 So we can do some people like it. Hey friends, you're watching Behind the Scenes, Divine Intimacy Radios, Dana Stephanie Burke. Before we jump into the show, I want to just so people know what we're talking about today. We are going to be talking about the power, the liberating power of understanding divine providence. So before we do that, we want to tell folks about something that's coming up soon that they can take advantage of if they want to grow in their marriage. Yes. And it's for people who have their pre-marrieds. So they're engaged. Yeah, they want to set it up right. Having difficulty in marriage, have a great marriage. It covers the entire spectrum, or yeah, did I say that right? Yeah, total spectrum, total wherever you are. We've had everybody all over the spectrum. Yeah. And why don't you tell them when it is? It's November 3rd through the 5th this year, 2023, at the shrine of the most blessed sacrament in Huntsville, Alabama. If you haven't been there, wow, it's an incredible venue for a marriage retreat. It's going to be a great time of the year because it'll be nice and cool. It'll be beautiful. Yeah, it's going to be the best time. So Divine Intimacy and Marriage Retreat November 3rd through the 5th. Check it out at spiritualdirection.com forward slash events. Yeah. All right, let's jump into the show. OK. When your market's at go. This is Dana Stephanie Burke. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio, your radio haven of rest. Your hermitage of the heart. Your monastery of the mind where we lift our hearts and minds to the heavens to draw on the wisdom of the saints to help us navigate the tumult of this life. The tumult of this life. This is what this shows about the tumult, tumult of our life. Yeah, because I thought you said tumult, which reminds me of toes and something maybe. No, no, no. It's tumult. Tumult. Yeah, OK. It's hard to say. Maybe it's just early in the morning. Tumult of this life and how do you navigate it? How do you get through that and God's provision to deal with the tumult of this life? Right, right. And what in the tumult is caused by our own sinfulness, the sinfulness of others. The original original fault. Really, yeah, concupiscence, the brokenness of the world or wounds, you know, all this stuff, right? It just makes it hard. And something happened to me yesterday morning that made me want to talk about this today because I thought, you know, it's so good when you fail and you share it because people don't do that very often and it doesn't. And it provides such a great lesson because you're just sharing. Instead of just talking to people and like your teaching, this is almost like I've got it all together. Here, why don't you follow me? Rather, let's just be real and say, I don't have it all together, but the Lord is helping me. But the Lord does. Yes, He does. That's right. And He loves your weakness and your brokenness. He uses it in order to glorify Himself, to bring about the kingdom, to, you know, all that. St. Paul said, I boast in my weakness. When I'm weak, I'm strong because of Him. So this is what happened yesterday. We had special guests coming. We had this beautiful time last night. We had a house full already. Focus missionaries, which was very cool. And giving them a retreat. We have just our, not you and I this time, although we've given them retreats. We had them here. We had some special guests coming to add to them. And we're just trying to get the retreat center all, you know, cleaned up and all that. And so my list is really long of things to do. And as I'm looking at the day, I'm going yikes. I've got back-to-back meetings and all of this. And then so as I'm struggling and thinking, I don't think I'm going to get everything done that I want to get done, I start to get irritated. And then I think you may have asked me to do something. I don't remember. It was nothing problematic. And then there was this meeting you and I were going to be in that, you know, with folks that I love and I want to meet with. But in that moment, I- You're overwhelmed. Let's just put the word. I think the word overwhelmed will resonate with people because at that moment you were overwhelmed. Too much going on, too much movement, too many responsibilities, too much. Just plain old too much. And, you know, by the way, I chose too much. I allowed my schedule to be that tight. I mean, so I'm in part to blame. So then I texted you and I said, is there any way we can reschedule this meeting? And it didn't hear back because it didn't have your phone. Right. Well, I had my phone, but it was on do not disturb because of morning prayer. So let's just be, you know, but I was also neck deep in making preparations because we had 16 people for dinner at the retreat center last night. And so I was deep into that. And then I was just going to hit the ground running and come sliding into home and sit with you, with your, you know, behind your computer to meet with this, with these people and to love and serve them. So I never saw the text. Right. And so, but I just assumed for some reason, not, we don't always communicate perfectly. I just assumed you would go, yeah, we'll reschedule it. And so then you show up in my office. Ready to go. Ready to go for the meeting. Happy, cheerful. And so I was, so I would say on a scale of one to 10 irritation scale, I, you know, I probably started the morning at a two, even though I spent a lot of time in prayer. And then I, and then as I start thinking about the day, it probably goes three, four. And then I texted you to try to get some relief. You show up in my office, immediately jumped to about a six or seven. And I want to say, yeah, I saw that you were struggling on your face, but you didn't say a word. Oh, God. So I didn't, I didn't pay a price. So God be praised. Thank you. So you didn't manage your emotions like super duper well. I appreciate you saying that, but here's what happened in the middle of all that. So I, in our community, we, one of the pillars of our formation is understanding the provenance of God. We're using great books like Searching for and Maintaining Peace by Jacques Philippe. It's probably the easiest one to enter into the subject. Sacrament of the present moment, Jampi Ardikusad. Best translation is Kitty Muggeridge going through that. And then kind of the capstone of that formation is a new book I have coming out this year, which is entitled Finding Peace in the Storm. And so I've studied this, taught it. Now I've got a book coming out on it, which is a spiritual commentary on St. Alphonsus le Gris. Oh, God. Uniformity with God's will. So that's sort of the backdrop. I'm in the middle of this frustration, the needle is rising, and it was like the Lord or the Holy Spirit or my guardian angel said to me, Providence, actually it gives me, like as I'm saying it, I feel the power of the moment as I'm saying it, almost like a location, Providence. And I went, ah, God is in this. He's present. This is all happening for a reason. And the power of it now, well, I wanna go to past issues with anger and struggles with that. The power of it was, because it's so deeply ingrained in me, because that word carried with it so much context and perspective, meaning God's in it. He's allowed your failure in your own way that you schedule. He, you know, you're supposed to be wrestling with this right now, but you're not supposed to lose your peace. God wants you exactly in this situation for you to be healed, for you to be sanctified, for you to grow to learn all that. So that word, Providence, means all of that, which is what a location is in the sense that when God speaks to us, the speaking is powerful and it carries with it the grace that he wishes to convey in the moment. So immediately my meter went being down from what I said, it was seven, it went to probably one or two, right? Then we got into the meeting and the meeting was, it was really important for me to be in the meeting. Extraordinarily important. Now, and I will say, in these kinds of meetings that we're talking about, and we don't wanna, you need to hold this whole thing, but it's a mentorship sort of thing. You are fully prepared, equipped and capable of handling, in my opinion, a hundred percent of what always comes up. But in this meeting, there was a particular issue very directly related to my own experience. And I also think to the power of your, as spiritual leader of the family, as a fatherhood, of husband, just the fullness of what you have learned and what you live and what it means to be all of that. And my commentary was complimentary to that and it played off on what you were able to share. And it was just so very necessary for you to be there. And I knew it. I knew it because I have shared with you that I have felt God's calling in this particular relationship that we're talking about and that it's just so very near necessary for you to be there. Because the graces and the commitment of what's happening is just so powerful. And the Lord's saying, I'm in this. Don't, don't shift. Just stay at it, right? Right. Just stay at it. And I absolutely love the folks we remember. Yes, it was great. So, but the, what, so I used to have a major anger problem. Yes. I can testify to that truth. I'm here to testify. And so she's just to be clear. She's testifying to two things. One, I, well, actually one thing, I used to have an anger problem, God be praised. And how I, you know, why it came. I mean, I had the issue of wrath habitually. It was probably, it was worse before we met. I think it's a generational thing. It's also, you know, an outgrowth of the woundedness of childhood suffering. I mean, just pick something, right? It doesn't matter. I mean, yep. Yeah, so, but what's happened to me in my life and the reason I'm so committed to spreading this incredibly powerful reality of understanding the providence of God is that it slowly over time has liberated me from, it's played a big part in liberating me from that habitual sin of wrath and how it manifested itself. Now, I wonder, this isn't the show isn't supposed to be about me, but I'm sort of the subject. I'm revealing my own brokenness, whatever. If you could speak to, and we're, you know, close to coming on to a break. If you could speak to why you think, why you understand is a better word because I know you understand it. How powerful divine providence has been for me and why it moved me from easily going into the red zone to now it's pretty hard to get me in the red zone. And if I, and even if I am in red, I often won't say a word or reveal that I'm there. So you wanna do that after we get back from the break. I think we should. I think we should, so. Before we go to the break, I just wanna say to folks, if you desire community, if you desire to learn these kinds of things and to receive, you know, formation several times a month at no cost with thousands of people around the world who are very committed to the Catholic faith, check out apostoleva.org, A-P-O-S-T-O-L-I-V-I-A-E It's a beautiful, powerful community. And we'll be studying this book that's coming out, Binding Peace and the Storm, once it hits the streets and you'll be blessed by that. So we'll be right back. Are you good with the question or do you want me to reframe it? No, I'm good. I mean, you can just say it quickly and we'll go. I'm good, I'm good. On your market set, go. Welcome back. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. You're listening to Divine Intimacy Radio. You're a radio haven of rest. We're talking about the power of understanding, which means that our intellect is rightly ordered to the truth. And Jesus said, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. So the truth of divine providence has in a dramatic, I mean, life, we overuse life changing, but totally life changing way has affected me in my life. And you knew me when my wrath was out of control and you attested that it's not anymore. So how, as an observant of a person with the problem of wrath and as someone who knows me better than anybody on the planet, talk to me about that, like just so that people understand why it works and then I want to share from my own internal perspective why it's so, why it works. Yeah, well, I think we can begin by looping in this idea of suffering, right? Of suffering because sin entered the world and when sin entered the world, this terrible suffering came with it, right? And in essence, the suffering is through God's grace, united to God's grace is a remedy for that sin. Okay, what do I mean by that? Well, in the beginning, when that brokenness of wrath would rage, when it would surface and it wasn't every day, it was just on occasion and I could see you kind of moving into the red zone or whatever, it creates, first of all, it creates pain in us, right? Our sin creates like a dis-ease in us that makes us rattle and become distressed. And it insists on release. That's the interesting thing about sin. It causes so much pain in us that it insists on having relief manifest, allow me to manifest. Not true relief, but it to ask itself out. It just wants the release and I don't mean relief. I'm saying release with an S. It insists on achieving its end and manifesting, right? Almost, you can think of it as a demon. I mean, it's the effect of demonic activity. It's sinful, it's not God's will, but he allows it. So it insists, it bubbles up, it's in us, it's been, we've been contaminated by the world, the flesh, the enemy, our history, generations. And this dis-ease happens, it bubbles up and it says, I insist that you allow me to manifest, right? And so in our weakness, we allow it to come forth, right? To escape. To escape and we allow it to manifest whatever it is, screaming at a loved one, just losing it, losing control, whatever it is, right? When that happens, what happens with this? It causes suffering. More suffering, external to the person. Right, so first it's suffering on the inside, then it manifests, it never brings about good, and then it sets off more suffering because then relationships are broken or they're damaged, injury is done, we feel horrible when we finally just let it go. Yeah, because we don't like hurting other people. No, I mean, it's, you know, it's, most people are just, they don't, you know, I always say, if people understood what they were doing, they wouldn't do it, right? It's just this terrible act out of desolation, doubt, despair, narcissism, totally turned in on ourselves. We're experiencing this brokenness and we allow it to manifest and then it causes suffering in us and around us and causes damage, right? That suffering then is used by God in order to teach us because I would watch you when this would happen and you would suffer, you hated it, you hated the sin, you hated the damage that it was causing, you hated the wreckage, you know, and you desperately wanted to be free of that, but, and I could see you just, you know, like a penitente, just scourging yourself, not literally but figuratively in your prayer and your penance and your suffering and you're going inward with the Lord in prayer and saying, and I, you never said it out loud to me, but I can, I know what I've said before is, Lord, take this from me, purify me of this. It's not of you, I've damaged my loved ones, I love them, I don't want them to suffer. Please take this and purify me, right? And so in that act of penance, repentance, going to confession, praying to the Lord, crying out, relieve me from my enemies, because these are our enemies, right? These sins, then the Lord brings grace, He brings healing, He restores and He strengthens us against that sin when we repent and go to Him. Okay, so that is like foundational. Right. Presumes confession, Eucharist, prayer, all this kind of way of living. So then one step beyond that, what is the power? What is it that I'm resisting when I'm struggling and what is the liberation from what I'm resisting? Right. So then- Or to what I'm resisting. Because, well, God's desire is that you be brought to perfection, that every soul listening to this podcast be brought to perfection in Him, to achieve our mission, the fullness of oneness with Him and become who He's calling us to be, right? And so what happens then, providentially, by God's providence, is He knows that's still there, that you're strengthened, you're stronger now, your intellect has some illumination as it were, as to, okay, I did this, He knows that there's junk that I need to be healed from. Right. Yeah, whatever you call it. That's the simple way to say it, right? And He doesn't want it there, right? And you've made the prayer, Lord, get this out of me. So what happens in that? When you make the prayer, Lord, get rid of the darkness in me, He's going to provide the means for that to happen. Right, He's not gonna take away the external or internal factors that cause the problem because those are what you need. You need to be healed of the internal, which is what you're in control of with His power. And the only way that happened is by God's providence, allowing it to be challenged, to be tempted, to be brought to the fore so that then you once more get an opportunity to resist and to go to Him first and to surrender. Perfect. That's the invitation. So perfect. So that's kind of the external God's eye view of the thing. What the internal problem? Like fundamentally what I realized was, so I grew up in abuse, I grew up in a difficult circumstance when I was constantly trying to control and manage. So I didn't get the crap beat out of me and I didn't, you know, whatever could happen. I mean, a gun was fired in my home when I was a kid, these kinds of things. So it makes you very, you want to really manage your environment a lot. So, and I'm very goal-driven. So I'm always got, I'm always got things to do. I know where I'm going, all that. So those combined cause a circumstance where I want to do something. I want things a certain way. There's a key right there. I want. I want. Exactly. I want. And what God wants is for me to go to heaven, right? So what he does, what he allows is for things to be disrupted so that I begin to let go of what I want and be at peace. With what he wants. With what he wants. And so yesterday when I was going through that, I affirmed, I said, Lord, I understand, I embrace this circumstance. You want me right here. And what's crazy is I've gone from that kind of thing with just, I would blow my top years and years ago, decades ago, really. And it's gone from, I would blow my top, actually bottom left-hand corner of the graph to then I began to realize and recognize I could pray and separate a little bit the stimulus from the blow-up. But I still blow up. And then I went to the stimulus occurred. I'm fighting and praying more because my life is getting more sanctified in general. Then I react, but it's a mixed reaction. It has some good and some bad, but I'm not quite directly as controlled to what happened yesterday where I'm still have the frustration, but before any bad stuff got out, before I had to go to confession or anything, the Lord, so I feel it, but then he says, I'm in this, I'm present, would you embrace my will? And so when I said yes, he met you in it and set you free. When I said yes, then I totally broke the pattern, even though I felt the temptation. Sometimes people think as you mature, the temptations leave you. No, no, no. And I wanna bring two things up is there was a pattern in that and you started to recognize the pattern, the same repeat pattern of the brokenness in you that was trying to manifest and how the Lord was trying to teach you and all of that, right? So we recognize the patterns in our lives, but then we also need to recognize that very important truth that we will experience temptations till our last breath. And some of them will be more intense as we get closer to our death. So those temptations are the invitation to greater surrender, greater purification, greater abandonment to His divine providence and to say, Lord, this is coming up. Like I went through a battle this morning and that battle was going on while we were in adoration. And so I prayed against it, I surrendered it, I called out to our lady, I called out to the Lord and I said, take this from me. I don't want it. Put me under your mantle, mother. Cover me in the precious blood of your son. I give this battle to you. I do not want it. Cleanse me, purify me, fill me with all the disaview. And I have to tell you, it lifted, it lifted and it never left the thought. It just went from a sliver of a thought and it never came forward any farther. So it's really important, yeah, that we learn this idea that God's in everything. Everything's a grace. Every challenge is a grace. Every temptation is a grace. Every trial is a grace because it's an invitation to surrender to the providence of God, to allow him to purify us, sanctify us in the daily events and trials of our days so that he can have fulfillment of his kingdom being manifested. And for us to have peace. So if these struggles are, you recognize them, you wanna know peace like you've never known before. Finding peace in the storm, be out soon. Keep an eye out at spiritualdirection.com in the shop area. And then Jordan and I are actually gonna do a series of teaching through the book on a version of divine intimacy radio. And so keep an eye out for that and I promise that you'll be blessed and find peace like you never thought possible. Until next time, may the God of peace make you perfect in holiness. May he preserve you whole and entire. Spirit, soul, and body, irreproachable at the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen. Hey, folks, for those who have hung out after the show or made it this far, I wanna just remind you, divine intimacy and marriage retreat. We actually talk about a little bit of this kind of thing in the retreat, but November 3rd through the 5th, Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, Hansville, Alabama, spiritualdirection.com forward slash event. And then an upcoming course that's pretty exciting, August 29th, 2023. Wisdom of the Faith, St. Augustine, St. Benedict, St. Bernard, all of them. By a great teacher, Dr. Ben Nguyen, love Dr. Nguyen. He's absolutely fantastic. It's a graduate level course. And you can find more about that at avala-institute.org. Wisdom of the Saints, avala-institute.org. God bless you guys. Thanks for hanging with us. And you know what? Could I say one last thing, producer? If you like the show, most of you statistically are not subscribed to our YouTube page. And if you like the show and you're watching this on YouTube, please click the, what am I supposed to click? What are they supposed to click? It's a little. Subscribe button and the notification button. And then you'll always know when there's a new show. So God bless you all. Take care.