John & Paula Sandford: Healing the Family

Many people are fascinated with science fiction, the battlefield worlds of Star Wars and Star Trek. John and Paula Sandford, as healing theologians, knew that the great arena of battle is inner space, rather than outer space. With their Elijah House ministry, their passion was to evangelize the unbelieving areas of the believer’s heart. They felt called to “restore the hearts of children to the fathers and the hearts of fathers to the children.” (Malachi 4: 6)

The Sandford’s discovered through thousands of hours of Christian prayer counselling that inner healing of the heart makes us more human:

The tragedy of our culture is that men and women are becoming progressively less human.

Restoration of the inner person comes not through trying to correct our behaviour, but rather through death and restoration:

Sins need forgiveness. But our sin nature can only be dealt with by our own death on the cross. Forgiveness is done for us totally by Jesus. Death on the cross requires our participation…

Even though death, resurrection and forgiveness already happen when a person receives Jesus, we are slow to accept the new reality. John said that we are spiritual midwives attending at the birth of people. Sanctification is daily death and resurrection in Christ. Restoring the Christian family happens as we apply the Lordship of Jesus to every area of our lives. Everyone needs inner healing in order to mature in the Christian life, transforming our hearts.

Like Leanne Payne and Francis MacNutt, John and Paula were mentored by the grandmother of modern healing, Agnes Sanford.  She saw inner healing as nothing other than the confessional, the revealing and confession of long-forgotten sins (James 5:16).  Paula and I, said John, have heard more confessions than most priests.

John first met Agnes Sanford in 1961 in Springfield, Missouri, where she prayed for the healing of his back by asking the Lord to enable him to forgive his mother.  His childhood relationship with his mother had been very difficult. In John’s subsequent dream, five-foot-four Agnes Sanford tackled to the ground the six-foot-tall weightlifter John Sandford before racing with him through a skyscraper turning on lights. John commented: “Ever since then, the Lord has been turning on lights in my tower of knowledge.”

In 1963, John joined Agnes as a teacher in many inner healing seminars conducted by her School of Pastoral Care. 

After the death of her husband, Agnes Sanford came to John and Paula, needing love to come out of her walls of depression and to live again.  It was a great privilege to prayerfully release her from her depression.

Four key areas where John and Paula made key contributions were in the area of the heart of stone, inner vows, bitter root judgments, and performance orientation.  These four areas have been key to the Sandford’s success in restoring marriages and reversing ‘silent divorce.’  John and Paula’s vulnerability about their marriage challenges gave courage for many other couples to be transparent in seeking healing.

John and Paula often opened up inner healing by asking three questions:

1)        What was your father like?

2)        What was your mother like?

3)        Did they give you affection?

Because Paula’s mom struggled with anger, so did Paula in the early days of raising her children. Through deep inner healing, Paula became very sweet, even when she later had Alzheimer’s. Her son Mark said:

Whenever my wife Maureen and I visited her, memories of the angry mother of my distant childhood faded in the warm glow of gentle hugs and kisses and “I love you” and “I’m so proud of you.” We never detected a hint of anger toward us.

Both John and Paula Sandford were wounded by their fathers being workaholics whom they only saw on weekend. This left them with bitter root judgments that their spouses would not be available for them.  As Hebrews 12:15 puts it, “see to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.”  Bitterness defiles everything.  John said:

What is in us either blesses or defiles others. There are specific ways that bitter roots defile. Our bitter root judgements can draw out the worst behaviour in people.

Forgiveness by John and Paula of their fathers brought great healing to their marriage. John found it easier to be present to Paula when she no longer saw him through the eyes of her absent father.

For the first 18 years of their marriage, Paula could not keep the house tidy.  Everything was messy. When John repented of his bitter root judgement about his mom being messy, Paula could keep the house tidy, with her children actually helping her.

Marriage, said the Sandfords, is a twenty-four-hours-a-day, 365-days-a-year, exercise in the art of forgiveness. The ability to completely forgive is perhaps the most needed skill requiring restoration in family life today. Forgiveness is vital in inner healing.  When we forgive our spouse, our hearts are more tender as the roots of bitterness are removed. This makes it easier to be kind and generous to our spouse. No more silent treatment, putdowns, or screaming. How does your family handle conflict? 

Because John’s mother was not safe to be around, he made an inner vow not to be open to a woman. Through breaking this inner vow, God radically restored intimacy within his marriage.

John’s father suffered from procrastination, never finishing things. Part of John’s heart of stone was that he was locked into his inner vow that unlike his dad, he would finish things. This caused him to not be available to his wife Paula because he would not stop until he had finished whatever project that he was already doing, whether ministry or sports. This hooked into Paula’s inner vow that her husband would not interrupt things to be available to her. Breaking this inner vow allowed John to be present to Paula in a life-giving way.

The greatest difficulty concerning forgiveness, said the Sandfords, is that most often we do not know we still cherish resentment, or have lied to ourselves. People almost inevitably think they have forgiven when they haven’t. Until we lay the axe to the bitter root of unforgiveness, there is no rest. The Sandfords held that

Bitter-root judgments are the most common, most basic sins in all marital relationships – perhaps in all of life. 

Because of bitter root judgments, we continually look for a fight to happen with our spouse. Seldom are marital fights ‘clean’, (i.e. actually concerning what they seem to be about.) Marriage is fraught with surprises.

The best way to destroy a marriage, said the Sandfords, is to be sure to win every argument.  They taught extensively about biblical listening: 

Real listening is the most difficult art in the world precisely because it calls for the most complete and constant death of self.

True inner healing breaks the curse of self-centredness, releasing us to a life of service. The single root cause of failure, said the Sandfords, in every marriage is selfishness. 

When a person has a heart of stone, especially clergy and caregivers, they are incapable of divulging their inner being to another. Receiving is always riskier than giving. The heart of stone, said John, is an automatic hiding place with us, a hard place inside of us that resists trusting brothers and sisters.  Love is a fire that will melt whatever remains of the heart of stone.

Performance orientation, as described in Galatians 3: 1-5, leaves us stuck on an endless treadmill of trying harder to be good enough. We so easily believe the lie that we will never be loved unless we do things perfectly. John Sandford commented: “God doesn’t want us to try. He wants us to ‘die’ so that He can do it through us.”

All of us can learn from the wisdom of John and Paula Sandford which is available in many books and also on YouTube.  Would you like God to give you a heart of flesh? Would you like to break any inner vows off your life? Would you like to be released from any bitter root judgments?  Would you like to be set free from performance orientation? Jesus is waiting to set us free.