What is Encountering Abba’s Heart
People often ask me, “Sam, what is Encountering Abba’s Heart?” In those moments, I respond, “When we encounter our heavenly Father, we are praying for inner healing.” Inner healing is how Jesus transforms our hearts by inviting us into deeper levels of wholeness and freedom through prayer. Jesus is our Great Shepherd, who leaves the 99 sheep to find the one that may be broken, alone, rejected, or bound by the negative influences of sin in our world.
In Luke 4, Jesus proclaims that His ministry on earth is to heal sick and hurting people, proclaim freedom to those who are held captive by the pain of their current experience, and declare His heavenly Father’s goodness to all who will hear and believe. So often, due to the pain and hardship we experience in live, we are unable to experience the freedom and wholeness that Jesus promises us through the Gospel.
An encounter with Abba’s Heart allows us to align our body, soul, and spirit with everything that Jesus came to do. When we meet with our heavenly Father through inner healing prayer, we are relying on the Word of God to apply to every part of our lives and grant us direction on how to live in freedom and wholeness through the timeless process of confession, repentance, and renunciation (verbal rejection) of the negative influences we may face.
Do I need to pray through each area in Encountering Abba’s Heart to receive inner healing?
After meeting with so many people to pray through the issues they face, I have found out that their inner turmoil is simply the product of bad fruit, which can only be fixed when the root issue they face has been settled. When we trace our pain back to the root issues causing our internal conflict, then we will see a deep healing encounter with our heavenly Father take place. I encourage everyone to pray through each area of Encountering Abba’s Heart to bring to the surface any critical issues between them and God. After praying through each area, people are often surprised to notice that the fruit or symptoms of their inner spiritual turmoil disappear when the root issues are settled between them and God.
Living in spiritual conflict is not a pleasant or ideal way to live. If many Christians knew how to solve or heal their spiritual problems, they would have done so long before they realized they needed inner healing prayer. What they need is a clear map to receiving healing and the Holy Spirit’s wisdom to guide them. The Encountering Abba’s Heart prayer process is not just random areas that people can pray through in a robotic way. There are nine areas that need to be addressed in order to experience the abundance of life that Jesus promised in John 10:10! These nine areas are:
Forgiveness
Negative Influences
Lies of the Enemy
Fear
Wounds in our Heart
Shame
Sexual Brokeness
False Religion
Spiritual Conflict
Through my experience, I have yet to find a person who has not had root issues or fruit issues that cannot be settled by praying for inner healing in one of these nine categories. Not everything in Encountering Abba’s Heart applies to every person, but many find each area to be impactful and helpful. Though the prayer process is the same for each person, everyone will experience it in a different way as they interact with God through inner healing prayer.
How Is Encountering Abba’s Heart Different?
Encountering Abba’s Heart by praying for inner healing is different and unique as it allows us to settle the root issue that hinders an abundant relationship with our heavenly Father. I would like to share four examples of ways that inner healing prayer is unique in the way it brings us into an abundant Christian life:
1) It allows God to heal our souls. Inner healing is not counseling or Christian therapy. (Although those things are beneficial, needed, and important resources.) It allows God to apply the healing power of the Gospel to the places in our souls (mind, will, emotions) that lack an experience with His healing touch. Although psychological means allow other people to objectively listen to our problems and then allow us to come to conclusions, inner healing takes us to the root of the issue and presents it to God, believing in His healing power to transform, sanctify, and make mend our broken lives and hearts.
2) It relies solely on God’s power. Encountering Abb’s Heart rests on the principle that God is all-powerful, we are His children, and His desire is for our freedom and wholeness. From this reality, we establish our identity as children of God, knowing we can come to Him in our times of need and find grace and mercy to help us. While counseling allows us to see the deep details of our hearts over a longer, more extended period of time, inner healing allows us to quickly see the places where God’s power is needed to transform our lives and heal our brokenness. I have often asked many people what is different about their experience praying through this prayer model and attending a pastor or Christian counseling session. They respond, “It is almost like Encountering Abba’s Heart knew exactly where to start so that I could settle the root of my spiritual conflict. What took minutes with inner healing would have taken me months or years in counseling.”
3) It goes deep—to the root of our issues. As we pray through the hard areas in our past and the ways we often choose to respond to those issues in our present, we see that all brokenness has a root. Roots are areas where we may need to confess, repent, renounce, and receive God’s truth in order to see change in our lives. When people pray and ask God simple questions like, “Lord, who do I need to forgive, or is there anything I need to give to You today?” He is the one who brings names of people to their minds or areas they must confess in prayer. Inner healing is an act of partnering with the Holy Spirit to reveal root issues that need to be settled quickly and effectively. These are additional advantages of praying for inner healing by Encountering Abba’s Heart:
It connects us with Christ in our healing process.
It establishes our identity as children of God.
It causes us to make our faith “our own” with a deeper commitment to obeying Christ.
It allows us to align our healing with what the Scriptures say about godly living.
It allows us to become personally responsible for sin and accept Christ’s forgiveness.
It empowers the one seeking prayer to walk in the Spirit and accept His guidance.
It allows us to reject sin more consistently.
It sheds light on our inner lives quickly and effectively.
It opens a door to see God heal the painful places in our past.
4) It often exposes memories or experiences that accompany emotional pain. Emotional pain is the result of unmet emotional needs. These unmet needs happen during painful moments in our past. Inner healing allows the Holy Spirit to shed light on every place in our mind where emotional pain may be present, caused by memories of times when our emotional needs were not met in the way we desired. God works through our minds and memories, bringing them into a place of His divine healing. Encountering Abba’s Heart allows the Holy Spirit to search our hearts and minds, to remove every area that limits an abundant relationship with our heavenly Father, and to invite us to walk in the freedom and wholeness that Jesus died for!
For more information on how to live a spiritually and emotionally whole life, check out my book Encountering Abba’s Heart: Prayers and Declarations from the Heart of God by using the link below:
Comments