Charles H. Kraft - Satan Fears Youll Discover Your True Identity: Do You Know Who You Are?

S everal decades ago, I started my first appointment to full-time ministry. My wife and I had just graduated from Bible school and college, and our eyes had been set on going to the mission field. But since our mission felt we needed some ministry experience, we approached my home church, which appointed me as assistant to the pastor. My duties included praying for the sick and visiting new members.

I still remember those old days and the anemic prayers I offered on behalf of the sick. The best I could do was ask God to guide the hands of the physicians and to speed up the sick persons recovery, if healing was within His will. I was afraid to be too aggressive in asking for healing because if healing did not come, then I was putting God into an embarrassing situation. Even worse, I was embarrassing myself by my lack of effective praying. So couching my anemic prayers in conditions that put the authority back into the hands of God and His will gave God an out, thereby saving us both from powerlessness.

It would be two decades before I came to realize that God does not like to see His children in pain, and that He has given us authority already to claim His power. He wants to bring healing and forgiveness to those who are in pain. But I had not yet learned to exercise my identity as Gods representative on behalf of those who are servants of sin, who are broken in body and crushed by damaged emotionsand I did not know how to pray for them.

Unfortunately, countless others shared my impotence in prayer, and so we fumbled along. But the Holy Spirit was about to begin a new work among His people.

Slowly at first, a few brave souls began to experiment with taking God at His word by starting to pray with authority on behalf of His people. Among those with the courage to face their own ignorance and fear: Dr. Charles Kraft.

Fortunately, Dr. Kraft was brave and skilled enough as a writer to share his journey in print. And for more than thirty years now, he has shared his experiences, his insights from the Word of God and his emerging strategies in praying for the people the Scriptures refer to sometimes as the brokenhearted. In the course of his many books on the topic of spiritual warfare, Dr. Kraft has advocated a return to the biblical practices of praying for the sick, setting the captives free and claiming our authority in Christ.

In this new book, Dr. Kraft shares from his years of experience in bringing healing to people with painful memories of past abuse. This is not a combative book in which he seeks to answer his critics or defend his practices. It reflects the very best of the pastoral side of Dr. Kraft as he affirms for believers the multiple ways God has provided for us as His sons and daughtersco-laborers in the struggle against the ravages of sin and heirs of His promises.

Dr. Kraft also identifies the multiple ways Satan seeks to destroy our confidence in Gods promises and provisions. He challenges us from the very first chapter to discover and recover our true identity in Christ. In each succeeding chapter, Dr. Kraft identifies specific ways Satan seeks to overwhelm believers with lies, damaged emotions, ugly memories and bad experiences that leave us feeling powerless and helpless.

Then, into every one of these settings, Dr. Kraft gently shares Gods provisions for our healing, using inner healing strategies that move beyond simply knowing a truth to experiencing it at the deeper level of our hearts and memories.