Jesus gently but firmly
showed me that I needed to hand over to Him not only
the virtuous side of who I was, but the sinful weak
and wounded side as well. When I surrendered to
this diagnosis and invitation of His, I soon
discovered that I had not only allowed Him to be at
the center of my life, but that I’d received a
significant measure of inner healing and a major
physical healing, at one and the same time.
Within a few months, I
found myself praying for the so-called “baptism in
the Holy Spirit” at a Catholic Charismatic prayer
meeting. It wasn’t long before I found myself
attempting to shepherd at first dozens, and then
hundred of teens who insisted upon meeting every
night of the week for Bible studies and prayer
meetings. The early seventies proved to be, for me,
a sometimes wild and bewildering ride upon a mighty
wave of the Spirit sweeping over our land.
Among other things, as
we prayerfully studied the New Testament, insight
after insight into inner healing just seemed to jump
off of nearly every page. These hope-filled, more
than energetic, teens and young adults hardly seemed
to be very much in need of this healing wisdom that
we kept on receiving. In time, however, I gradually
came to realize that so many of them most surely
did. A significant percentage of them were carrying
profound, but often well-camouflaged, woundedness.
The hundreds upon
hundreds had shrunken down to less than a hundred by
the late seventies. But some of them had sensed a
call and had grabbed hold of a vision. They
obtained counseling and social work degrees. Some
of them helped me found a counseling center where
clients could expect healing prayer to accompany
their therapy. Others found employment with local
social service agencies with the idea of allowing
these careers to be ministries of Christ’s healing
love as they kept looking to Him to provide
opportunities and openings for outreach.
In 1995, I attended a
national gathering of leaders from various streams
of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal held in St.
Louis. I soon found myself sharing a bit of who I
was and what I did with a sweet lady from that area
named Bette Sullivan. She bluntly but gently
rebuked me for not being a member of ACT. In a
matter of seconds, the Holy Spirit used her to blow
away every excuse I’d ever resorted to for not
joining.
About five years ago I
started to sense a call to make inner healing
retreats, I’d co-authored or authored, available to
a wider audience via DVD. About a year and a half
ago, I showed excerpts from a recently released DVD
retreat, written for prison inmates, at our regional
ACT meeting. Those in attendance appeared to love
what they saw, but then went on to throw out a fresh
challenge: “Why don’t you come up with one of these
DVD healing retreats that could be offered to the
folks in our parishes?”
“Six Simple Steps into
Healing Prayer” has just been completed and is ready
for distribution, thanks to those “pushy” ACT
brothers and sisters and, I suspect, thanks to the
prayers of a sweet lady from St. Louis who presently
makes her home in the Heavenly Jerusalem.
*Note: DVDs may be
ordered from
communityofthecross.com
or at 203-748-4972
