“This may not work when you leave this room,” I often tell my participants. “I don’t know how to explain it, but there’s a special anointing on these moments. God knows I need him to speak in this way to help you heal. We’re going to ask him to speak in your imagination, but if you don’t see anything, there are other ways he’ll go about making himself known. You might hear things, sense things, or feel things. Tell me whatever you experience and I’ll help you discern it along the way.” We then begin the inner healing experience and people are often so overcome by the Holy Spirit that they cry their way through it.

But it’s not uncommon for them to return in the following weeks feeling a bit defeated. “I tried to imagine Jesus at home while praying like we did in our session and it wouldn’t work. Am I doing something wrong?” they ask. I use these moments to remind them of a few things:

(1) This is how you know that it’s not all in your head. You can literally imagine anything you want, but you are learning to tell the difference between your imagination and the Holy Spirit’s influence on your imagination.

(2) We typically do inner healing and exorcism through visions. Biblically speaking, that’s a prophetic seer gifting. Most of the people I work with don’t necessarily have that gift. Rather, it is a gift that the Holy Spirit enables my participants to momentarily operate in when they work alongside me.

(3) Paul said to eagerly desire the greater prophetic gifts, so I encourage you to keep trying outside of these sessions. Sometimes it will happen when the Spirit allows it. There’s a possibility that you might grow into this gifting now that you know what it’s like. But even if you don’t grow in the seer gifting, God will start to teach you what his voice sounds like in other ways and you’ll learn to pray in an experiential and conversational capacity.

(4) Sometimes I think the Spirit allows visions to happen more often in a communal setting because it allows others to weigh in on the issues and discern what the Spirit is saying.