This book is an extension of Leanne Payne's ministry of healing hurting and damaged people. Frank Lake, in his book Clinical Theology, says: "Pastoral care is defective unless it can deal thoroughly with the evils we have suffered as well as with the sins we have committed." We too easily focus on undesired behaviors and ignore the inner woundedness from which the behaviors stem.
Payne's premise for healing is to treat the cause and not the symptom. This approach is well documented from both a psychological and theological perspective.
The author successfully integrates biblical principles with psychological insights. She uses real-life stories to involve readers in the inner dynamics of emotional and thought patterns that impact behavior. Those insights are then placed in the context of faith and God's healing presence.
Payne writes about a unique and specific kind of prayer contributing some original ideas. She introduces us to prayer for the healing of the emotionally dam aged soul. This healing prayer addresses what the author identifies as the three great barriers to spiritual wholeness: (1) the failure to be self-accepting, (2) the failure to forgive others, and (3) the failure to receive personal forgiveness.
My major concern about Payne's book is her promotion of an emotional faith healing service complete with laying on of hands. In doing so she suggests that the damages of a lifetime can be healed in a single moment if the person has the necessary faith. The author does state, however, that the one prayed for needs follow-up counseling and support from trained church people and some times from professionals. The book's strength is its insistence that the primary healing out of which all other healing proceeds has its source in God. The soul's dark places hide distorted reactions and unconscious responses that affect our moods, thoughts, and behavior patterns. Only God's presence en lightens and dispels this darkness. Until inner healing occurs we cannot correct behavior.
This book won Christianity Today's Critics' Choice Award in the category of Christian living and spirituality for 1992.
