Inner healing

Abstract

God wills life and health for all people. This is God's general stance toward all of us who are his creatures. In fact Jesus says "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (Jn 10:10) . That is a difficult proclamation to take literally. It is one that we can easily equivocate, water down, or explain away. Its simplicity is threatening: our first reaction to it often is that Jesus could have meant it as it stands and yet, nowhere do we find him qualifying it - there are no "ifs', "buts" or "maybes" attached to it. It is a statement made for anyone who has ears to hear it. In recent years inner healing has received much attention. A good number of books have been written and now people are aware of the fact that we all need to experience this type of in depth prayer. We are aware that unhealed memories of psychological hurts can exert a great deal of negative influence in our lives, keeping us from the emotional wholeness and holiness we so earnestly desire. All people experience a lack of inner freedom. If there is one statement that all honest men and women could confirm it would be this one, for none of us has escaped entirely the experiences of limitation such as failure, frustration and fear. Each of us may express it in a different way, or due to his own personal weakness, may find one kind of inner bondage prevalent over others, but we all experience in common this one fact. Various authors have gone so far as to call this "the human situation", and, indeed, without experiencing the risen Christ in one's life, lack of freedom and bondage to weakness are the only experiences of day to day living that we could say mark the life of each human being.