As we light the candles for another year in my mother Susan Litchford's life, we also illuminate the path she's paved for many to find liberation from their deepest struggles. Today's conversation is not just a tribute to her years on earth but a testament to the lives she's transformed through her prayer ministry. You'll hear about the intimate journey my mother took to a closer connection with God, and how this bond armed her with the strength to help others break free from generational curses and personal battles. Her story is one of hope, a reminder that healing is within reach, and that faith, coupled with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, can lead to profound freedom.
The episode continues with a discussion on the steps toward achieving real liberation, a goal we all strive for but often find elusive. Moving from reflection to action, we dissect the consistent, yet simple actions that can guide us toward a life brimming with purpose and fulfillment. Join us as we close this chapter with heartfelt gratitude for the wisdom my mother has shared and the love from our listeners. Don't forget to subscribe to join us on our next episode, where we'll dive deeper into the process of liberation, offering insights and guidance to those seeking to emerge from the shadows of their past. To each of you listening, we extend our love and appreciation, eagerly anticipating the next steps we'll take together on this transformative journey.
As we light the candles for another year in my mother Susan Litchford's life, we also illuminate the path she's paved for many to find liberation from their deepest struggles. Today's conversation is not just a tribute to her years on earth but a testament to the lives she's transformed through her prayer ministry. You'll hear about the intimate journey my mother took to a closer connection with God, and how this bond armed her with the strength to help others break free from generational curses and personal battles. Her story is one of hope, a reminder that healing is within reach, and that faith, coupled with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, can lead to profound freedom.
The episode continues with a discussion on the steps toward achieving real liberation, a goal we all strive for but often find elusive. Moving from reflection to action, we dissect the consistent, yet simple actions that can guide us toward a life brimming with purpose and fulfillment. Join us as we close this chapter with heartfelt gratitude for the wisdom my mother has shared and the love from our listeners. Don't forget to subscribe to join us on our next episode, where we'll dive deeper into the process of liberation, offering insights and guidance to those seeking to emerge from the shadows of their past. To each of you listening, we extend our love and appreciation, eagerly anticipating the next steps we'll take together on this transformative journey.
Speaker 1:
Do you ever feel like life can get too complicated and maybe even overwhelming? Yeah, me too, and it's okay. My name's Martha Gano, and in this podcast we're going to talk about life, love, faith, family relationships, all kinds of things, and we're going to drink from what God wants to pour into us, one small sip at a time, because when it's the fountain of living water, small sips make all the difference. Sometimes it'll be just you and me, sometimes we'll have a friend join us. If we could have lunch together today, this is what I'd want to talk about. Well, hey you guys. Welcome to the show. I'm so excited today I actually have a guest here. That is an amazing human being. I've known her my whole life, actually longer than my whole life. This is my amazing mom, susan Litchford, and today's a big day for her. It's her birthday. Happy birthday, mom.
Speaker 2:
Thank you. I'm three quarters of a century old today.
Speaker 1:
Okay, I was going to let you tell that I wasn't going to tell it, but amazing. And in those three quarters of a century actually you have lived a life of blessing so many people. I know it didn't start out so great and I'm sure you'll share parts of your story here as we talk today. But most of your life, mom, from the time I was a small kid, people would say to me I wish your mom was my mom and I would say back to them there's plenty of my mom to go around. I think I didn't realize back then actually was the Holy Spirit in you that just would flow through into the earth with amazing motherhood. You've blessed so many people. Just honor you today, not just because it's your birthday, but just because you're a woman of honor, and so thank you for being on the show, thank you, that's so sweet, thank you. And you know part of what you've done for so many people and I'm sure there are going to be countless numbers of people listening to this podcast that you have blessed, that you have walked through parts of their journey with them to see them set free in some amazing areas. So today, as mom shares you guys some stories of freedom.
Speaker 1:
My question for us, as we listen, is have you ever felt like you're stuck in areas of your life? Or maybe you swore that you would never fill in the blank, or you would never tolerate what you know you tolerated as a child, or you've seen other people in your world tolerate, and now you're either doing the thing you swore you'd never do or you're living a life where you're experiencing the thing you said you'd never live with again. It's like terrible history repeating itself. Or maybe you can't get over a hurt or a wounding. You feel like it just continues to impact your present and future, or maybe there's a block. You keep running into the same wall over and over again with God and your relationships and you work whatever.
Speaker 1:
So, mom, that's what you've done, for You've done it informally your whole life, I feel like, but for the last 30 years you've done more of a intentional, formal, focused sitting down with people, walking them through this process of becoming unstuck, removing that block, stopping that terrible history repeating itself. And today I've asked mom to come on and give us some hope, share with us some stories of exactly this people that she's seen move from those terrible, repetitive or stuck places into freedom. So that's my question for me, for you, for someone that you know is there a place in your own heart where you would love to experience freedom, to get unstuck, to be unblocked and to stop patterns repeating themselves in your life? That's not how you ever intended to live. So I'm excited to mom. Mom, I'm just asking the Lord to open our hearts as you share with us some amazing stories of freedom.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely. One of my stories of freedom that I'm very impressed with, of course, is my own. I did give my life to the Lord. When I was about 12 years old A friend invited me to. It was a Pentecostal church, actually, and the pastor was preaching hellfire and damnation, that if you didn't receive Christ as your Lord and Savior, you were going to hell. And I knew that I was not going to hell.
Speaker 2:
So we all come to Jesus in many different ways. That was an encounter with God, and over my life I have had many encounters with him. Another very significant one happened when I was 29,. In that I said to Jesus I've been a Christian all these years, but from this day forward I'm all yours and you're all mine. And I experienced a significant difference in my life at that point too, when I laid down a lot of my own ways and wanted just to be consumed by holiness.
Speaker 2:
But having said that, another encounter I had with God was when I was in my 40s, early 40s, and I had studied the Bible for many years. I'd been in prayer groups, I'd led Bible studies, small groups along with my husband, and yet God was distant to me. He felt cosmic to me, no matter what I did, I felt like Jesus was near, holy Spirit was near, but God was cosmic. So I'll explain that a little bit later, just to give you some understanding of why did I land there after many decades of being in the Word of God. But I wanted to share with you sort of some examples of these are generic somewhat, because I've literally prayed with hundreds and hundreds of people over 30 years. I would say that I'm a prayer minister, I'm not a counselor, and prayer ministry is very, very different, and that it's prayer ministry, simply put.
Speaker 2:
But one story I wanted to share with you of something I experienced during my prayer ministry years was a young man who came to see me. He lived up north. I'm from the south of the United States, he lived in the north and he came to my house and we began to work through some incredibly difficult abuse. The greatest abuse, I would say, was from a stepfather and so, as he and I walked through this process of the past being reconciled and healed, we said amen after actually three hours of prayer and conversation, and when we said amen, my house phone rang. So this was probably 20 years ago. We had house phones. My house phone rang and when I answered it it was the stepdad. How that man got my phone number.
Speaker 2:
I have absolutely no idea how that man could have called my house when this young man who lived up north was at my house in the south. I do not know to this day, but when I answered the phone it was the abusive stepdad and he said could I talk to so and so? And I thought, oh my goodness, this is the enemy trying to steal this young man's healing. But the young man said, yes, he would talk to him. When the stepdad was on the phone with the young man, the stepdad began to bawl, crying, just sobbing, and he said I treated you horribly when you were a kid and I know you could never forgive me, but I do want to ask you to forgive me for how I treated you.
Speaker 2:
And the young man said absolutely I forgive you, because he'd just spent three hours for getting this man so all of that to say there is a spiritual dynamic that we don't really grasp, that when we set people free, it's almost like God says oh okay, you're going to let that person go, you're going to let me have them, okay, I'll take them. And it is spiritual, it is unsing. So that's something I'll be glad to unpack.
Speaker 1:
Take a quick second right here. Just unpack the concept of spiritual law, because, without going into all the details of how these things get lodged in our lives and what the freedom process is, we'll get there. We're going to take people there, but maybe just give them a sneak peek with spiritual law.
Speaker 2:
Spiritual law. Basically, we get natural law, we get gravity, we get the law of thermodynamics, of science and physics, math. We get all those laws, scientific laws, natural laws that govern the universe, no problem. But we don't realize that there is spiritual law that also governs the universe, just the same as gravity. God unpacked it in the Old Testament and Jesus unpacked it in the New Testament.
Speaker 1:
It's very real. Okay, so that's just a sneak peek, because obviously in this young man's life there is a spiritual law in place that was impacting his life and when he actually I guess, if you compare it to gravity and you jump off the roof, 10 out of 10 times you're going to hit the ground he stopped jumping off the roof spiritually and he stopped hitting the ground and that relationship was immediately in a really I mean, that's crazy.
Speaker 2:
Yes, well, I had another situation where a young woman who was a missionary in another country, she and her husband, they couldn't get pregnant and I'm thinking you came to me because you can't get pregnant. Okay, it's a little weird, but in investigating her situation, she was the firstborn of many, many children. So from really childhood she found herself constantly taking care of her siblings and when she went to the mission field, I think some of them even went through separation anxiety.
Speaker 1:
And from her as if she were the mother. Yeah, as though she were the mother.
Speaker 2:
So she, her childhood, had been literally robbed because she became a little mama as a little girl. So as we began to investigate her situation and prayed through things, I later got an email from her that says we prayed on the 24th and the ultrasound shows that I got pregnant the 29th. So this is just like spiritual law that is in place, that is impersonal but it affects us, just like gravity affects us, but we don't realize that, we don't understand that, we don't read the scriptures with our eyes wide open.
Speaker 1:
Wow. So she stopped jumping off the spiritual roof and it changed that. She stopped hitting the ground in the way it was impacting her life and things got aligned with their original design, how they were intended to function before she started jumping off the spiritual roof.
Speaker 2:
Well, it brings things back into order. For example, I saw that I had judged the Christian spiritual roots that God gave me. It was I judged a denomination that I grew up in and I said all kinds of critical, ugly things about that denomination and that God showed me that he gave me those spiritual roots and I processed them with derision so I repented. Within seven days I was invited by the director of the women's Sunday school class at that denominational church in my town to come and speak to those women. So once I was set three of my judgmental, bitter, critical attitude regarding that denomination, I was free to be available for God to work through in that denomination. So we lock ourselves up, we put ourselves in a pit and then we live out of that pit with just a little bit of light in those areas in our lives where God could be a bright, shining light through us.
Speaker 1:
Amazing and a little bit of a teaser into the process too, which I really like. But you know it makes me think mom like how many people do we know that, say, grew up in an alcoholic home and swore I will never drink alcohol, live with an alcoholic abuser or whatever and then in their lives they either become that alcoholic or they end up literally living in the same situation, sometimes over and over and over again the same situation. So I love it that, that is, that there's hope in those situations that you can break free from those destructive patterns, and I love it. Did you have another?
Speaker 2:
story. There are all kinds of things like saying the way I treated my parents, my teenagers will never treat me like that. And then you're sitting in the middle of your bed in your bedroom, going. I cannot believe I'm going through this, Right.
Speaker 1:
Tell about having a dad that traveled here. As we finish up, let's make it our last story.
Speaker 2:
Very quickly. I grew up in an abusive home with a dad who traveled. He was on the road and I said I will never be married to a man that travels. I was going to have the dad home. Well, I ended up with a husband who works in healthcare Hospitals do not move. However, he ended up as a young man in charge of many hospitals and not one of them was in the state of Georgia. So my Martha, who's sitting here until she was 15 years old, had a dad who was traveling or not at home in a full capacity. So I did end up married to a man that traveled.
Speaker 1:
That's amazing. So, hey, you guys, you know, if you're curious to hear more about freedom at that level, how people could get unstuck after years of blocks and walls or history repeating itself. The next show we're going to talk about the process that you hinted at some, mom, that process of what gets us in those places and how we can actually get out of those places, get set free and live a totally different kind of life that we were actually intended to live all along. So if you're curious, make sure and check back in for the next show for that full explanation. Thanks, mom, happy birthday, thank you, and I'm excited to hear about this process. Thanks, you guys, for joining us today and we will see you next time.
Speaker 1:
Hey, you guys, thanks for hanging out with us today. I hope you've got some refreshment from this SIP from the Fountain. If you're curious to hear more or if you like what you've heard, you can go ahead and subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to yours or follow our Instagram account, sips from the Fountain or our Facebook page by the same name. Special thanks for cover art photography to the Sarah D Harper, and I can't wait to hang out with you guys next time. Thanks so much I love y'all Bye.
