 Hey, friends, you're watching behind scene Divine Intimacy Radio. We're talking about part, we're doing part three show of Uniformity of God's Will and we're just going to jump in on your market set. Go. This is Dan, Stephanie and Jordan Burke. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio. You're a radio haven of rest. You're a hermitage of the heart. You're a monastery of the mind where we lift our hearts and minds to heaven to navigate the tumult of this very difficult life. And we have an amazing guide to do that today, which is St. Alphonsus Liguri. And Jordan Burke. And Jordan Burke. That's right. And we're working through my latest book, which is a reflection on an amazing letter he wrote called Uniformity with God's Will. And if you're following along, we're in chapter two, Uniformity and All Things. And in this chapter, St. Alphonsus really starts to dig into this question of how do we respond when God moves, either he causes or allows something, can indicate to us how ready we are to follow his will and can reveal how weak that readiness is or how strong it is. And then when it's revealed that it's weak, we have this beautiful moment of encounter where we can either, we can either sort of fight the junk in us to deal with conforming, or we can yield to our own sinful, which is usually what it is, response or frustrated response. So I'm curious, what I'd like to hear from both of you, is there an example in your life, recent, more recent, the better, because you've been working for a while, but it'd be good for people to, or maybe in the past, and maybe some contrasts, where there was a circumstance that initially caused you to really be frustrated or angry or whatever the negative emotions are, meaning you're resisting as well. You realized it in the moment because of this, this what we're studying. And then you, you were able to recover. So I don't know, either one's fine. Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of examples, but I don't know. I don't know which ones I can tell. You know, some of them are very personal. I think, you know, recently I mentioned in the show previous to this one, the second show, that I gave a talk this weekend. And originally, I didn't want to do it. And that's just kind of my demeanor. Whenever someone wants, they're like, can you come on a podcast? Sure, I guess. You know, I'd rather be in a cave somewhere, right? But so there's that struggle. But then in that recognizing that that's something that God is calling me to and to resist is to be like Jonah, who probably will be close friends and have it if I ever make it there. But in the midst of trying to write that talk, so saying yes to God's will in that sense and saying, yes, I will do this talk, there was still a lot of internal struggle to the point where I couldn't write anything. I couldn't think. I mean, I was banging my head. I talked to you all about it. I was just banging my head against the wall for an entire day. You mean the Lord was asking you to do the harder thing? Right? I know. Yeah. Imagine. Imagine that. Instagram page. Yeah. And shameless plug. Yeah. And do the harder thing. It was it was interesting because it's it's it once I say yes, it's generally very easy for me to just write something out. In this case, it was extraordinarily difficult. And I was I was just struggling with it. And in that, and I'm resisting the struggle to I'm frustrated that I'm struggling. I'm frustrated that I can't do something frustrated that I'm not, you know, like God, why aren't you giving me inspiration? Whatever these things are, right? So it's a lot of internal just, just wrestling. Until I kind of realized, oh, you're wrestling because God wants you to wrestle. You're wrestling because what he wants you to talk about is something that you've struggled with for a long time. And you need to experience this feeling of wrestling so that you can articulate it. You need to be brought. So my spiritual director, as an example further better example, it's easier to articulate this way. When I was given talks on pornography overcoming that, you know, I told him every time I'm about to give one of these talks the week prior, I'm in an extreme desolation for an entire week prior to this talk. He said, Jordan, God is taking you to the valley so that you can remember how you felt and where you were so that you can lead these guys out that desolation. And that's for me recognizing, you know, uniform or unifying myself with God's will and realizing you're permitting me to feel this desolation for a purpose that you have gained me the experience or or some some outcome that you want. Yeah, you've got a big one. Oh, Lord, which which ones? Which ones are you alluding to? I have a list. Mama. Mama. Mama. Oh, Lord, have mercy. Yeah. So painful. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I know a lot of families are dealing with this struggle. My mom has been diagnosed with dementia. She's had it for years. And she took a really hard turn south. It just went really recently, you know. And so I've got my dad, you know, who through a fall ended up having to have brain surgery for a brain bleed. He's 86. He's my my deacon dad, my stepdad. But he's been good. He's been my dad for years and years and years they have I don't know, 40, 40, 50 year marriage, 40 years, something like that. Beautiful people. Yeah. And then and he's caring for my mom. So he's 86. She's 83. And I you know, I went to see them. And I stayed for two weeks, you know, almost two weeks there to try to help out because they're staying at my my eldest step sister's house. And we're trying to figure out how to navigate how to serve them how to serve them. Dad's going to therapy. Mom is struggling like crazy. And you know, I'm watching all this happen. And I knew I had to leave. Because I married, I have a husband, there's a ministry, you know, there are souls that are waiting to go through deliverance and my spiritual directories and all of that. Like, I like the Lord is saying, I've called you to something I need to go home. And this is something that's going to be really hard in the stomach for a lot of people. But I was struggling because I thought, I don't know what's going to have how my mom's going to be when I leave. I didn't want to cause her more suffering. I didn't want her to say, you know, wear stuff, you know, and be languishing and then go even worse south because she would get very agitated, upset, disoriented, paranoia, all kinds of stuff going on. Yeah, just pain. She's suffering. Just terrible pain. It's heartbreaking. And it's it's very it's a it's a hard struggle. She's got a fiery spirit makes it all the harder I think. And and so I I'm languishing in this but I haven't articulated it to anybody. And I'm just staying faithful to my prayer. And I'm just laying everything at the feet of the Lord. And but this is ruminating in my head. I'm worried about how she's going to react. I get up the next day the day before I'm supposed to leave. And I walk into the kitchen and she turns and she looks at me and she says, Hey, when did you get here? And I had been there for weeks. That was the only day that she did that. And it was like the Lord saying, follow my will. Follow my will. And you know, the day I left, which was the next day. And and he was comforting me, you know, letting me be detached of that. The next day I get up and you know what the scripture verse is? What? And he who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the kingdom of God. I'm reading this as I'm flying away at 6am in the morning. I left in the dark weeping. I was I was weeping. I was grieving. Because you want you you wanted to above all you wanted to be with her. I wanted to be the one who cared for her protected her, consoled her to care for bodily needs. God hasn't given that to you. He hasn't. Because she's in Texas. He hasn't given it to me. Yeah. But he's given me a heart of love and sacrifice. Yeah. And so following God's will versus my will was leaving was leaving and going back to what he asked of me. Not what I wanted to do. And it's even brings tears now. It does. It's such a struggle. But you know what? I know that he's working in this and he's he's sanctifying the rest of my family. He's working in and through this pain and this struggle. And even, you know, I know this as part of my mom's purgation, right? And it's just excruciating excruciatingly painful, not and especially they're also the whole family is just beautiful, wonderful people. Yeah. I mean, and especially at least an hour. Yeah. And it's so hard to watch the pain. Yeah. Yeah. But but so often that get giving my heart completely over to the Lord, to say, I'm going to go where you lead me, I'm going to do what you ask of me. And you got to take care of mom. And I've got it. And I have to surrender my mom to him. And he's letting me know, I've got her. She's not going to suffer more because you're not standing by her side. I'm in control of this. Let go. Well, that's how complicated this topic is. And that's a perfect example, because at this point, you have listened to God's will so far in your life, or you come so far in your life, that you recognize God has called me to do X Y Z. I have these things, these ministries, these other things, aside from the state in life things that we have to answer to. And, and you even have to balance that out. When people are understanding, well, how do I do God's will? It's like, well, I want to, I want to fulfill the commandment of honor your parents. But in this case, you are right. And that's really hard for people to understand. You are honoring your parents by doing this, because you are supposed to be doing it. You're supposed to be doing it. And God's doing it. He needs to do and wants to do things that we will not understand until we're with him, while we're fulfilling what he has called us. Yeah, I mean, there's so many levels to this. And I have really truly understood that my role, what my part in this is now become sacrifice, prayer, every rosary, every man and every time there's a phone call where there needs to be help, right? I'm there. Yeah, I will have to go back out. You know, we're going back at Thanksgiving to go to go just love and serve the family and check in and see how things are going. But you know, that that was a wind of time that I was able to carve out to go. And we just we have to do what the Lord asked us. And is it maybe this will help people? Is it struggling with the feeling of abandoning something else? When in reality, we're not abandoning, we're, we're putting it on the altar for God to deal with. Trusting. Right. That's the difference. Yeah, the flesh or the devil would say, to try to bring guilt, you're abandoning. Right. The truth is, you're, you're giving it over to God. Because if you look at the sovereign plan of God, in this case, we have, we, for years, we asked them to come to Alabama. We would build them a place and we would help them. And that wasn't God's will. And so it wasn't given to us. They're in doubt. They're in Fort Worth, where we have wonderful people who are caring for them. And and that's what God decided. We didn't decide that air flighting him out, forcing the whole thing. He didn't just, you know, my parents didn't decide it. We didn't decide the Lord said, in by these circumstances, I'm going to put them here where they're going to be cared over and watched over by family and some really good options for their wonderful options. I mean, state of the art. Yeah, world-class medical care. But I think in our flesh, so often, we want to do what we want to do that feels right to us, and not understand that even in these circumstances, the Lord's at work through my mom suffering, the Lord is transforming and my family. Yeah, beautiful conversation. My siblings. It's crazy. It's beautiful. Yeah. So hard. It's sort of it's beautiful, as we say, beautiful, brutal and beautiful. When you see what God is doing. So we get back from the break. We're going to do another example of this with dealing with illness, because of Liguri actually brings that up specifically, we'll be right back. And your market said, Oh, welcome back. Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio. You're with Dan, Stephanie and Jordan Burke today. We're doubly blessed today to have more of the family to talk through this great subject. We're talking through just key highlighting key points in my new book, Finding Peace in the Storm, which is reflections on St. Alfonso Liguri's uniformity with God's will. And I think, frankly, the best antidote, I mean, there's three books that we mentioned, but this is one of the three best books out available on understanding difficult times, understanding, how do I find peace? How do I find God's will? How do I bring myself in conformity? So on page 27, St. Alfonso says, further, we must unite ourselves with God will not only in things that come to come to us directly from his hands, such as sickness, desolation, poverty and death of relatives, but life, likewise, those we suffer from others, for example, contempt and justice, loss of reputation, temporal goods, and all kinds of persecutions. On these occasions, we must remember that that while God does not will the sin, he does will our humiliation and our poverty, and our mortification as the case may be. Yeah, yeah. So I have a great example here. A loved one. I won't say who it is. There were a number of layoffs at work. And as we were in discussion, you know, there was, there was a huge amount of need for the income that was coming in, right? And you could kind of see it on the horizon, you know, the economy has been pretty bad. And so there was one layoff. And I said, it's coming, you know, it's coming, the layoffs coming, because your position in this, in this organization, isn't crucial. And they just haven't figured it out yet, because they're struggling financially, or whatever it is, right? Cutbacks is, you know, the economy to be clear, this is not our organization. No, no, no, it was just so people are like, why don't you talk about this? It was it was a loved one who was working for an organization. And the and the, you know, the layoff came. And then there was one layoff, there was a second layoff. And then I get the call. I lost my job like that. No severance, no nothing overnight. And all of a sudden, no backup plan, no resources, you know, because when you're living in a real way, not irresponsibly, but paycheck to paycheck, because they're young, you know, then that that's a real burden. And, you know, I immediately called, and I said, get yourself to church first. Get you this is a huge storm, you know, after you know, all the, the the outburst of work, you know, the, the string of words, no, no, no, no, you know, all this stuff, right? Okay, now let's get to church, go sit at church, just be in God's presence, and put it at his feet and surrender it and come to a place of peace before you do anything else. And what's most important, guard your heart from any kind of bitterness, doubt, despair, narcissism, anything that's going to take you the wrong direction. Because when we come to those storms, the temptation is, you know, we do go into desolation, and then we run, and the enemy runs with it, and can really wreck us, can turn us into bitter, angry, frustrated people that we all know out in the world that we see all over the place, right? But in that moment, it was no surrender to this, surrender to him. And then you get up and do the next right thing. And God be praised through that trial, tremendous graces, and a month of every day, every day, surrender prayer, application, surrender, application, holding together, keep an eye on got a great job, got a job that far outweighs the other, fully remote, and is enabling them to do the other things that they want to do. It doesn't always work out that way. It doesn't. But in this case, it did, it did out of out of trust and faith, you know. Yeah. So did you have something, Jordan? No, I mean, just more often than, more often than not, though, that's what happened. Because you've given what he wants, which is it's saying, in this tough circumstance, whatever the situation may be, whatever hardship may be, Lord, your will be done. It's Jesus in the garden, right? Let this pass, this cut pass for me, but your will be done. Yeah. And in that, there's tremendous grace. Well, it's a real understanding that God is sovereign. And that's the, the first thing that the enemy wants us to, to forget. Yeah. Oh, God's not in this. Where is God? He's napping. Where was God in your, in your storms? He went on vacation. He's in the Bahamas. But you know, that's not true. He's paying attention to him. He's allowed this. The producer. He's either willed it, or he's allowed it in order to bring about a greater good. So another example, I just want to be just give real examples. You know, the first show in this series, this is the, is this the third show? So you could, I could barely talk. And, and my, my vocal cords were inflamed, my lungs were inflamed. I was really struggling. So since then, I've been on a path of recovery. And to, and I've been tapering down medications that make me feel terrible. And obviously, I can talk way better than all that. And I thought, okay, I'm out of the woods, and I'm going to be fine. Two days ago, wrong. And I started to go backwards again. And there was, there is a moment because I lost a lot of sleep a couple of nights, because I'm coughing, I can't breathe, I can't lay flat and all of this. And there are moments in there. And even now, like right as I'm talking, there's a little bit of darkness, a little bit of desolation, trying to creep in. Because I hate the medication. I hate the way it makes me feel. It helps me not to die, which is good. But, but I don't like it. But I was up in the chapel yesterday. And just a theme that the Lord has been reminding me, I was looking at him on the crucifix. And he just reminded me again, I couldn't breathe, you know, and I'm having trouble breathing. And so I'm like, okay, I'm with you. And I'm sorry for your suffering. Because you couldn't breathe because of my sin and the sins of the whole world that were laid on you. And so I get the gift again, it's not as severe as it was. But I have a gift. And even now my lungs are rattling as I'm speaking. But I get this gift of being able to be more intimate with Jesus, more united with him and his suffering to offer it up. And we have the marriage retreat coming, we have all of this. And so, so even when you are down, let's say, which I am a little bit, even when you're in desolation, you can still choose to be conformed to his will. And you can say, in spite of how I feel, and by the way, I offer up how crummy I feel, if it's irritation, if it's sadness, for me, it's weariness, you know, just like how long am I going to fight this thing? It's been months now. When is this going to end? When is it going to end? But, but what happened to me as in that moment in particular is as I, it allowed me to rejoice. And it's a weird kind of rejoicing. It's not a rejoicing like, Hey, Yippee-ki-yay, isn't this wonderful? I can't, I can't breathe and things weren't getting, you know, it's not like that, but this weird kind of goofy, false thing. It is a deeper kind of rejoicing. It's a gratitude. Because, you know, I get to know him in ways that people who have never had severe lung disease get, get to know him, because that's a unique kind of suffering that he experienced. And that's a gift. And I'm grateful for that gift, because I know what to do with it. I know how to offer, offer it up. And, and then there's this progression of cooperation in this whole thing, like in all of these circumstances, there's a, there's a maybe a, okay, I accept this. That's good. There's, there's merit there. It's better than fighting or it's a yes, this is good. This is another deeper level, right? And then there's another one, which is yes, I need this, I embrace this. I understand it's your will. Yeah. And then there's another one, which is yes, now I'm going to fully cooperate with it. So it's not, it's, it's a, you know, it would be one thing to just accept the suffering. It's another to say, I offer it up, which is joining with him. It's another to say, I want it, if it's your will. And most people, just to be perfectly clear, are going to have to start with that act of the will that says, okay, I accept this. The early one. Yeah. Right. Right. I mean, that's just where it starts. It's the same thing with forgiveness. You have to choose to forgive someone, even if you don't feel like it. Right. You have to make that act of the will. It's the same thing with unifying your will to God's will and on a deeper level. You have to, if you're starting there, that's fine. There's merit there. Yeah. But eventually, as you said, there's deeper levels of commitment and deeper levels of relationship that will come as a result of you subjugating your will to what you know is right. Over and over and over again. The more you do it, the more you enter more deeply into it, the more you draw near to him in it, the more you cooperate in it, the more you then you become an instrument. Right. Right. Of his grace. Yeah. So I don't know if it's okay, but I'd like to make a given example of a married couple. Sure. And what this looks like. So, you know, so many, so many couples, you know, they enter into a marriage. It's, you know, you know, he smells good. He was the cutest guy. He's the one who pursued me. You're talking about me. We got, you know, whatever, right? For all the wrong reasons, you end up married to somebody. Oh, yeah. And you find your, and when you got married, you were kind of both off the rails. And then, then the Lord breaks through. Normally, he breaks through through childbearing. And more often than not, it's not all the time, but a heavy percentage of women convert before men. Like it's the suffering. It's the, the, you know, the appreciation of childbirth and being able to cooperate in this. It's so miraculous and incredible to carry a child and then have this baby placed in your arms. And it just changes you. You're never the same when you've carried in how to child. And so the Lord uses that and he rushes upon you, right? And a lot of women, that's the beginning of their conversion. So then the Lord's rushing upon them. And all of a sudden, they're not the same woman that the guy married and he's going like, what happened to my wife? And he's not on board with the faith, but she is, right? And that's a whole nother level of suffering, right? And so you've got this pain and this, this dis ease in the marriage, the wife's being called the husband being called, but he doesn't recognize it. He's not cooperating. And so there's that pain and discord of my marriage, like is falling apart. It's painful. I don't feel connected to my husband. He's not with me. And this can also be husbands with their wives because I know a couple of examples of crazy conversions of guys and their wives didn't come along with them. And and so that pain and their suffering has caused them to distress. So that's another place where that uniformity with God's will with giving into his divine will is so very important because you have to take that suffering and you offer it to the Lord for the sake of your spouse, for the sake of the unity of your marriage and you have to get beyond the anger, the disappointment, the frustration to turn it into a life giving suffering that's united to the will of God because he's sovereign. He's allowing this to happen. And hopefully he will bring it to its fruition. Then as we're about to close, you may be the only person who's going to pray and sacrifice for them. That's right. And your prayers in that case, because it's forgiveness and your own suffering are way more powerful than any prayers that anyone can offer. Pray for the person that's persecuting you or breaking your heart is the most powerful prayer. 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.