how do we pray for Alzheimer's how do we pray for senile dementia and the first thing you have to understand is that they're not quite the same but they look very similar so dementia is really a a chemical thing and has to do with neurotransmitters in the brain and Alzheimer's is a physical degradation of the neural structure in the brain and if you look at it under a microscope it looks like moths have eaten the brain tissue and my daughter's nodding her head so if I passed the medical exam all right or at least at the Layman's level so uh so they're not quite the same but they present the same so people always say well how do we pray for this how do we see people get healed and I see a lot of people get healed of it and so here's how I think about that and it's directly tied to what I'm about to teach you but I'm going to give you an example before I get to the teaching because sometimes the picture really is worth a thousand words people who have either of these conditions commonly uh have one of three things going on one of three things going on three the first option is they did something somewhere in their life it could be more than one something but we'll just take the simplest case and say one something and they would like to forget this uh they don't really understand forgiveness they may not even be Christian so they wouldn't even have a framework for that but like the woman I described in Australia who couldn't get clear about that even though she had language for it she didn't really have genuine belief that's what's going on there um that whatever that thing is they they can't they can't get Beyond it because they're racked with guilt they're racked with remorse they're racked with shame you could throw other words on the list but that that's option one option two they had something done to them now if it's if it's the first option what is that that's a sin sickness isn't it if it's option two what I'm about to tell you this is inner healing something was done to them so it you know it doesn't always have to be a sexual example maybe they got bullied at school I remember praying for a guy in Australia in a part of the country where the weather is very hot even hotter than Fresno and uh that was supposed to be funny and they build their houses on low stilts and so there's like a crawl space under the homes and all kinds of things under end up in those crawl spaces snakes uh wombats sometimes a koala that falls out of a tree whatever but stuff ends up under the house well one day this guy was walking home from school and there was a group of kids in this class that bullied him they didn't like him and they started to chase him and they were throwing rocks at him and so he crawled under one of these houses and the the he was a little smaller than these other boys and they couldn't get under that crawl space so on the one hand he was kind of safe but they took rocks and they were throwing him under the house like this trying to hit him and they were they were hitting him so something was done to him and that might be the kind of thing that could create and Alzheimer's or a senile dementia scenario a lot of times people go to war and they they do things or see things done or have things done to them right so I think an important part of the whole pstd conversation has to do with things that might have been done to you in the context of perhaps being a pow a lot of our Vietnam Vets suffer with this and a lot of them have very big mental health issues that include dementia and Alzheimer's okay so your second option is something that's done to you so case one they have a sin sickness form of it case two it's an inner healing thing case three is slightly different but it's closer to case two and that is they didn't do anything and nothing was done to them but they observed something they were in the context of it so I've seen this for example in families with multiple kids and maybe dad would beat one of the one of the kids but for whatever reason the other kids didn't get beaten but they saw it they heard it it was traumatizing it was terrifying they're standing by they're nearby well that's going on so they need to be healed of that memory so in in a sense it was done to them but it wasn't physically done to them there's still an impact from it does that make sense okay just trying to be really crystal clear about each and every one of these so what happens is that's all your root and now later in life um the career curve maybe has flattened out they're not probably not getting another big promotion because they've reached that age where big corporations and don't really promote you uh or the kids are grown so the burden of caring for them being sure they're well attended to that they've done their homework they've gotten settled in life they finished their education they've gotten married whatever it might be that's all in the rearview mirror and so you've got this situation and the way I like to characterize this this is a metaphor it's a word picture think of somebody who likes to ride horses and maybe they like to ride bareback they don't have a saddle and reins on the horse and let's let's say it's someplace that gets a lot of fog the Central Valley can get a lot of fog at certain times of the year but so so do the highlands of Scotland and you know all that so any place that has a lot of fog could be Big Sur they've gone horseback riding and instead of you know hanging on to the horse's neck or maybe the main or however you it is you hang on when you're riding bareback they just let go of the the horse and they let the horse run where it will and they run into a fog Bank you can still if you're standing by observing this you can still hear it as the horse is Galloping but the hoof beats are getting dimmer and dimmer and dimmer and of course they're in a fog bank they can't see they can't find their way out they don't know where they are they're losing their sense of orientation and perspective how do you heal this well first thing you've got to do is figure out did they do something was something done to them or were they Observer to something and then apply the appropriate prayer technique so we talked last night about how to deal with the sin sickness one and in this thing this morning we're going to talk about what to do if something was done to them or they observed it so you how are you going to get that information well if they're not too far gone you can ask them if they are pretty far gone ask their near family and friends because nearly everybody talks a little bit about things that bother them often they don't talk much but they can at least tell you what that thing may have been and you'll at least have some definition around the problem then you'll use the appropriate prayer technique and once you've prayed inner healing over them or forgiveness of the sin sickness if that's the problem now we summon them back out of the fog so think of yourself standing on the beach in Big Sur and you say you know Janie come back to us well she's in the fog but she can Orient by your voice right does that make sense summon them literally like like Lazarus come out that same kind of thing summon them out of the fog and summon them back to you and I've literally seen it happen I was in New Jersey a couple months ago and I prayed for a woman they brought in who had very Advanced Alzheimer's and it was Alzheimer's and we had to uh we I actually had to talk to her daughter and son who had brought her about what what was her issue and they didn't know a lot but they knew a little bit so we we prayed what we knew now with this one you have to be led by the spirit and you'll just pray according to your best understanding whatever that is you'll feel weak and lame because you don't have full knowledge but you still do it and then I called her out of the fog and she literally kind of did like this and she looked and she said oh oh nice to see you her daughter was right here on my left she said where are we I didn't know that we were coming to church and she starts talking with her and she goes mom whatever the brother's name was he's right behind you she turns around she goes oh how nice to have both of you with me and she says well now that we're all together after church is over can we go to lunch they start crying they're they're like what just happened here so these concepts are super powerful but you do have to move slow enough to make sure they work a lot of times people want to pray these prayers in 60 seconds or 90 seconds that doesn't work very well does it Robert gotta take the time and let these things unpack so for her that woman in that wheelchair that morning in New Jersey a few months ago I think I prayed with her about 20 minutes which is relatively quick but I kind of knew what I was after so that accelerated things but but don't think you're going to do this in a 60-second prayer at the altar if it should happen you got lucky and you had a miracle there you go there's your answer on that one so anyway the last thing that I normally do with people who have whether it's Dementia or Alzheimer's is I'll pray for physical healing so if it's dementia we're going to pray for a rebalancing of the body chemistry that the neurotransmitters would all be correct and if it's Alzheimer's we're literally praying for a miracle the restoration of brain tissue that's been eaten up or decayed or whatever the right word is Anna could explain that but but that's how we do it