To have wounds is natural and time will heal them. But wounds remaining unhealed for a long time point to the poor health of a person. Wounds can happen in all three parts of the integral personality of man viz. body, mind, and soul.
Of these three, the mind is more complex and the diseases affecting it are difficult to treat, unless a proper diagnosis is done. Its treatment involves a certain technique called inner healing having its origin in Christian spirituality. Oftentimes we find persons who carry the burden of something that happened in their life years ago. These experiences haunt their mind and make them behave in a certain pattern.
Reason will tell us to treat the diseases of the mind psychologically or psychiatrically, not knowing that everything affecting the mind cannot be rectified by these tools. Here comes the relevance of inner healing. Basically it is a spiritual tool to heal a person who carries unhealed wounds in his mind.
Wounds that are not properly treated will turn chronic with the passage of time. At this stage the open wounds will start producing a stench that we call negative emotions. The devil will use these negative emotions as doors to enter our mind. For example a person who was sexually abused during childhood can develop an aversion to sex or on the other hand can make themselves abusers when grown up.
The major reasons for our mind to get wounded are: Love and affection denied, Painful incidents or mishaps, Memories that refuse to fade with time, and Unfulfilled wishes.
We know that a cruel father and an equally cruel aunt were behind a young Adolf Hitler becoming the most cruel autocrat of modern times. The hatred towards his aunt, who was disabled, led Hitler to reach the absurd conclusion that disabled men and women were to be wiped off!
Unhealed wounds start a chain reaction producing a host of negative emotions like inexplicable fear, uncontrollable anger, inferiority complex, melancholy,unbridled sexual desire, extreme hate, guilt complex, addiction to alcohol and drugs, loneliness, unreasonable worry and anguish, despair, suicide tendency and the like.
These emotions become a fertile ground for the devil to sow the seeds of sin. Those who struggle with unhealed wounds often do things that they never wanted to do. ‘I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate’ (Rom 7:15). It is because of the surreptitious works of the devil who use our past wounds as a fertile breeding ground. Left unattended, wounded persons often wound others. As long as we do not get healed we will act not in a humane way but like a ‘brute beast’(Ps 73:22).
Inner healing is the process of transforming this brute beast into true human beings and its first step is to identify the reasons behind our negative emotions. Well begun is half done and with a proper diagnosis we have traveled halfway to healing. Now it is time to apply the medicine. We know of only one medicine for inner healing and that is the precious blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In fact he has already paid the whole price for our integral freedom in the cross. Knowing this ultimate truth is the way to a new life. This truth will set us free. Believe that ‘by his wounds you have been healed’ (1 Pet 2:23).
It is as simple as it looks. Place our wounds alongside the sacred wounds of Jesus as he came to this world to ‘bear our infirmities and carry our diseases’ (Isa 53:4). ‘He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed’ (Isa 53:5).
Inner healing retreats are commonplace nowadays. Be assured that once healed with the precious blood of Jesus Christ, none of your past wounds would ever hurt you again. In other words a person healed by Jesus Christ becomes a new creature. ‘So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away, see everything has become new!’ (2 Cor 5:17).
Come! the Lord is waiting to heal us. Why should we carry the burden of a gloomy past into our glorious future?
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