Inner Healing
Inner Healing is the healing of our emotional core. It is the ministry which deals with our response to hurts from the past, known and unknown. These hurts may affect us in the present in the form of bad memories, a sense of worthlessness and inferiority, unreasonable fears and anxieties, or inexplicable and psychosomatic illness.
The causes of inner pain and distress are many, and may come from such things as the separation from a parent through illness, divorce or death (which can be experienced as rejection), or the experience of failure (perhaps at school). It can also come from experiences of overwhelming fear, or abuse, or a family history of problems, such as alcoholism, violence, or the involvement in the occult, or any unresolved burden of guilt.
Some of life’s hurts come from the fact that we live in a fallen world. Events happen such as accidents, disease, poverty and natural disasters that are not of deliberate choice. There are also hurts which come from our own wrong choices and responses. Often memories are pushed below our conscious thinking, where they remain and are felt in debilitating ways, such as: fear, anger, anxiety, resentment, self-hate, guilt, un-forgiveness, an inability to trust, or persistent irrational beliefs.
When we suppress the hurt, so that we can cope with everyday life, the memory is not dealt with and remains in an incapacitating way.
CMH-The Mount approaches inner healing ministry tentatively and humbly, so as not to inadvertently “place” problems upon people which may not be the true source of their negative emotional symptoms. We seek the presence of the Holy Spirit and ask for discernment and knowledge for the ministry. In the confidence that Jesus invites to come to him with all that burdens us (Matthew 11:28), we turn to him for healing and peace
John 14:27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.
WAITING ON GOD
In a prayer of St Augustine, the petition is; ‘Grant us to know you that we may truly love you’.
While ‘waiting’ doesn’t seem very dynamic in worldly terms, in God’s Kingdom waiting becomes an active, vigorous spiritual pursuit because God in loving us reaches out to each one of us and God is seeking, and expecting a response from us.
Contemplation is one response. It would be at the other end of the prayer spectrum from intercession. It is an endeavour of listening.
‘Lord, continue to speak to us that we my hear your word, move among us that we may behold your glory’.
A Fellowship of Contemplative Prayer Group is a ‘listening’ group. The group is guided and begins with the choice of a saying attributed to God the Father, or to Jesus Christ- a Dominical Saying. This can be something Almighty God is recorded as saying to a person or people in the Old Testament, for example ‘I will turn the darkness that is before you into light’. Or it might be a saying of Jesus recorded in the New Testament such as: ‘I have said these things to you, that your joy may be complete’.
Over the course of about one hour, the Saying is received into our mind, our heart and our will. There is time for commentary, followed by silence for ‘listening’ at each stage. This is a time of expectancy that God would speak into our thoughts, our feelings and our actions.
The ‘listening’ is a sensing of God’s word, which as we receive, discern and assimilate the Saying, goes into action through us as we take God’s word outwards into our lives and the world.
Regular contemplation encourages thanksgiving: ‘eternal living God, we thank you for your unsearchable riches which pour forth from you as light from the sun.’ It is our response as we release our love for God, and receive his love and care. The invitation of Jesus is present, reaching out to us, ‘Come to me.’ as individuals, and as a group where there is strength in togetherness, and a shared appreciation of God’s word, giving God the glory.