Hope and Healing for the Hurting through Personal Prayer Ministry
Author: Rev. Dr. Kiyimba Joseph
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Are there hurting places in your heart? Do not be discouraged. Your Creator loves you. He is able to find a way to heal you and make you completely whole, and He won’t stop short if you won’t. "Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” Psalm 121:1b and 2.
Be encouraged by these words from Romans 12:2, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – His good, pleasing and perfect will.”
In prayer ministry, hurtful issues that touch one’s life emotionally and spiritually are brought to the Lord for His truth, forgiveness, healing, and freedom. Minds are renewed and lives are changed as people are freed from the hurtful effects of unresolved issues.
Are there emotional or spiritual issues from your past that you have not been able to “leave behind”? How do they affect you? Why? What can be done about them? These are the issues this ministry addresses.
Have you found that some of the feelings from hurtful past experiences show up in your life today? This may happen when something subconsciously reminds you of a past memory that still holds negative emotions. You may not be aware of the connection between what you are feeling today and something you felt in the past. But have you had times when you wondered why your reactions were so strong or so difficult to handle?
We are finding that negative emotions that we have felt before are connected in our minds with the memory of the first time we felt those emotions. In this prayer ministry, we help people find the roots of their hurtful emotions and seek true healing from the Lord.
When an issue is fully resolved in the original memory that it stems from and the Lord brings healing, the person is set free from its hurtful effects in his or her life. Then the person is able to experience the perfect peace of God concerning that issue and can truly leave it behind without any difficulty.
Unforgiven hurts: Have you ever tried to “forget” a significant hurt or offense without facing it fully and dealing with it? Trying to forget that way is like covering up or closing a physical wound without first cleansing it of any dirt or debris that may be in it. Even if you are able to put the memory of the offense out of your mind in such a way, so that you are not consciously aware of the hurt, it is still there somewhere. And as long as it is somewhere inside, it has the potential to continue to affect you until it is completely resolved in your heart so that there are no longer any feelings of hurt in the memory.
But how can you forgive completely? We have found that an offense can be fully resolved in your heart if you will first allow yourself to feel the emotions that are coming from your memory of what happened, without pushing them down or ignoring or denying them. Then you must be willing or at least be “willing to be made willing” to give the hurt to Jesus. He will help you truly forgive and receive complete and lasting peace in your memory of the event. However, forgiving completely like this does not mean trusting the other person if trust has been broken. That may follow if trustworthiness is proven.
Hurtful beliefs: Can you recall an unpleasant experience from earlier in your life that you can still feel negative emotions from -- feelings of embarrassment or shame, anxiety or fear, panic or desperation, loneliness or grief, rejection or abandonment, hopelessness or despair, frustration or anger, or some other hurtful emotion? Can you see ways in which that experience may still affect how you feel, what you believe deep down inside, and even what you do in certain circumstances in your life today?
The emotions you can still feel from such early experiences are coming from what you believed in your “heart” in response to what happened in each situation. Here are a few examples of this kind of emotionally held belief: “It is my fault.” “I am not wanted.” “I am dirty.” “I deserve it.” “I am bad.” “I can never be good enough.” “There is something wrong with me.” “I am stupid.” “God doesn’t love me.” “I am trapped.” “There is no way out.” “I am going to die.” “There is no hope,” and the like. Your hurtful belief(s) coming from a memory will be whatever you believed at the time of the hurtful experience.
Do you relate to these kinds of “hurtful beliefs” or “lies” in your life? You may know in your “head” that a hurtful belief is not true, but it can still feel as though it is true emotionally, “in your heart.” As with hurts from the past, such emotionally held beliefs have the potential to affect you in what you think and feel and do, until they have been fully dealt with. This is true even if you may not be consciously aware of them.
Have you just given in to living with the effects of your past hurtful experiences? Or have you tried to overcome those effects on your own? Have you tried to counter the hurtful beliefs by telling yourself what is true in your logical mind, but have found that doing that has brought little or no lasting relief from those emotionally held beliefs? Have you tried to ignore, deny, minimize, or push down your negative emotions or hurtful beliefs?
If one faces the hurtful emotions and related beliefs in the memory of the event where they were first felt and believed, it can prepare one to receive God’s healing. While you are feeling the emotions and how true the hurtful belief(s) feel in the memory, we ask the Lord to let you know in your heart what is true concerning the belief(s). When He helps you come to a realization of the truth about what you believed there, the memory becomes peaceful and calm. As you experience His healing in this way, His truth sets you free from the hurtful beliefs or “lies.” We find that this healing results in lasting freedom from each hurtful belief that is dealt with in this way.
Unconfessed sins: Do you feel ashamed or guilty about something you have done that you have not fully confessed and asked forgiveness for? Have you thought it was too long ago to be dealt with? Or have you tried to justify it to yourself, or in some other way tried to silence the feelings of guilt?
We are not including anything here for which you may still feel guilty, even though you have confessed it, asked forgiveness for it, and tried to make it right if you could. Such lingering feelings of guilt are much like “hurtful beliefs” or “lies.” We have found that when you bring these feelings of guilt to the Lord, He can help you separate out false feelings of guilt from true conviction and lead you into His perfect peace.
Do you carry anger that may once have been appropriate but has been held onto too long? Do you have resentment, bitterness, hate, or desire for revenge? Have you made selfish decisions, said or done something to hurt someone, or judged others?
In Psalm 139: 23 and 24 David shows us how to bring all these things to God in prayer: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there be any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” With the Lord’s help, we are able to see what is in our hearts. In prayer ministry, we help people open their hearts to the Lord, confess to Him, and experience His complete and lasting forgiveness.
Self-protection: How have you tried to protect yourself from the effects of hurtful emotional experiences in your life? What you do about your negative feelings and hurtful beliefs can have a deeply significant effect on your life and on the lives of others. Ways of handling these hurtful things that are centered on trying to protect or “heal” yourself will often work against letting God protect you or bring you His complete healing.
Have you tried to ignore, deny, minimize, or talk yourself out of your hurtful experiences, negative emotions, or hurtful beliefs? Has this truly gotten rid of all your pain or discomfort, or do the hurts and hurtful beliefs still affect you?
Have you tried to “protect” or “heal” yourself or control your pain by turning to alcohol or other addictive, sinful, or harmful behaviors, or by holding onto your “right” to stay hurt or angry, resentful, bitter or hateful? Do you see how such things may be harmful to your relationship with God, your relationships with others, and your health and well-being?
Have you made “self-protective vows” such as not to trust anyone or not to allow anyone to get close enough to you to hurt you again? Such vows can have significant unintended effects in a person’s life until they are dealt with, even if they have been forgotten about.
Have you had very hurtful emotional, physical, or sexual experiences as a child? If so, you may have built walls in your mind so that a part of you could go through each experience as it was happening, take the knowledge of it, and hide with that knowledge deep inside. That may have helped you handle pain that was too great for you at the time. However, even though such memories may be hidden, their effects can touch your life and the lives of those around you. Jesus has healing for those places too, when you are ready.
There seems to always be a downside to our ways of trying to protect or heal ourselves compared to giving the hurtful things in our lives over to the Lord to seek His help and to accept His healing. In this prayer ministry, we seek to help people surrender their own ways and bring their issues to the Lord for His truth, forgiveness, healing, and freedom.
The enemy: Are you giving a place to the evil one that allows him to be active in your life without you being aware of it? Here are examples of some ways one may do that:
Jesus warned of consequences of not forgiving our brother from the heart in a story recorded in Matthew 18:21-35. He concludes with these words in verses 32 to 35: “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 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.” Is Jesus saying that the enemy will be allowed to cause us torment in some way if we will not forgive our brother from our heart?
In John 8:44 Jesus said the devil is the father of lies. Our emotionally held hurtful beliefs are really lies that can affect how we feel, what we believe, and what we do. Could we be open to the devil’s influence through such lies without our realizing it?
We are warned about holding onto anger in Ephesians 4:26 and 27: “‘In your anger do not sin’: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.” May you have given the devil a place in your life by holding onto anger?
It is important to bring these and all hurtful things to Jesus and address them fully with Him. Then our enemy the devil will no longer have access to us because of them. Even curses against us will not stick if we deal with all issues in our lives (see Proverbs 26:2b).
Generational issues: Do you wonder about issues that seem to run in your family?
In Exodus 20:4-6 we are told that making or worshipping idols can have a harmful effect on one’s children for up to three or four generations. In Leviticus 26:40 and in Daniel 9 we learn that confessing both our own sins and the sins of our fathers (and forefathers) can be a part of gaining complete freedom from generational issues and related curses. As we bring these concerns to God in prayer, He brings to light what we need to know and do so we can be set free.
There is hope for the hurting. For “we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:37b through 39
“Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work in us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Eph. 3:20 and 21
Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. All rights reserved throughout the world. Used by permission of International Bible Society.
If you would like to learn more about receiving prayer help in this way we invite you to contact us at: Tel: +256711949076
ABA Foundation, P. O. BOX 70592 KAMPALA UGANDA
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