TECHNIQUES OF CURE INNER HEALING (PRAXIS OF CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY CONTINUED)
Rychlak’s (1981) final question asked: What unique procedures are followed by the theorist in readjusting the disordered personality?
Agnes Sanford (1972) had great success in spiritual healing. She discovered that she could use the same approach in the healing of the psyche as she had found successful in healing the body. She describes her method as follows:
“The first step in seeking to produce results by any power is to contact that power. . . . The second step is to turn it on. . . .The third step is to believe that the power is coming into use and to accept it by faith ( p. ix.)”
Building on Agnes Sanford’s work, the Sandfords (1985) described their steps as following: They pray for the little child inside the person and they conceptualize Jesus as being outside time and space, able to identify with the wounded spirit all the way back to the time of conception. When they sense that the Lord is identifying with that child or that prenatal being, they speak his words of comfort, reassurance and affirmation directly to the inner spirit of the person.
They state that they are placing “the cross of Christ (the stopping place for all sin)” between the child and all those who have hurt him or her even “back through his generations declaring that all of his inheritance be filtered through that cross.”
As they are praying, they are watching for the imagery and the impressions which the Holy Spirit produces in them as well as in the client. They then describe the images or impressions, encouraging the counselee to do the same. They especially watch for health-affirming images.
John Sandford (Sandford & Sandford 1982), for example, gives an illustration of how the process works by describing a vision God gave him for the healing of one homosexual. God showed him two poles like anode and cathode poles, radiating to balance each other. Then he saw the homosexual as having the poles crossed. The Lord said, “John, when you have done all else for a homosexual, by vision, see the poles reversed as I have shown you, and then stand and see as I reach in to disentangle those poles and set them in order.” (Pp. 314-315). Sandford “saw” the poles reversed and the man reported his homosexual desire was replaced by the desire for a woman. This change in personality persisted for more than 10 years at the time they wrote.
Other healers acknowledging the teachings of Sandford include the Linns, the MacNutts and the Pytches. Like the Sandfords, they are extending Agnes Sanford’s work. The Linns (1978) take the one being healed through Kubler-Ross’s five stages of bereavement. They call their technique the five stages of forgiveness. MacNutt (1974) developed a team to do what he called “soaking prayer,” believing from experience that if the team would pray long enough, the person would either be healed or vastly improved. Influenced by Wimber’s (1987) success in working with large gatherings, the Pytches (1985) adapt the inner healing techniques to mass audiences. Their technique, like Wimber’s is to invite the Holy Spirit to come upon the people and to reveal childhood traumas to individuals. Helpers pray with the person with whom the Holy Spirit is sealing. The helpers are instructed to keep asking the person seeking healing to “describe what the Holy Spirit is doing” during the process.
Linn, D. & Linn, M. (1978). Healing life’s hurts. New York: Paulist (a more recent edition is 2004)
MacNutt, F. (1974). Healing. New York: Bantam (a more recent edition is 1999)
Pytches, D. (1985) Come Holy Spirit. London: Hodder and Stoughton
Rychlak. J. (1981). Introduction to personality and psychotherapy: A theory-construction approach (2nd ed). New York: Harper and Row
Sandford, J. & Sandford, P. (1982) The transformation of the inner man. South Plainfield, NJ: Bridge (a more recent edition is 2007)
Sandford, J. & Sandford, P. (1985) Healing the wounded spirit. South Plainfield, NJ: Bridge
Sanford, A. (1958). The healing touch of God. New York: Ballentine (a more recent edition is 1987)
Sanford, A. (1972). The healing light (rev. ed.) New York: Ballentine (a more recent edition is 1983)
Stapleton, R. C. (1978) The experience of inner healing. New York: Bantam
Wimber, J. (1987). Power healing. San Francisco: Harper and Row
Thursday, June 28, 2012
INNER HEALING TECHNIQUES OF CURE
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
FAITH TEACHING THEORY OF CURE CHAPTER 9
THEORY OF CURE CHAPTER 9 (This belongs at the end of the Faith Teachers)
When sick, how do we get well?
THEORY OF CURE
The theory of illness sets up the theory of cure. Rychlak’s sixth question is “How is cure effected.” If you accept that your problem is that your body and mind have fallen under the curse, and that your sense knowledge has taken control of your whole psychological system, and if you add that faith can break that hold and make you eligible for your cure, then the answer to cure becomes self-evident.
To begin with, the problem is that when sense knowledge has a dominance over the system, the God type of faith becomes impossible. As Kenyon points out, sense knowledge gives us aa type of faith built upon our experience that is hard to break. Faith reveals to us that we can be healed. At the same time, sense knowledge built on information coming from within and without can tell us that we cannot.
So, Paul talks of the necessity of renewing of the mind. Even if we are in pain, there is access to higher knowing that co-opts the lower sense knowledge. Faith teachers found that the best way to renew the mind was with the Scriptures–God’s Revelation.
Renewing of the mind can go on in two ways. One is a natural way much like the teaching of modern cognitive theorists with their teaching on “cognitive restructuring”: The other renewing of the mind is more supernatural.
Hagin (1978) explains the cognitive way like this: “When the mind has been renewed with the Word of God, the soul can take sides with the spirit because it now knows what God says.” (p.11). In other words, even though you are in a situation that seems impossible and your body, part of your mind, and the medical people are confirming it, there is a part of you that knows a higher truth. Thus, the sense type faith can’t totally dominate. Then God’s Spirit through man’s spirit can get control.
A similar insight into cure was discovered by Freud when he wrote something to the effect that “Where id was, there must ego illuminate.” In Freud’s case ego (soul) must become aware of the id and id must relinquish its grip. In the Faith Teaching, if the soul can entertain the possibility of a higher power due to its saturation in the written revelation, it will loosen its grip on the psychological system and let the spirit do its faith work.
Besides this cognitive function of the Word’ ability to break the hold of sense knowledge type of faith, Faith teachers also discovered in the Word, a form of life force in and of itself. There is mind renewing power in the Word. St. John teaches us: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In John 17:17 “Make them holy--consecrated--with the truth; Your word is consecrating truth.” Kenyon (1966) writes: “Just as Sense Knowledge is developed by reading Sense Knowledge literature, so the spirit grows by reading and meditating in the Revelation that was designed to be its food.” (p. 16)
Building on Paul’s statement in Romans 10:17–“faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God” Capps explains how the process works. “Take the Word which is filled with Spirit power, the power of God, and speak that Word. Then that Spirit life in that Word gets inside of you because your voice is picked up by your inner ear and fed directly into the human spirit.
Faith that breaks the curse is now possible.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Note to that christian fellow
I got really excited about your interest in growing in the Lord–actually a little too excited. Last night, my wife and I were walking along and talking about your desire to have all God has to offer. Suddenly, I hooked my toe on a rock, fell
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Recent Comments on Speaking in Tongues
Read More......
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Sunday, September 25, 2011
ISRAEL MATTERS!!
I RECOMMEND THIS LINK Why Israel Matters to Us TO THOSE WHO ARE 24/7 CHRISTIANS, WHO KNOW THE BIBLE IS THE TRUE WORD OF GOD, WHO UNDERSTAND PROPHECY AND WHO CARE ABOUT ISRAEL AND THE FUTURE OF AMERICA.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Following the Voice of God--a Letter to My Granddaughters
Dear Granddaughters,
Now you have both graduated from your universities and taking the bold step forward of following God’s call on your lives. You are off to Rhema Bible Training Center. Just before you left, you both seem to be concerned that your Papa would not understand your brave decision. So, I am sending you this history of my own lifetime of following God
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
School Prayer
This was posted on my political blog about the school prayer in Texas. students can pray at graduation The school officials and a federal judge forbid the valedictorian from asking audience members to join in prayer or to bow their heads. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Prayer I Delivered at Opening of Fall Election Republican Headquarters
Heavenly Father, We, members of the Watauga County Republican party, come to truly seek your wisdom and guidance. We do not do this in some perfunctory ritual as a way to start a meeting. We have many reasons for praying to you.
First, we are aware that when your people Israel acknowledged you and sought your guidance, you were able to prosper them and make them a great nation. We also know that when they turned away from you, their enemies overran them and destroyed them. Even nature turned against them with a vengeance.
Also, today is the anniversary of our amazing Constitution which has created the greatest nation in the history of the world.
We know that many of our founders sought your guidance throughout the process. We know that many knew they were receiving your divine guidance in fashioning documents far beyond human wisdom.
We know that afterwards when each congress met, they continued to thank you and to ask for your continued help–a tradition which comes down even today.
Father, many of us call ourselves conservatives and by that we mean that we are sworn to conserve the values of this great document You helped to produce.
Father, we know that founders like George Washington and John Adams came out of that convention realizing they had produced a document made for moral and religious people. They said it was wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
For all these reasons Father, we are bold to ask you to guide us. Help us to send to Washington, to Raleigh and to governments of our communities--people who will protect and defend that constitution.
And to you be the glory.
Amen
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Why We Pray at Public Meetings
THE PRAYER I DELIVERED AT THE OPENING OF OUR WATAUGA COUNTY REPUBLICAN HEADQUARTERS.
Heavenly Father, We, members of the Watauga County Republican party, come to truly seek your wisdom and guidance. We do not do this in some perfunctory ritual as a way to start a meeting. We have many reasons for praying to