I used to be afraid. That was when I knew about God, but before I knew Him. God made me pretty strong. I stand up for what I believe. I speak my mind. But the one thing that made me freeze up and panic was the supernatural experiences of living in a “haunted” house.
My husband and I have lived in two houses that needed to be exorcized. The second was worse that the first, particularly because it affected our children as well. Sam and I could both sense that something was there, we just didn’t know yet if it was positive or negative. Over the next few months things were knocked off shelves. The door to the basement would open itself. We were seeing things out of the corner of our eyes.
But worst of all was how this thing affected our 18 month old daughter. She started screaming one night like I’ve never heard before. I thought she had seriously hurt herself and I ran up there. She seemed unharmed, but was upset and so we rocked her until she calmed down. She pointed to her bed indicating she wanted to go back to sleep. She was too young to talk. That pattern of screaming followed by our calming continued. That was the first night of weeks that followed.
Every time I would go up to comfort her I would feel it in there, hostile and aggressive. I would pray out of panic: "Please Jesus, please Mary, keep her safe. Protect her, surround her. Keep me safe." She was waking up screaming 3 nights a week. Then she started having insomnia. She would wake up and be awake for 2-5 hours a night about 4 nights a week. She wanted to sleep, but she just couldn’t. I tried natural children’s sleep aids, but nothing worked.
Things increasingly got worse. One afternoon I remember rocking our 4 month old son thinking, “At least it can’t physically hurt my children.” When I got him up from his nap I saw three parallel scratch marks down his back in two places. There was no possible way he could have scratched himself. Thankfully my parents’ parish priest (Fr. Brian Hurley at the time) was able to come and exorcize the house and from that night on she slept through the night.
In March of 2018 God showed up in my life, one sunny afternoon while I was just sitting on the porch. He showed me how small I was. How much He loves us. All the good things He made for us, for our enjoyment, out of His love for us. I was overwhelmed and sobbing and I knew that that was GOD and was put on a search to find who it was that I had just met.
That search led me to Jesus, who is so very beautiful. And Jesus has done so much for me, for us. He has had such an immensely positive impact on our marriage and our children and ourselves. I came to recognize my authority as a child of God and I stopped praying out of panic and being on the defensive and started going on the offense.
My parents’ current parish priest, Fr. Robert Slaton, lent me a book titled "Deliverance Prayers for Use by the Laity" written by Fr. Chad Ripperger. BUY THIS BOOK! What a resource! We don’t often think about the powers of darkness, but they are at work in our lives and the lives of our loved ones every day and we can do something about that! Prayer works. Prayer is powerful, especially when you have your heart in it.
Shortly before receiving that book my husband and I realized we had a gift for healing. We had prayed for our daughter when she was ill and she felt completely back to herself within 10 minutes. And we would pray for each other when we had some pain and the pain would leave.
One night he asked me to pray for him for a pain in his jaw. I put my hand on his jaw and began to pray in my head, “God please send your Holy Spirit through me to help heal him. Spirit of pain be gone, in Jesus’ name!” I felt something move under my hand. As things were evidently happening over those moments I continued to pray in earnest, “Spirit of pain be gone! He is a child of God. You have no authority to be here.” After that it went dormant, but I knew it wasn’t gone.
My husband said the same thing. He couldn’t feel it, but he knew it was still there. I had the thought that perhaps it did have the authority, through whatever free will choices my husband had made, and I remember a prayer that my uncle gave me. Out loud I prayed: “In the name of Jesus, I pray for Sam Zweifel, that the two edged sword of the Holy Spirit sever anything that is not of You, and I thank You and I praise You.” And when I prayed the "Thank you" and "Praise you" part, I imagined a sword slicing in an X at the back of Sam’s head where it had gone dormant. After that I went back to praying in my head, “Get outta here, demon!” and then I felt it leave. Sam said he heard a door close. Afterwards he said that when I prayed the "Thank you, praise you” part, he had seen an X drawn in his mind! I found out later he had been plagued by negative thoughts, but those were gone after I had prayed for him.
We would not have been able to handle all that life has become if we didn’t have God. He is the rock that keeps us grounded, the Light that shines in the darkness, and the Love that keeps us going when everything else fails. I used to be afraid, now I take a stand against an enemy that cowers at the name of Jesus.
"For we fight not against flesh and blood... but principalities and powers in the heavenly realms." Eph. 6:12
SPECIAL INVITE: We are hosting a special "Belief & Beverage Night" featuring Sam & Holly sharing their fuller story (amazing, powerful, beautiful), with solid-Catholic instruction and insights on deliverance for lay people. If you are interested, please contact us: Alive@MassImpact.us.
|
