Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E177: What Exorcists on YouTube Get Wrong w/Dr. Sean Tobin

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E177: What Exorcists on YouTube Get Wrong w/Dr. Sean Tobin · The Lila Rose Show

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  Experienced a lot of paranormal things in the office, from
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  pictures shifting around to persons speaking in languages
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  that they don't know. I'm less concerned with how a
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  demon came to be present in their life and more concerned
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  with why does it have permission to remain.
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  This is of course also begs the question of should there be so
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  many podcasts about exorcism? Like is Satan getting too much
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  marketing? My idea of deliverance it's not
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  just about removing us from the enemy's power, getting God's
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  children out of Egypt. It's also about getting Egypt
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  out of of God's children, but not stopping there.
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  It's to bring us into the Promised Land, which is life in
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  Christ. Sean Tobin, welcome back to the
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  podcast. Thank you.
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  Good to be here. Great to see you again.
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  And I just talked to Father Boniface.
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  That's right. Now our mutual friend.
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  He's amazing. Yeah.
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  So you get involved in exorcisms?
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  Yeah. Well, not the exorcism itself,
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  but in the process of 1, receiving an exorcism,
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  evaluating people to kind of screen for mental health issues
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  that might be really, really discern the authenticity of
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  someone's experience with the demonic and then also offering
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  supportive therapy alongside the process that they're in with a
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  priest typically, yeah. All right, there's so much to go
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  through here. First of all, though, you are a
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  psychologist, you're not a priest, you're not an exorcist
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  per SE. Tell us about your clinical
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  background and then we're going to dive into this very
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  fascinating topic. Sure.
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  Yeah, My clinical background. So I went to Divine Mercy
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  University and Azusa Pacific for my graduate studies after having
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  begun at Franciscan University in the pre theology program
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  there. And I was really intrigued by
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  this the realm of the supernatural through what I
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  experienced even in in ministry settings at Franciscan.
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  And then I spent a few years actually in religious life where
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  at some of the conferences we would witness people at the
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  conferences just manifest and scream out at the priests and
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  other people disrupting services.
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  Even that seemed very much demonized in what you might read
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  in the gospels when people are manifesting in the temple and
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  Jesus is confronting them. And so that kind of thing I, I,
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  I witnessed and when I started to study psychology, kind of
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  having more of a spiritual background, I always had it in
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  my mind what was happening in those situations in the, in the
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  gospels, because sometimes it almost looked like a psychiatric
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  condition. And in my training, I even
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  worked at a psychiatric hospital where there would be patients
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  that would identify as being Satan.
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  They were a little bit more mentally ill.
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  And so it just always was this question in my mind of what is
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  that integration between mental health and the spiritual and how
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  do we properly discern what's happening?
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  And believing, you know, informed of my own faith in, in
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  the truths of the Christian faith that the devil is real.
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  What is the, the, the impact in the human person and, and how
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  does he operate? And so those were just questions
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  that I really was wondering about.
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  But when I was studying, there wasn't a whole lot of literature
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  in the psychological databases. About demonic oppressions or
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  possessions. All that stuff, yeah.
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  Meaning they did like it's like the the psychiatric role
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  pretended those things didn't exist.
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  Or they can all be like medicalized and understood
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  through medical. Naturalized or whatever else.
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  And so I mean, you did find in different fringe areas or
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  different studies, a lot of it was, yeah, to discredit a
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  religious worldview. So I really set off in my
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  dissertation to to study that, to study what is happening, even
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  if it's a secular psychiatrist studying someone who's possessed
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  to really understand what's happening in that person.
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  And really at first I wanted to validate that exorcism, at least
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  according to my own faith tradition, has had a place to
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  bring freedom into people's lives.
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  And so if I'm in the, the art or the field of helping bring
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  internal freedom and mental emotional freedom to people,
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  then to me that's a significant area of human experience that
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  needs to be also addressed, but without that precedence.
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  And also I, I just found that it made a lot of people
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  uncomfortable even in the mental health field, other
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  professionals to and they really wanted to kind of separate that
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  stuff from what we were doing. But you mean it made them
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  uncomfortable to admit that Satan is real?
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  Yeah, and there's some stuff that they can't treat exactly
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  because it's diabolical. Exactly because they're supposed
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  to be the experts too. If.
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  You're a psychologist, you don't believe in God or the devil, and
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  you are treating a patient who is literally, you know,
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  screeching and manifesting demonic activity.
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  What are you going to say? Oh, you're schizophrenic?
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  Usually that's the case. Bipolar, schizophrenic,
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  something like that, but unfortunately a lot of the, the
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  people that well, there's there's a meaning behind when
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  people manifest and when the devil, he likes to hide behind
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  mental illness even. And if you just think it's
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  mental illness, you know, great, because it still gives him that,
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  that that authority to operate in someone's life, that I mean,
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  that's the whole thing we can get into.
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  But. What?
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  Tell me more about that. Yeah.
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  So I mean, the enemy ultimately doesn't want you to find out
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  that he's operating in someone's life.
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  He doesn't want you to know that you're possessed or oppressed
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  or. Absolutely.
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  And, and, and it would be easier to just label someone as
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  mentally ill and treat them in all the different forms of
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  therapies and medications that you know it.
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  In some ways it's kind of diagnostic when, when
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  medications and therapies, at least in the traditional way,
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  are not really helping the person.
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  Typically we, we kind of write people off as they're just too
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  broken and this what happens in life.
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  But there can be often times where it's because we're
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  treating the physical, we're treating the, the psychology,
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  But there's, there's other influence in their life that we
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  really have to factor in. Like Saint Paul, he really
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  didn't want us to be ignorant of the fact that in in this life,
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  we do have an enemy and, and so. Have you have you seen examples
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  of that in your work? Oh, absolutely, yeah.
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  I mean, I've, I've, I've experienced a lot of paranormal
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  things in the office from from pictures shifting around to a
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  person speaking in languages that they don't know or seeming
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  like a whole other person talking to me.
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  That's beyond what I've witnessed in like a dissociative
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  or multiple personality disorder.
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  These are in therapy sessions you're giving.
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  Yeah, with with people I've been meeting with the.
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  Pictures moved on the wall. Yeah.
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  And and and and them knowing things about what did you.
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  Do when that happened. Just continue the conversation.
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  It's like, forget you Satan, not today.
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  You can't make mess up my picture for him.
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  I'm going to. How dare.
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  American meat delivered to. To me, yeah, my whole approach
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  to this stuff, I mean, it's very easily easy to get hyped up with
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  all this stuff that enemy can be doing.
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  And typically I meet with people that have been listening to
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  exorcists online and are the people that are possessed or
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  heavily oppressed are are really experts in all the theology of
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  demonic stuff and my challenges. I I really approach this
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  radically different. So I should probably should have
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  started with that where I really believe that God in his
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  Providence allows the enemy to operate in people's lives for a
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  purpose. And often times it's to bring to
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  the surfaced something that might be remaining hidden within
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  a person, an area of division or brokenness.
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  And apart from that external conflict, sometimes we're not
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  aware of it to kind of clue us in that there's something that
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  needs to be brought to the Lord, brought into the light to be
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  healed. And so the enemy can serve so
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  many different purposes according to the Lord.
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  And I mean the way that he tested and approved of Job by
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  letting the enemy go after him, or to bring Peter to a more
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  refined place in his faith by being sifted like wheat to be to
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  have a kind of a humbler posture of dependence on the Lord.
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  Or or Paul with the thorn in the flesh that God allowed these
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  messengers from Satan to provoke him, to help him become more at
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  peace with his weakness. So there's always a meaning for
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  why the enemy is allowed to operate.
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  And so we can have this worldview too, where the
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  spiritual and the psychological don't have a lot of
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  interconnection. But from what I was, I've really
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  been studying and going back to the dissertation, what I really
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  found was that enemy, the enemy always operates within our
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  psychology and within ultimately it's a battlefield of the mind
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  from the garden on. It was through this, this mental
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  conversation and the influence of his suggestions even in the
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  mind that he began to have influence from the start.
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  And so that's still the case today, that I might operate
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  primarily focusing on someone's psyche or soul, but that really
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  is the territory that the enemy is also trying to operate in.
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  And so, yeah, I, I just just found this huge gap in, in
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  research and in conversation, and that's really what set me
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  off to to pursue this. And and then you were asking
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  about my, I guess my clinical experience.
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  It was really through my friendship with Bishop David
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  O'Connell, who has is now deceased.
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  Bishop David O'Connell in Los Angeles.
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  He was murdered. Yeah, yeah.
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  Recently. Yeah.
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  God rest his soul. Yeah, he and, and I know he's,
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  he's definitely with the Lord, but he, he was a really good
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  friend actually and helped us start our, our clinic in the
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  area, but met with me a lot, 1 on one, not just because we
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  were, he often had people coming to his office that that needed
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  some, some more care because they were experiencing certain
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  spiritual phenomenon. So was he an exorcist?
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  I mean, he's a Bishop. He, he's, he's an apostle in
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  that way. So typically it's, it's, it's
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  bishops who actually designate a priest to be an exorcist.
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  So he has those that ability, but he didn't really identify as
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  being an exorcist per SE. He who do a lot of more simple
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  deliverance prayers with people, but he didn't feel entirely
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  confident to, to work with some people, to be honest.
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  And as we really worked hand in hand together with, with several
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  people. And just what I, what I found
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  though, I mean, I, I went out to defend exorcisms, but then what
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  I ended up finding was that again, there's so much going on
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  within a person and an area of brokenness that the enemy can be
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  manipulating. And so really just sitting with
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  that brokenness and not reacting to the demonic stuff that's
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  happening, but really believing that there's meaning and God's
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  Providence in it. Again, I found a way of really
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  just sitting with a person when they're manifesting or whatever
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  else to, to, to, to really try to understand that area of, of
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  influence that the Lord is trying to connect with or trying
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  to reach within a person to bring healing to.
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  And I, what I found is that when a person is healed, when that
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  broken part of them that the enemy has influence over is
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  healed, then he has no place left in their life, nothing else
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  to cling to. And so rather than being
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  confrontational in my approach with people, I'm really letting
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  the enemy clue us into areas that God is trying to address
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  and that really, you know, takes care of the enemy.
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  This sounds so different from what?
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  So we've had a couple exorcists on the show.
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  Now we're going to have more because it's a big topic that
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  people are affected by more and more because of dabbling in the
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  occult through different opened, opening different doors.
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  But one of the last ones I spoke to, Father Carlos Martins, he
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  said that they have to have the authority to be there.
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  And sometimes they can be given the authority to be there, the
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  demonic oppression or possession, they can be given
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  that authority to be there because a person who has the
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  authority over that person that like when they're like a child
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  could have done something to expose that child to danger,
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  basically. But you're saying something a
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  little different, which is that not to say that's not true, but
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  that you believe you're in your experience having dealt with
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  people experiencing this. They're not they're, they have
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  some sort of a wound or a hurt or something maybe bad they've
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  done or are doing that they're opening the door themselves.
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  And your job is to sit with them and figure out what was that
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  open door is that? So, so part of it is, is, yeah,
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  oftentimes looking at where that open door is.
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  But really in a believer's life, I'm less concerned with how a
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  demon came to be present in their life and more concerned
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  with why does it have permission to remain?
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  And you're talking about demonic rights.
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  And I know that's a common, you know, buzzword or theme in, in
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  this realm, but I, I actually, I'm a little challenged with the
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  concept of a demonic, right? It, it makes me think of when,
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  when Jesus was before Pilate and Pilate said, do you not know
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  that I have the power to, to sentence you or set you free?
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  Like I have the power and Jesus is like, you have no power over
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  me except for what's given to you from above.
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  And so I, I start with that that demons are liars.
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  And they, they say so many things in the context of
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  exorcisms or interviews or dialogue or whatever.
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  And, and they like to think that they want you to believe that
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  they have more power than they do have, because in reality,
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  they're given an opportunity for a purpose.
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  And even if they're in someone's life, it's not we can we can
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  border into the realm of a lot of superstition like because
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  this aunt said some prayer or this person was a Mason or or
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  whatever it is, therefore this person's possessed.
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  I think it's a lot more nuanced than that.
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  Where courses children and I've worked with children who were
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  possessed and. How did they become possessed?
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  To me, it's more of a systemic thing that as a child, you have
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  more of a Permian membrane, you have more of a your sense of
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  self, your identity is not as firmly established yet.
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  And so I mean, as we all know in our experience with our parents,
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  what our parents say, especially early on, just naturally impacts
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  us. And so to me, it's more of a
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  systemic thing that oftentimes the fear and often the
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  superstition of parents, the belief system of of your parents
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  naturally starts to affect the child.
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  And oftentimes that thought of an Ant who was a witch that must
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  have consecrated you as a kid didn't start with the kid that
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  was manifesting. It starts with the system around
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  them. And what's beautiful in
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  situation like with with kids is often times it leads the family
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  to seek help, brings them back to church, seeks pastoral
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  support, gets the father and the mother praying again with the
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  child. And, and, and even just through
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  that process, the child becomes free because they start getting
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  built up in their own faith, so. Meaning they're don't like the
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  kid did not need an actual exorcism as much as they needed
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  love and support from their family.
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  So that so this is so interesting.
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  So first, let's define our terms.
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  I should have done this already. I'm sorry, but we're talking
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  about possession obsession. You're using the word
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  manifestation. Can you define these terms for
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  folks? So I guess obsession is is more
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  when there seems to be or harassment there.
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  There seems to be something demonic and supernatural going
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  on in your life, but it's more external to you.
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  Like the pictures moving on the wall?
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  Pictures moving in the wall, hearing things in your house,
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  different kinds of harassment like feeling hit at night or
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  your your leg yanked or or or more external images of demons
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  doing things to you. Possession has more to do with
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  the demons kind of taking over your your faculties in some way
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  of speaking through you where where you really there.
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  There seems to be a loss of agency in a person.
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  And that's when the person might start to speak in a language
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  they don't understand. Sure.
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  And earlier I. Acting in different ways and
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  that are. I, I, I'm sorry because I, I, I
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  think I interrupted you, but you said earlier you were about to
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  say it sounded like, or the person, if they're possessed,
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  they might also know something that they shouldn't have been
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  able to know. Can you share more about that
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  Well, I mean, it goes back to the idea that that spirits,
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  angels, they do have knowledge of things that is not as
• 19:39
  immediately available to us. They're not limited the same
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  territorial boundaries. And and so they can know things
• 19:48
  about people. And I mean, someone who's a
• 19:51
  believer also through words of knowledge is given information
• 19:55
  from the Holy Spirit about people's lives.
• 19:57
  And so it's it's, you know, it, it, it, it really amazes us that
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  there's something that is supernatural, but it's kind of
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  normal in that realm. And so often times, Yeah.
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  It can be more of a way of like demons try to intimidate a lot
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  because ultimately they're trying to get attention.
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  The devil is he roars, he he prowls around like a roaring
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  lion looking for someone to devour.
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  But from my my experience is that he wants us to react to the
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  roar. He wants us to get spooked.
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  He wants us to get spooked. So when those pictures were
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  moving on the wall in your office, you're like scurry to
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  intimidate. I do not even care, right?
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  So I'm just going to keep talking because you're annoying
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  and stupid. But my, my, my real philosophy
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  is that a roaring lion is a terrible prowler.
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  He reveals where he's hiding. So instead of reacting to the
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  roar and you see how God is really driving out those foxes
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  hidden in the vineyard underneath the surface and
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  driving them to the surface. A manifestation really is more
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  of the outward expression or or evidence of there something of
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  of a demonic presence like. So the manifestation could be
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  the the the pictures moving on the wall or the person acting
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  crazy or saying something in another language or something he
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  shouldn't give. Manifestation in that way yeah
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  and yeah I mean when when Jesus was in the temple in like Mark
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  chapter 1, he spoke in such a way that the people knew wow,
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  this is someone speaking with authority.
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  And it was only after they they all had this like witness of
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  this man who spoke with authority that there was a man
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  in the temple that manifested. We know who you are and he, you
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  know, told the demon to be quiet.
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  There's because the the the enemy ultimately wants to to
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  distract us and to divert our attention.
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  To freak us out to. Freak us out to to maintain a
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  place of influence in someone's life.
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  And by influence, do you mean like even just thought centered
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  on them on on the devil? Because, and and this is of
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  course, also begs the question of should there be so many
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  podcasts about exorcism? Like is Satan getting too much
• 22:14
  marketing, like marketing support right now?
• 22:17
  They're like, now there's a lot of people struggling with
• 22:21
  demonic oppression or obsession. Excuse me, obsession or
• 22:25
  possession. We didn't actually talk about
• 22:27
  oppression yet, did we? It's it's kind of the same, OK.
• 22:31
  It's the more external stuff. So there are a lot of people
• 22:34
  dealing with this because of messing around with the new age,
• 22:38
  sexual sin, all of this stuff. But you're saying it's kind of
• 22:43
  counterintuitive. It's like, yeah, So what?
• 22:45
  Yeah. Devil's out there.
• 22:47
  And God's jealous for us. And so he, he gives us a
• 22:50
  sparring partner to cause us to seek him.
• 22:55
  And. And so, yeah, someone's dabbling
• 22:57
  into New Age occult stuff. Well, the Lord wants the pure
• 23:01
  spirituality in that person's life.
• 23:02
  And so he's going to let sometimes some things, you know,
• 23:06
  Yeah, spook you to seek. Where do I find peace and
• 23:09
  security? Well, it's only going to be in
• 23:10
  the Lord. That is so powerful what you
• 23:13
  just said. And that's exactly what Nora
• 23:15
  Jensen shared on the show a few months like a month or so ago,
• 23:18
  she she came in her parents identified as witches and a
• 23:22
  witch and a wizard. New age like totals like the
• 23:26
  whole thing. Wicca was the particular
• 23:28
  spirituality and anyways, her mother did this like seance
• 23:32
  thing with her and made her go and, you know, into this like,
• 23:36
  I, I don't remember the exact door that they opened or how
• 23:40
  they opened the kind of spiritual door into their Wicca
• 23:42
  world. But through these spells they
• 23:44
  were casting, she got really freaked out because she got
• 23:47
  stuck in this like meditative state.
• 23:50
  And then her dad was playing around with a Ouija board and
• 23:53
  something really scary happened and she got freaked out.
• 23:56
  And later on that would be part of the chips in the the chinks
• 24:00
  in the armor. Excuse me, That made her think
• 24:02
  this is maybe not the kind of faith I want to have a religion
• 24:05
  I want to have. And she ended up becoming
• 24:07
  Catholic later on. But it was things that were
• 24:09
  scary that made her feel like this is a maybe a no go zone to
• 24:14
  continue to play with this stuff.
• 24:16
  Yeah, fear. Fear can confront us, right?
• 24:20
  And St. Agustin said that sometimes fear
• 24:24
  needs. It's like a needle with a thread
• 24:27
  that the fear needs to enter in first before the love of God can
• 24:30
  follow through. That's.
• 24:32
  Why the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all.
• 24:33
  Wisdom in some way and so that can just be a place where God
• 24:38
  meets us and and and confronts us.
• 24:40
  And but I, I, I just start from this place of Providence that
• 24:44
  behind it all God is orchestrated.
• 24:47
  He he is put the bridle in the bit in the devil's mouth and
• 24:52
  he's disarmed the powers and principalities and he's given us
• 24:56
  the anti venom of the Holy Spirit and that really if you
• 25:00
  like. I said anti venom and not
• 25:02
  vaccine exactly. Just in case, Yeah.
• 25:06
  And so just for me, like, you know, in the early church when
• 25:10
  there would be manifestations and the more confrontational
• 25:14
  exorcism deliverance approach that was really serving as a
• 25:18
  sign of the Kingdom, a demonstration of the truth of
• 25:22
  the gospel and the power of the grace of Christ.
• 25:26
  A lot of the early church fathers talked about how it
• 25:29
  really showed that what are these other gods when just the
• 25:34
  name of Jesus can can free a person and it was just that
• 25:38
  evidence for people. But the kind of people that I
• 25:41
  tend to work with are are people who are already believers and
• 25:45
  yet they actually have a lot of problematic beliefs mixed into
• 25:50
  their spirituality that are often pretty superstitious and
• 25:53
  that that can create a system of bondage for people.
• 25:58
  So for instance, like when when someone believes that, you know,
• 26:03
  they're just opening doors. Well, fear.
• 26:07
  Fear is like a self fulfilling prophecy, false evidence
• 26:10
  appearing real. A self fulfilling prophecy
• 26:14
  really is is a is is a kind of false expectation or belief that
• 26:19
  leads to its own confirmation. So what you're saying is that
• 26:23
  somebody, because they're maybe in their faith, not trusting
• 26:28
  enough in God's Providence, and they're superstitious in a way,
• 26:31
  even in their Catholic faith, they may open the door to Satan
• 26:35
  and demonic oppression because they're like, is the picture
• 26:38
  moving on my wall? Oh, shoot, it is moving on my
• 26:41
  wall. Yeah.
• 26:41
  That that is Satan. That time like that was Satan,
• 26:43
  but your imagination was like, is the picture moving on the
• 26:46
  wall? So many times that saying it's
• 26:47
  like, all right, I'm going to move your picture for you
• 26:48
  because I clearly have your attention.
• 26:50
  Is that what you're talking about?
• 26:51
  Yeah. Or or or is that is that the is?
• 26:53
  Have you seen something like that happen?
• 26:55
  So for me, it's, it's more about the personal influence that the
• 26:58
  enemy wants to have, like within a person where he's he, he wants
• 27:01
  to ultimately control them, right?
• 27:03
  And he wants us to blame him for what he's doing in someone's
• 27:07
  life. But this this kind of
• 27:10
  superstition, it's more because I believe the enemy can and or I
• 27:16
  or I'm intimidated by his power. Therefore he begins to have
• 27:21
  power in my life. And So what God is allowing, he
• 27:24
  talked about a chink in the armor with the armor of God that
• 27:29
  we're all called to stand in, right?
• 27:30
  In the spiritual battle, we're given this shield of faith with
• 27:34
  which we can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil 1,
• 27:37
  which means that if anything is getting through, then there's a
• 27:41
  chink in the armor. There's an impurity in our
• 27:43
  faith. So God is actually using the
• 27:45
  enemy to shine a light on an area of maybe a, a, a, a
• 27:50
  perverse thought or belief. Like when Jesus rebuked the
• 27:53
  disciples and the man and his son when they he wasn't being
• 27:57
  freed, even though he'd given the apostles authority to do so,
• 28:01
  he, he rebuked them for their, their mindset and their beliefs.
• 28:05
  And so Jesus really is. God really wants to.
• 28:07
  Get behind me, Satan. Literally to Peter.
• 28:10
  And he wants to renew our minds. He wants to refine our faith.
• 28:13
  And oftentimes it's in the trials that that reveals
• 28:16
  impurities in our faith, like gold in a fire.
• 28:19
  It sounds like in one sense you're saying that if someone is
• 28:24
  demonically oppressed or possessed, it's because of
• 28:29
  something that they believe or did.
• 28:33
  And it's not, it's not always. Yeah, it's a combination.
• 28:36
  Meaning like there's no such thing as someone just
• 28:38
  accidentally, the devil like fell into you or something, that
• 28:41
  there was something that they chose, it wasn't chosen for
• 28:45
  them. Now, a thought pattern that you
• 28:48
  grew up with as a kid, I guess you didn't maybe fully choose
• 28:50
  that. That kind of was baked in.
• 28:51
  So in that sense, maybe you didn't choose that.
• 28:53
  You're more picking up on a system of a thought or belief, a
• 28:57
  vulnerability to certain kinds of fear.
• 29:01
  Absolutely. And so there's something we can
• 29:04
  be believing that is being exposed or something that we've
• 29:08
  gotten involved in and started to encounter, like in something
• 29:11
  like the New Age or occult. And either way, God is allowing
• 29:15
  that confrontation as really as an invitation to seek him and
• 29:22
  seek the ways in which we need healing to really bring about
• 29:26
  that freedom. Because you know, my, my, my
• 29:28
  idea of like deliverance as a concept, it's not just about
• 29:33
  removing us from the enemy's power, like getting God's
• 29:37
  children out of Egypt. It's also about getting Egypt
• 29:40
  out of God's children, but not stopping there.
• 29:43
  It's to bring us into the promised land, which is life in
• 29:45
  Christ. And when we're talking about
• 29:47
  believers, people who quote, UN quote are, are, are disciples of
• 29:51
  Jesus, and yet they are still influenced by the enemy.
• 29:57
  You know, consider when, when Jesus was asleep on the pillow
• 30:01
  and there was that storm. And it, it caused enough fear
• 30:05
  that the disciples started to question, do you not even care
• 30:09
  that we're perishing that that belief that God might not care,
• 30:14
  especially something like this were to happen, that that was
• 30:17
  there in their hearts and God allowing that to come up in the
• 30:21
  midst of that, that that moment of stress of crisis.
• 30:25
  You know, what Jesus does is Jesus wants to prune us by his
• 30:28
  word. He wants to renew our minds.
• 30:30
  He, he prepares us like preparing the bride, right?
• 30:34
  And he, and so he, when he speaks to them, he really
• 30:37
  teaches them something about their faith of or where they're
• 30:40
  putting their faith, if it's, if it's in fear, if it's in how
• 30:44
  they're interpreting the circumstances or if it's really
• 30:47
  in looking at him. And so God does that with the
• 30:50
  enemy too. He allows these situations to
• 30:52
  come to our life for a purpose again, and for believers,
• 30:57
  oftentimes it's to expose an area of unbelief or to confront
• 31:02
  us from an area of, of sin or some impurity in our
• 31:06
  spirituality, something that we've gotten involved in that
• 31:09
  really again in his jealousy, he doesn't want us to continue
• 31:12
  going that route in. What's an example that you've
• 31:15
  seen in your work and you've done work for the diocese
• 31:19
  helping with helping with exorcisms and then helping
• 31:23
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• 31:26
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  order. In, in our, in our station of
• 32:14
  Los Angeles, we're not very organized with that whole
• 32:17
  service really of helping people pastor them through such
• 32:21
  suffering. And so often times people will
• 32:25
  come to me even working with exorcist from other diocese or
• 32:29
  other organizations or just word of mouth and, and they, they
• 32:33
  come to me first before seeking more of that formal work.
• 32:37
  Actually, I've had several people who have been receiving
• 32:42
  exorcisms from more in Orange County and with temporary
• 32:46
  success. And which that that in itself is
• 32:49
  like a a strange thing to think about that how can an exorcism,
• 32:54
  why should it take multiple times and and when the person's
• 32:58
  still not freed? Yeah, why?
• 33:01
  Because I clearly, you know, it didn't seem difficult for Jesus
• 33:04
  with the man with Legion, right? Or the apostles, really.
• 33:08
  And so, yeah, to me, we've come so far from how things were in
• 33:15
  the early church when it was less about this like we have
• 33:21
  like this medical model approach for this, this, this bias where
• 33:25
  we're we're trying to always diagnose people and to
• 33:28
  distinguish. Racism, do you think?
• 33:30
  Yeah, like why this is happening in someone's life and we're not
• 33:33
  really just looking at the Lord and and why he's allowing it and
• 33:38
  and and turning to him because he's ultimately the remedy you.
• 33:40
  Know So are you saying that if someone is experiencing
• 33:42
  oppression and they go to an exorcist multiple times and
• 33:45
  they're still experiencing it, it's a lack of someone's faith.
• 33:48
  This sounds like our healing discussion.
• 33:49
  We had to some degree kind of where we were talking about, you
• 33:52
  were talking about spiritual healing and physical healings.
• 33:54
  And sometimes it's it's a lack of faith that people have.
• 33:56
  Yeah, which is a scary. Right thought and and faith to
• 34:00
  me though, it's not so much a a quantity like they don't have
• 34:04
  enough. It's a quality because when we
• 34:07
  have pure faith, we see God. The size of a mustard seed.
• 34:10
  We could get the mountains to be thrown into the.
• 34:11
  Seed some of the size per SE. It's about the purity and
• 34:15
  there's an impurity in our faith that needs to be refined, as
• 34:18
  Scripture says. And, and Jesus is the one, the
• 34:21
  perfector and pioneer of faith, as it says in Hebrews.
• 34:25
  So he is about creating faith, activating faith, renewing our
• 34:29
  faith, refining our faith. And he does so by the washing of
• 34:34
  the water of his word through relationship with him.
• 34:36
  And, and, and so there there is that element.
• 34:39
  But I I also think that when we make exorcism, we can make it
• 34:46
  into a kind of superstitious worldview where you got to do
• 34:49
  this and pray that prayer and shake that.
• 34:52
  Holy water on yourself and hold a rosary and then you'll be OK.
• 34:56
  And all these spiritual disciplines and yet where just
• 34:59
  where is relationship with? Jesus in it, and I think that is
• 35:03
  one of the criticisms that a lot of Protestants have and they
• 35:06
  perceive in their spirit a superstitious spirit in among
• 35:11
  some Catholics. And that does happen and it can
• 35:14
  happen among Protestants too. But I think that is, you know, I
• 35:17
  was talking to Father Boniface earlier and he was talking about
• 35:20
  how the more amazing something is, the more it can be corrupted
• 35:25
  and the more beautiful something is, the uglier it is when it's
• 35:29
  corrupted. And I think that's is true with
• 35:31
  the faith to like all of these things, the sacramentals, the
• 35:35
  community community of the Saints, like all of the riches
• 35:38
  of the wealths of of the of our faith of our Catholic Church and
• 35:41
  our faith. When they are approached with an
• 35:45
  A disbelief in the Lord and more of a working to get ahead
• 35:50
  superstition, you know some of these pitfalls, then yeah, they
• 35:53
  can. It can get really ugly.
• 35:55
  Right. Absolutely.
• 35:57
  And, and unfortunately, we hear a lot of people who are experts
• 36:02
  on the topics of exorcism when, when they prescribe a more
• 36:08
  superstitious remedy, even then you've, you've had different
• 36:13
  people on your podcast. Sometimes it leaves you with
• 36:17
  this feeling of fear about the enemy and his power.
• 36:21
  And we have to do these things where else where unless you're
• 36:25
  living a certain way, like you're, you're very vulnerable
• 36:28
  to the enemy. And and to me that's that's.
• 36:32
  It's not how God operates. He operates in power.
• 36:35
  And he is. Such a good point, Sean.
• 36:37
  It's actually a really good point.
• 36:38
  And I can say I personally have had that experience where you
• 36:42
  can kind of wade into something and it's theologically
• 36:46
  fascinating and there's real world consequences to it.
• 36:49
  But if you walk away from it with a spirit of fear and not
• 36:52
  fear of the Lord, it's more just fear of the bad thing or fear of
• 36:56
  making a mistake or whatever all the fears can be, then you
• 37:00
  actually open yourself up to more nonsense.
• 37:03
  And so it's a really good reminder that it really does
• 37:06
  come back to trust in the Lord, like you're saying.
• 37:08
  And like this is our Jesus, like he is King of the universe and
• 37:12
  he is the Savior and he is all powerful and we have nothing to
• 37:16
  worry about with our Lord. Nothing, nothing, nothing can
• 37:19
  touch us. Right literally it says in first
• 37:22
  John 518 that those that are born of God, God protects and
• 37:26
  the evil 1 can't touch them or or in Philippians 128 Paul says
• 37:31
  to not be intimidated in any way by your enemies and this is a
• 37:35
  sign to them that of their destruction and of your
• 37:39
  salvation and this is of God. So yeah, I really the reason why
• 37:43
  I started to get into this, obviously this curiosity of
• 37:47
  where this all fits in, but I started to get really indignant
• 37:52
  seeing people who and I'd been talking to exorcists or
• 37:55
  receiving different kinds of treatments so afraid.
• 37:58
  I know I, I've talked to some, they haven't been on the show,
• 38:00
  but I, I know people personally, I think of one person and I
• 38:04
  won't share any like, you know, totally anonymous, but they were
• 38:08
  really struggling with demonic oppression.
• 38:11
  And I remember thinking many times, you know, what is this?
• 38:16
  Like, why is this? They're going to the exorcist,
• 38:18
  they're going to the exorcist, they're going to the exorcist.
• 38:20
  I'm like, where's the freedom in Christ that we're all promised
• 38:23
  and if we see the Lord can. But that's the danger too, of
• 38:26
  judging other people's struggles because, you know, I was not in
• 38:30
  this person's shoes. And I don't know this person so
• 38:32
  well that I can really make a clear judgement about like these
• 38:35
  were the issues. But it sounds like what you're
• 38:38
  saying is it really does come down to trust in God.
• 38:44
  Yeah, and ultimately he's still behind you.
• 38:47
  He wants you to trust in him and he's seeking that out for you.
• 38:50
  And sometimes he'll let us taste the fruit of our thoughts and
• 38:54
  beliefs or go down a path like like the prodigal son until you,
• 38:58
  you know, the famine confronts you, the circumstance or
• 39:02
  whatever obstacle confronts you before you can turn back, you
• 39:06
  know, but God, God is after each one of us.
• 39:10
  He's jealous for us and and so again, starting from that yeah,
• 39:15
  I I just was so bothered by all this fear in people's lives and.
• 39:21
  And, and just seeing this pattern of the kinds of things
• 39:24
  people were teaching where again, you just feel the fear
• 39:28
  after certain messages and make honestly even the way we started
• 39:32
  our conversation. Like is this of the spirit or
• 39:35
  tone that like I I feel in my heart and because we we hype up
• 39:40
  so much stuff right, But. Well, let's I was trying to cut,
• 39:44
  to cut to the like, cut to the point of like, tell me about the
• 39:48
  oppression, oppression you experience in that room.
• 39:51
  And then, you know, because it's like I'm thinking about people
• 39:54
  listening and I want to, you know, I want them to stay with
• 39:58
  us and stay engaged. But you're right, Like what does
• 40:00
  the Holy Spirit want this conversation to be?
• 40:02
  Because. That's at the end of the day,
• 40:05
  the litmus test for anything we do as believers.
• 40:07
  Like what does the Holy Spirit want and did we pray before we
• 40:11
  started? Sitcom Holy Spirit, I say.
• 40:13
  We should have done like a longer, definitely a longer
• 40:15
  prayer than that. How does it make you feel?
• 40:18
  Wait, how does what make me feel?
• 40:20
  We didn't pray enough. I every day I don't pray enough,
• 40:23
  So I'm always like, I didn't pray enough and then I have to
• 40:25
  do that other thing when you don't pray enough of saying, I
• 40:27
  chill, Jesus, Ioffer you my lack of prayer and that's a prayer.
• 40:31
  And Jesus, I trust in you and help me and that's a prayer,
• 40:34
  right? And.
• 40:34
  Thank you for such a good reminder.
• 40:36
  Even right now though, we can't do this without you.
• 40:37
  Well. I remember talking to my brother
• 40:39
  one time and I was, this was like a few years ago and I was
• 40:41
  really struggling to pray. I think I'd had my second baby
• 40:44
  or something, I don't know. And I was like, I'm not praying,
• 40:46
  I'm not praying. I'm so stressed out that I'm not
• 40:48
  praying. I don't know how to pray anymore
• 40:49
  because I'm so exhausted and distracted and everything else.
• 40:52
  And he's like, you're praying right now.
• 40:53
  Like just just pray. Just like tell God I can't pray.
• 40:56
  And that's your prayer. And I was like, that's so
• 40:59
  comforting. I was like, and that's it.
• 41:02
  And then like, do it again. Like, Lord, help me Jesus, I
• 41:05
  trust in you, Jesus, help me. Like that's your prayer.
• 41:07
  That's, that's your prayer. And honestly, that prayer could
• 41:10
  be more pure and more powerful than 17 holy hours because it
• 41:15
  comes with the spirit of total dependence and need for Jesus
• 41:18
  Christ. And I'm like, that's so
• 41:20
  consoling that. Reality and if you're doing 17
• 41:23
  holy hours we're so prone to start like feeling I'm I'm I'm
• 41:26
  doing pretty good I'm crushing it Yeah when when really even
• 41:30
  just the the desire to pray comes from God right.
• 41:33
  Like I love when Paul, he says that we all like sheep have gone
• 41:36
  astray, no one even desiring God, that it's so humbling to
• 41:41
  think that even that desire is from him and it's first his
• 41:45
  desire for me. And I, I, yeah, so often I find
• 41:48
  that the Lord, he, he, he does so much or allow so much to
• 41:52
  happen to bring us back to that, that just humble posture before
• 41:55
  him. And, and really this whole stuff
• 41:57
  with the enemy is about that too, of, of realizing just our
• 42:01
  dependence on him. And I have this anecdote where,
• 42:08
  you know, in a natural battle, we, we, we take up arms and, and
• 42:12
  often times we can take up certain spiritual disciplines
• 42:15
  and even the rosary as a weapon or different things as we're
• 42:18
  leveraging all this stuff in the battle, right?
• 42:22
  So in the natural battle we take up arms by, but in the spiritual
• 42:24
  battle we're taken up in arms that it's more about seeing what
• 42:29
  Jesus has done for us and seeing ourselves in Him and His.
• 42:34
  The revelation of His love, especially at the cross, that is
• 42:38
  what overcomes the enemy in our life.
• 42:40
  It's what is it? I will fight for you.
• 42:42
  You have only to be. Still, what Moses said in Exodus
• 42:45
  Absolutely and and. God will fight for you.
• 42:47
  You have only to be still. Yeah, and, and honestly, I God.
• 42:50
  Will fight for you. You have only to be still.
• 42:53
  And and and stillness is actually our our struggle is is
• 42:57
  to be still our. Struggle is to be still.
• 43:00
  It's so true. I mean, the fight of faith, as
• 43:02
  Paul said, is is not really against the enemy per SE.
• 43:05
  It's to lay hold of the life to which you were called in Christ
• 43:08
  Jesus. Our our battle against flesh in
• 43:11
  our against flesh and blood is doing all we can just to stand
• 43:15
  standing in Christ. I think about like I am the
• 43:19
  vine, you are the branches apartment for me.
• 43:21
  You can do nothing. What does a vine and a little
• 43:24
  branch do? Like you just you just sit
• 43:26
  there, you know, like you bear fruit, but you bear fruit very
• 43:29
  like gradually naturally pass passively.
• 43:33
  I remember just marveling when I was when I've been pregnant each
• 43:35
  time like this is happening, whether I whatever route, I
• 43:40
  mean, as long as I'm basically eating, like obviously if I
• 43:42
  starve myself, that would be problematic.
• 43:44
  But like this pregnancy is just happening.
• 43:46
  It's happening with me and my under my, you know, passionate
• 43:50
  yes to my husband, but this is also happening just whether I go
• 43:54
  to sleep, wake up, depending on my mood like the Lord is doing
• 43:57
  this work in me through creating this child.
• 43:59
  But that is the spiritual life too.
• 44:01
  And too much of the striving is actually counterproductive to
• 44:06
  the fruit. Yeah, Father Bodiff is when I
• 44:09
  were talking about this too, this striving for holiness,
• 44:12
  that's it's so present, especially in our Catholic
• 44:15
  lives, right? Everyone wants to be a St. and
• 44:17
  we're practicing all this virtue and we're striving to be holy to
• 44:21
  the point where people are insecure whether or not they're
• 44:23
  going to become a St. or can become a St. right?
• 44:25
  Like where's the focus? Is it on God or is it on our
• 44:28
  effort? And when the Catechism is clear
• 44:31
  in 773 Paris 773, that holiness really is a response to the
• 44:35
  bride, to the gift, to the bridegroom, That's all it is.
• 44:39
  And that is a response to the gift of God's love.
• 44:42
  And that's what makes us holy, that we are just.
• 44:45
  Like children? Like children?
• 44:47
  Like saying, I'm so excited I get to wake up in the morning
• 44:49
  and my bowl of cereal and be with my mom or my dad like this
• 44:52
  or mom and dad like that, like that fresh eyed, bright eyed
• 44:55
  child is that that's the attitude that we that we were
• 44:59
  meant to have. Right.
• 45:01
  And, and even in the spiritual battle, it's I like to say that
• 45:05
  we're not fighting for victory. We're fighting from victory and
• 45:11
  that the battle really is about learning to stand and what Jesus
• 45:14
  has accomplished for us. And again, he's disarmed the
• 45:18
  powers and principalities and made a spectacle of them.
• 45:20
  And you know, it can seem very, I think, I think people when
• 45:28
  they think about this conflict with the enemy, we, we expect
• 45:32
  this great power struggle, right?
• 45:34
  But you know, even taking from example in Jude, Michael and
• 45:39
  Satan fought over the body of Moses, over the body of a
• 45:42
  believer, you know, over possession almost, right?
• 45:46
  But Michael didn't engage in the power struggle.
• 45:48
  He just said the Lord rebuke you.
• 45:51
  No, because who's like the Lord Michael, right?
• 45:53
  That's what his name means. His whole approach in the
• 45:56
  spiritual battle was the Lord rebuke you.
• 45:58
  The battle belongs to him. And God did rebuke the enemy,
• 46:02
  especially at the cross where, you know, he was dethroned in,
• 46:07
  in, in the world. The Prince of this, of, of the
• 46:09
  world was, was judged and, and cast out.
• 46:15
  I, I, I find like the approach that I I take with people is
• 46:21
  really just letting Jesus show them what he he what he did and
• 46:25
  and who they are to him. Can you give an example of
• 46:29
  someone who came to your clinical practice and they.
• 46:32
  Yeah, maybe they thought they were wondering maybe is it
• 46:36
  mental illness or is it demonic oppression?
• 46:40
  And then you helped them navigate that and then bring
• 46:43
  them back to Jesus. Sure, I'll tell you.
• 46:45
  I'll tell you a couple stories. Yeah, maybe the first one is in
• 46:48
  my own life where I, I started to get this little philosophy of
• 46:51
  how this all works, where it really is about receiving what
• 46:55
  Jesus has done. First, When I was witnessing all
• 47:01
  this manifestations and stuff and, and ministry.
• 47:05
  One day when I was in prayer, actually in religious life, I
• 47:09
  started to become aware that I, I had a kind of anxiety about
• 47:12
  the idea of Satan in, in, in, you know, in my life and just
• 47:16
  around, and that he was an enemy seeking me out.
• 47:19
  You know, I, I was aware and honest that I felt a little
• 47:23
  anxiety and so I sat with that and I asked the Lord, like, why,
• 47:29
  why do I feel anxious again? If, if, if you've done all this
• 47:31
  for me and you're with me always and will never abandoned me and
• 47:34
  nothing can separate me from your love, Why am I anxious and
• 47:40
  sitting with that? A memory came to mind of when I
• 47:43
  was atheist and I watched the movie The Exorcist.
• 47:46
  And I remember watching the scene, especially when the woman
• 47:50
  was like vomiting pea soup and, you know, their head turning
• 47:53
  around, whatever else. And I was so freaked out, even
• 47:56
  though I was atheist, I just the thought of something
• 48:00
  supernatural happening to a person, like freaked me out.
• 48:04
  And ever since then, I had this fear in there being something
• 48:08
  that I can't understand that could happen to me and just this
• 48:11
  vulnerability. Because of course, in that that
• 48:13
  movie, I mean, even the priest gets harassed and everything.
• 48:16
  So it really just glorifies the power of evil and which has
• 48:21
  happened a lot in Hollywood, which has really shaped the way
• 48:25
  we understand exorcism today, unfortunately.
• 48:29
  So where the Lord has showed me that memory and I was
• 48:32
  acknowledging this, this fear, I asked him just simply like,
• 48:36
  Lord, well, what do you want me to know?
• 48:38
  Like that just felt very real to me.
• 48:40
  This, this power of the enemy. And I saw Jesus sitting with me
• 48:45
  on the couch, just in my mental, my, you know, imagination, just
• 48:48
  sitting with me on the couch. And he had a big bowl of
• 48:51
  popcorn. And when that scene came by,
• 48:54
  again, he laughed so hard that he knocked the bowl of popcorn
• 48:58
  and it went all over the place. And I'm just like sitting there
• 49:01
  with him, like seeing his joy and his laughter, almost like he
• 49:05
  was looking at like, the worst CGI and like this silly thing.
• 49:10
  Yeah, exactly. Wow.
• 49:11
  And I felt all of that just in his presence.
• 49:14
  And then afterwards, he, he just put his arm around me and we
• 49:17
  kind of continuing to watch the movie.
• 49:19
  But even like when he put his arm around me, I felt like just
• 49:23
  the, the weight of his presence, the the power of his personality
• 49:27
  that was becoming my personal reality, you know, And it
• 49:31
  shifted something emotionally for me where I no longer no
• 49:35
  longer felt as true that the enemy's power was a threat to
• 49:38
  me. And I started to to internalize
• 49:41
  what had been given to me in my, in coming to faith of God's
• 49:45
  protection always there with me, that his faithfulness is my
• 49:49
  buckler and shield rather than my own sometimes, right?
• 49:53
  And just that truth being revealed to me.
• 49:55
  And that shifted something for me personally.
• 49:58
  And so kind of taking that same principle into my work where,
• 50:03
  you know, in therapy, in my professional role, I'm not
• 50:05
  praying for people to cast out demons and to confront stuff.
• 50:09
  I'm really just sitting with what their experience is,
• 50:11
  knowing that that really there's a meaningful place in this
• 50:17
  person's life that has come under the influence of the
• 50:20
  enemy. Just like with Adam and Eve, it
• 50:22
  was through some suggestion that the enemy came to influence this
• 50:26
  person because demons, they're messengers, they're angels,
• 50:31
  That's all they do. And they're trying to maintain
• 50:34
  the effect of a message in your life.
• 50:37
  And, and so we, we, we have the power of the gospel, which is
• 50:40
  the power of God, which is the, the redeeming message to, to, to
• 50:43
  counteract every other message. And it, And so I'm really just
• 50:49
  trying to hear for what is the influence.
• 50:51
  And like in, like in the Gospel of John, there's not a single
• 50:54
  exorcism in the entire gospel, But instead Jesus is confronting
• 50:58
  unbelief, which is really belief in an erroneous or false message
• 51:04
  about God, about ourselves or whatever.
• 51:06
  And that's what Jesus is confronting instead of demons.
• 51:09
  Really interesting. So when I sit with a person kind
• 51:13
  of talking a length here, but even this past week, I there was
• 51:17
  a woman I sat with who she she manifests where she speaks like
• 51:24
  Italian. She doesn't know Italian.
• 51:27
  Her, her, her body contorts. And sometimes I have fun with
• 51:30
  people where I'll say God loves you and they start to like, you
• 51:33
  know, manifest and like you're his favorite and they start to
• 51:35
  manifest. And we, we kind of make it this
• 51:38
  almost playful thing because it's like the demons don't like
• 51:41
  this, but this is the truth. And this is ultimately what
• 51:43
  provokes them is because they don't want you to receive that
• 51:46
  love. So ANYWAYS, she was, she was
• 51:48
  manifesting. And one of the things we've been
• 51:51
  focusing on in her life is that she has a deep maternal wound
• 51:56
  from where her mom left the family when she was really
• 51:59
  young. And I sitting with her long
• 52:03
  enough, we started to recognize that that brought such a rupture
• 52:08
  in her family system and her security as a child.
• 52:12
  But also especially when that happened, it was a trauma where
• 52:17
  she remembers how her sister was extremely emotional and her dad
• 52:21
  seemed super sad when her mom left.
• 52:24
  Like left left. Left well, actually to to come
• 52:27
  to the United States. She lived in a foreign country
• 52:31
  to work. But back then, you know, they
• 52:34
  couldn't keep in touch very well.
• 52:35
  And it was a little more complicated than that too.
• 52:37
  But but for her, even just seeing their reactions, she
• 52:43
  couldn't go there in her own sadness and pain because if she
• 52:47
  would have cried with them, she would have felt completely out
• 52:50
  of control and overwhelmed. And so that little girl learned
• 52:54
  to go numb and suppress her emotion.
• 52:58
  And for her, when we were processing that trauma, she saw
• 53:04
  an image as we're talking about the memory and actually using a
• 53:08
  tool called EMDR, she saw a demon in the room.
• 53:12
  And this demon had like tendrils going out to each of them,
• 53:17
  almost like it's influence in some way.
• 53:20
  And, and every, every step of our kind of processing, often
• 53:25
  times like the demons would manifest and kind of interrupt
• 53:28
  for a moment for us connecting in our, in our dialogue.
• 53:31
  And so typically that's why I know, OK, we're touching
• 53:34
  something important because they're really trying hard to
• 53:37
  distract us from getting at this place here.
• 53:41
  So ANYWAYS, all I did with her was I sat with her.
• 53:45
  And when we were in that trauma, in that wound and seeing this
• 53:49
  influence of this of this devil, and we were kind of powerless
• 53:53
  there, you know, it seemed like it had control in my mind.
• 53:58
  I'm very aware of where's the Lord?
• 54:01
  And so we simply ask the question, God, where are you
• 54:06
  when this is happening, when this feels very real in her life
• 54:09
  and is almost like a an argument against trust, You know, God
• 54:15
  wasn't there. God, what do you want her to
• 54:17
  know? Just simple, simple question.
• 54:20
  She saw Jesus come into the scene and he went up to her
• 54:25
  sister and he just blessed her and held her and just saw how
• 54:30
  consoled her sister was. And then he went to her, her
• 54:34
  father, and he put his hand on on him and almost like
• 54:39
  acknowledging like, you know what, what it's costing him.
• 54:43
  And, and these are almost, it's almost like communicating more
• 54:45
  in understandings in every little thing he did, like deep
• 54:48
  understandings of what he was saying to each one of them.
• 54:52
  And and that in itself was so profound because seeing Jesus
• 54:55
  taking care of them, she realized it was a part of her
• 54:58
  that felt was trying to be respond, take care of them.
• 55:02
  And she could let go of that responsibility to let Jesus take
• 55:05
  care of them. And that was part of, again,
• 55:08
  just the mess of the wound for her that was kind of keeping
• 55:12
  things, you know, going. But then he came to her
• 55:15
  eventually and, and by the way, like the tendrils started to
• 55:19
  disappear as Jesus was interacting with them.
• 55:24
  When he came to her, he, he came up to her and he just said, your
• 55:28
  pain is my pain. And when he said that, she
• 55:33
  actually saw a sword of light just come out of nowhere and
• 55:37
  pierced through this demon and cracks started to form.
• 55:41
  And this demon, that light started to like just spread
• 55:44
  throughout this demon to the point where it kind of
• 55:46
  evaporated. And but he because when he said
• 55:52
  your pain is my pain, she remember she was too afraid to
• 55:57
  acknowledge her pain then to feel it.
• 55:59
  It would have been too much because there was no one there
• 56:03
  to contain it for her to let her feel like it was safe to feel
• 56:06
  that. But when he said that your
• 56:09
  pain's my pain, he was holding on to it for her.
• 56:13
  And it wasn't so much about her expressing it.
• 56:15
  It was about it being acknowledged and just in his
• 56:18
  compassion, in his love and that tenderness of just being present
• 56:21
  with her. It like what I've seen time and
• 56:24
  time again is how Jesus's compassion absorbs our sorrow
• 56:28
  and and and that's what happened for her there And and the demon,
• 56:32
  the influence, at least in that place was completely removed.
• 56:37
  In other times, we've actually worked.
• 56:38
  With did it kill her of the oppression.
• 56:40
  Not not completely because it can be.
• 56:43
  To me, it's a journey I'm, I'm less focused on.
• 56:47
  I just want to be faithful to the process of how God wants to
• 56:49
  continue to make himself known in a person's life.
• 56:53
  And, and we're, we're complex and I don't need to figure it
• 56:56
  all out. You know, another time with her,
• 56:59
  though, actually we're just kind of processing the experience of
• 57:04
  when you, when you manifest like that, like what's happening.
• 57:08
  And and she was describing how she saw like demons behind her
• 57:11
  kind of operating through her when they start to speak.
• 57:13
  And this this great presence of hate comes in that floods her
• 57:18
  mind and she internally is trying to just be still and let
• 57:23
  it pass. And she kind of is actually in
• 57:25
  it in her own little survival thing within, you know, But it
• 57:29
  was such an interesting thought of like her visually seeing like
• 57:32
  a metaphor, demons speaking through her.
• 57:35
  And when that was happening, I'm like, well, you know, we're just
• 57:39
  feels like you're alone in that because really that's that's the
• 57:42
  first thing I think the Lord wants to address is that you're
• 57:44
  not alone in any of this. When Eve was talking to to to to
• 57:50
  Satan, where was Adam? You know, it's almost like the
• 57:53
  enemy wants to magnify this aloneness.
• 57:56
  You know, he, he wants us to feel alone, to take things into
• 58:00
  our own hands. And, and so for her, she had
• 58:04
  these self-defense mechanisms, these strategies to cope with
• 58:07
  the devil, but where was God? And so where she saw this
• 58:12
  happening and it was happening in our session.
• 58:15
  So could we just ask the Lord where that's happening for you?
• 58:18
  Like what's what he's doing? And she actually saw the Virgin
• 58:22
  Mary up here. And Mary simply just walked
• 58:26
  behind her where the demons were, you know, speaking through
• 58:28
  her. And she just went behind her
• 58:30
  and, and, and, and spread her arms, wow to, to block the
• 58:34
  demons wow from getting to her. And, and she saw this contrast
• 58:39
  where all of a sudden the darkness in the scene changed,
• 58:42
  where it was dark behind Mary and light in front of her.
• 58:46
  Wow. And all this light was now
• 58:47
  coming upon her and Mary just blocking it all.
• 58:51
  And and then we had a dialogue of like, OK, after the session
• 58:54
  is done, am I going to go back to my normal life?
• 58:56
  Like after this nice meditation is done, like, Mary, where are
• 58:59
  you? Are you?
• 59:00
  Are you going to remain? And so it just became this
• 59:02
  deeper thing of like truly carrying the trust of this is
• 59:07
  not just this moment. This is how I am for you.
• 59:09
  I'm your mother. I will never leave you.
• 59:12
  And and that was the truth. Again, she's used to a mom
• 59:14
  leaving her that she needed to hear and needed to to learn that
• 59:19
  would that was somehow we realized was part of the space
• 59:24
  the enemy was given an influence to.
• 59:26
  But if it wasn't for the enemy operating that way, God allowing
• 59:30
  it to come up in her life, she never would have had the
• 59:33
  opportunity to learn these truths prior to us meeting.
• 59:38
  She never even realized how significant her mom leaving
• 59:42
  meant because her whole life she she accepted, Oh, it was a
• 59:45
  difficult choice my parents had to make, but it was for our
• 59:48
  opportunities. And, you know, we grew up in
• 59:50
  poverty, so it gave us a chance. And so she rationalized
• 59:54
  everything. And so all that pain, all that
• 59:56
  trauma was never seen, never acknowledged until Jesus allowed
• 1:00:02
  such a conflict to come up in her life.
• 1:00:05
  And and. She's someone who is continuing
• 1:00:08
  to, you know, work out her healing.
• 1:00:10
  But when we first met, she was actually getting raped every day
• 1:00:15
  by demons. And after a couple sessions of
• 1:00:20
  really just sitting with what was happening, that completely
• 1:00:22
  stopped. And now there still is, you
• 1:00:25
  know, some definitely some experiences of the devil, but
• 1:00:29
  it's significantly different. I've also met with other people
• 1:00:33
  who have gone through and I know these stories are interesting.
• 1:00:37
  I I've seen people who have been getting exorcisms for years and
• 1:00:40
  not getting better in like 1 session, completely freed
• 1:00:45
  because of the Lord really uncovering a certain place in
• 1:00:49
  their life. For some people, the wound it's,
• 1:00:53
  it really is localized around 11 formative moment and when the
• 1:00:58
  Lord can can can meet you there. Sometimes the the impact, the
• 1:01:02
  transformation is so profound and anything the enemy might do
• 1:01:06
  was just completely eradicated and redeemed.
• 1:01:11
  But even like another guy I saw he he came in because he he
• 1:01:16
  couldn't sleep. He was just getting like abused
• 1:01:19
  every night, like a succubus was appearing to him.
• 1:01:22
  That was like raping him. He would hear chains at night
• 1:01:26
  and and he'd be get beat up when he tries to fall asleep.
• 1:01:29
  He'd hear the screeches of, of souls in hell, the demons kind
• 1:01:32
  of saying that this, this place is for you and we're coming for
• 1:01:35
  you someday and all this stuff. And, and just sitting with, you
• 1:01:39
  know, hearing his story one time I was just asking him like what,
• 1:01:45
  how he saw God and, and he said that, well, he feels like he's
• 1:01:49
  not a good disciple. He has to pray more and all
• 1:01:51
  these things. I just, I just sense like this,
• 1:01:53
  this guilt he had not being a good enough son with the father.
• 1:01:58
  And so we just asked God, like, where that felt true, like when
• 1:02:02
  he's just not a good enough son, how do you see him, father?
• 1:02:06
  And at first, he was actually brought back to a memory when he
• 1:02:09
  was a little kid and his dad was really critical of him.
• 1:02:13
  And it made him feel like it was his fault.
• 1:02:15
  And he disappointed his dad. And he didn't realize how much
• 1:02:19
  that has impacted him as a man trying to prove himself even
• 1:02:23
  with God. But what was profound was, you
• 1:02:30
  know, even in the session, he was actually starting to get
• 1:02:32
  beat up by demons as we're asking these questions.
• 1:02:35
  And so again, it was like the sense of guilt.
• 1:02:38
  Like I just love to ask the question.
• 1:02:40
  Right. And because part of me deserves
• 1:02:42
  this, I'm not good enough. I'm not a good son.
• 1:02:44
  And it left the space open. He saw an image of Jesus being
• 1:02:49
  scourged at the pillar, but the pillar disappeared and he saw
• 1:02:53
  himself there and Jesus was over him being scourged.
• 1:02:57
  It's almost like Jesus was covering the pillar covering him
• 1:03:01
  and he and Jesus was taking the abuse that he actually also got
• 1:03:05
  from his dad growing up and the separation happened within him
• 1:03:10
  of of Jesus. You know, the physical abuse
• 1:03:15
  happened, but it doesn't mean that emotionally has to also
• 1:03:20
  affect you. Jesus kind of took the space in
• 1:03:23
  between where he could be safe and loved and cared for and
• 1:03:28
  protected emotionally, even if the physical stuff happened.
• 1:03:32
  So Jesus created this new space in his life and his relationship
• 1:03:36
  really healing that. And within like a a week, all
• 1:03:40
  the everything stopped in his house and and he he was one of a
• 1:03:44
  lot of things started moving around around in in his house
• 1:03:46
  all over the place. That all stopped because really
• 1:03:50
  our our house and the things we own, our extension of ourselves
• 1:03:54
  and our authority. And and when this is whole, the
• 1:03:58
  enemy has no place there too. So anyways, those are just yeah,
• 1:04:02
  some stories, but spoke at length a little bit there.
• 1:04:05
  That's great. It puts more, I guess, texture
• 1:04:09
  to yeah, just that Jesus has done this and the, the, the
• 1:04:15
  witness we get in Scripture is that he wants to prepare his
• 1:04:18
  bride. And if there's a spa or blemish,
• 1:04:21
  he wants to wash our feet, he wants to do that.
• 1:04:24
  Like this is just his love. He he lowers himself, he seeks
• 1:04:27
  us and it's getting back to that.
• 1:04:30
  And yeah, so it's very different, very different
• 1:04:36
  approach. So I think go from here.
• 1:04:39
  I think it's the right approach, yeah.
• 1:04:41
  And it's so encouraging. Yeah.
• 1:04:44
  What you're saying, a lot of it was resonating.
• 1:04:46
  But one of the things you said earlier, well, it's all
• 1:04:49
  interconnected. But about the Exorcist, I'm not
• 1:04:52
  kind of giving you this fear. And then Jesus is watching it
• 1:04:55
  with you holding, holding your back and laughing at the scene
• 1:04:58
  like this is ridiculous. Come on.
• 1:05:00
  It's all right. It's.
• 1:05:00
  I'm here. Yeah.
• 1:05:02
  I think like the exorcism of Emily Rose.
• 1:05:04
  I've never even watched it. I, I, I won't watch those things
• 1:05:08
  because I don't, I don't believe it.
• 1:05:10
  It's true. I mean, it's true in one sense,
• 1:05:12
  but it's also not true because of the, the way it's presented.
• 1:05:15
  And so I don't like horror movies.
• 1:05:18
  I don't watch those. I don't watch those sorts of
• 1:05:20
  things, but they still sometimes haunt me.
• 1:05:23
  And I, I get sometimes haunted about this idea of like all the
• 1:05:27
  horrible suffering in the world abortion.
• 1:05:29
  Obviously, I could tell you the worst stories that we've can,
• 1:05:35
  you know, learned about or, and been told about just the most
• 1:05:39
  heinous crimes against children. I mean, little babies ripped
• 1:05:42
  apart. I mean, just the, you could just
• 1:05:44
  the whole world of the worst things and then the whole world
• 1:05:47
  of the worst things around the abandonment of little kids and
• 1:05:49
  the neglect of little kids. I mean, you go down, you start
• 1:05:52
  going down that path and it's so incredibly dark.
• 1:05:56
  And but we're not made to carry all of that is incredibly dark
• 1:06:01
  because that's God. God does that for us.
• 1:06:04
  That's our entire salvation story.
• 1:06:07
  And what I love about what you're doing is it's so
• 1:06:10
  personalized. Like you're, it's taking that
• 1:06:13
  individual story, that individual person, that
• 1:06:17
  individual who is us in the end. And it's reminding herself like
• 1:06:20
  Jesus is here in every moment and whatever hurt me the most,
• 1:06:24
  like Jesus is here in that moment with me and he actually
• 1:06:26
  wants to take that hurt for me. Absolutely.
• 1:06:28
  And that's so. And he has by his stripes he.
• 1:06:33
  Has by his stripes through. Your sorrow.
• 1:06:36
  And yet we often carry that apart from him.
• 1:06:38
  It's like it's realizing he carried that for you and that
• 1:06:42
  received that love. And that's what transforms us.
• 1:06:46
  And yeah, I mean, the whole Sacramento life is about
• 1:06:51
  receiving what he's done and entering into that mystery again
• 1:06:55
  and again because it's really by the encounter with Christ that
• 1:06:59
  we are transformed, you know? So, yeah, I mean, when it comes
• 1:07:04
  to this whole gosh. Exorcism fad?
• 1:07:11
  Yeah, there's there's. Thomas Merton actually has a
• 1:07:15
  chapter in his book New Seeds of Contemplation on the
• 1:07:18
  spirituality of Satan. Interesting.
• 1:07:21
  Any challenges how Satan has no problem with you preaching the
• 1:07:27
  teaching the gospel and teaching about Christian spirituality as
• 1:07:31
  long as he gets to dictate how you do that.
• 1:07:34
  Wow. And he talks in the in the
• 1:07:36
  chapter. Of the fruitless.
• 1:07:38
  The fruitless works of darkness are not necessarily like Hells,
• 1:07:42
  hellish screams and crazy. Whatever that fruitless works of
• 1:07:46
  darkness can be literally look like Christian, look like
• 1:07:50
  Christian spirituality, but it doesn't have the fruit of the
• 1:07:53
  Spirit. Exactly.
• 1:07:54
  And, and he even says that there's a lot of Orthodox
• 1:07:57
  teachers that yeah, you, you can sense the fruit sometimes, but.
• 1:08:01
  You can I, I don't want to sound judgy.
• 1:08:03
  Fascination with evil, basically.
• 1:08:05
  Well, but I don't want to sound judgy here 'cause I this is of
• 1:08:07
  myself too. Like I'm the first I can fall
• 1:08:09
  in. This is not like this is someone
• 1:08:10
  else's problem, but you do sense with certain people, there's
• 1:08:14
  this edge, this darkness, this heaviness, this just
• 1:08:17
  judgmentalism. And I'm so sorry.
• 1:08:19
  Repent if you felt that with me because I don't want to be that
• 1:08:22
  and I need to receive more of the Lord's love to not be that.
• 1:08:25
  But you do see this in like the creative world of like, you
• 1:08:27
  know, Christians, conservatives, Catholics doing podcasting,
• 1:08:30
  doing whatever. And then on the one hand,
• 1:08:33
  they're they're saying the Christ is king.
• 1:08:35
  They're talking about the spirituality, they've been
• 1:08:36
  talking about exorcisms or whatever.
• 1:08:38
  But there is this, there's this like knife there.
• 1:08:44
  Yeah, there's, there's, there's something that's rigid sometimes
• 1:08:47
  that not to say that we're supposed to be super liberal,
• 1:08:49
  but we're more meant to be more integrated.
• 1:08:52
  And yeah, I mean, he, he basically describes how there's
• 1:08:56
  a tendency in this fascinate that he calls it almost like a
• 1:09:00
  hypnosis of evil, where we begin to talk about sin and of
• 1:09:04
  judgement in such a way that we we start to almost delight in
• 1:09:09
  hearing the negative outcomes of other people and how we're doing
• 1:09:12
  well and we're staying away from all that stuff.
• 1:09:14
  And it starts to really warp your sense of solidarity too.
• 1:09:18
  And that, you know, one time in my own life, honestly, I, I
• 1:09:23
  questioned this, you know, who needs deliverance?
• 1:09:26
  Is it just for someone who's possessed or demonized?
• 1:09:29
  And I went through a, a really difficult time, honestly, in my,
• 1:09:34
  in my marriage where I recognized how reactive I had
• 1:09:39
  been, like stonewalling in my anxiety and not being able to
• 1:09:43
  just stay in a conversation that we needed to have.
• 1:09:46
  And that fear was really crippling me from being able to
• 1:09:50
  commune even with my wife. And the Lord really showed me
• 1:09:55
  that I needed deliverance from fear from fear in that area and
• 1:09:59
  that I was not conformed enough to Christ, to love my wife like
• 1:10:04
  Christ, like the church Christ, you know, he he put castration
• 1:10:08
  anxiety to death on the cross that I was, you know, protecting
• 1:10:13
  myself in. But I really had to die with
• 1:10:17
  Christ to to to to like in him only so that I could love my
• 1:10:21
  wife in a non defensive way. And he he really confronted me
• 1:10:27
  that, you know, so often we're like Martha, we're anxious about
• 1:10:32
  many things. So there's many things that
• 1:10:34
  actually have influence in our life that we need to be freed
• 1:10:37
  from. And that's a form of
• 1:10:39
  deliverance. And I think so often we like to
• 1:10:41
  categorize people like these are the sick and these are the
• 1:10:44
  healthy. But Jesus.
• 1:10:46
  Exactly. And we all start at a place
• 1:10:50
  where we all need, you know, Moses and Elijah, when they
• 1:10:53
  appeared to Jesus, spoke to him about the Exodus.
• 1:10:56
  He was going to work out in Jerusalem for all of us this
• 1:11:00
  deliverance that he was going to bring into our life.
• 1:11:02
  We all need to go on that journey.
• 1:11:06
  You know, Saint Bonaventure has a great reading in the office of
• 1:11:09
  readings on his feast day about this Passover.
• 1:11:12
  This pash we have to make with the Lord.
• 1:11:15
  It goes beyond the mind where we truly are conformed him and go
• 1:11:19
  through this mystical journey of union with Christ and his death
• 1:11:24
  so that we can really rise with him, really set free from the
• 1:11:28
  parasite of the enemy where he's got nothing else to cling to.
• 1:11:32
  But this is a deep personal journey and conversion that we
• 1:11:36
  have to go through. And yeah, I mean, this is all.
• 1:11:40
  Is this all going to be in Little Devil Big God?
• 1:11:43
  Big God, little devil. Big of course you should start
• 1:11:46
  big. God, little devil Sean, where
• 1:11:48
  can people find? It's not published yet, right?
• 1:11:52
  So I, I do, yeah. I, I, I wrote the book.
• 1:11:55
  I'm still editing it. I think it's going to like this
• 1:11:58
  final round now. It's, it'll probably, it'll,
• 1:12:02
  it'll for sure be out this year. So big God, little devil.
• 1:12:06
  You can actually check out the first couple chapters for free
• 1:12:10
  if you go to biggodlittledevil.com.
• 1:12:11
  Amazing. And the part of it, I mean, when
• 1:12:14
  I met with you last time, you challenged me to talk and speak
• 1:12:17
  more about things, and I started the Instagram Reel.
• 1:12:21
  I just followed it looks awesome.
• 1:12:23
  Yeah, because none of us going to read a book.
• 1:12:25
  And especially parents. But I love, I love the heart of
• 1:12:28
  this message. It's so needed.
• 1:12:30
  It's so needed, Sean, in every corner of the of the the people,
• 1:12:35
  the faithful and and those that don't have the faith yet.
• 1:12:39
  So big God littledevil.com and the book will be coming in 2025.
• 1:12:44
  For sure it'll be out in 2020. Five.
• 1:12:46
  What do you hope it's going to accomplish?
• 1:12:48
  I hope yeah. And really this is my only goal.
• 1:12:52
  It's it's to help shift the the cultural mindset in the church.
• 1:12:56
  So because I think of right now we have in first John, St.
• 1:13:06
  John talks about these three stages of the spiritual life.
• 1:13:10
  When he says, I speak to you children, I speak to you young
• 1:13:12
  men, I speak to you Father's and to the children and young men he
• 1:13:16
  addresses, you know, you've overcome the evil 1.
• 1:13:18
  But to the fathers, it's, you know, the one from the
• 1:13:20
  beginning. And he just repeats that to
• 1:13:22
  them. And I think we have to move past
• 1:13:25
  this paradigm of, of how we see the spiritual battle as if like
• 1:13:30
  it's still unfinished to get to this place where we realize all
• 1:13:34
  is grace. God has overcome it all and
• 1:13:37
  we're just captivated with the one who's on the throne.
• 1:13:41
  I mean, Jesus even said. Worship.
• 1:13:43
  Yeah, to he who's overcome, I will grant to sit with me on my
• 1:13:45
  throne as I have overcome and sat with my father in his
• 1:13:48
  throne. Like he wants us to enjoy that
• 1:13:50
  place of intimacy. And sometimes it's through the
• 1:13:53
  battle, you know, I like to say that a smooth sea never made a
• 1:13:57
  skilled sailor. We got it has given us the
• 1:14:00
  sparring partner and the enemy. That's very useful, you know.
• 1:14:05
  But he wants us to enter into that greater reality
• 1:14:09
  relationship with him. And so my hope really is that
• 1:14:13
  this really, well, I've also become really concerned with
• 1:14:16
  some of the abuses that have happened in this realm where
• 1:14:20
  there have been people who have died, there have been people who
• 1:14:23
  have. Died in exorcisms.
• 1:14:25
  Or or just not gotten the help they needed.
• 1:14:27
  Yeah, like someone who does have some mental illness, whether
• 1:14:31
  it's schizophrenia or even I talk a lot of in the book about
• 1:14:34
  borderline personality, where someone like that actually
• 1:14:37
  delights in being targeted by demons because it secures a
• 1:14:42
  relationship with an exorcist, which is a father figure that
• 1:14:46
  they need in their life that they didn't have.
• 1:14:48
  And so in ways we can be really. Yeah, it could just.
• 1:14:52
  It's a terrible system. BPD.
• 1:14:55
  I've I've met multiple people to.
• 1:14:57
  Sort of have the demonic issue so they can have this deep
• 1:15:00
  relationship with them. And they?
• 1:15:02
  I've actually seen, yeah, I know, I know of people and I've
• 1:15:05
  observed that happening. And, and, and when they when
• 1:15:08
  they when they meet with me, you hear them talk about the the
• 1:15:10
  different demons after them. Oh, Bill's above Jezebel, this
• 1:15:13
  one and that one. You almost see this, like almost
• 1:15:16
  delight and and you feel it the. Attention that they've been
• 1:15:20
  seeking, yeah. And sort of stability in the
• 1:15:22
  chaos, like the the chaos is a is stability for them.
• 1:15:25
  Absolutely. So, yeah, I, I just, I, I want
• 1:15:28
  to shift all that, you know, in the little way that I can where
• 1:15:33
  we just return to seeing the Lord and, and for him to be
• 1:15:37
  glorified. But also I think we're in a time
• 1:15:39
  where we're beginning to see a new evangelization and with
• 1:15:43
  people that are non believers or have not really heard the gospel
• 1:15:47
  really before. I think it's going to be again
• 1:15:49
  in a sign and and wonder to demonstrate the gospel when in
• 1:15:53
  the simple ways people are are delivered from demons.
• 1:15:57
  Just it not so much about who has authority, but about the
• 1:16:00
  power of the in the name of Jesus.
• 1:16:04
  Can you close us in a prayer? Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:16:06
  I'll do that. Yeah.
• 1:16:07
  And pray for people listening. Sure.
• 1:16:09
  Yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 1:16:12
  Just in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
• 1:16:16
  Jesus, you are wonderful. You are beautiful.
• 1:16:22
  Just thank you, Lord, for what You have done for me, for every
• 1:16:28
  one of us, for your suffering, for your compassion, for your
• 1:16:35
  joy, for every soul. I just thank you, Lord, for your
• 1:16:40
  jealous love for each of us, and that You desire our wholeness
• 1:16:45
  more than we would want it for ourselves.
• 1:16:47
  I just thank you God, that you have gone at at no expense to
• 1:16:54
  reveal yourself, to reveal the Father, to love us, to return us
• 1:17:02
  again to yourself. Or I just pray that anyone
• 1:17:06
  listening to this, as complicated as it can be, Lord,
• 1:17:11
  that they just might hear and see you, that Jesus, you might
• 1:17:17
  become more real to us right now, this day, than ever before,
• 1:17:22
  and that your love for us might begin to transform our lives.
• 1:17:27
  I just pray, Lord, that for those that are suffering in any
• 1:17:30
  form of bondage, that God, you might reveal how you are with
• 1:17:35
  them, that they're not alone. And that you might counsel them
• 1:17:40
  by your wisdom for how to be still so they too may see how
• 1:17:44
  you fight for them and what you have done.
• 1:17:46
  And I just pray, Lord, that that in the church today, and even in
• 1:17:52
  this in Lila Rose and her and her and her podcast and and all
• 1:17:56
  that she does, God, that your truth may be given the greatest
• 1:18:02
  microphone, the greatest volume, that it may truly set us free.
• 1:18:07
  God, that you might magnify your message in the earth today.
• 1:18:12
  And we just pray this in your holy and matchless name, Jesus.
• 1:18:17
  Amen. Amen.
• 1:18:18
  Thank you. Thanks, Sean.
• 1:18:20
  Yeah, that was awesome. So good to be here.
• 1:18:23
  Thank you for this. Yeah.
• 1:18:24
  Thank God. littledevil.com. That's right.
• 1:18:26
  It's awesome. It's so needed.
• 1:18:28
  Yeah. Amen.
• 1:18:30
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• 1:18:35
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• 1:18:38
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• 1:18:41
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