Speaker 1: 0:31

Welcome to the Husband Material podcast, where we help Christian men outgrow porn. Why? So you can change your brain, heal your heart and save your relationship. My name is Drew Boa and I'm here to show you how let's go.

Speaker 1: 0:50

Today we are talking about inner healing prayer. One of the most powerful experiences of my life has been receiving inner healing prayer and also facilitating it for others and seeing how this can allow us to experience the love of Jesus. Not just think about God, not just know him intellectually, but to truly feel and experience his love and his healing Prayer can be so powerful. For many of us, prayer has been like a one-way monologue, or it has felt like a duty or a chore, rather than an amazing opportunity to receive the power of God in the places where we need him most, in the places of pain that we have used pornography to try to pacify. In this episode, my friend Matt Wenger from Boulder Recovery will be interviewing me about inner healing prayer, and this is actually the third and last preview we will share of our new free course, Heal your Trauma, which you can find at healyourtraumacom. It will give you 10 ways to help you resolve the roots of porn and sex addiction, and inner healing prayer is one of my favorites. Enjoy the episode.

Speaker 2: 1:56

So, drew, one of the things that is special about encountering recovery as a Christian is incorporating prayer and different kinds of prayer into the recovery process, into the healing process. You wanted to make sure that we spend time on healing prayer and what that looks like and all the different facets of it, and you know, I want to hear from you what is healing prayer, and then also I'm sure we'll get into the different you know types and traditions of healing prayer. But what comes to your mind first when you think of healing prayer?

Speaker 1: 2:36

when you think of human prayer. For many of us, prayer has been a one-way, rigid, ritual monologue where I'm telling God about my life or I'm asking him for specific things, but it doesn't feel relational and I don't actually get any kind of attunement from God in the process. I'm just kind of hoping and trusting that this invisible, inaudible being can hear me, healing prayer is a way of connecting with God and inviting him to reveal himself, which can come through words, through scripture. It can also come through images in your imagination. It can even come through unexpected ways. It can come through anointing, it can come through the laying on of hands, but the point is it's putting us in a posture to receive whatever God has for us through his people and through his presence inside of us.

Speaker 2: 3:44

So what I hear you saying is you know, a lot of people experience prayer like email right, Like God's like way over there, and I'm going to shoot off my email and hope that he gets it and then the Bible is like his email back to me, traveling over these immense distances. But healing prayer is relational. It's about closing that gap and experience God through prayer.

Speaker 1: 4:09

And, as the founders of Emmanuel Prayer have said, healing is not found in the absence of pain but in the presence of the healer. And in the Bible the word for salvation and healing is the same word. It is who he is, it is what he does, and this might be a helpful point to clarify what do we mean by healing prayer. Francis McNutt, part of the inner healing movement, says that there are four different kinds of healing. One of them is the spiritual healing of actually creating a relationship with God in the first place and being brought into his family.

Speaker 1: 4:46

Another type of healing is emotional healing a lot of what we would focus on. And then there is the kind of aspect of spiritual warfare which is sometimes a part of healing prayer and casting out any darkness or demonic or evil influences in our life. And then there's also physical healing, which we see all over the New Testament, and I'm guessing that everybody has a little bit of a different attitude about each of those types of healing. The one that I think is most important for our purposes here, and porn and sex addiction is the inner emotional type of healing prayer. Now the other parts are important may find that if you actually have never had a real relationship with God, then maybe praying with some prayer ministers might bring you into that saving connection. Or maybe it's not just trauma but there's also some spiritual warfare that's happening within you that can be addressed. At the same time, in my experience, mostly it's the emotional healing that we neglect and is most needed for us to really become sexually and emotionally healthy.

Speaker 2: 6:06

I'm hearing within that that we kind of have to expand what we mean by prayer too. Right, that we're not just making requests or verbally, you know, trying to communicate that. That that to broaden the understanding of what do you even mean when you say prayer.

Speaker 1: 6:26

Yes, and to maybe broaden the ways that we conceptualize that God can speak to us. Conceptualize that God can speak to us. So, rather than just viewing God's communication with us as an email, as you were saying, or just in the Bible, he can communicate through emotions. He can communicate through images. He can communicate through a hug. I've heard Julie Slattery call that relational revelation. God reveals himself through people. Oftentimes he becomes present to us through other people. Right, we're the body of Christ.

Speaker 1: 7:03

Sometimes people are resistant to this because they are really concerned about hearing from God accurately or having an inaccurate view of who God is, and that's part of why it's important to do this in relationship and to always check in with. How does this line up with scripture? Does this resonate with you? How does it relate to what other people are thinking and feeling, who are also mature Christians? And then, of course, how is this affecting you? Who are you becoming as a result of this revelation? Is it helping you become more like Christ or is it making you more selfish?

Speaker 1: 7:46

The goal of healing prayer again, is not the absence of pain, but restoring all that God intends us to be, and his plan for us is to become more like Jesus. So if God's telling you something but it's not leading to character development, if it's not helping you grow more into the fruit of the Holy Spirit love, joy, peace and so forth then we have to discern what really is from God, and that's what I want to emphasize here. When you're doing any kind of inner healing prayer, receiving it or providing it and praying for someone else, humility is incredibly important. We always need to say well, I'm getting a sense of this. It may or may not fit. How does it sound to you Always holding whatever we think we're hearing or seeing with open hands, so that we're not trying to push or impose anything on the other person?

Speaker 2: 8:38

yeah, it sounds like we have to be really careful as we are explaining what we understand as prayer and inviting god to communicate to us in ways that maybe are different. Um, but holding those things loosely, the things that he's sharing with us. Holding them loosely, not encountering them as revelation. One of the things that we do in group work.

Speaker 2: 9:05

We just did our last video on psychodrama, right, and when somebody is playing the role of Jesus within a psychodrama, we de-roll and we say I'm Matt, I'm not Jesus, I'm Matt, I'm not Jesus, I'm Matt and I am not Jesus. So when they're done with the drama, right, they don't continue to relate to each other as if they were still in those roles. But one of the things I have people say is, when they're done is saying I'm mad, I'm not Jesus, but I have been his hands and feet for you today, right, and that is connecting the dots between saying, hey, while I'm not Jesus, I am filled with the presence of Jesus as a Christian, I'm filled with the Holy Spirit as a Christian and I can interact with you as a ambassador of Christ in your life, and that is valuable right, and this is incredibly valuable for men who are dealing with porn and sex addiction, because ultimately, our sexuality is this divine engine for intimacy and connection and inner healing.

Speaker 1: 10:11

prayer restores intimacy and connection with God, with other people and within yourself. So by restoring that connection, it reduces the need for regulation and for unwanted sexual behavior.

Speaker 2: 10:27

Healing prayer isn't just something that we do as addicts in recovery right, it's also for those recovering from betrayal. You know have experienced the hurt and the trauma of um addiction, as you know, in their relationships. You know, is there a way drew in which um those suffering from betrayal can bring that um brokenness and hurt and sadness and pain and anger to God in healing prayer?

Speaker 1: 10:57

Yeah, absolutely, partners and addicts alike have trauma and need healing.

Speaker 2: 11:05

And to know that God hasn't abandoned me in this betrayal. He hasn't betrayed me by allowing this to occur in my life or set me up with someone who I thought was going to be this wonderful father and husband and life partner and then just to pull the rug out from under me. I imagine that healing prayer could be very impactful for those who are in that healing process.

Speaker 1: 11:35

Yeah, and the way God might speak to a partner could be a lot stronger, maybe emphasizing justice what happened to you was not okay, that was not my plan, that was not me, and I'm committed to your safety and to your liberation. Might be very different from the way he would speak to an addict, yet equally important.

Speaker 2: 12:06

I think there's a powerful avenue for healing for both members of that coupleship. What would you say to someone who's hearing all this and says you know, that's great, that's what I've been waiting for you to say. That prayer is like you know, if we just get in there and we do the right kind of prayer and we really believe it, that God is going to do that supernatural work within me and I'm never going to struggle again or I'm going to be redeemed out of this addiction.

Speaker 1: 12:36

First of all, god is not interested in creating some kind of magic so that you don't need him anymore. His heart is for relationship and if some kind of breakthrough experience leads you to stop depending on God, that's not his heart for you. He wants to be intimately involved and when we engage in inner healing prayer, we invite him in, we listen, we give and receive love. This is a brain level reality. We're not just making up this connection with God. When I engage with God in my imagination and invite Jesus to come to me and to speak to me and to respond to me, it's not just some kind of spiritual realm where this is happening. Neural connections are firing and rewiring when this is happening, so it's very physical actually, it's not just spiritual and when you experience this you can understand it. We've talked about that a lot. This is more caught than taught.

Speaker 1: 13:56

I want to emphasize that there are very specific approaches to inner healing prayer.

Speaker 1: 14:03

Some of them are Emmanuel prayer, transformation prayer, theophastic prayer and so-and-so prayer, prophetic heart healing. All of these have organizations, processes, trainings that facilitators can go through, and they don't have to be licensed therapists, but they do need to receive it and to practice in order to be able to provide it and, depending on what church you go to or what churches are in your local area, you might have some people who are trained in some of these kinds of prayer ministries, and especially in Emmanuel prayer, which is the one that I'm most familiar with. They emphasize safety, safety. Safety Because, especially for survivors of trauma and especially spiritual abuse, healing prayer can be re-traumatizing if you don't have a foundation of attunement, of connection, and they don't even really focus on trauma. They focus on intimacy with Jesus and healing can be a byproduct of that. But the goal here is to experience your belovedness in ways that are particular and specific to your story and allowing that to unfold, being led by the Spirit, being sensitive to whatever God might want to do.

Speaker 2: 15:31

Yeah Within the relationship right God might want to do. Yeah Within the relationship right and where we create the meeting ground or this relationship and we let Jesus be Jesus in that right and see what comes about.

Speaker 1: 15:45

It's not a transaction. God is not a cosmic vending machine. He is a loving father, father, son and Holy Spirit. So when we engage in healing prayer, the biggest healing is just to be reconnected with him.

Speaker 2: 16:07

And we can make the mistake that is so common in addiction compartmentalizing ourselves. Right, that healing prayer is going to address a spiritual state within myself, but not all the other parts of what it means to be me, right, my intellect, my emotions, my physical body. Right, that over here is just a spiritual thing that is going to happen, that over here is just a spiritual thing that is going to happen. But that understanding and seeing myself as a whole person, that interacting relationally with Jesus in prayer can bring healing to all parts of who I am and finding healing in those areas can bring healing to my spiritual as well. It's not mutually exclusive. We are whole creatures, right? All these different facets right?

Speaker 1: 16:58

Yes, and most of us were trained and discipled to relate to God with our left brain logic, reason, analysis not as much with our right brain, our emotion, our passion, our creativity and our sexuality. So you can think of this as engaging God and receiving from God with my whole brain, not just one part of it.

Speaker 2: 17:24

What would you say to people that are confused about where to start?

Speaker 1: 17:29

Yeah well, you can even start just on your own with Emmanuel Journaling. I'll put a resource for that in the link below and, depending on what churches are in your local area, you might be able to get involved with some type of inner healing prayer. You can obviously find some of these resources online and simply incorporate it into the healing you're already doing, for example, in the middle of an individual therapy session or in the middle of a group session. Just ask the question Jesus, where are you right now? What do you want me to know? What are you doing here? And being open to however he might reveal himself to you, whether in words, images or some other way.

Speaker 2: 18:18

It makes me think of a tradition that is coming back into vogue, perhaps, but has been lost for generations, especially within the Protestant community, which is the contemplative tradition of Christianity right Of learning to sit in the presence of God and to experience not just to know things about him, but to experience relationship with him and to sit in his presence and even allow silence to play a role in how I connect and be and sit with him.

Speaker 1: 18:53

Yes, If you think about knowing God. For some of us, knowing God feels like a science class where you're dissecting a frog. Contemplation is like knowing God as in going to a pond or a swamp and sitting with the frogs.

Speaker 2: 19:10

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:11

That's a different type of knowing. So we can sit with Jesus, we can sit with the Holy Spirit, especially in community. And when we surrender and open up that space, things happen. It's unpredictable.

Speaker 2: 19:39

And it's beautiful. How does this run into perhaps kind of broken understandings of who God is?

Speaker 1: 19:44

Well, sometimes our broken understandings of who God is can infect what we're hearing and seeing from him. So if I say, how is God feeling towards you right now? And you can say, well, he's really disappointed in me and he's really disgusted by me, well, that might require the help of a spiritually mature group of people or a professional prayer minister to be able to help you unpack where that's coming from and separate that out from the real God. The reality is we all have a distorted perception of who God is and, as you've said, a lot of it comes from our family of origin. So, with the help of God's word, god's people and the dynamic activity of the Holy Spirit, we can unlearn and relearn who he is and who we are as His beloved.

Speaker 2: 20:37

I hope that people take advantage of the opportunity to pursue some of these ministries and traditions to expand and diversify your recovery experience and explore new depths of your relationship with God and your experience of who he is and how he loves you.

Speaker 1: 20:56

And that's it. Go to the show notes or the description for this episode to find more recommended resources and some of the organizations that approach inner healing prayer differently. I hope you will find what works for you and if you want more videos like this, the rest of this course is available at HealYourTraumacom. We believe that everyone struggling with porn deserves accessible support, so we've provided all 14 video lessons, as well as this really cool PDF and a private community where we can process these things together at HealYourTraumacom. It's free because we want to share this with as many people as possible. We would love it if you would join us, share this with your friends, send them to healyourtraumacom and let's continue to change our brains, heal our hearts and save our relationships. Always remember my friend you are God's beloved son and you, he is well pleased.