Margie Fleurant | Guest Speakers: Greg & Maria | CTN Episode 26 ✨

0:00 You pray it and he can answer it. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. God will put the prayer in your heart to pray so that he can answer it. It goes into the hearts of the people, doesn't return void, it produces results. Hello, my name is Margie Florent. Welcome to Prayer and Purpose. Today's episode is one that speaks directly to hope, perseverance, and the power of prayer. I'm excited to welcome two very special friends and guests, Greg and Maria DeGregorio. They walked through one of the hardest times in their journey as a family, and they watched their son in active... addiction and he was struggling they prayed when it seemed impossible they trusted god when there was no guarantee and they refused to give up so i just want to welcome my friends my guests maria and greg before we get into the testimony of your son tell me and remind me how did we meet wow margie i will tell you how we met actually i knew you way before you knew me, in a good way.

1:20 So we were attending Faith Fellowship at the time. 1982, was it? We started going there in 1983. 1983. Pastor David T. DeMola, one of my favorite preachers, and then came Margie. But she used to minister there. She used to preach there. And I just fell in love with her. She was a female version. of pastor david t domola so that's how we initially met the big hair long nails the shoulder pads and all what was that i remember back in the day i only remember her at king's highway faith fellowship down here in atlantic islands wow she preached there too she preached on um she says i came to a funeral yes And she came all dressed in black. And I was like, she's not kidding. That was amazing.

2:14 It was a good message, dying to yourself. So that kind of stuck with me because we need to do that. Yes, I believe God's bringing us all back to that place of dying to self so that more of the life of God and the resurrection power of God can manifest in our midst. But that's another subject. um so we're here to talk about your testimony with how whereas how you prayed for your son and my opening question is to take us back to the beginning what was life like for you as parents when you realized that your son was struggling with addiction it was it was it was hard any parent you know to have to face something like that uh is a very hard nut to crack or like torture torture right so I'll take you back to when we first got saved that was back in 1982 1982 Greg is really good with the years and things like that and early on you know we started to pray together And, you know, at that time it was like, oh, we're going to pray out loud together. First time we ever did that.

3:32 Right. So we get on our knees and we're praying to the Lord. And he spoke audibly first. And I have to say only time I actually heard the audible voice of God. You know, we all get that inner witness. We all get that knowing. We all get that still small whisper. But this was a voice that said. I have called you to be a prayer warrior. So I just stopped dead in my mind. I looked at Greg, and he's still into praying. And I said, Greg, did you just say something? And he said, no. I said, okay. So I started to pray again. And I said, well, I just heard a voice tell me that we're called to be prayer warriors. So long story short, that kind of led us into a quest to find out, What does that mean?

4:27 What is a prayer warrior? Warrior? I'm not a warrior. If anybody knew me, now my husband is a Vietnam veteran, so he would know more about war. Me? I was a coward growing up. I didn't want anything to do with war, devils, or anything like that. Okay? But God called us to do that. Because when he calls you to do something, he equips you. I remember when she first told me this phrase, we're prayer warriors. I looked in the concordance for prayer warrior. I couldn't find anything that had to do with a prayer warrior. Right. So what happened was when we had our Bible study, somebody came over with a series of tapes, cassette tapes, way back when. And it was teaching on intercession by Marilyn Hickey. And she was explaining how Moses was an intercessor. And she gave the example in the Bible about how the people were complaining and they got into sin and they made a calf out of gold and how God was angry with them after all of this frustration.

5:36 They complained the whole time they were in the desert. So he said, God said he wanted to destroy the people. And Moses said, you can't do that. He said, the Egyptians are going to say, oh. you freed your people from each egypt and brought him to the wilderness to kill him there and he went on and you know he was using god's promises from abraham isaac and jacob you can't do this you promised you know all these things to your people so as the bible says that god repented or changed his mind so that really caught me prayer warrior it caught me where i was starting to understand a little bit what intercession was so god by his spirit was teaching you what that meant yes The Holy Spirit at that point in our walk with God, He was the one that was training us and teaching us. Because at that time, we started to have a Bible study with just family members. Like, let's just start praying together. And boy, did God show up at those meetings, Margie. His tangible presence was there. And what we did at that time was we prayed for every single family member. Most of them were Catholics.

6:51 They didn't want to hear about, like, what is this, born again stuff. So we just were diligent every week, every Friday night, right, with your cousins over, your brother. We would just pray for the family. I'm not going to go into that, but every single family member that we prayed for, including my family. In a nine -month period, 14 members of our family got saved. Praise God. And God is my witness. And we did it through intercession. preaching the word to them and speaking to them. There was a lot of persecution that happened and all that, and we don't have to talk about that, but one by one, like dominoes.

7:37 My mother, her parents, my father was already deceased, my brothers, and I was involved with the full gospel businessmen. They all came to the meetings and got saved. My cousins. it was just an amazing thing that happened how god moved so quickly quickly well that's the testimony of the power of prayer and the power of agreement yes because the bible says if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything it shall be done for them by my father in heaven so you guys have a lot of power in your agreement we did but you know see margie now teaches all this stuff we didn't know all of that But all we knew is, oh, when we pray and pray in the spirit, God is directing and leading our prayers. And we saw them answered. So it just built us up so strong in our faith and in our walk with God as far as prayer. And we thank God for that because we'll fast forward into our lives with our children.

8:44 We had a beautiful life. You know, we raised them. In the faith, they went to faith fellowship Sunday school. Of course, now we can't say Sunday school, right? We have to say children's church. But we raised them in Sunday school, and everything was great. Anthony was always involved with sports. Greg was always the coach. A very important thing we have to mention in our lives, because Pastor Dave at Faith Fellowship Ministries, We first started going there, he was teaching about authority. Yes. And I'm saying to myself, wow, from my religious background, I didn't hear nothing like this.

9:26 Religious authority in the name of Jesus. Right. That, you know, demons must bow, and this will happen, and confess the word over this. And it was like, whoa. So that really impressed us. Yeah. Wow, we took a hold of that, you know, and we used it. with faith, and we saw results. And we give glory to God. It's not us, it's Christ in us. That's right. That caused these things to happen. So it's a very important thing, the proper teaching, the training of God. So when you say authority, why don't you define it for our audience? To me, authority is... Jesus Christ, when you become born again, Jesus Christ gives you that authority that he had, the same thing.

10:12 So as he gives us this authority, we need to use that to, against circumstances, people, places, or things. And so if finances say, you know, we tithe and offer, and we speak the word over that, we take authority over that, we command the enemy. to take his hands off of our finances. We take authority. So we have authority over anything. So no matter what circumstance, we use that authority over it in the name of Jesus. And that comes into play more with our son, with the addiction that he experienced. We know we are in a war. When we get born again, we don't know it at the time, but... We enter into a realm of the spirit where there's a spiritual enemy who wants to steal, kill and destroy. This is my book, Decision Time. Everyone should read this book, especially those of you who are at a crossroads in your life. You don't know what to do. You don't know how God is leading you.

11:23 This is the book where you reach a place where you say, Lord, not my will, your will be done in my life. I also include in this book. How to Hear the Voice of God, which is important when you're making decisions. If you go to my website at margieflaurent .org, you will see that this book is available to you. And what he wants to do, if he can't get to you, he's going to go after your kids. Right. So what are we going to do? Are we going to sit back and play dead when he starts attacking our children? No, we're going to rise up. everything that we learned and everything that God called us to be, we're going to use that against the enemy.

12:10 So you were stepping into what God had spoken to you. Yes. And that is that he's called you to be a prayer warrior. But he was teaching you line upon line, here a little, there a little. and so here we are here we are spiritual warfare here we are and it takes years i mean you still learn you you never you never stop growing and learning and i i heard jensen franklin speaking today on pressing fasting and prayer there's different levels of demonic spirits so as we grow and we start to rise up in our faith and authority he gives us more He gives us more authority. So getting back to Anthony, he, as a teenager, then started moving away from the things of God.

13:00 He started being pulled into a direction that we didn't like. We knew that he was dabbling with maybe drinking on the weekends. um and then but but we never put two and two together as far as like he was smoking pot he was doing this we never realized that we never we said well he's still going to school and he's still getting the you know good grades and he plays baseball so the reality reality of it didn't hit us until he left the home So at that point, we were praying for a prodigal son, okay, which was very powerful.

13:47 I mean, that in itself, we all need to be praying. I'm still praying for certain things like that, for the prodigals to come home. But we still continue to have prayer groups in our house, right? So we were having, I'll tell you this one situation. We were having a prayer group at our home. We were going to a different church at the time. And Anthony was always running, doing his thing. And he would come home and... say to himself, like, look at these crazies, you know, there they are again, doing their thing. Fanatics for God. Fanatics for God. On fire for God. But we, at that point, were watching a video, John Bevere, and he happened to be speaking on the love of God. And he kind of, I saw Anthony kind of come closer to where he was now standing behind the sofa. At that point, John Devere was saying, you know, you need to be careful because you're in danger. You know you're in danger when you stop hearing the voice of God. Sin becomes, your heart becomes so hard that you don't even hear his voice or you don't even feel his tugging because as we pray, God moves. So even though we don't see it, He's working and he's moving.

15:17 Maybe you want to share what he used to say to us about the gas station. Yeah, when you pray, God, you may not know what's going on. Right. But by faith, you know, you have to stay in faith. But he went to a gas station and some guy come up to him out of nowhere and says. you have a call on your life. You better go see Jesus Christ. And he went to a bar. He was talking about God in bars and other things that he mentioned that he would run into people and they would say, hey, God's got a call on your life. So it's very interesting to hear that. Right. Because, you know, like that song says, Waymaker, even though you don't feel it, even though you don't see it, he's working. So when you pray in faith, things happen. You may not see it, but... God is answering your prayer. And sometimes it takes time. And, you know, faith and patience work together. So you've got to have the patience.

16:10 It takes somebody a long time to get where they are, so it's going to take some time to get them back. So God knows how to do it. He's an expert at these things. And so you can pray and ask God, and he will move. You know, the scripture that's coming to my mind is Matthew 9, 37. And it says, Jesus said, pray therefore that the Lord of the harvest would send forth laborers into the field. And it sounds to me whether you prayed that particular scripture or you were praying in the spirit that it was causing prayer opens up the door for God to work. So as you prayed, it was releasing these laborers into Anthony's path. Right. And so those laborers were coming to him and speaking to him. and i love that because you think your prayers aren't working but because prayer goes into the realm of the spirit doesn't work in the spirit and that it manifests in the natural realm so here we are we saw a manifestation in the natural realm of people actually coming across anthony's path the exact kind of person that he needed to speak into his life at the right spot the right time and here these labors are speaking to him that had to had to do something in his heart he had to say to himself wow god's looking out for me or god's apprehending me or there's something i know i'm not doing right and god's got his hand on my life but i'm just going to keep doing what i'm doing until exactly but i

17:41 love that i love that i have to be honest with you like um Right near the beginning and even if several years would go by I had emotions I was mad at him for doing this to himself Because I expected bigger things, you know I mean as parents you say well someday my son or my daughter is gonna get married have kids have a good job and live a nice godly life together, you know, but um that wasn't happening and Here he is. He's in his late 20s now and and it's not looking good you know but we're praying right we're still praying and um but eventually um we started to see signs you know like he came to that bible study we had 22 people in our living room and dining room that night right and he went around to uh where serena was right right and uh they would she would put her little innuendos yeah out there and he got a little scared yeah when he heard john bevere say he did some people wax cold and now they're not even they don't even feel or feel that that tug of god on their hearts anymore so he heard that and he got scared you know that had to be the holy ghost yeah that's the holy spirit the holy spirit is so strategic he really is he's so strategic he really is i i really love what you said margie that because that's key and that that comes with learning

19:11 how God teaches you, right, through people like yourself or other people that God put in our lives to teach us how to pray. Praying the right way, praying those scriptures. I mean, we could have sat there and prayed. And I'm sure many parents do that. But take heart. God takes you where you are. But when you learn, you learn to do better once you learn, like, wow, I'm praying amiss. Meaning, I'm not praying that targeted prayer that I need to pray. I need to pray how God sees my son. So now I'm going to take a hold, even if it's one scripture. Okay. Even if it's one scripture that you know. Lord, didn't you say that if I train up a child the way he should go, that when he gets older, he wouldn't depart from it? I feel a little teary. I'm sorry. Thank you. Sorry, but so when Greg was talking about Moses, this is how I used to pray, Lord, what didn't you say? And it was from your heart. It wasn't like, okay, I'm just reading. What are people going to say? What are people going to think? Here we're serving God all these years.

20:27 And, oh, wow, look at Greg and Maria. You know, they're Christians for 20 years, and look at their son. He's addicted to drugs. Or he's doing this. I don't want to serve that God. Didn't you say that? Lord. And then, you know, I'm not saying that we're not mothers and we're not going to plead to the Lord. Please. Okay. We have those moments. God knows our heart. But let's not do that with the enemy. Because the enemy, he doesn't care about you. Jesus, he doesn't care. You've got to speak those words. No devil. God says that my son will live and not die and declare the works of God. So you were praying the scriptures.

21:11 You were speaking the word of God. My children are taught of the Lord. Great will be the peace and undisturbed composure of my children. I will be saved and my entire household. You were quoting scriptures. You were taking authority over the devil. Where did praying in the Spirit come in in your prayers and in your intercessions for Anthony during this time in his life? That's huge. We did that more than anything else. Well, when we first got born again, we received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Yes. And with the evidence of speaking in other tongues. And as we learned about prayer, we saw the importance of speaking in tongues because the bible tells us in corinthians 14 that we pray with the understanding and then we pray with the spirit so we're not a bunch of robots i mean we gotta we could pray with we exhaust english we say god you know save our son and we use scripture we pray that out so then when we exhaust that now we go into our prayer language speaking in tongues because romans 8 26 says we don't know how to pray as we ought.

22:25 We just ran out of words. So it says the Holy Spirit comes and prays through us the perfect will of God with groans too deep for words. So that's how you get into warfare where you start using the word of God in English and then when you exhaust that you get into praying in tongues. Now you're speaking things that you don't even know what the Holy Spirit knows. So you're praying the perfect will of God by praying in the Holy Ghost, and it accomplishes much. Much more than what you can do in the natural. So when we learn that, we use that. And I'm telling you, like we said earlier, 14 people got saved within a nine -month period. And knowing all these things, how powerful that is. We use it on our son. But what I hear you saying is, but Anthony, he was the one that was a tougher nut to crack, if I could just say it like that. But I know your son, and he does have a bit of a stubborn streak.

23:27 So maybe that played into it, his personality. But the beauty of prayer is prayer opens up the door for God to work. And then we have the Holy Spirit. So when you didn't know how to pray for Anthony, you said, Holy Spirit, I don't know. Yeah, he's got a stubborn streak, but you know some things about him that I don't know. So the scripture says, he that searches the hearts. knows what is the mind of the Spirit. You know what's going on with Anthony. You know who his friends are. You know who's supplying the drugs. You know everything. And then you just yield to the Holy Spirit, which I hear you saying it takes trust. It does. Right? And he reveals things to you. He'll show you things that are going on in the natural. He'll bring it to your mind that, oh, okay. Like the day when he was living home, he came home at one point, he wound up getting his own place, things were really heating up as far as his addiction, and to make a long story short, as far as that, he wound up losing everything. You know, there is a saying that says, sin will take you where you never intended on going. But at that point, after hearing Anthony's story, even as his mother, he said it was at a point, his addiction, that it was just for survival. Just to be able to get up in the morning

24:59 and go to work, he had to take a handful of pills. So to be able to function, go to work, come home, go to the gym, work out. He was abusing steroids at the time, and the drugs clouded his... His judgment, so he was overdoing that. So the Lord, when he was living at home after he lost everything, I said, Lord, I need you to reveal to me what is really going on here with my son. I know that either he's addicted to drugs or something major. This is not. my son that we know. Right, Greg?

25:39 It's like you became a different person. Well, it's the addiction. Yes, it is. Addiction makes people different. I've heard therapists say it's the addiction that's speaking. Their brain becomes rewired. That's exactly what it is. They're not the same person. So tell me about your prayer life together. Obviously, you both have a lot of agreement and you have a lot of power in your agreement. Oh, my goodness. So how did you pray? You said you prayed the scriptures, you prayed in the Holy Ghost. My question is, how long did you pray? Because we haven't gotten into it on this broadcast yet, but I'm going to be teaching on the prayer of intercession. So it's not the prayer of faith whereby you believe you receive and you have it and you stop praying. The prayer of intercession is a different kind of praying.

26:29 And I know you both very well. I know that you know how to pray the prayer of intercession. And I'd like for you to explain to our audience. How do you pray the prayer of intercession for your son that caused him to break out and break into his victory? Well, I'll start and then you could. The prayer of intercession, as you well know, Margie, because I actually did a study on one of Margie's books, The Art of Intercession. We had a group, a small group on it. And, you know, it's placing one hand on God and one hand on that person, and you're standing in the gap for that individual or country. In the case of us, it was for our son. We stood in the gap.

27:17 But then there's the spiritual warfare, okay? So this is a battle. This is a war. So that's how we prayed. We came up against the spirit of darkness. We bound the spirit of addiction. Through the name of Jesus. Through the name of Jesus always. We have no authority in ourselves. Without him. Without him, we're nothing. Like I told you earlier, I'm a coward. A little, you know, chicken kind of girl. I'm not a prayer warrior. So, but praying for my son and praying in the spirit. God made me a warrior. So you have to know that you're fighting a real enemy of your soul and your son's soul. He wants to steal, kill, and destroy. And so we fought that.

28:07 And guess what? Our weapons that we have, they're not carnal. They're not guns. They're not knives. They're spiritual. They're mighty in the pulling down of strongholds. And in this case, this stronghold, was called addiction and drugs. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's podcast. It has been such a joy sharing this time with you. For more inspiration and resources on today's topic, please visit our website at margiefloran .org.