Some years ago I opened an inner healing conference with the statement that an inner healing movement and an apostolic move of God are happening at the same time, not out of coincidence, but because they are essential to each other.
I continue to maintain this position. The vast majority of inner healing seems to be connected to relational issues. Many problems and challenges people face are connected to their journey of discovering to be sons and daughters of God and godly men and women. In other words, learning to be secure men and women who are able to live out of the truth of their identity and security rather than dysfunction and fear.
An apostolic move of God is about sending people into the world. As we see the change in emphasis from gathering to sending, trusting people to know who they are and behave accordingly is central. Insecure people will revert to fear and control, failing to give people the opportunity to find their full potential.
As part of our apostolic commission, we need to raise up ‘big’ people and send them into places which we have no access to and no control over. We need to trust that they will express themselves in those environments out of their secure knowledge of their sonship, and thereby reveal the heart of the Kingdom and the King.
Bill Johnson talks about four key behaviours for the believer: risking, dreaming, trusting and serving. For these to be healthy, people need to be not only empowered but also clear on who they are made to be. The potential for failure in each of these means that our identity must be in who we are rather than what we achieve or fail to achieve. Someone insecure, living life with an orphan mindset, is more liable to find their identity in successful performance or in the shame of failure. A secure son or daughter is less likely to find themselves in that position.
Isaiah tells us that God’s government is on the shoulders of a son. The nature of that government is determined by the character of the one on whose shoulders it is built. The apostolic is a governmental mindset and so the importance of the journey of inner healing for the leader(s) cannot be overstated. My relational wounds need to be healed up so that I am able to healthily relate to my Heavenly Father and to those around me. The response of an unhealed and hurting orphan heart will lead to performance, control, victim thinking, a poverty mentality, and jealousy or competition towards anyone around me who demonstrates strength, success or ability. The apostolic is a mindset of increase. It goes with dreaming, risking, trusting, hoping, and believing. Isaiah prophesies that there will be no end to the increase of the government built on the shoulders of a son. The controlling leader is likely to encounter organisational decrease in the form of stagnancy, infighting, leaders leaving, attempted takeovers and organisational splits and coups.
What is in us comes out of us. Healthy inner thinking means healthy leadership. The inverse is true. We need apostolic leaders who can be secure in truly trusting, empowering and releasing those different, more gifted and more anointed than themselves to do the things they would never do. Inner healing and the apostolic are linked for this reason.