The reason why you can still continue to smoke cigarettes after a prognosis of certain death is given, is because a part inside has used smoking as survival for so long that it can’t risk stopping because it believes it’s keeping you alive. You can apply this dynamic to any hangup, habit or need for healing because what once worked to bring control, temporary satisfaction or a sense of peace, eventually becomes a stumbling block to true freedom. We rely on a stabilizing part within to guide us through a tough time in childhood that used lying, stealing, smoking, people pleasing, dieting, drinking or any other action that is driven to protect our negative emotions. Those emotions help us balance the uncertainty and split off pockets of memory holding conflict, creating fissures or fragments in our brain which we call “parts” in IFS Therapy. God created our brains with complexity so we will search out the answers for why we do what we do. Much like the parables, parts of us need to seek out the mysteries of why application of healing looks different for each of us.  Parts are negative brain pathways that came into our system with intention to help us navigate forward as kids when we perceived danger or threat to our well being.  They have the potential to remain stuck in that original moment which is why our re-connection with historical pain allows them to heal and move forward into a positive role. If we see our growth as a personal relationship to parts of us that might not know how to stop smoking or “acting out”, we extend them the grace Our Savior does, and our behavior will change.

If we have a physicality, most often it is attached to depression, sadness and loss because we’re no longer able to function as we once were, so the physicality is able to be maintained because there’s so much emotional energy that’s underneath of it while being compounded over time. We further condemn ourselves as Christians through “works” when we tell ourselves to take our supplements, drink our water, follow treatment, eat right and exercise while begging to be healed, without realizing different parts of us need to rest from those plans for different reasons, and all of them have valid points.  Survival is the goal to all conflicting parts within us and none of them will adhere to a one-size-fits-all solution because God wants us to seek Him for a rewiring of the negative pathway for true change. And truth be told, many won’t because it seems weird and isn’t taught in church. I’ve tried over a hundred ministry approaches for healing but because of the angst my body held during my childhood developmental years, I formed preexisting conditions that made all efforts for sustainable wholeness, impossible.  I’ve been in medical journals where the doctors concluded that the psychosomatic connection between my ailments kept pain in its place until I faced the past.  They did not have a surgery, pills or treatment that could do for me what healing a part of me could. Their remedy was “lower your stress”  which is the only advice offered in the pharmaceutical protocol.  

Thankfully, The Lord sent me to a neurologist who suggested parts work through IFS Therapy. I applied to their Institute so I could make sense out of why I couldn’t do what I wanted and wound up doing what I didn’t want, even if my health was on the line.  The modality starts with any mental or physical pain that trusts your emotions to lead you to the source of that original wound. When you get there, you spend time with that memory and all the ways in which that part suffered; it will share its story and help you feel it from its perspective. When you listen to that part who believes you forgot about it and covered it with religion, affirmations, scripture, denial, positivity and prayer, you learn it needed your friendship the whole time. All it really wanted was for your relationship to heal whatever loss it witnessed and has remembered on your behalf.  This is a supernatural work. This is the definition of sanctification because inner healing isn’t just praying a problem away, it’s getting to the reason why you got tripped up in the first place. When that pain is understood it automatically wants to return to the essence of what it once was when you were born, how God created that part of you to be. The power of Him rewiring your negative brain pathway that picks up a more positive identity once it is heard, makes this work sustainable. Part by part, each receives a reason to live that resembles something it would get from heaven, no longer a task of surviving.  

Inside the Internal Family System (IFS), the person, through leadership of Holy Spirit, can forgive himself once a part of him feels understood.  Praying blanket prayers of forgiveness doesn’t access the unknown parts because friendship hasn’t been extended from the person yet. When someone seeks prayer it is always best to encourage him to consider what grievances he might not know about so each individual part has an invitation to come forward with what and who it remembers. Forgiveness isn’t a one time deal because one part has many views and they each need to forgive how they were affected.  This could lend intrigue to the recipient and make him more willing to search his heart.  A myriad of parts who are suffering silently could hear of this suggestion and see it as a lifeline to their exposure which could offer freedom from separation.  Just offering the recipient a moment to ponder something more to forgive is meant for him to have a further conversation with The Lord in his own time. This is psalm 51:6 which says, “ Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, And in the hidden part you will make known to me thy wisdom”.  This is why deliverance is the wrong approach when it’s an inner healing issue because we’re defining our emotions as demons just because it seems faithless without immediate change manifesting. We were never meant to be God to each other. We were always meant to help bring others into a deeper trust in Him by supporting their pace. 

Parts form in an incident and fissure with negative emotions intact because they intend to protect that moment from being repeated in a person’s life.  Parts survive by any means necessary, even if condemning or critical reminders help them motivate you toward change. But condemnation kills, and it comes through religious exploits and strict rules and regulations that say you could’ve had an open door and let in a spirit that is oppressing you. This hyper-vigilant outlook offers no hope for any part stuck in fear of mistakes, habitual sin or shame. So a battle between polarized parts keeps one seeking, and the other running scared.  We don’t know what we let in because demonic spirits lie.  If we were traumatized as a child, both religion and the search for deliverance can be an indication that a part is powerfully trying to calm what they feel is scary, and that continuous pursuit of having to ward off a demon makes our inner healing futile. 

The devil  is a liar. Hell’s tactics will never reveal the truth because its nature is deceptive. Many Christians go chasing after symptoms or behavior as proof of a spiritual demonization and that keeps them from having to look inside and change. Being afraid of opening the door is living in fear, which is that door. This causes extra strife and anxiety in people who are already suffering from long-standing anguish, and we are making it worse by blaming behavior as the tell tale sign of demonic activity. Poor choices come from the parts inside where emotions become signals for help.  Parts expose the pain of inner conflict for relief but if we want to get rid of them they know it and will have a temper tantrum and trigger reaction, or hide and take longer to access for connection. Whisking the physical or mental pain away through delivering emotions just condemns that part and shuns it from commuinicating its needs.

Parts have experienced a negative situation and cannot be gotten rid of because they witnessed a memory and we cannot erase or change memories because they are stamped by time. Parts can keep a memory in dormancy which is where repression allows the person to function without a mental breakdown in the moment of trauma. Many people, including myself,  have lived decades with parts in control, protecting memories as a safety measure for keeping the person alive.  It is possible therefore, for anyone to react out of a subconscious part and still not understand why.  This is the grave importance of giving grace because one might not know why he does what he does or who he needs to forgive until memory is restored.  This can cause destruction in everyday relationships until the unknown part is revealed, but to blame it on the devil, is missing the mark entirely.  It is a healing process that requires curiosity to answer the mysteries that sway us internally. 

Parts are on the inside because they track emotional records. Demons are on the outside where they tag the original wound by sending assignments to trigger what still hurts.  Without deliverance of the Strongman out of the way, which is the Chief and ruling demon, the Religious spirit convinces a person to declare freedom when the bad behavior stops.  We know this from Jesus casting “legion” out and the many lesser than it going into the pigs along with it, (Mark 5:9) If we just get rid of the lesser ones, they can get called back 7 times worse by the Strongman or Religious spirits.  Knowing they have duped the person and the audience, they wait for a more opportune time to return, like after 10 years of abstinence.  Deliverance gets those two top rulers out of the way so inner healing can anchor within the inetrnal family system.  Ideally salvation occurs and deliverance happens once thereafter so that retrieval of old memories can begin the work of sanctification from the inside out.  This respectful approach to the one suffering would settle a lot of the scary stipulations that church makes over needing to be “careful” of re-infestation.  But many denominations rely on performance to prove if a believer shows signs of freedom.  The religious spirit will always blame the “works that we do” just to keep cracking the condemning whip.  Whether we stop sinning or dive head first into sin, demons fear the relationship a part can have to Jesus most, because that area of struggle can be redeemed and their attachment, dismantled.  We don’t want to get tripped up with chasing demons when liberty can be found by accepting that each  part of us just needs salvation. 

Our churches should be hospitals for the broken of spirit, yet we are shunning them from understanding the depth of God’s mercy when we step in the way and assume they can’t maintain healing due to a lack of faith. I was one of those arrogant people when I first got saved and I’m grateful that he revealed the parts in me who wrongfully told others just to take the healing that Christ has. But if they’re laying in a hospital bed and the normal projected process of their recovery in the natural world is a year, maybe a faith walk is for them to go deep and talk about their fears from their childhood parts points of view?  For the majority of my walk with the Lord, since I stopped being so arrogant, I’ve been lectured, chastised and corrected when I admit that I know I have emotional strife connected to my physicalities. However, my tenacity to meet the parts that have surfaced, has afforded me to recover from over half the ailments I carried around for decades, in only 4 years. My proof that parts bring the body into restoration, comes from the thousands of people I have prayed for and counseled who all admit that their physical pains improved when they addressed the long standing issues they’ve been avoiding.  And yet still, somehow there is always a percentage of believers who maintain that others are sick because they don’t want to be healed enough. 

Some parts in the soul actually fear healing because they like the sympathy or help from the person, parent or perpetrator. Other parts might rather die than get their hopes up only to be dashed again.  But many people haven’t met the parts inside of them because prayer and tradition offer mantras of obedience and accountability that actually distance one from slowing toward an internal conversation. To be brazen and assume healing is the same as delivering the person from a part of himself will cause further disconnection from his system finding lasting change. Programs, taking authority, declaring, breaking agreement, confessing, delivering, baptizing, all of it, all the ways in which we demand healing, actually distances His people from the parts who long for true restoration. This can’t continue, the world is already laughing at us. They’ve been mocking us for being a bunch of people who encircle each other to pray away our problems instead of leaning into them and finding solutions that last.  Without seeing that a part has a place in history that’s logical, we will remain a group seeking relief instantaneously without processing why or how it came to be.  Maturity is remaining teachable through the deconstruction of why we do what we do. 

I have witnessed the faithful question the sin in their neighbir only to negate they have a part who reacts in the same way.  Some of the most rageful people are believers because they think that they can apply the law and just be better by acting right.  Meanwhile we have anger brewing in our veins because we abstain from sin all the while hoping we can get away with it.  Our marriages end in divorce just as much as the world because nobody heals their childhood parts and they find partners that are just like their parents. Debilitating auto-immune diseases are trauma responses just as much as ADHD and bipolar, but instead of somebody taking responsibility for the poor treatment of a child and validating the adult he has become as a result, we tell him to focus on The Lord and the devil will flee. Nobody wants to affirm him in the place he was sinned against because they fear that will perpetuate the behavior, but in reality it will diffuse the strength of a long standing secret.  Three fourths of our population rely on substances to numb out because the children who were unwanted and unloved are suffering a void of purpose in many of their parts.  And we have the gravest misuse of sex ever known on the planet because everybody wants to say that something sexual was just “done in fun” when they were a kid. Do you know how many parts feel shame inside because of one sexual breach?  Fifty different parts can emerge on one act of sexual misconduct which means each “fissure” has to forgive both the perpetrator and himself.  That’s 100 potential viewpoints to forgive.  Ain’t no amount of casting out trauma demons, will settle that survivor’s system.  

To settle into the truth of who Jesus is, we would trust the process of sanctification even if it looks different for every person we know.  Inner healing is sanctification, it is connecting the beliefs to suffering and handing them over part by part as we long for personal transformation.  When parts are set free from their burdens then physicalities fall off and strength is restored.  When parts are embraced for the protection they have offered, compassion replaces condemnation and we can make choices through a sound mind. If we open our eyes and see the complexity of our brain is the very avenue that Jesus intends to speak deeply to us, we would stop trying to get rid of parts of ourselves and we would be welcoming their chance to get set free once and for all.