By Claire Dwyer
It was almost immediately when I started intentionally covering my family members in prayer years ago that I realized the magnitude of participating in the power of Christ who drives out demons and destroys strongholds. “You want to play that game?” the darkness seemed to sneer, surfacing from areas I hadn’t suspected.
But thankfully I knew that there was no real power behind his pitiful attempts to take back all the ground he’d lost through my prayers. The real power is in Christ, His Church, His sacraments. And when we stand on that belief with everything we have, we can know with certainty that “‘they will fight against you but will never overcome you, since I am with you,’ declares the LORD.” (Jer 1:19)
Still, I wish I’d had Kathleen Beckman’s new book A Family Guide to Spiritual Warfare: Strategies for Deliverance and Healing back then. It would have been a welcome source of information, inspiration, and practical advice on protecting what is most precious to me in all the world: my family. Now, it’s on the easy-to-reach shelf where I keep my perennial resources, my go-to guides for the spiritual life.
A Family Guide to Spiritual Warfare (Sophia Institute Press, 2020) effectively helps “evangelize families about unmasking diabolical disguises” and “encourage families to prevent problems by practicing the proven means of protection in the Church’s arsenal of spiritual weapons.”
Beckman is honest about her experience in this area, which comes not only from years of service on her diocesan exorcism and deliverance ministry team and facilitating and advising for the Pope Leo XIII Institute, but from decades of personal prayer and battle for the soul of her own family as “the family intercessor.” She is an authority with a compassionate heart and a clear call from God. And the Church is blessed by her timely contribution to the laity’s growing arsenal against Satan in the “final battle.”
She describes why the family is such a threat to the enemy and what his common tactics are to distort and take down what is central to God’s plan for salvation: the life-giving, authentic love of a man and woman and their children, the living image of the Trinity. She warns us that he often seeks to destroy us from within and how to guard against his subtle invasions with vigilance and time-tested tools such as discernment of spirits. She calls out the threats from without by describing some of the most alarming trends which seep satanic influence into even the most devout homes.
Beckman reminds us that spiritual warfare is central to the Christian life and that we have authority over that which belongs to us: our homes, our marriages, our children. She urges us to claim our baptismal authority and “talk back” to the lies of the enemy—and take back what rightfully belongs to Christ.
Filled with anecdotal evidence, scripture, stories of the saints, advice from exorcists, and prayers for all kinds of situations, this book like striking gold for those of us who’ve been seeking to dig an impenetrable foundation of faith for our families. I can’t recommend it enough.
Get your copy here.
© Claire Dwyer
Originally published on SpiritualDirection.com
