Many people come to counseling because something in their lives isn’t working the way they want it to. Maybe anxiety seems to take over too easily. Maybe conflict with a spouse quickly becomes overwhelming. Maybe they understand intellectually that they are loved by God, yet somewhere deep inside, they still feel unworthy, unwanted, or alone. Maybe they know what they should think or do, but knowing doesn’t seem to change how they actually feel or respond.

One of the most hopeful ideas in Living From the Heart Jesus Gave You, by Dr. Jim Wilder and his colleagues, is that this disconnect makes sense. Healing is not simply about learning better information or trying harder to think the right thoughts. We are deeply relational beings, created by God to grow and mature through connection—with Him and with one another. When our hearts have been wounded, those wounds can affect our ability to experience that connection.

This is where the work of inner healing becomes so important. Inner healing is the healing of the heart from the wounds we have accumulated throughout our lives. It is not a single experience or a quick fix, but an ongoing encounter with God's truth and love that gradually brings us greater freedom, healing, and holiness.

God Designed Us for Relationship

Scripture has always told us that human beings were created for relationship. We were made to love God and to love one another. We belong to a body. We are adopted into a family. We bear one another’s burdens, and we comfort others with the comfort we ourselves have received. Modern neuroscience gives us another window into something Scripture has been telling us all along: relationships profoundly shape us.

Our earliest relationships help teach our brains what to expect from other people and from the world around us. Is it safe to need someone? Will someone come when I am distressed? Can I make a mistake and remain loved? Can I experience strong emotions without losing connection? Can someone be disappointed in me without rejecting me? Over time, these experiences become more than memories. They influence the way we instinctively respond to relationships—including, sometimes, our relationship with God.

Our past, unhealed wounds can become obstacles to knowing God as He truly is and loving others as freely as we desire. If love has repeatedly been accompanied by rejection, abandonment, criticism, betrayal, or shame, we naturally learn to protect ourselves. We build walls around our hearts.

Those walls often served an important purpose at one time. They protected something tender when we did not yet know another way to protect it. The problem is that walls designed to keep pain out can eventually keep love out, too. They can make it difficult to receive love from others, to give love freely, and even to experience the love of God.

Healing, then, is not simply about tearing down our defenses. It is allowing God to show us that we no longer need some of them.

Knowing God’s Love and Experiencing God’s Love

This helps explain why we can know something is true while struggling to experience it as true. A person may sincerely believe, “God loves me,” while another part of them is constantly waiting for rejection. Someone may know that God is merciful while living as though every mistake places God's love in jeopardy. Another person may know that their spouse is not their enemy, yet find their body preparing for battle during an ordinary disagreement. This is not necessarily a failure of faith. Sometimes it reveals a place in the heart that has not yet encountered the truth we already understand with our minds.

One of the central ideas in the Life Model presented in Living From the Heart Jesus Gave You is the importance of joy. We often think of joy as happiness or excitement, but Wilder describes something more relational. Relational joy is the experience of knowing that someone is genuinely glad to be with us. Think about the face of someone who loves you lighting up when you walk into the room. The message is simple: I’m glad you’re here.

Experiences like these help build our capacity for connection, resilience, and emotional regulation. We learn that we can experience distress and eventually return to peace because we are not alone in it. This also gives us a beautiful way to think about our relationship with God.

What if we didn’t only believe that God loves us because Scripture says He does? What if we gradually learned to experience ourselves as someone God delights in—not someone He reluctantly tolerates, not a project He is constantly correcting, and not someone who needs to perform well enough to keep Him pleased, but a beloved child? Inner healing allows the truths we profess with our minds to travel more deeply into our hearts.

Our Wounds Can Become Unfinished Stories

Trauma and painful experiences can leave us with what might be thought of as unfinished stories. Something happened to us, and in the midst of that experience we formed conclusions about ourselves, other people, or God.

I am alone.

I am not worth protecting.

My needs are too much.

People always leave.

If I make a mistake, I will lose love.

I have to keep everyone happy to be safe.

God wasn't there.

The painful event may have ended years ago, but the story can continue to shape our lives because our hearts are still living according to the meaning we made of it. Inner healing invites God into these unfinished stories. Rather than simply analyzing the past or trying to convince ourselves that we shouldn't feel the way we do, we allow the Holy Spirit to guide us back toward the places that still need His presence.

God does not erase our history or pretend that what hurt us didn't happen. Instead, He can begin to retell the story from His vantage point. He can reveal where He was, what was true about us when we believed something very different, and what He wants us to know now. This is why Christian inner healing is more than remembering. It is encounter. We aren't merely asking, What happened to me? We are also asking, Jesus, what do You want me to know about what happened to me?

Why We Sometimes Resist Healing

Even when we want healing, there can be parts of us that are understandably afraid of it. Sometimes we haven't really given God permission to enter certain places. We may trust Him with most of our lives while quietly keeping a particular memory, relationship, loss, or wound behind a locked door.

Sometimes people are afraid that looking honestly at childhood wounds means blaming or dishonoring their parents. But acknowledging that we were wounded does not require us to condemn the people who wounded us. Parents can love their children deeply and still fail them in important ways. They can give us many wonderful things while also leaving wounds that need attention. Healing allows us to hold both truths at the same time.

We may also be afraid of what will happen if painful memories surface. What if opening that door makes everything worse? What if I remember something I don't want to remember? What if the emotions become overwhelming?

This is one reason the guidance of the Holy Spirit is so important. Inner healing should not be an aggressive search for painful memories or an attempt to force ourselves back into traumatic experiences. We don't have to hunt for wounds. We can ask the Holy Spirit to reveal what He wants to heal, when He wants to heal it, and to lead the process with gentleness and truth.

Healing Doesn't Mean Never Becoming Overwhelmed

Another important idea in Wilder’s work is that maturity isn’t the ability to avoid difficult emotions. Mature people still experience fear, anger, grief, shame, disappointment, and pain. The difference is that they increasingly develop the ability to remain themselves—and remain relational—even while experiencing those emotions.

That is an important counseling goal. We aren’t necessarily trying to create a life in which nothing activates us. We’re learning how to experience activation without losing ourselves. Can I be angry and still remember who I am? Can I be afraid without allowing fear to make every decision? Can I experience conflict without immediately attacking, withdrawing, pleasing, or shutting down? Can I feel shame without concluding that I am shameful? Can I be disappointed in myself while remembering how God sees me?

Sometimes our strongest reactions reveal exactly where healing is still needed. A spouse sounds irritated and suddenly we feel abandoned. Someone criticizes us and we immediately become defensive. A friend doesn't respond and our mind constructs an entire story about what we've done wrong. Someone is disappointed in us and we feel an almost desperate need to make everything okay.

Rather than condemning these reactions, we can become curious about them. What is happening inside me right now? What does this situation seem to mean to me? When have I felt this way before? What am I afraid will happen? What am I trying to protect? And eventually, Holy Spirit, what do You want me to know here?

Curiosity creates room for healing where condemnation usually creates more hiding.

Healing Gives Us the Freedom to Love

The goal of inner healing is not simply to become less anxious, less reactive, or more comfortable. Those things may happen, and they matter. But Christian healing ultimately has a greater purpose: freedom to love.

Jesus tells us that the greatest commandments are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Yet wounded hearts often have difficulty loving freely. Fear makes us protect ourselves. Shame makes us hide. Rejection makes us cling or withdraw. Resentment keeps us bound to what happened. The need for approval makes us choose what keeps others happy rather than what God is asking of us.

As God heals these places, we become increasingly free. We can love another person without needing them to fill every empty place in us. We can forgive without pretending that what happened was acceptable. We can establish boundaries without hatred. We can receive criticism without collapsing. We can disappoint someone without believing we have become unlovable.

Most importantly, we become freer to choose God's will.

Christian spiritual tradition sometimes describes this freedom as holy indifference or divine detachment. It does not mean that we stop caring about what happens. It means that our attachments, fears, wounds, and desires no longer have the final word. Instead of saying, God, I'll follow You as long as it doesn't cost me this, the healed heart becomes increasingly able to say, God, I trust You. Show me what You desire, and give me the freedom to choose it.

That is a very different kind of freedom.

Becoming More Fully Who God Created Us to Be

Perhaps one of the most encouraging themes of Living From the Heart Jesus Gave You is that wounds formed in relationships can also be healed through relationships. We need people who can remain present with us when we’re distressed, who don't require us to pretend, and who can remind us who we are when we've temporarily forgotten. Healthy friendships, marriages, families, churches, and counseling relationships can become places where we experience disagreement without abandonment, vulnerability without humiliation, and imperfection without rejection.

Ultimately, though, Christian healing points beyond every human relationship to relationship with God Himself. Pastoral counseling creates space to explore not only What happened to me? and How did I learn to cope? but also Who did God create me to be? What have I come to believe about myself that isn't true? What have my experiences taught me to expect from God? Where have I built walls around my heart? What might God want me to know about the parts of my story that still hurt?

Christian counseling is sometimes misunderstood as an effort to make people behave better, but healing is much richer than behavior modification. It is becoming increasingly able to live from the person God created us to be.

Fear may still visit, but fear doesn't have to make our decisions. Shame may still speak, but we don't have to accept everything it says. Old wounds may still ache, but they don't have to dictate how we relate to the people we love. Our past can be part of our story without remaining the author of our story.

As we invite the Holy Spirit into the wounded places of our hearts, we can begin to experience God's truth where we once believed lies and His presence where we once experienced ourselves as alone. The walls around our hearts can slowly come down. We become freer to receive love and freer to give it.

That is the deeper purpose of inner healing. God does not simply want to make our wounds hurt less. He desires to heal our hearts so that we are increasingly free to know Him, to love others, and to choose His will.

We become free to live from the heart Jesus gave us.