What If Deliverance & Inner Healing Ministry Isn't What It Claims To Be?
- 11 hours ago
- 10 min read
Are you being harmed by the ministries claiming to heal you?
Across churches and ministry networks, this question is becoming increasingly urgent. Deliverance and memory-based inner-healing ministries are expanding rapidly and promising freedom. Yet what is presented as breakthrough is, in many cases, producing confusion, psychological destabilization, and a growing dependency that keeps people returning for more.
I have often described those who facilitate inner-healing and deliverance as “well-meaning.” Years ago, I would have placed myself—though loosely—in that category. I was open to learning and intrigued by the possibility that this could be a new way to help people in the church. But it didn't take long to sense that something was off as I watched with growing alarm what was unfolding around me. I spoke up when ministry directed at me felt wrong. Beyond that, however, it was difficult to know how to raise concerns without being seen as rebellious, obstinate, or spiritually deceived.
In these circles, there is strong emphasis on remaining open to what God is doing. When something doesn't sit right, stepping away can mean putting yourself at greater risk. Hesitation or skepticism is often interpreted as rebellion, resistance, or even evidence of a demon. The fear of being labeled as lacking faith, accused of “quenching the Spirit,” or told you are the one in need of deliverance keeps many people from voicing their concerns.
I know this firsthand. Many times, I had to walk away from certain environments in order to protect my mind and heart, and not without accusation.
It is a disorienting and deeply unsettling place to be. That is why I want others—both ministers and participants—to pause and examine the methods themselves, to consider why good intentions are not enough, and to gain the language and confidence to speak up when something being done in God’s name feels off.
Those who truly care for God’s people pursue understanding. They recognize that the God of Scripture is also the Creator of our bodies and minds—and that helping others requires humility about how those bodies and minds function, regulate, and integrate into genuine spiritual and psychological wholeness.
If we desire to help, we must be knowledgeable about what truly helps—and what harms.
Understanding Sozo and Deliverance
If you’ve never heard of Sozo, deliverance, or inner-healing ministry, it is important to understand what these terms mean. Deliverance ministry generally refers to practices aimed at casting out demons or breaking spiritual oppression. Inner-healing ministry focuses on addressing emotional wounds, often by revisiting past memories through prayer. Sozo is a specific model that combines parts of both, emerging within charismatic Christian communities in the late 1990s and spreading across churches and denominations—sometimes under its own name and sometimes through similar approaches shaped by its influence.
Sozo, in particular, is associated with theological streams connected to what is commonly called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a movement with an estimated 3.5 million followers worldwide. However, that number remains difficult to verify and very likely understates its influence. NAR communities do not only promote Sozo, but broadly champion deliverance, inner-healing models, and apostolic-prophetic ministry frameworks that elevate spiritual authority and ongoing revelation as revealed to contemporary apostles and prophets.
Many engage with these ideas and practices without recognizing the theology behind them—particularly teachings that emphasize present-day apostles and prophets with extraordinary authority and ongoing revelation for the church, whether presented as new insight or the rediscovery of neglected truths.
Part of the appeal is that it feels exciting and empowering—an activation into spiritual authority that can then be used to “free” others. All it requires is the Holy Spirit—or at least the perception of His presence and direction—along with ministry training, frequently lacking clinical or trauma-informed education.
Bethel Church in Redding, California, is one of the most widely recognized churches associated with these practices. Because of the movement’s reach, it is difficult to provide a comprehensive list of affiliated ministries, but several widely known names include IHOP (International House of Prayer), MorningStar Ministries, Harvest International Ministries, Generals International, The Call, YWAM (Youth With a Mission), Hillsong, and Mercy Culture. For further context, I recommend the video linked at the end of this article and the book, Counterfeit Kingdom by Holly Pivec and Douglas R. Geivett. You may not agree with every conclusion presented in these resources, but engaging multiple perspectives can be helpful in growing discernment.
Because of this broad influence, even those who have never attended or heard of inner-healing or deliverance may be absorbing the teachings that makes these practices seem normal and necessary. Through conferences, worship music, online teaching, and ministry training programs, these ideas have become embedded in modern church life. They often lay the groundwork for the acceptance of deliverance and memory-based inner-healing practices across congregations and denominations. Understanding how they function may help you avoid harm or recognize it early enough to protect yourself or someone else.
A Clarification
This article is not a critique of one-on-one prayer, pastoral care, or discipleship.
The concern here is specific to Sozo-style deliverance and similar memory-based inner-healing models—approaches that follow a structure involving guided access to memory, interpretation of internal experiences, and spiritual authority entering another person’s inner world.
While these sessions are often conducted one-on-one or with a team, the danger does not lie in the setting itself, but in the methods that repeatedly ignore how the human nervous system, memory, and psyche actually function—and then spiritualize the damage when harm occurs.
From a mental-health perspective, Sozo-style deliverance and memory-based inner-healing practices are deeply concerning because they place untrained individuals in direct contact with another person’s autobiographical memory and nervous system without clinical safeguards or restraint, except what is believed to be Holy Spirit guidance.
This combination is neurologically reckless and can result in both psychological harm and spiritual confusion.
Memory Is Not a Recording—It Is a Reconstruction
Modern neuroscience and clinical psychology teach us that memory is not stored and retrieved like a video file. Each time a memory is recalled, it is reconstructed, influenced by the most recent telling, emotional state, and interpretive framework.
Put simply, memory is updated every time it is accessed.
This is why clinicians are explicitly trained not to insert themselves into a client’s memory narrative. Even subtle suggestion can distort recall, introduce false associations, or overwrite the original experience altogether. This phenomenon is well documented and known as memory contamination.
Many individuals who have undergone Sozo-style sessions report a consistent pattern afterward: emotional shutdown, dissociation, confusion, or an inability to access the original memory at all. The nervous system, overwhelmed and destabilized, does exactly what it is designed to do—it protects by going offline.
What is often interpreted as “peace” or “relief” is, in many cases, collapse.
A Recent Historical Warning
In the 1980s and 1990s, the Recovered Memory Movement swept through both therapeutic and spiritual communities. Some psychotherapists, pastoral counselors, and ministry leaders used guided imagery, suggestion, and interpretive techniques to help individuals “uncover” hidden trauma.
The results were devastating: false memories, destroyed families, lawsuits, professional disgrace, and severe psychological harm. The clinical world was forced into reexamination, and ethical standards surrounding memory work were radically rewritten.
The lesson learned at the expense of many:
Good intentions do not prevent damage when memory is handled without proper knowledge and restraint.
Sozo-style inner healing mirrors the structure of these discredited approaches.
The Common Sozo Process and Why It Causes Harm
A typical Sozo-style session often follows a sequence such as this:
Entering a specific memory
Interpreting the experience and identifying “lies believed”
Determining which member of the Trinity must be addressed
Inviting or “manifesting” that member into the memory
Asking what God wants to do with the memory, or where He was during the harm
Within many Sozo-style sessions, imagery, subtle impressions, or emotional shifts that arise during prayer are interpreted as direct activity of the Holy Spirit. If an image surfaces, it is assumed to be revelation. If a memory changes, it is framed as divine healing.
When internal experience, or even outward emotional display, is automatically attributed to God or the devil, neurological risk increases. Each step heightens the potential for memory contamination, particularly when the minister stops functioning as a witness and begins acting as an author or “identifier of lies.”
Interpretation, imagery, hierarchy, and spiritual authority are introduced into the most vulnerable psychological territory a person possesses. At that point, the individual is no longer simply remembering. They are being led.
Clinicians spend years learning how not to do this.
Even experienced trauma therapists approach memory work slowly and cautiously, using grounding techniques, informed consent, and dual awareness—because memory is powerful enough to retraumatize when mishandled. When someone without this training claims spiritual authority to navigate that space safely, the issue is not sincerity but methodological ignorance. No spiritual claim substitutes for clinical competence when working inside another person’s nervous system.
Relying solely on the assertion that “the Holy Spirit is guiding the process” does not remove neurological risk. It actually obscures it. The Holy Spirit may guide discernment, but Scripture never presents Him as an excuse for lack of wisdom, knowledge, or skill in the care of others. Scripture consistently affirms that calling and gifting do not eliminate the need for understanding and accountability:
Proverbs 19:2 — “Desire without knowledge is not good, and whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way.” Good intentions, even spiritual ones, do not protect people from harm when knowledge is absent.
Proverbs 11:14 — “Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.” Safety is found in shared wisdom and accountability, not isolated or perceived spiritual authority.
Why People Keep Coming Back: Dependency is Not Deliverance
One of the clearest warning signs is not the emotional intensity of these sessions, but their repeatability.
True healing moves a person toward greater agency, internal coherence and capacity, and freedom. Yet in many Sozo and deliverance cultures, people return again and again—still burdened, still destabilized, still convinced they need one more session, one more prophetic word, one more breakthrough.
This pattern is not mysterious to mental health professionals.
Clinically, it resembles iatrogenic dependence—a condition in which the intervention itself creates ongoing reliance. It also mirrors learned helplessness and externalized regulation, where the nervous system becomes conditioned to seek relief through another spiritual authority figure rather than developing internal integration and discernment.
The relief experienced in these sessions is often real but temporary. In some cases, what follows is not peace but heightened spiritual intensity. Individuals may appear more animated, more urgent, more convinced that profound breakthroughs have occurred. There can be an increase in religious language, dramatic spiritual interpretation of ordinary experiences, and a sense of spiritual acceleration or new revelation. To the participant, this feels like freedom. To the trained eye, it looks more like nervous-system dysregulation.
Heightened arousal is not the same as healing. Nervous-system activation can masquerade as spiritual zeal. Because the system rewards intensity, the heightened arousal is interpreted as proof that the ministry worked.
When pain and distress inevitably return, it is interpreted as evidence more ministry is needed. There is, perhaps, another demon, another lie, another hidden memory to be discovered.
Each return deepens dependency and further contaminates memory.
Over time, the lesson becomes:
I cannot heal without someone else entering my inner world for me.
This dynamic fits squarely within what clinicians—and an increasing number of theologians—recognize as spiritual abuse: the misuse of spiritual authority, intentional or not, that creates dependency, diminishes agency, and overrides personal discernment.
Biblical Foundation
Scripture says “There is one mediator between God and humanity—the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 2:5)
The New Testament consistently directs believers toward maturity, discernment, and direct access to God, not repeated dependence on intermediaries (Hebrews 4:16; Hebrews 5:14).
Yet in practice, many Sozo-style deliverance systems foster ongoing dependence on “prophets,” intercessors, or “anointed” ministers believed to have special access to God on behalf of others.
This may not be explicitly taught, but it is often functionally practiced.
When individuals are led to believe a minister is needed to discern truth or experience healing, spiritual authority shifts into psychological control. The damage cannot be overstated when suggestion enters a memory, and when a minister assumes the role of interpreter to a person in pain who is seeking comfort.
When this dynamic is coupled with a framework that interprets resistance, hesitation, emotional overwhelm, disagreement, or even a simple internal warning that something feels wrong as evidence of a demon or an unidentified hidden memory rather than a personal boundary line being crossed or a nervous-system response, the risk intensifies. What may begin as an attempt to help can quickly become coercive.
A person in distress should never lose interpretive authority over their own experience.
When this happens, harm deepens.
The truest forms of healing and deliverance are not manuals we write or ministries we construct and run people through, no matter how sincere our desire to help. We pray. We intercede. We sit with those who mourn. We comfort the afflicted. We allow God to do what only He can do—and we allow trained professionals, whom God has also called as helpers, to do what they have been equipped to do.
Deliverance and inner-healing ministry, as structured in these models, is not a system in need of minor reform. It is a system that contradicts the very freedom it claims to offer. God does not require memory intrusion, altered states, or nervous-system override to heal anyone.
Always remember: Deliverance that requires more deliverance is not deliverance.
Addendum
*This article was inspired in large part by an interview with Anna Kitko, apologist and cult specialist, conducted by Melissa Dougherty. Their conversation provided language and clarity to concerns many people experience but struggle to articulate. You can watch the interview here:
*If you have participated in deliverance or inner-healing sessions and are questioning whether you were harmed—or if you recognize that you were—please reach out to a licensed mental health professional who understands trauma, particularly psychological and spiritual trauma. Healing from harmful ministry experiences is very possible.
Want a little support each day? I send a free text called Out Loud Daily — short, grounding messages designed to help you start the day a little more present, a little more brave, and a little more yourself. If you’d like to receive up to 5 real, honest mental health texts per week, text RESTORE to 833-508-6784.
You don't have to keep carrying this alone.
At Restore Family, we believe what goes unsaid doesn't go away. It just goes underground. We help women and families bring truth into the light with care, courage, and a megaphone when needed. If you're ready to stop disappearing in your own life, we're here. Reach out via email @culpeperfamilies.org for more information or to schedule an appointment.
Comments