Intecessors of the Lamb

I think St. Paul gave us one of the most beautiful ways to examine our conscience when he gave us the definition of love in the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians. It's so beautiful! It's such a wonderful way of seeing who God is, what He wants, and who we are called to be. It helps us to know what we are not. Let me go through his definition of love. I encourage you to incorporate it into your own personal prayer life.

"Love is kind. Love is not jealous; it does not put on airs, it is not snobbish. Love is never rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not prone to anger; neither does it brood over injuries. Love does not rejoice in what is wrong but rejoices with the truth. There is no limit to love's forbearance, to its trust, its hope, its power to endure" (1Cor 13:4-7). We can substitute our own name for love. Try it. "I (your name) am patient. I am not jealous; I do not put on airs, etc." This is a wonderful way to examine our consciences.

Sometimes we can do really well for a week or a month, but we have our limits. "Lord, this is enough. Enough is enough." God will say, "No. Draw from My love. You're trying to go on your own strength and your own power again. I'm the Lord, your God. I'm the One who is pure love. You're limited. I am not. Draw from Me-then you can love without end, without limits, without conditions."

Have you ever tried that for just one day or even a half day? Take it slow and easy. I tried to spend a half day loving all the people in my life without any conditions. It is difficult. I had no idea of all the conditions I was putting on people. "Why couldn't they have spoken a little more gently, Lord? Don't You think they were impatient with me? What's wrong with them?" There was nothing unconditional about my love at that time. I wanted everyone else to change; then I could love them. I wanted them to be like Jesus; then I could love them.

But Jesus said that this is not where we begin. We begin to love where He began. He loved us when we were deep in sin. He loved us when we were still a long way off. He loved us just as we were. He loves us just as we are. This is how He came to us. It's His love that draws us to change. When we're loved by anyone, we really start to change. It's their love that does it.

St. Paul said, "Do you not know that God's kindness, God's love, is an invitation for you to change" (see 2Pt 3:9). God is saying to us, "Love everyone. If you don't find any love there, you put it there." This is loving unconditionally. Whenever we don't do that, we will find our sin. Paul says, "Seek eagerly after love" (1Cor 14:1). We might say, "Lord, how do I do this?" And He says simply, "By following Me. I am Love. If you follow Me, you are obeying Me. You will be Spirit led."

Excerpt from "Consecrated by the Spirit," Church Alive Album, Omaha, NE, 2000.

02-11-02 Some Tactics of the Evil One

February 11, 2002

"Some of the Tactics of the Evil One"

Satan likes to isolate us. The first large deliverance ministry that I ever participated in (I didn't tell anyone I was doing it) taught me many things. I received so much terrible retaliation from the enemy that I could barely drive myself to Church to have a priest get rid of the evil spirits which were attacking me. It was terrible. I remember asking the Lord, "I thought You wanted me to go into this particular ministry on this particular person that day." He said, "Yes, but never, never, do it alone. You had no backup behind you. No one even knew you were in the ministry, so they weren't interceding for you. The enemy likes to isolate you and then attack." So don't let the enemy isolate you because this is when we are the most vulnerable.

Satan likes to work in areas of miscommunication. Right now there are so many divorces in America because of miscommunication. People can't talk to each other anymore. They don't understand each other anymore. I asked the Lord, "Why is Satan coming into this area so easily?" Jesus told me, "It's because I am the Word. I am the Divine Communicator. This is Satan's attack against Me. He hates it when people communicate with each other." So if there is distancing between anyone, we try to get the people to communicate. We don't assume that we know what he or she is talking about. We play it back to him or her, "This is what I am understanding you to say. Is that correct?" Otherwise we can make assumptions, which can lead to miscommunication, which can lead to division-brother from brother, friend from friend, husband from wife. There is division everywhere, and it is very much a hallmark of the enemy.

Satan also works very strongly through concealment. Anytime you feel tempted not to tell, particularly a person or persons who should know, this is usually Satan tempting you, "Don't tell. Keep it in the dark." Satan loves us to keep things hidden and in the dark. Once we bring things into the light, even through our journaling, we're bringing it into God's light, and Satan gets very defensive. He's not very strong in the light, but he's very strong in the dark. So concealment is one of his best territories.

One day we received a phone call from a husband of a friend of ours. His wife had become very sick suddenly, and he asked that we come. When we got there we found that she was almost in a paralytic state. I am her spiritual director, and I know her very well. She's a daily communicant, a beautiful Catholic, and has a beautiful family.

Right away I asked the Lord, "What is going on here?" He told me that it was the spirit of fear that was putting her in this paralyzed state, and He wanted us to take authority over the spirit of fear and get it out. We did, and she was all right. But we always want to know, "How did this spirit get into him or her? Where is the open door?" It's always going to be different. So I asked the Lord, "Where was the open door?" He said, "Concealment." I thought, "I'm her spiritual director. She must be concealing something from me."

So later I asked her, "Are you sharing everything in spiritual direction that I should know, like what are you doing, what are you reading, are there any fears that you have that aren't being manifested to your confessor or to me?" She said, "Oh yes. I started reading a lot about UFO's and these space things. I have become very fearful of it.. I didn't want to tell you or anybody because it's things that my kids read. I thought you would think it was silly. I kept getting more and more afraid of the reality of it, so I kept that to myself." This is where, in the concealment, a door of fear opened so a high-powered controlling spirit of fear came into her and totally paralyzed her, totally stopping her. We also cast out a deaf and dumb spirit from her because the spirit of fear was keeping her from speaking and hearing.

There is a high-powered spirit that plays games, which we call a spirit of games. I think they play games with us in mockery of the fact that we are children of God. Children like to play games. We can spot them whenever there is a lot of confusion. If confusion starts coming during a discernment process, then we take authority over the spirit of games to get rid of it.

Excerpt from "Deliverance Strategies," Ghana, Africa, 2000.

02-18-02 The Prophetic Church

February 18, 2002

"The Prophetic Church"

There was another action that took place on Pentecost in the Upper Room. There was the driving wind, God breathing, literally blowing His wind, His breath into them. Scripture says, "Tongues as of fire appeared, which parted and came to rest on each of them" (Acts 2:3). The word "rest" is very anointed in Scripture, particularly for contemplatives because that is contemplative prayer at the very beautiful, full degree. When we are at this level, we rest because the Spirit is resting upon us. We rest so that God can do all the action. At this level of prayer, we become receivers. So the Holy Spirit came and rested upon them on Pentecost.

This year we are celebrating a year of jubilee, a year of God's favor. The Spirit is resting upon the Church this year as never before, and so we are anxiously awaiting all that He wants to do. We want to allow Him to lead us and fill us in this rest because we are in God's favor. When He rests, the same thing happens again as what happened to Our Lady-the Word becomes enfleshed in each one of us. We literally become His temple. We become His Body. We become flesh of His flesh and bone of His bone. St. Paul tells us that nothing can separate us from the love of God-nothing.

This Fire does something else when it rests upon us. Remember the Fire is the Spirit, and the Fire is still that driving wind. Whenever that Fire comes to rest upon us, It begins to drive us into the desert as It drove all the prophets into the desert, and as it drove Jesus into the desert as well. It drives us into the desert because many things happen in the desert, but the primarily one is intimacy-union, aloneness with God-so we can begin to allow that Word within us to take root and grow.

Sometimes I forget that Jesus was a prophet. His Word lives within us, and He wants to share that Word. A prophet is simply one who hears God's word and then does with that word whatever God is indicating. Prophets come from the desert because this is where they hear God and learn what God wants to do. For some, like the prophets in the Old Testament, it might be to speak that word out. For intercessors, we hear the word and then we pray it out. We take that word and live it out. So we need to go into the desert. We need to have the Holy Spirit drive us there everyday because we need to become prophets. We need to become a prophetic Church. We need to receive His revelations again. Jesus said, "My words are words of Spirit and Life. You are going to receive life. My Spirit of Fire is resting upon you, so My words are going to be burning words. They are going to be words of fire and words of action."

Excerpt from "Gathered Together in One Place," Church Alive Album, Omaha, NE, 2000.

02-25-02 A New Law of Love

February 25, 2002

"A New Law of Love"

Truly the Holy Spirit has written His law of love on our hearts. The Catechism has many names for the Holy Spirit, and one of the names given through the Church's history is "finger of God." The Holy Spirit is the finger of God on the Father's right hand. The Father's right hand is the power. Isn't that beautiful? The finger of God is what wrote the Ten Commandments. Remember when Jesus wrote in the earth when the woman was caught in adultery? Jesus stooped down and started writing. He said, "You, any of you who are without sin, then you cast the first stone" (see Jn 8:7). One by one they all started leaving. I thought, "That's strange. What happened there?" I was searching the Scriptures-it doesn't explain-so I asked the Lord, "What happened? ‘You who is without sin.' Lord, what would the Pharisees consider sin?" He said, "Their law. The Mosaic Law. The Ten Commandments." I said, "So that must have been what You were writing-their law. They had broken that law."

Now it's the finger of God that's writing this new law of love within our hearts, and He's writing it with the Father's right hand. It's engraved in our hearts. It's there as a Person-He is the new law. So we have the love power, but there's always a struggle. We don't always die so easily, even though Jesus said, "I want you to take up your cross daily (see Mt 16:24). I want you to die daily. I want you to decrease daily." We struggle, and God lets us struggle, but in the struggle, we grow stronger. Then there will be a birthing, and we are free. We'll go along for awhile and then there will be another struggle. There will be another birthing and more freedoom. It's going from glory because we're going from God's life to more of God's life to even more of God's life, until the day when we, too, will be full of the glory of God. We'll be full of His life.

It's really like living the Passover of the Lord at all times. This is what He was doing. We're passing from death at one level to life. We're passing from darkness within us at one level to light. We're passing from negativity or hate or anger at one level into love. We're passing from bondage within ourselves into freedom. We're always experiencing the Passover of the Lord because the Lord within us is carrying us over the threshold.

Personal sin is where Satan will direct his fiercest attacks. This is where we will meet him in a greater way than any other way in spiritual warfare-in the sin area itself because this is where he usually has a stronghold. Our struggle is to die, and we don't like to die that easily, and he knows it. He will do everything he can to tell us, "It's okay. You have your rights, too. You're justified. Who do these people think they are? Hang on to that, hang on. Don't die. Don't give into Jesus, don't give in to the Spirit, don't give in to love."

We struggle so he will not have power over us. He is darkness. St. Paul said, "Put on the armor of light" (Rom 13:12). That's a type of armor of the Spirit where we live totally in light. Satan can't touch us when we are clothed in the armor of light. He's blinded and is very weak in face of the light. God has truly called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. He is the Spirit of light, He is the Spirit of Truth, He is the Spirit of Love, and for intercessors, the Spirit of obedience is the very essence of prayer. This is because obedience is the essence of our mission. In this spirit of obedience we join in the mission of the Lamb who takes away the sin of disobedience. Taking away sin, taking away Satan's hold on the world, and taking away Satan's kingdom through our obedience, in union with Jesus, is what it's all about. This is how we do it. We become little. Littleness is being humble and very vulnerable, and yet, it's being in the power of God as never before. When we are weak, we are truly empowered.

Jesus said to the Father, "Sacrifice and oblation you did not desire, but a body you have prepared for me . . .Then I said, ‘As it written of me in the book, I have come to do your will, O God' " (Heb 10:5, 7). Not just an individual body, but all of us together form that Body. God the Father has prepared a Body, a Mystical Body for Jesus to come again, so that the perfect will of God can be done in, with, and through Jesus who has taken up residency within us. Scripture tells us that we are temples of the Living God (1Cor 3:16). The Father says, "When you live in accordance with My Word, when you allow Jesus to lay down His life within you and come into union with Me, in, with, and through Him, then I will welcome you and be a Father to you. You will be my sons and daughters."

Excerpt from "Consecrated by the Spirit," Church Alive Album, Omaha, NE, 2000.

03-04-02 Mission for the New Millennium

March 4, 2002

"Mission for the New Millennium"

I believe that our mission for the new millennium is quite clear-it's to regain the Kingdom again, to regain God's world and give it back to God, soul by soul by soul. Our mission is to literally go into the enemy's camp. Our mission is to become a Church on the offensive again. The Church is a mighty fortress, and she's built upon the one foundation of Jesus Christ, her Lord. But I believe God is calling us now not to just be on the defensive, but to be on the offensive, as Jesus was. We are to go right into the enemy's camp and snatch souls back again for the Father and win this war. I believe that we are called to continue the warfare mission of the Lamb who continues His redemptive mission in each of us now, and that is continuing to take away this sin, to take away Satan's kingdom.

God wants us to be free. He came to set us free. We sing a song at home, "I went to the enemy's camp, and I took back what he stole from me." That's what we're doing. That's what we're all about. It's so easy to do once we have the tools, once we know what the Lord wants, once we have the discernment, and once we know how to do it. The beautiful thing about spiritual warfare is that it comes out of prayer in union with the Deliverer Himself-Jesus. It can take place anywhere in the world. Prayer in union with Jesus is definitely the answer to the new millennium because sin and evil has escalated. This is the only way we are going to reach everyone. Some people's faith level is very low. Many people have left the Catholic Church. There is a roaming, a sense of being lost within so many of God's beautiful little sheep, and it's time to go after them and bring them home. Through God's grace and prayer, it can happen.

Excerpt from "Spiritual Warfare for the New Millennium," New Orleans, LA, 2000.

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