What Actually Happens in an Inner Healing Session

I get this question all the time: "What actually happens during an inner healing session?"

People are curious, and rightly so. If you've never experienced this kind of ministry, it can sound mysterious or even a little intimidating. So today, I want to pull back the curtain and show you exactly what happens—because the truth is, it's simpler and more accessible than most people think.

Inner healing is like a prophetic prayer session where Holy Spirit is the guest of honor. It's not about human counseling. It's not about ministers giving their opinions or advice about what you should do or how to get set free.

Holy Spirit wants to do it. He wants to lead. He wants to be the one ministering directly to your heart.

And no two sessions are exactly alike, because no two people are exactly alike.

The Setup

An inner healing session typically involves a very small team working with the ministry recipient (that's the person receiving prayer). The team usually consists of:

• A facilitator (the person who leads the session)

• At least one intercessor (sometimes two)

We always keep the team very small because we're going to be dealing with sensitive things. Often, Holy Spirit will show us a trauma from the past or something where He wants to bring healing. We want to make sure the ministry recipient always feels comfortable dealing with those times in their life.

And here's something important: the ministry recipient doesn't have to re-experience any trauma. Holy Spirit knows how to bring up what He needs to bring up without forcing someone to relive pain. It's as light as picturing the bed where you slept last night—a word picture, a flash of memory, nothing overwhelming or re-traumatizing.

How It Begins

After we pray and talk about what the ministry recipient is there for—maybe they're seeking healing from depression, anxiety, addictions, or something else—we put that request before the Lord.

But we always yield. We always say something like: "Lord, we know this is what we'd like to see healed today. But if You want to heal something else first, if You need to take us in a different direction—You're Lord. We trust that You know exactly what You need to do."

We posture our hearts to trust that He knows the order He wants to work in.

Typically, even if He doesn't start right with our specific request, by the time we're done, He'll wrap up actually answering what the person came for. It's beautiful to watch how the Lord moves on a person—knowing what He wants to work on even before they arrive, then partnering with them and with us to bring it about.

The Conversation with the Lord

So if we have the ministry recipient and several ministers in the room, what happens? We're going to have a conversation with the Lord.

Holy Spirit is the main person. He's the guest of honor.

We might begin by asking: "Lord, where do you want to begin?"

We've already instructed the ministry recipient that we're going to ask questions, and we want them to give us the answer. More specifically, we want the Lord to give them the answer.

Because if I tell the person, "Hey, the Lord loves you," that's great. But if the Lord Himself speaks to them or shows them something, it carries His presence with it. If He says, "Let there be light," light IS. His word carries creative power.

So when we're asking questions, we may not know exactly what to ask. We're fishing for the Lord's direction. If the ministry recipient isn't getting anything at all, we tell them: "Don't conjure it up. Don't try to think it up. We're asking the Lord to lead us, and He's leading you to the answer."

What the Lord Shows

Here's an example of how it might unfold:

We ask, "Lord, where do You want to begin?"

Maybe the ministry recipient sees a flash of the living room where they grew up. Great. The room might be empty—they don't have to see any specific trauma. But as they're looking at that flash of memory, all of a sudden the Lord might also show them something that happened in the living room. Or maybe it happened in another room, but they went to the living room for safety.

The Lord knows how to communicate with our hearts.

This is not about the ministry recipient having any special skills in hearing God's voice. We can have unbelievers in an inner healing session and they'll encounter the Lord, because He's a master communicator.

He knows exactly what each person needs to see, hear, or feel. More than that, He knows HOW to communicate with them. He knows their language. He knows their experiences. He knows their culture. He made them. He wired them. He put them together.

He meets with each person on an individual basis.

One of the most beautiful things that comes out of inner healing sessions is that people walk out knowing that they KNOW that they KNOW the Lord was communicating with them. And that alone can set people free right there.

What We Deal With

During a session, the Lord typically addresses several key areas:

1. Forgiveness

The Lord will probably show you people you need to forgive. Unforgiveness is a huge part of healing because unforgiveness simply ties our heart to those events or to those people.

Unforgiveness doesn't protect us from being hurt again. It doesn't keep us safe. The enemy wants us to hold onto unforgiveness so he can get another hook in us.

As Nelson Mandela said, unforgiveness is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. It poisons the container it's in.

We'll often deal with unforgiveness toward other people, but sometimes it's unforgiveness toward ourselves.

2. Shame and Guilt

In Christ, there is no condemnation (Romans 8:1, NIV). So if you're being convicted of something during an inner healing session, it's to change your pattern—to change the way you think, to receive forgiveness from the Lord and to receive forgiveness for yourself.

Shame is a really powerful tool of the enemy because he'll take something we did wrong and make us feel like we ARE wrong—not just that we DID something wrong.

Too often, especially when we're children, if something was done wrong TO us, we don't know how to make sense of it in our world. We'll turn against ourselves. We'll believe it was our fault, that we're bad, that we're evil—even if something was perpetrated against us.

In Christ, there is now no condemnation. We break off the lies of shame. We break off the lies of guilt. We release forgiveness toward our perpetrators, and we receive forgiveness for ourselves.

3. Lies We Believed

Often, the Lord will show you a lie you believed about yourself, about Him, or about somebody else.

Maybe in a childhood memory, you thought your parents didn't love you. Maybe you felt like you deserved something bad. Maybe you felt like a traumatic event was your fault. Maybe you believed the Lord wasn't there protecting you, that He didn't love you. Maybe you felt like you weren't worthy of love and protection.

These are all lies from the pit of hell.

When we see them for ourselves—when the Lord shows us surgical truth that goes right to the spot—we can repent for believing the lie and come into agreement with His truth. That's when healing happens.

Remember, the enemy has no hold over you without your agreement. He gets you to agree by lying and manipulating. We're taking the enemy's hook out by seeing the lie for what it is.

4. Demonic Influences

Sometimes there could be demonic influences that either came in through our family line or through our own wounds. There could be a spirit of infirmity, a spirit of lust, a spirit of anger, a spirit of unforgiveness (where you're always critical and judgmental).

If you've tried to work on character issues yourself and you couldn't—by an act of your own free will—create new patterns, it might not just be a character issue. Stop beating yourself up. It could very well be that you're having a spirit influence you.

We have the ability to find out how the enemy got legal ground to be there in the first place. We get that legal ground out either through forgiveness or through repentance. Then we cast the spirit out.

Deliverance is a big deal. Every person on the face of the planet—believer or not—can be influenced by the enemy. Otherwise, there would be no Christian anywhere who was ever sick, diseased, angry beyond righteous anger, or struggling with lust, addiction, depression, gluttony—you name it.

We all can be influenced. But we all can be easily delivered.

5. Blessings

After we've given up so much in an inner healing session—maybe we've released anger or given up holding grudges toward people—the Lord will often give us a blessing in exchange.

It could be a gift. It could be the gift of peace in exchange for releasing depression. But we let Him do it. We don't just automatically assume the opposite. We let Him give the gifts because He is the gift giver.

6. Reintegration

If part of our heart disassociated during trauma—maybe we had to wall that part of our heart off—we bring those pieces back and reintegrate them.

The word for "brokenhearted" in the Old Testament is Shabbar (from Isaiah 61:1), and it means shattered into pieces. Often those pieces of our heart have been walled off, and we have to take those pieces and reintegrate them.

Usually, the ministry recipient might see their younger self—little Susan, for example—just kind of meld back into the whole adult Susan. It's an act of Holy Spirit doing it prophetically so we can understand with our minds what's happening with our hearts.

The Lord is here to heal the brokenhearted and set the captives free and make us whole. The root word for "holy" is actually wholeness—all pieces, all parts. Integrity means all the integers together: nothing missing, nothing broken, nothing left out, nothing left undone.

How Long Does It Take?

A typical session takes about two hours. The shortest one I ever facilitated was 15 minutes. So it doesn't have to take two hours, but usually it does because the Lord will take us to a couple of different memories or go into one memory at a deeper level.

Again, the person doesn't have to re-experience the trauma. The Lord just has to bring it up and show them what happened, what they believed about what happened, and where He was. He never left them. He never forsook them. He never approved of any evil being perpetrated against them.

The Beautiful Outcome

By the time we're done with an inner healing session, the ministry recipient usually sees how simple and easy this conversation with the Lord is. They walk out knowing: I can continue this conversation with the Lord myself.

They can speak to the Lord anytime they want—anytime something comes up. Anxiety comes up? Depression? A memory? They can say:

"Lord, what is that? What do You want to show me? What do You want me to know? What do You want to do about that? Where were You when that happened?"

If they try on their own and aren't getting anywhere, certainly they can come back and have another session. We all have different tools in our tool belts. But the idea is that someone will walk out of a session knowing how easy it is to connect with the Lord, and that He can give them the answers directly.

You don't need a priest. You don't need a minister in order to hear from Him. He can communicate with you directly.

It Might Not Be a Microwave

Let me be clear: it might not be a one-and-done, microwave session where all your problems are instantly healed. I'm not saying that at all.

But what inner healing does that counseling usually can't is get to the root of the problem. It isolates the place where it began. It heals that place so that as you do counseling, as you do other modalities of healing and therapy, they become much more effective.

If you struggle with addiction—if all you're doing is trying to stop drinking, stop taking drugs, stop porn (whatever your drug of choice is to heal the pain)—you're fighting in the flesh. Instead of trying to beat yourself up, try harder, do better, suck it up, let the Lord go back and heal the places where it started. Maybe through your family line. Maybe through your own wounding. Usually a combination.

Once we heal the root, once we've healed the original pain, changing the behavior and going through counseling becomes exponentially more productive because we've healed the original problem.

Inner healing goes after the root.

This Is Unleashing God's Kingdom

Jesus came to heal the brokenhearted and set the captives free (Luke 4:18, NIV). That's not just His mission—He assigned that mission to us as well.

"Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these" (John 14:12, NIV).

He works through us to bring His Kingdom on earth. He works through us to help people get healed, whole, delivered, and set free.

This is a big part of unleashing God's Kingdom today—making people whole, with nothing missing, nothing broken, nothing left out, nothing left undone.

It's easy. It's not that we don't go very deep. It's not that there aren't tears sometimes. But often those tears release pain that's been locked up for a long time. There are tears of joy. There are tears of acceptance when people realize how much the Lord loves and approves of them.

Holy Spirit is outside of time. He can go back and heal the place where you got hurt to begin with, then bring that healing into your now.

It's a beautiful thing that only God Himself can do. No person can manufacture that.

That's why I love inner healing. That's why we're talking about it. Because it's a big part of unleashing God's Kingdom today.

Blessings,
Susan 😊