Since prayer for inner healing may be enough to free a person from spirits of trauma, you will want to get to the inner healing prayer as soon as possible. The spirits will try to block the prayer if they can. So you may want to formulate the prayer in the following steps.
1. Protection
First, pray for protection.
In the name of Jesus Christ and by the power of his cross and his blood, we bind up the power of any evil spirits and command them not to block our prayers. We bind up the power of earth, air, water, fire, the netherworld, and the Satanic forces of nature.
We break any curses, hexes, or spells sent against us and declare them null and void. We break the assignments of any spirits sent against us and send them to Jesus to deal with them as he will. Lord, we ask you to bless our enemies by sending your Holy Spirit to lead them to repentance and conversion.
Furthermore, we bind all interaction and communication in the world of evil spirits as it affects us and our ministry.
We ask for the protection of the shed blood of Jesus Christ over [name].
Thank you, Lord, for your protection and send your angels, especially Archangel Michael to help us in the battle. We ask you to guide us in our prayers: share with us your Spirit’s power and compassion.
Amen.
2. Binding
Bind off the spirit(s) from impeding the healing by a prayer that goes something like this:
In the name of Jesus Christ I command you not to interfere with this prayer. I bind you off from influencing [name]’s will, from his mind, from his imagination or emotions, from his memories, and from his body. I cut you off by the sword of the Spirit from stirring up [name]’s grief (or fear or any other primary emotional problems). I command you to be quiet and to leave when we finish our prayer for healing.
Amen.
3. Extending Forgiveness
If the person has not already forgiven the people who have injured him, help him to do this.
4. Inner Healing
Now lead him in a prayer for inner healing. There are many ways of doing this, but all inner healing involves asking Jesus to go back to that moment in time, or to that broken relationship, that continues to influence the person. The prayer does not obliterate the memory; it is nothing like some forms of psychotherapy (like electric shock) that block out the memory. What Jesus does is take the poison out of the memory, so it can no longer harm the person in the present, and transform it—sometimes in an extraordinary way.
The simplest prayer for inner healing begins in a quiet location where your prayer will not be disturbed. Then ask Jesus to return to the memory of the event or to the broken relationship where the wounding took place. Remain in silence and see what Jesus may do. For an expanded explanation of how best to pray, consult any of the reputable books on inner healing that are available.
After we finish the prayer for inner healing, the spirit(s) of trauma should leave quietly, since they no longer have any foothold: The wound they were infecting has been healed.
At times, however, the spirit hangs on and you need to confront it and cast it out. But once the healing has taken place and it has lost its hold on the person’s past, it should be relatively easy to cast out. At other times you may find it best to cast out the spirit of fear or incest (or whatever) first, to help make the prayer for inner healing go more easily.
The difficulty with beginning with deliverance, rather than inner healing, is that since we are ministering to a wounded person and not to an evil spirit, and since the person has already been wounded by broken relationships and a shattered life, we may further wound the person in the process of trying to help. The feeling of life being against me, and of my being a rotten person, can be worsened by someone deciding that something evil resides in me and starting to command it to go. It is usually more helpful to represent Jesus as he heals and comforts, rather than in his authority and anger as he confronts and commands evil to depart.
For this reason, if you do start by commanding the spirit to depart, make sure the way you do it—the look in your eyes and the tone of your voice—does not give the impression that you despise the victim of evil, rather than the evil spirits themselves. In praying against evil, it is easy to make the victim feel that he himself is evil, and it is hard to maintain the balance between hating the sin and loving the sinner.
(Francis MacNutt)