Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E288: Born For This: How To Hear God's Voice In Your Life w/Fr John Riccardo | Lila Rose Show

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E288: Born For This: How To Hear God's Voice In Your Life w/Fr John Riccardo | Lila Rose Show · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  How does God talk to you? Most Christians, especially most
• 0:02
  Catholics, were taught how to say prayers.
• 0:04
  But I don't think we're taught how to pray.
• 0:07
  And there's a vast difference between the two of those.
• 0:09
  My sense of it is a lot of people aren't really living the
• 0:12
  amazing adventure that God has planned for them, I think.
• 0:15
  Everybody wants to be great, and I think most people are afraid
• 0:18
  of being great if. Everybody at listening to this
• 0:19
  episode right now wants to do a check.
• 0:21
  Am I on the adventure that you want me on?
• 0:23
  Am I on the mission you want me on?
• 0:24
  Lord, how should they discern? That we think there's actually a
• 0:27
  principle, and then we think there's a method of applying the
• 0:29
  principle. Well, the principle is simply
• 0:31
  this. That is such a great four step
• 0:33
  process. I was going to say it works, but
• 0:35
  he works. It's.
• 0:37
  So good I love that hi everyone thank you so much for listening
• 0:42
  to the Lila Roe show. By clicking on this video and
• 0:44
  listening to this episode, you're trusting us with your
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  every single episode so continue to leave your feedback.
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  We read your comments and we take it to heart.
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  Also thank you so much to everyone who has been
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  subscribing if you aren't already subscribed, be sure to
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  hit that subscribe button and if you enjoy this episode, please
• 1:02
  leave this episode a like also go over to patreon.com/lila Roe
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  show. A big thank you to everybody
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  who's supporting this show and it's by joining our Patreon, you
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  can get ad free episodes, behind the scenes access.
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  And if you're a monthly paid subscriber, you get 30% off all
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  of our merch. If you're an annual paid
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  subscriber, you get one piece of merch, your choice and we will
• 1:22
  send it to you for free. Thank you so much to all of our
• 1:25
  patrons. Father John Ricardo, welcome to
• 1:27
  the podcast. Thank you, it's a joy to be with
• 1:29
  you. I'm so happy you're here.
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  Thanks. I as soon as we started talking,
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  I thought because I was praying this morning, like what?
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  What are the There's so many topics to discuss with you.
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  You've written books, you've given so many talk speeches, you
• 1:41
  train people, but the one that you're wearing your socks about
• 1:46
  your socks, you kind of want to. Can we show the socks?
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  Talking about Joan, can we show the socks?
• 1:50
  We've got the Joan of Arc socks on.
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  Yeah. Why did you wear her socks
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  today? Well, I so I do know that she's
• 1:56
  your confirmation St. but I totally forgot that when I put
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  them on. So Joan is our patroness in Acts
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  29, aside from Our Lady, in a very special way.
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  And yeah, in a crazy way. I forget who it is who first
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  said it, but sometimes we pick Saints, sometimes Saints pick
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  us. And with Joan, it was very much
• 2:18
  picked by her in my life and in ours in our ministry.
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  I can't wait to hear more about that.
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  The topic of today, we're going to get into a lot of topics, but
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  purpose and discernment and you do incredible work training
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  people on both of these things, how to pray, what to pray for,
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  how to pray with others to figure out what God is calling
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  us to do. Try to.
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  And first of all, thank you for that work.
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  It's so needed by the church today.
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  You're in town because you're about to do that work for 160
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  priests, the entire diocese down here, which is amazing.
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  And tell me, let let's start with maybe going back to Joan.
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  Tell me about how Joan picked you and what that means for your
• 2:59
  ministry to be picked by Joan. Yes, I was familiar with Joan.
• 3:04
  You know, I'm a Catholic priest, 30 years, right?
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  So I know I'm one of those crazy guys.
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  You give me the date, I tell you who the saying is.
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  So it's just tricks of the trade or whatever.
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  So I was familiar with Joan tangentially, I think I'd read
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  Mark Twain's book on her some years ago.
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  But I walked into a, a friend of mine's office.
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  She worked at a parish at the time just to talk about
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  something. It's not even the particularly
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  close parish to me, either geographically or any other way.
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  And hanging on the wall was a picture of Joan and then her
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  famous quote, I'm not afraid. God's with me.
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  It was born for this and I saw it.
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  And I don't know how you experience the Lord of the
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  Saints at times, but it was, it was more than just, oh, that's
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  cool. It was it was something more
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  like somebody grabbing me and pulling me into a friendship.
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  And I gradually started almost from that moment on calling upon
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  her and her intercession. I was still a pastor at the
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  time. And but I've prayed with that
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  line ever since I saw it that day.
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  And I knew that wasn't just true for Joan.
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  That's true for me. That's true for you.
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  That's true for everybody. Like nobody, nobody happens to
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  be alive, right? You don't like, just sneak into
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  the earth like God wills everybody to be alive at a
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  particular moment in time for a particular purpose.
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  And he's given each and every one of us all the gifts that we
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  have. And I am just unbelievably
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  inspired by this woman who I think has to be like the
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  greatest woman, whoever lived outside of Our Lady.
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  Because for her to have done what she did when she did it is
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  unimaginable and incomprehensible and continues
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  to just provoke people who don't believe in God to go.
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  I think only God could have led her to do what she did.
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  And so she's, she's a huge intercessor for us in our
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  ministry. Her painting, variety of
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  different paintings and statues, even her flag are everywhere in
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  our office. We have a huge portrait of her
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  when she's first encountering the the voices of Saint Margaret
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  and then Saint Catherine and Saint Michael that hangs in our
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  Chapel. And she profoundly marks our
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  work to what we're going to talk about too, because I think Joan
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  had this amazing charism to hear.
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  And so we're constantly asking her to intercede for us, not
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  just for courage and not just for magnanimity. 2 virtues that
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  she really just excelled in, but really how to hear the Lord,
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  which we desperately need to know right now in the Church.
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  Her ability to hear the Lord, to know it was the Lord, to trust
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  it was the Lord, and to act on it in ways that were incredibly
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  controversial and required immense courage.
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  Like it was supernatural. It had to be supernatural is
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  what I think captivates people. She's so captivating because she
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  heard from God and she knew it was God, even though she didn't
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  go into it like this raging, you know, maniac.
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  She, she was this calm, humble girl.
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  She didn't have some agenda. She'd like invent this.
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  What does your ministry do? Sounds like this was the onset.
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  This, this connection with Joan was part of the onset of the
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  ministry that you have today. Yeah, it was very much so.
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  So I, much like Joan, experiences this call, you know,
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  within a call. She's already baptized.
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  She's living a life of discipleship.
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  And then the Lord asks her to go do something seemingly
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  ridiculous. So I was a pastor, and my time
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  was coming up at the time to move.
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  We tend to move every 12 years. I had this beginning of an
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  inkling in prayer that I wasn't supposed to be a pastor anymore.
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  And so I went to my Archbishop at the time and just said, hey,
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  I know you're going to move me soon.
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  You're going to be doing something different.
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  And he said, why would he have in mind?
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  I said, I don't know. I just don't think God wants me
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  to be a pastor anymore. And he and I had done so.
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  I've been fortunate to serve him in some different capacities.
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  So he, he knows me. And he said, yeah, let's pray
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  about that. And so I invited 567 folks.
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  Few of them were sitting right here with us.
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  We went up north on Lake MI, spent about four days together
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  in prayer, exposed Blessed Sacrament fellowship, food on
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  the on the right, on the lake. It was gorgeous.
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  And the whole context of the conversation was, do you and I
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  know each other for friendship or do we know each other for
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  ministry? And if it's friendship, that's
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  great. But if it's ministry, I'd like
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  to know who's in. And so some of us discern
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  friendship, some of us discern ministry.
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  I went back to the Archbishop. I said, I think there's a few of
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  us that it was kind of like an Acts 13 moment where the Spirit
• 8:01
  says set apart Paul and Barnabas for the work of mission that I
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  have entrusted to them. So we went back.
• 8:07
  We proposed to him that we start a nonprofit.
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  He's looked at me. He says, what if I say no?
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  I said, well, then I do what you want me to do.
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  He says, I'm not going to say no, go, go for it.
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  And then he released me from the the archdiocese.
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  So I'm a priest in good standing with Detroit, but Acts 29 is its
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  own entity and there's now ten of us.
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  There were five originally. And we're just missionaries.
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  So we do we do 4 primary things. So Acts 29 obviously there's no
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  29 chapter of Acts. Maybe not obviously for people
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  like I, I sit down with folks and always like I couldn't find
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  the 29th chapter. I was wondering am I reading the
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  numbers wrong? Like does that a real?
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  Does that part of acts? There's a there's a real
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  significant point to that, you know, so our formal name is Acts
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  29, Mobilizing for mission. And the 29th chapter of Acts is
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  often used by people as a way of describing this time, whatever
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  time it is, you know, that the same spirit who was writing the
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  history, the early church is writing right now.
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  But it means more than that. It means kind of like a return
• 9:08
  to like the nimbleness of the early church, not getting stuck
• 9:16
  in bureaucracy and what a friend of mine calls the
• 9:19
  corporatization of the church, return to basics, proclamation
• 9:24
  of the gospel. Let's presume nobody's heard
• 9:26
  this because probably most people haven't really learning
• 9:30
  how men and women work together, not just lip service to that,
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  really learning how ordained and lay work together and not just
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  lip service to that. So the name means a lot of
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  things, but the fourth main things we do, we do Fairmont
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  Media. So we do podcasts, we do some
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  videos, we write books, we do retreats for priests.
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  We've been with about 40 different presbyterates around
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  the world, about 6000 priests. It's given us a really honest,
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  sober look at the state of the priesthood.
• 10:01
  A lot of guys are thriving, a lot of guys are not.
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  We do these week long leadership immersives, which maybe we can
• 10:09
  talk about where we bring people to our space in metro Detroit.
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  And over the course of five days we just give away what God's
• 10:16
  given us because everything we do, we do for free.
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  And then we created an experience called the Rescue
• 10:21
  Project, which is really our I think it flows from our
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  conviction that the single greatest, most urgent need both
• 10:30
  in the church and in the world right now is a compelling
• 10:33
  proclamation of the gospel for the simple reason most people
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  have never heard it. So we do those things, and we do
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  it all for free. It's very amazing that your
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  Bishop was just like, yeah, go do this.
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  Not to say that bishops don't let priests go do things, but
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  it's very unusual. It's it's a unique thing that
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  you had this call, that the call was blessed really immediately,
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  virtually immediately by the Bishop and that this ministry
• 11:00
  has been thriving and it's already had such an impact.
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  It's very special. Yeah, it is an in you as a
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  priest, obviously it's a huge confirmation to me that this
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  must be God's will because my Bishop said yes.
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  And so it just, it, it gives so much, you know, back to Joan.
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  She has this capacity to hear the Lord and then she acts on
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  it. You know, my way of discerning
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  that was just, well, you know, what did you say back, back to
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  me as my superior? And he says, I say go for it.
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  I'm like, great, then I'm going to go for it.
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  And I want to be like John. It'd be great.
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  I've got to ask you, when you were a parish priest, when you
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  were working in a parish, before you started the nonprofit, and
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  now you're just traveling the world doing this incredible
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  work, did you have any inklings that this was coming or were you
• 11:42
  content? No, I was super content.
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  I think I, I began to grow restless the last couple of
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  years. I think that's what led to the
• 11:51
  asking of the question. I had no idea what, what the,
• 11:53
  what we were going to do if he said yes.
• 11:55
  In fact, like, you know, with to one of the, my former, my one of
• 11:59
  my missionaries sitting here with us.
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  Remember coming back from the meeting with the Bishop and
• 12:03
  she's there with another guy who was part of the original team.
• 12:06
  And they're like, what did he say?
• 12:07
  I said he said yes. And we?
• 12:10
  Got to go like what are? We going to do.
• 12:15
  But I had no, no clear understanding.
• 12:17
  We just trusted that. OK, so you called Lord, now
• 12:20
  you're going to make known the next step.
• 12:22
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• 13:53
  When you were first feeling called to be a priest, how old
• 13:56
  were you? I didn't feel called as a child,
• 14:02
  I felt like God broke into my life and asked me when I was 25.
• 14:06
  Wow, no clue up until 25. No, didn't even go to church.
• 14:09
  I had no desire to be a priest at all.
• 14:14
  Didn't go to church. So I didn't know what these
• 14:15
  people did. Were you raised Catholic?
• 14:17
  Oh yeah, but didn't rejected it. No, I didn't reject it.
• 14:20
  I I made a really conscious decision when I was about 15 to
• 14:26
  live a double life. Why?
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  I knew God was real. I've I've I've, I've grown up, I
• 14:33
  think, with the supernatural gift of faith.
• 14:35
  I've just God's always been present to me.
• 14:37
  I've never not known him, which means when I act the way I acted
• 14:43
  as a youth and I can still act today, it makes it all the worse
• 14:46
  because he's always right here. I mean always right here.
• 14:51
  So I knew he was real. I knew he loved me.
• 14:53
  I knew the cross was for me. I knew he created me.
• 14:58
  I was supposed to have been aborted.
• 15:00
  My mother was told to to kill me, but I just wasn't convinced
• 15:09
  that that was the best way to live life as a young person.
• 15:13
  And so in my mind, I just kept saying to the Lord, I'll get
• 15:17
  back to you. You were having too much fun, or
• 15:20
  what was the thing that was and what was that fun like that you
• 15:22
  were living this double life. Yeah, I wasn't really having
• 15:25
  fun. I thought it was.
• 15:28
  I just wasn't convinced that indulging all my appetites
• 15:31
  wasn't going to make me happy. So I tried and didn't make me
• 15:36
  happy. And then one day out of nowhere
• 15:39
  God said I'm inviting you to live single and to do it as a
• 15:42
  priest. And I went, I don't want to do
• 15:44
  that, but I figured that's probably God.
• 15:49
  So I just said if that's really you, then you've got to give me
• 15:51
  a desire. And that took one night's sleep.
• 15:56
  Wow, God was quick to hear that prayer.
• 16:00
  Yeah. So I was.
• 16:01
  So I was working. I was living in Ohio.
• 16:04
  I'm from Michigan. I was living in Ohio at the time
• 16:05
  working. I was going to go back to school
• 16:08
  to get an MBA, which I didn't want.
• 16:09
  I grew up in a family that was my dad was super successful.
• 16:12
  I knew I didn't want money. I wanted meaning.
• 16:14
  That's what I really wanted. I wanted meaning and purpose for
• 16:17
  my life. And I didn't think it was in the
• 16:19
  automotive industry, which is what my dad did.
• 16:22
  And so I would, I didn't go to church, but I did read the Bible
• 16:25
  every day and I prayed every day.
• 16:29
  Often times my prayer was, forgive me for what I'm about to
• 16:32
  do, but I prayed every day. And so I'm walking around at
• 16:35
  lunch one day, it was late November, open up the Bible.
• 16:38
  I'm just like, Lord, what do you want me to do with my life?
• 16:40
  And I open up to Matthew 19, where which I knew fairly well,
• 16:45
  where Jesus says some men are born and capable of marriage.
• 16:48
  Some men are made incapable of marriage and some men make
• 16:51
  themselves incapable of marriage.
• 16:53
  You can accept it, should accept it.
• 16:56
  And you know, the words didn't jump off the page or anything
• 16:58
  like that, but I knew God was talking to me and I went, you
• 17:00
  got to be kidding me. So I'd almost been married and
• 17:04
  thought about religious life for a little while.
• 17:06
  It kind of an ecumenical group of guys left all that kind of
• 17:09
  abandoned going to church. So I'm like, what in the world?
• 17:13
  Like what's left? And I felt like, you know, kind
• 17:18
  of like I can hear the hum and hear from the lights.
• 17:21
  I heard Jesus say to me, John, I'm inviting to live single and
• 17:23
  to do it as a priest. And so I said to him, I don't
• 17:30
  want to do that. You got to give me a desire.
• 17:31
  And I literally woke up the next morning with this unbelievable
• 17:35
  clarity, like, I don't understand this, but I want to
• 17:39
  be a priest. I don't know where you go.
• 17:41
  I don't know how long it takes. You're not even going to mass at
• 17:44
  this point. What you do?
• 17:46
  I knew one priest I think my whole life who I thought
• 17:48
  anything of, and maybe 2. All I knew was I, I, I would
• 17:54
  describe it this way after it happened, it was as if Jesus
• 17:58
  tapped me from behind on my shoulder and said, turn around.
• 18:02
  And I turned around and he says, that's what you want and that's
• 18:08
  why I made you. And I went, Oh my gosh, it is.
• 18:14
  The life of a priest. Yeah, because I wanted to
• 18:16
  preach. I want even though I was going
• 18:21
  to church, I wanted to lead people into an encounter with
• 18:23
  Jesus because I knew that was true.
• 18:27
  I knew it was true. But you didn't have this deep
• 18:30
  desire for marriage, Or did you? Oh, I did, yeah.
• 18:33
  So I've been in a relationship for a long time for, I don't
• 18:37
  know, 16 to 23, maybe something like that.
• 18:40
  Those years that just kind of gradually grew apart.
• 18:46
  And then at this time, I was dating again, and it just felt
• 18:49
  incredibly empty. So I, yeah, I just discerned
• 18:55
  from that, like, OK, that's not going to be enough.
• 18:57
  So the, the person that I, you know, had considered marrying at
• 19:00
  one point, we saw each other some years later at a reunion,
• 19:04
  and she said, how are you doing what you're doing?
• 19:10
  And I said, you know what? I think I came to realize I want
• 19:12
  thousands of children. Wow, spiritual children.
• 19:17
  Yeah, and I, you know, I, I admire the heck out of, you
• 19:21
  know, those of you in the, in the married life, it would kill
• 19:25
  me. Like I, I, I have more like I,
• 19:29
  it wouldn't contain me. I just have too much, I don't
• 19:33
  know, not energy. It's like that.
• 19:35
  That would never satisfy me. So people look at us as priests,
• 19:39
  oftentimes a religious and they go, how do you do that?
• 19:41
  We're looking at you going, I don't know how you do this.
• 19:45
  And it's not like how do you put up with the demands because the
• 19:48
  demands are are there on both sides or just different.
• 19:51
  It's just it's not what my heart's wired for.
• 19:53
  My heart's wired for. I want, I want to be first gods
• 19:57
  and then I want to be available to everybody in a way that you
• 19:59
  can't as a married person. So when you became a priest, and
• 20:03
  so that would have been your early 30s that you actually 31,
• 20:07
  did you feel at peace on a human level with all of the practical
• 20:12
  realities of the priesthood, or were there still things that you
• 20:14
  had to navigate? I felt, you know, the analogy
• 20:17
  would with marriage would be this is how I explained it.
• 20:20
  It immediately felt right, like the moment I got ordained, it's
• 20:23
  like, oh, I'm made to do this. And and so my to those who are
• 20:27
  married, it's like my presumption often times is you
• 20:30
  get married. It's like this just feels right.
• 20:32
  Then I got made a pastor and it was a quantum leap.
• 20:35
  And it's kind of like you become a mom.
• 20:38
  It's a quantum leap. Like it's a change from marriage
• 20:42
  to motherhood, and for me it was a change from priesthood to
• 20:47
  pastor. Like nobody trained me to be a
• 20:49
  pastor. It by experiences.
• 20:52
  Many priests really struggle with that because we're taught
• 20:55
  to be priests and formed to be priests but just be spiritual
• 20:59
  fathers and all that God asks us to do.
• 21:04
  Nobody trained me that. The person who trained me the
• 21:06
  best for that was my own dad. Did it come naturally to you?
• 21:10
  I don't know, ask the people in the room so.
• 21:12
  I think it seems that way. Yes and no.
• 21:15
  Yeah, yes and no. I, I, I think again because of
• 21:18
  the example I saw in my dad. He was just the greatest man I
• 21:21
  ever knew. I think listening to your story
• 21:23
  and this is an interesting thing to consider as we look, we're
• 21:26
  going to look at John's life and then the ministry that you do of
• 21:28
  how to discern and how to discern individually and in
• 21:30
  groups of people for God's call. You know, like Acts 29, we're
• 21:34
  out building the Kingdom of God. We're preaching.
• 21:36
  We're supposed to go to all four corners of the world.
• 21:39
  You seem to get it. I mean, I think you again, just
• 21:45
  on what you're sharing, people listening like you.
• 21:46
  You had the sense you didn't like this.
• 21:48
  You liked that. You didn't want this.
• 21:49
  You wanted that. God woke you up.
• 21:50
  God tapped you on the shoulder. You responded by God's grace.
• 21:53
  You had the humility to respond. You had the courage to respond.
• 21:56
  You got the I don't the desire. You got the desire and I think
• 21:59
  some people hear stories like that and they can relate because
• 22:01
  they've had experiences like that and other people like I
• 22:03
  don't relate. I I would like to have a, a
• 22:06
  clear cut mission the way that sounds like you were given, like
• 22:09
  you were just like, I don't know.
• 22:10
  I'm not called. I don't feel like the marriage.
• 22:12
  Maybe I'm called to be a priest. If you want me to be a priest,
• 22:14
  make me want it. Then you wanted it and then BAM,
• 22:15
  you become a priest, right? There's a, there's a simplicity
• 22:19
  there that again from the outside looking and you're going
• 22:22
  to be like, it was not simple, trust me.
• 22:24
  But that people say like, yeah, give me that.
• 22:26
  If I, if God could just tell me, tell me what to do.
• 22:28
  God, I want to do it like just tell me.
• 22:30
  And then like all of a sudden it's very complex and it's not
• 22:33
  so clear and it's like there's conflicting signals and
• 22:37
  everything else. Well, I don't think it is that
• 22:39
  clear for everybody. I think that's part of the
• 22:41
  challenge and we're in a broken world, you know, in in general
• 22:48
  anyway, I would say to somebody, are you allowing the Lord to
• 22:51
  speak? Like do you give him time?
• 22:56
  Because there is no, you know, like it's not like I got a phone
• 22:59
  to the Lord. You didn't get a passenger
• 23:01
  pigeon. Yeah.
• 23:02
  You know, like I, I tend to hear the Lord very clearly on a
• 23:05
  number of things, but it's no one's got a pipeline to God, you
• 23:09
  know, And so I have to discern everything.
• 23:10
  That's why the, the beauty of heaven, you know, a team that
• 23:13
  you work with, we all try to discern together what God's
• 23:16
  asking us to do. But the, the first requisite and
• 23:20
  one of the things we try to teach people and get them to
• 23:22
  share is to, to actually have conversations with each other
• 23:25
  and say, how do you, how do you hear God?
• 23:28
  How does God talk to you? Because I think most Christians,
• 23:31
  especially most Catholics, I think we're taught how to say
• 23:34
  prayers, but I don't think we're taught how to pray.
• 23:40
  And there's a vast difference between the two of those.
• 23:43
  You, you can say prayers and be praying.
• 23:47
  Most people, I think, just say prayers.
• 23:50
  But to pray, I mean to have a, you know, an established habit
• 23:55
  of, you know, giving the Lord, you know, marriage is a great
• 23:58
  example relationship. You know, you can text your
• 24:01
  husband, that's fine. You know, I hate pick up some
• 24:03
  milk on the way home, but that doesn't cut it for
• 24:07
  communication, you know, like you actually have to sit down
• 24:10
  and talk to each other and put all the devices away and just
• 24:12
  say what's going on inside, like where are you?
• 24:17
  And so with God, like I can, I can ask for intercessions.
• 24:22
  I can do all sorts of things, but but I also, I have to be
• 24:25
  quiet, not so I can empty my mind.
• 24:28
  That's not the goal, but so I can give him space to talk to
• 24:31
  me, you know, whether it's through scripture or just in
• 24:35
  meditation and ask the Lord something as simple as what do
• 24:40
  you want of me? I use movies a lot because I'm
• 24:44
  very visual when I pray. And there's a, there's a scene
• 24:46
  in in the movie Hacksaw Ridge, which I find so emblematic of
• 24:50
  where most people are right now. And so this true story, this guy
• 24:53
  named Desmond Doss fighting in World War 2 and he's up on top
• 24:56
  of a Ridge, Hacksaw Ridge in a in a tremendously dire
• 25:01
  situation. And all his, you know, fellow
• 25:05
  soldiers are retreating from the Ridge.
• 25:07
  He's still up there. And he falls to his knees, and
• 25:09
  he prays. And this is the prayer.
• 25:10
  He says, Lord, what is it you want of me?
• 25:14
  I don't understand. I can't hear you.
• 25:19
  And then almost immediately after, he prays.
• 25:22
  This is a true story. He hears this voice out in this
• 25:25
  battlefield crying medic, help me, somebody help me.
• 25:36
  And he puts his helmet on in the movie and he says, all right.
• 25:40
  And then he runs into this battlefield and then he spends
• 25:42
  the rest of the night finding wounded soldiers.
• 25:45
  Put him on his shoulders like the Good Shepherd, lowering him
• 25:47
  down the Ridge. That prayer.
• 25:49
  I mean, we, we show that to priests and bishops all the time
• 25:52
  and lay leaders in the church because I think that's the
• 25:54
  prayer of so many people. What is it?
• 25:55
  You wanted me? I don't understand.
• 25:56
  I can't hear you. But if we'll listen, we'll hear.
• 26:01
  We'll hear the Lord. We may not get the crystal
• 26:04
  clarity that we all want on a lot of things, but we'll hear
• 26:06
  the Lord because Jesus promised it.
• 26:07
  He said my sheep hear my voice. So I just sit there and go,
• 26:11
  hello, I'm your sheep. I can't hear you.
• 26:13
  You promised me I was going to hear you.
• 26:15
  Help me to hear you. So you give them time.
• 26:18
  You grow in the established habit of loving silence, which
• 26:22
  is so hard for most people. And he'll talk.
• 26:26
  Well, and I think the principle at work though, too is, yes,
• 26:29
  making the time for silence with God to receive, not just to like
• 26:32
  say the prayers or to do the prayers, but to let God speak
• 26:36
  and just letting emptying yourself like you're saying.
• 26:38
  But then the other word that comes to mind is service.
• 26:41
  Like Lord, deploy me, Lord, what do you want me to do?
• 26:43
  Like I like, because that's the question everybody has today,
• 26:46
  especially younger people who are figuring out their lives.
• 26:48
  But I would argue it's a question that people that are
• 26:50
  more established should have more in a more fresh way.
• 26:53
  Like, like kind of like press the restart button almost like,
• 26:55
  Lord, is this what you want me to do?
• 26:57
  And it likely it is. And you keep doing what you do
• 26:59
  and put a lot of love into what you're doing and be grateful for
• 27:02
  what you have and like, you know, open yourself with prayer.
• 27:05
  But sometimes we should shake things up.
• 27:07
  Oh, totally. So our formal name is Acts 29,
• 27:10
  Mobilizing for Mission. So I think as Christians,
• 27:15
  oftentimes we kind of get stuck in the me and Jesus two step, a
• 27:19
  friend of mine calls it. So like we just, we Just Dance
• 27:21
  back and forth, you know, yeah, I, I, this is a, a safe intimate
• 27:26
  space where we just talk with each other.
• 27:28
  But I don't want to get out there because it looks, it looks
• 27:31
  hard out there. And so.
• 27:33
  Or confusing. Yeah, or confusing or I might
• 27:35
  get yelled at or might get laughed at or might get worse.
• 27:40
  But we're. This is, I think, the area where
• 27:43
  the Lord has really taught me the most over the last probably
• 27:45
  10 years as a priest is I think most of us get the mission
• 27:49
  wrong. What do you mean?
• 27:52
  I think we think the mission is just to evangelize and obviously
• 27:56
  that's a huge part of it, right? We're supposed we're we're
• 27:59
  commissioned to go share the gospel.
• 28:00
  But Jesus says in Matthew 28, go into, you know, go out to all
• 28:04
  nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, the
• 28:07
  Holy Spirit, teaching them everything I have commanded you.
• 28:11
  That's a lot. So you're saying it's not just
• 28:14
  share the gospel, it's make the disciples?
• 28:17
  And it's changed the world. That's the part that I think so
• 28:21
  I think we get, I think we've heard we're supposed to
• 28:23
  evangelize. I think we've heard we're
• 28:25
  supposed to make disciples. I don't think we know how to do
• 28:27
  that, but I think we've heard those things.
• 28:29
  I think often times people and and my goodness, the work that
• 28:32
  you've been doing towards this end is spectacular example.
• 28:37
  You and I are commissioned and the laity in a particular way is
• 28:40
  commissioned to transform the world to to the the way I often
• 28:45
  would describe it is like the enemy can't create.
• 28:48
  There's only one enemy of the human race.
• 28:50
  That's Satan and his minions. Nobody else is my enemy.
• 28:53
  No human being is my enemy. People do wicked things.
• 28:56
  They're not the enemy. They're just rebels.
• 28:59
  Rebels to be 1 but they're not the enemy.
• 29:03
  You know Paul says that Jesus died for the ungodly.
• 29:08
  That's us, right? So I was a rebel, can be a rebel
• 29:12
  still, at least in my mind, if if not in more ways.
• 29:16
  And someone won me, you know, the Lord won me and he won me
• 29:18
  through people. But the, the work that we're
• 29:22
  supposed to do, because the enemy can only, he can't create,
• 29:25
  he can only bend. So he tries to to deface God's
• 29:29
  good creation, marriage, family, sexuality, dignity of the human
• 29:33
  person, politics, entertainment, sports, everything, you name it.
• 29:38
  And God wants to put us into those places.
• 29:41
  That's why he's entrusted you with the gifts you have and
• 29:43
  everybody who's watching with the gifts that they have so that
• 29:46
  they can encounter him. But then they can go back into
• 29:49
  that area and they can try to bend it back into conformity
• 29:53
  with how God created it to be. And here's the tension.
• 29:56
  We'll never get it done. Like we're never going to
• 29:59
  finish. You can't build the city of God.
• 30:01
  It's a terrible song on so many levels, but you can build for
• 30:05
  it, and I think that's the part that we haven't been taught.
• 30:08
  So there's more than just do the work virtuously, as important as
• 30:12
  that is. It's going to art, going to
• 30:14
  politics, going to entertainment, going to sports,
• 30:17
  going to every area. And make it more genuinely human
• 30:22
  as God created it to be. Because when Jesus returns, it
• 30:27
  will not be to take us away, even though I think that's how a
• 30:30
  lot of people live their lives. It will be to make all things
• 30:33
  new, a new heaven and a new earth.
• 30:37
  Did you know that your health insurance plan likely covers
• 30:41
  abortion, abortifacients, and other unethical services?
• 30:45
  Most people have no idea that they're footing the bill for
• 30:48
  procedures that go directly against their beliefs.
• 30:51
  Well, there are health sharing ministries.
• 30:53
  Some families need and want standard insurance.
• 30:56
  That's why I'm so excited to share about Presidio Healthcare,
• 30:59
  the nation's first pro-life Christian health insurance
• 31:03
  company. If you're in Texas, visit
• 31:05
  presidiocare.com. That's PRESIDIO care.com to get
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• 31:13
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• 31:20
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• 31:22
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• 31:25
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• 31:29
  but one thing that I consistently rely on are the
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  I'm a huge fan of We Heart Nutrition.
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  and more. I personally take the post Natal
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  That's weheartnutrition.com and use the code Lila for a full 20%
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  off your order. It's very beautiful what you're
• 32:25
  describing and it it definitely, you know, it's captivating for
• 32:29
  me. I think it can get maybe
• 32:31
  confusing in practice because people see spreading the gospel
• 32:36
  as more of a you need to preach the name of Jesus.
• 32:40
  You need to be very clear about what are you know, Jesus is the
• 32:44
  one who saves. And then as a Catholic, you want
• 32:47
  people to be able to be in full communion with the church.
• 32:50
  You also obviously want to respect those that are not full
• 32:52
  in full communion because I think the Holy Spirit is very
• 32:54
  much alive among our Protestant brothers and sisters, certainly
• 32:57
  our Orthodox brothers and sisters and so many others.
• 33:00
  I think this is a good place for Joan to enter back into the
• 33:03
  conversation because her mission was not some obviously
• 33:09
  evangelical mission. And I think that's makes her
• 33:12
  scandalous. It made her scandalous at the
• 33:14
  time, for sure. And even looking back on it, if
• 33:17
  you look at the details of her life, you're like, Oh my gosh.
• 33:18
  Like it wasn't like she was going out to like, convert, you
• 33:21
  know, feed the poor, take care of the poor or like, you know,
• 33:25
  preach the name of Jesus in the public square to people that
• 33:27
  didn't know it. Or like go be a nun or something
• 33:29
  like this, or be a good Christian mother and raise her
• 33:31
  kids up like she was out there fighting a war and the war was
• 33:35
  even questionable. Can you share?
• 33:37
  So Joan's life is crazy to me. So like I struggle with Joan's
• 33:40
  life, but one of my favorite quotes.
• 33:43
  So when she's on trial, right, she's asked, does God hate the
• 33:48
  English? So she's leading this.
• 33:51
  She's trying to get the rightful king of France back to on the
• 33:54
  throne. And she's fighting for a
• 33:55
  monarchy. I mean, we we fought to destroy
• 33:58
  a monarchy. Yeah, that's the story.
• 33:59
  We're about 250 years of independence.
• 34:01
  Yep, exactly. And so she's asked, you know,
• 34:03
  so, so God hates the English and she says, no, he just hates them
• 34:07
  in France. It's just a great answer.
• 34:11
  You know, it's a, it's a tremendous answer, like.
• 34:14
  Because English, we're trying to take over France.
• 34:16
  Yeah, like they belong back in their land and we'll love them.
• 34:20
  Well, we're not going to love them here.
• 34:21
  This isn't where they're supposed to be.
• 34:22
  They're supposed to be reigning over us.
• 34:24
  And so her whole mission is to try to, you know, bring them
• 34:28
  back to where they're supposed to be.
• 34:30
  And the French back in in rightful authority of their own
• 34:34
  land. And that's what ends up getting
• 34:37
  her burned alive twice, which is kind of strange.
• 34:40
  But so then, yeah, like to your point, I mean, the mission
• 34:44
  doesn't look overtly Christian. It doesn't, but in fact, it's
• 34:49
  remarkable. It's a very fascinating for us
• 34:51
  to discuss, especially in the context of like you, you saying
• 34:53
  we have to change the world. OK, well, what does that mean?
• 34:55
  If you took Joan of Arc's mission then and put it today in
• 35:00
  a modern construct, or, you know, modern context, I should
• 35:04
  say, what does that look like? Well, so I'll try to answer that
• 35:09
  by giving an analogy or a story of what I think often happens to
• 35:13
  people. So in fact, a guy called me the
• 35:15
  other day, mid 60s, super devout Christian, works in a
• 35:21
  engineering company, very high up, had a profound conversion
• 35:28
  experience couple years ago, maybe 20 years ago now.
• 35:31
  And he's been wrestling for tons of years now with I want to go
• 35:36
  do something Christian with my life.
• 35:39
  And so he called me just says if you got 5 minutes to talk, I
• 35:42
  said sure. He says, so this is what I'm
• 35:43
  hearing. I want to retire.
• 35:45
  I want to just do mission. He says, and I was as I was
• 35:48
  praying, I felt like the Lord said to me, you're exactly where
• 35:54
  I want you. I've given you the gifts that
• 35:58
  you have to teach leadership, to lead well, to lead with
• 36:03
  integrity, to highlight the dignity of all the people that
• 36:07
  you, you know, you care for. What do you mean?
• 36:11
  You want to go do mission? You're on mission as an
• 36:15
  engineer. And he says, could that be God?
• 36:18
  I said absolutely. I mean, absolutely.
• 36:22
  I got a friend of mine, he's a football coach, very successful.
• 36:27
  How to really? Jim Harbaugh.
• 36:30
  Yeah, he had a deep encounter with Jesus.
• 36:32
  That's how you're talking about Jim, Really.
• 36:34
  This is what I'm talking. About He's amazing and I shared.
• 36:36
  This with him big. Fan.
• 36:38
  I am too. I'm.
• 36:39
  Like just a good football coach. It's got to be him.
• 36:41
  Him and Sarah are amazing people to me and like they're works in
• 36:44
  progress like I am, you know, but but there are, I mean, talk
• 36:47
  about a guy with courage to be doing what he's doing on behalf
• 36:51
  of life. And we just gave him a life
• 36:52
  award. I know you did.
• 36:53
  It was awesome. It was amazing be there, but I
• 36:55
  wasn't able to get there. But I think you'd have to ask
• 36:59
  Jim to confirm this. But I think and I've I've asked
• 37:01
  him this in one way or another. He went to Rome, he met Francis
• 37:08
  profound encounter with God. I don't know a more competitive
• 37:11
  man in my life than Jim Harbaugh and I think he wrestled with OK,
• 37:16
  something happened there. How do I take what happened, the
• 37:22
  outpouring of Holy Spirit of my life and still want to win and
• 37:27
  and not be a jerk or not be all about me?
• 37:31
  And I think he's figured it out, or at least he's on his way to
• 37:34
  figuring it out. But I think what happens is
• 37:36
  people, people like him have an encounter and then they go, I
• 37:40
  have to abandon this profession because it's all about me.
• 37:43
  It's all about money, it's all about winning, it's all about
• 37:45
  competition. But it doesn't have to be.
• 37:48
  So rather than abandoned the profession and just let it fall
• 37:52
  apart and let the enemy reign there, how about you stay in the
• 37:55
  profession as a disciple and now you teach what sports is really
• 38:01
  about, how to be competitive and not be a jerk, how to lead with
• 38:06
  integrity, how to really care for the people that you coach.
• 38:09
  And I think that's what he's been doing.
• 38:13
  I mean, it's extraordinary to me.
• 38:15
  It is. And at the same time, leveraging
• 38:19
  what God's given him for things like the dignity of the human
• 38:23
  person in the way that he's doing it, which so he and I and
• 38:26
  Sarah, we did a, a, a big event in Michigan because Michigan had
• 38:28
  a huge ballot issue of sort of years ago, not too long ago now,
• 38:33
  four years ago maybe on which unfortunately just put us in one
• 38:38
  of the worst conditions in the world as a state.
• 38:41
  So we're we're giving a a talk to try to help people understand
• 38:45
  what was on the ballot. To legalize abortion.
• 38:49
  Yeah, at every stage, you know, and so and I, I was interviewing
• 38:53
  the two of them and I just said, were you, are you nervous about
• 38:56
  being here? And Sarah said, like, I don't, I
• 39:01
  didn't think we should do this. I didn't know if we should do
• 39:03
  this. I was concerned about it like
• 39:04
  you, you might lose recruits, you might lose your job.
• 39:07
  And he said in front of like 500 men, mostly men, because most of
• 39:11
  them came to see Jim Harbaugh and not for life.
• 39:14
  And he said, So what? It'd be for the right thing.
• 39:19
  Every guy there just went, yeah, what the heck?
• 39:21
  What am I afraid of? Here's a guy who's national
• 39:23
  championship coach, super successful, they all look up to,
• 39:28
  and he just demonstrated. But that's that's secondary.
• 39:32
  I think people might look at Jim Harbaugh and say he's already
• 39:35
  made it. So if he crashes and burns, like
• 39:39
  because if he says what's true and good and holy and he fights
• 39:42
  for life and on the unborn and whatever else, like at least he
• 39:44
  made it first. I think a lot of guys and women
• 39:47
  are kind of like, well, let's keep our head down.
• 39:49
  Let's be like undercover Christian.
• 39:51
  Not that they fully hide their faith, but they're not going to
• 39:54
  maybe speak about controversial issues.
• 39:57
  They're not going to necessarily stick their necks out too much
• 40:00
  because they want to make it in their industry.
• 40:03
  He who honors me, I will honor. The Lord says that doesn't mean
• 40:07
  riches and rewards and fame and all that, but it means the
• 40:10
  Lord's going to honor you if we honor him.
• 40:12
  And I don't know, at the end of the day, how do you live with
• 40:14
  integrity when you know, when you know I'm not doing what I'm
• 40:17
  supposed to be doing? Or you're not speaking what
• 40:18
  needs to be spoken. Yeah, you can't look in the
• 40:21
  mirror. That was that was what got me to
• 40:23
  the point where I was like, I, I couldn't look at my face in the
• 40:26
  mirror. It's like I'm not living the way
• 40:27
  I know it's supposed to be living.
• 40:29
  This is a horrible way to live life.
• 40:31
  And when you know you're compromising on what you what
• 40:34
  you claim to be true, you can't live with yourself.
• 40:37
  So then you start doing all sorts of stupid things to numb
• 40:39
  pain and to escape. But please God, he brings us to
• 40:44
  our senses eventually. So I would say to anybody who's
• 40:46
  in that situation, dare, it's like God's daring you.
• 40:50
  Well, why don't you try it? Try me on this.
• 40:55
  Try speaking out. Try being bold.
• 40:57
  Try see what. Happens.
• 40:58
  See how you feel being a person of integrity.
• 41:01
  See how you feel. It doesn't mean being unkind, it
• 41:04
  just means speak the truth and love.
• 41:06
  Like live an integrated life, be who you are everywhere.
• 41:13
  As opposed to what I think most people do which is they put
• 41:15
  masks on in different contexts which just reinforces man I
• 41:19
  can't even be me anywhere. Well that's a terrible way to
• 41:22
  live life. Don't want to live like that.
• 41:24
  And also, how are you going to advance the gospel living like
• 41:26
  that? Yeah, what's going to and what's
• 41:28
  the Lord going to say to me when I die?
• 41:30
  I stand in front of them. Hey, great job.
• 41:34
  Wouldn't it be better to hear well done, good and faithful
• 41:37
  servant that was Joan? Yeah, So, Joan, the modern
• 41:43
  context, I mean, just I'm just trying to imagine it, right.
• 41:45
  So a woman today gets voices she believes is from God and they're
• 41:52
  telling her to. I'm trying to think of a context
• 41:55
  that we can match what was happening with England and
• 41:58
  France at the time. But you know, England was
• 42:00
  occupying France. France wanted their national
• 42:03
  sovereignty back. I mean, they were both there.
• 42:06
  Well, well, there was the Catholic, non Catholic dynamic,
• 42:11
  right? I mean England.
• 42:12
  Yes and no. I mean, there's, there's, it's
• 42:14
  all, it's all Catholic. They were all Catholic.
• 42:16
  This is pre reformation. This was pre reformation so this
• 42:19
  it wasn't even it was Catholics against Catholics.
• 42:22
  Yeah, although they're more nationalistic than they are
• 42:24
  Catholic, obviously. I mean, there's a Bishop, for
• 42:26
  goodness sake, who's the one responsible for her?
• 42:29
  Dead Bishop. Yeah, that's the horror of all
• 42:33
  this. It is the horror of all this.
• 42:35
  And it's, and it helps, I think, for us living now to, you know,
• 42:38
  with all that's going on in the church in our day and age, and
• 42:41
  just to remember, well, there's never really been a golden era
• 42:44
  of the church. But but I'm just thinking like
• 42:47
  from the modern construct context, why couldn't, I mean,
• 42:49
  someone would look at that story and be like, guys make make
• 42:51
  peace with each other, like get over this, make peace with each
• 42:54
  other. What?
• 42:55
  And and I, I'm just imagining Joan instead of going to war to
• 42:59
  win, you know, to, to get back the rightful throne for the the
• 43:03
  king of France, right? Why wouldn't she just say let's
• 43:06
  like, let's strike a truce? Well, she did tell them to
• 43:09
  leave. The English to.
• 43:11
  Leave and they wouldn't listen. I mean, so, so you go to war,
• 43:15
  you know, so there's reasons, there's just reasons to go to
• 43:19
  war. I think that's what Peter Kraif
• 43:20
  would say. There's, there's not so much a
• 43:21
  just war as there are just reasons to go to war.
• 43:25
  So if you break into my house, I'm a, I'm a dad and a husband
• 43:29
  and I just say, well, you don't like my wife and kids are
• 43:31
  inside. That's being a bad father and
• 43:33
  husband. So my, my task, my
• 43:37
  responsibility as a person who's supposed to guard and protect
• 43:41
  them is to ward you off. I'm going to do everything I can
• 43:44
  to ward you off. I'm not going to do that out of
• 43:46
  violence or anger or hatred. I'm going to do it out of love
• 43:49
  for them. And if in the process of doing
• 43:52
  that, I have to harm you, unfortunately, to keep you from
• 43:56
  hurting them, what that's my responsibility.
• 43:58
  You amplify that to being the head of a government.
• 44:01
  That's why you do things at times to protect the people that
• 44:04
  you care for. But it's possible for same
• 44:08
  scenario you break into my house and I'm so livid with rage that
• 44:13
  you did this that I want to kill you.
• 44:14
  Well, now I've made myself to be a murderer.
• 44:16
  That's a very different case, even though it looks like the
• 44:18
  same action. So Jones desire is, hey, I want
• 44:22
  to get the English out of here. You got to go back.
• 44:24
  So she just tells them. She keeps saying, threatening
• 44:27
  them, saying God has called me to put our king back on the
• 44:31
  throne and for you to go back home, go home, or God's going to
• 44:36
  lead me to do action. Or they didn't believe her or
• 44:41
  they didn't want to, they didn't want to leave.
• 44:44
  And so then she does what she does and.
• 44:47
  What did she do just for people to make sure we have the
• 44:50
  historical? Account into battle and so
• 44:52
  here's this you know illiterate teenage girl who can't ride a
• 44:56
  horse who knows nothing about military suddenly becomes this
• 45:00
  incredible. You know, I was going to say
• 45:03
  horseman, but she's horse. Woman leaves the army and kicks
• 45:09
  the English out. So she got the skills of Almost
• 45:13
  Supernatural. Definitely she showed up.
• 45:17
  Definitely the skills showed up. Because the same men who are in
• 45:19
  the army, who are losing time and time and time, this is the
• 45:22
  middle of the 100 years War, they couldn't win a thing.
• 45:25
  Suddenly they're fighting with tremendous courage, and the
• 45:29
  courage is clearly inspired by that girl.
• 45:34
  And I think the other context here is a lot of innocent people
• 45:37
  were being hurt. So it was not like, oh, just
• 45:40
  some peaceful occupation. There were a lot of innocent,
• 45:44
  no. And I think that's the other
• 45:46
  part of this. It was a, you could say, you
• 45:48
  could argue it's absolutely a humanitarian mission as well as
• 45:52
  a mission of justice. What can we learn about
• 45:54
  discernment from the life of Joan of Arc?
• 45:57
  About discerning God's voice and purpose for our lives?
• 46:00
  Yeah, it's a great question. I think a couple of things.
• 46:01
  The first is it provokes the question, do you believe God
• 46:04
  speaks today, which I don't know that most people do.
• 46:09
  Like speaks in a personal particular way for you when you.
• 46:11
  Talk to me. Well, because he's omnipresent
• 46:14
  and omniscient and omnipotent, and he can be entirely present
• 46:19
  to you and me at the same time. It's kind of the perk of being
• 46:22
  God. So he cares about you.
• 46:24
  That's why he willed you into existence.
• 46:26
  So if he willed you into existence, he probably has a
• 46:28
  plan for you or he wouldn't have created you.
• 46:31
  And not just a plan for eternity, but a plan right now.
• 46:36
  And he's more excited about revealing it to you than you are
• 46:39
  and getting it. So that's the first step.
• 46:41
  It's just, Lord, I believe you've created me for a definite
• 46:45
  purpose in my life. And I believe you talk.
• 46:49
  So talk, help, help me to hear you, help me to know that.
• 46:56
  And, and I think he usually leads us by desires.
• 46:59
  That's how he changed me. That's what he did with Joan.
• 47:01
  Joan doesn't want to do this. And then she's got this growing
• 47:04
  desire to embark on the mission that she's doing so much so that
• 47:08
  she can get to the point where she's like, I was born for this.
• 47:12
  Well, I, I believe everybody is supposed to get to that point.
• 47:15
  Everybody's supposed to be able to say I know what I was born to
• 47:18
  do, even if that was to be a great mom or a great dad or a
• 47:25
  good husband or a Good Wife or a good priest, whatever.
• 47:29
  Like you're supposed to have clarity on why God created you.
• 47:35
  Why are some people called to crazy missions like Joan or more
• 47:39
  obvious, intense public missions, and other people are
• 47:43
  called to, yeah, be an engineer and be a dad or yeah, just be a
• 47:47
  really good school teacher and be a really good husband or
• 47:51
  whatever that thing is? Short answer, I don't know
• 47:57
  Longer answer, I, I, I, I think everybody can be heroic.
• 48:03
  Most heroes, well, we won't know anything about until we get
• 48:07
  home. I mean, the real heroes are the
• 48:10
  ones who just do what they do day in and day out.
• 48:15
  Love the Lord, love their neighbor, you know, like hold
• 48:19
  the line. They just persevere like those
• 48:22
  are the real heroes. Other people, it's almost like
• 48:26
  they're firecrackers in the sense that they burn brightly
• 48:29
  for a short time and then they're gone.
• 48:32
  I mean, Jones, Jones gone before she's, you know.
• 48:36
  Literally a firecracker. Unfortunately, what they did, I
• 48:39
  mean, by God's grace, obviously she's a St. now she's a
• 48:41
  murderer. But I think some people though,
• 48:46
  they are afraid to maybe not even afraid.
• 48:49
  Maybe they just don't have. It's this curious thing, right?
• 48:52
  If you're living, you go to college, you're, you know,
• 48:55
  trying to figure out your job, your career, you're opening to
• 48:58
  marriage. Maybe you're just kind of a
• 49:00
  normal kid in America or really any country that's maybe
• 49:02
  listening to this and maybe you have a deeper desire for
• 49:06
  something more that is kind of confusing to you.
• 49:08
  That's like driving you, you're not sure how to like realize it,
• 49:11
  or maybe you're content, but maybe you shouldn't be content.
• 49:14
  I guess what I'm getting at here is I, my sense of the people,
• 49:19
  the many people I, I get the opportunity to meet is most
• 49:21
  people are not dreaming big enough.
• 49:24
  They're not aiming high enough. And they're almost accepting
• 49:28
  like the structures of the world and living within them within a
• 49:31
  kind of a very maybe small way. And there could be humility
• 49:36
  there. And that is what God wants in
• 49:37
  the exact thing that they're doing.
• 49:38
  That is actually what God wants, and they should do it.
• 49:40
  Or they're kind of, you know, by accident, lukewarm in a sense,
• 49:45
  or they're maybe afraid or they're not.
• 49:47
  You know, they haven't opened themselves up to this next step
• 49:50
  that they're supposed to take. I think everybody wants to be
• 49:54
  great and I think most people are afraid of being great
• 49:58
  because I think most people are either they misunderstand what
• 50:01
  greatness means or they're afraid of what the risks might
• 50:05
  be involved in this. And so we settle all too easily.
• 50:09
  But I'm I'm just passionately of the mind.
• 50:14
  I think we're wired for greatness, but the world has
• 50:17
  deformed our understanding of that because because we've
• 50:21
  equated that with celebrity, that's not greatness.
• 50:24
  Greatness is integrity. Greatness is humility.
• 50:28
  Greatness is love. I mean, that's greatness.
• 50:32
  Anybody could become famous. I mean, really, anybody could
• 50:34
  become famous in this world Now with a camera and an iPhone.
• 50:37
  You. Can do bad stuff and become
• 50:39
  famously bad. Bad, famously.
• 50:41
  Yeah, exactly. That's not greatness.
• 50:42
  Greatness is living your life with character, living your life
• 50:45
  with heroic virtue. That's greatness and that's
• 50:47
  accessible to everybody. But what that means, and the the
• 50:50
  condition for doing that is, is having the the courage to be
• 50:53
  able to surrender yourself to God and say, I will do whatever
• 50:56
  you want. And that's what's terrifying.
• 50:59
  And I think it's terrifying for most people because they don't
• 51:01
  know him and they're afraid, well, that he probably is going
• 51:04
  to want me to suffer because that's what he does.
• 51:06
  He makes his friends suffer. Well, that's not exactly a
• 51:09
  really, you know, rousing way to understand God.
• 51:14
  You're going to suffer, to be sure.
• 51:16
  But that's because we live in a broken world.
• 51:18
  But God doesn't want to. That's not a, you know, sadist.
• 51:22
  He's not trying to inflict pain on people.
• 51:25
  That the beauty of the Christian life is even pain can be used
• 51:29
  for good purposes. What God wants for you is he
• 51:33
  wants you to to give him your life and let him make a
• 51:40
  masterpiece out of it. Because you know, like one of
• 51:43
  the images that I have often times Scott's creating this
• 51:45
  mosaic with all these little tiles and we're all we're all
• 51:49
  just little tiles. But the mosaic doesn't get
• 51:52
  complete without you saying to him, you can place me wherever
• 51:55
  you want. Engineer, stay at home, dad,
• 52:00
  farmer, teacher, president, governor, coach, whatever.
• 52:06
  Doesn't matter. God's going to use you.
• 52:09
  We just have to give him the permission here.
• 52:10
  Here's my life. Whatever you want to do with me,
• 52:12
  do with me. That's why he marries the model.
• 52:16
  Whatever you want to do, do it. Blank check.
• 52:22
  So beautiful. And takes a lot of courage.
• 52:25
  And it and and trust. Yeah, which means you got to
• 52:28
  know who it is you're giving the blank check to.
• 52:30
  Yes. And that's the, you know, that's
• 52:32
  that's why we do what the work we do.
• 52:35
  At the heart of it is just we have to lead with preaching the
• 52:39
  gospel because most people have never heard it.
• 52:44
  And as a result of not having heard it, they've created their
• 52:46
  own image of God, which gives all these skewed understandings
• 52:49
  of who God is, when in fact, that's not who God is.
• 52:51
  God is love. So this one who's asking you to
• 52:55
  surrender your life to him, He loves you like he doesn't just
• 52:58
  say that, He's proven it, how he became a man.
• 53:02
  What do you do? He went to war for you.
• 53:04
  Who do you go to war against? The power of death, the power of
• 53:09
  sin, and the one that Jesus calls the strong man.
• 53:12
  And he won. And so you don't have anything
• 53:16
  to be afraid of, not because he's going to protect you from
• 53:19
  all harm, because he's the one who holds your life in his hands
• 53:23
  and he has no rival. Like to say Jesus is Lord is not
• 53:29
  the ending of a prayer. It's a reality.
• 53:33
  He holds the world, your life, my life, in his hands and I
• 53:39
  don't have to be afraid of anything.
• 53:41
  And He's making you the person listening to this myself, you
• 53:45
  father. He made us each for greatness
• 53:48
  and for a specific purpose. I think what you were saying
• 53:51
  earlier about greatness, it's it's very beautiful.
• 53:53
  Well, greatness isn't like, oh, fame or success in a worldly
• 53:56
  sense, It's holiness, ultimately love.
• 54:00
  But I think what trips people up is like, what does that look
• 54:03
  like in practice? Because, and, and I'm speaking
• 54:06
  right now, especially to what I was kind of indicating earlier,
• 54:10
  but I'm curious what you think about this.
• 54:12
  My sense of it is, is a lot of people, I don't know if it's
• 54:15
  most, but a lot of people aren't really living the amazing
• 54:20
  adventure that God has planned for them.
• 54:24
  And there's so much loss and tragedy in that.
• 54:26
  It's honestly, it makes me want to start crying right now just
• 54:29
  to think about it. And even for my own life,
• 54:31
  because there's obviously places in my life on a daily basis I
• 54:33
  could be surrendering more and the adventure would be that much
• 54:36
  more amazing. And by amazing I don't mean
• 54:38
  worldly amazing, I mean amazing in the in the true sense of what
• 54:42
  we are made for, which is love to love and to be loved.
• 54:45
  Do you get the sense that most people are not really actually
• 54:48
  living how God's plan for them because of most people
• 54:53
  Christians? Most Christians, Many clergy.
• 54:56
  Even clergy are not living God's plan for them.
• 54:59
  And what I mean by that is we settle for a routine.
• 55:03
  So here's the so like God talks me in images.
• 55:05
  Oftentimes this was the image he gave me as 30 years ago, I was
• 55:07
  praying with a bunch of priests and he brought me back to when,
• 55:11
  when I was, you know, in my 20s, I was in the seminary and I
• 55:13
  would, you know, I'd sit in the Chapel and I'd be reading
• 55:15
  Scripture and lives of the different Saints in Scripture,
• 55:19
  the lives of Saints in the church.
• 55:20
  And, and I would read that. And, and you're as a young man,
• 55:24
  suddenly a priest, you know, like time in seminary doesn't
• 55:26
  show up in somebody's biography. So it's like, it's a, it's a
• 55:30
  sentence maybe. And so the whole rest of my life
• 55:34
  was up ahead of me. And I would just sit there and
• 55:36
  go like, Lord, I can't wait to see what you write in my life.
• 55:38
  I, I don't think out of ego or vanity.
• 55:40
  It's just like, I just can't wait to see what you're going to
• 55:42
  do in my life because you're an amazing God.
• 55:44
  So like, let's go bring on the drama, you know, and then you
• 55:47
  get ordained or you get married. And, and I started to just like
• 55:51
  slide into a routine. And then I hit 50 and then I hit
• 55:56
  60 and you can realize. Hey, how old are you and.
• 56:00
  It's like, well, I guess this is just my life.
• 56:02
  What do you mean? What do you mean by that slide
• 56:04
  into a routine? This is what I do.
• 56:06
  You get up every day, you know, you, you, you take care of your
• 56:09
  kids, you celebrate Mass, you go on emergency visits, you preach
• 56:14
  the gospel. I mean, like, how in the world
• 56:15
  does preaching the gospel become routine?
• 56:17
  But it it can I see for countless priests.
• 56:21
  And then as I was praying with this, I felt like the Lord, you
• 56:24
  know, he's like in the chair next to me like you are.
• 56:27
  And at one point, you know, he was writing the story of my
• 56:30
  life. And then without realizing it, I
• 56:33
  had taken the pen out of his hand and he looks at me and he
• 56:37
  says, give me back the pen. We're not done here.
• 56:43
  And so this whole way of praying to learn how to know what to do,
• 56:48
  the way we would say what you just said is restores the drama
• 56:53
  of discipleship. Like the life of following Jesus
• 56:58
  is anything but boring. That doesn't mean it's supposed
• 57:01
  to be a thrill a minute. That's not the point, but to to
• 57:04
  be able to to go to the Lord every day and say, what do you
• 57:09
  want from me? How do you want me to live my
• 57:11
  life? What are you asking of me?
• 57:14
  Don't let me get settled into mediocrity.
• 57:16
  That was John Paul's constant, you know, exhortation to young
• 57:19
  people. Never settle for mediocrity.
• 57:22
  I just keep aiming higher. And every time I get better.
• 57:25
  Yeah, why not always? Rick, who's sitting in the room
• 57:28
  right now, He's, you know, he's fond of using as an example the
• 57:31
  Olympic model like Usain Bolt's got a coach, fastest man in the
• 57:35
  world as a coach. How does that work?
• 57:37
  I'm the fastest man in the world.
• 57:38
  What are you going to teach me? Right?
• 57:41
  And yet he wants to get better. Well, if that's true for someone
• 57:44
  winning medals, great as that is, what's it like for life?
• 57:50
  Why don't we want to keep getting better?
• 57:53
  So let's always strive to keep getting better, always strive to
• 57:56
  grow and teach me to love better, teach me to forgive
• 57:59
  better, teach me to long for unity better teach me to to be a
• 58:03
  peacemaker. Teach me, teach me the
• 58:05
  beatitudes, teach me to look more like you, Jesus, to talk
• 58:08
  more like you, to stop posting the way I post and like actually
• 58:14
  build people up as opposed to tear people down.
• 58:17
  Like all those things are within everybody's reach, and that's
• 58:21
  greatness. We just found out by the way,
• 58:24
  Usain Bolt is following live action on Instagram.
• 58:27
  Some team member texted me that like a week ago.
• 58:29
  I was like, let's get him to our young leaders come and I'm like,
• 58:31
  what's he doing right now? He's raising his kids.
• 58:33
  I guess he's like, he's like semi retired or I don't know.
• 58:37
  But no pressure on those. The adventure is just, I know,
• 58:40
  right? Like run, run, run.
• 58:42
  I'm like, I can't even fuck that again.
• 58:45
  OK, so, so much to unpack here about what this discernment
• 58:48
  looks like to let Jesus take the pen because I think most people
• 58:52
  are like, yeah, Jesus, I want Jesus to have my pen of the, the
• 58:55
  story of my life, right? Then there's also the tricky
• 58:57
  thing of freedom. Like, well, I'm supposed to make
• 59:00
  decisions and like, I don't want to be like autumn.
• 59:03
  I like an automaton or a robot. But at the same time, like I
• 59:05
  can't like redecide my life every day.
• 59:07
  Like there's certain commitments you make that you've like our
• 59:09
  long term commitments, you know? So what does it look like to
• 59:14
  discern whether or not you're living?
• 59:18
  Like, like if everybody at listening to this episode right
• 59:20
  now wants to do a check on their life, Like, am I living the way
• 59:23
  you want me to live, Lord? Am I on the adventure that you
• 59:26
  want me on? Am I on the mission you want me
• 59:28
  on? How should they discern that?
• 59:31
  How do they kick the tires? There's a lot of ways to answer
• 59:33
  that potentially here. Here's one of the ways that we
• 59:35
  would try to begin to walk people through some things
• 59:38
  individually. So I don't know if you've ever
• 59:41
  done any form of the Ignatian exercises, but the one of the
• 59:45
  challenges of the Ignatian exercises is you have limited
• 59:48
  scriptures that you're asked to pray with and that's the focal
• 59:51
  point for the whole day. So Ignatius calls them exercises
• 59:56
  for a reason. Like this is hard, like prayer
• 59:59
  is work, at least it can be at times.
• 1:00:03
  So we we try to teach people. How to take very specific
• 1:00:08
  questions to the Lord in prayer that four of them would be this.
• 1:00:12
  This would be a way to do what it is you just said.
• 1:00:15
  And so you could do this over 4 days.
• 1:00:16
  You could do this over 4 weeks, but but try to go to the Chapel
• 1:00:20
  and and, or someplace that you encounter the Lord powerfully
• 1:00:23
  and you're going to sit down in the first day or the first time
• 1:00:27
  you're going to pray. All you're going to focus on is
• 1:00:28
  this one question. What name do you call me,
• 1:00:34
  Father? Like, who am I to you?
• 1:00:42
  Because the fundamental crisis for everybody is identity.
• 1:00:46
  We just don't know who we are. So we often try to construct
• 1:00:50
  identities. I'm an athlete, I'm a, I'm good
• 1:00:54
  looking, I'm in shape, I'm successful.
• 1:00:58
  No, you're not. You might be, but that's not who
• 1:01:00
  you are. That's just what you do.
• 1:01:02
  Who are you? And most people don't know who
• 1:01:05
  they are, and they don't know who's they are.
• 1:01:08
  And then most people don't know that they're loved.
• 1:01:10
  When I was in the seminary, my mentor said, John, you're going
• 1:01:14
  to discover most people don't think they're good.
• 1:01:18
  And your task is to be like, the magic coin trick is pull the
• 1:01:22
  little coin out from behind their ear and go, Lila, I see
• 1:01:25
  this in you. And man, is it good.
• 1:01:31
  And most people don't know that they've ever been told they're
• 1:01:33
  good. So the first step before we do
• 1:01:37
  anything, before we figure out like, what am I supposed to do
• 1:01:39
  with my life? Just rest in the father's love
• 1:01:43
  for you and, and what we, we, we encourage people like ask the
• 1:01:47
  father. Father, what name do you call
• 1:01:49
  me? What might someone here, if they
• 1:01:52
  ask that question, I mean, I'm, I'm first, as they'll hear, like
• 1:01:56
  I said that to our Lord. I mean, I I kind of have some
• 1:01:58
  sense of what he would say. Actually, even just saying that
• 1:02:00
  it wouldn't just be Lila. It would be other things.
• 1:02:03
  What kinds of things do you think people will hear if they
• 1:02:05
  ask the Lord? Blank slate, wide open heart,
• 1:02:09
  empty mind. Lord, what do you call me?
• 1:02:11
  What do you want to call me? Changes every time I do this.
• 1:02:14
  I've heard the Lord say me countless things.
• 1:02:16
  I'll tell you so. I was abused when I was a child,
• 1:02:21
  very young. Can't even tell you how that
• 1:02:32
  impacted me. I'm so sorry.
• 1:02:35
  I've never. I've never in my life felt pure
• 1:02:40
  ever like. Sexually abused.
• 1:02:42
  Yeah, so I my root wound would be shame.
• 1:02:46
  So as opposed to guilt, my root wound is shame.
• 1:02:50
  Like guilt means I've done wrong, shame means I am wrong.
• 1:02:54
  How old are you, Father I? Don't remember when it started,
• 1:02:59
  it went on for a while. I know when it ended.
• 1:03:02
  How old was that? 11 So I went to pray one day
• 1:03:10
  with this question, Father, what do you call me?
• 1:03:13
  And he said innocent. Well, I've never been innocent,
• 1:03:27
  ever. Only God could call me that.
• 1:03:30
  So what? The point there is that the Lord
• 1:03:32
  oftentimes calls us something to heal a moment in our life and to
• 1:03:38
  address a lie that the enemy tells me and you, because that's
• 1:03:46
  what the enemy does. He shows lies in our minds about
• 1:03:50
  God, about us. This is who God is.
• 1:03:52
  This is who you are. You're a failure, you're a, you
• 1:03:56
  know, you're a charade, you're a fraud, you're a disappointment,
• 1:04:00
  you're not enough. And on and on and on and on.
• 1:04:04
  Those are those things he just sews constantly in our minds.
• 1:04:07
  And without our realizing it, those lies become what scripture
• 1:04:11
  calls strongholds that we can't, we can't get out of.
• 1:04:14
  We find ourselves. My mind is supposed to be the
• 1:04:16
  place where I'm I love to go. I love to be in quiet.
• 1:04:21
  It's what's supposed to be. It's not.
• 1:04:22
  For most people, it's the last place they want to be because
• 1:04:25
  it's a place of torment, because the enemy's just created this
• 1:04:30
  prison inside us. So we do all sorts of things to
• 1:04:32
  like, keep the music going, you know, because I don't want to be
• 1:04:36
  alone and still and quiet and hear those voices accuse me of
• 1:04:40
  things. Because that's what Satan does.
• 1:04:42
  He accuses and he divides. But God wants to demolish
• 1:04:47
  strongholds and then turn them back into places where we can
• 1:04:50
  encounter Him and be at peace and just rest.
• 1:04:54
  And so He often times will call us names that override lies and
• 1:05:00
  that heal moments of our past. How did it feel when you heard
• 1:05:06
  the Lord say in prayer after what you had been through?
• 1:05:09
  You heard him call you innocent. Like a warm blanket.
• 1:05:14
  Like unbelievably healing, but the Lord must do that with all
• 1:05:19
  of us. You know, it's like the Father
• 1:05:21
  has, you know, Mary and her on our team here.
• 1:05:23
  So she would always say like the father knows your name.
• 1:05:25
  He knows your name is Lily. He knows my name is John.
• 1:05:27
  And sometimes he calls me John, but sometimes he calls me
• 1:05:30
  something else. And depending on what's going on
• 1:05:33
  in the season of my life, it's super appropriate to what's
• 1:05:37
  happening right now. And it just brings tremendous
• 1:05:39
  could bring healing, could bring peace, could bring restoration.
• 1:05:44
  You know, like we were with a group of priests a couple of
• 1:05:48
  years ago now we did this exercise and everybody thinks
• 1:05:50
  like this is never going to happen.
• 1:05:51
  I'm not going to hear anything. We we've had people say that
• 1:05:53
  before, you know, like they come back after the exercise and go
• 1:05:57
  like, this was the stupidest thing.
• 1:05:59
  I didn't believe it was going to happen.
• 1:06:00
  Can I tell you what he said? Everyone hears something.
• 1:06:03
  Oh yeah, Everyone hears something.
• 1:06:05
  They might just hear their name or they might hear son, or they
• 1:06:07
  might hear beloved, but that's the Lord.
• 1:06:09
  I mean the Lord. So it doesn't have to do
• 1:06:10
  something grandiose or but it might be, you know, this.
• 1:06:14
  So this one guy, he lived a pretty fleshly life before he
• 1:06:18
  was ordained and his peers called him Slayer because of how
• 1:06:23
  he would pick up women. Oh, his not his, Priestly Pierce
• 1:06:28
  his peers. No, his peers back when he was
• 1:06:29
  in his 20s, well, that's what the Lord called him when he went
• 1:06:33
  to Chapel. But it was sort of a completely
• 1:06:36
  different kind now, because now he's fighting the enemy and he's
• 1:06:40
  trying to rescue people who are in a place where he once was.
• 1:06:44
  And so it was the same word, completely different meaning.
• 1:06:48
  And so the, the, the Lord just has a way of knowing what's
• 1:06:51
  going on inside. That's the first step in in
• 1:06:54
  like, what do you want me to do with my life, Lord?
• 1:06:57
  Then the second one might be something like this.
• 1:07:01
  We asked Jesus to reveal these things.
• 1:07:02
  So we don't want to brainstorm. It's going to prey storming.
• 1:07:05
  So you just say, Holy Spirit, help me to hear you.
• 1:07:07
  And we're going to go before the Lord.
• 1:07:09
  We're going to be something like something like the rich man who
• 1:07:14
  runs to Jesus because that's what you're doing now.
• 1:07:16
  I'm running to Jesus. I want you to know what you want
• 1:07:18
  me to do with my life. And we asked the Lord, Lord,
• 1:07:22
  show me the one thing that's most holding me back from
• 1:07:28
  wholeheartedly following, from being all in.
• 1:07:34
  That's a big prayer. Oh yeah, that's why you don't
• 1:07:36
  start with it. You start with Father.
• 1:07:38
  Who am I to you? The good news, Bad news.
• 1:07:40
  Yeah, I got to. I got to start with that because
• 1:07:42
  that's that's what's going to give me the courage to go
• 1:07:45
  through these next two exercises.
• 1:07:47
  So you start with that. Who am I to you, Lord?
• 1:07:48
  And there's my identity. OK, I know this.
• 1:07:50
  I'm convinced of this. You've spoken to me.
• 1:07:53
  OK, now with that in mind, what's holding me back?
• 1:07:59
  And in that man's case, the Lord puts his finger on something
• 1:08:01
  which this guy never would have suspected.
• 1:08:03
  I mean, like wealth is a sign of blessing from God.
• 1:08:06
  What do you mean my riches are what's holding me back?
• 1:08:09
  So this guy gets angry. This is it.
• 1:08:12
  We often translated as he went away sad.
• 1:08:13
  He didn't go away sad, he went away angry.
• 1:08:17
  Like, how could that be? What's holding me back from
• 1:08:19
  following? And so the Lord has a way of
• 1:08:23
  putting his finger on something that we might just be really
• 1:08:26
  surprised by. For a lot of us, I think it's
• 1:08:29
  trust. You want to know what's really
• 1:08:30
  holding you back? You don't trust me?
• 1:08:33
  You don't trust that I'm good and I'm going to take care of
• 1:08:35
  you and it's going to work out. And then I'll and then I'll be
• 1:08:38
  enough for you. That'll be enough.
• 1:08:39
  Because I'm not promising you. It's going to be easy, right?
• 1:08:41
  That's not the promise. I'm not promising you.
• 1:08:44
  I'll keep you from pain. That's not the promise.
• 1:08:46
  Like that's nowhere in the gospels.
• 1:08:48
  In fact, here's the promise. You follow after me, here's your
• 1:08:50
  cross. Boom.
• 1:08:53
  And then we listen. And the Lord will have a way of
• 1:08:55
  speaking into that. What's the one thing most
• 1:08:59
  holding me back? And so you might want to pray
• 1:09:01
  with the passage of the rich man.
• 1:09:03
  Can I ask you about that interpretation of the rich man
• 1:09:05
  that you just kind of alluded to?
• 1:09:07
  So typically when we hear that passage, we think, OK, he just
• 1:09:11
  really loved being rich, and he didn't want to give up the money
• 1:09:14
  and all the lifestyle, whatever else.
• 1:09:16
  And so he went away sad because he's like, yeah, I don't want to
• 1:09:18
  give up the money and go do whatever Jesus wants me to do.
• 1:09:21
  But you had a slightly different take.
• 1:09:23
  You said he felt angry, almost like, oh, all along, this good
• 1:09:26
  wealth that you gave me that I thought was from God.
• 1:09:28
  You're telling me that's the issue?
• 1:09:30
  Like tell me more about your interpretation.
• 1:09:32
  So well, so wealth. So the Greek, which I forget the
• 1:09:34
  word rough the top of my head right now, but the the Greek can
• 1:09:37
  be translated not just as sad or sorrowful, but as angry and
• 1:09:40
  disturbed. Like how could that be it?
• 1:09:43
  Because again, so in the time of Jesus and not you, We see this
• 1:09:46
  all throughout the Old Testament, right?
• 1:09:48
  Wealth is a sign of God's blessing.
• 1:09:51
  Yeah, Job, the when he lost his wealth, then God's blessing had
• 1:09:54
  been removed. That was the interpretation.
• 1:09:56
  Yeah. So how can what is a clear,
• 1:09:59
  tangible sign of your blessing be what's holding me back?
• 1:10:02
  I think the lesson there for a lot of us is often times our
• 1:10:05
  gifts are what holds us back. What does that mean?
• 1:10:09
  We hide behind Him, we can almost make them into idols.
• 1:10:14
  We end up worshipping the gifts more than we worship the giver.
• 1:10:17
  So we're afraid of surre. So the rich man, it wasn't even
• 1:10:20
  that he he just needed to surrender his wealth.
• 1:10:22
  He needs to surrender it. The gift needs to be
• 1:10:24
  surrendered. And it may be maybe needs to be
• 1:10:26
  used in a way that we haven't been practiced at or that we're
• 1:10:29
  not expecting. But it's just we have to do the
• 1:10:31
  blank slate either way or the blank check, I should say we do
• 1:10:34
  the blank check. Yep, that's right.
• 1:10:36
  And that's hard to do. But that's why, again, I got to
• 1:10:38
  know him first. You know, like put in a typical
• 1:10:43
  example for a Catholic, I'm going to get about to get
• 1:10:45
  confirmed. What's it mean to be confirmed?
• 1:10:47
  I'm going to say to Jesus, send me wherever you want.
• 1:10:50
  Well, how am I going to say that to somebody I've never met?
• 1:10:53
  And no wonder most kids who get confirmed like leave the church
• 1:10:56
  shortly after because I never met him or ask them to do things
• 1:10:59
  that they've they couldn't possibly do because we've
• 1:11:02
  presumed they've already met him.
• 1:11:03
  So that's what we're going to do here.
• 1:11:04
  We're going to ask him in his kindness, and this is good news.
• 1:11:07
  Like, you know, like you go to the doctor, you got pain, you go
• 1:11:11
  to the doctor, the doctor says, well, here's your source of
• 1:11:12
  pain. Oh, thank you.
• 1:11:14
  OK, well, that that's a good diagnosis.
• 1:11:18
  Now I can treat it. What if there's a bunch of
• 1:11:21
  stuff? Well, he's going to show us the
• 1:11:22
  one thing. Oh, you think?
• 1:11:24
  That's, well, no, there's not just one, but there's one thing
• 1:11:26
  that's most important. Start with one.
• 1:11:27
  That's why the question is, show me the one thing that's most
• 1:11:31
  holding me back from wholeheartedly following.
• 1:11:34
  Like you're following, I'm following, but I'm not
• 1:11:36
  wholeheartedly everyday following.
• 1:11:39
  Should that be a daily prayer? Yes, I think so and connected
• 1:11:45
  with it is help me to trust you. And I surrender this thing.
• 1:11:48
  Yeah, that's why Our Lady is the model all throughout this,
• 1:11:50
  because Mary's anything but passive.
• 1:11:53
  Mary's not passive. Mary's actively receptive.
• 1:11:57
  She receives from the Lord and then she cooperates with them.
• 1:11:59
  So we're not puppets. You know, to your point about
• 1:12:03
  freedom earlier, God's not just going to say, go do this and and
• 1:12:06
  not have me be involved. He wants my will to be involved
• 1:12:09
  in it. He's like, yes, I want to do
• 1:12:10
  that. And I can only say that to
• 1:12:12
  somebody who I know and I love and I trust and I know who loves
• 1:12:14
  me. That point's so important
• 1:12:17
  because it's about unity, right? Love is about unity, and you
• 1:12:20
  want to have unity with God's will.
• 1:12:22
  That's not like that. That is surrendering your will,
• 1:12:25
  but it's also uniting your will. Most importantly, it's uniting.
• 1:12:28
  It's not like you're, you become a robot to God and now you're
• 1:12:31
  just like God, you know, animate me or whatever you want.
• 1:12:33
  It is a little bit of that, but really you're have a will, you
• 1:12:36
  have freedom. You want it to be completely
• 1:12:37
  aligned with God. Yeah, marriage is the example.
• 1:12:39
  Of it, yes, it is. Yeah, you.
• 1:12:42
  Know like you're not you're not a robot, but I mean like the
• 1:12:43
  purpose of, you know, the, the purpose of being free is to be
• 1:12:47
  able to choose to love. Well, and I I've, I've been
• 1:12:50
  realizing my husband and I've been talking about this lately.
• 1:12:52
  It's like you're discovering what you are together and it's
• 1:12:56
  this uniting of your wills, but then you're discovering this
• 1:12:59
  third, this third person, which is God.
• 1:13:01
  It's God, right? The Trinity obviously in the
• 1:13:03
  marriage is, is you, you and your husband and God, your wife
• 1:13:06
  and God. And then you have this whole new
• 1:13:08
  life that you live together as this new unit.
• 1:13:11
  And it's very exciting. Yeah, I mean, that's what you
• 1:13:13
  know, So technically the church would say that.
• 1:13:14
  Well, that's communion. What's communion?
• 1:13:16
  It's many becoming one without ceasing to be many.
• 1:13:21
  But you take on this new life well, living your own life.
• 1:13:24
  We're, we're now one in marriage or I'm now one with God in this
• 1:13:27
  relationship, but I'm still me. But I'm, I'm, I'm brought into a
• 1:13:32
  new and really profound unity with somebody else.
• 1:13:35
  You know, whether it's marriage or, or a life with the Lord or
• 1:13:37
  friendship, that's what communion is.
• 1:13:40
  And so we're still our own persons, but somehow we've grown
• 1:13:43
  to be better, more fulfilled, more, more alive because I'm in
• 1:13:49
  this relationship. And to be in this relationship,
• 1:13:51
  I have to actually give myself to you.
• 1:13:53
  Otherwise it's not a relationship.
• 1:13:55
  And and that varies from, you know, depending upon the depth
• 1:13:58
  of the relationship. But that's what makes friendship
• 1:14:00
  so rich. And, and I don't think most
• 1:14:03
  people live friendship with God. So again, that's why that first
• 1:14:06
  question is what it is. There's a third question.
• 1:14:10
  So the it'd be great to just think life's like being on the,
• 1:14:16
  the shore of Lake MI with a good book and a drink in your hand,
• 1:14:19
  but that's not life. Life's more like June 6th, 1944
• 1:14:23
  at Normandy. We're born into a battle and we
• 1:14:26
  have an enemy and he hates you and he hates me and he wants to
• 1:14:30
  destroy me and he wants to destroy you.
• 1:14:33
  So the third question is you, you go before the Lord and you
• 1:14:36
  say Jesus in your kindness reveal to me like what is the
• 1:14:42
  primary strategy of the enemy in my life?
• 1:14:47
  So. First idol, then primary
• 1:14:49
  strategy of the enemy. Could they be the same thing?
• 1:14:52
  They could be so the image here for me, because again, I'm
• 1:14:56
  visual is so I asked for something like the mindset of a
• 1:14:59
  spy. So imagine hell has a Mission
• 1:15:02
  Control because it does. Paul talks about, you know, our
• 1:15:05
  our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the the
• 1:15:07
  machinations or the schemes or the strategies of the devil.
• 1:15:12
  So hell has strategies. That's the bad news.
• 1:15:17
  So gospel means good news. Most people don't experience the
• 1:15:21
  gospel as good news because they don't know the bad news.
• 1:15:24
  The bad news isn't bad. The bad news is horrific.
• 1:15:29
  But once you know that, and then you come to see who Jesus is,
• 1:15:31
  and Jesus is stronger than that one.
• 1:15:34
  Now the gospel is not just news. Now the gospel is good news.
• 1:15:37
  I mean like really, really, really good news.
• 1:15:40
  So we're going to ask for mindful that Jesus has defeated
• 1:15:42
  the enemy. He just hasn't destroyed him
• 1:15:44
  yet. Lord help me to like peek into
• 1:15:47
  the blinds in Mission Control in hell and see what's on the
• 1:15:52
  screen for John's life or what's on the screen for Lila's life.
• 1:15:57
  What's the primary strategy of the enemy?
• 1:16:01
  And then we just ask the Lord to talk.
• 1:16:05
  And then there's a fourth exercise.
• 1:16:06
  Wait before you get to #4 What does that?
• 1:16:08
  What? What are some examples of what
• 1:16:10
  it looks like when you peek behind the screen to see like
• 1:16:13
  people you've done this exercise with fear?
• 1:16:16
  That's the biggest one. Meaning the enemy strategy is
• 1:16:19
  just to be paralyzed with fear to not live.
• 1:16:21
  Fear is a. Massive tactic of the enemy.
• 1:16:24
  Pride. That's probably the biggest one.
• 1:16:27
  Fear is right behind it. Shame, Unworthiness, on and on
• 1:16:37
  and on and on. Division, hatred, unforgiveness.
• 1:16:42
  That's probably right. Right there in the top three.
• 1:16:47
  Idolatry. I've put something else in front
• 1:16:49
  of God. Have you, when people have done
• 1:16:51
  this exercise, the now thousands of people and probably many more
• 1:16:54
  than that that have done it even not directly with you, Have they
• 1:16:58
  have some people been given more of even a vision of, you know,
• 1:17:02
  what could happen if they kept on living their lives the way
• 1:17:05
  they did and didn't change course?
• 1:17:08
  I've heard people speak about these sorts of severe graces
• 1:17:13
  sometimes of like getting a glimpse of, Oh no, if I don't
• 1:17:16
  like wake up out of my stupor, look at all the things I'm going
• 1:17:20
  to lose on in the eternal sense. I mean, not even necessarily
• 1:17:22
  losing heaven as much as losing, I guess the crown.
• 1:17:26
  I mean, I know that sounds maybe odd, but like all of the the
• 1:17:30
  souls, right? That could have been all the
• 1:17:33
  omission, the sins of omission where you're not in mortal sin,
• 1:17:38
  you know you are going to confession, but there's this
• 1:17:40
  whole unlived life in front. Of you settled for mediocrity
• 1:17:43
  again, right to that word as opposed to aspiring to be great.
• 1:17:48
  And can that land you in hell? Oh gosh, I'll let God answer
• 1:17:53
  that. I pray Hell is empty except for
• 1:17:56
  the enemy and his little minions.
• 1:17:58
  But it is scary when you think about, you know, I could die
• 1:18:01
  tomorrow. I want to go to confession.
• 1:18:03
  I want to repent of my sins. Like how many sins of omission
• 1:18:06
  are there? Are countless because that's
• 1:18:09
  what most people actually are doing most of the time and and
• 1:18:12
  most people never confess them it's.
• 1:18:13
  What they're not doing? And Matthew 25 you know the
• 1:18:16
  judgement of the nations are all sins of omission.
• 1:18:21
  That's what Jesus says. I was hungry, you did nothing.
• 1:18:23
  I was thirsty, you did nothing. I was naked, You did nothing.
• 1:18:26
  I was lonely, you did nothing. I was sick, You did nothing.
• 1:18:29
  I was in prison, You did nothing.
• 1:18:31
  You did nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
• 1:18:34
  You buried your talent and you did nothing.
• 1:18:36
  Yeah. Precisely like man, that passage
• 1:18:37
  scarce like. It's scary.
• 1:18:40
  And then he said and then he said I do not know you.
• 1:18:42
  And there was the wailing and then actually of the teeth.
• 1:18:43
  I mean, he didn't go out and murder somebody.
• 1:18:45
  The poor guy just got scared or whatever.
• 1:18:47
  His reason wasn't just in the ground.
• 1:18:48
  Stuck his talent in the ground. Right.
• 1:18:50
  So don't bury your. So this I mean.
• 1:18:52
  That's where this is all going towards this.
• 1:18:54
  What are the gifts? What do you want me to do with?
• 1:18:55
  Them, but I just I, I want to pause that for a minute because
• 1:18:58
  I just feel like it's so convicting for me and I hope
• 1:19:00
  it's convicting for everyone listening because this life,
• 1:19:03
  it's not just about avoiding sin.
• 1:19:05
  It's not just about trying to not sin.
• 1:19:06
  It's not just about like rejecting sin, much like sin is
• 1:19:09
  just like the the negation, right?
• 1:19:11
  It's about creation, it's about love, it's about the action of
• 1:19:15
  our wills and that's the whole adventure, right?
• 1:19:19
  But we can't do that without being in communion with the Holy
• 1:19:22
  Spirit and working with, you know, our Lord and health of
• 1:19:24
  teams of people. We're going to get to that in a
• 1:19:25
  second. And that's like you have to go
• 1:19:27
  and live. And I guess that's what I'm
• 1:19:28
  saying, you have to live. You don't just like to hold up
• 1:19:30
  and not sin, like go and live your life.
• 1:19:32
  And that's going to look messy and chaotic or scary at times
• 1:19:34
  even. Yeah, but so back to Joan real
• 1:19:36
  quick, because I think that's the beauty of the Saints.
• 1:19:39
  So, you know, unfortunately for those of us who live in this
• 1:19:42
  country, we don't know Saints. We know celebrities and
• 1:19:48
  celebrities don't usually inspire us to be great.
• 1:19:53
  They inspire us to be vain. I'm not saying that's their
• 1:19:56
  intention, but but to to, to be familiar with the Saints, to to
• 1:20:01
  know a Joan, to know a Catherine, to know Our Lady, to
• 1:20:04
  know Sebastian, to know, you know, pure Giorgio Farsadi, to
• 1:20:10
  know Maximilian Colby, is to see all these people in ordinary
• 1:20:13
  states of life, married, ordained, young, old.
• 1:20:17
  Healthy, sick, who lived great lives.
• 1:20:21
  And so to know the Saints, like when I was, so, you know, I was
• 1:20:23
  fortunate to live in Rome for four years or so and I didn't
• 1:20:28
  know anything about the Saints when I moved over there.
• 1:20:30
  I, they were names on the church.
• 1:20:33
  And then, then I move over there and I, I knew nobody.
• 1:20:36
  I don't understand the language. And I had to really learn how to
• 1:20:39
  pray. And I learned how to pray and I
• 1:20:42
  met the Saints. And, you know, you walk into
• 1:20:44
  Saint Agnes because that's where Agnes head is.
• 1:20:47
  So suddenly I, I get to know Agnes.
• 1:20:49
  You know where you go to Saint Sebastian's catacombs because
• 1:20:51
  that's where Sebastian dies. Or, you know, it's fortunate to
• 1:20:54
  lead people down to Peter's grave.
• 1:20:56
  And I got to know Peter really well.
• 1:20:58
  You go to Saint Paul's outside the wall and Paul's no longer a
• 1:21:00
  statue or a name. Paul's a man.
• 1:21:03
  And so to, to expose yourself to great Saints, genuinely great
• 1:21:10
  men and women who oftentimes just did really ordinary things
• 1:21:14
  extraordinarily well, is to go. I mean, this is what this is
• 1:21:18
  what converts Ignatius of Loyola.
• 1:21:21
  You know, Ignatius is the typical man.
• 1:21:22
  He's living for himself. He, he, he wants to be
• 1:21:25
  attractive to women. He wants pride, he wants ego, he
• 1:21:27
  wants vanity, he wants wealth, Gets his leg almost blown off
• 1:21:31
  lying in bed, asks for a book about, you know, celebrities of
• 1:21:35
  that time. They bring him the lives of the
• 1:21:36
  Saints. He reads the lives of the
• 1:21:37
  Saints. He's like, why can't God do that
• 1:21:39
  in me? And then Ignatius starts the
• 1:21:43
  Society of Jesus and the Jesuits.
• 1:21:46
  Well, like that's what's supposed to happen to all of us.
• 1:21:49
  But it won't happen if I don't meet God and I don't meet his
• 1:21:51
  friends. But you meet God and you meet
• 1:21:53
  his friends, and then you just like Ignatius or Joan, you say,
• 1:21:57
  hey, I want to be great, but I don't want to be great for me.
• 1:22:00
  I want to be great for you. Who cares if anybody ever knows
• 1:22:03
  who I am? Give a flip.
• 1:22:06
  But I want everybody to know who God is, and that's magnanimity.
• 1:22:11
  That's what Joan has. That's what's behind.
• 1:22:13
  I'm not afraid. God's with me.
• 1:22:15
  I was born for this. That's not pride.
• 1:22:19
  Sounds like pride, but it's not pride.
• 1:22:21
  That's magnanimity. God gave me gifts.
• 1:22:25
  I want to use them to glorify him.
• 1:22:27
  I'll let him worry out all the details.
• 1:22:30
  And and he's done that with every single person.
• 1:22:33
  There isn't anybody who's not a masterpiece, even if nobody
• 1:22:36
  knows who you are, because that's not greatness.
• 1:22:39
  Greatness is just responding to what it is that He's given us to
• 1:22:42
  do in such a way that pleases and honors Him and helps change
• 1:22:45
  the world. Even if it's just this little
• 1:22:47
  neighborhood or my house. That makes sense, yes.
• 1:22:51
  Inspiring. That's how you live life.
• 1:22:53
  That's like, that's greatness, not being on TV.
• 1:22:56
  You need those, you need the, you need community.
• 1:22:59
  I mean, we talk a lot. We can talk about a lot about
• 1:23:01
  community, but you need the people that have done it and we
• 1:23:04
  can prove they've done it. We know they've done, we have
• 1:23:06
  confidence they've done it. And there's such diversity of
• 1:23:09
  the Saints. That's what's so inspiring.
• 1:23:11
  You can find a St. for any random thing, and they're
• 1:23:14
  there's. How many canonized Saints are
• 1:23:15
  there? There's thousands of them.
• 1:23:17
  Yeah. There's so many I guess.
• 1:23:18
  We do know, but I don't. Know And then there's private
• 1:23:20
  devotions that one can have too, to people that are holy, that
• 1:23:22
  have gone before us. And there's so much wealth in
• 1:23:24
  that. Yeah, we and, and you know, like
• 1:23:26
  Hebrews talks about in Hebrews 12, you know, since we are
• 1:23:28
  surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses.
• 1:23:31
  So this, this is an image that the Lord gave me years ago.
• 1:23:33
  I love, I love watching football.
• 1:23:34
  So I, I came home one night. I'm watching a football game on
• 1:23:38
  a Saturday night after mass. I turn on the TV.
• 1:23:40
  It's, it's two teams. I get to give a flying flip
• 1:23:42
  about and, but I'm watching it anyway.
• 1:23:45
  And it's a packed stadium and everybody's got white pom poms
• 1:23:48
  and they're all like on their feet screaming and whatnot.
• 1:23:51
  As I'm sitting there and the stadium's two tiered stadium and
• 1:23:54
  it's bouncing. It's so obnoxiously loud.
• 1:23:56
  And the game hasn't started yet. It's the pregame.
• 1:24:00
  And it's like this. And as I'm watching this, I, I
• 1:24:02
  felt like the Lord said, John, that's heaven.
• 1:24:07
  And and the IT brought me immediately to Hebrews 12 in
• 1:24:09
  that passage after Hebrews 11, which is the Great Hall of faith
• 1:24:13
  and all these heroes of the Old Testament.
• 1:24:15
  And then the the author of Hebrews says, since we're
• 1:24:17
  surrounded by them now run the race that's set before us,
• 1:24:22
  keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of our
• 1:24:26
  faith. And the imagery there in Hebrews
• 1:24:28
  is clearly athletic, like we're on a, we're on a field in a
• 1:24:32
  stadium and in the stands are the Saints.
• 1:24:37
  And the the Saints aren't watching us any more than people
• 1:24:40
  go to a football game to watch a game.
• 1:24:42
  You don't go to a football game to watch a game.
• 1:24:45
  You go to a football game to change the outcome.
• 1:24:47
  That's why you want to play at home because 80,000 people on
• 1:24:51
  their feet screaming, cheering, Yeah, you, you inspire me to do
• 1:24:54
  things that on my own, like. That's why we go to football
• 1:24:57
  games. That's why.
• 1:24:59
  The cheering is going to make, That's true.
• 1:25:00
  If that's why people cheer not enough, they always win.
• 1:25:02
  That's right. That's why the home field's
• 1:25:04
  called the 12th man. Wow, interesting.
• 1:25:05
  Right. Because I can do something in
• 1:25:08
  front of a huge crowd, you know, whether you're a gymnast or a
• 1:25:11
  football player or a or an actor that I could never do on a
• 1:25:16
  stage, you know, in junior high or in my backyard in front of
• 1:25:20
  mom and dad. But somehow these people
• 1:25:21
  cheering for me, oh, that, that rouses me to greatness.
• 1:25:26
  That's the Saints. The Saints aren't watching.
• 1:25:30
  And so they've handed us the baton like we did our part.
• 1:25:34
  We were great. You'd be great.
• 1:25:37
  And then come join us. But don't join us until you run
• 1:25:41
  the race. Don't join us until you finish
• 1:25:43
  what it is you. Got to play, get out.
• 1:25:45
  There you got to play get off the.
• 1:25:46
  Bench and play. That's exactly right.
• 1:25:49
  And that that's the beauty of what Communion enables us to do.
• 1:25:52
  That's why we need friendship. That's both with the Saints in
• 1:25:55
  in heaven and the Saints here on earth.
• 1:25:57
  They inspire us to do great things.
• 1:25:59
  They inspire me to do great things.
• 1:26:01
  I play. I inspire them to do great
• 1:26:03
  things. I asked you to share more about
• 1:26:08
  #3 but we you were just about to get to 4 and you alluded to it.
• 1:26:11
  So the 4th is is based on everything you revealed.
• 1:26:15
  Lord, what name you call me the thing that's most holding me
• 1:26:21
  back from wholeheartedly following you, the primary
• 1:26:23
  strategy, the enemy, what you've revealed.
• 1:26:26
  Now, based on all that, what's the single most important thing
• 1:26:28
  in my life for me to focus on? Where do you want me to attack,
• 1:26:32
  you know, or what's most important right now?
• 1:26:34
  And that's how you make plans. That is such a great four step
• 1:26:40
  process. Well, I was going to say it
• 1:26:43
  works, but he works. It's so good, I love that.
• 1:26:48
  I wish everyone was taught that. That's why we're trying to teach
• 1:26:51
  everybody that, and we can do that individually.
• 1:26:54
  Like I can bring those questions to the Lord and then you and
• 1:26:56
  your husband can do that collectively.
• 1:26:59
  So you can ask, as a married couple, what's our name?
• 1:27:01
  What's our? The first question would be
• 1:27:03
  different. The first question would be,
• 1:27:04
  Lord, what's the single biggest gift you've given to us as a
• 1:27:07
  married couple? Wow, I love that we.
• 1:27:10
  Got a lot of gifts but what's the most significant gift we
• 1:27:13
  have? And then you do the same.
• 1:27:17
  Question, what's the biggest wound in our relationship as a
• 1:27:21
  couple or the thing that's most holding us back from
• 1:27:24
  wholeheartedly being the couple on mission that you created us
• 1:27:27
  to be? What's the enemy's primary
• 1:27:29
  strategy against us? And then based on all those
• 1:27:33
  things, Lord, where do you want us to attack?
• 1:27:35
  So we teach bishops this, we teach pastors this.
• 1:27:39
  We teach married couples this, We teach business owners this to
• 1:27:43
  anybody this. So you encourage people to do
• 1:27:45
  this exercise individually in prayer and then and it could be
• 1:27:49
  done. You think it has to be broken
• 1:27:51
  into four days? Or could it all be done on the
• 1:27:52
  same day? It's too much to do on one day.
• 1:27:54
  Give it, give us. A lot.
• 1:27:56
  We can do as many as three in a day, but four in a day is a lot.
• 1:27:59
  So save the last for the next day.
• 1:28:01
  Yeah, but we do. Finale.
• 1:28:03
  Yeah, although it it's kind of a downer to end on, like what's
• 1:28:06
  the enemy's primary strategy in my life?
• 1:28:07
  So you might do two and two, depends on what.
• 1:28:10
  That's what you're that you go to bed with that you have the
• 1:28:12
  bad dreams. Yeah, it does.
• 1:28:13
  So, so do it individually, ideally over 4 days and then do
• 1:28:16
  it as a married couple. You mentioned priests and you
• 1:28:19
  mentioned bishops and business owners.
• 1:28:20
  Are you you recommend that in addition to doing individually,
• 1:28:24
  they do it with their? Leadership teams.
• 1:28:27
  Leadership teams. So those with whom you lead,
• 1:28:29
  whoever it is, so if you've got people with you who know the
• 1:28:33
  Lord talks, they know how the Lord talks to them, they have a
• 1:28:36
  biblical worldview, you can be at least reasonably comfortable
• 1:28:41
  and engaging in healthy conflict because you're going to have to
• 1:28:45
  have some healthy conflict. If you've got those kinds of
• 1:28:47
  people with you, then you can't like, so you know, say you and I
• 1:28:51
  are husband and wife, we can go into Chapel together and we can
• 1:28:54
  pray on the same question. We can come out, we'll go out
• 1:28:57
  for dinner afterwards and go. What'd you hear?
• 1:29:01
  So you you recommend their that the prayer be done not
• 1:29:04
  physically together, but you separate and pray and then come
• 1:29:07
  back together and. I'd go together if you're doing
• 1:29:09
  them collectively. Collectively after.
• 1:29:11
  I would go together. But would you recommend not
• 1:29:13
  doing this collectively with the leadership team unless they've
• 1:29:15
  done it individually first? Yes, that's a great question and
• 1:29:19
  sharing with each other the answers that they got.
• 1:29:21
  Individually, that's that's pretty personal.
• 1:29:24
  That's why it works, because what that does is it it just
• 1:29:28
  builds vulnerability. So now when we're going to go in
• 1:29:32
  and start talking collectively about what the Lord's revealing,
• 1:29:36
  we already know each other in a much deeper way than we ever
• 1:29:39
  knew each other before. Do you think all business owners
• 1:29:41
  should do this? No, not unless you believe in
• 1:29:44
  God, believe he talks, and you've got the people.
• 1:29:47
  You gotta have the right people with you.
• 1:29:48
  You can't do this with people who are not believers.
• 1:29:50
  They'd be pretty difficult. Or you or you couldn't and you
• 1:29:53
  couldn't do this with people that there's just like issues
• 1:29:55
  with like existential like yeah, you know, there's not like a
• 1:29:58
  peaceful, harmonious relationship already that that
• 1:30:01
  pre exists. We have to, you know, like we
• 1:30:03
  would say you've got to be able to be brutally on, brutally
• 1:30:06
  honest with each other without being brutal to each other.
• 1:30:09
  Do you think that this process is essential to build truly
• 1:30:13
  world changing organizations and businesses?
• 1:30:17
  I would never try to do it without it anymore.
• 1:30:21
  This, this, this. So transforms every person we've
• 1:30:27
  ever. I mean, it's transformed me.
• 1:30:29
  It's transformed us as a ministry.
• 1:30:31
  It's transformed everybody we've worked with.
• 1:30:33
  I would never try to do this otherwise.
• 1:30:35
  What happens is we resort to brainstorming or best practices.
• 1:30:38
  Well, good grief, I don't want to.
• 1:30:40
  There's nothing wrong with those things.
• 1:30:41
  That's fine. Let's utilize brainstorming.
• 1:30:43
  Let's utilize best practices, but I don't want to rely on
• 1:30:45
  those. I want to rely on what He's
• 1:30:47
  asking us to do because just because something worked for,
• 1:30:50
  you know, like all these other places doesn't really just going
• 1:30:52
  to work for me because I'm a unique couple.
• 1:30:55
  I'm a unique family. We're a unique business, We're a
• 1:30:57
  unique organization, and God's got a unique plan for us.
• 1:31:01
  So utilize those other things, but don't use those to make
• 1:31:04
  decisions. Let Him tell you what the
• 1:31:06
  decision is informed by those things, right?
• 1:31:10
  So we'll let the data inform us, but we're not going to rely on
• 1:31:13
  it. We're going to rely on what He
• 1:31:14
  reveals in prayer. How did you come up with this?
• 1:31:18
  Like boiling this discernment process down to these four
• 1:31:21
  questions. It was a distinction.
• 1:31:23
  So we we think there's actually a principle and then we think
• 1:31:26
  there's a method of applying the principle.
• 1:31:28
  The principle is simply this. We, we have to learn how to
• 1:31:30
  restore the initiative to God. That's the principle.
• 1:31:34
  So Cardinal Contella Mesa, who was the Pope's preacher for
• 1:31:39
  decades, he gave an address to all the bishops 8910 years ago,
• 1:31:44
  something like that. And in it he had this great
• 1:31:47
  line. He says, you know, the apostles
• 1:31:48
  and the Saints, they didn't just pray before they did their work.
• 1:31:53
  They prayed in order to know what to do.
• 1:31:55
  We need to learn how to do that. We do.
• 1:31:58
  So the principle is learning how to pray in order to know what to
• 1:32:02
  do, or what we call restoring the initiative back to God.
• 1:32:05
  Why didn't they put this in the scripture?
• 1:32:07
  Well, they did. It's called Our Lady.
• 1:32:08
  It's in Luke 1. She's doing the four steps.
• 1:32:11
  She's not doing the four steps, but she's certainly restoring
• 1:32:13
  the initiative to God. So that's the principle.
• 1:32:16
  I mean it would be how are these questions?
• 1:32:17
  I mean, not, not not to sound crazy here, but and I think
• 1:32:20
  about like the obviously Holy Scripture is, you know, it's God
• 1:32:23
  and God's word. It's inspired, you know,
• 1:32:25
  divinely inspired everything else.
• 1:32:26
  But like, I think this is this, this question of like how to
• 1:32:30
  discern things, how to figure things out, how to know who I
• 1:32:33
  am. It's plagued the human person
• 1:32:36
  since the beginning of time. Really.
• 1:32:37
  As soon as we fell, we like got all messed up and didn't know
• 1:32:40
  what way was it right side up. And there is, I think a very
• 1:32:44
  beautiful simplicity and clarity in this mechanism that you're,
• 1:32:47
  you've been employing, I should say, deploying.
• 1:32:51
  Yeah, we think so too. I mean, it's, it's, it's, you
• 1:32:54
  know, the, the things we would say about what God's given us.
• 1:32:57
  Everything he's given us is very simple.
• 1:33:00
  It's just not easy. Things have to be simple.
• 1:33:04
  When did you start using the four steps?
• 1:33:06
  You call them the four steps. No.
• 1:33:08
  So again, what we teach is the principal.
• 1:33:10
  The questions are in application of the principal, but the
• 1:33:13
  principal is not limited to those questions.
• 1:33:14
  Could be other questions. Yeah, you, you like, you could,
• 1:33:17
  you know, a couple could go into the Lord or they could go with
• 1:33:20
  their family and bring all sorts of other questions about what
• 1:33:22
  the Lord might be, you know, one to put on our hearts that we
• 1:33:25
  want to get clarity on. But those are the places that we
• 1:33:27
  might suggest you start. But it sounds like the principle
• 1:33:31
  is like you said, you're receiving from the Lord, you're
• 1:33:33
  letting him be in in command, him be the Lord, truly the Lord
• 1:33:37
  of your life. Here's the pen.
• 1:33:38
  And you have to ask questions. I think like that's the Lord.
• 1:33:40
  You know, you have to knock on the door.
• 1:33:42
  You have to seek and you will find.
• 1:33:43
  You have to ask and you'll be answered.
• 1:33:45
  You have to ask. And I think we've lost the art
• 1:33:47
  of asking good questions about our own lives and our own
• 1:33:50
  futures. Oh yes, and and the Lord will
• 1:33:53
  speak if we ask him. And he wants to ask us questions
• 1:33:55
  too. Like annoying questions like you
• 1:33:59
  want to be. Well, this is a really annoying
• 1:34:03
  question. Do you want to be well?
• 1:34:04
  Yeah. Do you want me to heal you?
• 1:34:05
  Yeah, do. You want me to heal you?
• 1:34:08
  Like he says that to somebody who's been sick for 38 years.
• 1:34:11
  You think? My gosh, would I?
• 1:34:12
  And you think that's because they just given up and they were
• 1:34:14
  kind of like resigned to their. Well, I don't know.
• 1:34:16
  When you ask me that question, I say I don't know because I like
• 1:34:18
  my I like some of my illnesses. They're why they're my excuses.
• 1:34:24
  They're why I'm not better. I don't know how I'd live
• 1:34:26
  without these. Wow.
• 1:34:28
  You know, in a strange way, they can even become your identity.
• 1:34:31
  That's who I am. No, it's not.
• 1:34:33
  You're my son. You're my daughter.
• 1:34:34
  That's who you are. So do you want to be well, or
• 1:34:37
  what would you like me to do for you?
• 1:34:40
  You know, imagine asking a guy who can't see that question
• 1:34:42
  because Jesus does. Hello, blind man.
• 1:34:45
  What would you like me to do for you?
• 1:34:48
  Well, I'd really like to be able to see, but in order to say
• 1:34:56
  that, I have to have the faith that you can actually do that.
• 1:34:58
  So I don't know that I have the courage to say that.
• 1:35:01
  So the Lord asks questions. We can ask Him questions too,
• 1:35:04
  and He loves it when we ask Him questions.
• 1:35:07
  Then we just have to be ready for whatever He says.
• 1:35:10
  One thing that I feel that a lot of people along with what you
• 1:35:13
  just shared, which is so powerful, those four questions
• 1:35:16
  is, you know, Lord, do you want me to dream of something or
• 1:35:20
  Matt, like is there something more of like that?
• 1:35:23
  I'm not thinking big enough, Lord.
• 1:35:25
  And I think this is an area in my life I've had to like,
• 1:35:29
  practice because I think when we want to be humble, we want to,
• 1:35:33
  you know, we want to be obedient servants of our Lord.
• 1:35:37
  We want to not, you know, it's not about us, it's about him,
• 1:35:39
  you know, everything, right? So I think there's a fear of
• 1:35:42
  greatness because people are afraid of being proud or they're
• 1:35:47
  not wanting to go side, you know, get sidetracked or go the
• 1:35:51
  wrong direction. How do you counsel people?
• 1:35:54
  So go back to Joan because I think that's that's, I think
• 1:35:57
  that's a spot on challenge for lots of people.
• 1:36:00
  We're all tempted to pride. We all have an ego.
• 1:36:04
  We're all prone to be vain, everybody.
• 1:36:09
  Magnanimity, which is what Joan has, is literally greatness of
• 1:36:13
  soul. That's a heck of a virtue to
• 1:36:16
  have. So greatness of soul is just
• 1:36:19
  this awareness of you're a great God.
• 1:36:23
  You don't give chancy gifts to anybody.
• 1:36:28
  And I'm your creature. And not just your creature, but
• 1:36:30
  your son or your daughter. You've entrusted things to me.
• 1:36:34
  I want to make a good return on these.
• 1:36:36
  So help me arouse within me a desire to do great things, not
• 1:36:41
  for me again, but for you. And then, you know, like
• 1:36:45
  hopefully we've got people in our lives who can speak into our
• 1:36:48
  lives when they're when we're prone to go astray and go, hey,
• 1:36:52
  it's becoming a lot about you right now.
• 1:36:55
  But here's a question if you never hear that.
• 1:36:58
  Never hear what? Oh, are you going a little much
• 1:37:01
  to, to yourself? Like, are you doing this for you
• 1:37:04
  or is it meaning if you never take the risk?
• 1:37:06
  Because I just think about the parable of the talents.
• 1:37:08
  I think you mentioned it kind of haunts you.
• 1:37:09
  It definitely has haunted me in my life.
• 1:37:11
  And I'm sure the guy who buried the talent, maybe you could have
• 1:37:14
  an interpretation while he was like, I don't want to like be
• 1:37:16
  too cool for school. I don't want to.
• 1:37:18
  It's not just I don't want to fail or I don't want to work
• 1:37:20
  hard or I don't trust the master.
• 1:37:21
  It could also just be like, I don't trust myself.
• 1:37:23
  Oh yeah. And so I'm, I'm afraid that I'm
• 1:37:26
  going to whatever the hang up is.
• 1:37:28
  But it might be he was afraid of his own pride.
• 1:37:32
  Yeah, it might have been, but so again, there's that fear.
• 1:37:34
  Again that's that's a huge stronghold of the enemy.
• 1:37:37
  So we need to be in this deep community with the Lord and then
• 1:37:40
  we need deep communion with others who can rouse us to do
• 1:37:44
  great things that we can do great things with and who will
• 1:37:48
  be loving, honest, close enough friends to us and us to them
• 1:37:54
  that we can say, hey, this is not anymore about God.
• 1:37:58
  That looked a lot like about you like we need I need that.
• 1:38:01
  We need that. Otherwise, if you're a Lone
• 1:38:04
  Ranger, you're in trouble because the enemy will play all
• 1:38:08
  over that. Look how successful you are.
• 1:38:11
  Look at what you're able to do. Look at this and it's just like
• 1:38:16
  just start entertaining all sorts of thoughts.
• 1:38:18
  And then then you're, I mean, God has a way of dealing with
• 1:38:20
  people like that. You just pulls the rug out and
• 1:38:24
  lets you fall on your face and you're like, what do you think
• 1:38:26
  now? How?
• 1:38:29
  How independent are you? You need me.
• 1:38:32
  And that's a good thing. But if we have friends with us,
• 1:38:35
  it spares the step of him pulling the rug out from under
• 1:38:37
  us and us landing on our face, which happens often I think.
• 1:38:42
  What kind of changes have you seen in people's lives who for
• 1:38:46
  the maybe first time pray like this?
• 1:38:51
  Security, peace, joy. These sound like buzzwords, but
• 1:38:57
  they're not. I mean, like security is really
• 1:38:59
  amazing confidence, excitement with with regards to like we're
• 1:39:06
  fired up again for mission. It's like God could have created
• 1:39:11
  you to be alive at any moment in history.
• 1:39:12
  He chose now like God chose me to be alive now.
• 1:39:17
  And so for every person to come to realize that like, well, I
• 1:39:21
  got a purpose for my life right now.
• 1:39:24
  And, and the Lord's revealing that to me in all these
• 1:39:27
  different ways that he reveals it to me.
• 1:39:29
  And so I'm, I'm living my life not as an automaton and
• 1:39:34
  certainly not in a boring fashion.
• 1:39:37
  I'm living my life in this drama of friendship with God.
• 1:39:40
  And he's saying to me, Hey, why don't you collaborate with me
• 1:39:43
  today and recreating my world? Would you like to do that?
• 1:39:47
  Because I love this world. That's why I made it.
• 1:39:50
  And one day I'm going to remake it all.
• 1:39:52
  But in the meantime, I want to use you as like my working
• 1:39:57
  instrument in it to help me get this part of the world back.
• 1:40:03
  And I think when people will experience that, oh, it's just
• 1:40:05
  exciting, especially when they experience it together.
• 1:40:08
  Then they go on mission together.
• 1:40:11
  They don't just keep the machine running.
• 1:40:13
  They they go on mission together and they they engage and they.
• 1:40:18
  They, they get enlivened and they, and they're, and they're
• 1:40:20
  confident as they go out and doing what they're doing
• 1:40:23
  together, whatever it is, as a, as a couple, as a organization,
• 1:40:26
  as a parish, as a presbyterate, whatever the case might be.
• 1:40:29
  And, and oh, and by the way, the one who's sending us, he
• 1:40:32
  defeated death, he defeated sin, he defeated Satan.
• 1:40:37
  He has no rival. He's the one who's calling us to
• 1:40:39
  go. So let's go.
• 1:40:42
  What advice do you have for business owners or nonprofit
• 1:40:45
  ministry leaders who are trying to put together teams, but maybe
• 1:40:50
  they're in the secular space and so they're not like necessarily
• 1:40:53
  just going to hire or they want to be open to not just hiring
• 1:40:57
  Christians or people who would be able to pray like this.
• 1:40:59
  But at the same time, if they want to have a transformational,
• 1:41:02
  maybe business, certainly non profit, they want to be able to
• 1:41:06
  use this approach of really receiving from God's spirit.
• 1:41:10
  What is the plan uniquely for this entity or what should I do?
• 1:41:15
  Yeah, a couple things come to mind.
• 1:41:17
  So every organization has to have clarity on its culture,
• 1:41:21
  like who are we? Why do we exist?
• 1:41:23
  How do we behave? Like those are really important
• 1:41:26
  questions. So I can be, so let's put in a
• 1:41:30
  for profit company. You know, I can be a seriously
• 1:41:33
  devout disciple of Jesus and not have to, you know, hire only
• 1:41:40
  believers. But everybody that I hire,
• 1:41:43
  they'll want to know, well, what is this organization all about?
• 1:41:47
  Like what do we do? How do we behave?
• 1:41:50
  What is our purpose for existing?
• 1:41:53
  And so I want to invite people into I I have to, as a leader, I
• 1:41:56
  got to cast a vision for what we're about.
• 1:41:59
  Otherwise you're going to be frustrated.
• 1:42:00
  You're going to have a job. I don't want you to just have a
• 1:42:01
  job. And that's not very fulfilling.
• 1:42:04
  You want mission, even if you're not a believer, you want
• 1:42:06
  mission. So this is what we're about.
• 1:42:08
  You want to be a part of it. Yeah, I do.
• 1:42:10
  I'm a serious disciple of Jesus. That's great.
• 1:42:12
  That's fine. I'm not.
• 1:42:13
  But I love the mission, so I'm in.
• 1:42:15
  So I think we, we have to, if we're leading something, we have
• 1:42:19
  to know why we're doing what we're doing.
• 1:42:21
  We're not just trying to make money.
• 1:42:24
  But if I'm a disciple of Jesus and I'm leading something and I
• 1:42:27
  want people to help me lead for profit, not-for-profit.
• 1:42:32
  I'll do much better if the people who are helping me lead
• 1:42:34
  think the way I think. They don't pare at me, but they
• 1:42:37
  have the same worldview that I have.
• 1:42:39
  Because now we can go as the leaders and we can pray about,
• 1:42:43
  sort all sorts of things, and then we can continue just to
• 1:42:46
  impart vision to those that were entrusted with the task of
• 1:42:50
  leading so that we're doing whatever we're doing.
• 1:42:53
  Do you think parents should do the this sort of exercise and
• 1:42:57
  this sort of prayer with their children?
• 1:42:59
  I know parents who have one of the guys on our team.
• 1:43:01
  He did it with his, he's got 8 kids.
• 1:43:04
  He did it with his children, aged 30 to the 13.
• 1:43:08
  As a group. As a group, like they all went
• 1:43:10
  away, they said we're going to play with these things.
• 1:43:12
  He and his wife had done a. Family mission.
• 1:43:14
  Yep. So did they.
• 1:43:15
  Had they done it individually before that all the kids or they
• 1:43:18
  were going to do it and then do the family mission?
• 1:43:20
  I I don't know if they had done the four individual exercises
• 1:43:23
  alone, but I know they did the four together.
• 1:43:25
  The the husband and the wife did them themselves first about the
• 1:43:27
  family and then they invited the kids to pray into it.
• 1:43:30
  Kids got the same answers that the husband and wife got.
• 1:43:32
  Stop it 13 to 30. Do you think families have
• 1:43:36
  missions? Absolutely.
• 1:43:37
  And marriages have missions. Absolutely.
• 1:43:40
  The mission of a married couple simply I think, is to help the
• 1:43:45
  other know who God is. So my dad, my dad was my hero.
• 1:43:49
  My mom and dad were married 66 years.
• 1:43:51
  My mom went through a horrible trauma of of a divorce, a really
• 1:43:56
  bad divorce, when she was in college.
• 1:43:58
  My dad, when he married my mom, knew my mom's wounds.
• 1:44:03
  So she was the only daughter of my grandfather who had walked
• 1:44:06
  out on her mom left her feeling rejected, discarded, unloved,
• 1:44:16
  even though she in the world's eyes had everything.
• 1:44:21
  So my dad knew his mission was to heal that.
• 1:44:24
  You know that the Ani Ma Christi prayer, which I love, you know
• 1:44:27
  the one line is within your wounds hide me, which doesn't
• 1:44:31
  mean protect me from getting hurt.
• 1:44:34
  It means wherever there's pain, Lord in your body, place me like
• 1:44:40
  use me as a salve to heal that. So when you get married, please
• 1:44:45
  God, you know each other's lives.
• 1:44:48
  And sometimes we end up pushing each other's buttons, which is
• 1:44:52
  not the purpose of knowing each other's lives, but in knowing
• 1:44:55
  each other's lives, we're supposed to be able to say to
• 1:44:57
  the Lord, Lord, I know that's his wound, use me to heal it.
• 1:45:02
  And so my dad, who was super successful, he made his life's
• 1:45:07
  goal. I'm going to let you know the
• 1:45:11
  system, my mom, that you're not rejected and not discarded and
• 1:45:15
  not unloved. And he just demonstrated that
• 1:45:17
  over and over and over again. So my dad died 1st and right
• 1:45:21
  before my dad as just as we started the funeral, we're about
• 1:45:24
  to process down the main aisle and my mom's in a wheelchair at
• 1:45:27
  this point. She wheels herself over to my
• 1:45:29
  dad's casket and she puts her hand on his arm and like I just
• 1:45:35
  happened to be standing there and I think she was utterly
• 1:45:38
  oblivious. And she looks at my dad's body
• 1:45:40
  and she says, Honey, because of you, I know who God is.
• 1:45:49
  How beautiful. That's the purpose of that's the
• 1:45:51
  mission of marriage. Marriage is a sacrament, visible
• 1:45:54
  sign of an invisible reality. Visible sign.
• 1:45:56
  You just, you just Lila get your husband.
• 1:46:01
  I think a lot of couples just start to for bear with each
• 1:46:05
  other or just sort of tolerate each other instead of really
• 1:46:10
  dynamically developing an intimacy that is moving towards
• 1:46:14
  growth and healing and restoration.
• 1:46:17
  Because that work could be so complex and there's so many
• 1:46:20
  challenges. It's so fraught, right?
• 1:46:22
  But it sounds like what you're saying is instead of forbearing
• 1:46:25
  with the wounds of the other or the issues or the unresolved
• 1:46:29
  stuff of the other, the prayer should not just be like, give me
• 1:46:32
  patience. Let me just deal with this
• 1:46:33
  person. The prayer should be like, help
• 1:46:35
  me help me be healing. Not help.
• 1:46:37
  Not that you're going to go out and be the doctor, but help me
• 1:46:40
  be healing in their lives. Yeah, don't.
• 1:46:43
  Yeah, great. I love the distinction.
• 1:46:45
  There's not. Lord help me to fix.
• 1:46:47
  Them help me fix them right? It's help me use me to be a
• 1:46:51
  means by which that pain can get healed.
• 1:46:53
  Beautiful, because that's what the Lord wants to do.
• 1:46:55
  That's so beautiful. And it's possible.
• 1:46:59
  Have you seen it healing happen in marriages?
• 1:47:02
  Oh yeah. Have you seen guys, after
• 1:47:05
  they've worked with you and your team, like totally change their
• 1:47:07
  life, blow up their lives? Oh yeah, almost, almost
• 1:47:12
  universally, everybody goes through these week long
• 1:47:14
  immersives that we do. They leave utterly transformed.
• 1:47:18
  That's why we say it's not like it's not that it works, It's
• 1:47:21
  that God works because God wants to do this.
• 1:47:24
  God wants his world back. Have you seen people do like
• 1:47:26
  super dramatic things afterwards?
• 1:47:28
  Like quit something, start something, you know?
• 1:47:31
  Have we seen people step off the teams realizing I can't do this?
• 1:47:34
  Oh, meaning like I I'm opting out.
• 1:47:35
  I'm not. You don't have to find me.
• 1:47:36
  I. Can't, I can't do this like this
• 1:47:38
  is this is asking too much of me.
• 1:47:39
  And that's a great thing because that now they're going to find a
• 1:47:41
  better place for them to be right.
• 1:47:43
  So that's a good thing. This is not for me.
• 1:47:45
  Yeah, and we've seen other teams just go from like maintaining
• 1:47:48
  status quo to suddenly we are wholeheartedly in the game,
• 1:47:53
  whether as as a Chancery office or a Bishop and his team or a
• 1:47:56
  pastor who's just like we're just suddenly turned on to
• 1:47:59
  whatever God wants us to do. Amazing.
• 1:48:01
  Have you done marriage retreats with this?
• 1:48:04
  Yeah, we've had married couples come to us for some of the.
• 1:48:07
  We could totally do marriage retreats with it.
• 1:48:09
  Not to give you more work. I know you guys are a little
• 1:48:10
  busy but. We loved it.
• 1:48:13
  It works in every context. Yes, it as long as.
• 1:48:15
  You've got the ingredients of I have a biblical worldview.
• 1:48:19
  We can have good healthy debate and we believe that God talks.
• 1:48:22
  Let's go talk to him and let's talk about what he says all.
• 1:48:25
  Right. I've got to ask, you know, we've
• 1:48:26
  got to wrap it in here in a minute, but what does this mean
• 1:48:29
  for the ecumenic, for ecumenism and for unity in the Church?
• 1:48:34
  Because I get the privilege and I was raised Protestant, I
• 1:48:37
  became Catholic folks, some of my story in the show, but I, we
• 1:48:40
  interview a lot of different and have a lot of different people
• 1:48:42
  on the show, different faith backgrounds.
• 1:48:44
  And you know, my, my, one of my deepest goals and hearts and
• 1:48:48
  missions is Christian unity. I think we're all supposed to be
• 1:48:52
  1 and in many ways we are. We're one in baptism.
• 1:48:54
  We're one in the name of Jesus. But there's more to the faith
• 1:48:56
  than the name of Jesus means so much, right?
• 1:49:00
  And how we live to live together and how we, how we're supposed
• 1:49:02
  to break bread. You know, the Eucharist is, I
• 1:49:04
  believe the soul, you know, body, blood, soul and divinity
• 1:49:06
  of Jesus. So what does this look like to
• 1:49:10
  do this kind of on mission work with between Catholics and
• 1:49:15
  Protestants and Orthodox? So imagine what would happen if
• 1:49:18
  Christian leaders, rather than sat around and had a bunch of
• 1:49:22
  apologetic conversations about why we aren't all one said, you
• 1:49:28
  know what? Why don't we scrap that?
• 1:49:30
  Why don't we just go into a place where we all feel
• 1:49:33
  comfortable praying and we bring him some questions because only
• 1:49:38
  God together. Yeah, because only God's going
• 1:49:40
  to fix this disunity that's there and.
• 1:49:42
  And sometimes we're not sure what God's will is.
• 1:49:46
  In this case, we know what God's will is.
• 1:49:49
  Jesus is fervent prayer is for the unity of all those who
• 1:49:52
  believe in him so that the world will believe that the Father
• 1:49:55
  sent the Son, and so that the world will believe that the
• 1:49:58
  Father loves them the way he loves the Son.
• 1:50:00
  So we know this is a passionate desire of God.
• 1:50:05
  So what if we actually went into wherever we're going to go to
• 1:50:08
  pray? We're going to say, how about we
• 1:50:10
  take an hour and we ask the Lord, all of us together who
• 1:50:13
  love him and who are saddened over the disunity that exists
• 1:50:17
  between US, and who want more but don't know how to fix it.
• 1:50:20
  And brainstorming isn't going to fix it.
• 1:50:22
  And no one's shown us how to fix it.
• 1:50:24
  And me giving you a catechism doesn't fix it.
• 1:50:27
  How about we go ask Him? Lord, you do what only you can
• 1:50:30
  do, because this looks like a way we need a way out of No way.
• 1:50:33
  That's what we need and this is what you do.
• 1:50:36
  You bring dead things back to life and hopeless situations.
• 1:50:40
  You give hope. So how about we go ask them,
• 1:50:42
  Lord, what's the biggest gift that we have as as brothers and
• 1:50:44
  sisters? That's that should be the
• 1:50:46
  question. What's the biggest gift?
• 1:50:48
  Just. Like a married couple.
• 1:50:49
  The good news, Bad news Sandwich.
• 1:50:51
  Yeah. So what's the, what's the,
• 1:50:52
  what's the biggest gift you've entrusted to us?
• 1:50:54
  Beautiful. Then what's holding us back from
• 1:50:57
  being in Unity? What do you think it?
• 1:51:00
  Is I don't. Know I think it'll be different
• 1:51:02
  for different groups of people. I don't know.
• 1:51:04
  It might be because I think I don't know how God's going to
• 1:51:08
  do. This Catholics might get, oh,
• 1:51:09
  you're too, you act too judgy. And the Protestants might get,
• 1:51:12
  come on, just just accept. Just accept Rome.
• 1:51:16
  I don't know. I I don't either.
• 1:51:18
  That's why like people ask questions and it's like we have
• 1:51:20
  to go ask him. I don't know what God's going to
• 1:51:22
  answer, but I do know he's going to answer because he wants to
• 1:51:24
  fix this. He wants to heal this.
• 1:51:26
  He wants his body together and then we ask him what's the
• 1:51:30
  enemy's strategy, his primary strategy against us and he'll,
• 1:51:35
  he'll speak into that and then we're going to get to OK.
• 1:51:38
  Based on what you've revealed as our biggest gift and our
• 1:51:41
  relationship as brothers and sisters, even though we're
• 1:51:43
  separated, what's the thing that's holding us back from
• 1:51:47
  being together on mission to go out and share the gospel and
• 1:51:49
  change the world? What's the enemy's primary
• 1:51:52
  strategy against us as believers Now, based on what you've
• 1:51:55
  revealed, Lord, where do you want us to attack?
• 1:51:58
  Oh, wouldn't that be amazing? Oh yes, What if, Martin?
• 1:52:02
  What if Martin Luther had done that?
• 1:52:04
  We wouldn't have had. But we could have had, because
• 1:52:07
  you could have hardness of heart.
• 1:52:08
  You can hear from the Lord and you can say I don't want to do
• 1:52:12
  that. But less likely if I'm with
• 1:52:14
  other people doing. It that's true.
• 1:52:16
  Because you'll call me on. Yes, that's true.
• 1:52:18
  And we will discern together. I don't think that's what the
• 1:52:21
  Lord's saying. I think this is what the Lord.
• 1:52:22
  Yeah, what if all the Protestants say, well, you're
• 1:52:25
  supposed to give up these parts of your Catholic faith?
• 1:52:27
  And the Orthodox say, yeah, you're in the wrong Catholics.
• 1:52:30
  And the Catholics are like, come on guys, you know where you
• 1:52:31
  belong. But I don't think that's what
• 1:52:35
  the Spirit. Would do I don't think that's
• 1:52:36
  what the Spirit would do I. Don't think that's what the
• 1:52:38
  Spirit would do, I think. I think we our experience every
• 1:52:42
  time we do this. The Spirit might not do that.
• 1:52:44
  The Spirit would not do that, but people's own.
• 1:52:47
  But again, if if I if I know you love the Lord.
• 1:52:51
  And you're asking and you want union.
• 1:52:53
  Like I want union. Right, you're asking with
• 1:52:55
  sincerity. Then which trustees going to
• 1:52:57
  speak and and we should be able to discern like how do you know
• 1:53:00
  if it's God? It's it's in accordance with
• 1:53:02
  scripture. It's leading me into charity.
• 1:53:05
  Can I ask about the meeting you did recently or is that off the
• 1:53:09
  record? No, I think it's great.
• 1:53:13
  Just sure, how did it go? Did you guys do this and what
• 1:53:15
  happened? No, we didn't do it.
• 1:53:16
  Yet why not? Too early.
• 1:53:19
  You you're building bonds. Yeah, I think so.
• 1:53:21
  You can't love it. You don't know, right?
• 1:53:24
  And so I think the primary purpose of, I don't know, 25 or
• 1:53:27
  so of us who just got together, you know, from all over, you
• 1:53:31
  know, Orthodox evangelical Protestants, not evangelical
• 1:53:35
  Roman Catholics, religious ordained, lay everybody, just to
• 1:53:41
  get to know each other, just to knock down walls.
• 1:53:43
  And then I think what's got to happen next is some of those
• 1:53:46
  people. I don't know who it is.
• 1:53:46
  I don't know if I'm part of that.
• 1:53:47
  Doesn't matter. We got to go do this now.
• 1:53:50
  Now it's just like, how about we don't talk now until after we
• 1:53:54
  pray? Well, and I think that group of
• 1:53:56
  25 you can, you can strike up groups of 25 everywhere.
• 1:53:59
  That's the thing. Like this is a project that if
• 1:54:01
  someone's listening and they're interested, I mean, do this for
• 1:54:03
  your marriage, do this for your work.
• 1:54:05
  Do this for your, your, you know, your nonprofit.
• 1:54:08
  Do this in your family with your kids, like do it as a pastor.
• 1:54:11
  But if you are the privilege of, you know, having friends that
• 1:54:15
  are different faith backgrounds and you love them and they love
• 1:54:18
  you, then you, you could do this with them.
• 1:54:20
  Yeah. And and if you're really going
• 1:54:22
  to do the discernment it, it can't be 25.
• 1:54:24
  That's why the next step, yeah. How many should it be?
• 1:54:27
  8 at the most. What if you have 10 kids?
• 1:54:31
  You're doing the discernment. A couple wait for the weekend,
• 1:54:33
  yeah. Let a couple free.
• 1:54:36
  Let them run around or something.
• 1:54:37
  Yeah, so funny. Well, you.
• 1:54:39
  Yeah, I guess like that, that is.
• 1:54:40
  What about the spouses? Similar.
• 1:54:43
  What do you? Mean, I'm sorry that I'm going a
• 1:54:45
  little on a tangent here, but I'm imagining what about if you
• 1:54:47
  have, you know, seven children, They're all married with their
• 1:54:50
  own kids. Can you?
• 1:54:51
  Oh, you could, yeah. I mean you you can apply these
• 1:54:54
  things in so many different contexts.
• 1:54:56
  It's only smaller the. Principle is the principle.
• 1:54:58
  The principle is let's restore the initiative to God.
• 1:55:00
  Let's ask the Lord to show us what's He what does he want us
• 1:55:03
  to do, as opposed to just ask Him to bless what we want to do,
• 1:55:08
  which is, I think, what most people ask.
• 1:55:10
  Right. Like this is what we want to do.
• 1:55:11
  Lord, please bless it. What do you want us as a couple
• 1:55:14
  to do? How do you want to use this in
• 1:55:15
  mission? Because again, here's the world
• 1:55:17
  out there which is is at each other's throats, right?
• 1:55:25
  Like everywhere, this country and every other country, we're
• 1:55:28
  at each other's throats and we're all looking for someone to
• 1:55:31
  fix this. And so many people mistakenly
• 1:55:33
  think politics is going to fix this.
• 1:55:35
  Politics can't fix this. Politics is important.
• 1:55:37
  It can't fix this because the key to problem solving is to
• 1:55:41
  define the problem, the problems, the human heart.
• 1:55:44
  Politics can't fix the human heart.
• 1:55:46
  Only God can, and He wants to. That's what He does.
• 1:55:51
  He takes people who used to hate each other and not make it so
• 1:55:56
  they tolerate each other. He makes it so they love each
• 1:55:58
  other. So let's ask him to do that.
• 1:56:03
  If we do that first as Christians, what a witness that
• 1:56:07
  would be to the world. Then maybe they'd start paying
• 1:56:11
  attention. Amazing, very exciting.
• 1:56:16
  Father, I thank you. What a gift to get.
• 1:56:19
  To hear any final thoughts, any last words from Joan or and also
• 1:56:25
  how can people find your work? So our work is defined as
• 1:56:29
  acts29.org A/C TSXXIX dot. Org or you can go to rescue
• 1:56:35
  project dot US is another way to get to some of the work that
• 1:56:38
  we've created, which is this video experience, which is all
• 1:56:42
  online, which is free, which is our way of preaching the gospel.
• 1:56:46
  Last words, you know, So my dad's 10th anniversary of his
• 1:56:48
  passing is coming up. He'll be here in a couple weeks.
• 1:56:50
  And my dad's life was summarized by the words be great.
• 1:56:54
  And that that that's the last word.
• 1:56:56
  I think that's God to us. I made you for greatness.
• 1:56:59
  Go be great, whatever that means.
• 1:57:01
  Go be great. Live a life of courage, live a
• 1:57:03
  life of integrity. Live a life of virtue.
• 1:57:05
  Be great. Do something with yourself.
• 1:57:08
  Every person I've created is special.
• 1:57:11
  So let me use you and let me exploit the gifts I've given you
• 1:57:15
  to change this world which I so love.
• 1:57:19
  Amen. Thank you so much, Father.
• 1:57:21
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• 1:57:24
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