 Hey, friends is Dan Stephanie Burke with divine intimacy radio. You're watching behind the scenes divine intimacy radio We'll start the show in a minute But I want to tell you a Few want to tell you about a few things going on that will be very interesting to you. I think the first one is in a course that begins on Let's see Tuesday May 5th 830 Eastern and that's introduction to spiritual theology And it's a detailed exploration of sacred doctrine Which introduces the student to the most vital sciences in the life of the church today spiritual science, of course Spiritual theology takes up the wonder of god's holiness revealed in the world the glory of divine presence at work in hidden ways It's a study of the holiness of jesus and all who participate in his saving mystery In the life of the church if you are a spiritual director, I would say that's going to be you want to elevate your Formation at a whole new level like if you've gone to one of the good schools including ours heart of christ If you got any of the good faithful schools and you really want to dig deeper to help those who are further along The spiritual theology course is a great way to to start Get engaged with a deeper formation So that's what's going at the avalan institute and i'm just confirming with our producer that we're we're live and all as well Is are we good? Okay? um Few other things going on before we start the show remember to stay till the end and we will Answer a few offline questions directly from you and then Make sure you go to spiritualdirection.com and subscribe All of our social media numbers except instagram or is it just facebook? Everything but instagram right? It looks like it's being shadow suppressed, you know suppressed and i i think they're getting smarter because You know these big bold crazy moves people get pretty upset and what we're seeing is a a consistent throttling down that's pretty disturbing and You know once one day if we answer a question on a hot topic we could be completely off so Make sure you go to spiritualdirection.com and and subscribe there And then that way you will always be able to stay in connection with us spiritualdirection.com They can also see all of our events where we'll be traveling where we'll be speaking All of that if you sign up there because we promote everything through spiritualdirection.com. There's thousands of articles there videos audio I mean it's just all free all no charge. Yeah endless formations spiritualdirection.com And you can follow us at instagram on at catholic spiritual direction and then facebook at catholic direction Um, okay, so I think I got the basics a few one a few other things and then we'll get moving Setting the captives free. Stephanie. I will be in Princeton, Illinois on may 15th So we hope you can make it out. Um meet us in person come meet us in person. She's more impressive than I am No, i'm it's just we need to push back this darkness of isolation. Yeah, you know shutting down our country You know so come out and meet us in person. Everybody be human again. Yeah, we need to be human. That's for sure. Yeah Um Last thing and then we'll jump into the show So listen carefully. This is really important It will be amazing Are you listening do you think they're listening stuff? Yes So we have a spiritual warfare webinar coming up And it's with father Dennis mcmanus Father Dennis I I will say and my friends are going to get mad at me because I have a lot of friends who are speakers But i'm going to say that I have never in my life heard A more entertaining and powerful speaker than father Dennis mcmanus. Yes, he's brilliant articulate funny. Yeah He's awesome. He was one of our our main speakers at the last spiritual warfare Summit conference that we had the summit last not last summer but summer before last. Yeah And he's just Incredible. Yeah, so he's coming to work for us at the avalanche too. God be praised with our high calling seminary formation program But he's doing a webinar on may the second that's how it's not very far from now It's next week next week on uh confession spiritual warfare Um The most common ways that demon attack us how demons size us up by our sins and our wounds How the sacrament of penance frees us from darkness how demons slow us down making in making a good confession What's a proof, you know, just like hardcore amazing Stuff it's gonna be epic. So I if I were to read you his is His bio it would take the whole show and so we're not going to do that But um, he's worked with pope john paul the second pope benedict the 16th Um, consulted of the congregation of the discipline of the sacraments You know just on and on but he specializes In the development of the rites of ecstasy. So he's uh, he's got many other You know laudable Um Credibility, uh, I'm not saying any of this right. Anyway, you ought to come so go to spiritualdirection.com forward slash events and sign up you can see it there on the screen spiritualdirection.com forward slash advance and sign up for that webinar you will not it is not possible That you will be disappointed unless you are just a grumpy old man like I was yesterday. There you go, right? Right, and then nothing satisfies you. Right. Okay. So we jump into the show. Yeah, all right. Let's go On your mark get set go Welcome to divine intimacy radio. This is dan. Nope. That's not it. That's not the right one Stop reset. Okay, and your mark. It's that go This is dan and stephanie berg 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 heaven to draw upon The wisdom of the saints to help us to be holy help us to fight help us to have joy Please jesus. Please jesus joy. Huh tough day today helpless to fight Tough day today. Are you having a tough day today out there? So Today we're talking about a spiritual warfare funny enough Anxiety spiritual warfare and healing and What I wanted to do is I'm gonna surprise stephanie here. So oh, no Stephanie berg here's what I want to know The stephanie is a spiritual director extraordinaire She helps a lot of women like she has this group of women if they're all to gather in one place They would glow they're they're really beautiful Right, but if the lights went out like if we had a power failure We would not need to solve it right because we would just say here follow me to the kitchen And then they would all come and then we could look in the cupboard to get what we needed But on a serious level you do have a huge impact on women What I want to know is in terms of spiritual warfare And the impact in in what you see in spiritual direction. What's the most common issue that you see That folks struggle with where does he attack? Where does the enemy attack the most? Oh, wow, um I didn't warn her folks. So no, I'm gonna have to give her a second to think Yeah, so yeah, because I don't have to be Specific or no, you know be exacting here, but I think Where I would say the enemy has the biggest stronghold In particular among women, I would say is fear and anxiety. Yeah that can show up in a lot of different ways Because it's not it's not as if they're cowering Because I do you know women is devout these are devout women So and and I would say it's not even just amongst those that I serve through spiritual direction It's just through conversations Because I have a lot of holy conversations with a lot of really beautiful women Right a lot of the time and I think You know, we have this desire to Um love and nurture and take care of our homes and our children and our families and all of that and I think the biggest struggle can be When Things don't turn out quite how we had planned, you know Despite all of our best efforts and and thinking that we were doing things right or whatever And then things start to unravel one way or another. So I think there's this Um fear and anxiety, you know, the world's a scary place It's a scary place to send your children out to into the world anymore. It's not a christian society anymore We went to an event in california and there was a Wonderful pastor a lot of people know father mike smith smiths and he did a great Homily a great talk Basically Saying that the world is not a safe place anymore and what we need to do is focus more on Focus more on Preparing our children to go out into the world into a world that does not like them, right And that's hard to do it's it's scary to do so we have to be careful not to Um let that fear Take us over Cause us to not pray enough Cause us to not trust in god cause us not to control or have anxiety or Create conflict Because of our fear so when we can surrender ourselves completely to the lord in prayer supplication trust Tucking ourselves underneath the mantle of our lady Then we can know that our lord is a good father. He's he loves our children more than us. He loves our families more than us And we can stop trying to save the world Yeah, it's an interesting difficulty, right? So one we have a real enemy out there that's worse than ever and That wants to do a spiritual harm through other people through the secular society and it's not even secular it's it's uh The society our society is filled with The worship of evil and the demonic and it's anti-christian in all form. It's it's aggressively anti-christian and in In every way, there's just only You know, we live in the south which i'm grateful for in alabama And it's a little bit of a throwback kind of environment. It's very old american or at least You know feels something in the aside from the civil rights issues You know fifties america still feels a little bit like that but um Yeah, so you're saying that the biggest spiritual attack That women in particular face is that the devil will take them Into the future fear of what will happen the view what's coming. Yeah, that's what I see most often is this This worry so so we we tend to be either future oriented or to or past oriented depending on kind of our design or our woundings or our Dispositions, you know how we're designed. So we tend to either Have anxiety worrying about what's happening in the future Or we're have a lot of uh lament or regret about our past what I find is mostly With the women that I've served and spoken to over the years. It's more of a future orientation Where we're concerned about What's coming what's next and part of it is our design is women to nurture and care for our families our children our homes whereas men's um, you know Concerns are different. I think and um Have you seen that increase? Yes, yes, you you gave an emphatic. Yes just in the last year or the last two years or Well, cove. It's been horrible. Right. Um, that hasn't really helped anybody Strangely enough, I've seen divisions in families over that and I've heard more and more of that. Oh, yeah, we've experienced it ourselves Yeah, so that's really difficult so Yeah, I mean it's just it's a difficult time It is and if you follow the news at all if you're Keeping up with any of that that kind of wrecks your piece as well so You and I have have made the commitment not to spend time in that we don't have our tv running all day We're not listening to the news all day. I don't actually even have a television right in terms of cable or Big shocker. Yeah, shocking announcement here. We don't have a tv now just We're we're airing on it. It'd be shit. And so I would say if you have a tv fine watch mother angelica live, right? Right, yeah, check out that but you can check out the news basically once a week and get caught up Right because it's all repeat junk. Yeah Yeah, so we don't we don't plug into the Uh, the fear porn actually and allow it to manipulate us and I think that's a powerful That's a powerful phrase fear porn, but I I do think I mean obviously the very Very toss project Which is an undercover organization that's exposing a lot of the junk in the secular culture and politics and abortion and they Did us undercover on the director of cnn news And uh, I can say it it's out there. Yeah the and revealed that the Part of their strategy is to keep people afraid And of course to suppress a lot of what's good So and and we need to understand that really any of the shows are meant to Create a situation where we stay plugged in because then that'll bump ratings or whatever and then they sell their advertising Yeah, I mean it's it's part of of what they do. It's all manipulation But I mean we knew that from years and years of Marketing with you know household products or whatever we just need to be we need to be discerning individuals and our trust Our heart our mind our soul our body Should be grounded in the lord in the faith In in in deep prayer so that we can fill ourselves up. I love this phrase That a that a day hemmed in prayer rarely unravels That's a day hemmed in prayer rarely unravels. I like that. So that's really as women whether we're single married Religious whatever it is. That's really I think what's key. We start our day Anything worth doing begins on our knees. Yeah, you know in prayer. Yeah, and so so One of the reasons I wanted to bring this up obviously is the that there is pain and difficulty in the culture And I think It's been a big emphasis in our ministry in the last two years in particular Is helping people understand that when they have anxiety That reveals some spiritual warfare It's an invitation. So talk about that. What does it mean? What does it mean? What do you mean it's so so I come to you and I say You know, I'm really anxious. I went to mass today. Nobody was wearing masks. I don't know whatever Uh, I'm I'm unhappy or I'm upset about how I was treated in my family or my job Tell me about this invitation idea Well any kind of anxiety or any any kind of Thing where we feel that things are off is this invitation To get rightly ordered with the lord. He allows it to surface One of the things that I talk about that I love and this is my own theory So this is you know, this is a Stephanie Burke ism or whatever. I don't know what do you want to call it? But I love the the thought that as we draw near to the lord or as he's calling us to draw near He starts to want to take up more space within our hearts our minds our lives, you know our spirits And and so when he comes in he needs room And if we are filled with the world the flesh and the devil That is going to start to be pressed out It doesn't you know, there's no room for it in in our in our life with the lord And so uh, that will come out as anxiety or any kind of other issues anger Frustration, you know, whatever it is Desolation Yeah, and so that's an invitation for us to Note that that's happening speak to a holy person go to confession Go to your spiritual director and drill down. Where is that coming from? Is it a connection to? A woundedness that needs to be healed Is it, you know, just temporal affairs that need to be entrusted to the lord Do we need to give in to the lord and just allow him to take care of our families for us or What is it, right? It's all an invitation to greater healing and greater trust And to seeking out those means so I think when we get back we can talk more about All of that and a free course on how to deal with This kind of issue desolation. So when we get back from the break, we'll tell you about that. We'll be right back 12 30 go to 12 30 again 13 uh, well, um Right now in the break before we go back I'm going to tell people again that who have come on since we started That we have a webinar coming up with a man who specializes in the development of the rights of exorcisms father Dennis McManus And um, who's who's co-hosting is that me or jordan? No, dr. Wholecraft dr. Wholecraft dr. Joe whole crap the director of our high calling program, right? So may 2nd 5 p.m central so It's going to be on spiritual warfare father. Dennis McManus And you can register at spiritualdirection.com forward slash events spiritualdirection.com forward slash events All right, I think we're ready to head back. I am going to after the break I mean, uh, I am going to Send them over to possibly be for the free course. So Right and we are going to have them drop in questions, right? Yeah, and and for folks listening now, we're going to answer questions at the end of the show when we are done with the traditional terrestrial radio show and uh And your comment will show up on the screen. So be nice Uh, as little says father Dennis love. Yes father Dennis me too. Me too. He's amazing He really is a gift to the church and what's cool is good stuff If you're part of the avala army, you can actually see his talk from our last summit. It is there Exclusively for our avala army. So if you go to avalaarmy.org and sign up Um, then you can there you go See our producer's just on top of things. So if you go to avalaarmy.org you can sign up there and you can have access to his last talk That he gave at the avala summit in 2019 on spiritual warfare on spiritual warfare It is incredible rock your socks kind of talk And honestly very very practical for families for individuals everything. So Awesome. Cool. Uh, so trezz was trezz is my new best friend the best talk sign up friends. Okay, good That's awesome. All right Let's go ahead and jump back in on your mark get set Go welcome back to divine intimacy radio You're with dan and stephanie burk and I said before the break That I would reveal to you where you can find out a get a free course on how to deal with The junk in your head. Um, how to deal with anxiety and difficulties Fundamentally what we have come to and this is Just in our real life experience not theory in the last few years that discernment of spirit So foundationally you must be regular confession. You must Have regular daily mental prayer as frequent Eucharist as possible. Those are the foundations Beyond the foundations. We've actually come to very firm conviction that the most powerful way of becoming less of a victim of A spiritual manipulation Less of a victim of our own frailties Less of a victim of the insanity of the world is through the practice Of the examined prayer and discernment of spirits the combination of those Right, you agree with that. Yeah, we we're so convicted by this by this truth Really, I don't know of anybody that's serious about their spiritual walk That shouldn't have discernment of spirits and not only that I think the majority of issues the majority of breakdowns. I would say even Things like divorce and you know all kinds of things happen through A lack of discernment of spirits and not understanding what desolation is not understanding how you're being manipulated by the enemy Not being able to hear god's voice You know Just from this onslaught because the enemy's job all day long every day is to take us down Right, he his job is for the destruction of our soul, right? And so if we're not understanding that and if we're not very close to the lord and Understanding how do I hear god's voice and how do I fight the enemy who's you know attacking me? Then i'm going to fall victim to the enemy and i'm going to slide backwards or i'm going to crash and burn And then wonder why my life is unraveling around me and so often when you learn The rules of st. Ignatius through discernment of spirits when you learn how to listen You can understand how do I follow god? How do I fight the enemy and that all the voices in our head are not ours? And we shouldn't listen to them some of them some of them Like you're in my head and I should listen to you Well, you know, we're one. I'm with you all the time. So it's like, you know, right So anyway, no, we were so convicted by it that when we were creating our divine intimacy and marriage Retreat in fact, we have one coming up In texas. So check that out at spiritualdirection.com forward slash events Maybe you can come join us for that, but we were so convicted by that We understood that after we took folks through the retreat that we needed to provide a Disserminus spirits in marriage Course that you and I walked people through To help them with that second set of tools for their marriages for their lives. So it's really really important It's a game changer. Absolutely. And so the way you can find free Formation on this little mini courses that we've assembled from Work that we've done is at apostoleva.org. It's on the screen there And it's a p o s t o l i v i a e dot org It's a digital monastery. Yeah, it is of our community Or the online meeting place of our community. We're our community meets face to face all over the globe but the We come together twice a month for free formation and right now Second and fourth saturdays we're doing on spiritual combat. So that's no cost to anyone We have priest religious laity from 44 countries. I think his last count come So that we usually have about 300 and last time it's 350 people came Yeah twice a month just gathering together to learn together study together So go out and create a profile and then you you do have to do some orientation So we get people we do some detox from from social media behavior As we every we everyone needs to be treated with dignity and respect. We don't do any Anything but super positive engagement there But we have free courses on discernment of spirits discernment of spirits and marriage How to overcome habitual sin? I mean just all kinds of amazing resources there For free and then of course the avalanche to you can You can take courses. They're not free. I teach a course called discernment of spirits And it's always full and it always feel it fills immediately I'm I'm there's one coming up, but I think it's full again But you can keep an eye on that but there's a bunch of free resources You know I've spent money the and there are two books. I want to recommend and I don't know if the I didn't mourn the producer one is My books a spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits and oh he did look at that. He's on it The second one written by father timothy gallagher, which is discernment of spirits and marriage, which is awesome Both you can find at dwtn's religious catalog Where you can find you know or on our shop button. Yeah. Yeah, where it's it's easy Don't go to the evil empire of amazon, please go to dwtn's shot, you know Religious catalog go to our shop button go to st. Paul's and memphis, right, you know bookstore whatever Don't we need to stop funding these folks? We're shutting down faithful catholic authors and things like that. It's pretty sick. So so the free courses are there and I wanted to come back to a few what one other resource that I think is super powerful Is that we recommend to a lot of people that they pray the exilium christianorum prayers every day exilium christianorum prayers are prayers that And there's two versions of it one is for The lady and one's for exorcist or priests. Yeah Yeah priests or exorcists, right that only priests can pray one version And the lady can pray the other version and there's an app for it Out there take seven to ten minutes a day ten minutes on friday all the other days are seven minutes about depending on the speed and there are spiritual warfare prayers to surround your family so producer man, did you have the Deliverance prayers for the lady so This book is was put together by father ripper gr. He didn't create the content. He just gathered the content And that uh, I don't I don't know the I think I'm the best way to get that I don't want to put it amazon but go out there and look For deliverance prayers for use by the lady And you'll find exilium in there or you can get the app and it's a very important and powerful way Yeah to cover your family. We have you know, we live a pretty rigorous rule of life for plan of love. We call it and the I have two non-negotiables Daily basis mental prayer exilium prayers So if all things are bad, uh, and you know, we're disrupted or in the hospital or running around and can't you know Mental prayer exilium prayers Um, all other prayers can fall by the wayside. No, we don't do that often But those we protect I protect yeah, we do the same Well, and we we go to mass, you know every morning and so on the way to mass we do our rosary Yes for anybody who? um You know wonders about that so to me rosary is a non-negotiable for both of us But you know as we always get our rosary and and then as we drive home We do the exilium prayers together to make sure that we're praying and getting those in I want to tell you it's a game changer. I mean you are you're pushing back the darkness You're gathering in with other people that are praying it Pushing back the darkness covering each other in prayer and the priests that pray exilium christianorum Um also are covering us in prayer. So that's a big part. It's a huge part because it's a worldwide community It is a worldwide praying for one another. Yeah, it's like apastoli vie Right, you know, so when you enter into apastoli vie You're gathering in under a group of people who are all praying for one another supporting one another In this journey and then exilium christianorum Um, these prayers are part of what they do in fact, I don't know what else they do But that's what that I know of And you're getting covered in prayer there and it's specifically spiritual warfare prayers So what I tell people is if you're going to do it do it right and do it every day and don't let up and don't let up because Um, it they're seriously powerful You will feel an effect and I know that those that have committed to doing it the days that they don't They start to feel the darkness and it's not because they're of retaliation. It's because They're when you pray it every day, you're pushing back the darkness and you feel A kind of fog lift and a clarity that comes and a freedom that comes Doesn't mean you don't fight or have spiritual warfare. I think you and I struggle a little bit this morning with that But it does help you to be awake and aware both of us are aware Of what was going on and both of us were fighting it, you know and wrestling with it a bit but uh, so Back to the central tools that I mentioned which was discernment of spirit and the examine Uh and the time we have left maybe we should talk about why is the examine so powerful? Why is it so important? What does it do for us? What tell me a little bit about your thoughts on that? Yeah, so the examine prayer is uh at the end of the day We we kind of review the day you and I do it together mostly And we review the day kind of from 30 000 feet starting at the beginning all the way forward What are the blessings, you know, where where did we see the lord break through? What are the things that we're grateful so it it um nurtures and and um Sturs around gratitude. We need to have hearts and minds and lives filled with gratitude I don't think we have any idea how much grace is poured out on us constantly That all good comes from the lord All grace all is grace. So all good comes from the lord. So it's important to recognize it State it thank the lord for it talk about it. You know, we often go I'm grateful for you, you know, or you're grateful for me or I'm grateful for the time we had together or the conversation We got to have with one of our kids or whatever So all those things we review the day We thank the lord for at least three things that we can think of And then the other thing is a review of our day of any of the the things that we either need to take to confession Or um to say we're sorry, you know, if they're in the realm of venial we can we can just pray a confidior against that Or in reparation for that Or we can know wow, you know today didn't go so well. Why did that happen and take it to confession? and the the power of it obviously is we're We're honoring our relationship with God. We're honoring a relationship with one another and we're we're removing barriers to that Most important reality, but second is we're becoming awake, right? So we're becoming aware of our patterns and I think That to me has been such a gift is becoming aware And then knowing how to fight so that you're no longer a victim to all these oppressive forces that are pressing down on us To get us to divide from God and divide divide from one another By the way, those are the only two strategies of the enemy only two ends the enemy desires To separate us from God and separate us from those from one another So it's uh, it's something out of learn. There's also free resources out on a possibly va for that I just did a A audio summary of the redemptive exam That is in the reflections for the heart of the charism group And then uh, I'll I'll do a video at some point. So head on out there. We'd love to see you there Stephanie and I do the teaching on the second and fourth Saturdays of the month And um, obviously we provide all the formation as well in other places, but we're out of time Okay, so 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 amen So for those who are still on hang on and the producer is going to pop up questions and we can Answer it. So from teres, uh, some people have said when they pray the ox prayers They feel under attack more often. Would you say these prayers are meant to be on the offensive? I I I don't believe that. Um, I Because it's like saying Um, how should I say this? There's something else wrong Because it's it's you don't get you don't experience more attack When you're living the paradigm of ascent the foundational elements of the prayer and and pushing back the darkness more You just don't you know, there's something else wrong. Yeah might be another part of their life that isn't properly ordered Um, if if they're under spiritual attack, then that's an invitation. There's something going on So a deep examine looking at the paradigm of ascent. Are my sacraments, right? Am I grounded in the lord? Am I doing my daily prayer and meditation? Am I practicing self giving and self? Renunciation, you know is my yes big, you know all those things and if they're not then Um, what it's doing is it's revealing what's already there Yeah, it's sort of like, you know, so my initial reaction viscerally is like, no, that's not right And I I don't mean to be insensitive or I'm not judging But maybe it's a little more like so you begin to do this and it's like you're going to a doctor And you haven't gone for years and there are untreated issues that you've been ignoring and not dealing with So you get to the doc and the doc says this and this that's what's really going on Right, but you don't you're not weakened by fighting fighting, you know James four seven resist the devil and he will flee it doesn't say resist the devil and he's gonna come more You know, that's the holy spirit. Yeah, otherwise. He's not telling the truth. So Yeah, I mean what Stephanie said which is look at it a little more closely Yeah, I mean if you're not living a fully sacramental life or giving yourself over fully That needs to be taken care of before you start spiritual warfare prayers I would say that's true And if you want to know what the paradigm of ascent is again go out to a possibly va.org And that I have a also a course on that But it's just the fundamental elements and what they are that are true in this all the lives of the saints Yeah, but if you live that reality and you pray exilium you're going to be Kicking some heiny and taken names and And in the spiritual warfare realm. So what else Jordan? Please repent repeat the name of the book Which book we talked about about a bunch of them. Um, so we Spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits, which is your book the black one that's on the screen Yeah, okay, and then discernment of spirits in marriage by father gallagher. Yeah, and then The deliverance prayers for the laity, which is the black book And um, yeah, that's why census fidelum. I think Exilium christianorum. Just so you know that might be one that's tough for people. It's a ux i l um i um c h r i s t i a n o r u m christian They can type it into their search bar and it'll come. Yeah, it'll auxilium christianorum a ux. Yeah, a ux. Um, but Huh Yes, it's in the deliverance prayers for the lady. That's right. Yeah, but you can find it on the app store Which I find to be the easiest because I just open up that app right it's there every day We actually have it in our prayer book too for our community, but it's a little tad different But it's the same the you know, it's great stuff. Okay next Okay, okay. All right. Very good. You guys made it easy on us Thanks for hanging out with us today. We hope to see you In our next Saturday morning formation. That's right. All right. God bless you. Take care