Praise the LORD! For it is good to sing praises to our God; for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting. 2 The LORD builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel. 3 He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. Psalm 147:1-3 (ESV)
Deep unhealed wounds and the associated traumatic pain can interfere with our experiencing all that Jesus died to provide. The devastation experienced because of unconfessed and unforgiven generational sins and their attached judgments is overcome through actively claiming and applying Jesus’ releasing us from the power of the curse when he died on the cross. Lie-based strongholds are defeated through our recognizing and renouncing any lies we have believed and replacing them with promises and truths from the Bible. The truth sets us free from the power of the lie. (John 8:31-32) We must learn to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit to guide us through this process. When it comes to deep pain, however, neither the authority of the resurrected Christ over all generational devastation nor the bondage breaking power of the truth is the complete answer.
Deep traumatic pain requires the healing touch of Jesus.
All sin and bondage is based on lies. The bondage of sin and death began because a satanic lie was spoken, believed, and acted upon, which opened the door to a lifestyle of sinful independence with its resultant pain and destruction. When we encounter pain in our lives, we usually attempt to understand and make sense of it to protect ourselves by using the carnal or fleshly (Greek: sarx) mind, which lacks wisdom and often weaves for itself another layer of deception. The lies we believe, when acted upon, can introduce even more pain, setting the cycle in motion once again. Demons often take advantage of this situation and may present themselves as our “friends” who are trying to help. Demons look for a “nest” of lies and pain to set up housekeeping. Sometimes they rely upon some sort of “hook” in our souls, such as involvement in the occult. Such demonization may go back generationally. Deliverance from bondage needs to address these interrelated areas.
Identifying the Presence of Inner Hurts
Hurts and wounds of the soul are carried on the inside of a person and may be invisible except for how they affect our reactions and relationships. Their presence may be revealed by exaggerated emotional responses, bizarre behaviors, and irrational thinking. When our reactions are out of keeping with a provocation, inner hurts and associated lies may lie beneath the surface.
In the process of asking the Lord Jesus to set us free from inner hurts, embedded lies, generational devastation, and demonization, a good strategy may be to begin where the pain is the greatest. In fact, the reason most people seek help is because the pain has become unbearable. Pain motivates us to seek a cure. A good practice for each of us when we experience emotions that are not from God’s Spirit is to ask the Lord what is going on inside us. If we listen to the Spirit, he may reveal to us bondage breaking truth and provide healing.
Receiving healing from inner hurts may involve our repenting for known sin, identifying and claiming freedom from generational devastation, asking Jesus to heal our pain and replace lies with truth, and casting out any attached demonic influence in Christ’s name and authority.
Demons are not always part of the problem, however, and should not be assumed unless they are discerned with the aid of the Holy Spirit. Unless we use this broad approach to deliverance, we may leave key components of bondage in place, providing an incomplete form of help.
Usually, our pain has an historical basis and is directly connected to events we experienced, to words spoken over us, or to attitudes expressed to us.
None of these things has the power to bring us into bondage unless we believe some lie as a result. Jesus experienced all sorts of negative things in his life but never reacted sinfully and never came into bondage.
For example, when a parent fails to love his or her child properly, it may break the heart of that little one. As a result, depending on the personality of the child, the response might be to become afraid, depressed, angry, or maybe just shut down emotionally to wall out the pain. Lie-based strongholds are often generated as we try to understand and cope with our pain. We may come to believe that we have no personal worth, because our parents did not value us enough to live with us, spend significant time with us, or speak affirming words to us. We may feel ashamed and think there is something inherently wrong with us, causing everyone who is important to us to eventually abandon us.
As you can imagine, believing such things triggers corresponding behaviors that can be a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
For example, we may expect to be rejected; so, to protect ourselves from that pain, we reject the other person first. These hurts must be healed, and the lies must be addressed and replaced with God’s truth. The generational side of things usually needs to be addressed as well.
At times we need to consider that some events have produced a deep level of hurt in an entire group of people. Think of what happened at Wounded Knee when the US Army massacred an entire Indian village. Dee Brown wrote a book entitled Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, which communicates some of the pathos attached to that event. A once proud people were reduced to living in poverty on reservations supplied by a government that systematically lied to them, destroyed them, and divested them of their territories over several decades. We would have to ask a Native American what kind of pain remains and how has it affected both mental health and personal fulfillment and happiness. Poverty, hopelessness, and alcoholism run rampant on reservations. This is a generational inner hurt accompanied by generational lies and probable demonization.
Unless these past injuries are properly addressed, we may be hindered in moving forward in life.
Jesus can heal us from the pain associated with our personal, group, or family past, too.
Binding Up the Brokenhearted
How does Jesus bind our wounds and heal our broken hearts? When Jesus launched his public ministry, he told his followers what his focus would be by quoting the prophet Isaiah.
The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; Isaiah 61:1 (ESV)
The poor in this passage are those who have been so reduced by their neediness that they crouch and cower. Captives are those who have been conquered and made prisoner. The oppressed are people who have been “broken to pieces,” and part of their breaking has been the rending of their hearts. Many people have hearts that are thoroughly broken. They often are incapable, without proper mending, of feeling emotions properly or trusting God adequately.
Faith comes from the heart, and if the heart is broken, how can we feel or trust properly? That is one reason why the healing ministry of Jesus is so needed.
Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. 5 But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. Isaiah 53:4-5 (NASB)
Jesus endured the crushing pain of abandonment, false accusation, betrayal, fear, powerlessness, rejection, invalidation, and confusion. All the common maladies of the soul fell upon him as armed bandits might fall on an innocent, defenseless traveler. Jesus offered no defense but, full of trust in his Abba Father, went to his death as a sheep to the slaughter, as the Lamb of God.
The crushing Jesus experienced provided for our well-being and healing.
Jesus is not indifferent to our pain. He experienced it for himself and knows exactly how to heal it. In fact, he has already paid the price for our healing and restoration, if we turn to him, just as the woman with the issue of blood relentlessly pursued Jesus until she touched the hem of his garment and was healed.
Finding healing in Christ begins with the understanding that he cares, loves, and feels deeply for us. He knows about our pain – how it feels, where it came from, and what it has done to us. He also suffered in his own soul and body to provide for our healing.
If we will believe that Jesus is God the Healer, Jehovah-Rapha, and believe that he has already paid the price for our healing, and if we will come to him in faith, asking him to heal and restore us, we can experience healing at his hands.
This pursuit of healing may require us to revisit the memories of when painful things happened to us, reopening old wounds and unsealing long-repressed pain. We will need the courage to allow ourselves to once again feel that pain and ask Jesus to heal us. This has been labeled “inner healing” or “healing of the memories.” It is simply recognizing that our pain has an historical origin of which Jesus is aware. Our Lord was there when it happened; although, we knew it not. He knows what it felt like, what we were thinking, the lies that were set up in our hearts, etc. He also knows exactly how to set us free because he is the Wonderful Counselor! (Isaiah 9:6)
If we take these painful memories to him and ask him to heal us, the results can be amazing. Often God is far more interested in setting us free than we are in pursuing that freedom.
Some of us were so deeply hurt that it will take a great amount of bravery and trust in Jesus to permit him to visit the hidden places in our hearts. This is what blocks many from the pursuit of freedom. But the Bible tells us that Jesus can be trusted completely. He will be careful and kind to us on our journey to wholeness. Just as surely as he delivered the woman at the well in Samaria from her pain in John Chapter 4 and set the adulteress woman free from her condemnation and pain in John Chapter 8, he can do the same for us. He is the Healer of our souls.
