Dear Joseph:

Thanks for your comments on the new web design. It is appreciated.

On the previous incarnation of our website we did have a box with the Twitter feed. The new website does not have that twitter box, but is does have the link to our twitter account. If you look in the sidebar on the right, under the clock, is a list of all the social networking sites to which we are a member. You can click on the Twitter link to see twitter postings.

In lieu of the twitter feeds, which is mostly about the radio show, we have a news feed called "St. Michael News" found in the center of the page. Right under the Scripture for the Day, is a list of previous postings called "Recent St. Michael News".

St. Michael News replaces the twitter box, for technical reasons. I apologize that I have not updated the St. Michael News lately. I must remember to do that. Normally, I announce each and every radio show on the St. Michael News as well as any other news about our websites and apostolate. My health is deteriorating and with it a difficulty in remembering to do things. I will try to keep the St. Michael News updated.

The lectures from Fr. Fortea is not an ongoing thing. It was series of talks that I re-broadcast on our radio show. You can find them in the archives in the On-Demand Episodes section of our BlogTalkRadio page or in the archives of our own website, Excellence in Religious Broadcasting Network.

FYI, next Thursday, May 16, 2013, the topic on the Radio Show will be What to Do if I am Demonized. We will discuss how people find themselves in bondage to the devil, and how to get free of that bondage. Anyone who wants to ask a question or make a comment for the show call our Voice Mail, toll free, (877) 503-0600, ext. 2. Any questions or comments must be made by the Monday before the upcoming show.

The show is broadcast live at 5pm Central Time USA (-5 GMT during summer; -6 GMT the rest of the year). Once broadcast, the show is available in archive (On Demand section on BlogTalkRadio) within a few minutes after 5:30pm. The show is also archived on our own website, usually by 6:30pm. But, due to health I may not get it posted until the next day. It is always available on BlogTalkRadio, however. So much for the advertisement.

Just about everything that was on the old home page is found on the new website homepage. Like anything new, it will take some getting use to where everything is. Just today, responding to your comments, i added more references to the Radio Show in the tabbed menus.

Also, look to the footer section for lists of other websites we own, and other resources. This home page and the new design for the website is still under construction. Since we have some 10,000+ pages it will take a couple of years to get everything updated since I am doing it alone with no volunteers.

As far as a dead link on an article on witchcraft there is no way for me to fix this without knowing where this dead link is at. I need to know the specific page, the URL of the page, where this dead link is at before I can fix it.

On to your question:

God never forces us to do anything. If He did He would be lying about giving us Free Will. God does not lie and Free Will is like pregnancy—either you is or either you ain't. One cannot be 98% pregnant. Neither can we have 98% Free Will. Either we have it or we do not.

While God will not force us to do anything, He can be a mighty persuader. He can offer us a choice that, while it can still be refused, is mighty hard to refuse.

This is what happened to Jonah. Jonah said no to God. God said, "okay, you are going to say no to Me, let us see what you say after three days in the belly of a great fish."

This happened to me.

In 1987, God called me into a deliverance ministry. I was very reluctant to accept this call because a few years earlier I was involved in the new age and into the occult, nearly lost my life, and I did lose my soul for a while. It was when God gave me a vision of my own soul, which was dead, and a vision of the hell that I was going to go to, that I came to my senses and became the prodigal son coming home to the Father.

All that happened because I tried to go into a deliverance ministry without God's permission. When you tackle the devil without God's permission the devil will slap you down and slap you down hard. That is what happened to me.

Thus, when I felt a very strong calling (it was a strong understanding and feeling that God wanted this) that God was now giving me the green light to participate in a deliverance ministry, I was reluctant to do so. In fact, I looked up to the heavens and I said to God, "Lord, forget you. I am not going to do this." That is an exact quote I what I said to God.

Twenty-four hours later, a couple, and the wife's sister, moved into the apartment next to mine. The sister came knocking on my door. While I do not remember how I knew this because it happened so long ago, I knew that she was demonized and needed help.

God was saying to me, "Son, you are going to say no to Me? Okay, I'm going to place a hurting soul on your doorstep to see what you're going to do."

God did not force me to accept this person as a client. I had the choice. But the choice was between being the Good Samaritan and helping this person, or slamming the door in her face and coldly ignoring her suffering. That's quite a choice, but it is a choice.

I chose to be the Good Samaritan. I accepted God's call, albeit reluctantly. That was in 1987 and I have been doing deliverance work ever since.

This is an example of how God works. He will never force us to do anything. The choice is always ours. But, God certainly can place choices in our path in which it will be difficult to choose the wrong option. Nevertheless, the choice of option is always ours.

The ways in which God chooses to motivate us is rarely going to be as dramatic as it was with Jonah. But God will motivate us in some way. It may be a very subtle motivation. It could be an offhanded remark of a friend who doesn't even know that what he is saying is acting as a motivation to us. It could be that we read a verse in the Bible that seems to jump out at us. It can be a friend who is encouraging us to make a choice one way or the other.

It will rarely be a burning brush or three days spent in the belly of a whale, but God will give us the motivation to make the right decision. We only need to be open to the still small voice of God to know the direction we need to go.

Do not fear God's promptings. Fear comes from the devil. The devil wants us to ignore the promptings of God and thus he will instill a fear that God's promptings maybe more than we can handle. That is a lie. God will never give us anything more than we can handle, but he will give us what we need in order to make the right decisions.

The problem is that the solution is right in front of us, but as my father would say, "if it was a snake it would've bit you." Discerning God's will is right in front of us, we only have to take off the blinders on our eyes to see it.

An acquaintance of mine, a Carmelite priest, tells this story when people ask him about how they can know God's will for their vocation. He explains that this is very simple. There is a room with three chairs. One chair is the priestly or religious life. One chair is the married life. And one chair is the single life. Just sit in one of the chairs!

Most people fail to make decisions based upon their fear that they're going to make a mistake. So what if we make a mistake? We learn by our mistakes. God teaches us through our mistakes. We should never be afraid to make a mistake because if we do we end up becoming impotent and that is not God's will. As the cliché posits, "Whatever does not kill us makes us stronger."

Thus, using the Carmelite priest's story, we make a choice on which chair to sit in. That decision can be made by subtle small voices of our conscience, hints from other people who might suggest that we might make a good priest or religious, or perhaps be a good father, etc. Listen to those clues and make a decision—sit in a chair.

Sitting in one of these chairs does not obligate us for the rest our lives. In fact, one does not become a priest overnight, one does not take perpetual vows overnight, one ought not to get married overnight. There is plenty of time in the process of studying for the priesthood, or preparing for religious life, or in dating and engagement before marriage, to find out whether or not this is God's call for us.

If we sit in one of the chairs and later we discover that this is not really what God wants us to do we just simply get up and sit in one of the other chairs. But God can not direct our live if we are standing still. We must be moving in some direction, even if the wrong direction. It is only when we are moving that God can redirect our path.

Our life is like a ship. The course of our ship, our life, can be changed by turning the rudder. But, turning the rudder to the left or to the right will have absolutely no effect on changing the course of the ship if the ship is standing dead in the water. The ship must be moving through the water in order for the rudder to have an effect on its course.

Our life must be moving in some direction in order for God to make course corrections by changing the rudder of our lives. And of course, those rudder changes must be with our consent.

What is God's will? Well one of the ways in which we can test whether or not the promptings we hear are truly God's will, is to test it. Does our inclinations lead us in a direction opposite to that of the Church? If it does then it's not God's will. When people say the I believe it's God's will for me to leave the Catholic Church and become Presbyterian, it is not God telling them that.

If the prompting leads us in a direction that is destructive or sinful, then it is not from God. If one believes that God is calling them to leave their wife, that voice is not the voice of God. If one believes that God is calling them to do something which ignores their family, that voice is not from God.

If we are talking about apples and oranges, or talking about buying a Chevy or Ford. it is a good to be in a mindset to ask God which fruit or which car to buy, but this is not a topic about God's will for our life. It doesn't matter whether we eat an apple or an orange, or by a Chevy or Ford. We can always ask God for guidance in making these decisions, but we need to make the decision based upon our own preferences.

I had a client once who had a friend who lost his job. So my client invited his friend and his family to live with him in his house until they could find a job. Week after week went by and my client's friend did not find a job. The friend and his wife had been sitting on the couch watching television for those weeks without making any efforts to search for jobs. When my client asked his friend why he had not gone out and look for a job, the friend replied, "Well, where waiting for God to give us a job."

This man and his wife apparently were expecting God to drop a job in their lap like manna from heaven. That's not how it works. God may direct them to a job but only if they get out there and start knocking on doors looking for a job – the rudder cannot change the course of the ship unless it's moving through the water.

There is also the story of a humble man who is desperate because his wife was in the hospital and there were many medical bills to pay. His children need clothing and supplies for school. Thus, while he was not a gambling man, he bought a lottery ticket and ask God to please allow him to win the lottery so that he could pay the medical bills of his wife and buy the things his children needed. The lottery came, the lottery went. He did not win.

The man prayed, "Lord, you know I do not ask to win the lottery for greed. You know I ask this only because of the desperate financial needs I need for my family. Please let me win the lottery just this once."

The lottery came, the lottery went. He did not win.

The man prayed again, "Lord, please, help me. You know why I'm asking this."

This time God answered the man. God said, "Son, give me a break. You can at least buy a lottery ticket."

God can do all sorts of things for us when we ask him, but he can do nothing if we don't buy the lottery ticket. We have to do our part. To use the story from my Carmelite friend, our part is to pick a chair sit in it, whichever chair interests us. Then once in the chair to do the things that are necessary to facilitate that chair. If we sit in the marriage chair, then we need to date people. That's the only way we will find out whether or not this is the vocation that God has for us. If we sit in the marriage chair and just sat there, like my client's friend, nothing is going to happen. The same goes if we sit in the priest or religious chair. We must begin to do the things that are necessary to become a priest or religious. It is only when we are moving in that direction that then we can find out if that is God's will for us. The same is for the single chair. If that's God's will for us to be a single person then we do the things that we do as a single person. It is only when we go ahead with our life accepting our singleness that we can come to discover that God may have another vocation for us, such as the married life or the priestly/religious life. Again, our ship of life must be moving in some direction in order for God to change the rudder, with our consent, to move in a different direction.

Much of our questions about God's will for our life is explained by the stories. Beyond that the tests of what we think are the promptings of God are always vetted by whether or not those promptings are consistent with Church teaching, consistent with moral theology, consistent with what is best for us and our families, and which do not lead us into sin or into unproductive and problematic behaviors or situations. If it is God's prompting it will always be a prompting that is in our best interest.

Billy Graham once said, "People tend to sacrifice the best on the altar of the good." If one is a parent he wants the best for his child, not just a good. God wants the best, the excellent, for his children. We are never to settle for just a good. God's promptings will always lead us towards the best, towards the excellent.

All of this is dependent upon whether or not we properly respond to God's promptings. But, do not be afraid if you miss the promptings, or misinterpret the promptings. Be not afraid! Why? because God promises that he will make lemonade out of the lemons that we make of our life. This is a promise of God, and he does not lie.

(Romans 8:28) "We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose."

God makes this promise, but we must respond to it. It is our choice. But if we make the choice to to respond to God, then God will make the lemonade out of our lemons.

But we may say, yes I understand that, but there are so many temptations that lead me to not choose to allow God to make lemonade. Well, God has another promise. He promises that no temptation will ever come in our lives to which it would be impossible for us to resist. If temptation existed which we could not resist God will not allow it in our lives. In addition he promises that he will give us the way to escape from falling into that temptation.

(1 Cor 10:13) "No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it."

This is the promise of God. God does not lie. Thus, whenever a temptation comes our way, no matter what the temptation is, we can know for a fact that we can resist it because God said so and God does not lie. Now, we may not believe we can resist, or we may not feel we can resist, but reality is not based on what we believe or feel. Truth is based upon objective knowledge.

The nursery rhyme, "Jesus loves me this I know because the Bible tells me so," does not say that Jesus loves me this I believe, nor does it say Jesus loves me this I feel. It says Jesus loves me this I know. Why? Because the Bible tells me so and the Bible is God's word and God does not lie.

What does all this mean in terms of knowing God's will? It means that the will of God will always be in our best interest, it will always be consistent with biblical and Church teaching, and it will never lead us astray, it will never lead us to sin, it will never lead us into imprudence or to violate any of the virtues, it will always lead us to virtue.

It means that when we are tempted to choose something which is not in our best interest, to ignore the promptings of God, that those temptations are not impossible for us. We can resist them because God says so. And, God will give us a way to escape those temptations.

It means that we need not fear making a mistake in recognizing or interpreting God's promptings. As long as we are moving in some direction it gives God an opportunity to change the course of our life if we allow him to change the rudder of our ship. We also need not fear making a mistake because we know that God will make something good out of our mistakes if we allow him to. All things work together for God is a promise of God and God does not lie.

We also need to recognize that if the decision for our own lives requires a decision  of someone else, that God's will or us may not be realized because the other person has to make a free will decision to accept God's will also. To give a simple example, if Mary prays to God that John will come to love her and be her husband, that prayer may not come true. It may not come true even if it's God's will for John and Mary to be married, because God will not force John to fall in love with Mary.

And finally, there are some decisions in our life for which God is not going to give us a prompting perhaps. He may only give us a little nudge and maybe not even that. The reason is that the decision that we need to make is non-consequential to our life and salvation. It doesn't matter whether we buy a Chevy or Ford.

While God does care about every single aspect of our life, just as a parent cares about every single aspect of their child, the parent expects the child to make decisions for himself without always asking the advice of the parent. Nothing wrong with asking advice of the parent, but as parents our job is to raise our children in such a way that they may make the right decisions on their own without the advice of us. Wisely making decisions is a skill that all parents need to teach their children.

On matters of the Faith, as parents it is our duty to train our children in the Christian life, to teach them of Christian doctrine, to teach them Christian principles and the Christian worldview. In this way, when our children come across something of which we have not specifically taught them about, they will know the principles of good decision-making that is within the Faith, and are thus likely to make the correct decision without our direct advice. 

This is what the Church does with us. She teaches us the doctrine and principles of the Christ-life so that when we come across something of which the Church has not specifically given an opinion or a declaration we are able to make a correct decision on our own because we are thoroughly knowledgeable of the principles and worldview of Christ.

 It within the context of everything of which I have discussed here, I believe, that we can come to discern the promptings and calling of God in our individual lives.

I hope all this has helped.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary