I didn’t grow up knowing about inner healing. I didn’t know what it was until the Lord called me into deliverance ministry. Inner healing is going back and exploring the wounds of our souls and discovering where we need to forgive people and release the hurts we have experienced. We could need inner healing from rejection, anger, abuse, unworthiness and other emotional ailments that have built up as strongholds in our lives.
Inner healing isn’t reliving the experiencing and allowing the pain to come forth all over again. It is allowing the forgiveness that Jesus offered us to extend to the person who has betrayed, offended or hurt us. Inner healing is closing the doors to our past so we can move forward in the fullness and freedom of Christ.
But where are deliverance ministries falling short when they minister in the area of inner healing? If we look at the model of deliverance Jesus did in the Bible, He cast the spirits out. Inner healing and deliverance must go hand in hand. We truly cannot have one without the other, and when we do, we are simply masking the problem temporarily.
When we need inner healing, often the issue is one we have hung onto for 20-30 years, such as repeated rejection, feeling shame and self-condemnation. After years of suffering from these emotional ailments, they build up as demonic strongholds in our lives because we did nothing to release them or didn’t receive the proper biblical kind of ministry Jesus released. When an emotional abuse or ailment builds up, and we don’t reject it and dismiss it, it is a legal entry point for a demonic spirit to invade our souls. A demonic spirit must be cast out. Jesus cast the spirits out. He didn’t say get off, stop hindering them or do nothing about them. He spoke to the demonic spirit and gave it a firm, authoritative command, and the demonic spirit had to respond to His words.
I am continually amazed and frankly shocked at the number of people who call my ministry for deliverance, and when I ask what kind of deliverance they have had, and they tell me all the deliverance they have received but that no one ever cast the spirit out. I ask them, and I ask you, has someone ever in your inner healing or deliverance ministry prayed something like, “Spirit of (spirit name, such as anger, control, rejection), go, get out, leave them in Jesus’ name.” We must cast out the demonic spirit that is plaguing ourselves or people associated with the emotional stronghold.
If we don’t cast out the spirit, we are only masking the problem for a little while. What happens is you receive inner healing in a personal situation or altar ministry. You feel good for a few weeks or even months after, but then the same issue arises. The demonic spirit has not left; it is simply lying dormant in your soul until another sin or attack comes against you, and it arises. Let me give you an example. A person struggling with pornography quits pornography. They have conquered the behavior patterns and desire to watch porn. They are free for years; then they get entangled in pornography again. Why? Because the demonic spirits of that addiction such as pornography, lust, perversion and masturbation were never cast out; therefore, the spirits are inside a person’s soul, lying dormant until the next mishap. Our emotional ailments are similar. Unless we cast out the demonic spirits infiltrating our soul, we only experience temporary relief and not the fullness Jesus came to provide us.
Don’t believe every ministry that has the word “deliverance” in its name is a deliverance ministry. “Deliverance” means different things to different ministries. We need to go deep and cast out the demons as Jesus did in the Bible, and not every ministry does that. If you are discouraged because it seems as you have never received the freedom you are searching for, I encourage you to read my book, Discerning and Destroying the Works of Satan, so you can discover through scriptural insights the biblical way to do deliverance and then seek out a deliverance ministry that follows those principles. {eoa}
Kathy DeGraw is a prophetic spiritual warfare strategist releasing the love and power of God to ignite and activate people, release prophetic destinies and deliver people from the bondage of the enemy. She is the founder of Kathy DeGraw Ministries and Be Love Outreach. She is the author of several books, including Speak Out, Discerning and Destroying the Works of Satan, Identity Invasion, Who is Speaking? and Warfare Declarations. You can connect with Kathy on Facebook, facebook.com/kathydegraw or visit degrawministries.org.
Abby Trivett 
James Lasher 
Michelle Corral 
