Charles H. Kraft - Deep Wounds, Deep Healing

DEEP WOUNDS, DEEP HEALING

1993, 2010 Charles H. Kraft

Published by Chosen Books
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
chosenbooks.com

Chosen Books is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

Chosen edition published 2014

ISBN 978-1-4412-6836-5

First edition published by Servant Publications in 1993.

Second edition published by Regal Books in 2010.

Ebook edition originally created 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Good News Translation, Second Edition, Copyright 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.

Other versions used are:

NIV Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

NKJV Scripture taken from the New King James Version . Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

PhillipsThe New Testament in Modern English , Revised Edition, J. B. Phillips, Translator. J. B. Phillips 1958, 1960, 1972. Used by permission of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 866 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10022.

I want to thank several of my colleagues for their assistance with the first edition of this book. My highest gratitude goes to the two whose names are on the title page: Ellyn Kearney and Mark H. White. Drawing from their own experiences in ministry, each of them helped greatly in writing portions of this book and in finding examples to illustrate the principles. In addition, they searched the literature to find pertinent quotes and revised various sections of the manuscript as needed.

Others to whom I am grateful for assistance of various kinds include: Barbara Sturgis, Nancy Thomas, Tracy Jashinski, Jeanie Connell, Marti Browne, Molly Sutherland, Gary Hixson and the many whose books I have profited from. I also thank my wife, Marguerite, for putting up with the pressures that come from having a husband in ministry and writing.

I am also grateful to Dave Came, managing editor of Servant Publications who published the first edition, for his assistance and personal interest in the book and especially for his patience with me when I missed deadlines. Thanks also to Ann Spangler and Beth Feia of Servant Publications, and Dr. David King for invaluable help with , as well as to Paul Witte for compiling the index to the first edition.

My final thanks go to Gary Greig, Mark Weising, Rob Williams and the staff at Regal, who participated in getting out the second edition of the book. Special thanks to Deena Davis for her careful sharpening of content throughout.

The subject of inner healing, or, as I prefer to refer to it, deep-level healing, is confusing for many within the Christian community. People are used to the idea of professional counseling and led to believe that enough of such counseling will bring them freedom from their emotional hang-ups. But the effectiveness of professional counseling is more and more being questioned both inside and outside of the profession. Christians are also used to being told that salvation means freedom and that prayer changes things. If anyone is in Christ, we are told, he or she is a new creature; old things are passed away and all things have become new (see 2 Cor. 5:17). And many are led to believe that, as Christians, if they simply forget their past problems, they will be free (see Phil. 3:13, misused).

Life experience, however, is often quite different. We come to Christ thinking that will solve all our problems and we will find ourselves like Israelin the Promised Land; but we soon discover that the land is full of giants who have to be conquered.

We dont know why God does things this way. He seems to give us a gift and then expects us to work to overcome a considerable number of hindrances to our relaxing with that gift. Yes, there is newness when we come to Christ. Our human spirit is changed and it becomes a new nature. However, that newness is often interfered with by the emergence of old problems. We have taken the right first step. But for many Christians the freedom step is a second step. I have written about this in my book Confronting Powerless Christianity.

The disappointing news is that professional counseling is not very helpful for many people; nor does simply assuming that coming to Christ while ignoring ones problems works well for many.

But there is good news. It is the testimony of thousands who have gone through deep-level healing that they are free. There is a way to participate with Jesus in taking the freedom step. And, though deep-level healing may not be the only way Jesus brings freedom, it is a very effective way. Thats what this book is about.

Jesus is a healer. We see in the New Testament that He went about healing. The record there, however, shows Jesus as primarily involved in healing physical problems and casting out demons. I suspect, though, that if we had complete accounts of His healings, we would find that He frequently dealt with emotional and spiritual problemsthe kinds of things that cripple people inside and to which demons are attached. We will point to some examples of these deeper healings in the chapters to come.

For now, I want to discuss some of the confusion that seems to surround the practice of deep-level healing. One important source is the fact that we tap into a spiritual approach to healing that differs substantially from the secularism that is pervasive in evangelical Christianity. In spite of the assumption that what we do in church and in relation to church is spiritual, most of it is quite secular. The lectures (we call them sermons) tend to be intellectual rather than spiritual and relational; with the exception of contemporary worship, our hymns tend to be information-oriented rather than spiritually or relationally oriented; when healing is needed, we go to those who practice secular medicine; when we need psychological help, we go to secular counselors or Christians practicing secular counseling; when we train people, we train them in secular, informational and intellectually oriented institutions.

Deep-level healing is quite different. Jesus actually appears to the counselee and does things that rarely happen in normal church life. Healing happens at the deepest levels of a persons heart and mind. Although the techniques we use are often borrowed from the counseling profession, the presence of Jesus in them makes all the difference in their effectiveness. This is new for most of our clients, and, for some, it may be confusing at first but very healing.

One area of confusion is the fact that many people expect emotional healing to take a long time. With Jesus involvement in deep-level healing, gaining freedom seldom takes long. Most people are substantially changed in one session. On the other hand, many expect that Jesus will do the healing as quickly as we see it in the New Testament, and with little or no activity on the part of the client. This, too, is seldom the case. So, with such expectations, plus general unfamiliarity in working in the presence and power of Jesus, people are often confused about the process.