I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. (Ezek. 36:26)

I know this verse is true because God has healed my heart completely from extreme darkness. What He has done for me, He will do for you. All you’ve been missing are the right tools (drawn from Scripture), and effective guidance so you can use them skillfully. I will show you seven prayers which He used to restore faith, hope and love to my heart. I will lead you in applying these specific prayers to every area of sin and woundedness in your heart, and you will be set free! I guarantee it, because it has proven to work for the thousands who have tried it.

Newly Revised & Expanded 20th Anniversary Edition!

I have stopped trying to fix my own “issues”
I no longer order my heart to “stop feeling that way.” Why? Because it doesn’t work! I know. I tried it. When I allowed myself the freedom to experience emotions, I found they were all over the place. That helped me understand why I had been taught they were soulish and unreliable and to be cut off. However, it was Jesus who had restored emotions to my heart. So I went to my journal and asked Him, “Lord, how do we process emotions spiritually, because my strivings of the flesh are completely ineffective in dealing with them?” He answered me…

GOD is the one who created emotions
Emotions are to be part of life, and they are to be a blessing, not a curse. Emotions are not to be negative conduits of demonic energy (Eph. 2:2,3), but rather carriers of the healing presence of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 14:17).

Compassion is the carrier wave of God’s healing power. Fear and anger are the carrier waves of demonic energy. I have experienced both. I choose compassion. Jesus, moved by compassion, healed (Matt.14:14).

Once I allowed myself to feel, then…
In my first few months of journaling (in 1979), God said, “I want to restore emotion to your life.” He gave me three steps to take, which I did: 1) Read the Gospels and see that Jesus healed because He was moved by compassion; 2) Read the Psalms and note that David had emotions and processed them all in the presence of God, and that was fine; and 3) Note how tenderly God loved me in my journaling and learn to love myself and others the same way. In doing these three things, I repented of my scorn and disdain toward emotions, and acknowledged the truth that they are created by God and to be filled by God. I prayed and asked God to restore emotion to me and He answered my prayer. I began to feel.

Then I discovered that my emotions were all over the place, so I asked how to resolve this and He taught me that emotions are by-products of pictures. If I would let Him give me the pictures I was to look at, and I looked ONLY at these pictures, then I would experience HIS emotions! Wow! What an insight. I have found that is the BEST tool I have to guide my emotions throughout the day.

Big hurts open the door to what?
However, after suffering some really big wounds and some really big battles, I experienced vivid, powerful negative emotions rise up and grip me from within. They were very controlling!

I wondered, what is this? For example, if I was in a threatening situation, I would sense fear rise up and grip me and absolutely control my inner being. Fear took me over. I could not shake it.

Well, I discovered that these things that rose up within me and gripped me were actually demonic forces which needed to be cast out. This was something Jesus did with great regularity. Of course, my church did not do that but you know what, I don’t care. What I care about is what the Bible models and teaches. I have chosen to live my life according to what I see in Scripture. I can’t imagine any good reason not to.

Delivered from demons…after three decades in ministry!
So I asked a husband and wife prayer team to pray deliverance over me and in three hours they cast about 20 demons out of me! Wow! Did I feel better! You should try it! You will feel better, too! I wrote about my experience in the book Prayers That Heal the Heart. This couple was absolutely amazing in the variety of prayers they utilized and in the way they allowed the Spirit to lead the prayer time.

I followed up this prayer ministry with lots of journaling and Bible meditations which extended the victory out even further. I began by applying the prayers they prayed over me into additional crevices in my heart which needed healing prayer and had not been addressed during the ministry time.

I would wake up in the middle of the night realizing, wow, here is another person whom I need to sever ungodly soul ties with, and I would sever them. Here is another person I need to forgive and I would forgive them. Here is another painful memory I need to bring Jesus into and allow Him to heal, and so I would do inner healing prayer. After a couple of weeks, this process waned and a new activity took its place.

How to avoid ending up worse off than you are now
Finally, I needed to rebuild the walls that had been torn down so I didn’t invite the demons back. It was my ongoing sin which invited them in, in the first place. So I needed to stop sinning or the Bible said they would come back and bring seven worse with them (Matt. 12:45). Yuck.

So I closed the door by doing Bible meditations on the areas which were the opposite of the sins I had been walking in. For example, I had been living in the sin of fear, so I did a Bible meditation looking up verses on faith. I memorized them, journaled about them, and spoke them over my life so I would learn a new way of thinking, believing and living.

I had been living in bitterness, anger and hatred, so once these demons were cast out, I looked up Scriptures which were the opposite of these things – verses on love, forgiveness and mercy. I meditated on them, memorized them, journaled about them and spoke them over my life so that I could begin living them.

I did this with each area in which I had received deliverance. I suggest you plan for a one month meditation on each area you are rebuilding. The Bible meditations I completed can now be found in the appendices of the book Prayers That Heal the Heart which is my testimony of this entire healing experience.