Podcast

In this episode, we’re getting real about something I know many of us wrestle with: the fear of fully committing our lives to Christ. Maybe you’ve felt that pull to go all-in but hesitated because of what it might cost you—relationships, your job, or even just the comfort of staying where you are. Trust me, I get it. But here’s the thing: while Jesus never sugarcoated the challenges of discipleship, He did promise something far greater—the eternal reward.

We’re diving into powerful scriptures like the story of the rich young man who walked away because he couldn’t let go of his possessions. We’ll talk about why counting the cost is important but how focusing on the reward—eternal life and true peace—can help us overcome those fears. Plus, I’m sharing some practical tips on how to live boldly as a disciple, including ways to deepen your prayer life and bring Jesus into every part of your day.

📚 Bible verses for reflection:

Luke 14:28-34
Matthew 18:19-23
Matthew 19:16-22
Luke 12:16-20
Matthew 19:29
John 14:1-3
John 6:51-56

 

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Welcome back to the pew, everybody. I’m your host, John Edwards, and I’m excited to be joining you for another episode of just to get on the pew and the gym, or while you’re cutting the lawn or driving in your car or whatever you’re doing, it’s always a pleasure to be with you and I want to thank each and every one of Who are listening to this right now on any of the audio platforms that’s available out there, the podcast platforms, any of you that are listening to YouTube, I really appreciate it.

Each, every week we get your comments. We see the likes and the shares. We really appreciate it. So those of you who are listening and enjoying this, please consider liking, sharing, subscribing to our YouTube channel. If you haven’t become a partner in the pew yet, consider doing that. That just means you’re somebody who comes alongside us, supporting us on a monthly basis to help us continue to minister to men through this podcast, to the groups that we’re launching in parishes, to these diocese and leadership summits we’re doing.

It’s what allows us to continue this mission that God has set before us in this wonderful ministry. So folks, if you want to become a partner in the pew, you can go to just a guy on the pew. com. There’s a donate button there on the page or in the top menu bar, you can click that, or you can go directly to donor box.

org slash pew, or you can Or simply look in the comments. But folks, I just, I wanted to thank you all for listening, for sharing. It just means so much to see all of you that are, and all of you that share it each and every week. Folks, if you’re wondering where we’re going to be in the next couple of months, we’re about to get out on the road.

Starting in September, we’re going to be in Folsom, California. We’re going to be in Muncie, Indiana. We’re going to be in South Bend, Indiana. In October, we’re going to be in Scranton, Pennsylvania. We’re going to wind up going back to Muncie for a men’s conference there. In Indiana, then in November, we’re going to be in the Dallas Fort Worth area, and we’re going to be in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

So folks, we are busy all the way through deep into 2025. So go to our website. If you want to look at, see if we’re coming to your area, if we’re going to be around you, go to our website at just a guy on the pew. com, go to the events and book me page, there’s a calendar there. You can click it and look at everything we’re doing that we’ve got booked out as far as we’ve got things booked out.

So folks, we’re really excited about coming to your area. If you’re around and you listen to show or you love just following the ministry, show up, meet us there so we can meet you and spend some time with you. I’d be really excited to do that. Folks too. If you want to start a men’s group in your parish, you can go to just to get on the pew.

com. If you want us to help you launch a vibrant ministry to men in your parish, Go there. You can click it, fill out the form. You’ll get on a call with me, Derek or a new person that we’re going to be announcing here in the next couple of weeks, we’re bringing on to join us, but we’ll be able to get in touch with you, see what your needs are.

See how we can help. We can also put on diocese and leadership summits. We’ve been doing that in the diocese of Victoria and diocese of Metuchen and Fargo, we’re building these things out. We’ve got one coming up in St. Louis and the archdiocese of St. Louis. So we love doing all these type of events that bring men.

to a place where they can learn how to launch life changing, vibrant ministry men in their parish and diocese. So what we do, if you’re interested in it, go to just a guy on the pew. com and find out more folks. I am so excited to be back in here. I just got back from the diocese of Victoria.

We just did that leadership summit there in Texas, and I want to give a shout out. To rick and robert and iman and father jacob and everybody else that helped us put that event on We had close to 60 or 70 men show up that either want to launch something new in their parishes Or they want to revitalize something that maybe has lost a little bit of the fire But either way, a bunch of men showed up on a Saturday and we went through what it means, what men are looking for, right?

What men need, how to build a men’s group, what’s the structure and a leadership model you can follow, and then how to actually put those things in place to start launching your parish. So I’m sure we’re going to be going back to Victoria a bunch of times. So if you’re in that area, Just let us know you’re there, come to some of the events, we can’t wait to see you there either.

But guys, I just want to give you a shout out, Rick, thanks for letting me stay at your house, thanks for walking through this whole event with us, it was just such a blessing to be with y’all, and I can’t wait to see the fruit that comes of it. But folks, I was excited to get in here today, and Victor’s not going to be with me today I had a few moments here before the Labor Day weekend, this will come out after the Labor Day weekend, but I just wanted to jump in here while there were some things on my mind and get this kind of this subject matter out here.

Guys, a lot of times lately when I’ve been traveling one of the same questions or same themes comes up a lot. And it is just this idea of people that want to give their life to Christ, but they’re fearful of that. They. They are afraid of boldly living as a catholic christian man or woman And they’re scared of taking that next step and I don’t mean scared in a bad way like oh, they’re cowards I don’t mean that what I mean is this genuine fear that we can have When we look at it, what it means to actually give our lives to Christ and live as these disciples that we’re called to live as, and it’s a common theme, like I said, everywhere that I go, where somebody winds up coming up to me every single time, and they’re talking about this desire, the Lord’s place in their heart.

And then the butts start, right? Like the, but I’m worried about what will happen at work, but I’m worried about what my family might think, or, but I’m worried about losing the friends I’ve had in my life forever. It. So we start to fill ourselves with these questions and these worries and these anxieties And these doubts and these fears and the thing is like we start to count the cost and the funny thing is there’s nothing wrong with counting the cost like In prudence which is a virtue, we should always look at when we have to make decisions about things in our life, about what are they going to cost us, or what are we going to gain, or what are the two sides of the question or the equation.

And Jesus even talks about this, right? Like he doesn’t just say, follow me without looking at the consequences. He actually does the opposite of that. And there’s Very different, verses and places in the bible where he talks about this and the first one Really is in luke 14 28 through 34 He says if anyone comes to me And does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters Yes, and even his own life So boom, there’s a cost, right?

Like you have to love me above everything else and it may cost you everything else. He goes on to say, whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my own disciple. For which of you, and this is the important part here, another important part I should say. For which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it.

Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish. All who see it begin to mock him saying this man began to build and was not able to finish Or what king going to encounter another king in war will not first sit down and take counsel whether he’s able to with ten thousand men to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand and if not While the other is yet a great way off.

He sends an embassy and asks terms of peace So therefore whoever of you who does Whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. So here we see Jesus talking about this great cost. Like it may cost you your father, your mother your family, everything you hold dear there.

You have to pick up your cross and follow me. But then he also looks at who’s, that’s going to set out to build a tower, doesn’t sit down first and count the costs and make sure he has enough to do it. So Jesus isn’t saying don’t look at what it’s going to cost you. In fact, He invites us again and again in scripture to count the cost, right?

Jesus is being honest with us about it. I want this for you. I want this life. I want you to be my disciple But what it truly means to be a disciple Are these things and i’m going to lay them out in front of you and then you decide it’s just like at the At the bread of life discourse, you know when he’s telling people you must eat my flesh You must drink my blood and he keeps doubling down on those things and using harsher and more graphic words That people of that time would have understood to mean like exactly what he was saying You got to eat, you got to rip, you got to tear my flesh, you got to drink my blood.

How many people walked away? Like he told them completely what it was to follow him and what was required of him and what he would give us in order to do it. But so many said, what this saying is hard. And so they walked away. There is a cost to being a disciple and the Lord wants us to think about it.

He desires for every one of us to be with him. But he also wants us to know that being a disciple is a very costly thing. It’s not just going to church. It’s not just checking boxes. It’s not just going to things to feel good that you’re doing something. It’s actually about giving more and more of your life and boldly following Christ, living with more courage each and every day to follow him more completely.

It’s about an ongoing conversion in our life. It’s not. It’s not a one time thing. It’s about going deeper and deeper in this pursuit with Christ and this relationship that we are all called to have with Him. Just because I’m on this podcast and I can do shows or I’m going and speaking to men doesn’t mean that I’m completely perfect and I’m where I need to be.

No. The Lord is always showing me in my life. That i’m nowhere near perfection And there’s so much more work to do in my life and there’s so many places in my heart That haven’t been healed that haven’t been reconciled that haven’t been Repented of that haven’t given to him. And so Jesus tells us to wild wisely count the cost because there is indeed a great cost and that’s what I love about jesus He tells us the truth, right?

He goes on to say in other verses in Matthew 18, 19 through 23, you hear someone else, a scribe come up to Jesus and say, teacher, I will follow you wherever you go. And Jesus said to him, foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head, says another of the disciples said to him, Lord, let me first go and bury my father.

But Jesus said to him, follow me and leave the dead to bury their own dead. Again, Jesus is laying out. The cost of being a disciple, right? This guy says I will follow you wherever you go It reminds you of peter when he boldly proclaims lord I will go where you have to go and I will die for you and all these things and the lord looks at me goes Before the cock crows tonight.

You’re gonna deny me three times he says the same thing to this guy here You know when he comes up and you can see this scribe just courageously and almost pridefully I’ll follow you wherever you go and jesus is like look foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head like I don’t have a home.

I’m on the road. Like I’m living the life that the Lord has called me My father has called me to going for the conversion of souls going to save the world to be the savior that i’ve sent to be And if you’re going to follow me, you have to be like new christ You have to be like me willing to give everything all the way to the cross that christ gave his life on the cross for us.

You have to be willing to do that same thing. All right So he’s on he’s never going oh, yeah, come with me It’s going to be a walk through the You know down a rainbow it’s gonna be like skipping through the tulips and there’s gonna be nothing But just awesomeness all the time and you’re gonna feel wonderful the whole time Like no the lord is telling you like it’s very hard to be a disciple So again, he’s giving everyone who comes to him these opportunities to really count the cost and he’s saying look I hear what you’re saying, but you need to think about what you’re saying Because what you’re what you have to do if you want to be my disciple is all for everything I have to become the most important thing in your life, and I think there’s so many of us today Including myself sometimes that would say that i’m a disciple of jesus christ But if we sit down and we put pen to paper and we start writing down the ways that we think we are That list may be a whole lot shorter than what we think it is in our mind because how many times do the hard things come up and we turn away from them?

Or the chance is to really choose christ over other things in our life or are there in our life But we choose very rapidly very easily very comfortably the other options All right. So jesus is always inviting us to It’s his place of counting the cost, right? But the difference is counting the cost is one thing.

You need to sit down and go, okay, where am I in my life? Like I need Christ. Okay. So to bring Christ into my life, it’s going to cost me all this selfishness, right? All this Tom spent thinking about my own desires and what I want and how I get ahead and the things that I need. And it’s the shift to thinking first and foremost, what is God calling me to?

What is Jesus desiring of me? Okay. Seeking his will and discerning his will in our life, but then also looking to those around us, what does my wife need? What are my kids need? What are the, what are those people around me? Even yes, my enemies, what do they need? And what am I called to give and to be for them, right?

So there’s this cost but it’s not the problem isn’t in counting the cost that’s something that we should all be doing right counting the cost of what it’s Of what it means to be a disciple because it’s also a way each and every day We can look at our life and see if we’re measuring up to the cost if that sheet is balancing if you will right with the cost and then what we’re actually living in our life Right the results of the cost of those things But the problem isn’t in counting the cost, as I’ve said.

It’s in fearing the cost and this is where so many people wind up and this is why so many people come up to me in events and this is why it’s always a theme where no matter wherever I go It’s like man, I want to do the things you’re calling me to that christ is speaking through you to me to do He’s calling me to do but man i’m afraid, and a lot of people don’t outright come up and say i’m afraid but you hear that fear in the my wife isn’t a believer.

My husband isn’t a believer or You Or my kids are, they’ve walked away from the faith. And if I live more fully as a disciple, it’s just going to push them further away. Or what if I lose my job? If you’re asking me to live for Christ everywhere, then you know that’s a problem in the world today in some places.

And you could lose your job over, over living out your faith in a bold way in your place. I get it. They’re all concerns, right? And they’re valid concerns, but we’re not supposed to fear those things, right? We’re not supposed to fear ’em. And when we fear the cost, this is where there’s a problem.

Because fear paralyzes us. Fear. Keeps us from moving forward. It just it’s like getting like stepping into quicksand or to concrete and you can’t move like wet concrete You’re just stuck and so you make no decisions and that’s what that fear leads us to it’s it’s where a lot of people are and it leads us to this place of indecision and we see this again In the scriptures, you know in a famous parable the rich young man, right?

We see it in matthew 1916 through 22 It says and behold one came up to him saying teacher What good deed must I do to have eternal life? So someone’s realizing there is a benefit to following Christ, right? There is eternal life. Like, how do I have. This great reward and jesus says to him why do you ask me about what is good one?

There’s one who is good if you would enter life keep the commandments He said to him which and jesus said you shall not kill you shall not commit adultery You shall not steal you shall not bear false witness honor your father and mother and you shall love your neighbor as yourself The young man said to him, all these I have observed.

What do I still lack? This is the question we want to ask Jesus, but this is when we don’t want to hear the answer, right? And so this young man has the boldness and the courage to ask Jesus and then Jesus looks to him and says if you would Be perfect, right? If you would be my disciple Go sell what you possess and give it to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven and come and follow me That’s always the invitation from Christ, right?

If you really want what you’re asking for, then give everything to me, right? Turn away these things and turn to me. Look to me for everything you need in your life, for your sustenance, for your support, for your faith, right? For your times of great need. Look at me, look to me and look to follow me.

But when the young man, it says in scripture, when the young man heard this, he went away, sorrowful. Some versions say sad for he had great possessions. This is the thing folks. When we hear this, we think man, if I follow Jesus, do I just have to walk around and torn robes and give up everything and have nothing in my life.

And no, that’s not the thing. Like Jesus, isn’t calling you. Not all of us, at least to, to give up, like what the things that you have, like the Lord has blessed you with a home, with a family, with a career, with a job, and sometimes maybe he’s calling you into ministry or something, but he’s not saying, okay, go get rid of everything that I blessed you with and then just walk aimlessly down the street searching for me.

No seek my will, look at the gifts I’ve given you in your life, and then choose to follow me, right? And that means putting me ahead of everything else. But the thing is, just like this rich young man, we get fearful. The devil starts whispering in our ear oh, you start being a full, a real disciple of Jesus, you’re gonna have to give up this, can’t watch those movies you like anymore with all the language and the nudity and all that stuff.

You’re gonna have to turn off that laptop of the things you’re not looking at You’re gonna have to really realize you’re probably drinking a little too much You got to put down that bottle or at least get it under control you’re gonna you’re gonna have to you’re gonna have to start forgiving people, right?

These people that you’ve wanted to just hate your whole life. You’re gonna have to forgive you’re gonna have to you have to quit being angry about things let the lord into those places, right? Because to be a fully a real and full disciple of the lord you got to let him into every part of your life So this is where we get scared and just like this rich young man He had a lot of things and he had found comfort in those things But even that comfort he realized as all of us do there was something still lacking, right?

Something’s still not right. I’m still not i’m still not really joyful. I’m still not happy I don’t feel like my purpose is fulfilled. So jesus, what do I lack? And this is the hard part jesus tells you give up everything and follow me Right? Make me the most important thing in your life and center everything in your life around it.

Make me the center of that circle and everything else is circles that come into that circle. Everything is impacted by your relationship with me. All your relationships, the way you work, the way you carry yourself, the way you treat people, all of that. Let me come into you through the Eucharist, through the Holy Spirit, and let me live in you as a light and a beacon to this world.

But so many of us we count the we’re not only counting the cost, we’re fearing the cost, what it’s going to cost us. And this is exactly where the devil wants us. He wants us to think about that instead of thinking about what it means and the gift that we receive when we become a disciple of Jesus Christ.

So we settle for being content, right? We settle for mediocrity, we settle for indifference. And this is where we begin to struggle, right? This is when we begin to struggle. And this is what happens, like here’s another scripture verse in a, an example for you. So everybody also knows about the rich man that was storing up things in barns.

And he says, Jesus told, it says, Jesus told them a parable saying, the land of a rich man brought forth plentifully. And he thought to himself, what should I do? For I have nowhere to store my crops now. So this guy’s like abundantly being blessed. And instead of returning gratitude for those things or sharing those things with others and helping other people.

He says, man I’ve got all this stuff. What should I do now? And so he says, what shall I do for? I have nowhere to stare my crops, store my crops. And he said, I will do this. I will pull down my barns and build larger ones. And there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years.

Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said to him, you fool, this night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God. Folks, that’s Luke 12, 16 through 20. Again, here’s this person that like doesn’t even realize the blessings of God, like he realizes, oh man, I got all this stuff.

And instead of thinking like what can I do with it? How can I bless others? How can I use it to serve the lord? He simply thinks I can just store all this I’ll rip down my two small barns and build gigantic barns and fill those and then I can finally rest I can be comfortable and that’s it’s almost like satan saying this stuff when he says I say to myself You know, I have many years worth of stuff laid up.

So you know what? Take your ease, drink, be merry. It almost sounds like the devil in his ear saying those things. And it’s what happens to us. Like we get it fearful. We start to listen. We go, you know what? Following Jesus is hard. Like I’ll do that later on in life. First, let me just take care of all these other things.

My job, my, my stuff like that. I’ll focus on that. And then when I’m retired and I don’t like have work to answer to, or maybe when my kids are gone, I’ll Or you know when they’re grown up and have their families then i’ll pour myself into this time to really being a disciple then i’ll put the fears aside and i’ll move forward courageously to serve the lord and i’ve seen that in so many businessmen like I talked to They’re like man my whole life I had my head down and all these other things and then I looked up one day and like I had no Relationships with my kids and I had no relationship with the lord and i’d given everything to work and I had all these plaques That basically mean nothing in my life now You And they want to return then in that life when they’re retired.

So serving the Lord and praise God for that. Whenever you turn and you encounter the Lord is a good thing. But how many of us never make it to that, right? I know many people in my life in the last year, it seems every time I get an email from my parents, someone’s dying. They’re announcing a funeral and they’re not just people in their eighties and nineties, there’s guys in their fifties.

Women in their 40s. They’re passing away people that have cancer randomly now more than ever who succumb to it, right? We’re not promised anything We’re not promised tomorrow and that’s what god says to him like you fool This very night your soul is required to you and the things you prepared whose will they be?

As you’re sitting in this comfort saying i’ll do it later. I’ll do it later. I’ll do it later may never come All right and so as we fear we begin to put off and we begin to procrastinate and we begin to procrastinate To just settle for mediocrity and comfort, right? And we just become content with where we are and we think i’ll serve jesus another day And I get it folks like I get that giving your life to jesus can be a very scary idea like it can be a very scary idea and you want to put it off to a more a better time But really what we’re doing is saying like lord, i’m afraid like i’m afraid to trust you I’m afraid to fully surrender and here’s the thing.

I want to ask you like Why focus on fearing the cost when we should be looking towards the reward? That’s what I’ve told all these men when I’m speaking is like, why do we fear counting the cost? Why do we fear the cost after we count it instead of looking towards the reward? And what do I mean by that?

Like, Jesus and the saints scriptures. They all talk about this great reward. Jesus says this in Matthew 1916 through 22 Sorry that’s not the right verse. I’m sorry there. He says in 19 matthew 19 through 29 Sorry, I got a bunch of notes and I want to make sure I’m telling you but he says in every one of them, and this is after that he had talked to after he had talked to the rich young man who said, what do I need to do?

And he walked away sad. Peter then says, Lord, who’s going to be saved in like we’ve given up everything. What is there for us? And Jesus goes on to tell him about, we’ve, I’ve got a place for you and all of that, but he finishes it talking to basically all of us. And he says in Matthew 19, 29, and every one of you has left house who has left houses.

Or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for my name’s sake Will receive a hundred fold and inherit eternal life This is the reward like the jesus saying like stop fearing what it’s going to cost you now in this Temporal world in this temporary place and start to look where you’re going to be for eternity Because folks there’s two options where we’re going to be with him forever loving worshiping serving him in this joyful bliss And this restored to this divine intimacy and this friendship with the Lord that we lost in the fall of man and in Genesis being restored to their proper place or living forever in, in hell with the, in what is hell.

It’s eternal separation from God. It’s this pain of never feeling God again in your life. And so Jesus is saying whoever gives up all these things and does all these hard things I’ve asked of you it’ll be returned to you a hundred fold. And you’ll be there with this joyful and peaceful and wonderful life for eternity.

That’s the reward. He goes on to say in, in John 14, one through three, he says, let, and this is when he’s talking to the disciples about what’s going to happen to him and how he’s going to have to go to the cross. He says in John 14, one through three, let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God.

Believe also in me. In my father’s house are many rooms. If it were not would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself. And where I am, may you also be. Like, Jesus is telling you stop focusing on this life and what you’re going to lose here because it’s not going to matter.

You can’t take it with you. And the things that you lose are probably things you didn’t need in your life in the first place. Right when you boldly start to live your life god starts to clear out Like when you boldly start to live your life for him god starts to clear out the things that are unnecessary All right the things that once captured your attention and the things that drug you down and the things that you struggled with seem to be of no importance anymore, and it seems magical, but it’s not it’s just that the reward Of that greater trust in the lord and surrendering ourselves over to him the saints talk about this, too they say saint irenaeus says this he goes god did not tell us to follow him because he needed our help But because he knew that loving him would make us whole. How many of us feel like we’re missing pieces of ourselves? Like we’re, there’s just something, no matter what we shove in the hole of our heart, it never fills us up.

It’s because God kept a piece of himself for us and hoped one day we would come looking for him. And when we do, we surrender it all to him. And he sticks that piece of our heart right back to him and we become whole. That’s why we need healing in our life to heal the whole person. All of those things.

We need God. And that’s what St. Irenaeus says there. As he says, God didn’t tell us to follow him because we need him. Because he needs us. We need him. Not to follow him because he needs us, but because he wants to make us whole. St. Bernadette says, Jesus gives all to those who surrender all.

Jesus gives everything you’re looking for. He takes off the goggles of the world and everything the world tells you gotta have to be happy and you need To be successful in other junk. He removes all that. And he shows you what these clear glasses he puts on you to show you everything that you want.

He gives all to those who surrender all St. Bernard says, Jesus gives all he says, excuse me. He says, God not only gives now, this is confusing of a quote. So I’m going to say it slowly so you guys can hear it because I confused myself when I read it. So it says, St. Bernard says, God not only gives me myself, he also gives me himself.

In his first work, he gave me myself. In his second work, he gave me himself. When he gave me himself, he gave me back myself. So there’s this idea that when we count the cost and the fear that what we’re going to lose, the friendships and brother, have I lost those? Yes. But I’ve also gained more close friends that I’ve ever had in my life and better relationships that I ever had in my life.

But what he’s saying here is God will give you yourself back, right? Your true self, who you were supposed to be. Not the person you become because of who the world’s told you to be, but who you’re supposed to be and who God designed you to be, who he loved you into existence to become, right? The plan that was always who you were supposed to be.

He gives you that because he gives you himself. And through himself, that, that relationship restored his beloved father and beloved son or daughter. You now understand better who you are. So he gives you yourself back more fully. It’s a beautiful quote. St. Thomas Aquinas goes on to, to give some quotes.

I’m going to share here at the end too. But the last one I want to share in this part is St. Francis of DeSales. He says, serve God as he wishes. You will see one day he will do all you wish and more than you even know how to wish. So there’s a thought for you to stop counting the cost and look to the reward.

This is what Christ calls us to, right? This is what he calls us to. This is why he says I’ve come so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. I, my peace I give you, my peace I give you, right? Like my peace I bring you, my peace I give you. What does he say to the apostles when he appears like my peace I give you This is what jesus came for to deliver hope and peace and mercy and love And second chances and healing from brokenness In this world, but further in the next but if we’re always fearing the cost We never look to the reward and my brothers and sisters that are listening here The thing is if you really want to count a cost like if you really want to fear a cost Then fear the cost of not giving your life to him That’s what you should fear if you’re gonna fear anything fear not giving your life to the lord Because if you’re unhappy here on this earth think about how happy you’re gonna be in hell And that’s the truth guys like we get on here every week and we talk about all these things We’re struggling with and where we are, but there’s the truth of a matter There’s a choice in your life that has to be made either i’m going to throw caution to the wind, and I’m going to quit fearing surrender, and I’m going to, I’m going to quit fearing the cost, and I’m just going to boldly take this step forward into saying yes to the Lord Jesus in my life, allowing him into my heart.

And allowing him to take over myself so that I can be what I was created to be in the first place. And I can go out and serve in the way I was supposed to not for myself, but for everyone else around me, my family, those that I love and the people in the world around me, folks, that’s what we’re here for.

That’s what Jesus called every one of us to when he ascended into heaven, to go and make disciples. There’s a cost to discipleship. Yes. So count it. Look at it. And for those of you who think that we’ve given our lives over to being disciples of Christ, start to write down how. And I think each and every one of us can find ways where we’re not giving our lives fully over to Christ.

And that’s okay. That’s a gift. That’s not something to go stick your head in the muck about and to ostrich yourself, right? Oh, I don’t, I’m not a terrible disciple. Look at it as a gift. These are the places I still need Jesus to come into my life. Praise God. I recognize them. Now let that happen. But to those of you who are stuck in fear because of what it’s going to cost you, stop fearing the cost of that.

And start looking towards the reward. Start having a an eternity mindset. We weren’t made for this world. We were made for the next one. So stop spending so much of your mind, your headspace, focusing on the things of this world and focus on the things of the next, and you find out that the things of this world become a lot easier to deal with, a lot easier to put into perspective and a lot easier to give to him, the only person that could do anything about it.

So let’s talk a little bit about some how to’s here, folks. Like, how do we do this? Like, how do we stop fearing the cost and how do we start stepping into this bold life of a disciple and not again, a box checker. But somebody who’s actually seeking in their lives each and every day, Lord, I know I’m not living the way I should.

How do I live more perfectly as a disciple for you? That’s the question he longs for. That’s the question he’s looking for. And that’s the question we need to be asking ourselves each and every day. So how do we do that? Honestly, folks, you have to say enough is enough. You have to be tired of living in fear.

You have to say I’m making a decision right now to surrender it all, get sick and tired of being sick and tired, right? Because here’s the thing. Aquinas, as I brought up a minute ago, this is what he says about it. St. Thomas Aquinas, he says, two things are required in order to obtain eternal life, right?

Which is the reward we’ve been talking about. So two things are required to obtain that eternal life, that eternal reward, the grace of God and man’s will. And although God made man without man’s help, when he gave me himself, I’m sorry, that’s wrong. I read the wrong thing there. Sorry. When God, I’m messing up today.

Sorry. So let’s start over that. Two things are required in order to obtain eternal life. The grace of God in man’s Will and although God made man without man’s help. He does not sanctify him without his cooperation So now that I confused everybody i’ll say it one more time For me and the ones in the cheap seats.

Two things are required in order to obtain eternal life, the grace of God and man’s will. And although God made man without man’s help, he does not sanctify him without his cooperation. So folks, this is what I mean. You got to get sick and tired of being sick and tired. You have to say enough’s enough.

You have to make a decision. That i’m going to surrender it all and then do it because it’s an act of your will That god’s looking for and then he gives you the grace to do everything else The second thing I would say is keep your eyes on eternity Quit worrying so much about here because guess what you could die tomorrow and nothing here matters anymore It’s not a concern of you anymore because you’re not here You’re going to be concerned about wherever you are worshiping and serving god or wishing you had if you’re in the other place, so keep your eyes on eternity, look to the reward, stop counting the cost, and then you’re able to live in the way as a disciple that you’re called to live three, grow your love for Christ by building a greater relationship with him through prayer, through the liturgy and through the word.

That’s what Saint yeah, not saying yet. He will be, I’m sure one day Pope Benedict, the 16th says, you want a better relationship with Christ? Seek it in the mass, right? Go and receive the Eucharist each and every day. Through prayer, grow in your prayer life every day, seek the Lord every minute of your day, like just keep them in your mind and your thoughts all the time and offer everything to them in prayer.

Three, through the word. Get into his word and learn a bit more about Jesus there and what he says. Everything I’m reading to you here on these podcasts and we’re sharing with you scripture wise are places I’m diving back into in my own life to seek him in a greater way and he’s given me these insights and by the way, these podcasts, like they’re not just for you, they’re for me.

He’s giving me insights into my own life and I thought, you know what, that would probably be helpful to somebody else because oftentimes I fear what giving more and more of my life to Christ looks like. And he calls me to quit worrying about the fear and start looking towards the reward. So I’m sharing that with you here.

So seek him in all of these things, right? In the sacraments, in reconciliation, all of those things, seek him constantly. Finally, pray to the Holy Spirit for help and the courage to continue to live the life of a real disciple. Have the courage, Holy Spirit, give me the courage to examine my life. And look at where I haven’t surrendered, where I haven’t fully given my life over the Lord, and help me to have the courage to invite Jesus back into that place to come to heal me to give me what I need to move forward, and to counsel me in the places I need counsel.

Folks, that’s how you do this. It’s not a hard thing. It’s hard in the fact that if you look at the fears and you concentrate on that, but we’re not called to count, to, to fear the counting the cost and what those costs are. Counting the cost isn’t the problem. It’s the fear of the cost when we’ve counted it.

Stop thinking about the fear, start thinking about the reward. That’s the that’s what God told me this week in my own life. That’s what I’m here to share with you folks. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing. If you want to support us again. You can go to JustToGetOnThePew. com and click the donate button.

Join us as a monthly supporter. It allows us to do all that we’re doing here on this podcast and throughout all of this ministry, what we’re doing. Folks, I’m going to be praying for you. Please pray for me. And we’re going to take all of this to prayer right now. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen. Heavenly Father, When we look to being a disciple, the devil meets us immediately with the fears of what it’s going to cost us. We think about the relationships we might lose, the job we might lose the friendships we might lose, the family members that might walk away. But Lord, you call us back by saying, Yes, it may cost you something, but I’m going to give you everything.

Just trust me and to walk forward with me, give your life to me, and there’s a reward in heaven that waits for you. Lord, when we fall in these places of worry and stress and anxiety and fear over the cost, remind us of the great reward. Help us to have the courage to walk more boldly as a disciple of yours each and every day, and help us each and every day as we face those struggles.

To turn back to you, to look for you, to you for courage, for advice, for strength. And at the end of the day, trust. So that we can be in the places you’ve called us to be, and we can experience that great reward with you one day. In your most holy name we pray. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

In this episode, John and Victor dive deep into a topic that affects us all—worry and anxiety. We all have those moments when life feels overwhelming, but what can we do about it? John shares a powerful personal story about how worry was stealing his joy, even during a simple fishing trip. We’ll explore what the saints and scriptures have to say about overcoming these feelings and how trusting in God can make all the difference.

But that’s not all—this episode is packed with inspiration! You’ll hear a touching story of a young man who found hope and healing through our men’s group, a reminder of the incredible impact community can have. Plus, we’re talking about the busyness of ministry life, the importance of prayer, and the ways we can all support each other on this journey of faith.

Whether you’re new to the show or a longtime listener, there’s something here for everyone. Don’t forget to like, comment, and consider becoming a Partner in the Pew to help us continue this vital work.

📚 Bible verses for reflection:

Philippians 4:6-7
1 Peter 5:7
Psalm 55:22
Matthew 6:25-34
Psalm 94:19
Psalm 56:3
Isaiah 41:10
Proverbs 12:25

 

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March 10-15: Visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico with Father Zachary, a fantastic priest and friend. This affordable trip is perfectly timed for most school spring breaks.

May 12-23: Join Father Larry and me on a spiritual journey to the Holy Land. Walk in the footsteps of Christ and experience an unforgettable pilgrimage.

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Welcome back to the pew everybody. I am your host, John Edwards, and here across the table from me as always is my co host and cohort, Victor Adams. Hey John, good to be here today, man. It’s good to be with you too, dude. How you been? It’s been a minute. Yeah, it’s good. But we we celebrated a good friend’s birthday this weekend.

So today’s Sunday. Sunday for those. Yep. So happy 50th, David. It’s one day late now, but we did get to have that dinner with him and I went fishing with him Saturday morning. We’re going to talk a little bit about that today, but yeah, it’s been a minute. We we had a show that you and I had done that was supposed to come out and then the sound was messed up.

So we’re gonna have to redo that one. But I know Paul George has been in here. We had the Eucharist of Congress stuff. So I’m sure people are like, Oh, good. Victor’s back in here. Cause it’s been a few weeks since you’ve been with us. Thank you. Man of many words, Victor Adams, but man, I’ll tell you what, I’m excited to get started today and talk about what we’re going to talk about.

But first, Victor, I just want to share something with you because I know this is going to mean something to you too, and I want to share it with the audience. But I was at mass the other day at a noon mass and there was a lot of people there and after mass, one of the ladies walked up to me and she said, you don’t know who I am, but I pray for you by name each and every day.

And I said you look familiar. And she said, you don’t know me, my son. And she goes, my son for years has struggled with addictions, painkillers, drugs, all this stuff. He got hurt on the job. We also had lost a child earlier in life. So he lost a sibling and it’s always been a trouble and a struggle for all of us.

And especially him. And she said, and I, he had walked away from his faith and all of these things. And she said, and I really was praying for him every day, but I felt like I was losing more and more hope. That he would never be able to turn around and change. And she said, but then he found out about your men’s group.

And started going to it. And she said, John, it’s changed his life. She said, he’s a miracle. Like he, he’s going to church again now. Like he’s going to your group every week. He’s put down the pills and the drugs and the alcohol, and he’s gone back to work. And she said, and there’s just something in him.

There’s a. So there’s a hope in him that I didn’t think I would ever see again in my life. And she started crying and gave me a hug and she said, I pray for you every single day for the men in that group and for your ministry. And Victor, I just share that with you one because you’re part of that group.

You’ve been in there and you’ve been in the room with this young man and and he began to share not long ago about that struggle in his life, but. Yeah, the Lord has done that great work in him. But Victor, if we didn’t have that group, no wonder where he’d be like, tell him where he’d be.

It wasn’t anything I did or you said, it was just the environment that’s been created in our parish for men to be able to come in and to be a part of something. And, Victor, people ask me all the time and she did too. She said, what can I ever do to try to repay? And I said, ma’am, all we need, what we need more than anything are continued prayers and support.

Victor, we’re in a place now where we are busier than we’ve ever been. The demand for our work is greater than it’s ever been. And we’re in a place where we’re going to have to bring on people. And the only way we can do that is if people support us monthly, right? And so that’s why we’re always talking about partners in the pew.

We need people to come on beside us, whether it’s. 10 bucks a month or 20 bucks a month, a hundred bucks a month, whatever it is, every little bit helps. And right now, more than anything, that’s what we need because we’re, the demand is outrunning the supply, right? Like we’ve got to have more people. I want to bring in some guys.

There’s some already some people I’m talking to, to be able to come in here and do some of these work, some of this work to go out into parishes. And do the missions and the trainings and the launchings of these groups so men like this young man can find a place where he can find healing and hope and restoration.

That’s what these groups are really doing. So folks, if you’re, if you’ve been listening to this, if you’re watching, this is why you should give. Stories like that. This guy had no hope in his life. His mother was almost out of hope. Praying every single day for this young man, and then he wandered into one of our events into one of our groups Group nights one of our four pillars and he’s been coming ever since and his life is better.

He told his mother I’m never walking away from this again folks. That’s what we do It just got in the people we’re going and starting these places where men can grow in their faith Where they can come back to the lord with and get rid of all these Addictions and vices and these things that have a hold on them You can be a part of these places, too.

We get stardom in your area, or you can give and help us stardom in other places. So folks, hat in hand today. I’m asking you, if you’re watching the show, if you’ve been moved, if you’ve been inspired, so many people send us those things. And I’m so appreciative of it. It means the world. But if there’s any way that you could support us financially, that’s what we truly need.

And that’s what our prayers are for each and every day in the ministry. Is that God will send us more people to support what we’re doing to partner with us in this ministry so we can grow and continue to help people all around this country. So folks, you can do that by going to just a guy on the pew.

com. There’s a donate button on the left side of the page. A little heart, as much as you scroll, it’ll be right there on every page. So you can click that or there is a donate support button in the menu items at the top. Go there, fill it out and become a monthly partner in the pew. Again, you don’t know how many lives you can help save by doing it.

So thank you guys. Victor, I just want to share that because I know you and I hadn’t really talked about that and it was a, it was an amazing thing and a grace to have somebody come up and just say that it’s very humbling and it just makes you realize like the Lord is doing great work here. So Victor, you’re a big part of that in the podcast and our group each and every week.

But today, what I wanted to talk to you about was a subject that I think, again it’s something that’s happened in my life. I know it’s hit home to you. And honestly, if you’re a human being, like you can’t go a lot without fighting this some way. Yeah. Yeah. And what it is worrying, worrying anxiety. And the name of this episode, haven’t really quite figured it out yet, but as I was thinking about the show, I kept thinking, stop stealing from yourself, or the waste of worry, right? So I don’t know what we’ll wind up calling it, but both those things are the point. And this came to mind.

We mentioned David is 50th birthday and he was, that was Saturday. Today’s Sunday. So yesterday was his birthday. This will be coming out Tuesday, a couple of days after his birthday. But you and I went to dinner with him Friday night and Friday, we had a really busy day in the ministry. I was on the phone from 10 in the morning till five o’clock in the afternoon with.

Either booking more engagements, more conferences, more missions, leadership summits, all those things working through what people were already working with just a lot of stuff. And it just, there was a lot of different things too. Like some people called me and wanted to start partnering with these different larger organizations and, really Hey, what if we did this?

And we moved all these things over here and you ran this and you did that. And we partnered in this way and all good things, it is when you’re just, when you’re doing everything you can to just keep up and then all these other things are coming at you too, you’re just like, Oh my gosh, and you start to worry and things and your mind starts to be preoccupied and that’s all you think about, right?

Is, how are we going to support the ministry? How are we going to meet the need? How are we going to all this stuff? So we go have dinner and even during dinner, like my mom wasn’t shutting off. And then David said, do you want to go fishing Saturday morning? And I said, yeah, it’s his birthday.

Love to go. And I, and again, Sometimes I walk out in my carport, in my garage and look at the boat that hadn’t moved in months because we’ve been gone every weekend doing missions and I started to feel anxious about that, the boats paid for instead of feeling anxious, I should feel grateful that I have a boat instead of going, Oh man, sitting there and I’m not using it and dah.

So long story short we, I meet him, Jacob and I get up at five 30 in the morning, my son, Jacob and I, and we head out there and and we go to this lake right outside of Memphis where his uncle has a spot in a place. And there’s trouble immediately the trolling motor won’t start. We have to rewire all this stuff, but we get out there And it’s a beautiful day.

It’s overcast. It’s not like a hundred thousand degrees like it’s been in memphis lately There’s a breeze blowing across the water. We’re catching some fish But man, I found myself just constantly thinking about work and thinking about ministry people I got to call back and this and that And instead of doing something I love very much fishing and has always been an escape.

My mind was just like You know Hammered in things like we weren’t even speaking, you know Everybody’s doing their thing and Jacob might get tangled up or something and talk and I eventually put some music on we leave, you know about 930 fished about four and a half hours or three and a half hours Whatever it was once we finally got in the boat and got going But I was in the truck on the way home as driving on the interstate with my son sitting there and again quiet not thinking About anything and all sudden Jacob says dad like are you okay?

He said we were sitting on the water and like normally you’re so playful and you’re picking at David and you’re picking at me and we’re laughing and But like you didn’t say anything the whole time I’m like every time I look at you look sad like you look just Like you lost your best friend and I just smiled and just laughed at his perception that 14 years old that he would ask that and I just said son, i’m anxious and worried over many things and Of course, I felt like martha right when jesus talks about that But there’s a lot of things going on right now as I mentioned in the ministry They’re all good things, but when we worry we get preoccupied like good things become You know Not so good in your mind, right?

You become burdened by things, which are gifts. And that’s what I was thinking about. I was like, man, years ago, I was praying for one speaking engagement, one, one parish to be able to help. And now, there’s, they’re calling every day and so yeah, we’re going to have to step up staff up and we’re gonna have to do all these things.

Those are blessings, but the devil gets in that stuff and calls you to worry. And really, what is that, man? What is worry and anxiety? It’s, The definition of worry is to give way to anxiety or unease and to allow one’s mind to dwell on difficulty Or be absent from the present. Yeah. Yeah. So this is something that I know Isn’t only something I have to fight, right?

I’m sure you have it. I know angela is always working and worried about things and basically everybody is because we forget You know that we’re not supposed to worry and we get mired down in it We’ll talk about what some of the saints say and stuff like that and even what it means to worry in the processes of that But that’s what I wanted to talk about today.

I’m sure you’re familiar with it, too. Yeah. I mean what you’re talking about is like it’s The symptom of the what if scenario. We’re very good at playing out scenarios of what if, like for instance, for a lot of us, 2008, the home crisis, the bubble burst, and a lot of people lost their jobs.

A lot of people lost their homes. We were worried about that too, because I just left. We’re in the VA hospital where it worked into youth villages. And Christy just got her real real estate appraiser’s license. So you get something, you’ve worked for two years, and studied all this stuff, got your license.

And then all of a sudden the worst thing in economy, for a long time, boom, house prices go down. No one. No one can really move on. No one can sell because things are just going bad for everything. There was worry then, but, but the difference is, I think we had faith to know that even though we may have to cut back a lot on what’s going on, we had faith that, that something will.

God’s intervention will happen, and it’s easy to say, it is easy to say yes, because suffering is involved in that thought moment too. Worry also brings suffering as well. If it’s something that it hasn’t already. Showed itself. We are very good at manifesting, suffering as well.

But as people, many people know, my oldest daughter and she’s always told me that she, let her tell her story. She suffered with anxiety and panic attacks, still does, but she’s able to cope with it, and have a coping mechanisms and realize that this is a panic attack, I’m okay, I’m in a safe place, so and so forth.

And if anxiety comes upon her, she realized, okay, this is anxiety, this is only last a moment. It won’t last for an eternity. Sure. And I think a lot of us have to get to that same concept of saying, Hey, I’m stressed out right now, but this feeling I’m feeling now is only a moment.

Yeah. And let me deal with the moment and know that, in the longterm, Thank you. You’re welcome. This won’t always be this way. Yeah. And you make a good point because anxiety, worry, they, they can really just stop you dead in your tracks. If it’s severe like that, it’s just, you don’t want to do anything.

You want to isolate. You want to sit still. You don’t want to like, you’re just, it can rob you of everything. This is what I meant by calling it like stop stealing from yourself. And I know some people can’t help it. Like they just have issues of that, that they either have to be medicated or they have to go through a lot of counseling.

And things to learn, ways to deal with it. I’m losing the phrase I was trying to say there, but like steps to be able to walk through when you’re experiencing that and things, but man, it is, the scriptures talk about this a lot and about worry itself. And the funny thing is like the word worry actually comes from an old English word.

The root of it is actually worgen is it’s a W Y R G A N. I’m probably saying it wrong, but. It originally meant like strangle. That’s what that word meant where worry is derived from. And man, isn’t that the truth? Cause like when you get to worry and you become like a hamster on a wheel and it just, you’re spinning and spinning and getting nowhere.

And you start to feel like that, that overwhelming fear and anxiety and that almost like you’re just slowly struggling to breathe sometimes, right? Where you’re just like, Oh man, this all of a sudden, Everything in the world is coming down on me and there’s a couple of great saints, we always love to see what the people before us and the great saints have said about these things.

There’s a couple of them that have mentioned it and said different things. So like the first one, Saint Padre Pio, he says, if certain thoughts bother you, it’s the devil who causes you to worry and not God. Who being the spirit of peace grants you tranquility. So right off the bat, he’s saying, look, if you’re experiencing worry and all those things and St.

Ignatius and all these different people with the discernment of spirits have said the same thing, like these type thoughts don’t come from God. Like he doesn’t, God’s not sitting up there going let me whisper this in their ear and then watch them. Go nuts, right? That’s not what God does. That’s the evil one.

And that’s what he’s always trying to do. Because if you’re worried and you’re anxious, you’re preoccupied, as you said, you’re not present. And I certainly wasn’t in that boat. And my son even picked up on it. What’s wrong with you? What’s going on? Because I wasn’t there. I was physically there, but mentally I was not.

I was somewhere else. I was back in this studio over in that corner where I work. Like in my mind, thinking about all these things that I could do nothing about at the time that, that I really was robbing myself of time with my friend on his birthday and time with my son and things that I’d been worried about.

I haven’t been able to do lately fish. I was now fishing, but I couldn’t enjoy it because I was worrying about other things when I used to be worrying about not being able to fish. And it’s just a never ending cycle But and the devil does that because he’s constantly trying to rob steal and destroy.

That’s what it says, right? The devil comes to plunder right to take everything and all over goodness. So St. Francis DeSalle goes even further by saying anxiety is the greatest evil that can befall a soul except sin. God commands you to pray, but he forbids you to worry. He forbids you to worry. So saying that one more time.

Anxiety is the greatest evil that can befall a soul except sin. God commands you to pray, but he forbids you to worry. And this is the hard part because worrying just seems like such a natural human thing to do, right? There’s always, it seems like there’s always something to worry about.

There’s never enough money. There’s, you never have enough time to do the job you need to do. There’s, your kids are going to grow up and be gone before long. There’s always something to worry about if you look for it. And the devil lays those bread, clumbs, crumbs. And then he watches you swirl down the drain as you enter into this sort of stuff.

And it robs everyone of their peace and of the present moment. And so we’re going to continue to talk about it a little bit, but yeah. What do you think about all that? What the saints are saying and that word strangle? That’s the things like, you know, when something’s being strangled at the lack of oxygen, right?

Yeah. So when a lack of oxygen, if you want to assimilate that into a lack of hope, when you’re worried so much about something, then anything of hope or anything of joy is removed from that situation. For a lot of us, we have stresses every day. Like you see, financials, will we afford a little to go to school?

We, we did with Lily. We were able to do, a lot of things to get her where she is now. Will we have enough for retirement? I don’t know. It seems every time I hear a financial advisor goes, you need this amount of money to retire. I’m like, or my 401, Advisors you need to put more in.

I’m like, yeah, but I don’t trust the stock market, man. Cause it goes up and down so much. It’s I’m like, I almost feel like I lose more. First, I got to get more. Yeah. No, it’s like, why do I lose more than I think? I feel like a millionaire first get a million dollars. So it’s we can get all the advice of people who live in comfort, and like I said, I think for us, because we’ve have gone through so much. Stress and worry, you know your life story my last my life story where I was planning to go in this way in my Life and then I had a you know A sickness a tumor and then it it actually went I made my life go another way Which I have been blessed because of that and same thing for you know you were on trajectory of like wealth and power and privilege and then you got to a point where You know something situational happen in your life to where now you’re doing something where you were always probably called to do you just didn’t hear it Yeah, so so the great thing about even though when stress anxiety or worry or suffering comes in our lives.

We think it’s You know, it’s gonna be always a bad thing, but sometimes it redirects us to where God wants us to be, too. Yeah, but that’s the thing. I think the Saints are saying is that when it’s obsessive anxiety, when it’s something that you just, it just is so overwhelming, then you have to be careful like, where’s that, where’s the voice coming from with that?

Yeah, is that something that, is pulling you away from God or pulling you towards God? Yeah, and That’s why I thought it was so interesting. I love researching stuff like this for the podcast. Cause I was like, I wonder what the root word of that is. And it’s like strangle.

Yeah dude, that is the truth. Like it strangles you, like worry strangles you, man. It, that’s why we love heart attacks. That’s why we overeat. That’s why we drink. That’s why we like, it’s like the devil put you in a sleeper move, wrestling, father Martel would love that.

Yeah. But yeah, it does. And it starts to rob you of everything. And it not only strangles those around you. Because when you’re worried and you’re stressed you’re angry because you’re fearful and you’re afraid and that’s what it all leads to and we’ll talk about that in a second.

But like I know when I’m worried and anxious, like I’m not the nicest person to be around. Like I’m short. I answer my wife and kids short. I get what do you mean? That’s a simple thing. Why did you ask that? You should have been able to figure that out. Like stuff I don’t usually say and do.

And it’s usually when I’m worried and stressed out about something, and so that’s why the devil does it. Because if he can get to you, the head of the family, the father the provider, and all the stuff we’ve been told as men, we’re supposed to be. And inside we’re dealing with our own inadequacies.

And the fact that we’re not providing the way that we wanted to, or this or that you start to worry, and then what do you do once he takes out the head of the family? He uses you to go and alienate everyone else in that fear and in that worry and in that concern And so I wanted to talk about that a little bit like how it strangles you and I was thinking about this It’s gonna sound funny, but in the shower this morning, or last night.

I was just like man I really like this idea and then I started thinking it’s ah almost busted and Broke my head getting out of the shower to get a pencil and write something down But it really starts with this, like where does worry start? It starts with a lack of trust in God. It really does.

When we start thinking about something and our mind starts going down these pathways and next thing you know you’re in some Armageddon scenario like in your life and it’s because you’re forgetting that there’s a God who loves you, right? And there’s a God who has a plan for your life. And there’s a God that if you’re giving your life to him and you’re trusting him that he plans nothing but for your good.

He created you. He created you for a reason and purpose. He loves you. Yeah. Why would he allow the worst thing ever to happen to you? In a sense. Yeah. Yeah. We have to realize that, that he doesn’t wish anything bad. Oftentimes we do the bad things to ourselves. Yeah. And it’s he says, like Jesus is like, what kind of father would hand a man a snake when he was a child, a snake when he asked for fish.

Yeah. It’s that kind of thing. But that when you have that lack of trust in God, And you don’t even realize it. It’s no, I love God. And I go to church on those things. Yeah, you can do all those things and really not trust God with your life. Every single one of us struggles with trust.

Surrender is the hardest thing to do in our faith is to fully surrender, but you have to learn to trust God. And in those moments, you’re like, that’s when you can go, okay, you know what? God’s never let me down. So why would he this time? Things may be difficult, but he’s not going to abandon me.

Again, Jesus leaving the 99 to go after the one like. He, he even knows the hairs on your head, all those things that we’ll go through some Bible verses here in a minute, but it starts with this lack of trust. Which leads then like when you don’t trust God, you think, Oh, God’s not going to, I don’t know if he’s going to handle this or not.

So I need to step in. So that lack of trust leads to a retreat towards self sufficiency, right? Like I have to do, I have to figure it out. I have to do it myself. And when you get in that mindset, then you start to figure out, Oh man, I can’t do this myself, or this isn’t in my control. And what can I do about it?

And I can’t see the future. And you start to worry and all those things, which eventually leads you to. Oh gosh, I can’t figure it out and I don’t trust God now. I’m not, I know I’m not enough now. And then that inadequacy that’s in all of us starts to rise and the devil starts to play in that. And you start thinking man, I’m inadequate.

I can’t do this. That leads to fear. I’m afraid. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know how I’m going to pay for my daughter to go to school or Jacob to go to school or I don’t know what’s going to happen in this ministry. We lost some donors last month so what’s going to happen now?

We really needed that money and how are we going to make that up? And like, all of a sudden you get fearful, right? And then you get scared. And when you get fearful. What do you worry right when that fear hits you then you start all those questions What why how when all those things start to come to mind and it starts to just take over and it causes a law it?

leads to a loss of peace and joy and presence and You wind up losing your grasp on the truth And that truth is that God will never abandon you, right? When you lose that idea, you lose your gratitude too. And that’s what I was thinking in that boat. And when I was telling Jacob in the truck, I was like, son, yeah, I was really preoccupied.

And I said, it doesn’t make sense, son. Because every time I’ve ever been worried in the ministry, like I started this nonprofit, we had no money. I gave 2, 000 to lawyers started. I had no money. I was sitting in the floor for weeks on, okay, God, I got a nonprofit. I’m not working. There’s no money coming in.

My family’s suffering like what? Come on, man. Two weeks later, we, I get a call from a guy. I barely know. We started virtual Catholic conference. Which launched all these virtual conferences in the church during COVID. Yeah. Yeah. During COVID and gave me a way to provide for my family for many months until this started growing and taking off.

God’s always been there, right? He didn’t abandon me in that jail cell, right? He allowed Angela and gave her the grace to forgive me and to stay with me, right? He’s never left me in anything. And we can lose our memory of that, of those moments where God has shown up, where God has proven himself.

We forget. And then we get scared. And when we get worried, we get scared, we lose our gratitude and everything starts to take over. And Victor, that’s where most people get and that’s where we start to struggle. Yeah. I think a lot of us forget to do the the thankful inventory look like, how do I get to where I am now?

And a lot of us, if we really go back in hindsight, we see where God’s hand. And God’s influence, the influence of other people that God’s working through helped us to get to where we are. A community of faith is a big thing. It’s just not your parish, your church, it’s other believers who see something in you or who see that you’re a hard worker and maybe need a break, and they give you that, that shot, that opportunity the boss, his name said, and I went to his last thing cause I didn’t get permission for this.

Sure. Sure. Like I was, after working in a while for a place like you village, which I love, but it was just so hard. I had a young family. I was working eight to eight, barely getting paid for that, and then I took a break and I was a stay at home dad for about six, seven months, and then, we had 2008 came around, all that stuff.

So it was I gotta go back to work, but then I worked somewhere, but then, this guy took a shot on me and said, Hey, for his development. I didn’t know what that was. And so he said he interviewed and I did well and, and I got the job and so I’ve been in business development for 10 years.

Working with behavioral health and mental health and substance abuse facilities and being that connector for people needing help, you know So in a way one person gave me that opportunity To expand the influence I can and the kingdom to get people where they need to get because they’re dealing with a lot of traumatic Experiences but also addiction stuff too.

Yeah, and what you’re saying too is that when we look in the past where God’s hand was there, we have to realize that hand will always be there. Sure. And not be so consumed. Yeah, he helped me here. And he helped me here and there and there and there.

But I don’t know if he can do this now. I don’t know if you can help me out what’s going on now because this is crazy. This is, I don’t know how you can do this, but it’s also, it reminds me that what you’re saying reminds me of that footsteps in the sand prayer, like poem or whatever it’s talking about.

Yeah. There were these two footsteps where you were walking with me and then God, all of a sudden, there was only one. Where did you go? And he said, that’s when I was carrying you. That’s your, I was, I had you in my arms. I was carrying you. And it’s something that he, it’s something that he does every day in our life.

If we just forget, we, because of wounds and abandonment issues and all these things in our life, there’s been people that have left us. There’ve been people that we thought we could depend on. All those things. That’s why we talk about healing and wounds and all those things all the time.

So that adds to worry. And that’s what adds to your fear of not being able to trust God or that God’s not going to show up and handle things. But he has spoken to us all throughout scripture and throughout the saints with all the saints about how he’s going to take care of us. And I just want to ramble off some of those real rattle off some of them real quick.

I’ve got a lot of them here, but I want to read them. And then of course, I’ll give you the verses and we’ll have them in the show notes. But Philippians four, six through seven through Paul, he says, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

That’s an example. First Peter five, seven, cast all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. So there’s Peter. In the Psalms, Psalm 55, 22, cast your burden on the Lord and he will sustain you. He will never permit the righteous to be moved. Then you hear it from Jesus himself when he’s talking about his father in Matthew 6, 25 34.

He says, Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, and what you will eat, or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is it not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

Are you no more of value than they? And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to your life? To his span of life. And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? Or what shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all.

But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. So that’s Jesus speaking to us. And then a couple more here. When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul.

That’s Psalm ninety four nineteen. When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. Psalm fifty six three. Fear not. I am with you. Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous hand. Isaiah 41 10. And finally, and this is just a few, there’s tons more in the Bible, Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad.

That is Proverbs 12 25. Victor, the Bible talks to us constantly about what God says. I’m here. I love you. Don’t be afraid. I’m here. I know even the hairs on your head. It’s a little bit harder for him to count mine than yours, Victor, but but yeah, it is, he knows everything and he knows our needs and our concerns and our worries and he provides, but it’s the evil one that comes to seek and destroy and as I said, we’ve got a couple more saints quotes in here too.

And again, St. Padre Pio, pray, hope, and don’t worry. Worry is useless. God is merciful and we’ll hear your prayer. So he’s saying like trust again trust just pray the lord needs he knows your needs and he knows what you’re fearful of But tell him he waits for you to speak with him about it, right? And he says it’s anything else is useless.

You’re wasting your life you’re you’re putting stresses on yourself and all these things that you don’t have to and then Of saint francis to sell says this he says it seems to me You ought to resolve to carry out peacefully what you can do not worry about all the rest, but in trust to divine providence, that’s which you are unable to accomplish on your own.

What is pleasing to God is the reasonable care and attention we give to accomplishing well, whatever business we must undertake through duty. What is not pleasing to God is anxiety and disquiet of mind. The Lord wants your limitations and weaknesses to find their support in his strength. He wants us to hope that his goodness will complete and perfect the imperfectness of our means So what’s he saying?

They’re like you ought to carry out peacefully what you can leave everything else to god, right? Leave it to divine providence because god doesn’t want you in anxiety and worry and disquieting of mind. He knows fully well he made us what our limitations and weaknesses are. So give the rest of them and find support in him.

A lot of times that’s what he’s waiting for is us just to give it to him so he can make perfect what we can’t make even near okay. Yeah. And that’s what these great saints are saying. So Victor, I just thought there was those verses and everything we go How can I feel better? There’s a whole book of feel better.

It’s called the word of God, the Bible. And then we have this treasure troves of people that have this great wisdom and these great gifts from the Lord to become saints that have lived through these trials. And there’s, they’re sitting here from the pages of the past yearning to share that information too.

So where do we go in our worries? Back to the treasure trove of the church back to those places that we know the people that went before us and then from god himself where he speaks to us through the prophets through the apostle paul and through christ himself. That’s where we go in these times of worry and in need So how do we what do we do now victor?

We always want to talk about how to so that’s great How do I quit worrying right great that they’ve said all these things well one When these moments come, stop and pray. That’s what I did on that boat. What I told Jacob in the truck, I said, yeah, I’ve been worried and anxious over many things. Like I couldn’t enjoy myself because my mind was just like a water bug on that water, on that lake, just going here and there and everywhere.

And Jacob, what I, you know what I did, he is what, and I said, when I turned the music on and when I started talking towards the end of the trip, I You know, on the boat, he goes, what, yeah, what did you do? And I said, I just gave it to God. Lord, there’s nothing I can do about it. Like you’re presenting this stuff and you’re not going to lay in front of me things that you’re not going to help me complete.

You’re not going to send all this stuff here without a plan and a way. So instead of worrying, Lord, help me to sit down. And to work through it with the people you put in my life, the Ryan Foley’s, the Derek Cummins, the Matthew Leonards the, the, all these people that have been so gracious in my life, the Dr.

Bob’s, the, you all these people that could sit down and help me in the areas that I struggle and I worry because I think I don’t have the gifting to do this, but God, again, has supplied people in my life that do. And so instead of worrying, sit down. And that’s what I got in that prayer. But I never would have gotten that if I hadn’t sat down and asked God to come in that moment.

And that’s what I told Jacob he needed to do in his life to remember all the times that God’s taking care of you. What we talked about earlier, how many times when we’ve been so worried and we’ve lost moments with our family or we’ve been angry or we’ve heard other people because we’ve allowed the worry to become fear and all the processes we went with the lack of trust of God and the self sufficiency and then the fear and then the worry and then the loss of gratitude.

How many times have we allowed that to happen? Because we simply forgot who God is. Like God is a good father. And just like if Jacob came to me or my daughters, Caitlin and Allison said, dad, I need something. I’m not going to say, okay, I don’t care. Go figure it out yourself. Like you can’t come to me.

That’s not my problem. That’s not what I’m going to do. And God’s not going to do that either. So we have to go back and look at the times where God has said, it’s okay. I know. But just stay with me a little longer, right? And I’m going to give you what you need Three ask for his grace to further trust him these places where we worry the devil uses them to destroy But the lord wants to use them to build up.

Yeah, so these places where we worry don’t get upset and oh my gosh I’m worrying again realize that there’s some sort of Some sort of inadequacy or some sort of place where you’re not fully trusting god and this worry It’s not just a tool of the devil to make things go bad, but it’s also the Lord shining a light on a place where you have an opportunity to greater trust in the Lord, right?

To surrender more. And you don’t always have to look at things negatively oh man, I’m starting to worry. Obviously this is a place where God wants to come into and wants to heal me of something and to give me a greater trust in him. Four, this is going to sound funny, but Google verse is about worry.

People go John, I don’t know scripture like you and Victor do or like Dr. Han or whoever. There’s a Google machine, right? Google it. Google it. What are Bible verses about worry? And then sit with the Lord. And let him speak into your heart. You say I can’t hear him in prayer.

Then open up his words and he’s speaking directly to you. That Bible is there to speak to you as a loving father. So find those things, Google saints quotes about worry and take those words as a way to. Yeah. to shore up your own belief in your trusting God. And in scripture, it allows you to find yourself in certain places where other prophets or apostles, disciples are in, like for instance, I’ll be real quick and brief on this, but the thing is a couple of weeks, probably two, three Sundays ago.

And you probably remember this. Where are. Elijah was like just done. He went and he hid under a broom tree to die. Oh, yeah Let me tell you there’s been times where I’ve felt that like I’m done Lord I don’t know what like exhausted in my work in ministry I’m like, I was I want to be a presbyterian minister and then the ordination process said, no, you really think this, or I want to be in the military and I had a back, back tumor and they go and I go, no, you can’t do that.

So it’s what do it’s like, all right, I’m done. I’m done. I thought, and I’ll just sit down and die, like it says in the Bible. And that’s like the human nature of going like, all right, I’ve done everything I can. And we know we haven’t done everything we can, but we’re pouting in a sense because we’re not getting the way that we expect it to happen.

But anyways, I didn’t mean to detract, but the great thing about scripture is that it continues to speak to us, even those living in this 21st century. Yeah. Like wherever you are, God wants to meet you there and that’s one of the greatest ways he does it. And then finally, the last practical thing I would say is the surrender novena, right?

That’s a practical prayer that if you’ve got something that you’re so worried about, Pray that non day surrender novena and give it to the Lord and just give it to him. And when you do really give it to him, make the amend in your life, amend the promise to yourself that I’m not going to worry about anymore.

I’ve given it to God and I’m going to trust him with it. May not work out the way I want and might, but either way it’s in his hands now. And that’s how you start to compete worry in your life. You stop and pray, remember all the times God’s taken care of you and live in that gratitude, ask for his grace to further trust him.

Google verses and saints quotes to help you, people reinforce what God’s saying to you, and then pray that surrender novena, and that’s a good place to start. But folks, worry is going to affect all of us all through our life. You’re never going to escape it, but it doesn’t, you don’t have to waste away your life with worry.

You don’t have to steal from yourself the joy and the peace and the presence of the moment. That’s what the devil wants to do with it, but the Lord wants to use it to shine it. A light into the place in your life where you don’t trust him. So Victor, let’s take it to prayer and let’s pray for a greater trust in the Lord and the name of the father and the son and the Holy spirit.

Amen. Heavenly father, there’s so many times in places where we don’t trust you fully. Instead of remembering who you are and finding great confidence in all the things you’ve done for us, we surrendered to the enemy and we get caught up in worry and anxiety. Lord, all that does is steal joy presence.

And in peace lord, we know that you want to bring those things back to us So as we leave here today, please invite us into a greater trust with you Give us the grace to find it And then help us to remember to turn all of our worries our anxieties and cast them on to you And your most holy name we pray in the name of the father son and the holy spirit.

Amen  Welcome back to the pew everybody. I am your host, John Edwards, and here across the table from me as always is my co host and cohort, Victor Adams. Hey John, good to be here today, man. It’s good to be with you too, dude. How you been? It’s been a minute. Yeah, it’s good. But we  we celebrated a good friend’s birthday this weekend.

So today’s Sunday. Sunday for those. Yep. So happy 50th, David. It’s one day late now, but we did get to have that dinner with him and I went fishing with him Saturday morning. We’re going to talk a little bit about that today, but yeah, it’s been a minute. We we had a show that you and I had done that was supposed to come out and then the sound was messed up.

So we’re gonna have to redo that one. But I know Paul George has been in here. We had the Eucharist of Congress stuff. So I’m sure people are like, Oh, good. Victor’s back in here. Cause it’s been a few weeks since you’ve been with us. Thank you. Man of many words, Victor Adams, but man, I’ll tell you what, I’m excited to get started today and talk about what we’re going to talk about.

But first, Victor, I just want to share something with you because I know this is going to mean something to you too, and I want to share it with the audience. But I was at mass the other day at a noon mass and there was a lot of people there and after mass, one of the ladies walked up to me and she said, you don’t know who I am, but I pray for you by name each and every day.

And I said you look familiar. And she said, you don’t know me, my son. And she goes, my son for years has struggled with addictions, painkillers, drugs, all this stuff. He got hurt on the job. We also had lost a child earlier in life. So he lost a sibling and it’s always been a trouble and a struggle for all of us.

And especially him. And she said, and I, he had walked away from his faith and all of these things. And she said, and I really was praying for him every day, but I felt like I was losing more and more hope. That he would never be able to turn around and change. And she said, but then he found out about your men’s group.

And started going to it. And she said, John, it’s changed his life. She said, he’s a miracle. Like he, he’s going to church again now. Like he’s going to your group every week. He’s put down the pills and the drugs and the alcohol, and he’s gone back to work. And she said, and there’s just something in him.

There’s a. So there’s a hope in him that I didn’t think I would ever see again in my life. And she started crying and gave me a hug and she said, I pray for you every single day for the men in that group and for your ministry. And Victor, I just share that with you one because you’re part of that group.

You’ve been in there and you’ve been in the room with this young man and and he began to share not long ago about that struggle in his life, but. Yeah, the Lord has done that great work in him. But Victor, if we didn’t have that group, no wonder where he’d be like, tell him where he’d be.

It wasn’t anything I did or you said, it was just the environment that’s been created in our parish for men to be able to come in and to be a part of something. And, Victor, people ask me all the time and she did too. She said, what can I ever do to try to repay? And I said, ma’am, all we need, what we need more than anything are continued prayers and support.

Victor, we’re in a place now where we are busier than we’ve ever been. The demand for our work is greater than it’s ever been. And we’re in a place where we’re going to have to bring on people. And the only way we can do that is if people support us monthly, right? And so that’s why we’re always talking about partners in the pew.

We need people to come on beside us, whether it’s. 10 bucks a month or 20 bucks a month, a hundred bucks a month, whatever it is, every little bit helps. And right now, more than anything, that’s what we need because we’re, the demand is outrunning the supply, right? Like we’ve got to have more people. I want to bring in some guys.

There’s some already some people I’m talking to, to be able to come in here and do some of these work, some of this work to go out into parishes. And do the missions and the trainings and the launchings of these groups so men like this young man can find a place where he can find healing and hope and restoration.

That’s what these groups are really doing. So folks, if you’re, if you’ve been listening to this, if you’re watching, this is why you should give. Stories like that. This guy had no hope in his life. His mother was almost out of hope. Praying every single day for this young man, and then he wandered into one of our events into one of our groups Group nights one of our four pillars and he’s been coming ever since and his life is better.

He told his mother I’m never walking away from this again folks. That’s what we do It just got in the people we’re going and starting these places where men can grow in their faith Where they can come back to the lord with and get rid of all these Addictions and vices and these things that have a hold on them You can be a part of these places, too.

We get stardom in your area, or you can give and help us stardom in other places. So folks, hat in hand today. I’m asking you, if you’re watching the show, if you’ve been moved, if you’ve been inspired, so many people send us those things. And I’m so appreciative of it. It means the world. But if there’s any way that you could support us financially, that’s what we truly need.

And that’s what our prayers are for each and every day in the ministry. Is that God will send us more people to support what we’re doing to partner with us in this ministry so we can grow and continue to help people all around this country. So folks, you can do that by going to just a guy on the pew.

com. There’s a donate button on the left side of the page. A little heart, as much as you scroll, it’ll be right there on every page. So you can click that or there is a donate support button in the menu items at the top. Go there, fill it out and become a monthly partner in the pew. Again, you don’t know how many lives you can help save by doing it.

So thank you guys. Victor, I just want to share that because I know you and I hadn’t really talked about that and it was a, it was an amazing thing and a grace to have somebody come up and just say that it’s very humbling and it just makes you realize like the Lord is doing great work here. So Victor, you’re a big part of that in the podcast and our group each and every week.

But today, what I wanted to talk to you about was a subject that I think, again it’s something that’s happened in my life. I know it’s hit home to you. And honestly, if you’re a human being, like you can’t go a lot without fighting this some way. Yeah. Yeah. And what it is worrying, worrying anxiety. And the name of this episode, haven’t really quite figured it out yet, but as I was thinking about the show, I kept thinking, stop stealing from yourself, or the waste of worry, right? So I don’t know what we’ll wind up calling it, but both those things are the point. And this came to mind.

We mentioned David is 50th birthday and he was, that was Saturday. Today’s Sunday. So yesterday was his birthday. This will be coming out Tuesday, a couple of days after his birthday. But you and I went to dinner with him Friday night and Friday, we had a really busy day in the ministry. I was on the phone from 10 in the morning till five o’clock in the afternoon with.

Either booking more engagements, more conferences, more missions, leadership summits, all those things working through what people were already working with just a lot of stuff. And it just, there was a lot of different things too. Like some people called me and wanted to start partnering with these different larger organizations and, really Hey, what if we did this?

And we moved all these things over here and you ran this and you did that. And we partnered in this way and all good things, it is when you’re just, when you’re doing everything you can to just keep up and then all these other things are coming at you too, you’re just like, Oh my gosh, and you start to worry and things and your mind starts to be preoccupied and that’s all you think about, right?

Is, how are we going to support the ministry? How are we going to meet the need? How are we going to all this stuff? So we go have dinner and even during dinner, like my mom wasn’t shutting off. And then David said, do you want to go fishing Saturday morning? And I said, yeah, it’s his birthday.

Love to go. And I, and again, Sometimes I walk out in my carport, in my garage and look at the boat that hadn’t moved in months because we’ve been gone every weekend doing missions and I started to feel anxious about that, the boats paid for instead of feeling anxious, I should feel grateful that I have a boat instead of going, Oh man, sitting there and I’m not using it and dah.

So long story short we, I meet him, Jacob and I get up at five 30 in the morning, my son, Jacob and I, and we head out there and and we go to this lake right outside of Memphis where his uncle has a spot in a place. And there’s trouble immediately the trolling motor won’t start. We have to rewire all this stuff, but we get out there And it’s a beautiful day.

It’s overcast. It’s not like a hundred thousand degrees like it’s been in memphis lately There’s a breeze blowing across the water. We’re catching some fish But man, I found myself just constantly thinking about work and thinking about ministry people I got to call back and this and that And instead of doing something I love very much fishing and has always been an escape.

My mind was just like You know Hammered in things like we weren’t even speaking, you know Everybody’s doing their thing and Jacob might get tangled up or something and talk and I eventually put some music on we leave, you know about 930 fished about four and a half hours or three and a half hours Whatever it was once we finally got in the boat and got going But I was in the truck on the way home as driving on the interstate with my son sitting there and again quiet not thinking About anything and all sudden Jacob says dad like are you okay?

He said we were sitting on the water and like normally you’re so playful and you’re picking at David and you’re picking at me and we’re laughing and But like you didn’t say anything the whole time I’m like every time I look at you look sad like you look just Like you lost your best friend and I just smiled and just laughed at his perception that 14 years old that he would ask that and I just said son, i’m anxious and worried over many things and Of course, I felt like martha right when jesus talks about that But there’s a lot of things going on right now as I mentioned in the ministry They’re all good things, but when we worry we get preoccupied like good things become You know Not so good in your mind, right?

You become burdened by things, which are gifts. And that’s what I was thinking about. I was like, man, years ago, I was praying for one speaking engagement, one, one parish to be able to help. And now, there’s, they’re calling every day and so yeah, we’re going to have to step up staff up and we’re gonna have to do all these things.

Those are blessings, but the devil gets in that stuff and calls you to worry. And really, what is that, man? What is worry and anxiety? It’s, The definition of worry is to give way to anxiety or unease and to allow one’s mind to dwell on difficulty Or be absent from the present. Yeah. Yeah. So this is something that I know Isn’t only something I have to fight, right?

I’m sure you have it. I know angela is always working and worried about things and basically everybody is because we forget You know that we’re not supposed to worry and we get mired down in it We’ll talk about what some of the saints say and stuff like that and even what it means to worry in the processes of that But that’s what I wanted to talk about today.

I’m sure you’re familiar with it, too. Yeah. I mean what you’re talking about is like it’s The symptom of the what if scenario. We’re very good at playing out scenarios of what if, like for instance, for a lot of us, 2008, the home crisis, the bubble burst, and a lot of people lost their jobs.

A lot of people lost their homes. We were worried about that too, because I just left. We’re in the VA hospital where it worked into youth villages. And Christy just got her real real estate appraiser’s license. So you get something, you’ve worked for two years, and studied all this stuff, got your license.

And then all of a sudden the worst thing in economy, for a long time, boom, house prices go down. No one. No one can really move on. No one can sell because things are just going bad for everything. There was worry then, but, but the difference is, I think we had faith to know that even though we may have to cut back a lot on what’s going on, we had faith that, that something will.

God’s intervention will happen, and it’s easy to say, it is easy to say yes, because suffering is involved in that thought moment too. Worry also brings suffering as well. If it’s something that it hasn’t already. Showed itself. We are very good at manifesting, suffering as well.

But as people, many people know, my oldest daughter and she’s always told me that she, let her tell her story. She suffered with anxiety and panic attacks, still does, but she’s able to cope with it, and have a coping mechanisms and realize that this is a panic attack, I’m okay, I’m in a safe place, so and so forth.

And if anxiety comes upon her, she realized, okay, this is anxiety, this is only last a moment. It won’t last for an eternity. Sure. And I think a lot of us have to get to that same concept of saying, Hey, I’m stressed out right now, but this feeling I’m feeling now is only a moment.

Yeah. And let me deal with the moment and know that, in the longterm, Thank you. You’re welcome. This won’t always be this way. Yeah. And you make a good point because anxiety, worry, they, they can really just stop you dead in your tracks. If it’s severe like that, it’s just, you don’t want to do anything.

You want to isolate. You want to sit still. You don’t want to like, you’re just, it can rob you of everything. This is what I meant by calling it like stop stealing from yourself. And I know some people can’t help it. Like they just have issues of that, that they either have to be medicated or they have to go through a lot of counseling.

And things to learn, ways to deal with it. I’m losing the phrase I was trying to say there, but like steps to be able to walk through when you’re experiencing that and things, but man, it is, the scriptures talk about this a lot and about worry itself. And the funny thing is like the word worry actually comes from an old English word.

The root of it is actually worgen is it’s a W Y R G A N. I’m probably saying it wrong, but. It originally meant like strangle. That’s what that word meant where worry is derived from. And man, isn’t that the truth? Cause like when you get to worry and you become like a hamster on a wheel and it just, you’re spinning and spinning and getting nowhere.

And you start to feel like that, that overwhelming fear and anxiety and that almost like you’re just slowly struggling to breathe sometimes, right? Where you’re just like, Oh man, this all of a sudden, Everything in the world is coming down on me and there’s a couple of great saints, we always love to see what the people before us and the great saints have said about these things.

There’s a couple of them that have mentioned it and said different things. So like the first one, Saint Padre Pio, he says, if certain thoughts bother you, it’s the devil who causes you to worry and not God. Who being the spirit of peace grants you tranquility. So right off the bat, he’s saying, look, if you’re experiencing worry and all those things and St.

Ignatius and all these different people with the discernment of spirits have said the same thing, like these type thoughts don’t come from God. Like he doesn’t, God’s not sitting up there going let me whisper this in their ear and then watch them. Go nuts, right? That’s not what God does. That’s the evil one.

And that’s what he’s always trying to do. Because if you’re worried and you’re anxious, you’re preoccupied, as you said, you’re not present. And I certainly wasn’t in that boat. And my son even picked up on it. What’s wrong with you? What’s going on? Because I wasn’t there. I was physically there, but mentally I was not.

I was somewhere else. I was back in this studio over in that corner where I work. Like in my mind, thinking about all these things that I could do nothing about at the time that, that I really was robbing myself of time with my friend on his birthday and time with my son and things that I’d been worried about.

I haven’t been able to do lately fish. I was now fishing, but I couldn’t enjoy it because I was worrying about other things when I used to be worrying about not being able to fish. And it’s just a never ending cycle But and the devil does that because he’s constantly trying to rob steal and destroy.

That’s what it says, right? The devil comes to plunder right to take everything and all over goodness. So St. Francis DeSalle goes even further by saying anxiety is the greatest evil that can befall a soul except sin. God commands you to pray, but he forbids you to worry. He forbids you to worry. So saying that one more time.

Anxiety is the greatest evil that can befall a soul except sin. God commands you to pray, but he forbids you to worry. And this is the hard part because worrying just seems like such a natural human thing to do, right? There’s always, it seems like there’s always something to worry about.

There’s never enough money. There’s, you never have enough time to do the job you need to do. There’s, your kids are going to grow up and be gone before long. There’s always something to worry about if you look for it. And the devil lays those bread, clumbs, crumbs. And then he watches you swirl down the drain as you enter into this sort of stuff.

And it robs everyone of their peace and of the present moment. And so we’re going to continue to talk about it a little bit, but yeah. What do you think about all that? What the saints are saying and that word strangle? That’s the things like, you know, when something’s being strangled at the lack of oxygen, right?

Yeah. So when a lack of oxygen, if you want to assimilate that into a lack of hope, when you’re worried so much about something, then anything of hope or anything of joy is removed from that situation. For a lot of us, we have stresses every day. Like you see, financials, will we afford a little to go to school?

We, we did with Lily. We were able to do, a lot of things to get her where she is now. Will we have enough for retirement? I don’t know. It seems every time I hear a financial advisor goes, you need this amount of money to retire. I’m like, or my 401, Advisors you need to put more in.

I’m like, yeah, but I don’t trust the stock market, man. Cause it goes up and down so much. It’s I’m like, I almost feel like I lose more. First, I got to get more. Yeah. No, it’s like, why do I lose more than I think? I feel like a millionaire first get a million dollars. So it’s we can get all the advice of people who live in comfort, and like I said, I think for us, because we’ve have gone through so much. Stress and worry, you know your life story my last my life story where I was planning to go in this way in my Life and then I had a you know A sickness a tumor and then it it actually went I made my life go another way Which I have been blessed because of that and same thing for you know you were on trajectory of like wealth and power and privilege and then you got to a point where You know something situational happen in your life to where now you’re doing something where you were always probably called to do you just didn’t hear it Yeah, so so the great thing about even though when stress anxiety or worry or suffering comes in our lives.

We think it’s You know, it’s gonna be always a bad thing, but sometimes it redirects us to where God wants us to be, too. Yeah, but that’s the thing. I think the Saints are saying is that when it’s obsessive anxiety, when it’s something that you just, it just is so overwhelming, then you have to be careful like, where’s that, where’s the voice coming from with that?

Yeah, is that something that, is pulling you away from God or pulling you towards God? Yeah, and That’s why I thought it was so interesting. I love researching stuff like this for the podcast. Cause I was like, I wonder what the root word of that is. And it’s like strangle.

Yeah dude, that is the truth. Like it strangles you, like worry strangles you, man. It, that’s why we love heart attacks. That’s why we overeat. That’s why we drink. That’s why we like, it’s like the devil put you in a sleeper move, wrestling, father Martel would love that.

Yeah. But yeah, it does. And it starts to rob you of everything. And it not only strangles those around you. Because when you’re worried and you’re stressed you’re angry because you’re fearful and you’re afraid and that’s what it all leads to and we’ll talk about that in a second.

But like I know when I’m worried and anxious, like I’m not the nicest person to be around. Like I’m short. I answer my wife and kids short. I get what do you mean? That’s a simple thing. Why did you ask that? You should have been able to figure that out. Like stuff I don’t usually say and do.

And it’s usually when I’m worried and stressed out about something, and so that’s why the devil does it. Because if he can get to you, the head of the family, the father the provider, and all the stuff we’ve been told as men, we’re supposed to be. And inside we’re dealing with our own inadequacies.

And the fact that we’re not providing the way that we wanted to, or this or that you start to worry, and then what do you do once he takes out the head of the family? He uses you to go and alienate everyone else in that fear and in that worry and in that concern And so I wanted to talk about that a little bit like how it strangles you and I was thinking about this It’s gonna sound funny, but in the shower this morning, or last night.

I was just like man I really like this idea and then I started thinking it’s ah almost busted and Broke my head getting out of the shower to get a pencil and write something down But it really starts with this, like where does worry start? It starts with a lack of trust in God. It really does.

When we start thinking about something and our mind starts going down these pathways and next thing you know you’re in some Armageddon scenario like in your life and it’s because you’re forgetting that there’s a God who loves you, right? And there’s a God who has a plan for your life. And there’s a God that if you’re giving your life to him and you’re trusting him that he plans nothing but for your good.

He created you. He created you for a reason and purpose. He loves you. Yeah. Why would he allow the worst thing ever to happen to you? In a sense. Yeah. Yeah. We have to realize that, that he doesn’t wish anything bad. Oftentimes we do the bad things to ourselves. Yeah. And it’s he says, like Jesus is like, what kind of father would hand a man a snake when he was a child, a snake when he asked for fish.

Yeah. It’s that kind of thing. But that when you have that lack of trust in God, And you don’t even realize it. It’s no, I love God. And I go to church on those things. Yeah, you can do all those things and really not trust God with your life. Every single one of us struggles with trust.

Surrender is the hardest thing to do in our faith is to fully surrender, but you have to learn to trust God. And in those moments, you’re like, that’s when you can go, okay, you know what? God’s never let me down. So why would he this time? Things may be difficult, but he’s not going to abandon me.

Again, Jesus leaving the 99 to go after the one like. He, he even knows the hairs on your head, all those things that we’ll go through some Bible verses here in a minute, but it starts with this lack of trust. Which leads then like when you don’t trust God, you think, Oh, God’s not going to, I don’t know if he’s going to handle this or not.

So I need to step in. So that lack of trust leads to a retreat towards self sufficiency, right? Like I have to do, I have to figure it out. I have to do it myself. And when you get in that mindset, then you start to figure out, Oh man, I can’t do this myself, or this isn’t in my control. And what can I do about it?

And I can’t see the future. And you start to worry and all those things, which eventually leads you to. Oh gosh, I can’t figure it out and I don’t trust God now. I’m not, I know I’m not enough now. And then that inadequacy that’s in all of us starts to rise and the devil starts to play in that. And you start thinking man, I’m inadequate.

I can’t do this. That leads to fear. I’m afraid. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know how I’m going to pay for my daughter to go to school or Jacob to go to school or I don’t know what’s going to happen in this ministry. We lost some donors last month so what’s going to happen now?

We really needed that money and how are we going to make that up? And like, all of a sudden you get fearful, right? And then you get scared. And when you get fearful. What do you worry right when that fear hits you then you start all those questions What why how when all those things start to come to mind and it starts to just take over and it causes a law it?

leads to a loss of peace and joy and presence and You wind up losing your grasp on the truth And that truth is that God will never abandon you, right? When you lose that idea, you lose your gratitude too. And that’s what I was thinking in that boat. And when I was telling Jacob in the truck, I was like, son, yeah, I was really preoccupied.

And I said, it doesn’t make sense, son. Because every time I’ve ever been worried in the ministry, like I started this nonprofit, we had no money. I gave 2, 000 to lawyers started. I had no money. I was sitting in the floor for weeks on, okay, God, I got a nonprofit. I’m not working. There’s no money coming in.

My family’s suffering like what? Come on, man. Two weeks later, we, I get a call from a guy. I barely know. We started virtual Catholic conference. Which launched all these virtual conferences in the church during COVID. Yeah. Yeah. During COVID and gave me a way to provide for my family for many months until this started growing and taking off.

God’s always been there, right? He didn’t abandon me in that jail cell, right? He allowed Angela and gave her the grace to forgive me and to stay with me, right? He’s never left me in anything. And we can lose our memory of that, of those moments where God has shown up, where God has proven himself.

We forget. And then we get scared. And when we get worried, we get scared, we lose our gratitude and everything starts to take over. And Victor, that’s where most people get and that’s where we start to struggle. Yeah. I think a lot of us forget to do the the thankful inventory look like, how do I get to where I am now?

And a lot of us, if we really go back in hindsight, we see where God’s hand. And God’s influence, the influence of other people that God’s working through helped us to get to where we are. A community of faith is a big thing. It’s just not your parish, your church, it’s other believers who see something in you or who see that you’re a hard worker and maybe need a break, and they give you that, that shot, that opportunity the boss, his name said, and I went to his last thing cause I didn’t get permission for this.

Sure. Sure. Like I was, after working in a while for a place like you village, which I love, but it was just so hard. I had a young family. I was working eight to eight, barely getting paid for that, and then I took a break and I was a stay at home dad for about six, seven months, and then, we had 2008 came around, all that stuff.

So it was I gotta go back to work, but then I worked somewhere, but then, this guy took a shot on me and said, Hey, for his development. I didn’t know what that was. And so he said he interviewed and I did well and, and I got the job and so I’ve been in business development for 10 years.

Working with behavioral health and mental health and substance abuse facilities and being that connector for people needing help, you know So in a way one person gave me that opportunity To expand the influence I can and the kingdom to get people where they need to get because they’re dealing with a lot of traumatic Experiences but also addiction stuff too.

Yeah, and what you’re saying too is that when we look in the past where God’s hand was there, we have to realize that hand will always be there. Sure. And not be so consumed. Yeah, he helped me here. And he helped me here and there and there and there.

But I don’t know if he can do this now. I don’t know if you can help me out what’s going on now because this is crazy. This is, I don’t know how you can do this, but it’s also, it reminds me that what you’re saying reminds me of that footsteps in the sand prayer, like poem or whatever it’s talking about.

Yeah. There were these two footsteps where you were walking with me and then God, all of a sudden, there was only one. Where did you go? And he said, that’s when I was carrying you. That’s your, I was, I had you in my arms. I was carrying you. And it’s something that he, it’s something that he does every day in our life.

If we just forget, we, because of wounds and abandonment issues and all these things in our life, there’s been people that have left us. There’ve been people that we thought we could depend on. All those things. That’s why we talk about healing and wounds and all those things all the time.

So that adds to worry. And that’s what adds to your fear of not being able to trust God or that God’s not going to show up and handle things. But he has spoken to us all throughout scripture and throughout the saints with all the saints about how he’s going to take care of us. And I just want to ramble off some of those real rattle off some of them real quick.

I’ve got a lot of them here, but I want to read them. And then of course, I’ll give you the verses and we’ll have them in the show notes. But Philippians four, six through seven through Paul, he says, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

That’s an example. First Peter five, seven, cast all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. So there’s Peter. In the Psalms, Psalm 55, 22, cast your burden on the Lord and he will sustain you. He will never permit the righteous to be moved. Then you hear it from Jesus himself when he’s talking about his father in Matthew 6, 25 34.

He says, Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, and what you will eat, or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is it not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

Are you no more of value than they? And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to your life? To his span of life. And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? Or what shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all.

But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. So that’s Jesus speaking to us. And then a couple more here. When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul.

That’s Psalm ninety four nineteen. When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. Psalm fifty six three. Fear not. I am with you. Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous hand. Isaiah 41 10. And finally, and this is just a few, there’s tons more in the Bible, Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad.

That is Proverbs 12 25. Victor, the Bible talks to us constantly about what God says. I’m here. I love you. Don’t be afraid. I’m here. I know even the hairs on your head. It’s a little bit harder for him to count mine than yours, Victor, but but yeah, it is, he knows everything and he knows our needs and our concerns and our worries and he provides, but it’s the evil one that comes to seek and destroy and as I said, we’ve got a couple more saints quotes in here too.

And again, St. Padre Pio, pray, hope, and don’t worry. Worry is useless. God is merciful and we’ll hear your prayer. So he’s saying like trust again trust just pray the lord needs he knows your needs and he knows what you’re fearful of But tell him he waits for you to speak with him about it, right? And he says it’s anything else is useless.

You’re wasting your life you’re you’re putting stresses on yourself and all these things that you don’t have to and then Of saint francis to sell says this he says it seems to me You ought to resolve to carry out peacefully what you can do not worry about all the rest, but in trust to divine providence, that’s which you are unable to accomplish on your own.

What is pleasing to God is the reasonable care and attention we give to accomplishing well, whatever business we must undertake through duty. What is not pleasing to God is anxiety and disquiet of mind. The Lord wants your limitations and weaknesses to find their support in his strength. He wants us to hope that his goodness will complete and perfect the imperfectness of our means So what’s he saying?

They’re like you ought to carry out peacefully what you can leave everything else to god, right? Leave it to divine providence because god doesn’t want you in anxiety and worry and disquieting of mind. He knows fully well he made us what our limitations and weaknesses are. So give the rest of them and find support in him.

A lot of times that’s what he’s waiting for is us just to give it to him so he can make perfect what we can’t make even near okay. Yeah. And that’s what these great saints are saying. So Victor, I just thought there was those verses and everything we go How can I feel better? There’s a whole book of feel better.

It’s called the word of God, the Bible. And then we have this treasure troves of people that have this great wisdom and these great gifts from the Lord to become saints that have lived through these trials. And there’s, they’re sitting here from the pages of the past yearning to share that information too.

So where do we go in our worries? Back to the treasure trove of the church back to those places that we know the people that went before us and then from god himself where he speaks to us through the prophets through the apostle paul and through christ himself. That’s where we go in these times of worry and in need So how do we what do we do now victor?

We always want to talk about how to so that’s great How do I quit worrying right great that they’ve said all these things well one When these moments come, stop and pray. That’s what I did on that boat. What I told Jacob in the truck, I said, yeah, I’ve been worried and anxious over many things. Like I couldn’t enjoy myself because my mind was just like a water bug on that water, on that lake, just going here and there and everywhere.

And Jacob, what I, you know what I did, he is what, and I said, when I turned the music on and when I started talking towards the end of the trip, I You know, on the boat, he goes, what, yeah, what did you do? And I said, I just gave it to God. Lord, there’s nothing I can do about it. Like you’re presenting this stuff and you’re not going to lay in front of me things that you’re not going to help me complete.

You’re not going to send all this stuff here without a plan and a way. So instead of worrying, Lord, help me to sit down. And to work through it with the people you put in my life, the Ryan Foley’s, the Derek Cummins, the Matthew Leonards the, the, all these people that have been so gracious in my life, the Dr.

Bob’s, the, you all these people that could sit down and help me in the areas that I struggle and I worry because I think I don’t have the gifting to do this, but God, again, has supplied people in my life that do. And so instead of worrying, sit down. And that’s what I got in that prayer. But I never would have gotten that if I hadn’t sat down and asked God to come in that moment.

And that’s what I told Jacob he needed to do in his life to remember all the times that God’s taking care of you. What we talked about earlier, how many times when we’ve been so worried and we’ve lost moments with our family or we’ve been angry or we’ve heard other people because we’ve allowed the worry to become fear and all the processes we went with the lack of trust of God and the self sufficiency and then the fear and then the worry and then the loss of gratitude.

How many times have we allowed that to happen? Because we simply forgot who God is. Like God is a good father. And just like if Jacob came to me or my daughters, Caitlin and Allison said, dad, I need something. I’m not going to say, okay, I don’t care. Go figure it out yourself. Like you can’t come to me.

That’s not my problem. That’s not what I’m going to do. And God’s not going to do that either. So we have to go back and look at the times where God has said, it’s okay. I know. But just stay with me a little longer, right? And I’m going to give you what you need Three ask for his grace to further trust him these places where we worry the devil uses them to destroy But the lord wants to use them to build up.

Yeah, so these places where we worry don’t get upset and oh my gosh I’m worrying again realize that there’s some sort of Some sort of inadequacy or some sort of place where you’re not fully trusting god and this worry It’s not just a tool of the devil to make things go bad, but it’s also the Lord shining a light on a place where you have an opportunity to greater trust in the Lord, right?

To surrender more. And you don’t always have to look at things negatively oh man, I’m starting to worry. Obviously this is a place where God wants to come into and wants to heal me of something and to give me a greater trust in him. Four, this is going to sound funny, but Google verse is about worry.

People go John, I don’t know scripture like you and Victor do or like Dr. Han or whoever. There’s a Google machine, right? Google it. Google it. What are Bible verses about worry? And then sit with the Lord. And let him speak into your heart. You say I can’t hear him in prayer.

Then open up his words and he’s speaking directly to you. That Bible is there to speak to you as a loving father. So find those things, Google saints quotes about worry and take those words as a way to. Yeah. to shore up your own belief in your trusting God. And in scripture, it allows you to find yourself in certain places where other prophets or apostles, disciples are in, like for instance, I’ll be real quick and brief on this, but the thing is a couple of weeks, probably two, three Sundays ago.

And you probably remember this. Where are. Elijah was like just done. He went and he hid under a broom tree to die. Oh, yeah Let me tell you there’s been times where I’ve felt that like I’m done Lord I don’t know what like exhausted in my work in ministry I’m like, I was I want to be a presbyterian minister and then the ordination process said, no, you really think this, or I want to be in the military and I had a back, back tumor and they go and I go, no, you can’t do that.

So it’s what do it’s like, all right, I’m done. I’m done. I thought, and I’ll just sit down and die, like it says in the Bible. And that’s like the human nature of going like, all right, I’ve done everything I can. And we know we haven’t done everything we can, but we’re pouting in a sense because we’re not getting the way that we expect it to happen.

But anyways, I didn’t mean to detract, but the great thing about scripture is that it continues to speak to us, even those living in this 21st century. Yeah. Like wherever you are, God wants to meet you there and that’s one of the greatest ways he does it. And then finally, the last practical thing I would say is the surrender novena, right?

That’s a practical prayer that if you’ve got something that you’re so worried about, Pray that non day surrender novena and give it to the Lord and just give it to him. And when you do really give it to him, make the amend in your life, amend the promise to yourself that I’m not going to worry about anymore.

I’ve given it to God and I’m going to trust him with it. May not work out the way I want and might, but either way it’s in his hands now. And that’s how you start to compete worry in your life. You stop and pray, remember all the times God’s taken care of you and live in that gratitude, ask for his grace to further trust him.

Google verses and saints quotes to help you, people reinforce what God’s saying to you, and then pray that surrender novena, and that’s a good place to start. But folks, worry is going to affect all of us all through our life. You’re never going to escape it, but it doesn’t, you don’t have to waste away your life with worry.

You don’t have to steal from yourself the joy and the peace and the presence of the moment. That’s what the devil wants to do with it, but the Lord wants to use it to shine it. A light into the place in your life where you don’t trust him. So Victor, let’s take it to prayer and let’s pray for a greater trust in the Lord and the name of the father and the son and the Holy spirit.

Amen. Heavenly father, there’s so many times in places where we don’t trust you fully. Instead of remembering who you are and finding great confidence in all the things you’ve done for us, we surrendered to the enemy and we get caught up in worry and anxiety. Lord, all that does is steal joy presence.

And in peace lord, we know that you want to bring those things back to us So as we leave here today, please invite us into a greater trust with you Give us the grace to find it And then help us to remember to turn all of our worries our anxieties and cast them on to you And your most holy name we pray in the name of the father son and the holy spirit.

Amen

This week, I’m thrilled to welcome my good friend Paul George to the show. Paul is not just an incredible author and speaker; he’s a man dedicated to helping others discover the joy of living a life rooted in faith.

In this episode, we get into the nitty-gritty of what it means to live as a man of God, facing our wounds and seeking true healing. We talk about everything from Paul’s latest book, Holy Grit, to his work with The Art of Living — a nonprofit that serves not just churches and parishes, but a wide range of organizations dedicated to making a difference.

But it’s not all serious talk—we also share some laughs as Paul brings a little piece of Louisiana up to Memphis, surprising me with some authentic boudin and cracklins. We chat about everything from the best Cajun food to our mutual love for the show Swamp People. If you’ve ever wondered how alligator hunting connects to a man’s spiritual journey, you’re in for a treat!

We also dive into some exciting news about our upcoming Restored Men’s Healing Conference, happening this November 14-16 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. If you’ve been feeling the call to deepen your faith, heal old wounds, or just need a weekend of fellowship with other men, this event is for you. We’ll be teaming up with the JPII Healing Center to offer talks, prayer, and plenty of opportunities to connect with God and other men on the same journey.

Register for the Restored Men’s Healing Conference here

 

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✈️ Join us on one of our 2025 pilgrimages:

March 10-15: Visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico with Father Zachary, a fantastic priest and friend. This affordable trip is perfectly timed for most school spring breaks.

May 12-23: Join Father Larry and me on a spiritual journey to the Holy Land. Walk in the footsteps of Christ and experience an unforgettable pilgrimage.

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Welcome back to the pew, everybody. I’m your host, John Edwards. I’m excited for all of you to come back.

To this week’s show, because I have a special guest joining me. If you’ve been following us for a while, you know that from time to time, we have a friend come through a fellow evangelist or a priest or whoever it may be. And this week’s no different. Paul George, a good friend of mine is here in studio with me here.

This week I will bring him up in just a second, but first I want to tell you a little bit about him. So Paul founded the art of living, which is a nonprofit that serves not Churches and parishes and all those things but also other nonprofits. He is an author. He’s written Holy Grit This is his newest book through Ave Maria Press that came out about a year ago You can grab it anywhere on Amazon and all kind of sites out there with Ave Maria and everything else.

He also wrote Rethinking Happiness which was his first book, which was also a great book to read guys. If you’re out there looking for something that’s going to lead you to be happier, to be a better man, to get you in the right place get you more focused on virtue and holy living. These are books you should check out.

Paul also speaks. He travels the country and does public speaking. Parish missions. He speaks a lot about marriage, speaks to men, and does a lot of things out there for the church. He’s a guy I’ve admired from a distance for quite a while now. And as God would have it, he’s brought us together to work on a project for the JP2 Healing Center.

Paul’s been on their board there for a number of years. I know many of you are familiar with the JP2 Healing Center. I talk about them constantly on here because of the relationship I have with Dr. Bob and Sister and Bart and everybody else over there. And I’ve been leaking out a little bit and teasing that I was going to be doing these men’s healing conferences.

Alongside someone and that someone is Paul. So Paul’s up here this week. He’s helping me and we’re looking at this conference and kind of getting everything ready for our first one. That’s going to take place in November in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We’re going to talk about that more in a second, but without further ado, I wanted to bring up my good friend, Paul George.

Paul, thanks for being here, bud. Yeah, man. Great to be with you and great to be in the studio. I’ve seen it, online. Yeah. So it’s good to be here in Memphis. Yeah. I drove up from Louisiana. I know you did straight up through the SIP. And I picked up some food for you on the way. Yeah. Okay. Now, what did I bring you?

You brought me boot and you got it. Did I get it right? Yeah, we practiced that. We practiced it. Yeah. We messed up the show the first time. So I had to re say it again, but Buddha and crackling. Yeah. Cracklins. That’s like a, one of the famous. Staples in Louisiana. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. How was it? It was awesome, man It was good. Like I didn’t want to come in here and do this show I want to sit there eat that whole box man, but I know you want barbecue. So I’m trying to yeah, it’s a switch It’s a trade off. That’s right, if I’m gonna be a Memphis we’re gonna do barbecue, but I’m gonna bring you Louisiana food Yeah I appreciate that and if I ever come down there and I’m with you then you Folks in Louisiana better stock up before I get there because I will eat every crawfish or anything else you have down there.

I love Cajun food. Memphis has been blessed to have some people opening up like a couple of different Cajun restaurants and trucks and man, I can’t get enough of it. My wife and kids are like, can we please not eat crawfish for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next six weeks? So dude, I’m, I am indebted for you for that great food and thank you for bringing it.

Besides the accent. Yes. guys. guys. You’re an honorary Louisianian now. There you go. Okay, there you go. An honorary Kenyan. I’ll give you one of them. Yay. Seriously. And I’m a big fan of Swamp People, man. I love that show. My, my son and I have watched alligator hunting forever. It just, even though the same thing happens every time, I can’t stop watching it.

It’s real. Yeah. It’s real. I couldn’t imagine doing that, man. And the thing that gets me and you probably are like, this is probably a big deal to you either, but some of those episodes, they’d be like, we got to go over here in this little area where people are swimming. Cause there’s like a 14 foot alligator.

And I’m thinking, see, like I would have a pool, like I wouldn’t be in the swamp swimming, right? I just, if there’s something, same thing with the ocean, I’m six foot eight, I’m not venturing that far out there. Because you only need two or three feet of water for something to take a big bite out of you So I don’t get it man kids.

I guess it’s just part of growing up down there. You’re part of growing up You just swim where there’s water. Yeah, and you just assume that the alligators will we’ll Leave you alone. Yeah, they’ll leave you alone. You’re a big guy. I don’t know man I might look like a big chicken wing or something to him.

I don’t know That’s right, they just you knows man, so I’m gonna leave them alone man. I’m gonna leave them alone But man, I’m glad you’re here. So I talked about a little bit of here in the beginning. You’ve done so many great things for men out there. You’ve been working with men in marriages and stuff for so long.

You and I met for the first time a few years ago and I was still running virtual Catholic conference as one of the partners. And my job was the speaker concierge. So I chased down speakers, got videos, asked people to help us, that kind of stuff. And you were the one of the ones, one of the ones on our men’s conference and you give a great video and you and I got to talk a little bit then I remember you were like, Hey man, so what do you do?

And, I said I do this and I do this just got in the pew thing. And it was in its early stages. And we talked about cool, man. Maybe we can get up to Memphis sometime, or I can come to your parish. And we were talking about those different things and So yeah, here we are a few years later, you were up in Memphis a couple of years ago at Father Robbie’s parish.

And so man, I never thought that you’d be sitting here in the studio and we’d be on the verge of doing some great work together, but it’s the way God works, right? It’s crazy. If you would’ve, told me then that we would be working together and particularly on this project, I would’ve been like, I don’t, I don’t know I don’t even know if I’m ready for this project five years ago.

And if you would’ve thought five years ago, like where. The pew ministry would be where you would be working with men all over the country and how your story would take off and the journey that you’ve been on in your own life and what God has prepared you for, five years ago, whatever it was, I was in Memphis.

It was the last event I did before the shutdown for COVID right before COVID hit. Yeah. And I didn’t know and got home and everything just got canceled, not long after that. You guys launched this online conference. We met on the phone, but we really never met in person No, we just heard about each other and whatnot And so it never crossed my mind that we would be working together and particularly on something so cool as this.

Yeah. And even just a couple of years, what, last year we were both in Atlanta doing separate events and we got what that, that thunderstorm rolled through there and you and I were sitting in a restaurant for four hours together. That was right after Bob had said, Hey, like individually to us, separately, I want to bring back men’s healing conferences through the John Paul II Healing Center.

If folks want to know more about their work, you can go to jp2healingcenter. org and find all they offer. They offer marriage stuff and Undone for Women, which is the complimentary conference to what we’re going to be putting on for men. They have priest things. They do all kinds of stuff.

Even for religious leaders, superiors and things now, they’re doing tremendous work. But you and I were sitting there and it was a beautiful Atlanta day. Sun was out. We’re both like, man, we’re going to be home at six 30 tonight. It’s going to be awesome. And then I don’t know, it was like a scene from the 10 commandments or something like the clouds, like just the sky clouded up, it got dark.

All the planes were grounded, but here we were in this massive airport and the chances of us being in the same city at the same time. And we got to kick this around a little bit and had a meeting with Bob after that and said, all right, Bob, let’s hear it. And so here we are now. And I’m so excited because obviously Bob is, it’s been, he really has been very trusting of us.

He may be rethinking that after this episode. I don’t know, but because I know we’ll listen to it when he sees us on here, but but yeah, he was, he’s just been very trusting. He’s allowed us to just, he’s given us some guidelines and said, I want it to be your heart and your, what God’s, calling you to and your special gifts and where he works in your heart.

And that’s been very freeing. And so that’s what we’re doing here this week, here in my house in the studio is just praying together and see what the Lord wants to do and where we’re going to go. So we both thought let’s jump on the show while you’re here and let’s talk about it a little bit.

Share with men, like what’s, what we’re thinking and just what men need right now. We need healing and men. Sometimes that’s like a little, get away from me, kind of word for men because we don’t want to be vulnerable. We don’t want to admit that there’s something wrong with us.

Cause that means there’s a chink in our armor and we’re not one man armies that we’re told we’re supposed to be. But that’s also why we find ourselves in so many things that we don’t need to be involved in. Healings where we, The Lord wants to heal all of our lives, and that’s what He came for.

I know we want to talk about that a little bit today, so I’m excited to jump in that with you. Yeah. We’ve been meeting a lot on the phone or over zoom. Yeah. We finally just said let’s just get in the same room, hash out, some of this talk, pray together bring some crackling, bring some boot in crackling, and hurry, this conference, the first one will be in November and we really want to pray into this and prepare for it.

You would have told me five years ago when we met that, yeah. I would be doing a conference on healing. I’d have been like, I’m not ready for that. But God has led each of us in our own journeys and stories in our own healing journey to offer men some hope in healing. Like we’re still on the healing journey.

I, I’ve, I experienced Christ over 30 years ago and I’ve been in this ongoing conversion and healing in my life. And I still am. It was funny. It’s not long ago, I just felt like I just, hit a wall. So I call Dr. Bob. He’s a friend of mine. And here I am year, like at my age, I’m having a conversation with him and we’re praying on the phone about something that God wants to heal me with.

Or in and for and I’m like, and the first thought I had is I cannot believe I’m still dealing with healing stuff in my life at this age. And then my next thought is, man, thank God. Yeah. I’m still dealing with this, that God loves me so much that he wants to set me free. Yeah. Even at my age, he cares that much about me.

Yeah. You don’t feel that way. No, I do, man. I do. It’s dude I constantly step on rakes in my life. That’s probably a good way to say it. I’m like, man, I’m feeling really good. I’m healed. Like this stuff’s working. Thanks Bob. Thanks for the one prayer session. I’m all better, and then something happens and I just completely Revert to a man I used to be in the former life not in the doing drugs and stuff But just in the way I speak to my wife sometimes and places when things bother me like something I’ll just see a guy and I’m like, I don’t like him and I’ve never even talked to him or met him in my life there’s places of brokenness.

We all have yeah and unforgiveness, you know Sometimes I still have conversations with my dad where I leave Wounded, where I’m hurting some and I’m like, man, I thought Bob and I worked through that. We prayed through that and we, I forgave my dad and I thought that was, I was completely healed.

And yeah, I was healed in a couple of things that we worked on, but there’s so much in us. And I’ll tell people like one guy told me one day, he goes, I don’t understand. He goes, I’ve got, I’ve lost 30 friends in the last year. He sent me an email, said that, and he goes, what’s wrong with them. That’s what it said in the email.

I said, man, thank you for emailing. This probably is not going to be something you want to hear, but there’s one common denominator in those 30 people in relationships and it’s you. And maybe the Lord is calling you to look interiorly at things that may be, wounds or stuff like that. And I got an email back, there’s an all caps like blankety blank you and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I was like, all right, man the Lord be with you. Peace be with you. But a couple of months later I got another email and he said, Hey, I just want to say I’m sorry for the way that I spoke to you or typed to you, whatever. And he said I started to really pray and think about what you said.

And he goes, I have never had a good relationship with my father. And I thought that I never could make him happy. I was always seeking affirmation. And so what I, where the Lord took me in those prayers was. He took me back through all these broken relationships and where I lost them was in the beginning.

A lot of people liked me, but then I started getting intimidated by the things they could do better than me or the, the gifts they had that I didn’t. And so I got very arrogant and I had to be the best at everything and I had to have the best stories and I had to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And he said, And then I realized that’s when I push people away, because people are like, dude, I can’t, I’m like, I don’t want to be around somebody that’s going to one up me all the time or, and so we never know, we go through life and a lot of times we can think what’s wrong with everybody else.

But the real question is what needs to be worked on in me? And that’s the hard thing. A lot of guys, and I’m sure you’ll agree with this, I hope you do. A lot of guys will say like, all right, what can we do out there to fix things? And they’ll pick up a broadsword and they’ll go out there and start whacking stuff in the world because it’s easier when you actually have to fight the battle of your own heart.

That’s the hard stuff, man, when you really got to look and say this arguing with my wife. It’s not just my wife, it’s me. The reason my kids don’t get along with me is not because something’s wrong with my kids. It’s most of the time because something is not right in me. And there’s places that men, we’ve been told we can’t go there.

We’ve been told that nope, nope, men don’t do that. You just figure it out or you shove it down and then we wonder why. Suicides at a higher rate than it’s ever been. Divorces at a higher rate than it’s ever been. Alcoholism, opioid abuse is higher than it’s ever been because shoving it down and trying to one man army it yourself is not the way the Lord wanted it done.

And it’s certainly not a way it’s going to fix anything. Yeah. We were talking about it as we were just talking through the notes from this conference and looking at it, one of the, one of the main questions in the heart of every man is. This question of, am I adequate? Yeah. Am I enough?

Yeah. Do I have what it takes? Am I enough? And am I adequate in my marriage, in my fatherhood, in my work? Am I enough? Yeah. And it is this question, like I, there is not one. Man out there who’s void of that question. There’s not one man who looks in the mirror, flips his hair back.

Every morning is I’m the best. I have it all. I’m awesome. I’m awesome. I have no weaknesses. That’s just not the truth, right? Yeah, but there is this core question in our heart. Do we have what it takes? And the only way we can get to the real answer of that is. to come to know the truth of who God says we are.

Amen. And when we talk about healing. We’re basically talking about what are the obstacles from that question to believing who God is. And those obstacles in between that are really the things that we need healing in our own life. Where are we broken? It’s all different for all of us based on our stories and our background and our mistakes and our sins and the trauma we’ve dealt with or whatever the case may be, right?

The solution is the same is that God loves us more than anything else. Yeah And he wants to speak that truth into those areas of our lives that have been hurt or wounded or broken and so that when you know when you talk about healing you’re like guys are like, ah, no, Like God wants to set us free in the areas that were broken.

That’s what healing is. Yeah, and that’s I mean who doesn’t want that? Yeah, no everybody and that’s why I love Isaiah 61 Like where the where Jesus is just I mean it’s about Jesus the prophecy and he talks about he comes to Comfort those who mourn to free those in prison to break the chains that bind.

It’s just Every time I read that, I just, my heart soars because that’s the gospel. A lot of people think the gospel is there’s some guy that everybody thought was really holy and the son of God. And he wants to come and make your life difficult because he wants you to do all these hard things that are impossible for people.

And that’s not the gospel. Like the Lord wants, he knows that you heard, he knows that you’re broken. And because of the fall and things we’re going to talk about in this conference and the repercussions of those things, which a lot of men don’t even think about, like, why am I the way I am? And they think it’s just like something that they’ve done wrong.

But in fact, it’s. We’re all descendants of parents that fell to sin and now we all suffer consequences because of it. And there’s a truth to that there, there was a divine intimacy and a friendship that was lost in that moment. And that’s what we’re searching for in our heart. A lot of guys feel like Jesus is just coming to basically overlord me, right?

To nope, that’s bad, nope, that’s good, I can’t do anything fun anymore, it’s all that. And it’s a really immature way to look at Christianity because what Christ wants, says it over and over again, I’ve come, I no longer call you slaves, I call you friends, like this language he speaks to us is all about healing.

And he went up to people and said, do you want to be healed? What do you want from me? And these aren’t things where the Lord is saying, this is what I demand of you. Now, yes, there are demands to Christianity. You have to change your life and live the way that you’re called to live. But the Lord shows up and he’s always inviting.

Not with a, with a. Not trying to bust down the door with a battering ram, but asking inviting us to open the door to him and letting him come into these places that quite honestly, Paul, we’re ashamed of, we’re hurt, we’re embarrassed of, we’re, we’ve made bad decisions and guess who gets in those?

It’s not the Lord, it’s the evil one. And that’s how so many guys wind up believing there’s no hope and that they’re a piece of garbage and they’ll never be any better than they are. But the Lord has that small whisper where he’s always in our hearts and he’s always trying to call us back to these different things to the moments of no, I want to free you.

I want to heal you. There’s not pain and torture and loss, but with coming with me there’s hope and peace and joy and mercy and grace. And that’s what he wants to give to us. So this idea that we have as men that healing is some torture. It’s look, it can be painful, right? It’s not like you’re going, all right, Lord, heal me.

Good. I’m gone. It’s not a finger prick. It’s a lot of times it’s a, it’s an incision, right? And it’s going deep and sometimes we need a lot of anesthesia to get into that place. But those are a lot of healing references, medical references I’m throwing in for whatever reason, but.

But at the day, the Lord wants to come and redeem us and restore us. And that’s what this whole thing is about. Yeah. A hundred percent. The four main things that we’re going to flow through for the conferences, we’re going to start with the God created us whole. Like in union with him, he created us good, we’ll go through just the story of salvation, salvation, history, wholeness, brokenness, redemption, and restoration.

Yeah. And we were talking about that as we’re still on that journey. Just cause you’re like, understand God’s forgiveness and you’ve been redeemed doesn’t mean that you don’t still struggle with being broken and God doesn’t continue to move you on that journey.

Like I was saying, like just recently I’m on the phone dealing with something, right? Like we’re constantly on this journey, it’s important for us to understand that. God created us good. Yeah, like he really did, you know that’s really hard for me to accept Because I look at my life and I’m like man, I don’t know if I’m that good, yeah, but God created us good and you’re right like we’re descendants of fault people who fell who were tempted to By the enemy and they fell for it.

Yeah, and we inherited that sin, right? But that’s not the end of the story. That’s the beauty of it I think a lot of times, at least for me when I’m living in my biggest lie, I’m living in the lie that I am Not redeemed like I’m still broken and there’s no hope for me like And when we’re hopeless the enemy’s got us yeah, like you’re no good you’ll never get through this there’s no hope for you.

Like you’re always gonna be this way You’re not good enough. You’re not adequate for the task you’re gonna go home tonight with your wife and your kids and you’re gonna feel like You can’t go to toe with them. You’re just, you don’t add up, then you go to bed at night, you lay down and you’re like, man, what am I doing with my life?

Yeah. Why don’t I have this? These people have that I should be further along in my life. And that’s what he does. He jumps in there. And he continues to just get into those places and that’s I don’t know about you paul But I mean i’ll tell people all the time like there’s times where i’m out here doing work and we’ll help some people or something will go well And then all of a sudden the doubt will come in my mind and do 15 20 minutes later Like I feel physically ill because i’m sitting there and i’m like it’s just the enemy comes to rob steal and destroy And that’s what he does constantly is like trying to tear you down to the point where you give up right where you’re just because Why?

Because if you look at it, the way God chose to show his love to the world, it’s through the family. And the family is an image of the Holy Trinity, right? So God loves the son so much that there’s a third in the Holy Spirit. Man loves woman so much there’s a, third, fourth of your Catholic, twelfth, whatever, kid or whatever.

But he knows that. And so everything in our world today is aimed at destroying. The family. You look at same sex attraction, gender dysphoria divorce, pornography, all these things are an attack on that. And so at the head of that family is man is men, right? And this is the place that God put us.

Now in our world today, there’s a lot of men that aren’t living in that place. And why is it right back to what you’re saying? I don’t think I’m good enough. I don’t deserve it. I don’t belong. God possibly can’t love me. You don’t know what I’ve done. He couldn’t forgive me. And what I would say here is, it’s just a little preview of the conference that, that speaks to my heart, that helps me come out of that, is you met my son Jacob a minute ago, man.

He’s my only son. He’s an apple in my eye. I love that boy. He does a lot of stupid stuff sometimes that disappoints me dude, why in the heck did you do that? Why did you think it was okay to leave that football stadium and to walk two and a half miles to somewhere we didn’t know where you were going?

And not tell us and we had to find it, anything that’s probably the least of what a lot of kids have done and what I did in my life. But there’s a lot of things that he does. It’s just dude, but he’s not stupid. He made a bad decision. And that’s why we always have to be careful in our language when we talk to our kids.

But I think about that. And no matter what he’s done, take the worst thing he’s ever done. And if I look at that, there was never a moment where I said, I don’t love Jacob. Like I hate that kid and I don’t want him in my life. Never a moment. But that’s exactly what the devil will tell you. God says about you, right?

And we believe it. But if you look at it like there’s nothing Jacob could ever do, I don’t care if he murdered somebody in his life, I would still love him and I would still be there for him. And that’s the way the Lord is to us. But it’s so hard to see when you’re in these places. And then you don’t even know why you’re in those places.

I hurt. It’s like going to the doctor and saying, I hurt, but I don’t know why. When we need healing, a lot of times there’s bones sticking out. Like you break your arm and there’s a bone sticking out. It’s pretty obvious for somebody to go. That’s why you hurt. Yeah. But with it, with interior healing, that’s not always the case.

You know why most men die before women is because. We’ll have pain all over our body. We will not go to the doctor. When did you start feeling like you’re we’re having pain in your chest is like a year ago.

And so there’s something in a guy that’s like adverse to pain, physical pain, emotional pain, admitting it. I can walk around just with pain is ah, I just hurt, but I’m not going to go see a doctor. I just don’t have time. It’ll stop on its own. It’ll stop on its own.

The same thing is with our own spiritual and emotional pain. Like it is there, it lays there and it comes out in various forms and behaviors or thoughts or patterns or whatever the case may be. And we just say, Oh, that’ll go away. Or that’s not a big deal. And there are tons of Catholic men who go to Church, they go to mass.

They even go to confession who. Who are living in this lie of the enemy that God can’t set you totally free from this bondage, right? From believing that you don’t have to live this way your whole life, right? So we can also believe that Jesus came and died for us and our behaviors never change because there’s something in us that we’re not allowing, the divine physician to come in and do surgery on.

Because it was like, Oh, I don’t have time for that. Or how do I do that? Where do I go for that? Sure. We have all the excuses and some of them are good excuses. I get it because I’ve made them, but at the end of the day yeah, like God wants to actually, like, heal us, fix us, in areas that we don’t want to be in.

We don’t think we, we can be, what would our life look like if we actually just let him, take us under the knife, I was thinking about when you were saying that, that image, I’m sure we’re all familiar with where Jesus is at the door. And there’s not a door handle on the outside, the door handle’s on the inside.

He’s never going to force his way in and that’s the thing we have to understand. Why doesn’t Jesus just come in and just fix everything? Because one, he’s not a magician, he’s not a, it’s not a magic trick. And second of all, he’s not going to come where he’s not invited. That’s the thing. Like why is that?

Because we, everything was perfect in the beginning, right? We had this divine friendship. Everything was good. And we made the wrong choice, right? And for sin and death to come into the world then that was the repercussion of that choice. But with choice, there has to be two sides. There can’t be good without evil, and so we have to have free will. Now we have free will. That’s basically what we received. And when we bit the bit into the fruit, the apple there, And now in that free will, God’s not going to force himself on us, right? It’s cause that’s not love, when I know I’m coming in there and I’m going to have my way with you is not love, right?

That’s not love. He waits to be invited in. And unfortunately, so many men, because of the way the world has told us what it means to be a man is so dead wrong. Like it just do it by yourself. Be a one man army. Don’t have feelings and emotions. Don’t have pains. Totally. And then we go, why are so many guys drunk all the time?

Why are so many guys like on drugs all the time? Why are dudes so stuck in porn? Yeah. Why is it an epidemic? And even video games now, like there’s guys sitting in their basement at 48 years old playing video games in their underwear. Why? Because they’re trying to save the girl.

They’re trying to be the hero. All these things our hearts long for, but they’re putting it in the wrong place. The latest statistic is that loneliness. Is the third major killer of men. Yeah. It’s an epidemic. Loneliness. Yeah. Okay. You don’t become lonely because you’re doing good. Someone has convinced you to be isolated.

Yeah. You’ve convinced yourself the enemy is taking you along, this long ride of just isolation. So it’s all these things that. Pile upon men, we’re trying to go after the issue in a good way because we’re walking through it. So it’s not like we’re sitting here and be like, Hey guys, follow us.

We, we got it all together. Here’s our 12 step plan. Like this whole conference is we’re going to be sharing like our own stories, our own heart, our own healing. I remember, done ministry and spoken, like you all over and years ago, I wake up in the morning.

I can have, I could say my prayer and I could get in my truck and I could go to work without thinking twice about it and be like, I got it today. And I remember that same day pulling into my driveway and before I opened the garage thinking, I don’t know if I can handle what’s inside. Yeah, man, I’ve been there.

Like I can handle what’s out here, but I don’t know if I can handle what’s in there. Like I don’t know if I have what it takes to go inside that house. And be the husband and father and deal with the chaos and the crying or the feelings, or I don’t know if I could do that. And I remember I would sit in my driveway and I’d pray and I’d take a deep breath, it was almost like a firefighter running into a fire and the whole time I’m thinking, I don’t know what I’m doing.

I don’t know how to do this. I don’t have what it takes, and I’m thinking, Lord, how can I, like, how can you move me into a place where I can walk into that house the same way I can walk into work? Yeah. Totally just feeling like you have my back. Like I have what it takes. I’m adequate for this, even though like I don’t have the blueprint, that healing journey.

Like now I can drive up at home and I don’t worry. I don’t think twice about walking in that door, no matter how my wife’s doing or my kids are doing what’s going on. Like I, so that’s. God can take you from here to there and it may take a long time. It’s okay. Sure. But there’s freedom.

There really is. There’s there’s real freedom on the other end of this, that ability to like rest. Yeah. Yeah, and that’s the thing, man, like it’s, there’s somebody who wants you not to have that and there’s somebody that wants you to have it. And that’s why when temptation comes around or things like that, there’s somebody in your ear whispering, Oh, what, you can always go get mercy.

You can always whatever, just do what you want to do and you’ll be happy if you just do those things. Then there’s the Lord saying quietly don’t there’s a better way and you’re happy. That’s not real happiness. That’s he’s seeking to rob and steal and destroy. The only thing that’s going to bring you happiness is to learn to love well, to learn to be self sacrificing, to learn to put others first in your life.

Everything that we learn in the gospel and As men, we think man, that sounds really jacked up. If I don’t get what I want, I’m going to be happy. That doesn’t sound right. If I, and so we keep putting up these obstacles, but the Lord’s saying no, when you continue to walk down that path, then you’re going the wrong way and you’re never going to be the man you want.

And so honestly, our choices we make when we listen to the wrong voice fuel our inadequacy even more. Because we move further away from Christ and the only reason you’re able to love your wife and your kids and deal with the crying and the noise and everything else is because you’re allowing Christ to live through you.

That’s what it’s all guys are like man, if I give my life to the Lord, dude, I’m going to lose everything, and it’s like, why do we? Continually count the cost instead of looking towards the reward, right? There’s things I cannot do on my own that my heart is screaming to be want to be able to do to love My wife man, and not so she’ll go to bed with me, but because it’s what I want to do, right?

It’s what she deserves. It’s what God would want his daughter to have from me, right? And how do I do that on my own you don’t? You don’t you can’t there’s no way to possibly love people the way that you’re called to love without the lord being at the Center of your life. How do you get them in there?

Your heart if you just you know, we’re talking about healing It takes place in the heart you know the lord comes and he’s trying to get into your room and You’ve got so much baggage from all the things you think Wrongly about yourself or the mistakes you’ve made and the shame you’ve carried and the lord’s trying to get in But you’ve become a hoarder in your life you’re never forgiving yourself. You’re never letting yourself off the hook. You have every mistake you’ve ever made in that life in a box, in that apartment of your heart. And the Lord’s trying to push that door open and he can’t get in. And what do you have to do? You basically have to start opening the window and throwing those boxes out the window.

So you can make room for the Lord to come in and he can rearrange the floor plan of your heart. Where he can get rid of all this junk. And that’s what Isaiah 61 means. It’s he knows what it’s like to be human. Now. He didn’t he doesn’t know what it’s like to send he was perfect But he knows more than we will ever know what it’s like to be human And he knows the baggage that comes along we see him suffer in the garden in this thing that was asked of him.

It was so hard and he knows what it’s like So he comes in and he understands our burdens, right? You go tell Jesus what it’s like to suffer. I dare you, because he can tell you 5, 000 times more what it’s like to suffer physically the way he did here, but also the suffering he feels when he sees his children are torment the way that we are with the devil tormenting us all the time.

And so what he wants to do is to free us from these things. And. And sometimes as guys, we can think, Oh, that’s women’s stuff, right? All that healing junks for women. Yeah. And that’s one of the reasons why women, a lot of times are more stronger than men because they’re willing to go to those places.

And they’re willing like, Lord, have your way with me. And this is the place that we want to try to help men get to too is look, the Lord is not coming to hurt. He’s not coming to harm. He’s not coming to shackle you and tell you that you’ve got to follow him in this way of life with no choice and no options.

He’s bringing you a new way of life, and he wants to really embody this Isaiah 61, right? The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me. I’m here to heal. I’m here to free the brokenhearted. And that’s the source of what we need, to be the men we’re called to be the men the church needs. And all these men that are out there saying, Like, when’s the culture going to change?

When’s something going to happen? When are we going to be the ones to do it? Because we’re his hands and feet, and we can’t, we’re sitting on the sidelines until we do the work we need to do in our hearts and in our lives to be what he’s called us to be. Yeah, you mentioned, the family earlier.

Yeah. And the reality is that God, created the family to glorify him, like to show his love to the world. If you were to ask me what is the whole point of marriage? It’s not just to have a companion or to be happy. It’s to get to heaven together, to be holy. But the sacrament of marriage is to be.

Yeah. A reflection of God’s love to the world. Okay. So you look at your marriage and be like we have an imperfect marriage. Everyone does. Yeah. But in our imperfection, we have committed to love each other so much through it, through the, through, through the brokenness that we actually show God’s love to each other and to others, to our children and those around us.

Okay. You look at the landscape of marriages and the family and we see it but statistically majority of marriages that are still married, 40 percent of those still say that they’re unhappy. Yeah. Okay. So when I say to men, it’s probably the same thing you say to men, because the same thing that I need to hear myself, do I want to be a good husband?

Yes or no. No guy’s going to be like, nah, I don’t want to do, I want to be a good father. No man’s nah, I just don’t want to be, I want to be a terrible dad. I want to be a terrible dad. Do I want to be a good son? No, no guy’s going to be like, I want to be a horrible son. No, no guy’s going to answer no to those, so how do we get there? Those are our identities, right? Like son, husband, father, And a brother. Yeah. I do. I want to be a good friend or a bad friend to you. Yeah. I want to be a horrible friend, like that’s right. We wouldn’t say that. Yeah. But we can look at all those identities for us as men.

And we can think about failures as a son, as a brother, as a husband, as a father and the enemy will take those. And his words are so powerful. He would convince us that we can only be mediocre in those areas or bad in those areas, but not good, not free, not whole. And that’s the lie that we actually believe and we don’t even know we believe it.

Yeah. And we were talking about that earlier from the fall, there in the garden, speak about that a lot in some of our talks with our missions and things like that. And it really hit me one day in my own struggles in my healing journey. I was like, man, the times I’m really down and it really is Ignatian spirituality.

Like the time that I’m, that I really feel horrible about myself is when I’ve been listening to the wrong voice. I’m listening to this. And there was a book I read when I got out of Outta rehab. And it’s not a good book. It’s written by like eastern, thought. And the person in the drug rehab facility was like, oh, you should read this book.

And the guy was a famous like yogi or something, but you’re like, I’ll read anything right now. Yeah. I was like, I just need it. I want my wife and kids to love me and I wanna be better and all that stuff. So I was reading that and the first part of the book, I’ll never forget it, he was in college in Gainesville, and he was sitting there, he was like a economics major and he was sitting there on the couch.

Play in a video game or something. And all of a sudden he said, he looked next to him and he just said, shut up. And there was nobody there. He was in the apartment by himself and he had just been sitting there on that couch, like you’re not good enough. You’re not this, you’re not that. And he said, if the way that.

If somebody physically was in the room speaking me to the way that I was allowing myself to speak to myself or Someone else to speak to me in my mind. I would have punched him in the face and it’s out of two seconds Like that’s how ugly and violent it can get And you’re in the way you talk to yourself and in the fall like I started thinking about them Like where does that come from?

And why is this so persistent? Like this voice that’s just, you’re terrible, you suck, you’re no good, you’re, and it’s one, the enemy knows you’re dangerous and he comes to destroy, as we’ve said multiple times on here. But if you look at like with Adam and Eve, what happened, he shows up and it literally in Genesis three, he’d ask a question, right?

Why don’t you eat of that tree? And Eve goes, Oh, we can’t eat of that tree. I’m paraphrasing, but I can’t, we can’t eat of that tree, we’ll die. And he was the first thing that was mouth. You surely will not die. You eat of that tree and you will be like gods who know the difference between good and evil.

You’ll be like God. So if you read that and then you go along further. He says one or two other things. And then she goes, it looked good to eat. It was good for food and good to the eyes and look good to make one wise, boom, the fall. But what did the devil do? He showed up and he started to break apart and build these identity lies, right?

He tried to drive a wedge. If you’ve ever tried cutting wood and you’re trying to get a tree to fall and you can’t with a chainsaw, you knock a wedge in there until it splits the two breaks them in half. That’s what he was trying to do with God and humanity in that moment. And he succeeded, right?

He convinced her because what was must’ve been going through her mind. This is the stuff I like to reflect on. So folks, if you’re looking for this in the actual Bible, you’re not going to find these words, but it’s, revealed to us as you pray with these things. I just feel like the devil was saying to her God’s not really a good father.

And he doesn’t love you the way he did. Who would give everybody everything except for one thing? That’s not a good person. A good person would say you can have anything you want, not everything but one thing. He’s withholding something from you. And if he’s withholding something from you, then you aren’t worth what he says you are to him.

He doesn’t really love you and you should do what you want and be your own gods. And that’s exactly what the devil does to us on our life each and every day. And we believe we’re not good enough. So what comes out of that, Paul, that we’ll talk about in the conference at a greater depth is two wounds, right?

The father wound, God isn’t who I think he is. And how many times, because we have bad parents or we have somebody who wasn’t loved well, like I feel awful sometimes the way I’ve talked about my father, because it is truth. The things that are our relationship, but it wasn’t his fault. His parents didn’t get along.

They didn’t love each other and he wasn’t given. I love yous and I’m proud of yous. And so my dad did the best he could do to give what he could. But I grew up looking at God as someone that sounded like my father. You need to work harder. That’s not good enough. You don’t need anybody. Why did you do that?

That was stupid. That’s the way I heard it And this is what the devil does to us as he starts to break these things in We start to distrust god and then we push him further out of our lives Then he comes back and he goes. All right. Look what else god did He kicked you out of the garden when in truth when you read scripture What does it say?

God is speaking to the Trinity which is proof that Jesus and the Holy Spirit were around at the beginning, right? And he says, let us remove them from the garden, lest they eat from the tree of life and death and basically are forever in sin. So it’s an act of a good father, but what does the devil do again?

He twists it. Look, he kicked you out. He pushed you out. It says he was cast out into the wilderness, which is also why Jesus is cast out in the wilderness and the new Adam repairs what the original Adam couldn’t do for us. But in that moment, there’s this birth of a father wound, right? God isn’t who he says he is.

And I’m not who he says I am either. And anything else, anybody else that says there’s a lie and guess what? If I’m not good enough for him, then I’m inadequate. And that’s the root wound for all men is inadequacy. And not only that, I’m going to, I’m going to look to people, humans to be my God. Yeah. So Adam and Eve look to each other.

Oh yeah. Phil, what? God abandoned them and they failed each other. Sure. Adam failed immediately. And ever since then, like we’ve been looking to humans to fulfill our needs of a father, a mother, a friend. And the reality is that every human is imperfect. Yeah.

There’s no human out there that can fulfill My needs, my heart, not one, my life, my wife, as much as she loves me can love me better than anyone, but she can’t love me perfectly. She never will be able to, it is impossible. And vice versa with her, but God can love me. Perfectly right. He can restore what was lost.

What I think is a lie. What I have believed to be a lie where other people in my life have hurt me and hurt you. Yeah. I can restore those lies to what truth to believe the truth about him. Yeah. That he is not a father that abandoned us, that he withheld for their safety. Imagine like when your kids became teenagers or 12, right.

Yeah. You just. Gave them a car drive around, do what you want, no GPS, do whatever you want. Like here’s a beer. Yeah. Here’s right. No, you protect them for their safety. Yeah. Because you love them more than anything else. Now, can they choose to be like, nah, I’m going to do whatever I want.

Because of free will. Yeah. But it doesn’t change the fact that you as a father have put certain Parameters around them to protect them. Sure, right? Yeah Now that’s what you do. And that’s that’s the whole goal of this you talked about How do we move from you know where we are and our brokenness and our shame into restoration?

And it’s this reorienting of our identity and how does that happen? Through trust and through healing like that’s the only way I mean I used to look to everybody to make me feel good if I just get this award then I’ll finally mean something If I can just be the guy with the highest percentage of quota and the biggest paycheck then people will finally go like that guy’s The man like all these things that every time I got those it was never enough, right?

I’ve got a, I’ve got a closet full of stacked up salesman of the year plaques that probably have six inches of dust on them because they don’t mean anything. They won’t mean anything. Were they good things? Is it good to work hard and to achieve things? Yes. But when it becomes a God in your life, as you say, and you’re looking to it to fulfill you, you’re always going to wind up empty.

And what happens? You get angry. You get irritated. Even this didn’t work. I worked so hard and I got this and it still didn’t work. What’s wrong with me? Then again, what’s wrong with me? Why is this never enough? Why? When am I ever going to be okay with something? When will I ever find joy? I had a guy back in Indiana.

This was when I first started speaking and somebody was listening to show. They wanted to start a men’s group. And I was like, okay, I can tell you what we do, but I don’t really know anything beyond that wind developed. Everything that the Lord gave us to develop beyond that. And I went up, there’s a cornfield in Indiana.

I was like, there’s no way there’s a Catholic parish around here anywhere. And boom, I took a right turn and there’s a St. Philip’s in the middle of a cornfield. But I go in and it’s like this beer and barbecue thing, like 250 guys. Bush light everywhere, overalls and 60 year old men. And so I’m up there, I give him a witness and there’s nobody looks like to have any emotions at all.

They’re staring at me like, who brought this weirdo in here? Like I’m crying in front of just a bunch of hard men, and so I was like, all right, exit stage left, and they came up to me and said, we want to do a Q and a, and I thought, okay, great. You’re literally waiting for them to kill me, but I’m sitting there and this young man pops up on the left.

I’ll never forget. And he was redhead. He was 31 years old. And he said, I have a question. And I said, okay. And he goes, I didn’t have some crazy heroin story. And I said, okay that’s not a question. That’s a statement. What’s your question? And he said, I said, what’s your question? And he looked down after he got through life and he looked back up and he said, my name is Sean.

I’m 31 years old. And he said, I’ve got I’ve got two kids. I’m married. He goes every day. I wake up and I throw my kids in the car and I wish they’d be quiet because they’re getting on my nerves. He said, I dropped them off. I can’t wait to drop them off at school. I get to my job that I hate. I’m an accountant.

I sit in a cubicle. I hate with people I don’t like and a boss I can’t stand. He said, I sit there for eight and a half hours of hell. I come home, maybe I have some makeshift dinner with my family, but more often my kids are doing their thing. My wife’s busy and I’m still stuck on my phone or my laptop.

And I either work until they’re in bed till midnight or whatever, or I’ll sit down and pour four or five stiff drinks and watch a ball game and lose myself in Netflix. I said, okay, what’s your question? And he said, what’s the purpose of my life? And I went, Oh man, really? Like 250, like I thought you were going to ask like what my favorite color was or like how many kids I had or whatever.

I just prayed and I was like, Lord, what do you want me to say? And the Lord just prompted me after a few minutes of awkward, silent prayer in front of 250 people to say, who are you? And I said, who are you? And he goes, I told you, my name’s Sean. I said, okay who are you? As I told you, I’m a dad and I got kids and I’m married.

And I said, yep, that’s close answer. I said, but who are you? I told you I’m an accountant. Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Finally, he goes, I don’t know what you want from me, man. I don’t know what you want. And he sat down, he threw his hands up in the air and he started to cry. And I was like, man. Look, I’m not trying to upset you, but if you can’t tell me within a shadow of a doubt when I ask you who you are, I’m a beloved son of God and really believe that in your heart.

No wonder you don’t know what the purpose of life is. No wonder you struggle. And he just fell apart and all these men that had been unemotional, just their heads went down. And you could see that every one of these men that had. Spent their life being these big tough farmers who just made things happen when the rains didn’t come and the crops were dry and all these things that you just man up, you could just see this release in all of them.

And Paul, that’s the question that we all ask is what is the purpose of my life? It seems like there’s pain and there’s loss and there’s torture and where’s something good and if there is something good, it’s taken away and all this stuff. And when we have the mindset of living in our wounds and living in our pain, that’s our outcome of life.

That’s the goggles we have on. But the Lord is wanting to come into that place and go you’re my son. Yeah. You’re my boy. And that ultimately, like if you were to sum up healing, so men can maybe frame it or understand it or not be afraid of it is allowing the Lord to speak truth into your life where you’ve believed lies.

Amen. And when you can hear the truth. Around those lies, it begins to set you free. And we need God to speak that truth to us. Yeah. Like 10 years into my marriage my wife and I were I was traveling a lot and we, there was just some unresolved conversations that were just like every now and then these same arguments would come up and we just couldn’t resolve.

It was like, she would say one thing and I’d say another, we would hear totally different things. Yeah. So the priest who married us, Bishop Sam Jacobs. We called him and said, Hey, can you come over mediate this conversation for us? So I remember he came over and he’s a really great friend and we trust him a lot.

Like we’ve shared everything with him, and he came in our house and he made us sit on the couch together and he sat in between us as a mediator. Yeah. And he would say, okay tell Gretchen your feelings. And so I would say something and he would look at her and say what did he say?

And she would say, he said this, he said, that’s not actually what he said. Yeah. And then she would say what she said and he would say what did she say? And I’d say, she said this, he’s that’s not what she said. Yeah, she said this and he began to mediate all the lies that we were receiving and hearing and living out of yeah and living out of and Transforming those into true statements so that we can hear them in a way that we couldn’t hear from each other Sure.

Because there was this gap, right? Yeah. And I remember we walked away from that conversation with such resolution and truth, and it set us on a path in our marriage of just real deep resolution of hearing and allowing God to speak truth. I say all that because Jesus is that mediator. Yeah. Who has come to set us free, to Speak truth to us in the ways that we’ve believed over the course of our life, some lie, and we mightn’t even know it’s a lie.

Sure. Until we start to think about it. Yeah. That’s not true. Yeah. That’s off, and ultimately getting to what you were talking about, understanding without a shadow of a doubt that no matter what I do or accomplish or where I work, no matter what success or failure that at the end of the day, I’m a son of God.

Yeah. And that’s what matters. And that’s all that matters. And that’s where everything comes from. That’s where my identity, that is my identity. That’s where everything I do, you live out of that because that’s how you start to combat the lies of the enemy. When he shows up, you’re not good enough. Yeah.

But he thinks I am. You’re not this, you’re not that. It doesn’t matter what you think. It doesn’t matter what you think. And I’m, and you start to get wise to these things and it’s like this, the word I talk about vulnerability all the time and that’s a word men don’t like, right?

Oh, that means you’re weak. Cause the world will tell you that. If you’re vulnerable to attack, then you’re susceptible to attack. You’re weak. You’re, you could be flanked, all that kind of stuff in military terms. But really what vulnerability is the strongest thing that a man could be as a vulnerable man Because what it means is I have the strength to admit where I need help I have the strength to admit the places where I’m broken have the strength to admit that I’m not perfect and What happens in that there’s a humility and what does God ask it for each and every one of us?

He wants humility and surrender and the only way you surrender is to be humble enough To know that I can’t fix myself that i’m broken and I cannot fix myself and people here on this earth Whether they’ve got phds or whatever, they’re not ever going to make me completely whole. That’s why bob started the jp2 healing center He saw that all his studying and his Psychologists and psychiatry and all those things that he’d done.

He could only heal so much of a person He can only help them so much without the lord being involved in it. That’s healing the whole person That’s why he calls it that but you come to this place where? You Where you realize that being vulnerable is not is the fear of being vulnerable is what keeps us captive Right.

I’ll tell people that all the time like people say how do you get up here? And just tell people what a scumbag you were all the time Does it just get numb like you just realized you were scumbag and it doesn’t hurt anymore to talk about yourself like that I’m, like no it hurts every single time, but my solace is i’m not that person anymore It really is galatians 220.

Like I no longer live at christ lives in me And that’s where we’re all trying to get to because I may have had all these things like I was in a prison cell of four, a four walls and rebar and concrete and all these things. Every one of us, whether we realize it or not, we’re walking around in a virtual prison cell and the walls are made of our own mistakes and failures and shame and lies that we believe about ourselves.

And all of these things, disorder, disoriented disorder, what am I trying to say, disordered, desires, all these things. And we try to open the door and walk out and what happens? The devil meets us there and he goes to poke and prod. He sticks his finger in your chest over here, your pornography problem.

What if they find out about your porn? And so you step back. What if they find out about the way you really talk to your wife? What about they find out about this? What about the fact that you stole something when you were 10? Or whatever. And he picks his, he sticks his fingers in there.

And what happens? We become our own jailers. We grab the door, we lock ourselves in and he convinces us that all that’s out there is pain and torture and loss. But when you have the courage to become vulnerable and just a lot of times for people, for me, it was rock bottom. Like I have nowhere else to go.

I’m going to six by six or eight by eight or whatever it was room and I’m not getting out until somebody says I can. I can’t run anymore. Like I have broken and messed up my life and the only person that can fix it is God. And when you get to that place and you start to open up and you start to share and you let him in It hurts and it’s scary But man, if you can stick with him and you have the courage to believe what he says You come out completely different It’s like mary magdalene says in the chosen that year that first season when nicodemus is saying How long after the transformation when I came to cast your demons out?

She says it wasn’t you And he goes well, was it sanhedrin or who else was it? She goes It was a man and he goes, would you know her him again? And she said all I can tell you is this I was one way and And now I’m completely different and the only thing that happened in between was him and so I will know him for the rest of my Life, that’s my story.

That’s so many people’s story that when you met Jesus and that’s what He wants an encounter and that encounter is not to so he can field a an army of slaves That just serve him for no purpose. It’s so that he can heal you and you can come fully into the mission that he’s called every single one of us to, which is to bring people to that.

It’s like when we, it’s what I tell people then when they’ve experienced the Lord. If they really experience him and they really start to live the way he calls to you can’t help but go out like the woman at the Right and tell everybody and that’s the response and that’s where the joy comes from that all of us are looking for Is not that we made our life better or we did something Jesus healed us and we have an opportunity to partake in that healing and bring other people to it Yeah, and there’s no doubt that we’ve all locked ourselves into an emotional cell Eight by eight, you know and I tell men all the time, even myself, I label it the four Bs.

I’m like, you can go out on the ball field. Into the bedroom into the boardroom into your billfold and find your identity or try to yeah But if I ask you like to be vulnerable to share your feelings, where do you hurt the most? Yeah, what do you fear the most? Where have you Been hurt or traumatized or where your greatest wounds you would just shut down immediately.

Yeah. I could place myself on a ball field and I’d be adequate to the task or whatever the case may be. The greatest threat to vulnerability is risk. Yep. Amen. It’s risk. It’s just risking. And God’s grace is enough to take us By the hand out of that cell and sort of the images I love in the new testament is when the apostles would get put in prison Yeah, and like an angel would come and just let him out.

Let him out Like how’d you get out? Yeah, like I don’t know like We were praying, we were singing praises to God and we were cool and yeah. And an angel just came and roll us out of here. Or even Paul that went back and stayed there. The guy was like, Oh gosh, I’m going to get killed. And Paul’s we’re still in here.

Like we didn’t leave, right? Like the Lord’s going to yeah, like we, we’re not the ones to force that door open. Yeah. Like we always just let us out. Yeah. The Lord’s So gracious, but we do have to risk there is a certain risk and I say this as men We’re willing to risk in so many areas of our life.

Yeah financial risk. Oh do whatever you risk? Yeah, you physical risk. Yeah, I’ll dare you to do something like oh, Yeah, like we’re willing to risk in so many areas of our life. What about with our own heart? Yeah on emotion and I remember being in that emotional Prison cell, my own marriage, my own kids, not risking vulnerability, not opening up all the way because I had believed a lie that if I do, I would get hurt.

They would step on my heart, all these lies are out there. Or I’m going to shatter the image to my children or that I’m perfect or whatever. If I open up, it’s bad, man. Yeah. It’s, yeah. Yeah, no, it’s, it is. And it’s something that we all struggle with, man. But this is the thing, like I got to tell you, I was, I spent 17 years of my life hiding addictions and all I wanted when I was sitting on the couch at two in the morning, I knew how to problem.

And I wanted to stop so badly, but I was afraid of how and who would find out. And if I told Angela, she would leave me and all of those things. And at the end of the day, I allowed myself to sit in that torture for way longer than I ever had to, because all Jesus wanted to do was free me. Now I was hardheaded enough to where I had to hit a pretty bad wall.

And it was like, you keep doing this and you’re dying or you’re losing everything and all those things. But I’ll tell you something, the worst part. Was not vulnerability. Vulnerability was what set me free when I was in that jail cell and I hit my knees and I said, Lord, how did I get here? And he said, it’s the day you walked away from me.

And I started crying and I realized how inadequate I was to try to think that I could fix myself, that I could right the wrongs, that I could have a an amazing life I built for myself. The Lord just brought it all before me and said, you asked the question, here’s the answer. You’ve tried to do it on your own and look at where it’s happened.

And in that moment it just hit me and I started bawling and I started crying in the middle of that jail. So when people yelling at me and screaming at me about all these things are going to do and blah, blah, blah. And I’m just sitting there going, Lord, I have cussed you. I have hated you. I have this, I have that.

And instead I just I hit my knees and I said, I’m sorry and I’ve been such a fool and I have listened to the wrong voice in my life and I have chosen wrongly. And I’ve literally become my own jailer and I’ve punished myself all these years because I listened to the wrong person and I didn’t trust that you were good.

And in that moment, I said, if you’ll give me a chance to be better, if you’ll give me a chance to my wife and kids, or at least if you’re not going to give me a chance with them, give them somebody that’s better than me. I’ll give you my life and I’ll do it. And it was the scariest thing I did in my life.

But after that moment, all I’ve ever found in my life is peace and joy. Yeah, I have bad days. I have struggles. I’m not perfect, but the Lord has met me in those places and he’s done nothing but do what he said he was going to do to give me a better life and to leave me a place where it didn’t matter what anybody thinks.

And I’ll tell men that a lot, like if you’re worried about opinions, there’s only one that matters. So start worrying about that one. Cause when you’re dead and you’re standing in, there’s one person you’re standing in front of and it’s not your best friend or your boss or even your wife it’s Jesus, right?

And that’s the one who wants to bring you this healing. And Paul, that’s what we’re going on this mission for. This is why we’ve said yes to Bob, because we’ve experienced this in our lives and it is, it’s like Mary Magdalene and like any other person that’s ever been touched by the Lord. You just.

There has been something done for you that you could not do for yourself. And when you’ve experienced that healing and that love and that joy, and that just mercy, all you want to do is go share that with other people, because you can see it’s like the Lord gives you, It’s night vision to see into people’s souls and see that people are hurting and that they’re struggling and that the answer is right there.

And so that’s why we’re doing this because it’s nonsense to believe that men need to go through life without dealing with the things in their heart. You’re going to wind up being lonely and alone and in addictions. There’s two ways to handle things. You either bury them and shove them down and you find them.

You’re looking at the bottom of a bottle for an answer you’ll never find there or choosing other things to go down other viceful paths. Or you eventually look at God and say, I’ve had enough and I can’t control my own life and I can’t fix anything and I need you. And that’s when transformation happens.

And that’s why we’re doing this conference is to set aside the fears that men have that you and I have had in our lives. If I let go, what’s that going to cost me? If I let Jesus in, what’s that going to do to my life? I’m going to have to face those things. I was molested when I was little and I don’t talk about that much.

I don’t even know if I’ve ever mentioned it on this show. And that’s a place I never wanted the Lord to go. And I went there with father Malachy and Martin Doman and I am, and it was one of the most freeing things that I’d ever done in my life because I felt so shamed. And I wondered I wondered about my sexuality and all those things because it was one of my male friends.

And it was not my fault, but it was something I spent a whole lot of my life wondering things that I never should have had to wonder and hiding those things and letting them control me and letting the devil get in those things. And it was just recently three or four years ago that I admitted that and we prayed and man I screamed in that prayer and that pain came out.

But the Lord was there. He walked me right through it and he walked me out the other side and then he shut the door To that room where it happened. He said we don’t have to go there anymore. And that’s what healing is. Yeah, and that’s what we want to offer on behalf of the Lord through our meager gifts and through our experiences And through bob’s expertise and all these things when we come to these places to is to offer freedom for people And to not allow them to be their own jailers To give them an option, the best option we have in the world, which is our Lord, to be the person that sets us free and to let him be the good shepherd he wants to be, man, that’s what he wants to do more than anything is to show us how much he loves us and to set us free from the things that they convince us that he doesn’t.

Yeah. That’s why we’re calling it restored. Yeah. Just this reality that the Lord wants to restore us to who he calls us to be as men, his sons. We will. We want to allow the Lord to restore us into that identity. Yeah. And if that can happen for every man at that conference, then that’s the greatest thing that could happen.

Yeah. And what at the end of the day, it’s just so many of us have longed for a hug from a father that was distant or from someone to tell us that we’re good enough and all those things. And The thing that I really want to help people to see man is that God is every bit of that the prodigal son is real all of those things are real the lord wants to rush out to meet you He wants to embrace you and the thing is there is nothing you can ever do That would disappoint him.

Yes, he gets disappointed, but would ever make him turn away. Like when we do things wrong, I’m sure there’s some heartbreak there, right? Man, I wish you had chose differently, but there’s nothing that’s ever going to make him disgusted with us or turn from us. And if you can even let that have an inkling of hope in your life.

Then there’s an embrace. There is a, there’s an affirmation. There is a worth and all these things that’s waiting for you. And that’s what we’re going to dive into. You’ve talked about the four things. I can’t wait to do this with you. For those that want to know more about the conference, we’re going to have, these are going to be in the mold of healing the whole person, and so we’ll have a Thursday, Friday, Saturday Paul and I are going to rotate nights we’re going to, we’re going to dust off our MC skills some nights when he’s.

Okay. Given the teaching and the talk, I’ll be emceeing and trying to do my best to give justice to what he’s doing or the Lord’s doing through him. When I’m given teaching, Paul’s going to be doing that. We’re going to have plenty of time for prayer. This isn’t just a healing conference in name.

Like we’re going to talk about these things and we’re going to invite all of you into experiences to, to go into like, where’s the place where you feel the Lord needs to come most in your life? Where do you feel the most shame? And the most disgust with yourself. And we’re going to pray for the Lord to come in those places.

We’re going to have time for confession. We’re going to have fun stuff. We’re going to have a tailgate or something one night. And now there won’t be any drinking and until after or whatever, like we don’t need drinking before we start all this, but we’re going to have things where we’re just getting together as men and doing stuff and we invite all of you.

This is the first one. Paul, we’re going to be in Ann Arbor, Michigan at Christ the King Parish. It’s a, a pretty famous parish. Guys like Ralph Martin and Peter Herbeck and Pete Barak and a lot of folks like that go there. There’s got a great contingent of men there and in the St.

Michael’s men and stuff like that. They’re the Knights of Columbus, but we want everybody, if you’re anywhere near Michigan, come and be a part of this. It’s a big place. It can hold a lot of people. If you follow this show, if you’re a fan of Paul’s and follow his work, travel and be with us. Now, this is the first one, right?

We need everybody to show up. So Bob thinks we’re doing a good job and we can do more of them, but like, All right. But we need everybody there. It’s going to take place on November 14th through the 16th. And again, it’s going to start on a Thursday evening and it’ll conclude about midday Saturday.

But we’re going to spend a lot of time together doing the real work of the gospel, which is inviting the Lord into our hearts, doing, forming our own crucifix in the moment, like opening our arms and saying, Lord, here’s everything. Now that’s going to be hard for some. Some will have to, put some come alongs or something, maybe to open up those arms, but the Lord does that and he does it gently.

We’re just asking you to join us and have an open heart and an open mind to what the Lord wants to do. Cause Paul, I don’t know about you, but there were times in my life where I was just sick of being sick and tired and the only person that can do anything about it is you like the Lord wants to help you, but you have to be the one that, that takes the first step and lets them in.

And yeah, and maybe that risk. It’s just coming to the conference and let God take it from there, just saying yes to coming and just trust that the Lord will meet you where you’re at right now. And that’s it, and he’ll begin the journey with you, and you don’t have to have some Great tragedy in your life to come to the conference.

You just may be living a life where you don’t feel like you have much of a mission or a purpose or It just feels mediocre or your marriage is just okay, and you don’t know why god wants more for you God wants to release some truth into your life so that you Can live with a sense of mission and purpose every day, right?

Yeah, and that your identity is not in anything in the world, but in who you are as his son Yeah, all so it really is for all men, fathers and sons and grandfathers And hopefully we’ll do more of them. But the first one’s gonna be Yeah. And I would just say too, just one final thing there is don’t put expectations on God.

Just come with an open heart. Lord, you’re calling me here. I feel you’re calling me here. I’m going to show up, bring other guys with you because people may tell you they’re fine. We all have the disease of I’m fine, but none of us are fine. We’re all broken and we all know we are, and we act like we’re not.

So like instead of spending the energy acting like you’re fine when you’re not use it to actually. Be healed and be happy and joyful and purposeful in your life. So yeah, we mentioned that it will take place. It’s called the restored men’s healing conference put on by the JP two healing center.

If you want to find out more information, registration opened up on August the 12th. Or opens up on August the 12th. So you can go to JP two healing center. com. That is JP I not the number two, but the letter I healing center. org. You’ll go right to the page, the events page. You can find the restored event.

That’s the only one that’s there. So you’ve got 100 percent chance of getting the right one and you can click it and register. There is a fee associated with it, but I promise you, if you choose to spend that money to invest in yourself, you’re going to be glad that you did. And so will your family.

And so will everybody else around you. So Paul, any final words you want to say here about what we’re doing or tell us about where they can find out more about your work and what you’re doing. I’m excited that we’re going to keep working on this papers and we’re diving in. I think that was the whole point of us getting together in person.

It’s let’s just pray together and dive into this together and not just show up and speak at a conference. Yeah. This is a real mission and a journey, so I just want to encourage men to just to jump into that with us. This is a movement of, Just restoring men to who God created us to be, that’s what we want to do.

So it’s easy to find me paulgeorge.la and that’ll link to my ministry website, the art of living, things like that. But ultimately this is all about Jesus. Amen. Amen. That’s who it’s about guys. Please pray for us as we prepare, we are going to spend the next day and a half and this will be coming out in the next day or so.

So you could pray for us and just know that Paul and I are committed to praying for y’all. Praying that those of you who know they’re going to go come with an open heart. Those of you don’t even know you’re going yet that will wind up being there. We’re praying for all of it. We’re all going to work together and I look forward to the work that God’s going to do and Paul in my heart’s to right there alongside of you.

So again, JP two healing center. org. You can find Paul through all of his websites and everything else. He’s got books out there. Holy grit. And what was the other one again? Rethinking happiness. Go get those, do what you can to read those things, put that work into your life and prepare to meet us in November, on November 14th and 16th guys.

Until then, we’ll be praying for you. We love you. And Thanks for listening. God bless.

Many of you, after seeing the photos, wanted to know when this powerful conversation was going to be released to the public. I’m so excited to share my conversation with Fr. Malachy from the National Eucharistic Congress in Indy. I was blessed to be one of the 10 podcasters invited to podcast live at the NEC and, as per usual, my conversation with Fr. Malachy was full of joy and tears!

Today, I have a heartwarming conversation with my dear friend, Fr Malachy, a devoted Franciscan Friar of Renewal.

From our first meeting at the JP2 Healing Center in Tallahassee, Florida, to walking barefoot in reverence during a Eucharistic pilgrimage, our journeys have been nothing short of transformative. In this episode, we dive deep into what it means to live a life filled with the spirit of power, inspired by St. Paul’s teachings.

Fr Malachy shares his recent experience of carrying the Eucharist from New Jersey to Indianapolis, recounting the grace-filled moments and the profound connections made along the way. His stories are a testament to the power of faith and the radical change it brings to our lives.

We explore the importance of daily Mass, the Eucharist, and confession in achieving personal transformation. Our discussion is filled with personal stories, struggles, and triumphs, offering you practical insights and encouragement on your own faith journey.

In this episode, you will hear:

– The inspiring backstory of our friendship and spiritual journey
– The significance of the National Eucharistic Congress in revitalizing faith
– Powerful testimonies from the Eucharistic pilgrimage, including the profound act of walking barefoot in adoration
– How the spirit of power can lead to radical personal transformation
The importance of community, daily devotion, and surrendering to God’s will

 

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✈️ Join us on one of our 2025 pilgrimages:

March 10-15: Visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico with Father Zachary, a fantastic priest and friend. This affordable trip is perfectly timed for most school spring breaks.

May 12-23: Join Father Larry and me on a spiritual journey to the Holy Land. Walk in the footsteps of Christ and experience an unforgettable pilgrimage.

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Become a Partner in the Pew! Donate to the ministry today!

START A MEN’S GROUP IN YOUR PARISH!

www.justaguyinthepew.com

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Get a copy of my new eBook, “12 Ways Guys Can Get Closer to Jesus”!

JUSTAGUYINTHEPEW.COM/EBOOK

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Welcome back to the pew everybody. I am the host of just a guy in the pew John Edwards I’m from Memphis, Tennessee Yeah, there we go. We got some folks. I paid them to be here by the way, so someone would show up podcast that comes out each and every week called just a guy in the pew Our ministry goes around the country and we start men’s groups for men You All over the country, which because men’s groups are for men, that’s why they’re called men’s groups, but we start those all over the country.

And it’s just been a great work to do. One of my favorite things to do in that work is to do this podcast. And, when I came here, I thought about people to invite on the show. And one of the first people that came to mind was my really good friend, Father Malachy. He and I met a few years ago in Tallahassee, Florida.

We were, yeah, I didn’t pay them. Did you pay them? I didn’t, but either way we met at I am through the JP two healing center and father Malik and I have been praying together for with each other all the time. He comes and visits and. Just become a really good friend in my life. So y’all, some of you may know him from hallow.

He’s been on hollow lately. He was on, been on pints with Aquinas. He’s been on several of our episodes and it’s just a joy to have my brother in the Lord here. Father Malachy, give it up for father. Thank you, brother. Yeah. I’m going to be here with you as well. Yeah. Yeah. So today, what we really want to talk to you guys about, what we’re going to talk about, just a lot of the things we normally talk about when we’re on our prayer calls Just spending time together is this spirit of power.

St. Paul talks about, you don’t have a spirit of fear. You were given a spirit of power. And, so many of us in the world today, we wonder what can we do? You come to these things, people like father, this amazing priest or mediocre podcasters or whatever else you might see and things like that.

And you think what can I do in my life? What could I possibly do for the Lord? And the answer is so much, but we have to have this radical transformation. And that happens only by the grace of God and the things that he does in our life. Father would be the first one to tell you that what in him is the Lord and hopefully what in me, anything that’s good in me as of him.

But yeah, we wanted to talk about just the spirit of power, living radically transformed lives. And so as I was preparing for this, I, Just said, Lord, what are some quotes? What are some things to really get us started off here? And I was sharing that with father during lunch. And one of the quotes that came to my mind was from John Paul, the second Pope, John Paul, the second St.

John Paul, the second. And he says through adoration, the Christian mysteriously contributes to the radical transformation of the world. And to the sowing of the gospel, anyone who prays to the savior draws the whole world with him and raises it to God. So here we are in this Eucharistic revival in this Eucharistic Congress.

And like I said, my buddy over here had the extreme privilege to carry our Lord from New Jersey, basically to here. And so he’s got some good stories about that, that I know he wants to share. And father that’s really what I want to start off with. Like when you hear that quote that we talked about from the great Pope and the great saint.

And what you’ve done recently, tell us a little bit about that and just the grace that you found in that. Yeah. Thank you again. Gifted to be here with you, bro. Yeah, man. Dude, bro. Dude, bro. Yeah, seriously, a gift to be here because we’re in this gifted time in the life of the church. that we’re referring to as Eucharistic Revival and our community, the Franciscan Friars of Renewal, so blessed to have accompanied these four different Eucharistic pilgrimage routes throughout the country as chaplains.

And I actually didn’t walk from Jersey. Sorry. I did walk from Notre Dame though. I’ve never been to Indiana before, and I’ve never seen so much corn in my life. But it was a total gift to be accompanying Jesus with these Perpetual pilgrims on the Marian route, and we were blessed because we got to be the last route to arrive here in Indianapolis, walking into St.

John the Evangelist Parish, which is just across the street from this convention center. And I was there carrying the Lord and the pilgrims had decided a mile away from the end of their pilgrimage, which had been happening for 65 days, journeying with Jesus. Adoring him spending time in his presence and inviting others to come and just to accompany the Lord on the way And at the last mile they said we want to take our shoes off and walk the last mile barefoot So I was like, yeah, i’m a franciscan.

I was like, I love it bare feet. Let’s go And so we did that and then as we were walking closer and closer It was like people were just pouring out and the streets were just lined. And I was so aware, cause I’m sitting here, I’m holding the Eucharist. I’m like, Jesus, just like right here. And I’m like, like the gifts gift of being able to be with you, Lord, in this moment.

And as we walked through the crowd, we came and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I was just following the guy who was in front of me and looking at Jesus, it’s Oh but we had a moment, we turned around on the steps of St. John, the evangelist parish. And the entire like streets were just cut.

It was, a shutdown. It was just filled with people and all the people of God are out there and just lifted up our Lord. And I just was, as I was hearing this about, this, like this way in which our transformation through this encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist leads to a lifting up, a raising up of Christ in the world again, so that he becomes visible and right.

Like Eucharistic revival is about that encounter with Jesus. And so this entire like time and I had this gift and I was like literally holding Jesus up and my heart was just so moved with this reality. Not only that when Jesus is lifted up, right? That we have this gift of participating in that, but that when he is lifted up, he draws all people to himself.

And I was looking out on like religious lady priest. This like multi flora like ethnic group of people that you’d never have gathered together in this way. And at the center of it was Jesus Christ and the Eucharist. Drawing us to himself. And we’re talking about, that’s like spirit of power.

It’s like, why is he drawing us Lord? Like why are hearts moved? Why? When we’re like randomly walking through, the middle of Indiana and we’re like, passing by this this college campus and these kids are there and they just stop. And they’re sitting here looking and realizing, that here we are coming into their world, into their midst.

And this is the desire of God from the beginning, right? It’s like he created this world so that it would be the landscape, the sort of like theatrical, like setting for this love story, this relationship with humanity. And even the fact that we totally screwed that up, and I keep doing that, which is I love confession.

Me too. It was like, in the one week that I went 10 days, I was out on the road with him. It was like, I had to go to confession twice in 10 days. So I’m like, Jesus, I’m less close to you, but I keep on just like sending. But he keeps receiving us in his mercy and he keeps coming to us in his mercy.

And so this like revival, this grace of revival is the grace of an encounter with this love that comes to us in our poverty, in our weakness, in our real world lives and transforms them in a way that when you meet him, like you never go away the same. And I was thinking last night, at the opening ceremony, it was like Bishop Cousins praying in front of the I’m just Lord, come and have your way.

Come and have your way in my heart. And I think that’s what the beauty of this quote about Eucharistic adoration. It’s like this power and this revival and this just transformation is not something generic. It’s not something that’s just like out there. It’s right here. It’s my heart.

And if we want to see revival in the life of the church, how is that going to happen? It’s going to happen through the revival, the revivification, the transformation of my heart by encountering his heart, which is waiting for us in the Eucharist. And that’s it, and it’s and I just I remember standing there on those steps, holding up our Lord and just as blessing going forth and it was the last of these four routes.

It was making the sign of a cross over this nation, the solemn benediction of this entire country and finishing that last moment of blessing and just giving that blessing and just realizing that this power has gone forth. Power has gone forth. Like we might not even be aware of what that means yet.

But the fact that pilgrimage happened, the fact that our Lord crossed this entire land, North, South, East, West means that power has gone forth. The word of God made flesh has walked over our country. Isn’t that crazy? Just think about that. Like Jesus, Jesus has come into this world and he’s drawing us to himself.

And he’s calling us, each of us calling us. And it’s for a reason. And I think that’s what we were like talking about, right? It’s like, why is he calling us to us? Why is he drawing us to us? It’s because he wants this radical transformation to become flesh in us now today. Yeah. And what I see in you when you’re talking about this is just an incredible zeal.

And I know this was, you have a relationship with the Lord, not only in the Eucharist, but the person of Jesus Christ, just the person that you’ve met in your journey. Neither one of us, right? And this is what I really wanted to talk about a little bit too is You know, so often we can see people that is priests or deacons or whatever and say, man, those people must have come out of the womb with holy water and a Bible, right?

Like they just, they must have been made that way. And yeah, that’s not the case. The greatest saints are some of the worst centers. You think about saying St. Augustine, And some of the others in history, but it’s this zeal this radical transformation only happens when we meet the person of Jesus Christ.

That’s what happens in all of us or should happen. And if it doesn’t, then that’s why we’re doing this. Because I tell people all the time if you want people to know Jesus, then they have to see him in you. They have to see him, right? It’s not just enough to talk about it. You have to display Jesus in your life and that passion is what draws people and father i’m, so grateful for this revival because I travel the country a lot And I go in a lot of the churches and we’re on autopilot right just Hurry up father.

You’re taking too long. I gotta get a kroger. I gotta watch the football game I gotta there’s so much of that and we wonder sometimes like why aren’t more people becoming catholic? But if we ask ourselves If I walked in and I saw that, would I want to be a part of it? Would I believe that the people that were in there actually believe in what they say they believe?

Yeah, and the only reason the only way that happens is if we finally surrender our hearts over to the lord completely Yeah in our brokenness and our wounds and our mistakes and our failures. I mean you didn’t have a perfect life I didn’t have a perfect life Eight years ago. I was sitting in a jail cell

On the verge of taking my own life You

And yet, here I am sitting on stage with you in a place filled with 55, 000 Catholics that need Jesus and know it. And I’m not here because of my own gifts or skills or accords, I’m here because Jesus came to me and said, there’s another way and I haven’t forgotten you and your brokenness or in your mess.

I have a purpose for your life. And I desire a relationship with you. Yeah. And this is something that we need so much in our church. And the only way that we’re ever going to have that true revival is if we finally surrender ourselves to the Lord and cast off the cares of the world. And when anybody else thinks, I don’t care, there’s one person I have to answer to when I die.

And it’s not anybody in this room. It’s not you. It’s not my wife, although she probably runs a close second, but It’s just, that’s where we got to get to, and that’s what my heart longs for in myself more and more each day, because I’m not complete, I’m nowhere near that. You aren’t either. We pray together.

We know how broken we are. Yeah. But St. John Paul the second goes on to say from the Eucharist comes the strength to live the Christian life with zeal and to share that with others. And that’s the thing. So many people, father, I go to these men’s conference, all this stuff and guys go, I’m tired of the way the world is.

I’m tired of this. I’m tired of that. When is somebody going to do something? When are you, because like you said, Jesus made his way up and down and left and right across this country. And how did he choose to do that? through people carrying him through their hands and feet. And that’s exactly what he said when he took the cloud elevator back to heaven.

Like when he said, you are my hands and feet, right? Go and make disciples of all nations. But it seems so many times that even in my own heart and this ministry and the work that God’s called me to, It’s like I’m waiting on someone else sometimes. And while everyone has different gifts and we need everyone, it starts with the commitment, the desire, the renewal of our relationship and the promise that I will do everything in my power in spite of the devil and all the arrows he throws.

To be the man that God called me to be yeah, and that’s my hope that we all leave here with that Yeah, that same feeling of like I’m not gonna This isn’t gonna be something where I went up the mountain and I flew down on the other side and now I’m back to my Problems and my repetitive sins and my boss.

I hate and all that stuff it’s How do I live this in my life all the time? It’s with community and it’s with sitting quietly and abiding with Jesus every day in our life. Amen. Amen, bro. That’s like Forrest Gump. That’s all I got to say about that. Oh bro. No, totally. I, and it’s funny because like people coming up and like father, like seeing all these people and it’s awesome.

This is like Catholic family where you love. But it’s also true. I know who I am and where the Lord took me from. It’s like most people get shocked. They’re like, yeah, I was expelled from high school for breaking and entering for stealing money, buying a bunch of drugs with it, selling drugs to my friends.

It’s only here because of his love, and it’s the same love. That’s like for everyone. And this is why I have so much hope with this revival. And I’ve said this again and again, the reason why I have hope for this revival is because it’s a Eucharistic revival. In other words God bless, there’s so many people working in the life of the church trying to think of what’s the things that we could do.

How could we change? Obviously, just like a culture that has in so many ways, abandoned faith, abandoned God turned away from the roots that it came from within Christianity. What could we do? And you could have so many wonderful programs. I’m sure some of them are okay. We’re making some new ones now that weren’t good.

But the fact is, it’s just simple. And the answer remains the same and will remain the same until the end of time. Just put Jesus at the center. Just put them at the center and invite people to meet him. And when they meet him, see this is the thing, it’s like when our hearts meet this heart, it burns with love for us.

We realize how much he loves us. All of a sudden, something just like shatters inside of our humanity. Like those lies that like self hatred, I’m not worthy. I’m alone. This is meaningless. The lies that like the best I can do is hope for just existing and occasionally being happy and otherwise numbing myself with a screen or numbing myself with a drink or whatever else it is.

Like I live in the South Bronx in New York City. And before you get into the Bronx, you can already smell as you’re driving down the road, the marijuana, it’s just like weed is just everywhere. And then I get into that city and I’m in walking in the neighborhood and there’s people bent over who are like, totally passed out, drugged out from fentanyl and you see this and you’re like, what is going on?

I just tried to go to the bathroom earlier in that place we had lunch at and they have a screen in front of a urinal for crying out loud. It’s like we are trying to be distracted. And what am I trying to be distracted from? What am I trying to numb? What am I running from? And I think it’s this lie that like that deepest desire in our humanity will not be satisfied and cannot be satisfied.

And at the end, we’re just all alone. And it doesn’t mean a dang thing. So you might as well just do your best and get on and look out for number one. And that lie, right? Is so contradicted and so destroyed by the presence of God and the Eucharist, because not only did he come, but he comes every single mass.

It’s nuts, bro. Just think about this, like every single day. And even here, there’s so many different masses that happened here and the king of heaven came again and again. And this humble way and this form of bread and wine to be with us to continue to be Emmanuel. It’s not enough for me to know that God was born in Bethlehem and then he walked around in Galilee and then he did amazing things like, I need to know that he’s here now today with me, because there’s still a part of my heart that tells me like, no, there’s not one who actually loves you.

There’s not someone there for you. There’s not anyone who actually sees you in that reality of his presence. So humble. Still, silent, hidden in the Eucharist, speaks to that place in my heart, breaks through that lie. And bro, when that happens, man, dude, you should have seen this last leg of the pilgrimage.

We’re coming out of holy angels. There’s a beautiful black Catholic church here in Indianapolis, and we’re walking. It’s the last three miles. And so there was another one of the priests who was carrying our Lord for the moment. So I grabbed the guitar and we just started praising God and literally like David before the arc.

There’s people dancing down the street in Indianapolis in front of Jesus and the Eucharist, just I can’t contain the joy, because this is what happens, right? We sing when we are loved and when we are in love, we dance for joy, right? When we’re in the presence of the one whom we love and being in the presence of the living God and the Eucharist, there’s nothing better in this transformation that happens in our lives.

It is meant to become the way of life. See, the one thing, the sort of like Achilles heel of a Eucharistic Congress and Eucharistic revival is that we could allow the way of life that we are invited into through this to become simply another moment of our life. And that’s not it, bro. Bro this power, this transformation, we are meant to walk in a new way of life and the world needs to see it.

Yeah. And the only way that we could continue to do it is through the Eucharist. I mean with the power of the Holy Spirit that resides in us that we all received at our baptism, right? And then if we took our confirmation seriously And we said yes, like that wasn’t just a cute thing to take a picture with the bishop at his crozier And last catholic thing I ever have to do right?

It’s not that it’s a promise to the living god who loves you So much that he says you know what you were probably in your diaper when you were baptized and you didn’t have a say But now here at the age of reason, because I love you because love without choice, isn’t love. But I ask you now to serve me or to not.

And the choice is yours. And if you say yes, then I will give you everything you need in the Holy spirit. But even my very body, I tell people all the time when we talk about Jesus, I say, look, what I’m talking about in relationship is imagine if we walked outside of this building right now and we’re not paying attention because we’re distracted and we’re about to step out in front of a bus.

And then one of your best friends in the world pushes you out of the way and falls in front of that bus and dies. You would never for the rest of your life walk away from that moment. You would never cease to quit honoring that moment or that person and remembering that person. But yet the best friend we will ever have in our life did that 2000 years ago for each and every one of us.

He pushed us out of the way. And then not only that, he knew what you said about, this can’t be just a moment, right? This can’t just be a thing with some nice pictures. And all I remember that 10 years ago when we were at that thing, what was that? Was that seek? Was that revival thing? Was that? No. He gives you the Eucharist so that every day you have what you need.

His very body. People ask me all the time, John, how have you not done cocaine in all the years that you stopped? What’s kept you from doing that? I have two answers, daily mass and our Lord in the Eucharist and a family that I would never turn my back on again. But the only reason that family means what it means is because I finally understood what Jesus was supposed to mean to me and not only what he does mean, but this Great response that I am called to respond with.

Yeah. Like you can’t just go, Oh, the Jesus on the cross. It’s nice jewelry. It’s something that we see in our church. It always has to just demand a response out of our life. And it’s not meant to just be Quietly somewhere just you and the Lord all the time in your life like a relationship with Jesus doesn’t mean you and Jesus run Off in the tulips and leave everybody else we come into that relationship with Jesus Yeah, so that he informs us of who he is So that we can be informed of who we are and then we go back into the body of Christ and then together as the body we go out and we get the lost Amen, the thing that drives me each and every day is there’s so many silent sufferers in the world You Silence suffers.

Then they’re the people that you think have it made. Since Easter, I had 12 people in our diocese in Memphis men call me or my wife, two of them cheating on their wives physically, two of them emotionally, three of them struggling with porn. Two of them called me and said, I have a gun in my lap. Tell me why I shouldn’t take my life on and on.

Because people that, and these people, if you line them up in a room full of 30 people and said, pick the people, You wouldn’t be able to pick them because they look catholic because they go to all the catholic stuff Because they check all the catholic boxes But yet every one of them was broken and keeping isolated and alone and silently suffering And how many people do we want by in our offices in our on the streets in our churches in our family?

That we know something is not right. Yeah, and we get distracted and we’re busy with other things You When in that moment, we’re always wondering what does God want me to do in my life To be present to everything around us into that person because for You may be the beginning of that relationship with christ for that person.

Amen I saw something in them that person cared and they did something for me that no one else did and it’s because they love jesus And I want to receive that and I want to do it for someone else So if you’re looking for one way right off the bat to live radically transformed lives get to daily mass And receive the lord.

How many times do these churches sit empty all day long thousands of them across? I just got back from rome right 500 churches in rome You would think when you go there’s a pilgrim like we’ll barely get in these places And there’s so many of them that had three or four people in them And our lord is waiting there giving himself every single day.

I’m here that the pain the loss the identity wounds the places that need healing i’m right here Yeah, you need nothing more than this. Amen, and I need to hear it I need to hear this like i’m in mass and i’m daydreaming and I slap myself. What are you doing? You’ve been called to the supper of the lamb, man.

God’s got a chair at his table for you right now. Take the gum out of your mouth, right? Don’t go up there and act like somebody’s handing you a Twinkie, right? If we really knew, and there’s some saints, it’s way smarter than me. They don’t know his name. But simply if we really knew what was contained in the Eucharist, we would fall on our knees and never get up again.

Yeah. And this is what we have to remind ourselves, not just for here, not just for this hour, these next three days, but building ourselves opposite that you can go out and do that battle. And for those of you who want to do that in your life, you can’t do it alone. This is one of my closest friends in the world.

And I hope you guys can tell because of our relationship, but I can’t tell you how many times this dude has called me. I’m broken. I messed up. I need prayer. And what an honor that is to do that for a priest, let alone anybody, but a priest of God. And so many times I can call him. And so Jesus doesn’t just come to us in the Eucharist.

Yes, he does. And it’s the source and summit of our faith and the most valuable thing in the created universe. But he also gave us each other. And too many of us try to do it alone. And too many of us try to white knuckle it through our lives. And we’re grabbing our rosary till the beads pop off thinking if we just hold on, then we can do it ourselves.

And we can’t. We need one another because that outside of the Eucharist is where we find Christ. Yeah. In one another. Yeah. And it’s actually because of the Eucharist. Amen. That’s why we find Christ in one another. Yeah. Let me just think about that. So like we, when we receive communion, there is this movement of love.

And this first movement is this movement upward towards the Lord and his descending to us, his coming to us. But as soon as that movement happens, we’re immediately invited and even like the impulse of love itself is to begin to look around and to think about this. Like when you fall in love with somebody, you begin to love the things they love, right?

And all of a sudden you begin to notice the things that they like, their favorite color, their flower, it’s like so you begin to love the things that the one whom you love loves. And then when all of a sudden we realize that Lord, this tremendous love that you have for me, you have it for everyone.

And I was just last night, like in the stadium, just like looking around and realizing first he was looking to the Lord And I remember years ago, like the first moment, the first time when I moved from this place where my prayer life was like, I said a lot of awesome prayers and I was like, I was like, I had my, I called it my Catholic, merit badge sash, so I’m like talking about all this stuff in, that I look at my life.

But there was this moment when I remember being in the chapel and it was just a small chapel next to our college where I went to school at back in Augusta, Georgia for undergrad. And I just remember looking up and this word came and the word was just you. I think it was the first time that I had ever said that to God, you, and you only say you to someone that you’re in relationship with.

And it turns out that the only thing God really wants with us is relationship. And I was looking at him last night, in that beautiful moment of adoration over in Lucas oil. And just that word just kept coming back again and again, like you, but then I started looking around every single person and that same word was there like you, because that God that we adore in the Eucharist.

He’s chosen us to become living tabernacles. And that’s why daily mass, right? As I receive him, if I receive him in faith and I can be a hot mess. And guess what? That don’t bother him. He actually prefers those. Sometimes totally. I think so. Lots of room to work. Absolutely. A savior. If I don’t need saving, then I don’t need a savior.

He was like, if I got it all together, then Jesus is totally superfluous. I said that I think it was at your parish and we did that parish mission. And I think the priest jumped in his seat and I basically told everybody at mass, I was like, Hey, listen, if you’re here at church. And you don’t actually need redemption and salvation and you don’t need Jesus Christ, then the Catholic Church has nothing to offer you.

You should go home. Yeah, it was a good opening line because it’s true because what we’re preaching is salvation. If I don’t have anything that I need saving from, then I don’t need a savior, which means that there’s no good news that I have for you if I’m preaching salvation. Yep. But when he does come, our savior comes, he enters into us.

There is a transformation that he is working silently. Hidden inside of us, and I’ve seen it again and again, all of a sudden the wife who can look at her husband who cheated on her and forgive, I’ve seen it, the young man who struggled with doubts and fears about his unworthiness because of the constant battle with purity and sexual temptation, falling into pornography and masturbation and you name it because of this love, hope arises in their heart and strength to do what they couldn’t do before.

So this is the radical transformation. It’s his life enters into my life and not because I’ve got it together and I’m perfect, but the absolute opposite. I am poor. Thank you, Jesus. I’m a sinner. Praise God. I don’t have it all together. Glory to God in the highest because he has come to show us who he is.

Paul says the power of God, the love of God is most clearly seen in our weakness. And so that’s what he’s wanting. And I’m like, sweet. If you want weakness, I got it. And there’s something that I think we need to address too, because as we talk about this it’s so fearful because people do feel I’m not worthy.

I’m not this, I’m not that. That’s one thing. But then what do I have to give up? Yeah, that’s the other piece. What is this going to cost me, right? What about these friends that i’ve known all my life and I don’t want to lose them But if I become the jesus freak or the jesus guy Then they’re going to walk away and I experienced that in my own life, I had a year between when I got out of jail and When we started the men’s group and in my parish and nobody knew You know, I hadn’t told anybody like my family and my wife and kids because I was afraid if I told anybody like they’d kick us out of the school and kick us out of the parish like You All those things, Angela being embarrassed and all those kind of things.

And I had a lot of guys I was running with that first year and then I started inviting the priest over and then I started praying before meals and then I started inviting the guys to the group and all of a sudden they quit coming around. Some of them, I have a little bass boat and sometimes that’s the only time I ever hear from.

And so I tell people all the time yeah, you’re going to lose things, but why do we spend so much time counting the cost? Instead of looking towards the reward, right? Because it’s, I’m telling you what, all the things that I’ve lost in my life. And I told those friends, I love you. I get it. I don’t, you’re not in the place to receive these things, but I love you, right?

You’re always welcome here. Those things. But the thing is, we get so afraid about what we’re going to lose, but there’s no one who knows more than what you’re supposed to be than the one who loved you into existence. The one that said one day, and this is the thing that I think escapes all of our minds is that one day, like however many millennia ago, God’s there needs to be at that time, a Larry, or a John or a Jill or a Jane, or I’m saying a lot of J’s or a Pat or whatever and Amy. And then in his timeline and it’s perfect time. You came into existence. God loved you into existence. He wanted you to live right here, right now. And how many of us don’t spend any time pondering that, right?

That there’s a purpose for my life. There’s a God who loves me that declares that I need to live now. And the other thing that I will say to people when they think of all okay, I want to be a better Christian, but let me go ahead and disqualify myself for all the things I’ve done wrong.

There’s no one who knows more about who you’re supposed to be than the one that loves you into existence. And God knew everything you were going to do wrong in your entire life. And he still chose to make you. Yeah. So what does that say about what God thinks? He doesn’t care about what you’ve done. He cares about what you have the potential to do.

And if we want real change in this country, in this world, in our own hearts, in this church, then we have to remember to let ourselves off the hook too, because God knew the things we’re going to do. Now you have to repent, right? That’s the thing. If you don’t repent, then you’re separated forever from him for, possibly forever.

So he knows that as long as we repent, it doesn’t matter what we’ve done. He brought us into this world. with gifts, with talents and with his body, blood, soul and divinity. Those things become as perfect as they possibly could in us and become his tools to go and continue to create his kingdom. But we have to quit being afraid of what we’re gonna lose, of what it’s gonna cost us because the Jesus we serve didn’t count the cost.

He didn’t count the cost. He sat there in that garden, scared to death, I’m sure, fully God and fully man. And at the end of the day, in that pivotal moment of history, because salvation was won there in that garden, right? When he said, not your will, but mine, he knew the cost and he walked boldly through it.

And he watched everybody leave him, every friend he had in his life. And he didn’t count the cost. He went and he took on all of that. Not so that we can be mediocre Catholics. Yeah. Not so that we can keep me and Jesus in our, in, in here in our personal little party of two, but to go out into the world and to boldly live as Catholics.

Like I, I used to be so afraid of death, just dying randomly leaving my wife and leaving my kids or even before that leaving my own selfish desires in the life I created for myself. If something were happening to me tomorrow. So God willing, let me go to confession and receive the Lord in the Eucharist.

I got you covered, bro. Thank you. Can I hang out with you at least till Sunday? And this, but I’m going to go see the one that I love more than anything. And that’s the end game is imperfect as I am. As much as I, I fear as much as I, I double back down against that statement I just said, he still waits for me.

And he’s there to meet me and pick me up off the ground and to say, John, I know, I knew about this 350, 000 years ago or whatever it was, but I’m here and I don’t think less of you. I don’t love you any less. I just want you to look at me again, remember me and do the things that I’ve asked you to do.

And that’s for each and every one of us. We have another quote here from Tolkien. I know you’re a big Tolkien guy too. Oh yeah. And he said this, he said, out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated. I put before you the one great thing to love on the earth, the blessed sacrament. There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon the earth.

And that’s it, man. We’re looking for so many other places. It’s that old song, looking for love in all the wrong places, right? And that’s what we keep going back. But the goal is to be like that woman at the well, when we go back and one time there’s Jesus there and our lives change and then we go tell everybody that’s what it means to have a life that is radically transformed.

And that’s my hope for all of us, you, me, everybody in this room that we continue because conversion is not a one time experience. No, it’s the rest of our lives. And we have to come to grips with that because it’s a work for the rest of our lives until we draw our last breath. And I think also part of the reason why conversion is the work of our entire life is because it is something in which conversion is becoming what?

Becoming divine. Now don’t get me wrong There’s an actual understanding, and Peter in his letter says that we’re made participators in the divine nature. And so what is it? It’s that there is a work that God wants to do in each of us, in which each of us is called to become another Christ. And this is where the Eucharist becomes this like understanding.

It’s it’s like you think about it, if like you, you have the seed of life, the word of life sewn into us at baptism, you have this sort of this light that comes down upon it, this radiance of the sun, the spirit, and then this water that’s poured forth and it grows, but it grows over time.

And the way that the Lord continues to just pour into us, it’s like divine fertilizer, come on, miracle grow. Is this way is the gift of himself again and again in the Eucharist. Because if I, a finite being have been made to participate in the infinite glory and beauty of God, that it means no matter where I have arrived on that journey, there is always more.

Yeah. Always. And this is like the joy, right? And this is the call. This is the radical. So again, when we talked about radical transformation, I love this title. What does it come from? Radics root to the root of my being to the very heart of myself, where Jesus, and this is like a beautiful thing to even just think about and ponders like, Lord, where has my heart not been touched by your love?

Where in my life do I believe that your love can’t touch, can’t make new, can’t go there. Where do I not want you to go? Where do I not want to be seen? And these are the places that the Lord wants to come and he comes again and again in the Eucharist. And so the word transformed and you talked about like this, like before anything is existing, God’s like desire and plan for our lives.

And even knowing all these mistakes and these stupid like foot and mouth moments and these really things that were like, wish that never happened. All of that, but it tells us in Ephesians and I love this chapter one of Ephesians three to ten, there’s a beautiful canticle and it starts off and it’s saying before the foundation of the world, I chose you in Christ holiness

before the foundation of the world. Just think about this. That the eternal plan of the father for each of us is holiness. And what is holiness? It is the wholeness of our being that has been transformed by being filled with the divine life of God. And that is the life that comes to us again and again in the Eucharist.

But one knows that life and that love will never remain alone, but always becomes this like force of movement out. You mentioned the woman at the well. And what happens? She comes, she meets the one who is the living water. And what does she do? She stays there at the will and hangs out for the rest of her life.

Absolutely not. She goes running back into town. She’s Hey, guess who I met? Check them out. You got to see this guy. He told me everything about me that I ever did. And this is what happens when you meet the Lord. And he wants to be met and he wants to reveal himself. And like John, you and I, just the way that God has worked, there’s been some radical sort of like really like moment, like St.

Paul breakthrough things that have happened. It doesn’t always happen that way. I met some people. I met this beautiful 90 year old woman somewhere near a cornfield in Indiana. I know that doesn’t tell you where it was at because there’s so many cornfields, but She’s there coming out of the church.

We’re getting ready to begin this procession for it’s eight miles or something like that. And she’s out here, she’s got her cane, she’s like rocking it, like hopping along. And I was like, how are you doing? And, she’s, doing some, I’m so happy to be here.

And I was like, yeah, we’re so grateful to have you. She’s yeah, I’m 90 years old. I figured if I didn’t come this time, I wasn’t ever going to be able to come in my lifetime. And so she’s just out there she’s like going for it. You want to talk about like radical transformation?

Like she’s hungry to be with Jesus all the way to the end. And then the beauty too, of this Eucharistic pilgrimage, it kind of ties in with this idea of going forth and sharing this joy of relationship and love with Jesus Christ. Is it one thing I saw and I could see it in the faces of the people is that we have been so cornered and isolated and siloed by the culture, by the scandals in the church, by the divisions that exist in society to retreat.

We have been retreating from the public sphere. We’ve been retreating from the world. We’ve been hiding behind doors like those apostles in a locked room after the death of Christ. And this revival and this time in which we’ve been carrying Jesus in the streets of this country was a breaking out, a Pentecost moment.

And in fact, Jesus, whenever he comes to us in the Eucharist, Pope Benedict talks about this, he says, it’s like a mini Pentecost. That the Holy Spirit is given again to us, but the spirit is given in order to be shared. The love of God comes for us to share it. So Eucharist coming, I could see it in the faces of people where they were on the street in their neighborhood, on the street, in their town, standing publicly with the Lord.

With the Lord. And here he is being raised up. Jesus being raised up for everyone to see. And here we are singing. Whereas one time we’re like walking into again, I don’t know where Indiana never been here before. Apologies. It was such a blur. We went to like dozens and dozens of towns, but Bishop Rhodes were over in Fort Wayne diocese, at least I know he’s there.

He’s walking and we’re walking into town towards this parish. I think it was sacred heart and just singing we love you. We love you. We love you. God. And people just coming out and seeing just hundreds of people in the middle of whatever the Tuesday afternoon, walking through their town, holding up Jesus in the Eucharist and the people of God just singing together.

We love you. We love you. We love you. God, the world needs that witness. And I said this to some people I was preaching to in a mass earlier in the week here. We’re staying in an Airbnb. That’s like on the other side of the highways. And when we went there, it was awesome. So the friars are like, where are we going to stay?

So we all pile into this three bedroom Airbnb. There’s 10 of us there. It’s great. It’s like a home version of a clown car. It’s really hilarious. There’s a brother like laying on a mat next to the coffee pot. Step up, but it’s you walk across that. Divide of the, of this highway in the neighborhood changes completely.

I know it’s a little bit rough downtown Indy, but it just gets super poor and just run down and homeless everywhere. And just a really just it’s just rough part of town. And I was just thinking, you know what? Like this Eucharistic revival is dead in the water. If it stays on this side of the highway, we got to go out.

And I think the going out with the pilgrimage was like this, like stirring the heart of the bride. It’s we have something to share. Yeah. We have someone to share and the world needs him. But guess what? God needs. You needs us to be bold enough to allow the power of the spirit to fill us and to go forth and proclaim Jesus is Lord.

And he’s in our midst and not generically and not just spiritually, but truly, really present in the Eucharist. And so if people can meet him, then guess what? Revival is happening and revival is coming. Because there’s nowhere that Jesus goes where people are unchanged. Cause that’s just who he is, right?

And I don’t want to be unchanged any day of my life, which is why I keep coming back every day to mass. Like you’re talking about. And I’d say that’s the best recipe. You want deeper conversion, go to mass as often as you can receive the Eucharist as often as you can get to confession as often as you can, because every time we encounter that love of Jesus, I’m transformed, I’m healed, I’m made free, and I become just a little bit more like him.

And how beautiful would it be if people looked upon your face, saw the face of God, and that only comes because we’ve received him. Yeah. That’s what St. Paul’s talking about when he says, I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. Amen. I’ve died to self. I just, everything he says there, like 2 Corinthians 5, 17, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he’s a new creation.

The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. And that’s what I want to ask people is can you really say in your life that the old person has died? That the person you were before has died. Now that takes time. That’s a continual dying to self, right? We have that initial dying of choosing Christ over ourselves.

And then he invites us to die a little more each day to self. But that’s a question we should all ask ourselves because we can go to church. We can check all the boxes. We can do everything. You can be the most Catholic decorated person in the world. But if you really died to yourself and if you started living for Christ, that’s what he says in Galatians two 20, I’ve been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I just, there’s an image I have as I’m saying this, and I have three little kids. I guess they’re not that little anymore. Jacob’s 15. I apologize for my voice.

I’ve been talking to a lot of people over the last couple of days. The girls are 11, and the girls have learned, and father’s been over at our house a bunch. He said mass in our house. He’s, There’s been like 10 friars in my house at one time sleeping on various appliances or whatever you said earlier but I was in there one day in our den, which, you know and the girls had gotten obsessed with dominoes, at 11, which, I didn’t think would happen.

I thought that would be a younger thing. And they’ve got them lined up everywhere. And they’re about to push them over and they’re like, Dad, watch this. Watch them all fall down. And so I walked over and I walked about halfway down and this was just a God moment. It wasn’t me being like, watch what I’m about to do.

It was just the Lord moved me and I picked the domino up and before Allison was about to push them and she goes, what has stopped? Wait, if you take that out, they all won’t fall down. And I said, yeah, that’s you. That’s you. That’s you. That’s you. That’s you. And honey, your mother and I carry you to church and Caitlin, we carry you to church and we’re trying to make our faith yours, but then the day it’s got to become yours.

Because if you’re this domino and we take you out, if you choose not to boldly proclaim Christ with your life, how many of these dominoes, the people you will meet in your life will never fall. How many of them will never be affected because you choose something else? To choose something else and that doesn’t mean being a good person in your career or whatever else You’re pursuing in your life.

You can do both Because christ wants to envelop all of our life Not just the part where we’re in those four walls that we call a parish but every aspect of our life And so I held that up and I tell them all the time when they’re playing with them Make sure you’re in there. So the rest of them fall down And it’s something it’s a message I think for each and every one of us here As we come here and as we, I encourage you all to keep going to whatever you can go to, whatever’s in your schedule, whatever you have time for.

What else? You drove all the way up here. What else do you have time to do? Go to everything that you possibly can. Fall in front of the Lord. Like last night I was coming back from a second dinner that someone asked me to go to and father had told me I didn’t eat. I’m watching my figure, but but I did have a beer and that was a good beer, but father had told me I’m going to be doing adoration.

I’m going to be leading praise and worship. And it was 11 o’clock in my hotels, like a mile and a half, two miles, I don’t know where we are, but one way away from here and I was walking by church and I was like, man, father’s in there. But Jesus is in there and I’m tired. I talked to probably, I don’t know, four people that listened to my podcast yesterday at the booth and I was worn out, man, honestly.

And, but I went in that church and I sat in that pew and I listened to my, my, my good friend just belt out his gifts to the Lord. And I got home at 1230 and I was tired, but I wouldn’t have rather been anywhere else. And the Lord, that’s all he wants. Like I just so many times, like this is one last thing I’ll say.

And then father, we can close out here and just, but sometimes like I can feel like I’m a bother to God, right? God’s got plenty of other people to listen to or he’s doing, but then like my son Jacob will come to me and we were shooting fireworks on the 4th of July and I let him shoot some.

And he’s dad, can I shoot some? And there were some of these big things like blow your face off kind of stuff. Let’s go. And so I was like, all right, your mom’s across the road. It’s dark. She won’t know what you all right. Like here. And so I just don’t lose any appendages or anything . I don’t have any super glue with me.

So like I let him do it. And what I thought was just a simple gesture. He came up and he bear hugged me. I was a 15-year-old boy, like he’s beyond dad being cool, right? . And he hugged me while I was might and put his head in my chest and said, I’m so glad that we’re doing this together.

I’m so glad that it’s just me and you. And I thought about that in the inverse. Like we may go to adoration or we may be in front of walking down the hall and one of you wonderful priest is processing with our Lord. And in that moment are we seeing a monstrance in a wafer or are we seeing the God of the universe saying, I’m glad it’s just you and me, right?

Like I’m glad it’s just you and me. That’s what I want. That’s what I want. Is for this always in our life and your good times and your bad times and your mediocre times and your isolation and your community. It’s always me. That’s my hope for each and every one of us, man. And I just, as we leave you here somebody thought we were the joke guys that are coming next.

So sorry to ruin that whole thing. I accomplished crying three or four times, which I figured would happen being in your presence and when these people, but folks, we just, we’re inviting you to Again, not to come to this conference just to say I went to something, not to hang this well, mine’s over there, but the badge next to any other Catholic things you’ve been to.

But Lord, like in everything I do, in every talk I listened to, in every exhibit booth I visit, in every conversation I happen upon, what do you want from me? What are you asking of me? And when he tells you, don’t be afraid. to pursue it. Because he will give you everything you need. You have a guy that used to steal and rob and sell drugs.

You have a guy that, that was a terrible human being to his wife and to his kids and to generally everybody in his life that didn’t have a dollar sign on their face for me. But you have two men that sit before you that are completely different, not perfect, not sinless. We got our problems. Trust me, but completely different.

And I’m reminded that moment in The Chosen, which is a great show in the first season when Mary Magdalene has been transformed and Nicodemus is finding her. And he says how long after the transformation did you after my visit? Were you transformed? And she goes, Oh, it wasn’t you. And he goes, What was it?

Sanhedrin? Did someone else come? And she goes, No. And he goes if you saw this man, would you know him if you saw him again? And she says, all I can tell you is this. She says, I was one way and now I’m completely different. And the only thing that happened in between was him. So I will know him for the rest of my life.

That’s my prayer for all of us. So I pray for you, brother, and your priesthood as you continue to serve the Lord. I thank you for being here. I want you to have the final word folks, if you haven’t heard of the Franciscan Friars of Renewal, please check them out. They have a booth over next to all the other people that look like priests in the vocation section or sisters.

What a gift this man is in my life. What a gift he is to the church. What a gift all of you have been to take your time to spend time with us. We love you and Father Malachi, take us home. Thank you, bro. That’s the only thing. The only thing that brings revival

is him.

Dare to open your heart to the heart of Jesus. Dare to allow him to meet you where you are now. And I can promise you, without a shadow of a doubt, you will not be the same because of who he is and who you are to him. That’s revival. Our hearts meeting the heart of Jesus. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Thank you all for being here. God bless you.

I’m thrilled to be back in the studio after an incredible week at the National Eucharistic Congress. In this episode, I’m diving into all the amazing experiences and graces from the event in Indianapolis, where over 60,000 Catholics gathered. It was such a powerful moment for our community, and I can’t wait to share my thoughts and stories with you.

We’ll talk about the highlights, the inspiring speakers, and the impact this Congress had on all of us. Plus, I’ll discuss what comes next after this revival. Spoiler: we’re talking about keeping the momentum going and continuing to strengthen our faith.

During the Congress, I had the chance to meet so many of you at our booth. We shared stories, took pictures, and enjoyed some great conversations. A special thank you to those who joined our live podcast session with Father Malachy – your support means the world to us!

One touching moment was meeting a young man who shared how a previous podcast episode had helped him return to his faith. It’s encounters like these that remind us why we do what we do.

I also reflected on the biblical figures we can learn from: Moses, who doubted his ability but led the Israelites out of Egypt with God’s guidance; David, the shepherd boy who became a king and defeated Goliath; Gideon, who overcame his fear to lead Israel to victory; Jeremiah, the young prophet who spoke God’s word despite his youth; and Peter, the fisherman who became the rock of the Church after his encounter with Jesus.

Bible verses for reflection 📚:

Exodus 3:11-12
Exodus 4:10-17
1 Samuel 16
1 Samuel 17
Judges 6:15-16
Jeremiah 1:6-9
Luke 5:8-11

 

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✈️ Join us on one of our 2025 pilgrimages:

March 10-15: Visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico with Father Zachary, a fantastic priest and friend. This affordable trip is perfectly timed for most school spring breaks.

May 12-23: Join Father Larry and me on a spiritual journey to the Holy Land. Walk in the footsteps of Christ and experience an unforgettable pilgrimage.

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www.justaguyinthepew.com

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JUSTAGUYINTHEPEW.COM/EBOOK

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Welcome back to the pew. Everybody. I’m your host, John Edwards, and I’m excited to be back in studio after a week at the national Eucharistic Congress. We are going to talk all about that today. It was an amazing experience. I’m going to share the graces. I received the things that I saw my thoughts on it.

The culmination of this three year Eucharistic revival in the country that happened in Indianapolis last week was 60, 000 plus Catholics was simply amazing. And I know, you know what I’m talking about, because if you weren’t there, unless you’ve been under a rock, you saw it on Facebook, Instagram, relevant radio, EWTN, all over all these speakers and lay people’s posts all over their social media, it’s been everywhere.

And there’s questions now, right? We’ve culminated this revival with this Congress. Now what comes next? And it’s a great question. And that’s really what we’re going to talk about in the episode today. Like I didn’t even wait to invite Victor onto this just because like I wanted to get home. And before like things got cloudy or I started missing things, I wanted to jump on here as quickly as possible to start telling you about all the things I experienced that I saw that I witnessed.

The graces that were poured out in my own life. I want to talk to you about all that, but I also want to talk to you about what comes next. Like it’s great to have a conference, but what are we doing after this? That’s the main point that we all should be talking about. It’s something I want to cover today, but before we do, I just want to take a moment to say thank you to all of you that joined me there at the Eucharistic Congress.

So many of you found our booth. You came up you spent time talking to us. We took pictures together. You shared where you found us. You shared. Memories that we’ve had together at events. I’ve been with you. Many of you bought merchandise, mugs, shirts, rosaries, all that stuff, which you can also find online.

But many of you came and just spent so much time with us Every day was filled with people at our booth just sharing the graces that they’ve received from this ministry the appreciation for it and folks I got to tell you something that meant a lot to me To stand there to take pictures with you to shake hands to hear your stories Just it was awesome.

And so many of you also came to our live podcast that I did with father malachi We were one of the a few people selected to podcast live as a part of the Congress. And so many of you came in and listened and it meant so much to talk to you. And just that you were there and you took the time when there was so much other stuff going on to do there that you came to take the time to be with us.

So many of you asked. How could you support us? How could you help us grow this mission? How could you be more a part of what we’re doing? And the answer to that is by joining us as a monthly partner in the pew and folks, I want to take a minute here to tell you a story from the Congress as to why you should consider supporting us, right?

It’s easy just to say, Hey, we need money and we need it for this and that, but I want you to hear some of the things that happened. And for one, the story that comes to mind first was I was walking on one of the last days, I think it was the last day, Saturday. And I was walking to a session that I wanted to hear.

It was Damon Owens, a friend of mine has been on the show before, and he’s a friend of, just of me and my, in my life and in this ministry. And I was coming back from that and there was these huge crowds that were let out. And it was like cattle being herded everywhere. It was just, the hallways would fill when people were let out of things.

And all of a sudden I stopped to to look at my phone for a second. And this young man came up, he looked to be in his late twenties, maybe early thirties, ripped up, big guy. Yeah. He walks up and he says, Hey man, I just want to talk to you. I just want to say thank you. And I said, okay Hey, my name is Johnny.

He said, no, I want to thank you. You went on Matt frats pints with Aquinas and your story was a big part of my reversion to the faith. He said, I had things go on. I, I been a believer and all these things, but things happen and I walked away from the faith. And he said, and I just want to take a few minutes to tell you, thank you because your story was so impactful for me.

I saw it there live and it made me want to go back to the faith and go back to the Lord and believe that no matter what had happened in my life, that there was a chance for me. And so I continued to ask the guy a little bit about him. I was like thank you for saying that. Gosh, that’s such a blessing.

Praise God for that, that we were allowed that we found a way to do that with Fred and also that you found it in your life. And then I said, but what about you? And he goes to start telling me that he struggled with a lot of things that his faith is a struggle And he seemed like such just an upstanding just great catholic, but he started lamenting over His disbelief that he was worth something.

He was telling me that he couldn’t see that god really loved him He couldn’t see himself as a beloved son as I was talking to him about these things He just, he was like, yeah, I know what you’re saying. I can hear what you’re saying, but it just, it doesn’t help me. I don’t believe that God really loves me and that he could see past the mistakes I’ve made.

And because of relationships growing up, like I just can’t get past that blockade. And here I was with people coming up every couple of seconds. Hey man, nice to see you all dude. I’m a fan of yours and all that kind of stuff, which was great. This young man needed me in that moment and so even a priest walked out of the bathroom right there and he’s Hey, you’re the guy that starts all the men’s groups I want to talk to you about coming to my parish and I asked him to wait a few minutes so I could talk with this young man And he did he was very polite and he waited on me But I looked at this young man and we started to pray.

I started to pray healing prayer over him. I started to help him renounce the lies that he wasn’t good enough, that he wasn’t loved, that God couldn’t love him, that he wasn’t a beloved son. I started praying healing prayer over him. He started to weep. He started to cry and so did I. And I spent this time with thousands of people passing us by and people patting me on the back and, hey man, I love your show and all that stuff.

Pouring myself into this man because that’s what was needed at this time. And that’s what this conference Really this congress really was bringing out of everyone was just the need right to be present and folks This is the kind of things that we do when we were done praying he looked up with a tear in his eye and he said thank you man Like I feel so bad for taking so much of your time and you didn’t have to do that It’s no man This is exactly what we’re called to do like you don’t believe that you’re loved by god and that’s a problem You And that’s a problem with so many men that pull them away from the church, and pull them away from their families, and pull them away from the faith.

And so right now yes, there’s a lot of people that are recognizing me, or whatever else. But right now what’s important is the fact that you need help in your life and you need ministering to and folks That’s what we do in this ministry whether it’s in a hallway to Congress like that whether it’s talking to somebody after a talk at a retreat of a parish mission or A conference we see people suffering and we take the time to help them Reorient their identity and to understand that This young man looked at me and he said, man, I really needed that.

And I told him, I was like, you need to get a picture of yourself as a young boy and I want you, it sounds weird, but I want you to look at it and I want you to pray. And every time you pray or every time you’re in doubt that you don’t think you’re a beloved son of God and you’re looking at yourself in the mirror and you see yourself as a failure or whatever else you have going on.

You need to look at this picture of yourself as a young boy and remember that this is how God sees you as his beloved son. Right and nothing more nothing less nothing more but his beloved son and he sees you as worthy because he says so Folks, that’s what we did. We prayed over this man. I prayed over this man because he needed it And that’s what we’re doing This ministry is helping men believe that they are more than the sum of their sins and the sum of their failures We help men get out of the places that they’ve gotten to in darkness and isolation and loneliness We help men stop silent suffering And we put men in a position to believe the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the truth of their worth, and the truth that they’re loved.

That’s what we’re doing in this ministry. That’s what I had so many opportunities to do. That’s just one of many I had to do with the Congress. But folks, we’re only able to do that because of the support of people that are supporting us. And quite frankly, we need more support. We need more support to do things.

This Congress cost us at least 12, 000 to go to. We’re sacrificing other things. Because that’s what you have to do when you need to be at something like this that you feel called to be. But folks, we need support so we can continue to go to events like this. So we can continue to grow this ministry.

So we continue, more importantly than anything else, to reach men the way that we were able to reach that man in the hallway that day that we wouldn’t have been able to if we weren’t present there. I don’t know that moment would have happened for him if we weren’t there and a part of it. And the only way that happens is because of generous people that support us each month as Partners in the Pew.

Now, I know I talk about this all the time and I know I ask you folks, but I’m asking you to please consider joining us on a monthly level as a Partner in the Pew at any dollar amount, whether it’s 5, 10, 100, 50, 500, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, It doesn’t matter. We, I promise you every bit of that support is going to go to continue to helping men break free from these lies, break free from this entrapment in this cage, the devil has a men to help them believe and not only help them believe, but help disciple them and help them find places in parishes where they can go and disciple others and find the life that they’re looking for and they’re longing for.

So folks, I’m sorry for taking five, six, seven minutes here at the beginning of the podcast to say that. But folks, we need your help. And so if you’ve ever been helped, if you met us at the Congress and you’re interested in our mission and you want to help, you want to help men become the men that they’re called to be, then go to donor box.

org slash pew donor box deck dash org slash pew, or simply go to just a guy on the pew. com and look for the donate button on the side of the screen or up in the headings with all the menu items. Go there. It’s easy. It takes you a couple minutes to click, put in a custom amount, pick one of the ones that are already there, but become a supporter of our ministry on a monthly basis because we need it.

And so many others do too. So folks, thank you for hearing that again, go to just a guy on the pew. com. And consider prayerfully consider becoming a monthly partner in the pew. That’s how you can best help us as we continue to help men in this ministry. So folks, I also want to tell you, we got some upcoming pilgrimages.

You can find those on our website at justscoutinthepew. com. Go to the events and book me page. We have one coming up going to Our Lady of Guadalupe. It’s a five day trip. It’s right in spring break for most schools. It’s affordable. It’s one hotel. We’ve got an amazing spiritual director. So go to Just Scout in the Pew and consider joining us there for our next pilgrimage in March of 2025, March 10th through the 15th.

You can go to our website, Just Scout in the Pew and find out more. So folks, let’s jump into the Congress. I want to take a few minutes here to just tell you everything that you’re hearing out there is what I experienced, as long as you’re hearing the positive things. I set up my booth, I got up there on Monday, I ran into Katie McGrady and some other speakers on Monday night, was able to speak to them, and it’s so good to just go anywhere where you can just meet with other people that are working in the vineyard and be affirmed and affirm each other and just, it must be like what the apostles felt when they went back to Jerusalem, right?

Where they just were hearing stories of what other people were doing and it was so uplifting and so filling. But we put our booth together on Tuesday and the Congress started on Wednesday. And like I said, it was such an amazing time to spend in our booth with y’all. I also would spend a lot of time in the JP2 healing booth because we’re working alongside of them in their ministry now to be there with Father John Burns and with Sister Miriam and with Dr.

Bob and all the women that work there, Katie and Melissa and Karen and Maggie, who used to work for me, who now works for Father John Burns. It was so amazing. And to be around the other people on our lane in the vendor room to meet so many other powerful ministries and to see what God’s doing in their work and in their lives.

Folks this vendor room was like two football fields long. It was massive. And there was as many things as you’ve ever seen in the church, multiply that times like a hundred and that’s how many different booths and people were there. You had vocations with all the different orders of priests, all the different orders of sisters, like consecrated life, all of those things.

You had every ministry in the world from hallow to array of hope to, to bookstores, to everything, to pilgrimage companies, all that stuff, all there in support of the Eucharist in this movement. It was massive. But folks, I gotta tell you something, what I saw was what I think all of us have longed to see in the church for a very long time.

It’s been hard with all the scandals and all the division and the liturgy wars and the fighting and the stuff with people hating the Pope and all this stuff has been tough. And I think we’ve all interiorly prayed for a moment in time where we could just forget about all that other stuff.

And focus on what’s important and the greatest gift the Lord has ever given us in the Eucharist. And that’s exactly what happened this week. I saw a priest crying. I saw bishops on their knees repenting over, over different things that they were struggling with in their own lives and maybe the way that they’ve led people.

I’ve seen lay speakers on the stage calling out clergy, not in a bad way, but saying We need to repent, but so do you. We need repentance. I heard father Mike Smith say there is no revival without repentance, right? And all of us felt that as we were there on the first night and what started with this Congress.

It wasn’t some famous speaker that gave a talk. It wasn’t some band up there playing. It was Bishop cousins who was the lead pusher behind this. And Tim Glimkowski, the lead. Men in this and all the people behind them, but this thing started with Bishop Cousins processing in after my buddy, Father Malachy, you’ve heard so many times on here, processed with the last part of the national Eucharistic pilgrimage.

He shows up and brings that in. And then they’re in this stadium with all these people who had finally made it together. And this football stadium filled with joyful Catholics, the whole crowd went silent. Bishop Cousins processed in. And he put the Lord right in the center of all of it, not up on the stage where people would be speaking, but right in the center of the floor.

And lights flooded down on it, and incense was everywhere. And we started to adore the Lord, right? And all of a sudden all those voices fell silent. And occasionally you heard a little bit of humming, you heard a little bit of singing. But 60, 000 people fell silent right there in the presence of the Lord because they knew, And it was, the Lord was calling us to remember what was important, above all things.

And it was him. I remember there was a moment one day where they sat the Lord there and right as if, this was nothing could have happened like this except God. There was a bright light that came in from the windows, from outside the stadium, through a portal into the main part of the arena and hit the Eucharist perfectly where it was and sit radiant light everywhere.

You could see the stadium lights shining down on it But it was nothing from the light and the rays of God from the Sun that he created Shining there on the Eucharist as I said, I saw a priest crying also families entire families in line for confession I went to some of the family tracks and saw mothers and fathers in there Buku of kids like listening and being taught in the faith by Dr.

Bob and Damon Owens and any Hickman and Steve Agno and all these other people I went to tracks with encounter tracks and powder tracks in, not in powder, in Empower tracks with people like Father John Burns and Chica, and people like Dr. Cherie and Dr. Hanh. We, they even had a priest track where one of my friends on the inside said there were priests and bishops weeping as they were openly tearing open their chest and exposing the places of their own pain, their own wounds of their own loss of all of those things.

I even heard a story of an 86 year old priest going up to a bishop and crying and saying, this was the most impactful thing in his precession where a bishop was opening up his heart and repenting for the ways that he had let down the clergy, he said it was the most healing thing he’d ever experienced as a priest.

In 86 years of being a priest as I walked down the hallways, I saw lines for the shroud of Turin. I saw hundreds of priests hearing confessions Like hundreds of priests hearing confessions and coming out not tired But joyful that they were in that position that so many people felt called to repentance because of this moment in time and yes there were speakers like bishop barron and jonathan rumi and christopher fannick and Oh my gosh, all the other ones that i’m forgetting to mention all the ones that were on stage sister bethany and You and Father Mike Schmitz and Sister Miriam and Father Josh Johnson and all the other ones that were out there.

They were all wonderful. But folks, for the first time I’ve ever been to a conference, it wasn’t about the speakers. It wasn’t about the talks. The most, like the most impactful thing I ever saw was the adoration. Wherever our Lord was in the Eucharist was where people were. There’s a church right outside of the Indianapolis Convention Center where they held perpetual adoration and there was not a morning, an afternoon or an evening that I didn’t walk by there or go in there.

where people were not constantly praising the Lord. There was even an outdoor adoration session with all the Franciscan friars playing guitars and people in the streets, man, just adoring the Lord. I sat in a bar one night on the last night with my friend, Marcella June, having a drink and celebrating this wonderful freaking thing that we had been invited into with the Lord.

And there were people who weren’t even Catholic. They were sitting there on the corner of the bar. The talk started about the whiskey the man chose to drink with his wife. And then it turned into, we’re not even Catholic. But oh my gosh, we had to stop in all of the Eucharistic procession of 55, 000 plus people processing through the streets of Indianapolis, all the orders of priests and sisters, children, and families, people standing on statues, standing on street signs, standing on benches, trying to get a glimpse of this people up on balconies and looking down from rooftops.

And there were even stories of people who weren’t Catholic who hit their knees because they were in awe of what happened and started praising God. So many people right now say yeah, was this just some thing? And folks, that’s really what I want to talk about today. Because it could have been that for me and it almost was because I was there working a booth and I didn’t have time To go to everything I wanted to but when I did the Lord met me in my heart And the Lord told me that I need to give him more of my life in the Eucharist I go to Mass daily But I’m not always the best Catholic when I go and my mind isn’t always on him and I’ll go to adoration sometimes And it’s not to see him.

It’s just to say that I did it as I went through this week, the times when I really felt the most impactful was not when someone was giving a talk, or when a priest was speaking, or a sister. It was in the masses when I watched hundreds of clergy process in, when all our voices lifted up as one. There was no division.

I heard one time a man talk about the Pope, and the priest I was with met him in charity and spoke to him about who he was obedient to, the liturgy, or the church. The liturgy or to Jesus Christ. And I saw him meet this man in compassion and love. And I saw this man cry and admit that he needed to repent and that he needed to be focused more on Jesus than he was on anything else in the church, which so many of us need to be.

Folks, I witnessed all of that. And even in my own life. Yeah. So it’s the intercession. I’ve been praying since I’ve been home the last few days. Like my children and I have gone to Mass every day. We’ve gone to our adoration together. I’ve been talking to them over and over again about it. And through that talk, through the impact the Eucharist had on me in this call back, the Lord gave me in my own life to truly just address this message.

Throw myself into him in the Eucharist. I had a conversation with one of my daughters who told me that she had an encounter with Christ on our pilgrimage in Italy that she had not yet told me about. And she told me how she was brought to tears and she didn’t understand why and she was feeling fuzzy and now she wants to go to mass every single day and she wants to read more about the Lord and she wants to pray more and she wants to go to adoration.

She’d had an encounter with the Lord in the Eucharist and in a mass with pilgrims on our trip And I didn’t even know about it until I came back and started preaching again about how the Eucharist needed to be the center of My life and my family’s life more so than it’s ever been Folks this Congress was not just about three years of doing neat grassroots things.

It’s about changing our lives Individually and changing the culture of our church And so folks if you were at this or if you were present online Watching it and you’ve been moved by this anyway We cannot let this die. This is what I preach about so many times is that I get called to go to men’s conferences and retreats and those are great things and the Lord can do things through that.

But so many times those are mountaintop experiences where we come flying down the other side and it dies off as quickly as it started. And that’s not the call of our faith. That’s not the call of Christianity, folks. We have to be filled with the joy of Christ in the Eucharist, with the Holy Spirit. And what we see in each other in the body of Christ, it begins with relationship, first and foremost with Christ in the Eucharist, where He is most present in our lives, and then with each other.

That’s what the call of this revival was not to go to a place or to spend a few nights during the week watching talks, but what are we going to do? How are we going to allow the Lord to empower us in our life? To go out and change our 10 foot radius to work and to till our own garden Where are we going to be in all of that?

And I get it because so many people I know it feels you come off of these things and you yeah But what could I possibly do? I can’t speak like Father Mike Schmitz. I can’t reach hearts like Bishop Barron. I can’t call us to unity like Gloria Purvis or Sister Josephine or whoever else was speaking on these magnificent things.

I don’t know how to help people with healing the way that Dr. Bob or Sister Miriam does. Maybe that’s true, but you have gifts that God’s given you and you have a call on your life. And too many of us, we surrender and we forget because we say, Lord, what can you do with me? Or surely you can’t use me.

And folks, I looked up today, how many times that’s happened in the gospels and in the old Testament, right? Because you’re not the first people to think that. And God has done an amazing thing through those people who said that long before he ever was. Made you and before you doubted that you could do things powerful through him So I want to talk about a few of those for a minute one Moses right Moses it bit tried to make excuses at least five times to God about why he wasn’t the right guy and God was Like doesn’t matter about you.

It matters about me and the fact I want to use you and that you believe that I can So 12, he says it says but Moses said to God Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt? He said This is what God said. He said, But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you that I have sent you.

When you have brought forth the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God upon this mountain. So that’s the first time, Moses is saying, but who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt? I will be with you. It’s the first thing God said to Moses. And that’s what Jesus was saying to each and every one of us at this Congress, whether you were there or whether you’re not.

It’s what he’s been saying to you from day one that you were born and you came into the Catholic faith. I have a mission for your life and it’s to go out and to bring other people to me. The way that you’ve encountered me, the way that you have met me, we need to renew this and revive this so that you come out of this Congress or this mass or this moment in your life and this encounter with the desire to go and to bring someone else to that same encounter.

Amen. When Moses gave an excuse at that time, he said, I’ll be with you. Stop making excuses and quit making it about you and your deficiencies. Stop focusing on the lack and the deficiency and focus on the blessing and what I’m offering you. Moses again says, later on in Exodus 4, 10 through 17, Moses said to the Lord, O my Lord, I’m not eloquent, either heretofore or since thou hast spoken to thy servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.

Amen. Then the Lord said to him, Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him dumb, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be your mouth, and teach you what you shall speak. But he said, O my Lord, send, I pray. Someone else some other person than the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses And he said is there not Aaron your brother the levite, excuse me I know that he can speak well and behold He’s coming out to meet you and when he sees you’ll be glad in your heart And you shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you what you shall do.

He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall speak, shall be a mouth for you, and you shall be to him is God and you shall take your hand, this rod with which you shall. Do the signs again. God says over and over again. Don’t worry about what you’re gonna say or how you’re gonna do it. I’m gonna do that, but I can’t do it without your, yes, I’ll be with you.

He says to Moses, let’s go on and look at David. Samuel is sent to anoint the new king. And he goes to Jesse’s house, the father of David. And he says, bring forth all of your sons. So what does Jesse do? He brings all the ones that he thinks would be presentable. The ones that would be old enough, the ones that looked apart, the ones that were the men in his own idea that needed to be the ones that went out there.

Maybe that’s how you feel. Okay, God, you need something. Here’s father Mike Schmitz. Here’s sister Miriam. Here’s father Josh. Here’s John Edwards. Here’s so and so here’s my pastor. Here’s our DRE. Here’s the, here’s Paul. Here’s whoever. Okay. And that’s what you’re putting forth the way that Jesse did.

But what does Samuel say? What does the Lord say to Samuel? No, none of these are them. And so he says, is this all your sons? And what does Jesse say? He says, they’re still the youngest. He’s outside tending sheep. I don’t know what you’re going to do with him. Surely you’re not going to want him. And that’s the way we can feel in our life.

Cause we forget. It’s not about us. We’re the instrument. God is waiting on our yes. And this revival in this Congress was a call back to that, that it’s not about us. What we can or can’t do with him. It’s not about us. It’s about him and what he desires to do in our lives. My brothers and sisters, we have to get out of his way.

We have to fall on our knees and say, Lord, I surrendered. I will do whatever you want because I believe, and I see you present in the Eucharist never more so more so than now in my life. What happened? Samuel picks David and what does David do he goes and he slays Goliath and he becomes the greatest king of Israel and Jesus is born out of that lineage even broken as it is and the mistakes that David made later in his life God still brought redemption out of it in repentance because it wasn’t about David It was about Jesus.

It was about God. It was about what he wanted to do through him and David’s willingness to surrender You can look at Gideon, right? God is asking Gideon to go out and fight the wars with men And so what does he say? It says it judges 6 15 through 16 And he said to him pray lord. How can I deliver israel?

Behold, my clan is the weakest in manasseh and i’m the least in my family. He’s literally saying Don’t you have any better families? Don’t you have any better people than me? And God says, and the Lord said to him, I will be with you. I will be with you. And you will smite the Midianites as one man. That’s what God said.

I don’t need excuses. I don’t need to know about your deficiencies. I know full well how I made you. I will be with you. That’s what he said to Moses. That’s what he said to David. That’s what he said to Gideon. So let’s go to Jeremiah. Jeremiah says, ah, Lord God. I do not know how to speak and I am too young.

So now we’re throwing the age thing in for all you out there that are young or old. Now we’re talking age. But the Lord answered me, do not say I am too young to whomever I send you, you shall go. Whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of them for I am with you to deliver you Oracle of the Lord.

Then the Lord extended his hand and touched my mouth saying to me, See, I place my words in your mouth. Today I appoint you over all nations and over kingdoms, to uproot and to tear down, to destroy and to demolish, and to build and to plant. That’s what he says to another of the great prophets. It’s not about you.

It’s not about your lack or your ability. It’s about what I am going to do through you and all I need is your belief and your yes that I can do something through you. That’s Jeremiah. Then you go on and there’s even more. There’s Peter. What happens? Jesus goes to Peter. We all know this in Luke 5, 8, 11.

Throw your net on the other side of the boat. I’ve been fishing all night. Lord, we’re not catching anything. Excuses. And finally, Jesus looks at him and is do it. And what does Peter do he throws it on the other side of the boat He gives in and has finally has faith at least faith enough to try what this guy He doesn’t know wants from him and what happens his boat almost sinks because he catches so many fish And what is peter’s recall response?

He falls on his knees and he says get away from me lord I am a sinful man, but jesus said to him Do not be afraid, henceforth you will be catching men. And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him. Jesus looked at him and was like, it’s not about you being a sinful man.

It’s about me calling you and you saying yes. I’m sorry I’m missing my words up, but I’m pumped up, folks. I want you to understand that this revival wasn’t for this three year period. That this Congress wasn’t the culmination, the end of it, it’s the beginning. For each and every one of us in our lives. To go out and to do what God has called us to do, because here’s the thing, folks.

He tells us that we have everything we need. We have everything we need because we have him in the Eucharist where all these people had God with them. Moses had God with him. David had God with him. Gideon had God with him. Jeremiah had God with him. Peter had Jesus physically with him, but even then he didn’t have what we have.

The Lord who has given himself in body and blood for us to receive, to eat, To take in so that his strength and his power can become ours Because he so he can fill us with everything we need to do the things that he’s asked us to do He gives us his very self, but our faith becomes so bland sometimes, and we get so used to it, that we forget what sits in front of us.

And our bishops in this country, and the people that were a part of it, called us back to the most important thing that we need to remember. That we can do anything through Christ who strengthens us. And where do we find that strength? In the Eucharist first and foremost and the power of the Holy Spirit that he gave us afterwards Jesus says himself truly I say to you He who believes in me will also do the works that I do and greater works than these will he do Because I go to the father Because I go to the Father and here I am with you.

The thing is, folks, as great as what those men in the Old Testament had and what Peter had and Jesus standing there with them, we have something greater in the Eucharist that’s there for us each and every day to adore, to rev, to revere, to take in, right? Body, blood, soul, and divinity. That the God of the universe makes himself small and humbles himself to become one with us so that we can remember what’s important and that we can understand that we have the power we need to combat darkness.

All the spiritual warfare in our life means nothing when we have the Eucharist as part of our lives and we revere it and we’re called back to the source and the summit of our faith. Jesus says this in Matthew 28 20 low I am with you always to the close of the age to the close of the age I am with you always what did he mean?

I’m with you always how in the Eucharist there thousands of times a day throughout this world It’s 615 at 815 at 1215 at 530 on Sundays and Saturdays We have multiple times to go and be strengthened each and every day by our lord folks That’s what we’re called to do to go and receive him and then to go and tell others what did andrew and philip ask the lord when john told him to chase after him teacher? Where do you stay? And he says come and see and he gives us that same invitation in every parish in every church each and every day We say, Lord, I’m struggling. Where do you stay? Come and see, Lord. I don’t know what to do in my life.

Come and see, Lord. Things are falling apart. Come and see, Lord. I want to be more of a disciple for you. Come and see. And then what happens when we come and see and when we receive? He says that. He says to go out and to make disciples of all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

And then he tells us, I am with you always to the close of the age. Folks, this is our faith. Our Lord broke his body so he could be there with us, he could redeem us from our sins, and he could be present to us in the Eucharist each and every day in our life. This is what we’re called to after this summit.

This is what we’re called to after this revival. What happens next? You take on this call and you go and you strengthen yourself in the Eucharist each and every day, and you surround yourself with a community of people that want to do the same thing. And you go out and you change your 10 foot radius.

You stop making excuses. You stop saying, I’m not good enough. I’m not smart enough. I’m too young. I’m too old. I can’t speak well. I can’t do this. I’m not these speakers. Stop the excuses. The Lord is with you. And he will fill up every deficiency that you have in your life. The ones that you that are there and the ones that you think are there that are not.

I can tell you that because I have no business being on this podcast, speaking the way I am to you. Now it is him that is speaking through me. I have no business speaking on stages and parishes and all those things on my own. If I did it on my own, I would be nothing. But I go with the strength of the Eucharist, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the belief that God, that I am who God says I am, as his beloved son, and that I have a right as an heir to go out and to bring the kingdom to fruition in my own area, in the light, in my life, and in the people around me, through Jesus Christ.

He’s given us that authority to do these things and greater, but it starts with believing it yourself, with casting off the excuses. Folks, it’s time for the church to stop making excuses. We live in a world that has fallen apart because we’ve been making excuses. It’s not somebody else’s job. We’ve got to stop looking at the other people around us and say, when are they going to do something?

They get to something. When are you, because if we’re all looking at each other and waiting on the other one, no one is ever going to do anything, but the church has called us the Lord. Has called us through this Eucharistic revival along with 60,000 people there and countless millions around the world that witnessed this.

This is our time. This is the time for the church to rise up and be the church that God created it to be. It’s not worried about liturgy, wars and all that garbage, but about bringing. people to Jesus, to introducing them to the Eucharist, to the sacraments, to bringing them into their identities of a beloved son or daughter of God, the father who has in them, the Lord Jesus Christ and their brother.

And through the knowledge of the fact that they have the Holy Spirit within them and they can go out and they can continue to pay it. It’s time to pay it forward, right? You pay it forward in a Chick fil A line when somebody does it for you. It’s time to pay it forward in our daily lives and to start living as Eucharistic people that are full of courage and boldness and brave who cast off worries about anything else and to go out there and live as the people that God calls us to be.

Folks, that’s what I got out of this revival. And I saw people on their knees begging for it. I saw sisters dancing. I saw people repenting. I saw children crying. I saw joy on the face of families again. And never once did I hear any dissension or any of that there But it was nothing but unity and people seeking and desiring to make the lord the center of their life again So now the challenge of this podcast and of this episode is Are you going to do the same?

Am I going to do the same? My answer is yes I thank the lord our god for calling me to that place in indianapolis and surrounding me With so many wonderful other people who are looking to go further in their life Folks conversion is not a one time thing It doesn’t stop at baptism or confirmation We have to be converting in our life each and every day and we have to be running to our lord You’re not going to adoration to stare at something and check a box.

You’re going to be with your friend You And you’re going to get your marching orders. You’re going to mass to receive what you need to continue to do this work. So folks, will you do it? Will this revival with this Congress be something that’s just a page in history? Something we all talk about is, Oh, it’s nice.

And I’ll look at my badge and maybe I go back and look at a talk every once in a while, or am I going to take the bull by the horns? Am I going to grab the reins and say, no longer am I going to make excuses? I’m going to start to be a factor for change in this church, in the world, and it starts in my family and in my 10 foot radius.

Folks, that’s what I’m going to ask you today. Thank you for your time. Thank you for listening. Let’s take it to prayer. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Heavenly Father, I thank you for this day. I thank you for this opportunity, for this podcast. Lord, thank you for the Eucharistic Congress, for this three year revival, and all that you’ve done through it, and for the people that were involved in it that gave their time and their efforts.

To bring it to fruition, Lord, help all of us to realize that it’s not the job of any one person to bring the faith about. It’s the job of all of us and through the Eucharist, we can do that. Lord, draw us ever closer back to your heart in the Eucharist through adoration, through consumption of your body and blood.

And help us to go out and be the light of the world you call us to be. If we want this world to change, it starts with us. And it starts with us building a relationship with you through the Eucharist, through relationships with other people, coming into the community, and no longer being afraid to go out and do what we’re called to do.

You were with Moses and all those others in a powerful way, but you’re with us more in a powerful way through the Eucharist. So Lord, I thank you for that. Help us to be bold, to be courageous, and help us to go change the world for you. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.