen Books 11400 Hampshire Avenue South Bloomington, Minnesota 55438 chosenbooks.com
Chosen Books is a division of Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan. www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Chosen edition published 2014
ISBN 978-1-4412-6836-5
First edition published by Servant Publications in 1993.
Second edition published by Regal Books in 2010.
Ebook edition originally created 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Good News Translation , Second Edition, Copyright 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.
Other versions used are:
NIV —Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version ®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
NKJV —Scripture taken from the New King James Version . Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Phillips — The New Testament in Modern English , Revised Edition, J. B. Phillips, Translator. © J. B. Phillips 1958, 1960, 1972. Used by permission of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 866 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10022.
C ONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One:
A N I NTRODUCTION TO D EEP -L EVEL H EALING
1. What Is Deep-Level Healing?
2. The Aim Is Freedom
3. Who Needs Deep-Level Healing?
4. Present Problems Are Rooted in Memories
Part Two:
S PECIFIC I SSUES IN D EEP -L EVEL H EALING
5. Dealing with Wounds from the Past
6. Reactions Are Usually the Main Problem
7. Healing of a Damaged Self-Image
8. Healing from Loss
9. Healing for the Inner Family
10. Dealing with Demonization
Part Three:
H OW TO D O D EEP -L EVEL H EALING
11. An Orientation for the One Who Ministers
12. How to Do Deep-Level Healing
13. Ministry Techniques
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank several of my colleagues for their assistance with the first edition of this book. My highest gratitude goes to the two whose names are on the title page: Ellyn Kearney and Mark H. White. Drawing from their own experiences in ministry, each of them helped greatly in writing portions of this book and in finding examples to illustrate the principles. In addition, they searched the literature to find pertinent quotes and revised various sections of the manuscript as needed.
Others to whom I am grateful for assistance of various kinds include: Barbara Sturgis, Nancy Thomas, Tracy Jashinski, Jeanie Connell, Marti Browne, Molly Sutherland, Gary Hixson and the many whose books I have profited from. I also thank my wife, Marguerite, for putting up with the pressures that come from having a husband in ministry and writing.
I am also grateful to Dave Came, managing editor of Servant Publications who published the first edition, for his assistance and personal interest in the book and especially for his patience with me when I missed deadlines. Thanks also to Ann Spangler and Beth Feia of Servant Publications, and Dr. David King for invaluable help with chapter 9 , as well as to Paul Witte for compiling the index to the first edition.
My final thanks go to Gary Greig, Mark Weising, Rob Williams and the staff at Regal, who participated in getting out the second edition of the book. Special thanks to Deena Davis for her careful sharpening of content throughout.
I NTRODUCTION
The subject of inner healing, or, as I prefer to refer to it, deep-level healing , is confusing for many within the Christian community. People are used to the idea of professional counseling and led to believe that enough of such counseling will bring them freedom from their emotional hang-ups. But the effectiveness of professional counseling is more and more being questioned both inside and outside of the profession. Christians are also used to being told that salvation means freedom and that prayer changes things. If anyone is in Christ, we are told, he or she is a new creature; old things are passed away and all things have become new (see 2 Cor. 5:17). And many are led to believe that, as Christians, if they simply forget their past problems, they will be free (see Phil. 3:13, misused).
Life experience, however, is often quite different. We come to Christ thinking that will solve all our problems and we will find ourselves like Israel—in the Promised Land; but we soon discover that the land is full of giants who have to be conquered.
We don’t know why God does things this way. He seems to give us a gift and then expects us to work to overcome a considerable number of hindrances to our relaxing with that gift. Yes, there is newness when we come to Christ. Our human spirit is changed and it becomes a new nature. However, that newness is often interfered with by the emergence of old problems. We have taken the right first step. But for many Christians the freedom step is a second step. I have written about this in my book Confronting Powerless Christianity .
The disappointing news is that professional counseling is not very helpful for many people; nor does simply assuming that coming to Christ while ignoring one’s problems works well for many.
But there is good news. It is the testimony of thousands who have gone through deep-level healing that they are free. There is a way to participate with Jesus in taking the freedom step. And, though deep-level healing may not be the only way Jesus brings freedom, it is a very effective way. That’s what this book is about.
Jesus is a healer. We see in the New Testament that He went about healing. The record there, however, shows Jesus as primarily involved in healing physical problems and casting out demons. I suspect, though, that if we had complete accounts of His healings, we would find that He frequently dealt with emotional and spiritual problems—the kinds of things that cripple people inside and to which demons are attached. We will point to some examples of these deeper healings in the chapters to come.
For now, I want to discuss some of the confusion that seems to surround the practice of deep-level healing. One important source is the fact that we tap into a spiritual approach to healing that differs substantially from the secularism that is pervasive in evangelical Christianity. In spite of the assumption that what we do in church and in relation to church is spiritual, most of it is quite secular. The lectures (we call them “sermons”) tend to be intellectual rather than spiritual and relational; with the exception of contemporary worship, our hymns tend to be information-oriented rather than spiritually or relationally oriented; when healing is needed, we go to those who practice secular medicine; when we need psychological help, we go to secular counselors or Christians practicing secular counseling; when we train people, we train them in secular, informational and intellectually oriented institutions.
Deep-level healing is quite different. Jesus actually appears to the counselee and does things that rarely happen in normal church life. Healing happens at the deepest levels of a person’s heart and mind. Although the techniques we use are often borrowed from the counseling profession, the presence of Jesus in them makes all the difference in their effectiveness. This is new for most of our clients, and, for some, it may be confusing at first but very healing.
One area of confusion is the fact that many people expect emotional healing to take a long time. With Jesus’ involvement in deep-level healing, gaining freedom seldom takes long. Most people are substantially changed in one session. On the other hand, many expect that Jesus will do the healing as quickly as we see it in the New Testament, and with little or no activity on the part of the client. This, too, is seldom the case. So, with such expectations, plus general unfamiliarity in working in the presence and power of Jesus, people are often confused about the process.
There are, however, at least two further sources of confusion: (1) the anti-psychology movement within American Christianity, typified by the activities of Dave Hunt, Martin and Deidre Bobgan, and Don Matzat; and (2) the kinds of questions raised by those who are pro-psychology concerning whether counseling can be effectively done by nonprofessionals.
The anti-psychology movement sees a close relationship between the methods of psychologists (some methods of which are used in inner healing) and those used by New Age and other occult practitioners. As I have pointed out in my book Christianity with Power , 1 though Hunt and others do well to warn Christians of the danger of getting entangled with the occult, their opposition to Christian psychology and inner healing is based on a wrong assumption. Their assumption is that because certain techniques we use are also used by the enemy, the techniques themselves are infected and, therefore, wrong for Christians . What they fail to recognize is that these techniques, though used by followers of Satan, have been put in the universe by God to be used for His purposes. The problem is not in the techniques but in the power behind the techniques. When psychological insights and techniques are empowered by Satan, the process in which they are used is wrong. When, however, insight and technique is empowered by God, the process is right .
A second problem with the anti-psychology movement is that it is crippled by Western rationalism. This group is unable to get beyond the influ