For ten years, physician Peter Boelens and his wife Eleanor have been practicing a new treatment for depression and anxiety – healing prayer that invites Christ into clients’ painful memories.  Clients still remember past hurtful events, but their pain is gone.  Released to Soar describes the Boelens’ healing prayer process, documents its effectiveness, and demonstrates its practice – for readers’ personal use or to help others.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Section 1: Understanding Healing Prayer

Chapter 1: Wounds are Real, but God Can Heal

Chapter 2: Change Your Mind, Change Your Life through Prayer

Section 2: Administering Healing Prayer

Chapter 3: Preparing the Way for Healing Prayer

Chapter 4: Seeing Life through New Eyes

Chapter 5: Healing through Forgiving

Chapter 6: Going Deeper into Inner Healing

Chapter 7: Removing Strongholds of Evil

Chapter 8: Staying Healthy

Chapter 9: A Closing Note to Prayer Ministers

Section 3: Appendices

Chapter 10: Appendix A: Resources for Prayer Ministers

Chapter 11: Appendix B: Additional Prayers

Chapter 12: Appendix C: A Randomized Trial of the Effect of Prayer on Depression and Anxiety

Chapter 13: Appendix D: Prayers Included in the Book

Chapter 14: Appendix E: Recommended Healing Prayer Reading

Endorsements

We heartily recommend Released to Soar, which concentrates on how to pray for inner healing, forgiveness, and deliverance. It is a practical guide, showing a prayer minister how to administer healing prayer.  We hope that many counselors read Released to Soar and are encouraged to pray for inner healing.

Francis MacNutt, Ph.D., Christian Healing Ministries, Inc.

In the past decade, scientific research has given us a better understanding not only of the integral functioning of the most complex organ in our body, the brain, but also the interconnectedness of the psychological, spiritual, and physical aspects of our being.  This book brings these components together, documenting the effect of prayer on two of the most prominent mental health disorders in our country and the world – depression and anxiety.  A door is now open to gain an understanding of how prayer may initiate a cascade of events that lead to emotional healing.  This book, then, is a must-read for anyone in need of emotional healing.

Harold G. Koenig, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Associate Professor of Medicine, Duke University Medical Center

About the Authors

Over their lifetime, Dr. Peter and Eleanor Boelens have founded and worked in Christian medical ministries: a community health, church-planting program in postwar South Korea; Cary Christian Health Center in the delta of Mississippi; indigenous, worldwide community health ministries through the Luke Society; and Shalom Prayer, a psycho-spiritual healing prayer ministry.  Released to Soar is their third book.  The stories of their other ministries are told in Delta Doctor and Where Next, Lord?  The Boelens divide their time between Mississippi and Michigan.  Maureen Rank, author or coauthor of fourteen books, has assisted the Boelens with all three books about their ministries.