The Lord Goes Back in Time

Over ten years ago, my husband Gregory was diagnosed with hepatitis C. He'd had symptoms that something was wrong—a rash on his back, problems with his liver. The doctors ran tests and came back with the diagnosis. The truth was, Gregory had contracted hepatitis back in the 1970s. He'd had a "non-A, non-B hepatitis" diagnosis back then (they didn't identify hep C as a distinct virus until later), and he just thought it was cured. But it wasn't. Hep C had been growing in the background for more than 30 years, and he didn't know.

Because we're finite and limited to time and space, the doctors couldn't go back in time and heal Gregory when he originally contracted the disease. They had to give medication to heal it in the present day.

But here's what I want you to understand: when you have an inner healing wound that happened in your childhood—or maybe something that was even passed down through your generational line—there's no blood test for that. There's no medical scan that can detect a wounded heart or show you where the enemy planted a lie. But Holy Spirit knows. He knows exactly what happened and when it happened, so He can go in there and apply medicine back then.

It's almost like if that wound created a black thread that ran through the tapestry of your life, He's able to go back and snip the knot when it was first created, then pull the thread through. He's able to go back and rewrite the story.

The Criticism I Keep Hearing

One of the main criticisms of inner healing I encounter is this: "God doesn't take us back. Jesus only moves forward."

I've heard otherwise brilliant ministers say this, and I understand why it sounds good. But honestly, it's human-centered thinking. It's only humans who can only go forward. We're limited to time and space. But Jesus is not. Holy Spirit is not limited.

He can bring to our remembrance something that happened in the past. He can actually go back there and bring healing. He can show up in the memory. He can show you something different than what you believed at the time. He can reveal a lie you believed about yourself, about Him, or about somebody else.

And when He does, you can repent for believing the lie. You can come out of agreement with it. Remember, the enemy has no hold over you without your agreement. He usually gets you to agree by lying and manipulating. That's how he gets the hook in.

Inner healing is about taking the enemy's hook out.

When I Was Three Years Old

The first time I ever had an inner healing session, Holy Spirit showed me a memory from when I was three or four years old. I was standing at my front door of the house I grew up in, looking through the glass storm door, watching my father leave carrying a suitcase.

In this memory, I'm crying. I'm feeling very alone.

And Holy Spirit showed me what that little Susan believed in that moment: If I had been a good little girl, he wouldn't have left.

Now, as an adult, I would totally dismiss that logic. Of course it wasn't that little girl's fault. We all know that. If a counselor had said to me, "You know that wasn't your fault, right?" I would have answered, "Yeah, I know that wasn't my fault."

But the problem is, when we approach heart wounds from reasoning and logic, it's not the same as letting the Surgeon Himself—the Healer Himself—show you what your heart actually believed.

I believed if I had been a good little girl, he wouldn't have left.

That belief created a system—like a computer program running in the background of my subconscious. The effect of that belief, unbeknownst to me, was that I always had a low-level anxiety running. I always felt like if I'm not good enough, bad things are going to happen. If I'm not good enough, people are going to leave.

I had no idea this was really happening. It was just my state. My normal.

Even if I felt anxious about something, I didn't connect it to that childhood moment. I didn't understand why I always had to strive to be better. I had a performance-oriented mentality. In college, I'd stay up all night working on papers because somewhere deep inside, I believed that if I wasn't good enough, something bad was going to happen.

The Lord Rewrote My Story

When Holy Spirit showed me that memory and revealed the lie I'd believed, the minister led me through a prayer of repentance. I repented for believing the lie that it was my fault. I came into agreement when the Lord spoke the truth: it was NOT my fault.

Holy Spirit also showed me something else in that memory: I was not alone. He was there.

I was able to crawl up in His lap and receive comfort from Him. This wasn't some dramatic re-experiencing of the trauma. It was just a word picture in my mind—as light as picturing the bed where you slept last night. Very easy. Not overwhelming.

But Holy Spirit was able to go back into the recesses of my memory and rewrite the story.

I wasn't left alone. I wasn't left devastated. The belief that "if I'm not good enough, things are going to implode" wasn't true.

Even though I'd lived in that state for several decades—even though I had neural pathways that thought a certain way—He broke the pattern. He entered like a virus into the programming, disrupting the lie.

Now when those old thoughts would come up in the weeks that followed, I was able to recognize them: Oh, that's just based in the lie. That's not true. I began to think differently. The anxiety dissipated.

I was healed.

No amount of counseling could have done that. Actually, no amount of counseling probably would have even picked up on that particular memory, because it wasn't the grand finale. It wasn't the moment my parents divorced. It seemed like a random memory to me.

But the Lord knew how to pick one spot in time and have it be symbolic of a whole lot of things that had gone on in my life—a whole lot of other times when I felt like if I'm not good enough, bad things will happen or people will leave.

It helped to rewire me. It helped to put back the broken pieces of my heart.

Jesus is amazing like that.

Why the Lord Can Do This

He does this because He's outside of time.

People who have a problem with inner healing—with the idea of Holy Spirit taking us back into memories—don't understand that there's no blood test for heart wounds. There's no blood test to see if we have demonic influence causing depression, anxiety, anger, lust, or a spirit of addiction.

But if you have a wound in the spiritual or emotional realm, Holy Spirit isn't limited by time and space the way human doctors are. He can go back to when the wound was first created and apply medicine right there.

Think about it this way: Gregory's hepatitis C created damage over 30 years. The medication had to work in the present to heal the accumulated damage. But if Holy Spirit had been treating a spiritual or emotional wound that began 30 years ago, He could go straight back to the source—to the moment the wound entered—and heal it there.

That's the beautiful reality of serving a God who isn't bound by time.

As it says in Psalm 90:4 (NIV), "A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night." The Lord doesn't experience time the way we do. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow are all present to Him.

So when He takes you back to a childhood memory in an inner healing session, He's not violating some spiritual law. He's operating in the fullness of who He is—unlimited by the constraints that limit us.

An Invitation

If you've been carrying wounds from your past—wounds that created lies you believed about yourself, about others, or about God—I want you to know that the Lord can heal those places.

He's not limited to addressing only what's happening in your life right now. He can go back to where the black thread was first knotted and snip it, then pull it through so the pattern no longer runs through the tapestry of your life.

He's a genius. He's a master at healing the brokenhearted.

And He wants to meet with you—not through human reasoning or logic, but through the supernatural work of Holy Spirit showing you truth that sets you free.

"Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32, NIV).

That's not just a nice saying. It's a promise. When the Lord shows you the truth about what really happened, about who you really are, about who He really is—that truth has the power to break every lie the enemy used to bind you.

Welcome to God's Kingdom, where Holy Spirit isn't limited by time, and where healing can reach back to touch the very moment your heart was wounded.

Nothing is too hard for Him.

Blessings,
Susan 😊