The Story Method is the basic and foundational healing method of any treatment protocol. Variations of it are widely practiced and accepted across all the healing disciplines simply because it’s unavoidable—when people describe their problem, they tend to describe it in terms of their own story, and then you have to deal with the repercussions of that story.

In the context of the Story Method, a story is a series of related events with sins to identify and remove. You act as an intercessor, and the person who is receiving ministry is the person telling the story. Stories are superior to list-based approaches to finding sins because:

1. People recall events through stories
2. Stories express pain to be healed while lists do not
3. People form their identities through stories

Becoming a disciple of Christ is to transform a person’s idol-centered identity into a Christ-centered identity. Thus, submitting sinful, personal stories to the lordship of Christ is a necessary part of becoming a disciple of Christ.

Story Method Overview

The Story Method is composed of one diagnostic tool, two unblocker tools, and two healing tools, but is flexible enough to add any other tools you wish to this basic framework.

To elicit a story or the next part of the story, simply ask the person, “What comes to mind?” or, “Then what happened?” If they get stuck in recalling the story, use the Memory Unblocker tool to unlock their memory. As the person recounts their story, you identify and classify sins from that story using the Story Filter tool, and then pray the Intercessory and Personal Prayers to clear those sins. If the person is free of that story, then move to the next story and repeat the process for every story that the Lord brings to mind. Clear all those stories of a particular theme, and the person will be healed of that issue.

Getting a Story

There are many stories in the person’s life, and recounting them all is too time consuming, or even impossible because the person may have forgotten some, or they happened too early in their life to be remembered. Thus, we need a way to prioritize the most important stories to heal in the person’s life. They include the root story that started the sinful pattern to be healed (e.g. the initial exposure to pornography), as well as the painful stories that shaped the person’s trajectory in life (e.g. a rape). If you clear the root story, the stories that follow that theme may lose much of their power, and you may not have to go through those subsequent stories in great detail.

Usually though it’s not that easy—people have to go through less painful stories before they are ready to face their root story. If you have a choice and limited time, go after the earlier and more significant stories (usually the more painful ones) to bring a greater level of healing in the person within the time allotted, but be responsive and sensitive to the person and the Holy Spirit to start with the stories that the person can handle.

Often, the person will tell you their story without any prompting, but if they’re stuck, follow these steps to get a significant story:

Asking, “Can you feel emotional pain?” and then “Lord, please bring to mind a story where I felt this pain” will lead you to a significant story, but if the person is blocked from feeling any pain, just ask, “Lord, please bring to mind an important story or issue that I need to deal with today.” Healing these easier stories will eventually open up the person to face the harder ones. If the person remains silent for a long time, asking, “What comes to mind?” may get the story going. If the person tells only part of a story, asking questions such as, “And then what happened?” or paraphrasing what the person has said may get you more of the story.

Even if the person can feel pain, they may not be able to recall a story associated with that pain; or, they’ll remember parts of the story, but block out the traumatic parts of it. Have the person pray the Memory Unblocker prayer to unlock the story; “I repent, renounce and forgive any vow, curse, or covenant to not hear, remember, or tell, or keep my emotions in. God, please save me.”

For harder cases, the Memory Unblocker tool is not enough to unlock the story, and more powerful spiritual warfare tools are needed to reveal the foundations of the stronghold. You can add other unblocker tools to your healing toolbox, or switch to an easier story and come back to this harder one later on.

Identifying the Sins of the Story

As the person tells their story, classify the sins revealed by that story into intercessory and personal issues using the Story Filter tool.

Intercessory issues are sins that you can ask God to remove on behalf of the person, including curses, unholy attachments, and emotional pains to be healed. Personal issues are sins that the person must personally take responsibility for because they committed them: repenting of the sins they committed, renouncing the idols they worshiped, and forgiving the people who sinned against them.

Removing the Sins

The corresponding prayers to remove those sins are called the Intercessory and Personal Prayers. Every word in these prayers has a purpose, so they should be said verbatim. They have been field tested to be as short as possible, but no shorter, because the more sins removed in a prayer session, the more healing the person will experience.

Understanding the theology behind these prayers is critical to using them correctly. Either the intercessor or person can pray the intercessory prayers, but not every intercessory prayer has to be prayed for every story; for example, if no curse came up in the story, then the intercessor does not have to to break the non-existent curse. The person must pray the personal prayers out loud with you as a witness for the healing to work (Jas 5:16).

¹⁶Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

The easiest way to do this is to read out the personal prayers and then have the person repeat after you using the first person pronoun. When they get the hang of it, encourage them to pray the prayers out loud without having to repeat after you to speed up the process by a factor of two.

Finishing the Story

After the sins have been dealt with, pray, “God, please bring any other detail of the story <Person> needs to deal with to mind.”

If something else comes up, have the person tell the missing details of the story and repeat the Story Filtering process; otherwise, you can move to the next story. If the person can hear from God, then asking, “God, am I finished with this story?” will give a stronger assurance that you are done with this story before moving to the next one along that same theme. Possible themes include:

• What (a sin): Person repents of all the times they exploded in anger.
• Who (a person): Person forgives their mother for all the times she has hurt them.
• Where and when (an era of life): Person repents of all the sins they committed during their college years.

Clear all the stories of a theme, and then the person will be consecrated in that area of their life.

Summary

The Story Method compares the person’s sharing of their stories against Scripture to identify sins, and then prays the Intercessory and Personal Prayers to clear them. It uses nothing but your knowledge of Scripture to identify what is a sin, and then applies the gospel to remove those sins. This will allow you to see or hear God.

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Further Reading

The Memory Unblocker and the Intercessory and Personal Prayers are carefully worded to be as short as possible, but no shorter. What Comes to Mind helps unblock the common case where the person remains silent for a long period of time. It may be worth your time to click the above links to understand the theology behind those tools so you know how and why they work.

The Story Filter tool helps you identify the sins of a story based on your knowledge of Scripture. Understanding the theology of temptation and consecration will help you use the Story Filter tool better.