 This is a great, great honor and a blessing for us to be with you during this week. I'll just start with, as we were worshiping the Lord, I just, I just had the impression of the, of the little boy that had a few loaves and a few fish. And I felt like the Lord was saying to me that if I, if we can give away our few loaves and fish to you, then the Lord is going to use it to, to reach multitudes. So that's, that will be my prayer during, during this time that in somehow we are able to, to impart to you what the Lord has entrusted to us. And before I say a couple of words, I just, I think I want to tell you a little story about a ninth grade science teacher who was really trying to teach his students about learning. And sometimes when you, sometimes when you teach something, people miss the point. So this, this teacher took, came in one day and he had four worms and he was very excited about this experiment and he, and when the kids saw four worms, they all went crazy. And so he took one worm and he put it in some alcohol and some, another one into some sugar and a third one into some tobacco and a fourth one. So you understand the purpose of the whole thing. He put it into some good soil and the next day comes in, students are all excited about these worms, pulls one out of the alcohol, it's dead, pulls one out of the sugar, it's dead, pulls one out of the tobacco, it's dead. And then he's holding up this worm that's, that's wiggling around. And, and he says now, now students, what did you learn from this experiment? Johnny raised his hand, says, I learned that if you drink alcohol, eat sugar and smoke tobacco, you'll never have worms. So, so for some of you, that might be the best takeaway of the week, you know. Now, it's a great honor to be here in this long tradition of the priest, deacons and seminarians conference at Franciscan and I'm just so grateful for Father Dave for entrusting us with this, with you and with bringing this message to you this week. And of course, we're all, it's all good news that Father Dave is, is now the president of the Franciscan University. It's just, it's just a great, brought a great joy to my heart. Father Mike was my cousin, was my cousin, is my cousin. And so we've followed the history of Steubenville and Franciscan from the beginning. And I know Father Mike is rejoicing in heaven right now. So we're here as a team. Here's my lovely wife, Janet, who's been a partner in Unbound from the very beginning. There would be no book or anything if it wasn't for her. So you can say hello, Janet. And this is my amazing son, Matt, who is the future of part of the Father Ministry. So we're just really so delighted to see him come into his anointing. So tomorrow, oh, Father Boniface. Father Boniface, ah, Father Boniface is the last member of our team. I don't know, did you hook on to us or did we hook on to you? But Father Boniface really has taken up the message of Unbound in a very powerful way, and he brings something special to it as a spiritual director. And you will be delighted to hear from him this week. Tomorrow, during the message, Janet and Matt and I will introduce ourselves a little more to you, but I'm going to tell you one fact that I'm not sure many people don't know about me. I was a student here in 1967-68 at the College of Steubenville. And Father Mike used to tell me, he said, if you spend one year at Harvard, everybody goes around and says, I'm an alumni of Harvard. And he said, you should be saying you're an alumni of Franciscan. So today is the first time. I'm an alumni of Franciscan University and proud of it. So I'm also very grateful to all of you who have responded to the Lord, to the call to the priesthood, the deaconate, and the seminarians that are responding to the call of the Lord. I know in my life, there's always been a priest there at the significant times, at those moments of greatest need, greatest joy. There's been a priest bringing the presence of the Lord, bringing the wisdom and the counsel and that fatherly presence. And so I just feel just such a great privilege and honor to be able to speak to you. And as I said, if we can give something even small to you, I'm sure it's going to affect multitudes. Part of the Father Ministries really began in 1997 when I began to... So I prayed for people for healing and for deliverance for many years. But in 1997, we just got a few pieces of wisdom that put together a picture of how to minister to people in a powerful way, in a way that did not provoke or challenge or bring forth a response from demons, but set people free at a profound level. In 2003, my book, Unbound, A Practical God Deliverance, was published. It took several years after I wrote it because I was unknown to actually get it published. And since then, it's traveled around the world. It's been translated into 15 different languages and there's a few more on the way. And we've been producing the training materials and we're just getting to that point where we feel like we can say to people like yourself, we've just about got everything you need to be able to establish an unbound ministry team in your parish. And Matt's going to share a little bit more about that in the coming days. So our message is a simple message in a certain way, but it's profound because it really touches the human heart. But everything we speak about this week will revolve around what we call five keys. And they are repentance and faith, forgiveness, renunciation, authority, and the Father's blessing. And we're going to want to help you to put them together because they feed off one another. You might know four of the keys and just get one key fresh and it might just change everything for you. Using the unbound model has helped people around the world to unlock people's hearts. We have friends that are in Japan right now. And they were told when they went and started going to Japan on a mission strip three years ago, they were told, oh, the Japanese, they don't share anything. They're kind of closed. They're really personal. And after hearing the message, they're lining up for a ministry session. They're lining up ready to share some of the deep things of their heart that they've never told anybody before. And so unbound is called a practical guide to deliverance. It means that it really gives you practical tools on how to help somebody respond. You're going to have a lot of opportunities this week to grow closer to the Lord. We're going to celebrate the Eucharist together. There's going to be holy hours. There's going to be time for personal prayer unless you nap throughout that time. There's also going to be time for the sacrament of reconciliation. And we hope you take advantage of every aspect of this retreat. One more aspect of our team is going to show up on Wednesday evening. And we have 20 leaders from four different states, 20 leaders of Unbound Ministry showing up from four different states to be available to you if you want to sign up for a session. We're going to explain that more tomorrow, but that can, for some of you, can be a real significant turning point. And so as you're listening to our message about the five keys and you're hearing the story, just be aware, is God tapping me on the heart? Is he urging me? Is he moving me to take advantage of these teams that have, and thank you, Franciscan University, for hosting them, but they're all paying their own way to get here. And so they will be here for you on Wednesday night and throughout the day on Thursday. And they will be here at the prayer meeting on Thursday night. So if someone wants just brief ministry with them, you'll have that opportunity as well as have an opportunity with the Franciscan teams to pray for you for healing and anointing. So tonight what I would like to do is I would like to speak about Unbound and the power of the gospel. It's mostly about the power of the gospel, but I want you to understand that Unbound Ministry, whatever you might associate with it, is really an expression of the power of the gospel. And so we have been able to bring this message far beyond charismatic events, far beyond, we've been able to bring it to bishops and priests and many different countries, and they've been able to receive it because they understand the power of the gospel even if they distance themselves from the power of the Holy Spirit. It's kind of a sneaky thing. It kind of gets at them in a sneaky way. Don't tell them I said that. We make a statement at every Freedom in Christ conference that Unbound Ministry, we make no promise that Unbound Ministry will help everyone with their specific impairment, but we have confidence in the power of the gospel to help everyone in need. The gospel is the answer to the deepest questions of the heart. So I'm going to read one testimony to you just to get a picture, and I like this testimony because of the way she used the words, the way she expressed it. It was actually someone after conference she came to me for ministry, and when she left she looked a little bewildered, and so I said, Rachel, would you call her and make sure she's sorting this through? Because something deep happened, but I don't know if her mind could catch up to it, and this is what she wrote. Many years ago, I always saw myself as average, that all took a turn for the worst between the sexual abuse I endured, many surgeries, and infertility issues. I felt like a monster until the Unbound Conference. I never felt more beautiful. In fact, I never felt more beautiful in all my life. The issues that came up were healed. I no longer cry or feel terribly sad when I think about them. They've gone from subjective to objective. I know they were there. I remember. I see those as part of my past, but I have not attached to them anymore. It was a huge release. I really did not know what I was supposed to feel. That's what I was watching. But as I drove home and digested everything, I realized it was just gone, and the weight of the emotional ties I wrapped around my heart were gone. I felt physically lighter. It was amazing. We hear stories like that all the time. Matter of fact, it was one time I gave his presentations to his priests, his priests, and a couple weeks later, he wrote me an email and said, since the conference, there's miracles happening in my parish. I quickly wrote him back and said, I called him up. I said, could you tell me about the miracles? He said, well, I can't, because they're all happening in confession. We're going to be teaching you the long way to be able to interview and to train laypeople to participate in this ministry, but we want you to understand that the principles can be applied and integrated in the way that you hear confession, and maybe Father Boniface will share a little bit about that. We see unbound ministry as assisting people to access the power of the gospel. We see unbound as evangelization, and the freedom that comes is part of our ongoing sanctification that the Lord desires for us all. So I just want to put it in a context so that you understand it and don't label it simply as a deliverance ministry associated with other words associated with deliverance. As you know, the gospel means good news, or it's translated glad tidings. In Luke chapter two, it says, but the angel said to them, do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David, a savior has been born to you. He is the Messiah, the Lord. The savior will cause great joy to all who receive him. We carry a message about a savior, and that savior is able to save us from whatever oppresses us, whatever binds us. And when we receive the savior into those areas of darkness, it causes great, great joy. Pope Francis wrote about the joy of the gospel, and he challenges us. The joy of the gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness, and loneliness. Now when I read that, I felt challenged. Sometimes we proclaim the joy of the savior. We proclaim salvation, and we invite them to a life in the spirit seminar. We invite them to something, to encounter the Lord, which is awesome. But here Pope Francis is proclaiming that the savior doesn't only save you from sin, but the effects of sin and sorrow, inner emptiness, and loneliness. It's a powerful proclamation of what's available to us in the gospel. The gospel has power, and whether we're accessing that power through the unbound model or any other means, there's a pattern. There's a pattern that we need to understand, because if we miss something of the pattern, we might miss the effectiveness of the gospel. The first thing to know is we carry the good news of salvation within us. We proclaim it by the power of the spirit, and we assist people in making a response, which will help them to accept and surrender to the power of God's love that saved them in Jesus Christ. So there's a pattern, and as I go through this, I want you to try to catch us there. Part of that, that maybe you can grow in, because that will open the door for you to understand unbound ministry in a new way. Pope Francis spoke about the object of our sharing the gospel. He spoke about the goal being a new heart, a changed mind that leads to a changed life, and so when we're ministering to people, that's what we're looking for. We're looking for a changed life, a new heart. And so he writes or spoke, there have been so many revolutionaries in history, many indeed, yet none of them have had the force of this revolution, which brought Jesus to us. A revolution to transform history, a revolution that changes the human heart in depth. The revolution of history, of history, the revolutions of history have changed political and economic systems, but none have really changed the human heart. True revolution, the revolution that radically transforms life was brought about by Jesus Christ through his resurrection. Moreover, Benedict the 16th said this revolution is the greatest mutation in the history of humanity. And further on it says, in this day and age, unless Christians are revolutionaries, they're not Christians. They must be revolutionaries through grace. Grace itself, which the Father gives us through the crucified, dead, and risen Jesus Christ, makes us revolutionaries. Because once again, as Benedict the 16th said, he is the greatest mutation in history of humanity because he changes the heart. As Ezekiel said, I will take out of you, I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you the heart of flesh. So for some of you this week, you have an appointment with the surgeon. He wants to take out that stony part of your heart. And so we've done like six of these five-day retreats for priests, and I've discovered that there are those that have never really even yielded their heart to Jesus. They've been really good at serving the Lord and dedicated their life to Jesus, but there's something of their heart that was withheld. And I imagine there's some here that either, I prayed with one priest, he said, I said, did you ever have an encounter with Jesus? He just really knew, he loved you. And he said, yeah, when I went to Franciscan University, I had that encounter. And what happened since then? It's just been a distant memory. He's living off of it for so long, but Jesus wants you to encounter him again, and he wants you to go away with that sense of a living power of the gospel, with great hope and expectancy that you're going to have opportunities to see people's hearts change in a regular way or in a more impactful way than you've seen recently. Power of the gospel is the love of God. There's no greater power than the power of the love of God flowing from the heart of Jesus. In Romans 5-5 it says, and hope does not disappoint us or put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. And we're warned, we're warned in the scripture not to complicate the gospel. If you do, it's going to be detached, it's going to lose its power. And for some of us it's like going back to the beginning and being renewed and really believing in the power of the message that we proclaim. 1 Corinthians 1-17 says, For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, not with elegant wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. You know the core of the gospel is the krigma, and the apostle Paul understood the importance of the core of the gospel. He says in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 1 and 2, When I came to you, brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom, for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Some of us need to go back, go back to the core, to the center. I'd like to share with you three aspects of the gospel. That's the foundation for unbound ministry and for any other ministry as well. The first is the gospel is a gift. So what do we need? We need more faith. The second is it must be proclaimed, so we need more anointing. And the third is a response is required. So what do we need? We need to understand the human heart at a deeper level so we can help people make a response from the depths. The good news of salvation has been initiated by God. Romans 5-8 is one of my favorite scriptures to remember, but God demonstrates His own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Jesus loved us while we were separated from Him. Sometimes we don't act like we believe that. We sin, we mess up, we fail, embarrass ourselves, we fall again, we fall into darkness and disillusionment and bitterness, and we're in that dark place. And more than a couple of you are, you know, it's likely that more than a couple of you have been in the past or presently struggling with bondage to pornography or something else. And you know, and we distance ourselves from God and we think God is that judge and He's kind of crossing His arms and He's just looking at us and maybe disdain or some other way that we project upon Him something other than His true character. But the truth is, in your very darkness and in what you are facing and what you are struggling with, the Father is saying, here is my Son, right now in this darkness, in this moment my Son died for you, that you could be saved, that you could be free, that you could be redeemed. It doesn't belong to you anymore. Your sin, as you confess it, doesn't belong to you anymore. I found that many times when we minister at these priest retreats, there's something about the tragedies of the past that are still subjective and still reigning and still present, not transformed like that lady shared with me from something that's subjective and painful to something that is now objective. God wants to take the sting away. He wants to take the stain of sin, the oppression that comes with sin, the deception, the twisting of the image of God that comes with it. He wants to take that away and restore us. The second aspect of the Gospel is that it needs to be proclaimed. Disciples were sent to preach, to testify, to make disciples, and so too we have been given this ministry of reconciliation. I'm just going to read a couple of scriptures real quick, but I want you to just notice what I emphasize as I read it. In Mark 16, 20, it says, then the disciples went out and preached everywhere and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by signs that accompanied it. They went out and preached. You go out and preach. The Lord is working with you. It's not up to you alone. Matthew 28, 18. We take great comfort out of the scripture that says, I will be with you always, even to the end of the age, but listen to the context. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Holy Spirit and teach them to obey everything I've commanded you. And surely I'm with you to the end of the age. I'm always with you. The prime place without spoken is when you go and when you preach, when you're making disciples, he is with you to do it. We do our part. He changes the heart. The third aspect of the gospel is the response. So we have the gift, needs to be proclaimed, and there needs to be a response. Unbound is specifically designed to help people make a personal response to the gospel and encounter the Lord in deep places in their hearts. And Acts chapter two, verse 37, when the people heard the proclamation of the gospel by Peter, it says they were cut to their hearts and said to Peter and the other apostles, brothers, what shall we do? They were cut to the heart with the proclamation. They were cut to the heart and wanted to change, wanted to know what to do. God wants to release faith. I'm a kind of simple thinker, and I need things to be simple. So I've often wondered, people said, well, you've come to faith, you know, you love, live the faith, you're in the faith, and people keep talking about the faith. And sometimes I wondered, well, what exactly does it mean? Or Lord, could you give me a simple way of understanding faith so that I could translate it? And this is what I think he gave me, which I might have got from somebody else. I don't know. It's simply faith is our grace filled response to the revelation of God. Faith is our grace filled response to revelation. The response of the heart, people can hear the gospel for 60 years and never be helped to make a response. And that's what we're focused on doing in Unbounded Ministry. We want to create an atmosphere of love and acceptance where people are safe to expose the darkness and respond to his saving power. So at all of the conferences that we do, and I'm going to speak about the first key tomorrow, which is repentance and faith, but we've learned how important it is to help people to make a personal and verbal expression of what's in their heart. Now if you've been doing life in the spirit seminars or discovering Christ or various Alpha or various evangelism programs, you know how important it is for people to profess what the message is that they've received, that they make a verbal response. But we've learned that it's really helpful to stand with people all the time and to help them pray that prayer of surrender. And God uses it to transform their hearts in light of whatever issue is right there right now. Romans chapter 10 verse 8 and 9 it says the word is near you on your lips and in your heart because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised them from the dead, you will be saved. Your will is so extremely important. God will not violate your will. People actually get in trouble with with the demonic and for issues of bondage because of of the expression of their will. And we need to help people give expression to their will in response to the good news. And it's really clear to me through all my years of experience that speaking with the lips unlocks the heart and opens people to respond. When people come to us for unbound ministry, we know that they're not coming for pity. They're not coming to be hugged, to have their hands held. If they understand what unbound ministry is about, they're coming to be set free. And what they need is my faith. They need your faith. They need to believe in the Savior that delivers them from loneliness and inner emptiness and the bondage that they're facing at this present time. So what I'm doing in this message so far is I just want you to understand the temptation, you know, unbound is called the practical guide to deliverance. Some people get hung up on their word deliverance because they have associations with it. Matter of fact, the first talk we give at every conference is deliverance is a good word and because it needs to be recovered because our greatest deliverance was in our baptism. We were delivered from the kingdom of darkness and brought into the kingdom of the beloved Son through baptism and we experience it by faith. Deliverance is a good word. What I'd like to do in the next few minutes is just share with you a little bit about how evil spirits influence us. There's a lot of many of you. Maybe many of you might be exorcists and there might be a number of you that have been in deliverance ministry for many, many years and I'm so grateful to your labor of love and how you're ministering to the people of God. What the Lord has entrusted us with is a non-confrontational approach to deliverance meaning that we're doing nothing to provoke evil spirits or confront evil spirits what we're interested in doing is ministering to people's hearts and helping them to understand how evil spirits affect us, influence us, and seek to gain, to bring us into bondage. So a lot of times when people hear the word deliverance they think about the devil and one of the things that we want to do is to transform that so that people start thinking about deliverance as freedom. I have been delivered, I've been transferred into the kingdom of the beloved Son. Jesus when he cast out demons on one occasion it says the spirits went out and wandered around looking for a place to rest and then they came back and they found an empty place and they brought some of their friends and they rested there. The most interesting thing about that passage to me is they were looking for a place to rest. Where do you rest? I rest in places that are familiar to me like my home or I rest in places that are beautiful. Nature like the ocean or in the forest it gives rest to my soul. Where do demons look to rest? They want to rest in places that are familiar to them, places that are like them, sin, darkness, rebellion, lies, deception, the things that we carry around in our heart. They want to gain influence and then they want to twist it and they want to gain, they want to enslave us and to bring us under a level of bondage. This is the most helpful quote from Saint John Paul II says, the wisdom of Christ makes you capable of pushing on to discover the deepest source of evil existing in the world and it stirs us to proclaim to all men the truth that we have learned from the Master's lips and he's referring to Mark 721 that evil comes from within people from their hearts so the root of evil is within man. The remedy therefore must also begin in the heart and it is precisely here that our Lord wishes to lead us. So the shift that some folks have to make in applying unbound ministry or to learning unbound ministry is that we're focused not on evil spirits but we're focused on people's hearts. As you know evil spirits are intellect and will. They're fallen angels, they don't have bodies, they go where they focus their thoughts, they focus their thoughts on darkness that is what that's what's familiar to them. To go means they carry their presence and through carrying their presence they want to affect our emotions and our imaginations and they want to find an entryway into our thinking so that their presence can attach to something we're holding, some lie that we're holding, some deception that's been planted in us from the beginning like there's something wrong with me or it's all my fault or I'm responsible for everything or I don't belong anywhere. We just grabbed on to some thought along the way and the truth of the gospel as you've learned it has been coming up against it but its power hasn't been broken and God wants to break the power of that lie that we carry and you're going to hear in Matt and Janet's story and my story that for years as believers we carried something that the Lord I know is coming up against but until we could name it identify it and make an act of the will and take back the territory we were still affected by it. See we welcome or reject the enemy's presence based upon what is in our hearts how our character is formed. If you're formed in virtue and the enemy brings a thought to you a pornographic thought you might just oh that's disgusting what no part of that if you're not formed in virtue and that same thought were to come to you you might go huh see it's what's in your heart is going to reveal how you respond to the enemy's temptation and so when he has an opening in our hearts his presence gets entangled in our thoughts and our emotions and the design of the enemy is to enslave us to bring us into bondage so it says in the scripture is anyone who sins goes on sinning becomes a slave what happens we start to think about sin in the wrong way so that's just a small thing or that's something I need we rationalize it and we start to come under that that deception that surrounds that sin and we may confess it because we know it's wrong but our thinking about it hasn't changed and it's our thinking about it that needs to be confronted and challenged so that the forgiveness we receive in the sacrament that transforms us so the enemy's design is is that we move from a problem with our flesh to a problem that has become spiritually empowered demonically empowered so sometimes people think this is abnormal or this is you deliverance is is like over there it's in the back room if you believe in angels and demons then you believe that angels influence us and they they present things to our imaginations that come from God and and you believe that the favor of God they carry the favor of God to us and and demons do the opposite it's just normal so and I think the enemy wants to make us to think you know this is something special something different something big something you know that we need an exorcist for just a normal christian life we believe in angels and demons don't we so what I want to say as we begin is that if we're driving out spirits we need to deal with people's hearts if they're going to remain in freedom you can in the as the authority of your ordination and the authority as a child of God you can drive out spirits with a word but unless the person's heart is changed it's just going to return so to conclude I just want to say I want to read from Romans chapter 1 verse 16 for I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes tomorrow I'm going to I'm going to lead you in a prayer of surrender after I do the first key and but let me give you a homework assignment tonight I want you to think about the Savior I want you to ask the Lord you know for me I go through seasons in my life and my journey with the Lord sometimes it's you know I wrote a book on on the obvious heart my son and I wrote it and it just was captivated by being by Jesus as the Son and there's other times especially when I began years ago as baptized in the spirit Jesus is Lord Jesus is Lord Jesus is Lord I mean I spent years it's not that I forgot the rest but there's a shifting that goes on in our journey as we go deeper with the Lord and and there's been times that at Christmas when we're reading the about the birth of Jesus that says a Savior has been born I've just wept I've wept just tears come to my eyes where I mask because it was the Holy Spirit just penetrating me with the awareness of him as my Savior and as the Savior and the mercy of God in sending a Savior so would you stand for a moment and I'm just gonna pray I'm gonna pray in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit and Lord I Lord I want to ask you I want to ask you but you know where each man here is at today and for some you're gonna be leading them to Jesus the Son and some Jesus is Lord but I want to I want to ask you for all of us and especially for those you're tapping on their shoulder tonight is I ask you Jesus to reveal yourself as a Savior make yourself known to them a Savior and just imagine that there's parts of your heart frustrating parts where maybe you've confessed the same sin over and over again maybe it's just a thorn in your flesh that just never goes away and and the Lord just wants you to know he knows your name and he wants you to know that he is your Savior and this power available to you to the simplicity of the gospel and Jesus we glorify you and Father we honor you through your Son amen