 Marketsick, go. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio, your Radio Haven of Wraths. Your Hermitage of the Heart. Your Monastery of the Mind where we looked our hearts and minds into heaven to draw on the wisdom of the saints. And today is a Q&A show and I've got a few questions that I think we've dealt with before. You ready? Sure. On the demonic and how they cause issues. So here's a question. How do you know when you're dealing with a demon of discord and what can you do about it? Demon of discord. Okay. Well, the first thing and the first thing that comes to mind is understanding what you're listening to in your head, right? Where are the thoughts coming from? And what is the tone of those thoughts? Right? What is the tone of those thoughts? We have a really beautiful exorcist priest in our circle of influence, a dear friend, and he shared something with me that I think is remarkable. And that is that, you know, how do you recognize God's voice? Like, what does God's voice sound like? And if it doesn't sound like this, it's not of God, which I think is phenomenal. So here it is. Here's the key and listen closely. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control, right? If there's no self control, right? No peace, no patience, no kindness, no generosity, no faithfulness, no love. It's not of God, right? And she knows, I think she knows it's it's not of God. I think that's, I love that what you're sharing. And so you're saying, I'm just asking you, you're saying to be aware of what you're hearing in your head, right? And the fruit of what's happening, right? Right? So it's divisiveness, right? Right, discord, discord and divisiveness, right? And the thing is, it doesn't we need to keep in mind that what we're dealing with is not flesh and blood, but rather principalities, right? Which you just quoted St. Paul and Corinthians, right? So so say you have a situation at work, right? And as as you are conversing, or as you're in a meeting, like somebody shared with me, they were in a meeting the other day, two of their coworkers started to bicker and started to to go at one another. No charity, no generosity, no self control, no peace, you know, just ding, ding, ding, you know, this this intensity, urgency, lack of charity, right in words and in kindness. That doesn't mean that you can't speak truth or deal with difficult issues. But the manner in which in which it's being done will tell you if there's a spirit of discord, or dis ease in it, which is coming from the enemy. And that means that people's mannerisms, their ability to control their emotions, their generosity of spirit, their kindness, the words they're using, take on an ugly tone, become disruptive, tear down demeaning tear down relationships, cause a big uproar, right? So you've done a good job of describing how do you know that it's that? And let's say there's a human aspect here too. There are three sources of this, or there are two sources of this kind of thing, the demonic and us in a destructive way. Personally, I don't care what the sources, right? So you've said, well, how do you know if it's a demon of discord? And I could say, well, how do you know if a person's off base, right? Either way, the answer is the same. And the way you deal with it is the same. Yes. Right. So let's talk about how you deal with it. Right. So I think the way you deal with it is to do what St. Paul said. In conjunction with the passage you quoted a minute ago, which is taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. So what does that mean? It means that we recognize the movement that's happening, right? We recognize the disposition that's emerging in us. We think about our thinking. We identify the problem. And in Jesus name, we renounce it. Right, right. I think it's absolutely. And I think it's important. Often we can find ourselves right in the middle of it. And it's like it happens so quickly. Yeah, that you're going, Okay, what just happened? Right. You know, why am I feeling this revulsion? What you know, what's happening here? And so we need to step out of the situation and get somebody else's perspective. A holy person, a spiritual director, a priest, a holy friend, right? Not a gossip. Not a gossip. But but this is what I'm experiencing. This is what these were my thoughts. This is what's happening. This is the fruit of it. I mean, this morning, I ended up on a phone call with someone that's very dear to us. Because I called her and I said, this is what I'm experiencing in this situation. I need your perspective. I need your discernment standing on the outside. And it was a beautiful, hopeful thing for me. And it's something that I'm going to take into my prayer for the rest of lent, right? And that's rule number 13 of St. Jesus discernment. Shining the light on it, right? And I think the biggest difficulty is stepping aside, understanding nothing is urgent. Only the enemy thinks everything's urgent. He makes everything urgent. He makes it, you know, it's like, do it now. Fix it now. You've got to say something. You have to fix this, right? Yeah, happens all the time. And it was a longstanding pattern with me. The enemy would start to mess. And he would insist that I needed to act right away. Yeah, right away. I had to fix it. And that is straight from the pit of hell. Right because when when we go into that, then we can no longer discern, we can no longer think thoughtfully about how I need to approach this. What's a holy way to approach this? How do I solve this problem? Or this discord or this whatever it is, right? This unity that's happening in a holy way, and in a way that builds a bridge over which truth can pass. Love can be, you know, given and received in the true sense of the word, right? Not in a touchy feely way, but in the true sense of authentic love, and be able to bring peace, you know, his peace into it. So I think it's discernment, self control, time to reflect and think, and then shining the light on the situation and getting somebody else's perspective, especially if you feel yourself just being sucked in to a situation. And there's a book I wrote on this called spiritual warfare and the discernment of spirits on how to do this, how to understand discern, know what to do, how to respond, how to react, how to not get sucked into these conflicts, or sucked into thought patterns that are destructive to spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits, you can get it at EWTN's religious catalog. And if you buy it from them, two things happen. They will actually send you the book, and you'll help their mission, which is very good stuff. Yeah. The next question, kind of similar. But you've dealt with this a ton, like you are like queen expert of the universe on this. I'm going to ask you to go I'm not I'm not a queen of anything, except for I'm a daughter of the king. That's it. Okay, so here's the question. How do demons of conflict work on a spouse who is struggling with her, his or her role in an unequally yoked marriage? How can one seeking holiness combat this? Oh, yeah. Well, fascinating question. You know, say it one more time. So how do demons who are causing conflict work on a spouse who's struggling with his or her role in an unequally yoked marriage? How can one seeking holiness combat this? So I quite were to reword it, I would say, what is the normative pattern of demonic influence in unequally yoked marriages? And how do you deal with this? Probably a way to yeah, so we're going to we're going to focus on the spouse that is seeking the way of the Lord, which is probably the one who asked the question, right? Right. Because that's what I'm what I'm hearing. And when we talk about unequally yoked marriages, it's where one person is fully vested into seeking the Lord and trying to follow the Lord in all that they do think, behave, right? And then a spouse that is not there, right? The opposite. Right. And that's a biblical term, if you're right. So just to make, you know, to give people some context, if they haven't heard that before. So the way the enemy works is, well, he always works in one of three ways. So if we consider, if we take how the Lord works, right, recognizing the Lord's voice and his movements, he draws us to faith, hope, and love. The enemy draws us to doubt, despair, and narcissism. So the opposite of faith is doubt. The opposite of hope is despair. And the opposite of love is not hate. It's narcissism. Okay. So when we are drawn to doubt, I don't think this marriage is going to work. I don't think he loves me. I don't think he cares about me. You know, he's, I don't think he's ever going to come to God. I don't think God's working in his life, you know, XYZ, right, doubt, despair, hopelessness, just wanting to give up and, you know, all of those things. And then narcissism, what about me? What about my feelings? You know, what about what I want? That's a huge one. What about what I want, you know? And I remember even hearing somebody years and years ago, as I was going through my own difficulty, because I think, you know, most of our listeners may know at this point that you and I are the Brady Bunch. We both went through annulments. And by God's mercy, we were brought to healing and through that annulment process and when we're able to get married in the church. But I remember somebody saying to me in the past, when I was going through all those difficulties was, you know, you deserve something better. Right. Right. You deserve to be happy. You deserve blah, blah, blah. Well, you know, I don't know that I deserve anything. That's narcissism. Right. Narcissism, feeding the narcissism, right? Right. So those are the ways that the enemy works is to constantly put up a barrier of suspicion, of hopelessness, of lovelessness. And especially with the narcissism, it causes us to turn in on ourselves. And we no longer want to serve the other. We no want to no longer want to reach across to love. And the thing is, is to follow Christ is to be perfectly selfless. And we are here to be the, the, the helpmate of our spouse, and to be subject to one another as Christ was subject to his parents in Nazareth, you're right, in Bethlehem. Yeah. So that means I give myself away for you and you hopefully give yourself away from me. And in that, we serve the Lord. That's what we're called to even if the other spouse does not respond. Yeah, that was good. I'm glad you kind of brought it to that end. So let's do this. We're gonna go to the break. When we get back from the break, I want to walk through awareness, which is what you just did, understanding and then how you take action. So awareness is what you did thinking about thinking. Now what do we do about it is the question. So when we get back from the break, we'll continue to talk about how the demonic influences our relationships, especially in unequally yoked marriages will be right back. The market said go. This is Dana Stephanie Burke. Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio. We're talking about demonic influence on marriage and relationships, unequally yoked spouses. So you have the original origination of the word is, if you have, like I have a photo. So one of our most popular posts in an apostolate va.org is actually the most popular post is on unequally yoked marriages and as a giraffe yoked to a mule pulling a plow. So you have one ends really high up and one ends really low, which means it rubs them both wrong because the gate of a giraffe and the gate of a mule are not the same. And so it's torture for the animals and it can be torture in marriage with unequally yoked marriages is incredibly painful. So before the break, you talked about becoming aware of where these thoughts are coming from. Well, I talked about how the enemy works, right? In an unequally yes, understanding how the enemy affects a spouse in an unequally yoked marriages, marriage, right out to spare narcissism. Now we're going to talk about how to combat that how to deal with it. And I and I want to add to this, you know, I you have to be very careful when you are in an unequally yoked marriage to what sources you listen to and who is speaking into your heart, right? Because the enemy will speak often through people you love very much, who are watching you suffer, and they want you, they just want to ease your pain, right? And they're going to go to the easiest. The path of least resistance that avoids the cross. And the thing is, is salvation does not come without the cross. Yeah, we must embrace our cross and sometimes our cross, like sometimes my cross is in the shape of Dan Burke and has a beard. Whoa, whoa, whoa, right? And sometimes Dan's cross is shaped like Stephanie Burke, you know, and it smells like, you know, rose perfume. So, right? So, you know, we, we just have to, we have to understand that. And one of the best things, and you know, I'm kind of going off here, but one of the best things that you and I ever did, which I thought was really beautiful. And you had read something years ago. And we put it in place in our marriage is we put in hedges. We put in hedges, like a hedge around your house, right? We put a hedge around our marriage. And we committed to one another that the only person that got inside that has hedge was Jesus, our priest. And you and I, that was it. And the priest only in the, in the, in the context of, you know, if we needed to talk to a priest and get, you know, help, right? Nobody else got to speak into our marriage. And we also didn't speak to others about our marriage. So how does that apply to unequally oak though? Because that's, you have only one who's has a good commitment in that sense. Right, right. But as I've spoken to an, like, I countless direct these, right? Yeah, that have been in this situation. You know, if somebody comes to you and says, my husband is a narcissist, my husband is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, my response is, I'm sure that's very painful. The Lord wants to heal you. Yeah, you Lord wants to meet you in this situation. The Lord wants your heart. Oh, but what about my husband? I know, but the Lord is saying I want you. Yeah, because you can't control the other person. All you can control is what I don't want this time to go by because you're giving good advice, but I want to give folks a handful of resources who are in unequally oak marriages. One, spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits will help. Second, for the Gallagher's best book, in my opinion, by a long shot, it's called discernment of spirits in marriage. Right. And what? Well, yes, I love the book. Yeah. But as I said in our series with him, which is a phenomenal, phenomenal book. And I said, the wife is given a complete pass here, father. Oh, because only Mark, she did say it directly. Yeah. Mark in the book is the one with all the problems. You know, she, she's like a walking saint, right. And but also women struggle wing women struggle hugely with discernment. So yes, you know, discernment of spirits. And we have a mini course, a free mini course on this. We did 14 sections with Father Gallagher, who wrote the book out on apostoleeva.org apostoliva.org. It'll be in show notes. Yeah. Yeah. So so in the end, you know, how do you combat this? How do you deal with it? You really need good counsel as in a spiritual director that's burst in in spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits, deep in prayer themselves, people of prayer, that can keep you grounded as it were in on the rock of Christ, right? Not out on the sea of tumult, not on the sand of trying to fix others in your life, but rather going deep in your relationship with the Lord, letting him meet you in that pain, and then offering that to the Lord and and seeking healing in and through him, right? That's where our piece is going to come. And you know what the beauty of that is? And I want every person that is in an unequally yoked marriage to hear this, there is great hope in this, because the Lord's at work in that pain in that suffering in that cross, the Lord's at work, he wants to heal you and meet you there and draw you to himself. And what's so beautiful is that when he does that, you change grace flows and the world changes around you. And, and I have seen countless people come to the Lord in a deep profound way, who have ended up bringing about salvation through Christ into their marriage, healing through Christ into their marriage. It's remarkable. I've seen people deathbed conversions. I've seen marriages be repaired after forced abortion, and, and lack of intimacy after, you know, decades, decades, I've seen complete transformations when whoever is being drawn by the Lord goes deep with the Lord and all of us all in completely in and allows the Lord to heal them. And then they're able to pray more fervently, more efficaciously for the transformation of those around them. And the Lord works in that. Amen. Just it's awesome. Divine intimacy and marriage retreat. When's our next divine intimacy and marriage retreat? We are going to have one actually in November of this year, which is 2022. Right, right? Yeah, tell people. And that one is going to be in the diocese of Arlington, Virginia. We are also going to have one in Hansville. And that one we do yearly at the shrine of the Blessed Sacrament where Mother Angelica is buried, Hansville, Alabama. And we do that when over the weekend, whatever weekend's closest or overlapping with Valentine's Day. Right. And that's really, really great. Folks want to learn this stuff in depth. It's great. You know, it's something else they can do. So we have a few men slept in the show. What I want you to do is get personal. And I want you to because I think most of the time it's women who are converted and husbands who are unconverted, even though it goes both ways. I want you to talk about your struggles in our marriage and how you've dealt with them when they occur and related to discernment of spirits and all of that. Because we we have a very happy and good marriage. It first five years was rough. But God be praised the last years have been amazing. What tell what have you done? Like how have you used what you've learned to help the situation? Yeah. Well, God be praised. We had a good, a wonderful spiritual director. Yeah, that led us both. And which is big, you know, I think first was the recognition that we both brought darkness in knew that we were so broken. And we had said our fiat to the Lord huge fiat on both of our sides, all in all in completely in because we were determined to break the pattern of divorce in our family. Yeah. And we desperately wanted to put Christ at the center of our marriage. Yeah. So that's foundational. That's foundational, right? But I couldn't wait on you to get all that right. And you know, my happiness wasn't in I couldn't find my happiness in you. You came to that realization and you accepted that reality. I had to at some point now that doesn't mean it was easy. Right. And I struggled with it. And I did try to make you make me happy. Which never works. It doesn't work. Make you make me happy. That's a good line. Yeah. You know, and and it just you know, it wasn't working. And I remember in spiritual direction one time talking to dear Father John, I said, you know, he gets upset, blah, blah, you know, there's conflict and he like leaves and what do you know? And then I pursue and blah, blah, blah. And he said, let him go. Stop pursuing. Let him go. Stop pursuing. Stop trying to make him make you happy. Right. And and said, he'll come back. You know, and during and of course, that's a huge cross because you're feeling miserable at the time. And you just want to you want to relieve the pressure and the pain. So you just want to talk until you're blue. And that doesn't help because it just drives the other person crazy. And allowing that space was important. Allowing you to go was important and give you time to process and then come back to talk about it. Now, God be praised, you were in spiritual direction. So that was helpful. But what I had to do in that moment was embrace my own cross of needing to fix and drive to resolution. And I needed to deny that in myself to die to that in myself and offer it to the Lord. That's one thing. Another very, very specific. Go ahead. So the enemy would propose to you. Yes, you need to fix this. Yes. And something you revealed earlier and now now urgent, urgent, urgent. Right. So okay, and watch the clock. Yeah, I'm watching it urgency and improvements, by the way. Right. And just because you think somebody something does not mean that it should come out of your mouth. You could say that a many times. Yeah, just because you think of something doesn't mean it should come out of your mouth, especially to your spouse. You must treat your spouse with respect. And if you are driven to imprudence, to harsh words, to physical violence, to any of those kind of things, that's not of God. That's demonic. And you need to die to yourself a million times in that and not let that come forth and seek healing. Because that's that's an indication that you need healing. You know, the last thing I'll say about this, and this was huge for me, is I pursued God with all that I was, you did. I can bear witness to that with all that I was, I was so pained over my divorce. So pained at the at the damage it had done to my kids. So pained at the misery that it was causing that I was determined to be healed. And to do whatever God had asked, because I had made that promise before you and I met just shortly before you and I met, I had poured my my heart out in front of the Blessed Sacrament. And I had said, Lord, if you are real, take over my life, and I will do whatever you ask of me. I made that promise and I meant it. And it changed the course of my life. If you want to know how to do that, you want to know how to follow up on everything we've talked about on the show, apostoleva.org, A-P-O-S-T-O-L-I-V-I-A-E.org, lots of free courses, lots of resources. And with that, we got to run. So we got to get close to show. Okay. 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 with the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen.