C I R C L E O F H O P E

Jesus’ commission (why He came to earth) is given as a prophecy in Isaiah 61:1-2:

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor . . .

There is more to His commission than this, but only this part only is given because it is the part Jesus applied to Himself with regard to His first coming to earth as a man (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 . . . Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

When people come to Jesus in faith and choose to follow Him, they come with a lot of baggage. They are captive and oppressed in many ways. They have mental and emotional problems. They do and say things, and they themselves don’t understand where those things come from. They act in ways they don’t want to, and they can’t seem to bring themselves to do the things they would like to do. They have messed-up relationships that they can’t seem to fix. And they believe things about themselves that are completely opposite to what Jesus would say about the people for whom He died (I’m no good, I’ll never measure up, etc.). What is wrong, and what can Jesus do?

What is wrong is that, in a sinful world, people get hurt. This starts when they are children and never stops. Children are the most at risk because they are not mature enough to understand and cope with the evil around them. So they develop ways to protect themselves that ultimately backfire on them when they grow up. For example:

(1) They push down pain until they can’t feel it anymore; unfortunately, however, although they are no longer conscious of it, the pain is still there and very much alive and unhealed. (2) Or, they may reinterpret reality to make it fit with their limited understanding: e.g., “If Mummy and Daddy abuse me, it can’t be because they’re bad – it must be that I’m bad and deserve it.”

(3) Children may also learn to blame, often themselves: e.g., “Daddy left because I was bad the day he packed his bags.” They look around for comfort and take it where they can find it (thumb sucking, masturbation, eating, bullying), developing habits which can carry into adulthood as things like smoking, drinking, eating, sex, etc. And so on it goes.

When people grow up, they arrive at adulthood with all the stuff they put in place as children to cope with pain. Their hearts are filled with buried pain, and they add to it by continuing the habit of pushing new pain down. They have all kinds of negative beliefs about themselves, and now they reinterpret reality in light of those beliefs: e.g.: “My new husband appears to love me, but I’m not good enough to deserve his love, so he may leave me just like Daddy did, and I need to do all I can to make sure that never happens.” They blame, and they wreck their relationships doing it. They seek false comforts and sometimes destroy themselves with the things they use to dull pain (e.g., drugs, alcohol, fast driving).

When these people discover Jesus and how much He loves them, and put their faith in Him, He adopts them, with all their baggage. Jesus knows that their stuff is slowly killing them, and He loves them too much to leave them in that condition. So He says: “No matter what you’re addicted or enslaved to, from drugs to an abusive spouse, I’ve come to set the captives free. No matter how pathetic you think you are, I’ve come to release people held captive to the thoughts and beliefs in their heads. No matter how much pain you’ve stuffed, I’ve come to set you free from it. No matter how dark you think things are, I’ve come to release you from darkness. No matter how messed you are, no matter how emotionally and mentally troubled, I’ve come to bind up the broken-hearted.

Because Jesus came to bind up the broken-hearted, we know that our heart can break. This has nothing to do with being sad. The “heart” in Bible understanding is all of you on the inside of your body: your thinking, your emotions, your personality, your ability to make good decisions. All that you think of as being you is included in the word “heart”. The “you” on the inside of your body can break just as surely as your body can break. And it breaks for a similar reason. Bodies break when something painful hits them with a good amount of force. Similarly, our inner person can break when something painful hits it with a good amount of force. In other words, the painful events of life can cause us to become broken-hearted.

The most extreme example of broken-heartedness is dissociative identity disorder (a term I do not much like because our identity as Christians is who we are in Christ, not who we are in our woundedness).

However, broken-heartedness can manifest in other ways. Sometimes a person comes through a trauma and can tell you all about it without any sign of a normal emotional reaction. In that case, emotions may have become separated from the memory. They are still there – just not where they belong. In a case like that, if we ask Jesus to link emotions with the memory, very often a flood of emotion occurs. Another evidence of separated emotions is when people get sudden bursts of emotion for no reason they can figure. They may be at peace, alone, doing something they enjoy, and suddenly feel angry or sad. This happens with people have been used to stuffing emotion.

Broken-heartedness also becomes evident when we realize that we do not believe what we believe; in other words, we discover that we believe one thing in our head and another in our gut. Commonly, Christians may know they are completely forgiven and made clean through the blood of Jesus and yet continue to feel shame, or they may know that they are God’s precious, adopted children and yet still feel inferior to others and unworthy.

Finally, some people have the experience of being in a worship service or other event where the Spirit of God is moving and suddenly feel like they don’t belong, as if a part of them, in some deep, unknown place, is responding to the things of God differently from the way they are used to responding.

No one can put back together a broken person; only Jesus can do that. And God, knowing we would all suffer broken-heartedness to one degree or another, commissioned Jesus to bind up our broken-heartedness, that is, to heal the fractured off parts of us and put us back together the way He intended us to be.

Following is a suggested prayer for inviting Jesus to heal a person’s broken-heartedness. It is first given with an explanation for each part of the prayer. Following that, it is given in its entirety. This hopefully will be a help to those for whom the concept of broken-heartedness is new or not well understood. The prayer is written as if one person is praying for another; however, you can pray it for yourself as well.

PRAYER INVITING JESUS INTO A PERSON’S BROKEN-HEARTEDNESS, WITH EXPLANATION

Jesus, would you go to every part of [Jane], body, soul and spirit, which is not 100% under salvation and Your Lordship, in other words, is not yet completely healed and set free from sin and demonic influence. Would You go to every part of her mind: every memory, every belief, every stray thought, and the rules of her conscience by which she lives. Would You go to every part of her emotions and every part of her that affects emotions, including her physical brain and chemical and neurological make-up. Would You go to her will: to every decision she has ever made, the consequences of those decisions, her interpretation of those consequences, and to her conscience, which tells her what kinds of decisions to make. Would You go into every part of her spirit, including her understanding of who You and the Father are, and how You want to relate to her, to her ability to hear Your voice and respond to You, and to any part of her that has ever been, or is still being, influenced by enemy spirits. Would You go to every part of her body that is not yet how You designed it to be or that reacts to things in unhealthy ways such as allergic reactions.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 says: “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is the basis for asking Jesus to minister to those three parts of a person and to bring wholeness, although it should be understood that these three parts may be distinct, but they are not separate from one another. You are very much a whole person. The rest of this part of the prayer is just a breakdown of what exactly it is that we want to give Jesus freedom to heal, and is more for the person being prayed for, so he or she can intelligently agree in allowing Jesus freedom to heal into the deep places in his or her life, than it is for Jesus who, already knows how deep He needs to touch this life.

While You minister to the various parts of [Jane], would you put a godly separation between them and [Jane] so that they cannot bring pain to her because of her decision to seek healing and wholeness. [Ask the Lord about whether or not to include this the next part:] Also, if You know of any part that will not come under Your Lordship and salvation no matter what You do, would You, only if You think it wise, remove that part from Jane since it is better to enter the Kingdom missing the parts that hinder us than it is to hang onto those parts (Matthew 18:8-9).

Sometimes, as Jesus gets close to a hurting place within a person, a place the person may be unaware of til Jesus reveals it, that hurting place reacts, and the reaction may not feel at all good to the person receiving prayer. If it feels very bad, he or she may make the mistaken assumption that feeling bad means something is not going right and may decide not to pursue this line of healing. So we ask Jesus to keep that kind of reaction from becoming intolerable while healing proceeds. The next part of the prayer is left to your discretion. In dealing with dissociated people, we do encounter parts of their fractured minds that hate Jesus and want nothing to do with Him, but we have not personally had the experience of those parts not eventually coming to trust Him. Thus the prayer is phrased to allow Jesus absolute discretion in deciding if the request is appropriate, but to also to tell Him that He can be as radical as He needs to be in order to bring healing. The key to feeling safe while giving that level of permission is to trust the heart of Jesus – that He would never do anything to bring hurt, but will only do what is absolutely loving and for the good of the whole person. Jesus loves the person in general, and He loves those hidden hurting or angry or hateful parts of that person. All part of the person are precious to Him, and He will always bring salvation as opposed to judgment unless there is no other choice.

Would You adopt those parts which are so separate from [Jane] that they have not experienced Your love the way she has, and would You make them Your own, even as you adopted [Jane] and made her Your precious child.

When you are saved, all of you is saved. When you are saved, you are adopted and made part of God’s family. That means all of you. This request isn’t asking Jesus to do something that hasn’t already occurred. It is asking Jesus to make that experience real to all parts of the person. If you’ve ever had the experience of knowing you were a beloved part of God’s family but, every now and again, feeling like you are an outsider to that family, then you know what this request is about. It’s asking Jesus to do what He needs to do so that you know that you know that you know, to the deepest part of your being, with all of your heart and soul and mind, that you belong to Him, that you are a cherished, beloved, treasured part of His family, and that nothing can ever, ever shake that, amen.

Where You see parts of her that have difficulty with faith or are trapped in unbelief, would You reveal Yourself to them and win them to Yourself and to the Father.

This addresses the experience, which is common to Christians, of knowing something is true in their heads, but not feeling it is true in their hearts. For example, they know they are forgiven, but feel guilty over something from their past. They know they are loved by God, but can’t relax in that love, always feeling they have to do something to earn it or to keep it. They know God answers prayer, but feel like He seldom listens to theirs. They know they are made perfect by Jesus’ blood, but feel inferior, not good, like they’ll never measure up. They know that every person is needed in the kingdom of God, no matter how gifted they are, but don’t feel as important as the preacher or the missionary. The list could go on. It is that deep level of heart unbelief that we are asking Jesus to heal.

Where You see lies and beliefs that You know are not true, would You speak and replace all those lies with Your truth.

If you look at the list of unbelief given for the previous part of the prayer, you will notice that each area where there is difficulty believing, there is a corresponding belief that is not true: I am guilty, I am not loved, God doesn’t hear me, I am no good, I am not important. Not only do we want Jesus to bring faith where there is unbelief, we want Him to replace all lies with His truth: I am not guilty, I am loved with an everlasting love, God always hears me, I am good because Jesus made me good, I am hugely important in God’s family.

Where negative words have been spoken to her or about her, would you break the power of those words, end any curse that came on her life because of those words, and speak Your truth in their place.

One reason we believe lies about ourselves and have difficulty believing God’s truth is that people over the years have told us that those negative things are true of us and we believed them. For example, a child who is told over and over that he is stupid may struggle in school, not because he is stupid, but because he has been told he is and believes it. In that way, the words become a curse: they start to become real in our experience because we can’t stop living as if they’re true. Jesus needs to break the power of those words so they can’t hurt us anymore.

Where there is buried pain, would You heal, including healing the memories of pain and all body memories.

We bury our emotional pain all the time. It slowly drifts out of consciousness, and we think it is gone. But unhealed pain remains unhealed. It hurts as much as when we first felt it. We are just out of touch with it, is all. It’s somewhere in our subconscious or unconscious, but hurting all the same. This causes all kinds of problems. We can develop physical symptoms with no known physical cause: things like headaches, ulcers, hypertension, and so on. Or we may experience sudden manifestations of our pain: peaceful one minute, then angry or sad or hurt the next, without any apparent reason. Or we may react to a problem with rage or tears or a sense of rejection all out of proportion to the actual problem because some of our buried pain rises up along with the pain the problem is causing. All that buried pain needs healing, as do the memories of the hurtful events that caused it. Body memories are memories within the body that the mind is not in touch with. So, as Jesus moves into a memory, the first notice the person may have that He is someplace painful is something they feel in their body – a sudden pain, nausea, dizziness – with the memory as to what caused their body to feel that way following along a little later.

Would You remove all broken dreams, lost hopes, and wishes that never came true, and, where she was robbed of things that You wanted her to have, would you now give her those things.

Life’s disappointments can hang on to us, filling us with dissatisfaction and regret. Since Jesus wants us to live in joy now, He needs to release from us our dissatisfaction with our past.

Where she has carried the burdens of other people’s pain and not prayed those burdens over to You, would You now remove them from every part of her.

Some people are very sensitive to other people’s pain, be that sorrow, anger, hopelessness or some other negative emotion. They feel it as if it’s their own. This is a wonderful quality that makes them incredibly compassionate people. The danger is that all that pain from others will stick in their own hearts and drag them down. It is OK to feel for others. But eventually that pain needs to be given to Jesus because only He is able to bear the pain of so many people. This is usually simply a matter of praying for the person whose burden they feel and then asking Jesus to take the burden from their hearts. When people don’t know to do this, they end up carrying in their own souls a whole lot of baggage from other people’s problems. Jesus needs to take that off them.

Where the Father has given her visions and a calling that she has been unable to walk in, would You forgive and remove from every part of her all the things the Father tried to birth but that died in her before coming to life.

We have all missed God-given opportunities to serve, for reasons all the way from “we didn’t quite get the message” to “we did get the message but we refused”. That can cause lingering guilt, which weighs us down. Since the Bible tells us to get rid of everything that hinders us (Hebrews 12:1),[1] this kind of weight needs to go as well.

Where there is disagreement or even fighting within her so that one part wars against another, would You bring them into friendship.

I’m sure we have all experienced this kind of inner conflict: one part of us wants one thing, and another part doesn’t or it wants the opposite. We want to get out of bed to go to church, but we also want to roll over and go back to sleep. We want to stop fighting with our spouse, then we pick a fight. We want to go on a diet, and last all of five days. The Bible says it this way (Romans 7:19): “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing” (Romans 7:24-25). Jesus can heal that kind of inner civil war.

Where there are parts of [Jane] that are troubled because of hurts from past relationships, would You cut all the ungodly, painful, wounded ties between her and those people who hurt her. Would you remove from her anything that is not her. Would You mend all the heartache, sense of abandonment and loss, lies, and anything else that became part of her life because of broken or fractured relationships. Having disconnected the hurt parts of her heart from the people who wounded her, would you then reconnect those parts of her heart with Your heart, so they can receive Your perfect love in the place where there used to be pain. Where parts of her heart, in their pain, backed off from love and life, would You call them back to life and to the courage to risk again in relationship. Would You also teach her heart wisdom as to how and with whom it should risk intimacy. And where [Jane’s] relationship with You has suffered because of being hurt by other people, so that she can’t seem to achieve intimacy with You, would you bring to Your relationship with her all the same healing we have prayed with regard to her human relationships, except that since she has no need to wonder if You can be trusted with her heart, You teach her the reality that You are always trustworthy and faithful and good.

We can get hooked into other people, including those who hurt us. Where relationships have been good, the people we love may die or move away, and if we are hooked, we can’t ever seem to get over the loss. Where relationships have not been so good and people have hurt us, we may speak forgiveness for their sins against us, but we may not be able to get free of the anger/hurt/resentment/bitterness over what they did. Jesus needs to do more in these kinds of situations than comfort us or forgive us. He needs to cut the tie between us and the other person that keeps us locked into them. We may not know why we can’t get free of them, but Jesus knows. So we invite Him to end the reason we can’t go free. There is also the reality that other people can become part of us. They are not just memories; they are very real presences in our lives. Sometimes, we can almost hear them talking to us. When Jesus heals, He heals us so we can be us, without being driven by other people. The inner presence of other people and what they did or said, whether good or bad, need to go so we can remember them with good hearts, enjoy any blessings that came from our relationship with them, appreciate the good things we had together, but be free to live our lives without pressure from past relationships. But we need more than relief from the hurts of past relationships. We also need to be filled with what we really needed from the people in our life but that they couldn’t give us – a deep, faithful, pure and tender love – God’s love. So we ask God, as He disconnects us from the evil that people brought into our life, to reconnect us, but this time, to Himself and His heart, so our hearts can finally receive what they have desperately needed for so long – perfect love. Then there is the reality that once we are bitten, we are twice shy. We remain reluctant to trust again, to love again, to be honest and intimate with people again. But God has designed us for intimate relationships, and we cannot live full lives without them. So we ask Him to heal our reluctance, but also to teach us wisdom so we don’t risk our hearts with the wrong people. Even Jesus, although He treated everyone with kindness and dignity, did not entrust Himself to everyone because He knew that some people should not be trusted with the treasure that is our heart (John 2:24). Finally, the way we learn to relate (or not relate) to people is how we tend to relate (or not relate) to God. God is fully deserving of our trust, yet many to most of us struggle with trusting Him with everything about us. So the end of this part of the prayer is a request that God heal our ability to relate with Him as deeply and as well as we have asked Him to heal our ability to relate with other people, with the exception that He reveal to us that our relationship with Him is wonderfully different from our human relationships in one respect – God will never hurt us. He can always be trusted. There is nothing we can’t share unashamedly and fearlessly with God.

Where she has problems because of the sins of previous generations that have resulted in ungodliness coming down to her, would you cut those cords as well and set her free.

Unfortunately, negative stuff comes down family lines. People inherit genetic predispositions to things like cancer, depression, diabetes, and certain mental and emotional disorders. We know that abused children can grow up to be abusers. Parents communicate all kinds of things to their children: fear, worry, rejection, to name a few. Parents don’t necessarily want their problems showing up in their children’s lives, but often that is what happens. Jesus can put an end to that and remove the predisposition, as well as heal the things we have already received from our parents.

Would You teach all parts of [Jane] all they need to know about forgiveness of offenders, including forgiving themselves. Would You also teach all parts of [Jane] all they need to know about confession of sin and repentance, including repentance for any friendship with darkness.

This is probably obvious – that we all have sin issues and forgiveness issues that we need to bring to Jesus. The not so obvious part has to do with our friendship with darkness. Darkness can be anything: sin, pain, sickness. It is anything that was not part of God’s original plan for people. Sometimes, although we may say we want to be rid of our darkness, part of us really doesn’t want to let go. Remember when Jesus asked the lame man if he wanted to be healed? Now, Jesus wasn’t prone to asking stupid questions. So why was he asking this man, who kept coming to the pool in the hope of being healed, if he wanted to be healed? Because Jesus knows our deepest heart. He knew that it would be a struggle for this man to be whole. The man would then have to find work, get used to being self-sufficient, perhaps think about a wife and family. That would be a challenge. And deep in his heart, part of him probably knew that. Notice that his answer wasn’t “Yes, absolutely, I want to be healed right now.” It was an excuse (John 5:7): “‘Sir,’ the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” Jesus knows we have inner doubts about being free. He wants to heal those parts of us as well: the part that still wants to eat food we know is bad for us, the part that still can’t throw out the pornographic magazines, the part that still would like to see punishment fall on those who hurt us or that still wants the offender to say “sorry”.

Where the enemy has gained influence over any part of [Jane], would You take away everything that the enemy has used to strengthen his hold on her. Would You cut the linkings between those parts and any spirit having influence, and deliver her from all demonic. And would You return to her everything the enemy has kept in his possession until now that rightfully belongs to her.

The enemy is Satan and all demonic spirits. These spirits love to bring any kind of havoc they can into people’s lives. Where they have managed to do so, we ask Jesus to end that. We also want an end to any continuing demonic influence in the person’s life, whatever that might be. Sometimes spirits can bring physical problems, as with the woman in the Bible who was bent double. They also love to play with our thoughts and feed our tendencies to sin. Since Jesus said that Satan came to steal, as well as to kill and destroy, we ask that anything stolen be returned, whatever that might be: self-esteem, joy, marital health, physical health, and so on.

We know that, in dissociative identity disorder, one part of the person may have a health problem, while another part may not. It is a strange phenomenon, but very real. So we are cautious. Even where there is no DID, we ask that any sickness that might attached to anything in the person’s life, including buried pain and memories, be healed. It could very well be that, for example, our bitterness over our upbringing may be the source of our chronic headaches today.

Would you show all parts of Jane how able You are to protect them and take care of them. Would you remove all fleshly defence mechanisms and give all part of her all they need in order to cope with life without those defences.

This is a tough one. We all self-protect. We learned to do it when we were kids, and we still do it. We do it in all kinds of ways. We judge people and look down on them so they can’t get close to us and hurt us. We joke a lot and never get serious with anyone so they never really get to know us and all our vulnerabilities can remain safe. We put ourselves down in public so someone else doesn’t get a chance to do it first and hurt us. We hate so we can keep dangerous people at an emotional distance. We bite our tongues so we don’t make waves. Unfortunately, all those things we put in place to keep other people at a distance also work on God – and our spouse and kids and good friends. All those self-protective mechanisms become so habitual, they kick in with everyone and interfere with intimacy. But we all need and desire intimacy where intimacy is appropriate. The solution is to rely on God for protection, since He promises it, and to get rid of all those less than desirable self-defences. Unfortunately, we can’t do that on our own. Jesus needs to do it for us. Hence this part of the prayer. And just to allay any fears, He will not do this prematurely and leave us defenceless. He will do it at the right time, when we are ready for Him to become our best defence.

Would you take down all walls within [Jane]. If there are parts of her hidden behind those walls, would you rescue them and give them the same healing we have just prayed for all other parts.

We all have walls. Walls of bitterness, hate, fear, anxiety. They keep us from doing what we really want to do, from saying what we really want or need to say (e.g., “I love you”), from taking a chance for a greater good, from living life to the full which is our right as children of God (John 10:10).[2] The walls have to go if we want to be free. But they are protective. Sometimes they protect the most wounded parts of our lives. For example, someone who presents as a tough guy may really be a wounded guy, hiding behind toughness. So we want Jesus to heal anything hidden behind our walls so those parts of us are not left exposed in all their hurt when the walls come down.

As healing comes, would You grow up all younger parts, and draw together all the healed parts of [Jane] – body, soul and spirit – that have become separated from one another, and put her back together as the whole person You created.

If we are wounded in childhood and that pain remains unhealed, it remains the pain of a young person. If you were to get in touch with it, it would feel like a child’s pain. Or sometimes, we simply find ourselves in a situation that makes us feel like a kid again. The reason may be that some broken-heartedness occurred at that age and we are touching into it. In dissociative identity disorder, some of the fractured parts are children; they are parts of the person’s mind that fractured off at a young age and did not grow with the rest of the person. In healing, all of the person needs to be one, including one in age. So we ask Jesus to bring unity at all levels.

Would You heal any infirmities in body, soul and spirit that have been present up til now because of broken-heartedness.

We have already discussed how the body can be affected by broken-heartedness in explaining other parts of this prayer. This is a final request for physical healing of conditions arising from any remaining aspect of broken-heartedness.

Finally, where her body itself has learned ungodliness and sin, and is less than healthy because of this, would you heal her body and bring its responses to life under Your Lordship, so that her body has no darkness, but is filled with the light of life.

Our bodies learn to carry tension. They learn fear responses to things that aren’t fearful in and of themselves (phobias). Allergies are another response that is not normal: the body reacting to innocent substances. In immune system disorders, the immune system can turn on itself. We ask Jesus here to heal the body of its abnormal responses to life.

God of peace, would You sanctify [Jane] through and through. May her whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:23a).

Jane, the one who calls you is faithful and he will do it (1 Thessalonians 5:23b).

All of what this prayer asks releases Jesus to sovereignly heal physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual infirmities, in all the parts of a person where they are present, all at the same time. This is a blessing on many fronts.

For one, healing can happen very fast. In traditional healing ministry or counseling, everything has to happen at the conscious level. This means that, if there are hundreds of issues, healing is very slow.

Also, inner healing in the traditional way is very painful, as the person remembers and deals with all past pain. When Jesus does His work sovereignly, He is in control of memory, and part of healing can then be a blessed not knowing and never remembering if that is what He chooses.

Finally, to heal at the level of consciousness, the person has to remember, and sometimes things are buried so deep that this is almost impossible. But Jesus sees all. He knows right now all that is wrong with us, so He can start healing everything right now.

No person is so far gone that Jesus cannot bring him or her quickly to wholeness. Probably the most severe case we see in the Scriptures is to be found in the following story from Mark 5:1-15:

1 They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes.
2 When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him.
3 This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him any more, not even with a chain.
4 For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him.
5 Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.
6 When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him.
7 He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won’t torture me!”
8 For Jesus had said to him, “Come out of this man, you evil spirit!”
9 Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” “My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.”
10 And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area.
11 A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside.
12 The demons begged Jesus, “Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.”
13 He gave them permission, and the evil spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.
14 Those tending the pigs ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, and the people went out to see what had happened.
15 When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind;

From completely deranged to “dressed and in his right mind”, all in a few minutes.

It is true that, while we have seen this level or miracle in some cases, we do not see it all the time. For each person, we pray, we watch what Jesus does, then we deal with what remains. Discipleship and intercession also play a role. Sometimes there are blockages to healing that those two things can help remove.

The bottom line is that there are no formulas for healing. However, addressing broken-heartedness can unlock much healing as severed parts of a person come into wholeness and harmony and under the Lordship of Jesus.

Here is the complete prayer, should you choose to pray it for yourself or someone else:

Where You see parts of her that have difficulty with faith or are trapped in unbelief, would You reveal Yourself to them and win them to Yourself and to the Father.

Where You see lies and beliefs that You know are not true, would You speak and replace all those lies with Your truth.

Where negative words have been spoken to her or about her, would you break the power of those words, end any curse that came on her life because of those words, and speak Your truth in their place.

Where there is buried pain, would You heal, including healing the memories of pain and all body memories.

Would You remove all broken dreams, lost hopes, and wishes that never came true, and, where she was robbed of things that You wanted her to have, would you now give her those things.

Where she has carried the burdens of other people’s pain and not prayed those burdens over to You, would You now remove them from every part of her.

Where there is disagreement or even fighting within her so that one part wars against another, would You bring them into friendship.

Where there are parts of [Jane] that are troubled because of hurts from past relationships, would You cut all the cords that bind her to those people and set her free. Would you also remove from her anything that is not her.

Where she has problems because of the sins of previous generations that have resulted in ungodliness coming down to her, would you cut those cords as well and set her free.

Would you take down all walls within [Jane]. If there are parts of her hidden behind those walls, would you rescue them and give them the same healing we have just prayed for all other parts.

Would You heal any infirmities in body, soul and spirit that have been present up til now because of broken-heartedness.

God of peace, would You sanctify [Jane] through and through. May her whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:23a).

Jane, the one who calls you is faithful and he will do it (1 Thessalonians 5:23b).

One thing people have trouble with is leaving all these issues with God. They try hard to make their healing happen by, for example, praying more and asking God for their healing again and again, increasing their time with God so healing can happen faster, claiming their healing as if statements of faith can force God’s hand, combing through their minds for anything that might need to be confessed or forgiven or renounced so nothing stands in the way of their healing, and so on. But it is Jesus whose job it is to heal the broken-hearted, not ours. Having invited Him to do what He loves to do, the best advice to the person looking to Him for healing is to relax, stay out of His way, and let Him do His job.

[1] “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” BACK

[2] “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” BACK