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January 14, 2025 By justaguyinthep Leave a Comment

True Transformation: Growing in Your Prayer Life

We are in the midst of a series about True Transformation, and we kicked it all off last week talking about fasting. While fasting is one of the great gifts of the Church that can help us to elicit change, it’s never going to reach its potential unless it is yoked with a solid prayer life. They are two sides of the same coin. Whenever you see fasting in the scriptures, prayer is not far behind. One allows the other to bear lasting fruit.

The problem for so many of us, though, is that we don’t have a meaningful prayer life. Sure, we go to church and we check the boxes, praying while at Mass or before meals, but so many of us just haven’t made establishing and growing our prayer life a regular priority. It’s just the truth. If we want to become the men that God calls us to be, then we have to build an intimate relationship with Christ through prayer. Listen in this week as John shares about the importance of building a powerful life of prayer and the effect it can have on sustaining lasting change.

Learn more about our pilgrimage to Greece & Turkey

Episode Transcript:

Well, welcome back to the pew, everybody. I am your host, John Edwards, and I’m excited to be bringing you another episode of Just a Guy in the Pew here in this new year. I hope your 2025 is off to a great start as we progress through these first few weeks of January and of the new year. I hope you’ve had a chance to listen to some of our last episodes and start to implement some of the things that we’ve been talking about.

Right? We’ve been talking about how to take the desires that we all have, right? We desire to be the men we’re called, to be, the husbands we want to be, the fathers, we want to be the sons and the brothers we want to be. We all want to be better. And we know that there’s a chance in our life for us to be able to do that. But we can’t just desire it. We have to take action. We have to pair our desires with God’s and then form a plan, take action to make those desires become a reality.

And so that’s what I want to talk about today. We started this new series last week in the first week of January, called True Transformation. That’s what we want to help you with. It’s not just fleeting change for a few weeks here in January, and then you’re back to your old ways or back to the things that you’ve tried to be rid of, but how to actually help you establish true transformation in your life.

So we started last week, the first week of January, with fasting, this incredible gift from the church, where if you know what the impediments and the obstacles are that are keeping you from being the man you want to be and the person that Christ created you to be, then you need to take steps to remove those things. And what better way than to use the gift of fasting and abstinence that the church teaches so bravely and boldly and amazingly about, right?

If we know there’s problems in our life, we have to be rid of them. How do you get rid of them? You choose to fast. I don’t want this in my life anymore, so I’m fasting. Fasting is different than just giving something up. It’s actually taking those things, those things you’re getting rid of, and you’re tying those desires through Prayer into our Lord, right? Into a request to our Lord to give you the strength and grace necessary to leave those things behind and be find lasting change in your life.

So that’s what we’re going to be talking about this week. That fasting is by itself is not fully what it needs to be. It always, when the saints talk about it, when scriptures talk about it, when the catechism talks about it, it’s always linked to prayer, right? It’s always linked to a life of prayer. And so that’s where we’re going to go in this second part of this series on True transformation is growing your prayer life.

Right? Building and sustaining and continue to grow a prayer life. Now, some of you may have an amazing prayer life right now. You may be in a spot where you’re just experiencing so many graces from the Lord and growing in that relationship. There may be some of you that are such a high level that you’re just blown away by where you are in your relationship with Christ, in your prayer life and where it’s gone. But there’s also a lot of you that are probably in a place that aren’t praying like you should be. They’re struggling in your prayer life that don’t know how to grow it.

No matter where you are, a growing prayer life is a necessity in your life, whether you’re at step one or step 70. Right. We always need to be growing in our relationship with the Lord and growing in that conduit that allows us to better understand who he is so he can better inform us of who we are. And so that’s what we’re going to be talking about this week in this episode.

Unfortunately, Victor’s not going to be able to join me this week. He had some plans with his family, so he’s not able to be here. I’m going to tackle this by myself, but I assure you I’ll put some thought prayer into it. I’ve looked at some great thoughts from some saints and people that have gone before us and prepared for this episode because I know prayer is such an important topic.

Before we jump into it, though, I just want to remind everybody of a couple things. One, if you haven’t signed up for our pilgrimage to go to Greece and Turkey and walk in the footsteps of St. Paul, you still have time to do it. We have some spots left. We are only taking 50, right? We’re taking one bus, so we’re going to the thing’s going to fill up quickly. It’s already started to every time I go in there. We have more and more people signed up.

Folks, it’s going to be an amazing trip. We’re going to go over to this beautiful part of the world to walk in the footsteps of St. Paul, to see where he preached, to visit the churches and communities where he wrote letters, to visit the churches of Revelation, to see the site where John wrote the grotto, where John wrote Revelation on Patmos in his exile there. And we’re also going to see where Mary spent her last days on this earth, the house that she lived in in her final days.

Folks, it’s going to be a beautiful trip, not only with stuff like that, but also we’re going to have a four day cruise where you’re going to get to experience the beauty of the Aegean Sea and the Greek isles. You’re going to be immersed in the culture with food and drink and everything else. It’s going to be an awesome time. And I can promise you this, folks, if you travel with me, you’re going to feel seen, loved and heard. I can promise you that. I’m going to spend time with you. You’re going to get to spend time with our spiritual director, Father James Clark. You’re going to meet wonderful people from around the world that travel with us a bunch. You’re going to create lasting friendships and most importantly, you’re going to grow in your faith.

So if you haven’t signed up to go with us yet, you can do so by going to justagoutonthepew.com, clicking the Events Book Me and Pilgrimage page, going down one below the calendar, clicking right there. You can download the brochure, you can sign up. It’s going to be an amazing trip. Don’t miss out on this Register today through justaguyanthepew.com or just Google John Edwards Greece in Turkey. It will take you to select international tours and cruises, our wonderful partners. And you can register to join us there. But folks, do it quickly because we’re going to fill up fast.

Next thing I want to say is just invite any of you who have not yet who have not become partners in the pew to consider becoming partners in the pew. All that means is you’re helping support us financially to grow this ministry and to continue to meet the demand of our work and the places that God wants us to go and grow in this ministry. Some people give annually, some people give monthly, some people, some people give every once in a while. But all of you who have given are partners in the pew. We could not do this work without you. You are the lifeblood of this ministry and what allows us to continue to grow and to continue to keep doing what God wants us to do.

So for those of you who have not considered joining us as partner in the pews, please consider it. You can do it by going to justaguyonthe pew.com, there’s donate buttons everywhere. You can sign up there. It doesn’t matter the amount. We have people that give five bucks all the way up to $250 a month and beyond. Whatever you can do is what you can do. And all of it will be greatly appreciated. But all of it is a necessity to continue to reach Man We have people in our groups whose lives are being changed in these parishes where we’ve launched groups, and also people that are listening to the show that write in all the time and talk about how their lives have been changed by this work and the grace that God is pouring into this ministry.

So folks, help us continue to do that. Become a partner at the pew today@justagayonthpew.com finally folks, we have openings here in 2025. It’s filling up quickly, but we do have some spots in the summer and in the fall. So if you’re interested in having us come to your parish and help you launch a vibrant, life changing ministry to men. You want us to be part of a leadership summit or a men’s conference? Go to JustGuyInThePhew.com, click any of the links there on the homepage, fill out the form and we’ll be in contact with you again. You can do all that and anything you want to do with just a guy in the pew at just a guy in the pew.com.

So as I said folks, we started off last week in this, this new year talking about true transformation and the first step of that. And in my opinion, the first step you have to do is really just start to fast, right? We covered that last week, how to get those things out of your life. But along with your fasting comes prayer. They’re really not a step one and two. They’re a step A and B or side by side, A and A, whatever you want to call it. Big A, lowercase A, whatever it may be.

But we started talking about that and the next thing we need to do is talk about prayer. And Fulton Sheen, he talks about that a lot in his writings and his teachings and in his talks. And one of the things that I found that he said to kick Us off here. As he says, fasting detaches you from this world. Prayer reattaches you to the next world. This is why they go hand in hand. This is why it’s important.

While we use fasting to detach ourselves from the things of the world that are holding us back, holding us down, those places that have become impediments or obstacles or roadblocks to Christ entering further into our life, we use fasting to detach that. But we use prayer to reattach to the next world, right? To realign our vision to the next world so we can forget about these things, count them all as rubbish as St Paul says, and turn our eyes towards heaven and the men that we want to be in the life that we want to lead while we’re here on Earth, and certainly that we want to lead when we get to heaven.

So that’s what Archbishop Fulton Sheen starts us off with today. He starts to talk about those things, that this is what reattaches us. And our prayer life is really what sustains the transformations that we make, right? Like these changes in our life. You’re not able to sustain them without prayer. I can tell you that firsthand. People always ask me, john, how have you managed to quit doing cocaine in your life, to stay away from that for eight years? How have you managed to quit binge drinking? How have you managed to stay away from porn in your life? The way that you were so addicted before, right? How do you get out of that stuff?

It’s fasting, it’s prayer, it’s the sacraments. But at the middle of all that is prayer, right? It’s constant asking for God’s grace and for his mercy in my life, for him to help me continue to desire him in a greater way, so that the desire for him allows me to understand what I’m really here for. To further and faster. Click. And I can continue on this path of becoming the man that he set me out to be when he created me. That’s what prayer does for us.

But let’s be honest, many of us, we don’t pray like we should, right? Like, we don’t. We don’t like. Prayer is often an afterthought in our life. Like, sure, we’re going to church and we’re checking the boxes and we’re doing all those things and, and we’re praying while we’re there. We’re going along with the prayers of the church at mass or things that we’re involved in. But how often are we actually Taking a real stake in our lives at building out a prayer life.

Like folks, it is irreplaceable. It is the most important thing in our life that we could do besides receiving the Eucharist is prayer is constant prayer in our life. And so I think if we’re honest, so many of us, a lot of us that are going to church and we’re involved in all kind of Catholic activities, if if we’re being honest with ourselves and we really look at where our prayer life is, it’s probably nowhere near where it should be. I know mine is nowhere where it should be.

Oftentimes when I find myself struggling in my life, it’s because I’ve focused so much on the aspects of ministry or other parts of my life that my life starts to get out of sorts. And I wonder why. And every single time I look back, it’s because my prayer life has suffered. It’s because my prayer life has become a passing. Hey, good morning, Jesus. Thanks for this day. Bless me and bless everybody and thank you for everything you do for me. And I move on. Or it’s become just, oh, Jesus, in the moment, I need you right Like I need something right now. Can you show up and be that genie in a bottle and give me one of my wishes and then I’ll go back to everything being fine and I’ll pray to you when I can remember.

Like, oftentimes that’s where a lot of us wind up. We don’t pray as much as we ought to and we don’t have a real prayer life. And why is that? Like, why is it, why do we find ourselves and so many of us do? I mean, I talk to even spiritual giants, people that I really look at as like, man, these people are so far along in the spiritual life. It’s not even crazy, it’s uncanny. And even those people when, when I talk to them in our personal relationships, they’re like, man, I struggle in my prayer life. I’m struggling to continue to do the things I need to do.

It’s not just people that are out there every day on the street. It’s people like us that are evangelizing every day. We all have this in common and this is why we have to be so attentive to it and we have to safeguard this prayer in our life. Like we have to build up our prayer life because you are going to have no hope of sustaining any real change in your life without it.

So why don’t we have it? You know, I thought about this and I thought about reasons people have given me over the last year and years prior and the reasons people have sent in and their email to me when I ask them, well, what’s going on in your life? When they start to talk about the difficulties they’re facing. What kind of prayer life do you have? Most of the time it’s non existent or it’s few and far between or it’s just like in the middle of the things we do as Catholics. Right. Its just turned into repetitive stuff that we do at the dinner table, before meals or at mass. And it’s not a living, breathing, amazing relationship with Christ that your prayer life can be.

So I looked at some of these and I wanted to talk about them today because some of them may ring familiar with you. They do with me, I can tell you that much. One of the first ones is we just don’t make time for it. It’s not a priority in our life. For a lot of us, life is going good. It seems to be. Everything’s going our way. So what do we need prayer for? If we’re not asking for something or we’re not in a bad situation, or we just simply get caught up in life and we forget what a priority it needs to be in our life, but we aren’t making time for it and we don’t make time for things those falter.

Just like if you don’t make time in your life for your wife, that relationship is going to falter, it’s going to erode, it’s going to start to pull apart and to fall apart, right? Any relationship in your life takes that time. And that’s certainly what prayer is, a way to grow in our relationship with Christ, if we’re not pouring into that, then our relationship with the Lord starts to grow apart too. It starts to falter and starts to fade. And so if we’re not making time for that in our life, then it’s not a real priority.

And that’s just something we have to meet. Like sometimes, you know, we can hear things like that and we’re like, well, then that’s not. I don’t like the way that makes me feel. Well, the truth hurts, right? Like, I mean the reason it doesn’t feel good is because honestly, if we’re being honest with ourselves, it’s probably the truth. I’m not making a priority in my life. I know I should be and I’m not. So therefore I’m irritated by this and I don’t want to hear it.

That’s where a lot of us are. But we have to get past that, right? That immaturity. We have to start moving past those things and know, you know what? I don’t care how it makes me feel. This is the truth of my life. And it’s something I need to address. And so I’m going to do that through the grace and mercy of our Lord to become the man that God’s called me to be.

You know, I’ve mentioned it sort of already, but the next thing that people say a lot is we just do it when we need something, right? Like when things in my life aren’t going well, I’m fine when everything, I’m running through the tulips and everything’s going well and there’s money in the bank and the job’s going well and my family’s all healthy. But when those things happen that happen in life, that’s when we hit our knees again and we start asking for the, you know, please, please, please, please. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We need to invoke Christ and the saints and Mary and Joseph and everybody, the community of saints when we have difficulties in our life. But that can’t be the only time we pray. That can’t be the only time we pray. It can’t be. I mean, we can’t treat God, like I said before in Jesus, like a genie in the bottle that we just pull out whenever we need something, because it’s never going to be the prayer life we need to have. And quite honestly, we’re not going to have the relationship with Christ and our Father that we need to have to even be able to ask those things and expect them to be answered, if you want to know the truth.

The next thing I hear a lot of is we don’t think it’s necessary outside of mass or other things like just going to mass on Sunday, just praying before meals, praying when I go to whatever Catholic thing I do, that, that, that checks off the prayer box for me each and every day. But we shouldn’t just be praying every couple times a week. We should be the goal of our life should be in constant prayer, constant communion with the Lord. No matter if we’re driving or, or doing something for work, God should always be at the forefront of our minds.

Right? And I know that’s a lofty goal for some of you that may not be near it, and it certainly is for me too. But the thing is, you don’t take your prayer life like like, like trying to eat a whole piece. You eat it a slice at a time. You take off little bites and you start to be able to grow, right? Just like you can’t go and lift 400 pounds the first time you ever get on a bench press. You have to start small and start working your way up. That’s where patience and these things come in, these virtues. But this is the goal of our life, is to grow in our prayer life. And so we have to be praying and taking time and setting time alone with the Lord outside of mass and outside of these things like praying before meals and things like that, we have to build time for him in our lives.

You know, we, we, we feel like it’s a burden sometimes, right? We can feel like it’s, it’s. Gosh. I mean, I just want to say, like, more of a burden than it is a gift, more than it is an opportunity for grace. We can feel like it’s a burden. And honestly, again, if we want to drop a true bomb, probably feels like a burden to a lot of us because we feel inadequate at it. We haven’t spent the time. We need to really sit down and be silent and to listen to the Lord so often. So much of Our prayer is just spouting off whatever we need or whatever’s going on. And while the Lord certainly wants that and wants to hear that, we also have to make time to listen to Him.

And because of the way that some of us, we don’t even know how to pray. Scripture talks about, like, we don’t know how to pray like we ought. And. And so we feel like, man, what am I doing? I’m fumbling through this, and I just feel so inadequate that we just stop. And it feels like a burden. So we just don’t do it right. Sometimes we run from hard things, but prayer doesn’t have to be difficult. We have to kind of reorient the way we look at prayer. And that’s what I hope that we’re going to be doing today.

We also feel like it’s an obligation instead of a choice, right? I feel like I’m made to do this. Like I’m not going to get to heaven if I don’t pray or if I’m going to say that I’m a Christian, then I have to pray at least some. And we look at it as an obligation instead of a choice. It goes right along with the burden piece. But our prayer life should be something we desire. It should be a choice. Like, the first thing I want to do in the morning is to wake up and acknowledge that there’s a God and I’m not Him, and that everything I have in my life I owe to him, right? Is something that’s a grace that’s given to me, and then I should pay homage to that each and every day and thank him at the utmost for sending his only Son and giving his life for mine.

Like, we should be praying thanks for that each and every day, but also for praying for him to come further in our life, for us to experience the Holy Spirit in a greater way. But again, if it feels like an obligation and not a choice, then it’s going to be something we run from. It’s going to be something that we run from.

So let’s talk about what prayer should be. What is prayer? There’s a couple things I could talk about here. I mean, I’ve got some notes from the catechism in section 2559, paragraph 2559. The catechism tells us that prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God. That’s what it is. It’s taking your mind away from the things of the world and raising it above the temporal into the spiritual, right into the things that are beyond us. It’s just seeking the Lord in our lives and taking a moment to tell him and to show him how important he is to us. Right? To honor him with our time, with our presence. We should be the ones that are honored by Him. But it’s also to show how important he is to us and to raise our mind and our heart out of this world. God knows we need to get our head out of the things of this world, onto the things that are good and beautiful and pure, the things that bring us joy and peace. So that’s what prayer is. At its base is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God.

Saint Therese of Lisieux, she talks about prayer this way. She says, for me, prayer is a surge of the heart. It is a simple look turned towards heaven. It is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy. Something you do in good times and in bad. For her, it’s a surge of the heart. It’s a simple look towards heaven. I love the way that sounds. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It doesn’t have to be a burden. It’s a simple glance to heaven, remembering there is a God and remembering that he is your Father and remembering that he loves you.

This is where prayer becomes simple instead of a burden. Because just like you go and speak to your dad, hopefully you don’t have to go and practice and receive sight and be nervous about things you’re going to say to your dad in casual conversation with him. You shouldn’t feel that way in prayer either. God knows the trappings and the inner workings of your heart. He knows what’s going on with you before you ever come to Him. And as a good father, he wants to listen to them and he waits for you.

So often we get fumbled up and feeling like we got to sound like Shakespeare, you know? And how art Thou, my God, who are the greatest of thee, and my flesh seeks Thy flesh? And stop putting those burdens on yourself. Just talk to God like He’s your Father. That’s what he wants. That’s what he waits for. And this is what St. Teresa of Lisu is saying to us. It’s like. It’s a simple glance. It’s a simple glance towards heaven, right? A simple look towards heaven. It is a cry of recognition and of love that we recognize him and he most certainly recognizes us.

This is what prayer is supposed to be. It’s not an obligation, it’s a gift. It’s a gift from our Lord. It’s a way to communicate with him on a deeper level each and every day, to feel his presence and to sit there and to feel this conduit of his grace and mercy and hope in our lives each and every day. It’s about building and growing a relationship with him. That’s at its utmost what prayer is. It’s about a relationship, right? And just like I was saying earlier in the episode, if you don’t pour time into your lives the relationships you want, then it’s not really a relationship, it’s an acquaintance. It’s somebody you know but not at a deeper level. Prayer is an opportunity to get from our Lord to grow in knowledge and relationship with Him. That’s what it is.

And Catechism tells us the same thing. It talks about this and as it continues in paragraph 2559 it says humility is the foundation of prayer only when we humbly acknowledge that we do not know how to pray as we ought. Quoting Revelation. Romans 8:26. There, are we ready to receive freely the gift of prayer? Right? This is what prayer is. It’s the gift of prayer. It’s a relationship from a loving God. And so, just like I talked about, when we pray, we’re acknowledging there’s a God and we aren’t Him. That’s humility. And that’s the call of the Christian life is to humility. And so when we pray, we’re humbly taking ourselves before the Lord and saying, like, I need you, right? And I don’t know how to pray. I need you to help me with it. Because I want to spend time with you. I desire to have a deeper and greater relationship with you in my life. That’s what prayer is. It’s a cry from our souls to God.

Mother Teresa talked about it. It’s quoted there too further on the catechism. But in Mother Teresa she talks about it this way. She says, for me, prayer is a surge of the heart. It is a simple look. No, sorry, that’s St. Teresa. Excuse me for that. Mother Teresa says, prayer enlarges the heart until it is capable of containing God’s gift of himself. As I said, folks, I got a lot of notes here, so bear with me. I’m really. You can tell I’m jacked up about this and sometimes reading the wrong things.

But Mother Teresa says prayer enlarges the heart until it is capable of containing God’s gift of himself. The catechism in paragraph 2565 goes on to say, the life of prayer is the habit of being in the presence of the thrice holy God and in communion with Him. That’s what prayer is. It’s communion with God. And think about how amazing that is. The God of the universe would desire more than anything else in his heart to spend time with you, for you to commune with him and for him to commune with you. That should be awe inspiring, right? That alone should give us the desire to want to sit down right now and to enter into prayer with God. But we have to look at it as a gift, not an obligation or a burden. We have to make time for it in our life. We have to do it outside of when we just need things. We have to seek this and desire it with our whole life. Because without this relationship, we have nothing.

You know that Victor and I, if you’ve listened to this show for any time at all, have talked end on end and again and again about how the point of the Christian life is to grow in our knowledge and Relationship with Christ. That’s what it is. So that he could take us to His Father. That is the purpose of the spiritual life is to grow in our knowledge and relationship with Christ. So that we can become the people that he wants us to be, the saints that we’re called to become. That doesn’t happen at all without prayer. At all. Without prayer.

And Jesus, he tells us this himself. This is what he tells us in John 15, 1:10, right? This is the whole abiding together thing. This is where Jesus is employing to you. Just how important abiding in him is. And how do we abide in him? Through prayer. Through prayer. That’s how we stay attached to the vine. Jesus tells us that. He says this. I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine dresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away. And every branch that does bear fruit does not bear fruit. He prune. Or bears fruit, he prunes. Let me start over. Cause again, I’m moving too fast. I apologize.

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away. And every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For from apart from me you can do nothing. If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers. And the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in Me and My words abide in you. Ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you. By this my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit. And so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in my love. Just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in his love.

How do we stay in the center of all of that? How do we stay in this wonderful relationship with Christ? By abiding in him. By abiding in him. By praying constantly in our lives. By growing in our prayer life. That’s the conduit. He is the branch. And it’s through prayer. That’s where the SAP through the branch is poured into us where we receive what we need to go out and, and be the people that we’re called to be. This is Christ Himself telling you how vitally important it is to stay in prayer, to stay in relationship with Him. Certainly he did that when he walked the earth. How many times did he go away and he was in prayer with His Father. He went away to pray. He went away to constantly stay in communion with the Father and in his will.

That’s what prayer does for us. That’s how we can change when we take those desires in prayer. Lord, I want to put down the porn. I want to put down the drinking. I want to put down the drugs. I want to quit being angry. I want to quit. Quit being unforgiving. I want to quit talking to my wife in this way. I want to quit these things that are holding me back from you. You give them to him in prayer, and then you receive the grace necessary to get those things out of your life. That’s what prayer is. It’s an opportunity to express, Express your gratitude for the times that he’s given you what you need to be able to get rid of the things in your life that are holding you back. Gratitude for the times where He’s. He’s left you in places where, where you’ve had to go through things and suffer. Like, it’s this opportunity to stay and abide in that and let that grace flow through this channel of prayer. This is what it is. This is what it is.

Without that relationship, we have nothing. Your transformation can’t take place and certainly can’t be maintained without prayer, without staying attached to the vine. Right? This is what Christ is calling us to. The Bible implores us to pray this as well too. I mean, to pray as well too. It talks about in many different places. I mean, one, it says be joyful in Romans 12:12. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer, folks.

Again, the times that people get away from their spiritual life, when they fall into these holes and they start progressing away from the spiritual life and away from Christ, is when we let this conduit break, where we get away from the branch, where we start to just wither and die. But because we quit feeding ourselves with that SAP and those branches through the prayer that we need to be having, the prayer life that we need to have with Christ, this is where we get away from that. You have to be faithful in prayer. St. Paul says in Romans 12:12.

He says in Romans 8:26. Likewise, the spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought. But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groaning too deep for words. Right again. How many times do we feel inadequate? Do we feel it’s a burden? Do we, like, I don’t know how to do it and I feel stupid doing it, so I’m not going to do it. Stop thinking it’s you. Call on the Holy Spirit. Ask him for the words to say. Ask him to express the groanings of your heart. As St. Paul says there in Romans 8. 26, Quit putting the pressure on yourself and use the gift that you received in your baptism and that you were doubled down on your confirmation. And let the Spirit of God that resides within you speak for you to him to express their desires. Trust in that. Stop trusting in yourself and trust in the promises of God that you would have an advocate, and that advocate abides within you to speak to the rest of the Trinity, right to God and to Jesus.

For you. Don’t ever doubt that what Christ has told you about the gifts he’s given you. My prayer life went to another level when I stopped looking at, like, something I had to create, something I had to build, something I had to fumble through, something I had to sound great at so I. I wouldn’t feel inadequate in a room full of other people that were great prayers. If they’re great prayers, it just means that they’ve surrendered and that they’ve been in communion with God and they found a love language that he likes to hear, that they like to give Him. So it’s time for you to find yours. Stop worrying and comparing. Let the Spirit speak through you. However the Spirit wants to speak through you uniquely.

This is the things that Scripture tells us. Sorry, I’m stuttering. Because I want to make sure that, like, you’re feeling the passion I have for this and this that, the angst I have for myself and the times that I let this go away and I let this stop being important in my life. And for all of you out there that have written in so many times that struggle, and for those of you that have hit dead places in the road where you don’t even feel Christ and your prayer life is dulled. Like, just remember these things and go back to them.

For some reason in the faith, we feel like we graduate past steps and we don’t ever have to look back at the things that we’ve learned. Sometimes it’s going back to the basics that gets us right back in the game. That gets us to where we need to go. If you talk to any athlete or anybody, like Tom Brady or Michael Jordan, the people that were successful, Larry Bird, anybody else you can think of, Michael Phelps, any of those people, they will tell you it was going back to the basics and doing the small things again and again and again, that gave them the ability to be great. That’s what gives us the ability to be great in our spiritual life. It’s not to progress and forget, but to remember to reach back and to utilize the tools that we’ve learned along the way to continue to move forward in the spiritual life again.

St. Paul tells us in 1st Thessalonians 5, 17, pray without ceasing. Like Paul is saying, like, prayer is just as important as breath, right? Like prayer is just as important as the breath you take. Pray without ceasing. Breathe without ceasing or you’re going to die. Pray without ceasing or you’re going to find yourself away from the Lord. That doesn’t mean that every moment of your life, you have to give up your job and all those things and go be a monk somewhere. It just means to grow in that relationship with Christ so that everything you look at is through these goggles of Christianity, these spiritual goggles, where everything, the good, the bad and the ugly are God. Right? You could find God in all of it. And through finding God in those things are opportunities to commune with him and to thank him and invite him deeper into your life, to invite him into the sorrows and the struggles, to thank him for the. For the good, for the bad, for the ugly, to just walk with them in your day each and every day. This is what helps us keep transformed in our lives.

Here’s some of the mistakes we make too, though. Like sometimes we. We go, you know what? Prayer is hard. So I’m just going to dive into theology, right? I’m going to fill my head with all the knowledge of the faith. But again, without prayer, what good is it? Right? Without the grace that comes through the prayer and the knowledge that comes through the relationship, it’s always going to be head knowledge. Until that moves to our heart, it’s just sitting there in our head, right? Like theology. Knowledge of theology and a theological background is certainly a great thing to have, but. But it has to be prepared with a prayer life.

Same thing with service. If I’m just out there doing things, but I’m not staying in prayer with the Lord, then it’s not what it should be. All of those things need to be rooted in prayer and the relationship with Christ that it bears through prayer. That’s the goal. That’s what gives these things that we do and the knowledge that we obtain, the power that it needs to have to change the lives of others, to change our lives and to make an impact in the world, right?

Fulton Sheen says the same thing here. He says neither theological knowledge nor social action alone is enough to keep us in love with Christ unless both are preceded by a personal encounter with him. Theological insights are gained not only from between two covers of a book, but from two bent knees before an altar. The holy hour becomes like an oxygen tank to revive the breath of the Holy Spirit in the midst of the foul and fetid atmosphere of the world. He’s telling you, one of the greatest minds of the church, Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who will be a saint one day, that social action, theological knowledge about itself is not enough to keep us in love with Christ. We have to have that encounter.

And that encounter comes through the sacraments and through the life of prayer. This is how we grow, this is how we stay how we keep true transformation or transformation true, how we sustain it. It’s certainly how I’ve done it in my life. Every time I get away from my prayer life and I have the blessings of a spiritual director to remind me of that, I run back to it. No matter how bad I feel, no matter how I don’t feel like I want to pray, no matter the dryness, the aridity, any of those things, I have come to the point in my life where I know I have no chance in this life to be the people, the person that the world needs me to be. My family needs me to be. More importantly, Christ needs me to be. Without staying tapped into Jesus Christ through prayer. 

Everything that this ministry does that I have been able to do to help people has come through the grace, through my prayer life, through my relationship and my knowledge of Jesus. It’s all him. Anybody who tells you any different is not telling you the truth. Everything good in all of us comes through Christ. But that can’t be possible if we’re not growing in our prayer life.

So if you want that true transformation, if you want the things in your life, if you’ve identified these desires of your heart, these places, these obstacles, these places that have been difficult for you, these things that are keeping you from Christ, if you’ve identified those and you really want to be rid of them in 2025, then it starts now. Like, it starts with growing in your prayer life by choosing to fast, but strengthening your will through that relationship and the grace and the mercy that flows through, through that relationship with Christ, right? That prayer life is paramount. It’s not enough to just want it. You have to start actively going and doing it.

So how do we do that? As always, we don’t want to just preach here and just give you no way to do it. So for those of you that need a reminder, for those of you who are looking to start, this is what I would tell you. Make room for it in your life.

Step one. Everything else in your life is scheduled, right? Everything. You schedule doctor’s appointments. You schedule in your working hours from 8 to 5 or whatever your job requires. You schedule the things for the kids. You schedule times for dinners and lunches and breakfasts and snack times. You schedule time for working out. You schedule time to watch television. You schedule time to go on dates, hopefully with your wife. You schedule everything else in your life. Why not schedule the most important thing? Lord, I’m going to give you 10 minutes in the morning. I’m going to give you 10 minutes at lunch. I’m going to give you five minutes in the evening. Whatever it is and whatever you’re being called to in your heart, schedule it. Stop wishing for it, stop desiring it, just leaving it only as a desire. Start putting a plan in place. Use your phone and put it in there as a calendar reminder and set the time in your day, each and every life to get a reminder to pray. Start there, schedule it and make room for it in your life. Make it a priority.

Number two, start realistically. So many people go, I’m going to pray. And then they try to dive their whole life into prayer and they get frustrated and they stop, right? Just like everything else. It’s like, I’m going to go to the gym, and I’m going to work out harder than I ever have. And you haven’t touched weights in 20 years. You’re going to be so sore and not able to move that you’re going to be sick to your stomach and you’re going to give it up immediately. Same thing can happen in your prayer. When we go in and go, I’m going to get every book on prayer that’s in the church. I’m going to pray for hours on end. If you can sustain that, great. But most people, if you start off going 100 miles an hour, you’re going to quit just as fast.

So start realistically. Set aside realistic time for where you are in your life and where you are in your relationship with Christ. If you’re not praying at all, give him five minutes and then increase that. The more regularity you have, the more experience you get, the more comfortable you become with prayer. Then expand it a little bit and a little bit and a little bit. Before you know it, you’ll be praying 30 minutes a day, an hour a day. You’ll be going for a holy hour, an hour a day, or a couple of times a week. That’s between you and God. But you need to start realistically and don’t fail because you tried to bite off more than you could chew.

  1. Use the prayers of the church if you need to get started. Like, if you don’t know where to get started, then pray the rosary, right? Pray the surrender novena. Pray just simple prayers. The Our Father, right? That’s not a simple prayer. It’s the greatest prayer. But it’s something that’s easily found and easily prayed. Glory be one Hail Mary. Start off somewhere. Just open the lines of communication, and as you get more and more comfortable, then go away from those prayers if you’re feeling called to.

And start to speak in an everyday way with God, just like he’s your Father. And speak to him like you would your earthly father, you know, in a reverent and prayerful way. Come in humility again. In the Catechism we read 2559, it said, humility is the foundation of prayer. Only when we humbly acknowledge that do we know. I’m sorry, let me start that over again. Humility is the foundation of prayer. Only when we humbly acknowledge that we do not know how to pray as we ought are we ready to receive freely the gift of prayer.

So go humbly. Don’t go with your pride. If you’re nervous and awkward and you feel weird about it. Then tell the Lord. Lord, in humility. I’m awkward, I’m nervous, and I don’t know what I’m doing. Please bear with me. Come to him in humility. And it says here, you will receive the gift of prayer, right? So just go in humility and let your pride go. Don’t let it be an impediment to grow in your relationship with Christ. Fight the awkwardness. God is your Father. You don’t have to impress him. He just wants to spend time with you. Don’t put pressure on yourself to sound a certain way or to think. You have to pray a perfect prayer.

Just go before him humbly, as I just mentioned, and then six. Remember, it’s the Holy Spirit that prays, right? Romans 8:26. It says, likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought. But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groaning too deep for words. Let the Spirit do the heavy lifting. Just be willing. Make an after the will to go and take some time and trust the Spirit’s going to give you what to say and the ability to say it. Build up your time as you grow along. Remember, start with small steps. Build it as you grow. Go accustomed to prayer and as your relationship with Christ grows and finally get to the point where you seek him in every moment of the day. Right? Everything good, bad, and ugly. Remember God and all of it. That’s, that’s the goal, to get to a place and to move through these different stages of prayer life.

If you want to know more about those stages, check out a couple episodes we’ve done with Matthew Leonard. You know, he’s been on our channel a couple times. He is a spiritual guru when it comes to prayer. He would tell you he’s not, but he most certainly is. There’s two episodes in there where he talks about the different types of prayer and how to get to these different stages. If you’re at a place where you want to go deeper, go to our YouTube channel or go to our podcast page, any of our places. Search for Matthew Leonard and us, and you’ll find those episodes.

But folks, you have to start somewhere if you want true transformation. If you know the things that need to be out of your life, then do something about it. Start to fast, start to remove those things, and then start to add prayer alongside that. Fasting to grow in your prayer life so that you can have the strength to stay away from those things and start moving their direction to become the person that God wants you to be so folks, a little bit longer than I was expecting being by myself.

But hey, there was a lot here and I just felt impelled to share it with you. So folks, thanks for listening as always. Please, before you leave this video or before you turn off the podcast, go and hit like and subscribe. Hit those buttons. It helps us get this out more into the world. You can use it to evangelize other people. Share the channel with folks. Thank you for being here. Thank you for those that give and thank you for those who just are here listening and want to be better. I’m so grateful for each and every one of you. Let’s take this to prayer.

In the name of the Father and of the Son is the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Heavenly Father, prayer is such an essential part of our life. Unfortunately, it falls by the wayside so easily because we just haven’t made it a priority. Other things have stepped into its place. We move further away from it and by proxy we move further away from you. Lord, we need to abide in you. You are the vine and we are the branches. We need that SAP that flows through prayer. Lord, help us no matter where we are in our prayer life today, to come humbly before you and to surrender, to admit that we just need you right? That we need your help and your grace, your mercy, your love and your hope to help us move past the obstacles in our life so we can become the men that we’re called to be. Lord, meet us in those moments of prayer. Give us the strength, the courage to continue to seek you out in our lives each and every day and help us to truly transform through growing in our life of prayer.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Filed Under: Podcast

January 8, 2025 By justaguyinthep Leave a Comment

True Transformation: Fasting

New Year New Changes Right?

That is the hope of most people at the start of a New Year. Often times we find ourselves giving up hope before we begin. We all know the obstacles and impediments that fill our hearts and keep us from becoming the men that Christ calls us to be. So why do we so often fail? The lack of action. True transformation calls for a plan. It can’t just be about desire. When desires meet action true transformation becomes a reality.

Listen in this week as John and Victor start a series on True Transformation and focus on one of the gifts of the Church that can help: Fasting. If we are going to be rid of the things that keep us from Christ we must be willing to make an act of the will to choose the better part. Grab a seat as the guys discuss fasting as one of the most powerful ways to find lasting transformation in your life.

Learn more about our pilgrimage to Greece & Turkey

Episode Transcript:

Welcome back to the pew, everybody. I’m your host, John Edwards, and here across the table from me, as always, is my co-hosted cohort, Victor Adams. 

John, a new year has shown up and that’s additional for our, what is it, seven years now? Man, I lost count. I think we started this in. Yeah, I think it’s 2018 or something. We have to go back and look. Or people that followed it long enough could probably Google it and see. But yeah, it’s been seven or eight years, right.

I think I remember when we were first starting this, we’re like, you know, we’re like, by what show? 20? We’re like, I don’t know what we going to talk about after this. That’s right. Yeah. I remember as we were coming to the end of that bag of sins, right, that we had the first 50 episodes or whatever, and we were getting through it pretty good. And a lot of them were the same thing, right? Like ten of them were confession and five were drinking too much and others were work stress. And we started going, oh, man, oh man, what are we going to do next?

And Deacon Jeff used to actually tell us when we were recording back then in his studio over at what used to be St. Louis. It’s now over at St. Anne’s but he used to tell us, Look, I’ve got 500 episodes. Don’t worry about it. God will give you something to talk about. And, man, he was right. I mean, we’re here on, I think this is number 311 or 312. You know, something like that. So, so Lord does provide.

And I’m looking forward to another year of doing this with you, man. I mean, 2025 here, here we come. And I know it’s that time of year where people start to look for, okay, what am I going to do differently in my life? And you know, we, we kind of always have this hope that as the calendar turns, our habits will turn, our lives will change, wisdom will finally show up.

Yeah, that’s. Yeah, right. Like something magical will happen. Lord, will I be smart this year? Yeah, yeah. It’s like when I was doing drugs a lot, it was just like, okay, well, you know, married, I’ll stop. And I didn’t. And Jacob was born. Oh, I’m going to be dad now. I’ll stop And I didn’t. It’s. We always kind of wait for life to happen to us, right? And then, and then, you know, it never really does. Like you. You just kind of. Life doesn’t change you, you change yourselves. And that’s the call of the Christian life. So I know we’re going to talk about that today.

Before we get started, I just wanted to say a couple things. One, thank you again to everybody that gave donation donations. Not donuts or donations, donations there at the end of the end of the year. You know, we really had a successful campaign through I Give Catholic and there at the end of the year. So thank you to all you that gave.

For those of you that have become new donors, we had a lot of those. Thank you for that. Becoming monthly partners in the pew. That’s going to help us continue to move forward. So thank you for your. Yes. And folks, any of you out there that have been on the fence about it you know, every bit of that of your donations goes to help us continue to help families and men to find healing and restoration and to build these places and parishes across the country.

So if you’re interested in joining us as a partner of the pew, that means somebody who gives to us on a monthly basis, you can do so by going to justaguyonthepugew.com There’s a donate button on the side of the screen and in the top, so you can check that.

Also want to remind everybody that we do have the pilgrimage coming up to Greece and Turkey with Father James Clark. It does include a four night or four day gnc cruise. You’re going to go to Mykonos and all these different islands. You’re going to go to Greece and Turkey. You’re going to see all the places over there where Paul preached and where he taught. And you’re going to see the seven churches of Revelation, the house where Mary lived throughout her last days, and also on Patmos, the grotto where St. John wrote Revelation.

So there’s a lot to do there. It’s going to be amazing. Not only the culture and the food of Greece and some of the mythology and all that stuff too, but it’s going to be a great time to grow and your faith and in relationships and make friendships with people from all over the country and around the world. So, folks, we have a few spots left open. It is filling up fast. So join us. You can do that. If you want to go to Greece and Turkey with us, you can do that by heading over to justagoutonthepew.com clicking our events, bookme and pilgrimage page, you’ll see that in the top menu, click that, scroll down past the calendar, and right there you can download the brochure. You can register right there and everything. But the trip is filling up fast. So if you want to go with us please go ahead and register as soon as possible so you can ensure your spot.

Finally, I just want to say, folks, a lot of people have emailed in lately asking if we have open dates. And yes, we do. We have a few in May, a couple in June and July, and then the latter half of the year, September through the end of the year, we have some spots there too. But with my work with the JP2 Healing center, we’re also doing events there too. So our calendar does tend to fill up fast. So if you want to start a men’s group or you have something you want us to come and be a part of related to men’s ministry or to your parish, we’d be glad to do that. Reach out as soon as you can through our website at Just a Guy in the Pew. Com. Click any of those, find out more tabs on the page, fill out the form, schedule a call with me and we can figure out how we can help you. But just want to let people know we do have some open dates if you desire to bring us in.

So, Victor, that’s all I wanted to say there. Thanks folks for listening to that. Now we’re going to jump into our topic and we were, you know, started to get into a second ago just talking about change and the desires people have. And I know I have things in my life that over this period of really since my last event with the JPD Healing center of the Year was November 14th and 16th, that was our last ministry speaking event. Like, there’s been things in my life that I was really looking forward to. You know, like I wanted to rest at the end of the year. I wanted to really pour into my family since I’m going a lot of weekends of the year.

And one of our The employee we had, Derek, you know, he decided to go on another ministry. And so I’ve actually spent a lot of the last three weeks a little stressed with things, just trying that. We had applicants come in and find the time to really engage people and interview people. Have you narrowed it down yet? Yeah, actually I did. I hired someone, a lovely lady from out in Nebraska. She’s worked with the John Paul, the Healing second healing center before. Shes had a lot of ministry experience, so we had a lot of great applicants. Thank you to all of you that applied.

You know, that. Just a lot of prayer and discernment in my usual mode of operandi. Modus of operandi or whatever is, oh, gosh, I lost somebody. I just need a warm body. Like, I don’t care if you’re a serial killer. You’re hired, you know? And so I really wanted to be more prayerful and spend a lot of time praying, discerning, interviewing people, all that. So we did and I was able to, you know, interview everybody, give everybody equal amounts of time to hear their hearts, to get to know them a little bit. And then, you know, the Lord led me to the right person, I feel for the job.

So we did that. But in the midst of that, like, through some of the stress, Jacob breaking his arm, like, all that different stuff we had going on then the regular kind of rushing around of everything. Christmas was family house, family events. Yes, yeah, yeah. Like, all that kind of stuff. Angel’s getting ready to go on a retreat that’s a week long. There’s a lot of stuff going on. You know, like, I sometimes turn to things when I’m stressed out. Whether it’s, you know, just being angry and moody or something, you know, or. Or maybe to too many libations or whatever.

I started thinking about all that and then started thinking about our last episode. Right. We talked about a lot of things during Advent and letting the Lord into our hearts and all of that. Christmas has come, and now we’re, you know, we’re moving into. Into 20, 25. But the last episode we did that came out last week was really on what do you desire? And these desires of your heart, like that one. Your desires are put there by God, like, you know, your holy desires, even our distorted desires have a good and holy desire below them.

And then we talked about, like, after that, like, what it means. Okay. So if you kind of realize what your desires are, and you sit down and write those down, and you look at what God’s desires really are, a lot of times those are going to match up. You could form a plan, but then to enact that plan, it requires you to take action. And so as I was thinking further about that and just praying in my own life and my own situations I started looking at, like, I want to help people.

Like, the one thing people want to know Is like, I don’t want to just be preached at. Like, what do I need to apply to my life? Like, how do I do it? And I think that’s one thing we’ve always tried to concentrate on this show with, is not just to say, hey, you need to be better and good luck with that, but to give people steps to actually achieving what they want to do in their life.

And I would say that, like, you know, if we want true transformation, and this is what this next couple of episodes are going to be about, is true transformation in our life, which we’re all usually looking to do at the beginning of a new year it doesn’t always stick, but hopefully we can put these principles into place that help us to prolong that and to keep it going and make real change and true transformation in our life.

We have to start really looking at what we want. And like I said last time we talked about, we have to take action alongside God’s grace. If you’re talking about desires, our number one desire should be to be a saint. When you’re a Christian, when you give your life to Christ, there’s a way that you feel you’re called to live. There’s something that, that when that has made you turn away or at least begin to turn away from the world and say, I don’t want this anymore. I want this.

So what that this is is I want to be with God forever in heaven. If that means that’s what I want, then technically what that means is I want sanctity, I want to be a saint. Now that doesn’t mean you wait till you die and then you’re a saint. It’s a way that you live now that prepares you to become a saint. You know, as you, as you pass, whether it’s through purgatory or whether you’ve lived a saintly life and you get straight to heaven, I don’t know. I mean, that’s for each and every one of us to, and the Lord to sort out.

But the thing is, like, when you talk about everything else, well, I really desire this. I desire this. I desire to better myself. Whether it’s health wise or the way I behave or the type person that I am, that all still falls under that one desire. Like, I want to be good, I want to be holy, I want to be virtuous. I want to be whatever something in my heart tells me I should be, which is more. Our hearts are always telling us we’re supposed to be more than we are. There’s something that’s intuitive inside that tells us that.

So that may seem very impossible to a lot of people. It certainly did for me for a very long time. And sometimes it still does. When I’m in the middle of my own mistakes and my own brokenness and all those things, sainthood seems like a very distant thing. Impossible, distant a pipe dream. But it really isn’t. And the church, in her wisdom, gives us a lot of ways to start achieving this. They are not easy. That’s why the Christian life, when you’re truly living, it is not something that’s easy, that you can set on autopilot, and it just happens to you. It’s something that’s very difficult.

So I want to talk about that today. And just a little bit like, how at the start of this new year, do we change? And what actions do I take? And I think there’s a couple things we have to realize in that as we get started here and we get started talking about, you know, how to implement real change in your life.

Well, yeah, and kind of what you’re referring to is like adapting to a new self, a new perception of the self that I’ve always wanted to be, but for some reason I was incapable of, or thought I was incapable of. Wherefore like, well, I know I should stop doing this. I know I should be more active in my prayer life. I know I should read more. I know I should study more. But there’s something that holds us back from really plugging that in.

Well, we may do it for like a week or two, you know, and be intent on that. But then all of a sudden, it’s like we just find ourselves pulled back. Like, anything going, you know, working out or whatever else. You know, there’s always this motivation that I need to improve myself. I need to improve not just yourself, but internal self as well as external self. And we’re going to talk about that. I know, later. But the thing is, we all struggle with it. We’re all human. We’re all in the midst of the world and the sufferings that come from living in the world. But we do have the ability, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to live rightly.

Sure. And that’s really the thing that I want to talk about today. We have to realize a couple of things. We’re talking about being a saint versus living in the world, that they want two different things. Right. The call of the world is really the world of flesh and devil. I should say is to self indulgence. Right? We live in a world that says, like, get what you want when you want, live the way you want to, do whatever you want to do to yourself, to others, to your body. The world tells you to treat your body like an environment. Amusement park and all these things. And that’s not the call of Christ.

The call of Christ in the life of virtue actually call us not to self indulgence, but to self denial, to tempering our desires, this virtue of temperance, to choosing what is good for us and what is not and what we’re going to partake in and what is not. And really the way that You come to do that is by fasting.

And it’s so funny, Victor. I love to read and stuff like that too. And it’s been difficult lately because I’m writing a book and, and there’s deadlines with that. So a lot of times when I want to read, I’m like, well, I need to be spending that time writing, not reading. Because there are things that, you know, I’ve made a commitment to do to get this out in a certain time for publishing and all that. And a lot of times I’ll get in a book and I’ll start reading it and then I’ll put it down and I’ll start another one. And I’ve got like, probably 10 books in my room right now that are halfway read.

So as I was in this period and stuff here around Christmas and between Thanksgiving and Christmas with the stuff I described earlier I just was like, man, I really feel like I need to read something. And of course I’m always in scripture, but sometimes it’s great to hear insights from the people that have gone before us and priests and monks or deacons or sisters or just insightful lay people, gifted lay people, all that stuff.

So I started this book a while back called how to find God and discover your true self in the process. For those watching at home, it looks like this. It’s hard to find. It’s a handbook for Christians and it’s written by Dom Hubert van Zeller, which, which was a monk. But you can call St. Paul’s Bookstore. In Memphis maybe, yeah, she might be able to get it. I think I had to get it off of some, like, weird website with very hard to find books.

So it’s originally put out by Sophia Institute Press. But Dom Hubert van zeller lived from 1905 to 1984, wrote books on spirituality and prayer that offered straightforward advice to people seeking to love and serve God.

So I started reading this and he’s got a lot of language of the 30s and 40s. So sometimes you have to stop and go, like, what does all that mean? Like, he’s speaking in a way that, like, I have to get out a dictionary and like, figure out what some words mean that just aren’t in the English language often anymore.

But I started to pick this up and it’s so funny how God can lead us to the things we need at certain times. Because I was like, well, I’ll start reading this at the doctor one day with Jacob while he was in there getting his arm looked at and stuff. And and I was just like, wow. He started to talk about purifying oneself and really making the changes in your life that you want. And he talked about, he started talking about penance and fasting.

And so that’s what, like, I thought in this first series of true transformation we’re going to talk about over the next couple weeks that we needed to talk about was fasting. Some people may say, like, well, why not prayer? Like, prayer should be the first thing. Well, a lot of times I assume that people are praying. Now, obviously a lot of people aren’t praying, but generally people have some sort of prayer in their life. And we’re certainly going to talk about prayer in another episode and how to live a more prayerful life and how to have more of an impactful prayer life.

But I just thought fasting is something that’s harder for people to do. And so he begins to talk about this. The way that we start to move away from self indulgence in the world and towards self denial is a great gift of the church is fasting. And we hear about it in scripture in the Old Testament. Like, they’ll say, go and pray and fast and then return to me. You know, Jesus talks about the only way that some things can be cast out is through prayer and fasting. When the disciples fail to be able to cast out a demon in someone that like, they had so many times before and they go to Jesus and he says, some things can only be cast out by prayer and fasting.

So as we start to look at this type this time of year and the things in our life, we’re all looking for change. And we all know like, really what it is that the Lord is wanting for us to get rid of in our life or to get control of in our life. I certainly know the things that I’ve told my wife and my children. I realize some of these things are distractions, some of these things are a crutch, and I want to get rid of them.

And I think that’s why the Lord led me to this portion of this guy’s book, is because it was all about fasting. And so, you know, fasting is the way to begin to say no to the desire of the flesh and the ways of the world. If there are things that you’re trying to change, your weight, your selfishness, your anger, your addictions then fasting is a way to do it. It’s a way to start this journey towards sanctity.

And so Dom humor Van Zeller. I’ve got some quotes here from the book. And what I was reading, what he starts to talk about is that sanctity is not penance. And again, he’s talking about fasting here. When he talks about penance, says sanctity or sainthood, if you will, is not penance and penance. Fasting is not sanctity. But sanctity seeks to express its spirit in penance, and penance seeks to find its fulfillment in sanctity.

So what he’s saying here really is like, okay, they’re not the same things. But sainthood seeks to express itself in the spirit of penance. So, like, I’m choosing to not live in ways anymore that call me away from this life of virtue and this life of Christ. And penance or fasting seeks to find its fulfillment in sanctity. So how do I live out the life of a saint? By choosing the good and not the bad? Or choosing the way of the Lord and not the ways of the world?

So he talks about how these go hand in hand. That if our desires of our heart and what we talked about in the last episode are summed up in I want to be a saint. I want to be the man that God calls me to be for my family, for the world, for the church, for those, you know, for Christ chiefly. Then what I’m saying is I want to be a saint. And a big portion of becoming a saint is learning to deny oneself and to live in the way that we’re called to, which is very hard in the world.

But, you know, when you see this this is the problem. So many of us never try to deny ourselves. We kind of have, like we said with the hedging the bets episode. We try to kind of walk in both worlds and have our cake and eat it too. And what happens is we wind up letting our desires and our passions and our flesh control us versus us, controlling us. We don’t subdue our will. We let our passion subdue us.

And this is where we get in trouble. This is why we have so many people that are on opioids and drugs and alcohol and addicted to Porn and can’t get out of repetitive anger and unforgiveness and all these things is because we have slowly and gradually made choices that draw us closer into the world and what the world, the flesh, and the devil is asking of us. And we don’t realize, like, it’s not just like, you see an oncoming car, you jerked a wheel and you’re three lanes over and out of the way. It’s not a move that’s that quick. It’s a slow digression away from the direction we want to go.

When we start choosing the world and we start to become self indulgent again, where we start to look to self again. And the entire Christian life is a call to look outward at other people. Yes, we have to do that inner work that you were mentioning a minute ago, but we also have to realize that, like, Christ came as a gift and that we’re called to be a gift to the world. And we can’t do that when we’re. So we’re indulging in things all the time because those things feed our selfish nature and they pull us away from what matters to Christ and to other people.

So this is why fasting is one of the best ways to kind of do this, but it’s also very difficult for men.

[Victor] Yeah, you talked about self indulgence. Had a flashback, because self indulgence can be on both sides. You know, I mentioned this to you before, like, when I was 20, you know, and people know I had a major back surgery. And it kind of clarified my life, my role of, you know, being more in depth through my faith journey.

But. And I’m from Pensacola, Florida, if anyone knows. In the mid-90s, there’s a thing called Brownsville Revival for people in the first assembly of God. I wasn’t a member of the church, but my friend was. He said, come. Come and watch this. So it was worship revival. Yeah, revival. It was like worship music revival. I mean, it was like, man, it was like going to rock concert.

So. And, you know, and. And of course, I was Presbyterian, and, you know, I was baptized and I went through confirmation. But, you know, the way that they said is, like, if you never had Jesus, accept your life, you’re not saved again. You know what I’m like, gosh, am I saved again? I don’t know.

You know, so the whole thought of, like I’m not safe. So I, you know, did the altar thing and all stuff. So what happened is the self indulgency went the other way for me because I was more getting my fix in the worship music, you know, getting up there singing all that stuff, you know, raising my hand, watching people fall out and, you know, place their hands on stuff.

And it got the point where I became enmeshed in the sense of like, well, I’m going to do. I want to do everything better than everybody else. Like a competition. If someone’s going to fast, I want to fast better. Yeah. If someone’s going to sing, I’m going to sing louder, you know. And it got to the point where I became almost a fanatic, John.

To where I wasn’t like, being warm to other people. I was being like kind of like that, that Pharisee to that tax, tax collector, saying at least God, thank you for allowing me to be who I am and not someone like that guy. Yeah. Who just came in here and he’s, he doesn’t, he’s not feeling the spirit, you know. Sure. Thank you for letting me, you know.

So, like going there, I got my, my fix. I wasn’t there for, for God anymore. I was there to, to feel good about myself and to feel some righteousness. Sure. You know, saying I am deserving of everything, you know. Yeah.

And I got to the point where I started like, even being critical with my family, you know, like, I broke my CDs and I just disassociated myself with a lot of people that were decent people, you know, because they weren’t. Yeah. They weren’t like the way that I was going to be.

And I realized I hurt a lot of people. So what I did is that, you know, in wisdom, you know, I realized out of my early 20s that that’s not the right way to live either. You know, you don’t go to mass to feel better about yourself. You go to mass to ask God to reveal himself to you more. Yeah, right.

To what more can I do? Live in mercy, Live in love, Live in hope, Live in charity. And I wasn’t living in any of those things. I wasn’t charitable to anybody. I wasn’t kind to anybody because I was very very rough on people.

[John] Sitting on a seat of judgment.

[Victor] Yeah. Very judgmental. I was very judgmental. And I realized that that is, I became sick in itself too. Because I went too far. Self indulgence this way. And because I was over here, I’m like, well, I’m doing better. Yeah. But I wasn’t sure.

[John] Well and that’s a good point. I mean, it can Go either way. I mean, extremes are extremes. And you know, I would say it both ways to people. When you talk about fasting, you’re not talking about throwing out everything. I mean, we still have to live in the world, right?

[Victor] Well, it’s not competition because I was doing like, I was competitive fasting, like, God, I’m going to do, I’m going to six days for what? It wasn’t for him, it was for me. Sure.

[John] Well and that’s like I’m saying, like we don’t like the extremes can be extreme either way. Right. And so you’re not. This isn’t about. I’m going to throw out everything in the world. We have to live in the world. And the call of Christians is to go into the world.

But as I was saying, like, when you fast, what you’re doing is you’re training your will to be able to subdue the passions that may be coming to you from the world. Right. Like, okay, when I get in the world, I can operate in it because I’ve trained myself to be able to say no to things. And what once may have been huge temptations or I may have gone down some crazy rabbit trail. I can enter into these places because I have fasted and I’ve seen the light in my life and I don’t need those things the way that I thought I did before.

Now that’s very different than saying like standing in the, in the seat of judgment and you’re just pushing people away because you’re perfect and they’re not. Right. Like, you don’t go all the way to where like everything in the world is evil and you’re the only thing that’s not.

[Victor] Yeah, that’s a good point to make.

[John] It’s is, is this is just about what are the things in my life. Like I really want this true transformation. I really know in my heart, like, I know the things that are keeping me from the next step on the journey towards sainthood. So how do I start to take those steps? And fasting is certainly why it’s certainly important to doing that.

The thing is, like, the reason so many men don’t do it is because we don’t like to deny ourselves.

[Victor] It’s fasting with purpose. Right?

[John] Right. We give into our wants and our desires. We want something, we buy it. We’re really stressed. We self medicate. Like, we feel like we have all the answers ourself and we don’t need anything else because we can just find whatever we need in the moment.

And so we start to look to these things of the world for comfort and for. For meaning and for serving a purpose that only Christ should serve in our life. Right? The things that we look for in the world, we’re actually looking for Christ is what happens.

So fasting allows us to reject those things and to really pull back and understand where we’ve allowed control to go in our lives. Because really a lot of things that we struggle with and that that self indulgence is really. We’ve allowed things of the world, the flesh and the devil, to control us, and we don’t realize it.

And I remember there was a guy I was friends with, I think it was back when I worked at Napa. He was an older man, he was probably in his 50s at the time. And I was smoking back then. I was in the midst of drinking and doing drugs and all that stuff. And I smoked all the time.

And I remember he was working in one of the stores I worked in. And he used to give me stuff all the time. He’d be like, if you wouldn’t spend all that money on beer, you’d be a millionaire one day. Or if you wouldn’t spend all that money, you’d spend it on cigarettes. And he’s like, those things are bad for you.

And I was like, well, how do you know Mr. So and so? And he’s like, because I smoked for 30 years or whatever, some long period of time like that. I said, oh, yeah, well, I’d quit, but it’s. Every time I try to, it’s hard. And he goes, yeah, it was hard for me too.

And I said, well, what, what made you quit? How did you quit? And he said, you know, I used to live up north, John. And he said man, I was. I remember one day, it was in the midst of a dead cold winter. He’s like, it was almost negative temperatures. It was in the single digits.

And he said, and I was sitting in my office and I was jonesing for a cigarette like I did all the time because I smoke like a chimney. And he said. So I finally just gave in and said, I’m gonna go outside. And like I had so many times in the past freezing my tail off to just go and spend three minutes hot boxing a cigarette until I got the urge again.

And he said, so I go, you know, put on my coat, take the trouble, go through the office, go downstairs, go down the elevator, go outside to this smoking section or area. And he said, and I’m freezing. Like, as soon as I open the door, the winter hits me in the face. I’m Like, God, it’s already col.

And he says, I’m sitting there fumbling with this cigarette and this lighter. I’m so cold, I can’t even hold my hand still enough to light it. And he said, I finally get it lit and I breathe in that and all of a sudden like I felt just like like that’s what I was looking for, that’s what I needed in that first puff of that cigarette.

And he said, and then I started to sit there and just, I was more and more cold, I was more and more shaky, I was more and more freezing. And he said, and I started to notice that there were tons of people that were walking in and out of the building, getting out of the cold, not subjecting themselves to this stuff.

And I finally, in that moment, it hit me and I thought, what am I doing? Like, what am I doing? I’m letting this little bitty, you know, 4 inch, 5 inch thing control my life. Like, it is freezing cold out here. No one in their right mind wants to spend any time out here other than what they have to getting to and fro.

But here I am coming down, you know, whatever, because this was in an old job. He had like eight floors of an office building. Taking the time to get my coat on, going down, getting out of the building to stand here, to hot box a cigarette so I can obtain some feeling that I need and then run back inside just to do it again 30 minutes from now.

And he said, but I watched all these other people going in and out of this building and they didn’t have this problem. They weren’t sitting out here freezing their tear off like an idiot in a snowstorm, like just to have this fixed.

And they started to realize, like, I had let my passions and other things control me in my decisions and the way I live my life. And that’s what happens is like Victor, when we don’t subject our worldly desires and the desires of our flesh to our will, we wind up being subject to them, right? We wind up being subject to them and our passions wind up controlling us. And that’s where so many of us are in our life right now, that’s where so many men are in particular, is that we kind of sit down sometime and go, how did I get here? Like, how did I even get here? 

And it’s because we have let go of the restraint control in our lives. Like we have given into the things of the world and we no longer fight back, we no longer take a stand. It’s just become modus Operandi. And you become a creature of habit. It’s like, why those nights when you just. You open a beer and it’s like a Tuesday or something, you’re like, why am I drinking right now? I’m at home by myself. Like, why am I. Why do I need this? And the fact is, we don’t. But we’ve allowed our minds and our bodies to believe that we have because we’ve simply gotten, like, lax, out of control. 

And he talks about that in the book. He’s like, what are three reasons we really don’t fast? And the first one he says is like, well, we wind up thinking that our fasting needs to be an interior disposition and not an exterior one. I don’t need any outside fasting because I just need to fast interiorly about things. So that’s why some guys go, I don’t need that other stuff because you don’t know what I’m doing inside and what I’m holding myself accountable to entire inside. Well, yeah, but if you’re. If. If everything’s still translating into bad behaviors and habits that are not helping you become a saint or helping you become a better man and dragging you down, then your interior fasting is not really doing anything right. 

So we need both. He makes that point. And the second thing he talks about is, like, some guys, they. They say, well, you know, well, life’s hard enough as it is. Living’s hard enough, right? Like, living’s hard enough. Like, why do I need to make it harder on myself? Like, God gave us alcohol. He turned water into wine. Not the other way around, the old Protestant joke and all that stuff. But, like, God gave us all these things. Why can’t I use it? Well, yeah, like anything else. God gave them to you for you to express temperance in, not to overindulge and to self indulge and to turn into a problem in your life, which I’ve certainly experienced in my own. 

So guys go like, well, life’s hard enough as it is. Why put more restraints on myself? That’s just going to make me be more angry and more. More you know, irritable and more this and more that. Well, yeah, it probably will in the beginning. But again, that’s the battle of subduing your will and not letting your will control you. And then the third thing is, like, his. The point he makes in the book is basically like, my life will become boring and meaningless, and I’ll never have fun and I’ll never have any of this stuff if I start to make all these decisions like I want to change my health and the way I look, so I got to lose weight, but then I can’t eat what I want anymore. And what good is life if I can’t have a chocolate bar when I want, or a bucket of fried chicken or whatever it is, or what’s life going to be like if I can’t drink when I want to, or smoke or watch porn or whatever it is? And so this is the call for true transformation is we have to start going like, dude, your life is never going to be what it’s supposed to be when you do all those things. And so he has a lot to say about these things too. 

But I want, I want to just kind of talk about. What we’re saying here is that like fasting is really an act of the will. And what happens when we become self indulgent is we basically handed our will over to the world, the flesh and the devil, and said, you tell me what’s good for me, you tell me what I need and you be in control. And when you’re living that way, you don’t give control over the proper authority in your life, who is Christ? And you wind up in these places where some of us may be, as we enter in this new year of like wanting this change, God is again putting that desire there. How do we start to achieve it through fasting?

Well you know the story you said about your co worker back in the day, Napa, you know, I think that’s a true realization for all of us. When we find ourselves doing something, we know it’s unhealthy and we go, why am I doing this? You know, And I think all of us say that all the time. We’re thinking that all the time. But we may not put the right course of actions into stopping it. You know, it took for him like a blizzard, you know, realize like, this is crazy, I could kill myself. Yeah, Frostbite I hear, because I want a cigarette. You know, but when it’s a nice summer day, you’re like you don’t think about it, you know. Yeah, but but kind of what you’re talking about is like, you know, when, when we subdue, subdue those things that are not healthy for us and we ask God to become part of that battle for us to, to reclaim our lives for, for living in his will. Its going to be difficult. You know, there’s going to be trials and tribulations and there’s going to Be suffering that’s going to be involved. 

But the thing is, you said there will be a joy that comes from that. You know the joy of like wow, I feel different. I feel like the stress, the worriness, all stuff, it’s not as in front of me as it is, you know, as it was before then. You know, stress is. Pressure is a realistic reality for all of us. Sure. But when you live in God’s will, it’s kind of like eh it comes, it comes and goes in various degrees and you realize that it’s not that moment of feeling isn’t for eternity. It’s just a moment. It’s there, it’ll disappear and it’ll be something else you gotta work towards. But when we live in our own will, we’re gonna really live in a sickness of ourselves. Sure. And self indulgency of any kind isn’t a healthy place to live. Whether it’s self righteousness or whether it’s depravity. Yeah. You know, and I think not to say that there’s a middle way. What I’m saying is that, that God is the way, you know, living Christ like is the way loving, you know, being merciful, being kind charitable. I mean that, that’s the way that, that fasting will reveal all those, those, those virtues to you. Yeah.

And that’s what I mean at the end of the day, like I said, like you’re saying what you’re really looking for is God. Like if you’re stressed, go to God, don’t go to the bottle. Yeah. You know, if you’re stressed, go to God, don’t go to porn, don’t go to whatever else you’re doing. Because all those are self medications that you’ve trained yourself to be involved in. Because of whatever you’re feeling in the moment. It doesn’t fix anything. Yeah. Whether I’m bored, angry, stressed, lazy, tired, like we look for something. 

And a lot of times like still in my life where I catch myself like maybe indulging in alcohol more than I should. A lot of times if I’m really honest with myself, I’m bored. And I’m bored. And there’s plenty of things to do besides picking up a beer or whatever. Like go read a book, go spend time with your family. You get in this mindset where it’s like if I don’t have this, then what is my life going to be? And that’s where the devil wants you to go. I mean it talks about in the book Dom Hubert van Zeller also says some things in the book about really, in particular about the devil. He says in here it is in the interest of the devil to present the relative harm so as to cramp the soul’s pursuit of the absolute good. So when you begin to think about fasting, it’s like, oh man, I’m denying myself and I’m not letting my house. And that just sounds painful and that sounds troublesome and I’m not going to be able to do it. And that’s why, because he’s saying it is in the interest of the devil, he’s presenting to you the harm you’re going to do to yourself so that you cramp or cut off your own soul’s pursuit of what is better for you. That’s what he’s saying there. And in fact this is the purpose of fasting. 

He goes on to say, by denying himself the satisfaction of physical appetites and by imposing a measure of hardship upon himself, a man trains his senses so that they are more ready to respond to the obedience placed over them by the will. This means that when the whole man sense and spirit is called upon to meet a crisis, he will not be greatly distracted by the rebellion of the flesh. He will be used to subduing it. That’s the whole purpose we’re talking about this, this episode. That’s for fasting. The devil’s going to tell you it’s too hard and you give in. What he’s saying is when we learn and we start to make ourselves fast from these things, we’re imposing hardships on ourselves. Not for pointlessness, right? Not to just prove I can do it. Right.

A lot of people will say, like I did exodus 90s to see if I could go 30 or 90 days or whatever without drinking or without watching TV. And Exodus 90 is a great thing and it’s helped a lot of people because it helps them to impose fasting. But the reason you do it is because you desire to get rid of things in your life that have you shackled and chained and aren’t making you the man you want to be. In fact are hindering you from being the man you want to be. You want to be rid of those. Not so you can get some medal at the end of your life or at the end of a 90 day period or whatever it may be and beat your chest and say, look what I was able to do. And then you go right back to your behaviors. What good is that? You spend 90 days basically at that point, torturing yourself just to go back to the same things. The point of fasting should be, I have a desire in my heart to be better. And there’s things in my life that aren’t allowing me to be better. I need to remove them.

And God in his grace and the church in their knowledge has pointed to fasting, that there aren’t things just to white knuckle it and grip it to see if I can do it and see if I’m a man. But they’ve given me these tools to show me that I can break free from these chains. I’ve allowed myself to be shackled to by the grace of God and by the desire of my own heart. But I have to shore up my will. And that’s what he’s saying that this means. When the whole man sense and spirit is called upon to meet a crisis, he will not be greatly distracted by the rebellion of the flesh. He will be used to subduing it.

That’s what it means to invite these voluntary fastings upon yourself is so that you train your senses so that you’re more ready to respond in obedience to your will. Inst. Obedience to the world. And so that’s what started to mean so much to me, is I was like, man, I really have some things I’ve let myself slip into here in the last portion of the year. And I give myself all excuses. Well, I travel all the time, and that’s why I’ve gained weight and my health isn’t what it is because airport junk food and on the move and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, I still have the ability to make choices. Or I’m really stressed out. And that’s why I’ve indulged in more whiskey or a few more beers than I normally do. Well that’s just an excuse. Like God was there the whole time waiting for me to go and speak to him about my stresses. So What we have to do is realize that it is an act of the will.

And so I want to address just quickly the last couple parts here about fasting and what people think. So that last point in particular that he made in the book about if I fast, then my life’s going to become boring and mundane, like it’s going to have no meaning. And I can’t have fun anymore. I can’t have joy. And that’s not true. You could still go out in the world. I know plenty of people that have quit drinking, and they’re still out at parties and things like that with people because they’ve learned that drinking isn’t the point. The social aspect and the friendships and the relationships are.

So there’s all kind of ways that you can get out there and do those things. But he talks about here actually the opposite of what people think most fasting is. They think it’s voluntary punishment of yourself and a life of boringness and all that stuff. But he says this. The man who fasts and gives up his luxuries is not condemning himself to a life of boredom and frustration. He is freeing himself of much that would otherwise tie him down. By renouncing the amusements of the world, a man enlarges his capacity for enjoyment. Just as unhappiness does not come from the lack of material things, but from the superfluity of material things, so happiness is not threatened by self denial so much as by self indulgence.

So what he’s saying is like, the devil tries to convince us, and that’s what he was saying earlier about. He’s presenting the harm it will cause ourselves to deny ourselves. Like, how horrible it would be not to get what we want is what the devil tries to show us. But he’s saying, in actuality, he said, you’re not condemning yourself to a life of boredom and freedom or frustration. You’re actually freeing yourself from so many things that are tying you down that you don’t even understand. Like, why do I continue to be angry and stressed out at my kids? Well, you’re drinking every night, and while you may feel used to that, your body feels horrible. You’ve gotten used to feeling horrible. And so what you think is normal is you’re not normal at all, right? And so your anger and your frustrations, all these are coming out on people.

So things that you’re choosing to do that may seem normal and needed in your life are chaining you down. He’s saying this actually frees you. And so this idea that, like, I need the amusements of the world to be happy, he’s saying, no, it’s actually by denying yourselves the amusement of the world that you start to break those chains and you start to realize that unhappiness comes from an overabundance of all this stuff that you’ve allowed yourself to partake in instead of denying of self, right? So the self indulgence leads to really unhappiness in the end, and self denial is what allows us to go. Like, I don’t need all these things. My happiness, my joy is found in the Lord.

So the very last thing I want to kind of read here quote wise, is from St. Leo the Great. That backs that up, he says. Backs up Don Hubert van Zeller’s thoughts in this book. He says, what can be more efficacious than fasting? By its observance, we are able to draw abstinence arise. To draw abstinence arise. Sorry, I got to start over. I’m reading too fast. What St. Leo says is, what can be more efficacious than fasting? By its Observance, we were able to draw abstinence arising in pure ideas, reasoned desires, right minded counsels by means of voluntarily imposed hardships. The desires of the body are restrained and the virtues of the spirit are renewed. There’s been so many times in my life, Victor, where I’ve allowed myself to kind of indulge in the things of the world. And I’m sitting here wondering why, man, why can I not come up with what the Lord wants to do on a podcast? Why am I struggling to get a talk together? Why do I find it hard to pray and to go to adoration, to Mass right now? And really what that’s pointing to is I have allowed all these other things in the world. I’m not fasting from those things. I’ve really allowed myself to overindulge in them and it numbs my senses to the voice of God in my life. 

And so what Saint Leo is saying here is that actual fasting allows you to draw near to God, to resist the devil, to rise above the persuasions of evil, and to find yourself again with pure ideas and reason, desires and right mounted counsels. And you’re finding yourself the virtues of the spirit renewed, which are numbed when you’re overindulging in things. So that’s what this episode’s about today. Like, if you want real change in your life, implement fasting. Start to look at the things in your life and start to go, you know what, I don’t need this, I’m going to start to fast from it. It doesn’t mean that you throw yourself completely into like, I’m never going to drink again or whatever. If that’s a problem, a real problem in your life and certainly you need to look at that. Or I’m never going to, you know, watch television again. Like you know, again, look at the severity of the problem in your life and find the equal answers for it or the equal solutions. 

But like, what you have to realize is there are going to be some people in your life that come to you. There may be so called friends in your life, like, hey man, what did you give up drinking? Like, we can’t fun anymore. Like you, like we all we do is drink and smoke cigars or do whatever and now we can’t have fun anymore. Like it’s awkward with you being there without you partaking in all this stuff, which is really a sign of their own guilt and their own need to change, but they’re not willing to do it so they put it on you for Making them feel uncomfortable. But what’s happening there is like, you’re starting to change and you’re going to feel that. And a great insight that Don Hubert Van Zeller said there too, at the end of his book was like, the disciples realized at some point that fasting and prayer was a life that we’re called to, and that some people tried to tell them, oh, you don’t need to fast, just pray. And what they started to understand was that the call of worldly prudence, like, actually urged a greater caution was all too often the call to come down from the cross altogether. Right? 

So that first invitation of I’ll just give yourself a break is actually the pulling of a nail to free a hand. And then eventually, as you pull the other nails to come completely off of the cross, that the Lord calls us to the cross of the difficult life of living as a Christian. So fasting is a need in our life. You want true transformation, then begin to say, these are problems in my life. I don’t want these problems anymore. So I’m going to start choosing to do something. Like, I’m going to make an active choice to do something different, and that choice is fasting. 

So, Victor, like the ways that we do that is start to look at our life. What is it that’s a problem? How can I stop engaging in that? How do I start if it’s slowly that’s needed? How do I bite a piece instead of trying to eat the whole cake at once? And how do I move forward in getting things out of my life that are keeping me from Christ? We’re going to talk about prayers. We move forward in this series. We’re going to talk about embracing the suffering. We’re going to talk about some other important things.

But the first thing you can do right now, in my opinion, if you really want to start 2025 and get rid of things in your life is, is to choose to subdue your will, to say, you know what? Those things in the world, the flesh and the devil, are not in control of me anymore. I am in control of my own life. And whatever I’m struggling with, I’ll surrender to Christ and I’ll offer up to him through this fasting.

And I totally agree with you on that perspective because when you fast, you fast for the right reason. You fast for you pray and you fast. You say, God, reveal the change that I’m seeking within myself, that can only come from you. Dont be like, fast to see how long I can fast. That’s not a competition who’s holier than the other person because again, that’s the way I went and that wasn’t a healthy way either. But to totally ignore fasting altogether is also. You’re losing an amazing gift that can be given to you when you really remove yourself from something that, that will, that has been an impediment for you a long time for spiritual growth. You know, seek that out right now. Think about what is it that, that that’s really my impediment for me that’s in my life that, that I know is something that’s keep me from being like more in depth in my spiritual life. What is that? You know, and, you know, and, and, and seek that out. Seek that with prayer and say, God, I, I need you, your guidance, you know, like allow in this process of fasting. Because I don’t, a lot of people don’t know how to fast or what that entails, you know, so. Yeah, and you can find more about it. I mean there’s all kind of spiritual writings on fasting. The catechism talks about it. Obviously you have, you know, the Google machine. You can figure out all that stuff. 

But I’m not just talking about fasting from food. I’m talking about fasting from the things in your life that are causing problems. You know, we’re talking about true transformation. There’s a difference between transformation and change. Sometimes change is only momentary. Transformation is something that lasts. Right? And that’s what we’re looking for in our life and our spiritual journey is not these fleeting moments of wishy washy and back and forth and hokey pokey spiritual life. It’s I want to be different. I’m going to be different. How do I do that? It’s by taking back control of my will, cutting out self indulgence in my life and starting to look at denying of self and things like that.

So folks, this has been a long episode. I know, longer than usual. It’s about 47 minutes. But this is a big subject and it’s a big, you know, thing that we’re trying to do in our lives right now and who we’re trying to invite you to as well. You know, this is the time of year where people often fail because they don’t have a real plan. They just say, I’m going to do this. And they throw something together. It gets hard and they quit. You can go to the Lord and like he said in Mark 9:29 to the disciples. Some things can only be driven out by prayer and fasting.

So if you’re praying, great, continue to do that and go deeper with the Lord in that. But add fasting and start to step away from the things in your life that are causing you trouble and struggle in your family, the life and in the world.

So, folks, thank you for this time. Again, you can follow, like and subscribe us by anything that you’re on, whether it’s Spotify, Apple YouTube, all of that. Please think about leaving us some reviews. Those help us get this mission in this ministry out to other people. Again, if you’re looking to bring us in or something, you can do all that at just scout in the pew. So let’s take this desire to truly transform Victor into fast to prayer and ask the Lord to help us with it.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Heavenly Father, the world, the flesh and the devil offer us so much distraction and so many things that we think will make us happy. So many of us have tried again and again those things that they offer and come up empty each time. Lord, help us to break the cycle in our habits that keep us returning to a well that will never, ever be full, a well that never offers us anything, that will help us truly transform. Help us turn our desires to you. Help us look at the things in our lives that are keeping us from you, and make an amendment and a decision right now in our lives to fast and to turn away from those things that are causing us to be away from you. Or the goal of our life is sainthood and the way that we reach there. One of the ways is through fasting. So help us through your grace and your mercy, to decide what needs to be out of our life to fast from those things so that we can be forever in heaven with you as a saint among saints.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Filed Under: Podcast

December 31, 2024 By justaguyinthep Leave a Comment

2025: What Do You Desire?

Welcome to the final episode of 2024! As we wrap up the year, Victor and I reflect on what it means to desire change and align those desires with God’s will. In this episode, we dive deep into the importance of not just having holy desires but taking actionable steps to fulfill them.

From personal growth goals to the incredible opportunities God gave us this year through our ministry, we discuss victories, challenges, and the practical ways we can all begin 2025 with purpose and clarity.

Let’s make this new year different—not by setting fleeting resolutions, but by recognizing the desires God places in our hearts and working intentionally to live them out. Ready to go all in with us? Let’s take that first step together.

Learn more about our pilgrimage to Greece & Turkey

 

 

 

 

Well, 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. John, do you know that today’s a major day and, you know, and really what it is, is because gym memberships will skyrocket today. That’s right. Well, that’ll be tomorrow probably, right?

We’re here on a new year’s eve and it should be, it should be happy gym day. It should be. Happy New Year’s. Yeah. Happy New Year’s. Right. So that’s what it’s going to be tomorrow is New Year’s day. And we’re here, uh, putting this last episode down for the year. I can’t believe 2024 is gone by so quickly.

It’s, it’s, you know, we say this all the time when we, the older you get, which is weird because I remember my parents saying this, my grandparents saying is like, man, time does sure fly by. And it’s, uh, it’s no joke, man. It just, it’s hyperspeed now. And I think it’s because. We, we get so tied into our schedules because our schedules are booked.

It’s like, we don’t have time to rest. Yeah, it is funny. I mean, I remember being a kid and like wanting to be 21 or 18 or all those different things and it like took 20, 000 years to get to those ages. And then once you hit 21, it’s like you’re 40 and then you’re 46 and then you’re whatever else, right.

And, and it just flies. Cause you, life happens. You have kids, your kids get busier, all that stuff. And there’s things fly by. And. So I wanted to, you know, take a moment here before we dive into our topic, um, for 2025, really the first, the last year of 2024 is pretty much the first year of 2025, but, um, really just wanted to take a minute to just tell everybody, thank you again.

Um, it was an incredible year. Uh, it’s one of our biggest and most successful yet, as far as, you know, being able to do what God set before us. And, uh, just wanted to share some of that with you. We’re always on here asking for your support and. Asking for you all to be partners in the pew to become partners in the pew and thanking those of you who already are.

And I just want to share some things with you this year, in case you didn’t know, but in terms of the podcast, because of your support and your help and sharing it, and also the, you know, the, the support you give us financially every month, we were able to reach over 75, 000 people on the audio version of the podcast alone, and over 85, 000 on YouTube, um, through 2024, which is amazing.

I mean, Each and every year that’s growing and we’re reaching more and more people through media that way, and it’s drawn more people into what we do. And it allows us to be able to go back into these parishes and. Get invites to parishes and all those things to do the work, the leadership summits, all of that.

Um, as far as activity is going out and doing the work with men’s groups. I mean, we had six restored parish missions and men’s group launches in 2024. We, we spoke at six men’s conferences. We had six diocesan leadership summits that we were stuck on six, right? Then we had the pilgrimage to Italy where we were able to take 50 people to a Eucharistic miracles pilgrimage, uh, through Italy.

And. And just enrich people’s lives that way and to visit those amazing places We were able to go to the national eucharistic congress and podcast with father maliki in front of A ton of people there and to get in front of a lot of people in our booth thousands of people Um, you know throughout the week and you know Just through social media and everything else your instagram and and facebook and linkedin and x and all that stuff We reached thousands of people through that.

Like it’s ridiculous how many people, you know, we’ll watch and are reals and all those things that, that are there. So, you know, when you look at it, there’s now hundreds of men meeting in groups where they can find healing and grow in their faith and authentic friendships in Wheeling, West Virginia and Gainesville, Florida and Hutchinson, Minnesota and Muncie, Indiana, South Bend, Indiana.

It’s in Folsom, California, right? If you look at the conferences we were able to attend to really share the gospel and just plant the seed of these leadership summits and stuff to come back and help men rise up, not just come to the conference, but rise up and do something in their parish. We were able to, to speak in front of 4, 400 men last year in these conferences.

You know, I think it’s even a little bit more than that. I didn’t throw in some last numbers. It’s probably closer to 6, 500, but that was in Columbus, Ohio, Green Bay, Washington, Dubuque, Iowa, uh, Scranton, Pennsylvania, uh, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Muncie, Indiana. Uh, the leadership summits where we partnered with diocese.

We spoke in front of about 800 men at those from parishes with their priests and deacons in the Diocese of Columbus and in the Diocese of Metuchen and Diocese of Fargo, Diocese of Victoria, Texas, another one in Metuchen. And then through the experience retreat weekend for the men of Dallas. So the Lord has just been doing amazing things and it’s not possible without all of y’all.

So I wanted to take a few minutes here in the beginning of the show to say thank you to all of you that listen, that share, that write us emails and letters, um, telling us the impact this has had on you. I, I’m currently hiring for a job and one of the people that applied, a lady said that she had been listening to our podcast, Victor, for four years and that their marriage had been blessed and that their, their, their faith life was so much better because they’d been listening for four years.

Very humbling to get things like that. So we know that the podcast is helping people come out of their brokenness, all those things. We’re building these groups, but it’s all because of you. So thank you all that gave on Giving Tuesday. Gave monthly or annually or a one time donation this year. We hope that you’ll continue to support us through 2025 and beyond.

We’re growing. We’re going to be hiring missionaries. I’m hiring a full time or a part time admin right now and a marketing company that’s going to come alongside and help us grow with all this stuff. So that more people can have eyes on this. It can be helped by it and can know that we can go to their parishes and help them.

So I just wanted to take this moment at the end of the, of the end of the year to say thank you to all of you on behalf of Victor and myself. And. The opportunities, whether you were at one of these conferences, you listened to us, you support us, or you were at one of the group launches or whatever. We thank you all for the invites, for the time that you took to spend with us during all those things.

And we look forward to another year of working in the vineyard alongside you and your prayers. And your support. So thank you for that. If you haven’t supported us yet and you’re interested in 2025, you want to become a monthly partner in the pew, somebody that’s right alongside us in this mission, you can do that by going to donor box.

org slash pew. That is donor box. org slash pew. Or you can go straight to just a guy on the pew. com and you can, you can find that donate button in the top. One last thing. A lot of people have been asking about the pilgrimage to Greece and Turkey. You can find that on the website as well on our events and book me page.

Uh, if you’re interested in that is filling up fast. So please, I mean, we had five more, I think this or six more this week, sign up. So please, uh, if you’re interested in that, go and check that out and get signed up before we have to, uh, start the wait list. So folks again, thank you for everything. Looking forward to every opportunity we have to spend with you.

In 2025, through our events, through pilgrimages, through the podcast and wherever else God brings us together. And, uh, you know, you were talking about a list of everything that we, you know, collectively, uh, we, we’ve done mostly you, you know, doing the thing and I know it’s okay to receive it, but you know, they go into the conferences and the leadership, uh, events, um, any of those that have been there and, and experience, you know, John being down there and help, you know, speak down there.

I mean. And we would love to hear how your life’s doing now. Yeah. You know, just, you know, doesn’t have to be attached to this, you know, this, uh, video. Um, and, uh, Although we like comments, I’d be great to know how we’re doing, but like I said, just like, and subscribe. Yeah, just sit exactly. Sorry. I meant to do that.

But, uh, but yeah, just, just send us an email and let us know how we’re doing because, you know, we don’t hear much, you know, we, we, we, you hear, I think when you’re in person, emails come in and stuff too, but yeah. I don’t have that password. I get busy and forget to tell you all of them. But, uh, but I like, I like when you do share, I like to hear because not only is an encouragement, it’s one of those things like when, whenever we’re like wondering what’s the topic that people want to know about, what, what.

What, where to go, what direction do we need to be like, or what direction we can be in 2025? You know, I mean, those are things we would like to hear is like, Hey, this is great. I’ve never heard about anything like this. Is there a way you guys can talk about that? Yeah. Um, we are open to discuss a lot of those things.

Well, and you’re always wanting to know, like where, where do people minister to when we’re talking about where do people need to be ministered to when, when we’re talking with men’s groups and stuff, like one of the things that I always talk about is. What do men want and what do men need? Do you even know?

Because a lot of the complaints are like, well, nobody’s showing up or nobody’s coming or we don’t get consistent, uh, attendance, that kind of stuff. Or nobody seems to care or they come and they fall off. Well, what are you providing? Right? Like, do you even know what men want? What men need? When I was a sales guy for Napa, if a guy, you know, needed, uh, needed a radiator and I was selling brakes and that’s all I had, I wasn’t much used to them, right?

Or he needed a wrench and I had screwdrivers. Wasn’t much used to them. So one of the things that we really try to want to know in this ministry, whether it’s through starting these groups, administering them in, in that way, or through this podcast is where are you and what are you dealing with? What do you want to hear about?

Right. We’ve got 310 episodes after this, I think that, that have all kinds of things you can go back and listen to. But if there’s any particular, you can always email just a guy on the pew at gmail. com. So the name of the podcast and at gmail. com, and we can look at those. But, you know, you were talking about 2025 and desires, Victor, and And that’s really what this show is going to be about today.

You know, we’ve been on this beautiful journey. I know it’s been helpful to me. Um, you know, ever since Heather Kim came on three or four episodes ago and talked about encountering Emmanuel, been going through that book, uh, every day of Advent, it’s just been a gift, uh, to her, you know, she’s such a gift.

And just to walk through that with her insights and guidance of the Holy Spirit has been great, Angela’s doing it too. Um, but then we had the episode on preparing the way of the Lord, like what does the Lord want and how are we doing that and giving him our hearts? And. The healing that he wants to do.

And then we talked about, you know, stop hedging your bets, right? There, there, there comes a time for decision. You prepare and you wait and you prepare and you wait, but you also have to make the decision on what you’re preparing and waiting for the ways of the world or of Christ. And then finally, last week we talked about the heart of the matter that really what God desires is our hearts.

And it’s the place of transformation. It’s where everything has to happen. Then our faith can’t stay, uh, intellectually only like that’s where You come to the desire to know God, right? Like the questions and seeking answers, but then it has to move to the heart for it to become real and take place in your life, right?

And to have real change. And so as we were preparing for this episode, which is, as we said, this is coming out on New Year’s Eve, but tomorrow’s a new year and a new day, right? Is John Paul II, uh, was St. John Paul II was so Uh, so smart and saying, and so repetitive and saying was begin again, right? Like it’s a chance to begin again.

And we’ve done shows in the past. We’ve talked about like the gym membership stuff. You’ve, you’ve kind of referred to there and how everybody wants to like, how am I going to change this year? And oftentimes there’s. Those things fail. But what I really want, want people to think about and what I’m thinking about now is, um, have this time before the end of the year.

So many people are off work and, and have some time, you know, in the next week and a half, two weeks to really not just celebrate the season, but to think about like, okay, God wants my heart. That’s where transformation takes place. So the question that should flow out of that is what do I desire? Like, what, what do, what do I desire?

Now the more important thing is what God desires for me, right? But I think that’s where we have to start. So so many people go, well, I want to be different in 2025. Okay. Well, what does that mean? Yeah. Like, what are you desiring? Because as we’ve talked about before, Victor, our hearts full of desires, but they’re different desires, right?

There’s, there’s a ordered and holy desires and there’s disordered and unholy desires, right? The goal of our life is to let the Lord come in and help us rid ourselves of those unholy desires that come from wounds and places of pain. And you know, that’s where guys that are continuing to fall to pornography or, or substance abuse or whatever, oftentimes are, they’re giving into those unholy desires.

Which there’s a good desire below it, but it’s, it’s distorted in the way we live it out. But then we also have these holy desires, right? When you’re, maybe you’ve gotten in a fight with your wife and like you’re, you’re hot in the moment or you’re mad in the moment. And you don’t care a lick about anything other than the way you were treated or the way things went down.

But then you get away from it for a moment and you’re like, I just don’t want to fight in my family anymore. Or I just don’t want to be the reason that there’s an issue in my family. Or I just want to be a better husband and father. Or a better employer. Or a better friend. Or whatever it is. There’s all these great desires.

I want to know the Lord better. I want to know His purpose for my life. Those are good desires. But if we never really sit with that, Then we just, we don’t really know what they are. It’s like, well, I just wanted to be a good year. I want to be healthy. And, but what beyond all that, like, what do you really want?

And that requires taking time to sit down in our life and going, you know, what are my desires? What do I want? And so you and I are going to share some of our own in the show today. Like what, what we hope for 2025, our own life, and I hope to, to motivate and to. To, um, have guys really just leading by example, do the same in their own life.

So. I think there’s really four things we’ve got to look at and then we can dive into our own one What do we desire as I was just talking about like what do I really at my core what I want to be better at? and i’ll talk about my own here in a minute, but like The things that are the red lights that I know are issues in my life or the things I want to be better at What are those two?

What does god desire for me? Well, we know the answer to that question, right that that question is Is, uh, is really about what the Baltimore Catechism used to say, right? Like he wants us to to know him and love him and serve him so we can be with him forever in the next, right? I just butchered that, but to love and serve him in this world so that we can be with him forever in the next.

He wants relationship and those things, but he also desires what the good things for us, right? He desires good things. Now this is not the, what do you call it? The prosperity gospel kind of stuff. Like he desires me to have a Lambo and in a, you know, 17 bedroom house and all that stuff. But he desires our good and, and, and the things that he wanted us to have and designed us to have.

Right? Great relationships and faith in him and, and love and kindness and joy and peace and all those things. So. If you know what you desire, you know what God’s desires are, then the thing I would say is like, how do my desires line up with his? Like that’s the next logical thing in this whole plan is what do I desire?

What are God’s desires? Where do they meet? And then finally, how am I going to take action once I have clarity on those things? Because so many of us We don’t take action. We have a desire. Um, but we don’t, it’s like having a dream. A dream’s a dream until you start trying to make it come true, right? Till you start working to make those things happen.

So our desires are the same way. It comes down to, to knowing what we want, but also in praying for God’s guidance and discernment and all those things. And for him to give us the grace to be able to find those things that are good and holy. But also, um, it’s up to us to take action, isn’t it? Well, I know I was kind of like, joking a little bit about the gym membership thing.

Yeah, no, no. But really, that’s what it is. We all have a desire, like you said, to be healthy, to eat healthier. Yeah. Or to get out, walk, or go to gym, work out, and stuff like that. I think all of us want to be healthy. Yeah. You know, physically, mentally, spiritually, everything. That is, that is a goal that we all probably share on this earth, in one way or the other.

Um, but like you said, you know, we all desires need to be changed into a habit needs to be changed into a routine in order for that desire to be, uh, an act of labor, uh, working towards it. Um, and you know, for, um, a lot of us, I think once you set a routine and anything that you do, it becomes habitual process, your life, like, For me, I have to have a cup of coffee in the morning.

So I get up, I let the dogs out, I have a cup of coffee, go out there, let them run around. I come in and then, you know, I check my work email. I need to do something. I need to add something more to that. Like I used to do, which is to read the daily scripture, to ponder what, what the scripture is of that day, you know, and to say, what can I do to implement that in my life?

What can I do to be prepared for this? Um, I have allowed my work email. My Outlook app to be kind of like my setting tone of the day. Sure. And I don’t like that. I don’t like how that happened this year. Uh, two years ago, you know, I pretty much said I was gonna like limit or eventually not have any social media.

I have a Facebook account, but guess what? I’m sorry. If you friend me two years ago, , it doesn’t mean I don’t like you, i’s just, I don’t go, go and check on Yeah. You’re not a social media guy, that’s for sure. Right. Because for me, even LinkedIn, you know, I, I I just see what’s going on. Yeah. But like, I don’t, like, I, it’s like I don’t post because one, I feel like for me, I just, I, I, I, I, I share with people who I love.

Yeah. And they know my life. So if you, if you wanna know what I’m, how I’m doing, call me. And I’ll tell you how we’ll put his phone number out to all of you. So there’s a security code somewhere in there. That’s true. But that’s a desire then, right? If you like get back into more spirit, that is, that is, that is a easy step one basic process that I, and there’s other things that we could talk about further in the show, but for me is to kind of implement, uh, A daily scripture or a meditating process because I used to be like in the morning I would get up at six o’clock in the morning.

I light a candle. It was still dark and it opened up my bible Yeah, and I would I would look at um, you know, what’s the divine intimacy as well that book too. I would do the And I do that. And then I would write stuff down, you know, like what stood out for me generally. And for me, that’s, that was like an amazing activity that just really set my heart, not ablaze, but just like focused on what I’m supposed to do today.

Like, thank you God for this. The breath that’s in my lungs. Thank you for my heart beating. Thank you for my wife. Thank you for my children Thank you for allowing me to say I love you to people Um, and and and it really allowed me to be kind of like a motivated person of faith Yeah, you know instead of a motivated person of work.

Sure. No, I mean it’s something that I want to do too I mean i’ve I got a list of stuff over here too, and I was just kind of thinking when you were talking You know, that, that we, you know, the show’s called what do you desire? But the important thing is really what does God desire? And we really know what he wants of us, like we talked about.

But the thing is that we have to figure out in that is with that, with his desire and our desire, where do they meet? Where do they intersect? Because honestly, like, this is the cool thing about it. One thing I was just reflecting on one day. Is these good things that we have, they don’t always seem good because if you’re living in, in disorder desires, this desire of your heart, that’s telling you like, this isn’t good and you want to be better.

Oh, you know, it’s like, you know, when your heart’s telling you like. What are you doing? Yeah. Like, why, why are you thinking this way? Why are you acting this way? Yeah. You know, this isn’t you, and you’re like, well, yeah, it’s not me. Yeah. And I spent many, uh, many years in that, like when I was doing the cocaine and the drugs and the, the alcohol and all that stuff and the porn.

It’s like every time I went to do that stuff, there was like a quiet voice saying like, this is not you and this isn’t good for you and you don’t want this. And, and so really. So when we talk about our desires, when we talk about holy desires, it’s really the voice of God that’s speaking into us that make those holy, right?

Like those things, it’s that conscience and that quietness that’s, that tells you everything you’re making a wrong turn or every time you make a wrong decision or, or you’re getting off the track. It’s that voice. It’s calling you back. Sometimes we even feel like we’re being nagged by it or something, but it’s, it’s the voice of God.

And so like, we have to. It’s the things that we always kind of get around. Well, I’ll eventually get around to that. I’m going to be a better husband. I’ll be a better father. I’ll, I’m going to read more scripture. I’m going to, the reason we even say that is because someone is putting that desire there.

Like that reminder, right? So God’s desire is more important because he’s God. And two, Because it’s his desires that really shed light into our own desire, especially in those places where we’ve been broken and off course and, and just have gotten away. Right. And, and so that’s, that’s what we need to really focus on.

And so for me, you know, some of mine, like I’ll just read them off really quickly and we can jump into some as we talk about yours too, but. Um, like I want to be a better disciple, you know, I get, I get in a good groove and I’m like doing the liturgy hours and I’m, I’m got my new Scott Hahn, you know, huge Bible that came out a couple of weeks ago and I’m loving kind of reading through it and reading the footnotes and then going to the catechism because of that and, and I enjoy that.

But oftentimes I allow, like today I had a bunch of interviews for these positions. I had zoom calls with parishes and men’s conferences and all this stuff, making sure they have what they need. And I’m on the same page as they are and all that stuff because I’m having to handle it all by myself right now with the transition of Derek leaving.

But oftentimes that can happen more often in my life than I want it to. There’s been more lately, more times lately when I’ve missed daily mass and that’s something that’s been a stalwart in my life, right? Um, adoration has been a little bit few and far between for me. And those are things that I know I want to be a better disciple in that way.

I want to, I want to stay. At the foot of Jesus better than I have this year Um, not because it you know Obviously it makes the ministry better when I do But I need it like personally in my relationship with them because a lot of these other things i’m going to mention they They become issues when that first desire isn’t met like I want to be a better disciple of jesus.

So Two is I want to be a more present loving husband, right? There’s so many times I spend telling Angela about all the the struggles and the stress and the things that the ministry has going On or the you know, sometimes a one man show is as this can be when we are in between people I monopolize a lot of the conversations about Um, you know, my life and, and knowing she has stressful things going on, but just selfishly choosing myself over her, um, in the way that we talk and discuss those things, um, you know, listening, but not hearing kind of stuff.

Um, hearing, but not listening, I should say would probably be better. Um, so there’s those things. And then with children, right? Like I want to be more in loving and more and more loving and unselfish with them. Um, you know, when, when there’s time to be had with them, I don’t want it to be, okay, well, I want to watch this Grizzlies game.

Do you want to watch it with me? And then therefore we spend time together or I want to. You know do this or that and you can accompany me instead of just like what do you want to do this past sunday? I sat on the floor and played some game that never ends and was like monopoly. No, it was like Something against humanity.

Oh cards. Yeah, and like i’m just and it was like a clean kids version And it’s like what’s the point of this and when do you win or lose and they’re like you don’t and they’re just having a Ball and i’m like, oh my gosh I really have to like there’s a million things that you’d be doing. I want to do You But there’s gonna be one day when I look back and like wish for moments like this.

So yeah, I need just to be better about Letting that stuff go and just being present the moment to them and then finally like I want to proctor’s pride Prioritize my health not in some good a gym membership all that but I really want to sit down and eat better and plan better and exercise more and and not just use road travel on the road and airplane life and And you know doing what I want to be an excuse not to to treat my body as a temple I’ve been treating it like an amusement park, honestly, uh for the last, uh, since august probably with all the travel and the junk and the Making excuses for myself and so those are some of my desires, right?

But As we talked about desire has to take action, right? Right. So that’s some things that i’ve got to look at and start planning about how that’s going to happen in my life But what are some more of yours? Well, I mean i’ve i’ve learned to pray more Intentional wise like rather than just for myself intentionally.

Yeah, intentionally like I used to You know the youth of my prayer life was like god, um, you know Don’t let suffering come to me, you know, uh, God, let me be patient, you know, teach me to be, or, or bring this to me, like, you know, like asking stuff without the work, you know, and I realized a long time ago that, that you got to put the work in, you know, like if it’s kind of, Silly for me to say, God, don’t let any suffering come towards me, because I know that, you know, suffering, no matter how it comes, it’s always a revelation of God’s love in me, towards me, for me.

Um, I realized, gosh, if I didn’t go through this, I wouldn’t have a perspective I have, as I have now. Yeah. You know, and not to say that I’m wishing everything bad to happen to me, but like when it, whatever comes, ’cause I know he is not a punitive God, you know? Well, you’re surrendering his will. Yeah. He, no matter what it is, loves us.

Good, bad or different. He loves us. He loves us, but he wants us to learn. He wants us to love to learn how to, to learn how to love perfectly. Even though we may not reach that, but we’re on our journey to know what perfect love is. And, and that is to like to, to love. With your whole heart, not with a part of your heart, as we had in another conversation.

And, um, and by, by that I don’t ask for patience because I know I have to work on patience. Yeah. So therefore when patience means, like you said, to, to, when I got it, when I know I have something to do, I stop and I listen to what Christy says or my girls ask me to do. And I, I’m, I’m actively involved in the conversation.

Yeah. Because that is a moment they need me. So if I don’t show up now, then they’re never going to expect me to show up later in their life. Sure. So I’m, I’m, I’m trying to be more aware. My desire is to be more aware when I need to be present with those in my, in my life. Well, and that’s what I mean, that’s exactly what I was talking about too.

It was like really loving, like Jesus did being present to the people that are in front of you. And John, just. St. John Paul II was excellent at it too. It’s legendary about how late he was to things, because if somebody was in front of him, that’s all that mattered. Right. Like, and, and especially no more so than in the Eucharist, whenever he found himself in a adoration chapel or something like that, you know, he might be hours and hours late, but yeah, I mean, all these things are, like I said, these desires, God desires for us to these good and holy desires that line up with his, um, but we can’t leave it in the, it doesn’t need to be a hope, right?

Just like I hope this happens. When you use the word desire, like I want this, like I really need this in my life. This is something I long for. It’s really what desire is, is a longing for. So if I really long for it, then I have to be willing to do the things that matter, right? The things that I need to do to be able to do that.

For me, when I said prioritize my health too, like, sometimes I still, you know, I’m able to drink and not have a lot of problem with it as far as addiction, you know, I don’t, um, not like the cocaine, like I had to go, you know, you had to stop doing cocaine. It’s not good for you. And alcohol can be a bad thing too, as we know.

With me, what I want to be better about is not turning to things like alcohol. Or pornography sometimes when I still fall, you know, every once in a while when the devil wins at that, that temptation battle with me. Um, I don’t want, I don’t, I just don’t want to continue to go to those things as crutches.

You know what I mean? My desire is like to be rid of all that in my life to where when I, when I struggle in an argument with my wife or, or I’m disappointed because of the way that I didn’t handle the children, right. Or something that I don’t, or, or work stress or whatever it is that I don’t go and just go.

Okay. You know, I’m going to, I’m going to go drink more than I should because I’m, I’m stressed and I’ve, uh, I need a break or whatever. Well, I deserve this. Right. So allow the Lord to become the desire of, of that quenching, right. Of that release of that, of, of, of, of that, that yoke that he wants to be right.

To take on these things for me, that’s the desire I really have. And so what do you do about that? You start, you start making that more of a priority and you start realizing those things. And like, when I’m feeling those feelings and. You know, bored, less, uh, angry, stress, lazy, tired, you know, that, that I know that I’m, I’m susceptible to these things and that I need to be careful of that.

Cause honestly, the only time I ever struggle in my life again was like pornography or looking at something I shouldn’t, or, or something coming on a movie I didn’t expect to come on and. And not fast forwarding it quick enough or something like that is, is, um, is when honestly I’m not so many other things in my life are off kilter Right and usually if it’s drinking too much like if i’ve had too much to drink your inhibitions go out the window So what is a if that’s really your desire to not be in those situations?

Then maybe your plan of action is like, maybe drinking isn’t the best thing for me, right? Maybe I shouldn’t drink at all, or maybe I should set limits. Like I’m only going to have to like, you’re good about that. When you come over here, you’re like, I’m driving Christy, you can have a good time and, you know, drink some wine or whatever with Angela and the girls.

Um, but I’m going to, um, I’m going to have a couple and then have some time and then drive home. Right? So there’s just things like that in my own personal life that I’ve noticed when I get in a situation I don’t want to be with. And it’s generally because I’ve let my guard down and I’ve, and I’ve made some sort of excuse for the behavior and why I should be able to do that.

So that’s one of the places I want to, I want to take action. And, and that’s really what I want to talk about here at the end is like when we talk about these desires, a lot of people go, well, God knows me. He knows my desires. He just doesn’t do anything about them. Well, God likes to work in tandem with us.

He gives us grace and we take action, right? Like he gives us grace if it matches with his desires gives us grace and then he Waits for us to take action with it, right? I mean, I knew that I wanted to go into ministry I lost the job. Angela looked at me and said, take a little bit of money and start a nonprofit.

And if I had never done that, God gave me the grace through Angela and the, and the, and the words, his own words to do that and the inspiration. But I could have sat there and been like, no, I’m scared. I don’t want to do it. Or no, I’m just going to figure something else out, complain and all those things.

But instead. I took that action when I could have gone the other way and now here we are with this ministry. So through God’s grace and then our, our yes, right? So what I wanted to just read through a couple here before we, you know, start to end the show here in a second is really what the Lord says and what some of the other saints say about this.

So first of all, with our desires, the good desires, right? The desires that are, that are the holy ones of our heart, St. Catherine of Siena says there is nothing we can desire or want that we do not find in God. Right? So even your disordered desires have a good and holy desire under them, as Dr. Bob Schut’s tale says all the time.

And that good and holy desires from God. Right? So anything that you’re looking for is like, I was alluding to when it’s like that whisper or that piece of your conscience that’s going like, Hey, you know, you don’t want to do that. Or, Hey, you know, this isn’t good. Or if you, if you open your mouth instead of just being quiet and taking the, the more humble road in this, in this tip with your wife, Then, then it’s going to get to be a problem and your children are going to see you argue and fight and they’re going to remember it and all those things, or you have an option in the moment.

So, you know, these desires are put there by God. And then what we have to do is what we’ve talked about, like this. This, um, looking to what lines up with his, right? Because it says in, in Psalm 37, four through five, take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust in him and he will act.

So that’s just, it’s telling us. First and foremost, like we talked about, give the lord your heart so that transformation can take place. Like that’s what it means to take delight in the Lord, to put him first, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Now again, that doesn’t mean like 40 supermodels in a, in a You know, Ferrari and, uh, you know, in a, hitting a winning lottery ticket.

It means the good desires of your heart that line up with his, he will give you commit your way to the Lord, trust in him and he will act right. So if we have these desires that are good, we know they came from the Lord. He’s the one that spurred those desires within us. So he’s there rooting with you with the communion of saints, with those that have gone before you.

He wants those good things for you. So he waits on you to act. And so we have, you know, one of the fathers of the church, St. Augustine, that said this a bunch of times, and it’s a famous quote, you know, that people repeat a bunch of times, I should say, is pray as though everything depended on God and work as if everything depended on you.

And that’s what we really have to do for our goal in 2025, is to kind of go, you know what, I’m sick and tired of saying this all the time. And I know that, you know, God continues to whisper in my ear, these desires, you know, and that’s what gives me this desire in the first place, I’m going to sit down and start to listen to those and look back on 2024 and all the times I felt those nudgings and those kind of like sometimes a gnat, you know, that’s just, you want it to go away and it’s just buzzing around.

What were those? Those things that I heard what were those continual Echoes that I heard in my soul right and write those down And then look at what god basically wants for you your good your peace your love your hope Your grace to be poured over you all of those things. Do they line up? And then take St.

Augustine’s words, right, to heart. And then what Jesus himself says in Matthew 6, 33, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you. Right? When we pull apart our own selfish desires and the things of our heart that aren’t of God and we start to realize what is left, either, even those holy desires that are below the bad things that we’re doing and living disorderly.

There are desires come from God, the good and holy ones. If we really sit down and take that. So if you want to like actually change in 2025, if you want to stop the things that are going on and some of the ones Victor and I talked about here may have hit home with you, but if you know those things and it’s up for you to take action, right?

Um, you know, desire has no. Power without action, right? It’s a longing without ever the means to serve that longing. And so what we want to do is put our energy in 2025 into living that way and in utilizing, bringing those four steps together, right? What are my desires? The good and Holy ones and the good and Holy ones that are below the disordered ones.

What does God desire for me that came from him in the first place? So those will line up. But once I figure that out, how am I going to take action and find clarity on these things and then start to live it out in my life? Because that’s where change comes from. So for all of you out there, you know, that are looking for this, it doesn’t have to be another year that goes by where you said all these nice things and they didn’t happen.

Be more, um, intentional this year, like not wait, not waiting for, for tomorrow, right? Which is when you’re going to hear this. So I guess you’re going to have to, but like. But looking at it and saying, okay, 2025, I want to be different for me in these ways. These are the real desires of my heart. Even if they’re painful and I don’t want to admit them, or they look like Herculean to me or whatever, write them down.

What does God think about these? Where do they intersect? And then what is my plan of action to move forward in these? Um, for you, Victor, it sounds like, you know, you’re gonna, you’re gonna spend more time in the mornings praying and doing some more of that and, and being a better listener to your family and stuff like that.

For me, and I want, you can clarify on that in just a second, for me, I want to be a better disciple. I want to be more present to my wife and kids. I want to continue my healing journey, right, by, by looking at not. Everything that’s a problem is everybody else and not me, but like dealing with my inadequacies, they’re still there in my abandonment wounds and all those things.

And then working on my health and making good choices in my life. Those are the things I want to, I want to do. And so I’m going to sit down over the course of this time, you know, uh, next couple of days and just really look at that as I have been through Advent and come up with a solid plan, right? You don’t want to try to eat the whole cake.

Just write down some slices you want to start and then start taking bites of those slices. And once you’ve had one, go to the next and go to the next and go to the next and work systematically and intentionally with a guide who wants to do it alongside of you. So Victor, any final thoughts here? Just really just kind of piggybacking know, ideas and desires are good without a course of action or plan.

They just remain that way. Yeah. And, and God has placed something in your heart so that you move towards that, that goal, that, that closest, that that connectivity with God. With him in the spirit and with the son. Um, so listen to that, you know, obviously we, we, we, we hear this, we know this. Um, and yet something kind of prevents us from going all in, like if we’re at a poker table, you know, all in putting our heart on and, and not, you know, hedging our bets.

Yeah. And as we were talking about, right. So go all in and, and this year and coming up in 2025 and say, this is what I know I need to work on. This is what my course of action is my plan. And I’m going to meet those desires. They’ll become actual, um, actual events. Yeah. They’ll become reality. They’ll become truth.

They’ll become a truth of my life. So folks, I mean, that’s really it. Like we said, you know, look at your desires. Those come from God and just, they’re going to match up with Him if they’re good and holy desires. Um, you know, and then take action with it, right? Take action with it. So, we’re going to close out in prayer here with those things that, praying for all of you that, that you’ll take a couple of moments, or as much time as you need, over the next few days.

And don’t feel like you have to rush, you know, and do it tonight or in the morning because the calendar is flipped. Like sit with God and give him the time of your life be silent like get away from distractions Find a place in your room or somewhere in an adoration chapel and do what you got to do to sit down and have this Conversation with God Lord, this is what I keep hearing you say to me or my conscious is saying to me Is this what you desire?

If so, then Lord, this is what I want to help me make this desire reality and help me form a plan to do that. I promise you, your life will change, but the more intentional you are with that, the more chance you give yourself for change. So let’s take all of that to prayer. Um, and just ask God for help in 2025 and beyond for those that we love and for ourselves.

So the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you for this opportunity to come together and to talk about what really matters, the changes that you want in our life, right? Those whispers that we hear all the time, some that we were grateful to get and some that we ignore because we’re just.

To tie it up in the things that matter more to us than they should. Lord, the heart is the place of transformation. You’ve told us that there is where true change starts. So Lord, as we enter into this new year on this last night of 2024, help us to center on what those quiet voices tell us. Those desires of yours to make sure that they line up together, right?

And then to form a plan of action so that we can actually become the men that our heart tells us we desire to be, not for it to be a pipe dream or something out there out of our reach, but but for it to become a reality with your grace, with your guidance, with your love, and the hope that all of it brings.

And the name of the Father of the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Thanks folks. Have a great 2025.

Filed Under: Podcast

December 16, 2024 By justaguyinthep Leave a Comment

Stop Hedging Your Bets

Today we’re talking about something we see far too often: living with one foot in the world and one foot in the faith. It’s time to make a choice, to stop hedging our bets, and go all in with Christ.

In this episode, we share our own struggles with lukewarm faith and explore what it means to commit fully to God. We look at examples from Scripture—like Elijah calling out the people on Mount Carmel and David’s heartfelt psalm of trust—to remind us that God doesn’t want a half-hearted relationship. Advent is a time to prepare, reflect, and decide: Will we give our all to Him, or keep clinging to the distractions of the world?

Victor and I are passionate about helping you find the joy, peace, and purpose that only Christ can bring. This episode is a wake-up call for anyone who’s ready to stop living a “safe” faith and start living a fulfilled one.

Don’t miss this one, and as always, share it with someone who might need to hear this message. God bless!

Get all the details 👉 here

 

 

 Well, welcome back to the Pew everybody. I’m your host, John Edwards, and here across the table from me as always is my. Co host and cohort, Victor Adams. You know, uh, it finally got comfortable here. It was an ice box in here earlier. Um, I had to wear some layers today because I knew this is like kind of like the out, you know, it’s attached to your house.

It was great. It’s an amazing studio. If anyone wants to come and do a tour, let John know. We’re going to need to do some background checks before that. But no, you’re right. It was cold in here. I mean, some days I stay in the house and work just because. It’s a different heating system and all that. Yeah, it says 55 when you come in.

We all know, well, we all know that, you know, in the wintertime those gas bills can get crazy. So, if I’m not working out here doing calls with parishes and stuff, sometimes I’m just, right now I’m spending a lot of time writing the book. So I can sit in the house when the heat’s already on. Right, I find out why you keep a call for me to stay asleep, uh, stay awake.

That’s right, yeah. Cause I, in the old days Trying to turn your headlights on. Right, in the old days. We were just doing like, you know, no, no video. There was times where I was like this. Oh yeah. John be like, John be like nudging. Cause we were sitting next to each other. We did, uh, The old, uh, what was it?

Cafe? Cafe Catholic. Cafe Studio. Yeah. Studio. Yeah. So you would sometimes nudge me and I’d be like, bless, pray. Praise God. Yeah. Oh, Jesus, here. Yeah. Yeah. It’s . So, uh, so you know, we would, yeah, we used to set up IVs, uh, of coffee for Victor, just a straight coffee in the whole time, espresso shots. So anyways, that’s, that’s the history of this, this kind of story.

So, yeah. No, but it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s, uh, we’re in the middle of Advent, right? We’re going into, this will be the third week of Advent. So, you know, we’re continuing talking about, uh, the things that we’re going to talk about in the context of Advent. You know, we had the episode with Heather Kim and then last week, uh, we talked about, uh, preparing the way of the Lord, uh, and staying awake.

Yeah. When, prepare yourself, stay awake. Staying awake. That’s right. So right on your point of what you were talking about. So we’re going to jump into another topic today that I’ve just really been praying about and thinking about during Advent. Before we do that, I just want to invite everybody. And remind everybody that we do have that pilgrimage coming up, uh, going to Greece and Turkey to walk in the footsteps of St.

Paul with my good friend, Father James Clark from the Diocese of Memphis. That is taking place September 9th through the 20th, um, of next year. We already have a bunch of people signing up, Black Friday and all that stuff. They had sales. It’s already starting to fill up. We’re only taking one bus. That means less than 50 people.

Um, so if you’re interested in going with us, you can go in the show notes and click and register and find out more about the trip there. Or you can go to just a guy in the pew. com, go to our event page and right below our calendar is a whole section on the pilgrimage. And you can download the brochure.

You can do all that there and then register straight from our website. But we’re going to be doing a lot of amazing stuff. We’re going to be walking the footsteps of St. Paul. We’re going to see churches. We’re He wrote letters to places where he preached places where he traveled with Silas and some of his other, uh, disciples and brethren there.

Uh, we’re going to see the Island of Patmos and the grotto where St. John wrote revelation. We’re going to see the house where Mary, uh, was said to have lived her last days up until the Assumption. There’s just so many amazing things the seven churches of revelation Um, and there’s a cruise it’s a four day cruise involved in it, too So you’re in land and you’ll be through the Aegean sea Going to all these islands like Mykonos and Patmos and Rhodes and all these beautiful, uh other places So Folks, if you’re interested in that, go to the link in the show notes below in the description, go to our website, just to get on the pew.

com and you’ll see a pilgrimage thing at the top. Click it and join us there. We’d love to have you also for any of you that are looking to bring us in to help you start and launch vibrant life changing ministry to men, or you’re looking to do leadership summits or have us for conferences and do do multiple things like that.

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It really helps us in our mission. You can do that by going to just get on the pew. com too. All right, Victor. So let’s jump into it. So we talked about it. We’re here in Advent, the third week of Advent. And, you know, I’ve just been having this wonderful walk with the Lord personally. Um, you know, we were talking before the show, I was kind of lamenting over some things that have happened at the year that have been a little difficult.

You know, just things I didn’t know were going to happen. You brought your lyre out and you’re singing the harp of David and lamenting. I was impressed, you know, but, uh, it was one, you know, it’s just, it’s some things here at the end of the year. That have been difficult that I wasn’t expecting to deal with.

So the Lord’s been giving me a really great grace to just, you know, sit and prepare the way and, and to wait as you’ve said, and to really just sit in peace. And so I’ve had a lot of time to pray about a lot of things and reflected over 2024. And. Um, a lot of the relationships and a lot of the places that I’ve seen men and, and really just the church men and women in the church today.

And so I was praying their day and I was thinking about some of that stuff and you know, a big problem that I’ve seen a lot in, in the men that I’ve journeyed with and some of the men that are in, in the men’s groups that we walk with, um, you know, people that are just in the church. Um, there’s been this sort of problem of, of just man, this sort of one foot in and one foot out in the faith.

And again, I, I live my life a long time that way. Talk about hokey pokey. Yeah, just sort of this special hokey pokey and, and really just this, this, like this desire to not want to pick and choose a side, right? Like I’m going to try to live in the world and I’m going to try to live in the church. And yes, we have to have jobs.

We have to have things. I’m not talking about like the literal sense of having to live in the world, but it’s almost like, okay, I know that there’s God and there’s all the promises that he has, but I’m not sure that that’s real. And so I don’t want to like put all my time into that and go crazy and give my whole life to God.

And then find out at the end that nothing’s really there and it was all just something someone made up And so I I don’t want to lose what I could have had in my own life So there’s just kind of one foot one one in One foot in one foot out and this kind of desire to play it safe with god like i’m going to do enough with god to where Like god knows who I am and and possibly if if jesus were to come back tomorrow that maybe i’d make it in But I also am going to continue to flirt with the world and the things that they offer, because I want my cake and eat it too.

Like I don’t want to choose one or the other, because what if whatever I choose isn’t a safe bet, right? What if whatever I choose doesn’t turn out to pay out right. In the sense of like, Diversifying your money, right? For instance, well, what if I put it, if I put it all in that Apple stock and it crashes, then I’ve lost everything.

So I just want to diversify my money and put it everywhere, which is a smart thing, but it’s not always so smart to do in your faith because you’re pretty much hedging your bets. And God doesn’t like that. God wants us to make a choice and he wants us to choose him. It’s not about spreading out your, your life and yourself so that you can walk in both worlds and kind of jump back and forth with, you know, whichever, whichever way the balls.

You know, whichever side’s winning, right? Or whichever side is offering you more at the time. But I see that in a lot of lives of men today. I see it in a lot of the people we’re working with. Like, hey, I want to change my life, but I still want to do all the other things I’ve been doing. I just really want to feel better about myself for a little while.

I don’t really want to change. So can I sort of keep walking this life over here and then kind of stick my toe in the life of a Christian? You know, because we’re not just talking about Catholics. It’s every Christian out there. It’s a lot of parts of the faith you see this in. where people are trying to put on the pose of, I’m a good Christian and I’m giving my life to Christ on stuff.

But they’re still over here living fully in the world and they haven’t made a choice. They’re playing both sides of the table. Yeah. Um, that’s kind of like what you’re talking about. The world’s very good. at giving misdirections or distractions. Uh, every day we go about setting the course that we need to do in order to provide, uh, income for our family and to answer emails and to do everything we can.

And then sometimes during that busyness, we kind of like forget that God’s even part of our life. You know, cause we’re distracted by everything else. So that is the, the encouraged, uh, I guess, incursion of misdirection of what the world tells us to focus on. And the danger of that is, is that over time, we not only neglect going to God or spending time in prayer, we start developing our own philosophy.

Yeah. We start justifying, well, you know, I mean, life’s pretty good, you know, I mean, we’ve missed, you know, for, for Catholics, you know, we’re, we’re supposed to go to mass every, every Sunday. Yeah. And that’s just, that’s just the expectation, you know, of, of being a Catholic. Yeah. Um, and not to say that every person that’s not in the Catholic faith, you know, don’t, doesn’t go to a Sunday worship all the time, but I do know a lot of people, cause I came from that, that, uh, that faith that sometimes golfing or, uh.

Hunting or fishing fishing sports. Yeah, right usurp that time, you know, that’s the important part and you know, everyone needs recreation I totally get it. I’m not, you know land blasting people like that because sometimes you just you know Sometimes unfortunately sporting events are always on like sunday.

Yeah, even within the catholic faith. We have volleyball basketball I mean, so it’s kind of like catholic run sports organizations, right? so there is that that that process that sometimes we We don’t know We negate the sense of worship and community worship and we, we, we create our own philosophy and say, well, uh, uh, God loves me, you know, but I believe more spiritual life rather than religious life.

And when we start divesting, you’re talking about, you know, financing stuff, we start divesting faith from spiritual or religion. from spirit, we, that’s what the danger we form, we form our own faith, we form our own philosophy and we get further and further from the truth and we make up our own idea of who God is or who Christ is or who Buddha is or who, uh, you know, uh, Allah is.

And so it gets to the point where we’re, we’re, we’re so convoluted in our faith that we don’t really know who it is we believe in. And then we started to believe more in ourselves. Yeah. And we, you just start to struggle and you’re wearing these masks and things, right? Like that’s the thing. A lot of us, and I know, cause again, I’m not pointing my finger at anybody but myself here, you know, in my past and things.

I would, I would put on the Christian mask and the church mask on Sunday, just like I would the work mask and the, this friend mask and this guy mask. Yeah, for an hour and a half you wear it. Yeah. And wear it. And you’re like, okay, I did enough to check the boxes to. You know, if I die tomorrow, if I have a heart attack, get hit by a bus, maybe God will look mercifully upon me and I’ll go to heaven because I, I did some things and that’s dangerous because you, you start to, it’s almost like you’re, you believe you can earn your way into heaven and that’s not what it’s about.

We’re supposed to be doing things out of love, but it’s like love doesn’t hedge their bets and I keep saying that phrase and. You know, I’m sure everybody listening is familiar, but if you’re not like hedging, your bets is really just, it’s a phrase. It’s like, I don’t want to, I’m afraid of making a mistake.

So I’m going to, I’m going to spread things out. Right. I’m going to put things out there, um, and play both sides of the issue so that I come out either way. It’s that gambling turn, right? I’m going to hedge my bet while things like hedge funds, right. It’s, it’s playing things so that. There really is no opportunity for loss and that you come out smelling like a rose, no matter what happens, but we can’t do that with our faith.

God, you know, what does Jesus say in the Bible? You can’t serve God in mammon, right? Like you can’t. He, he says that multiple times. You can’t have a foot in this and a foot in that. It’s one or the other, right? You can’t put your hands to the plow and then turn back and look back because guess what?

You’re going to have the most crazy line that you, you’ve ever, you know, dug in the sand to plant crops. Like you’re going to be crazy and all over the place. So Jesus tells us that over and over again. But the thing is, it’s, it’s human nature for us to want to hedge our bets, right? Like we’re so afraid.

Of choosing wrong in things right instead of instead of like what is my heart leading me to or what is god calling me to? So we hedge our bets when we’re not sure what to go all in on, right? We want the safe play and we don’t know You know, we we start becoming a little bit everywhere and we get everywhere.

It’s like Trying to do 8 million things well, you’re never going to be able to do that because you can’t, like, you can’t give enough yourself to all these different things to really do all of them well. That’s why people like, very rarely do you see an athlete play football and baseball, Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson’s like, that’s it.

But how many players have ever played in the NFL, right? Or in the major league that weren’t able to do that because it’s, it’s a crazy talented person that can do that. For the most part, we have to concentrate on the one thing, right? And that’s why Jesus says, again, there’s one thing that matters, right?

There’s one thing. And so, We have to quit hedging our bets and this time for admin is a perfect time to do that Like as we’re preparing for the lord, that’s what we should be doing Like lord, where are the places in my life? Like we talked about last week that that i’m not surrendering to you that i’m not giving to you Where are the places that I still have?

My leg over in the, in the, in the secular world. Right. And still trying to live and have my cake and eat it too. Like I want to tell Jesus, I love him and I’ll give him my life. But over here, I’m still doing all these simple things that I know I shouldn’t be doing. And I’m not really making that much effort to stop them.

Or I’m turning all my attention to. to building up treasure on earth and all those things instead of using my gifts for what God wants them for. So there’s a lot of that that I think that we see like guys will come to us and we see it when they come to the group. It’s like, man, I want to change my life.

And I, I just, you know, I need help. And then they start to find help and then they disappear and you see them. You’re like, well, what’s going on? I’m fine now. I felt better. I went to confession. You guys really helped me. And six months later you see them and they’re in the same mess again. It’s because we can’t, it’s like trying to, to stand on two different skateboards and somebody push you as fast as they can down the road.

Eventually because of the curvature of the road, the obstacles in the way, those skateboards are going to start to spread and you’re either going to get cracked like a wishbone, you’re going to fall off and hurt yourself, or you’re going to have to choose one to jump on and with both feet and ride to avoid danger, to avoid falls in the pitfalls of life.

And that’s what, what we need to be thinking about here in Advent is like. I need to start making this choice and and stop being the people that that are really Just giving in to this hedging my bets and and out of fear Trying to live in both worlds because what if what if I give all my life and my time to god and none of that’s It’s all mumbo jumbo right and and i’m just dead and then I missed out on this opportunity to have this amazing life because I, I gave my life to the Lord and did all the things he wanted because again, so many of us look at equate giving our lives to Christianity and to Christ is becoming a servant, like a slave, not a servant, but a slave where it’s not like the amazing life that waits for you is in Christ, but we just can’t get out of the world.

So we, you know, we kind of make a deal with God. We’re like, okay, well, I’m going to continue to kind of do things over here. I need you to look the other way, but I’ll show up on these days and I’ll try to basically live by the commandments and, and I’ll try to partake in the sacraments every once in a while.

And, and maybe I’ll find a little time for prayer here and there. Usually when I need something, but like I’ll try to pray a little bit more than that. Maybe some prayers of gratitude and we wind up living this mediocre life, right? It’s not choosing either side and, and we know what the Lord says about that too, right?

He talks about that in scripture, being lukewarm and spitting you out of your mouth. We’re going to talk about that too, but this is a struggle that, you know, we’re trying to, to live in that world of Christianity and to do things as a Catholic we’re called to do, which is good. We should, but we also have to make that choice in that firm decision of the will.

That like when I start to move over to this Christian life, I can’t be, I can’t play both sides. It’s just like dating two women in your life is not a good idea, right? You’re going to wind up hurting one or both and losing both of them, stringing two jobs along forever that you’re trying to decide because you’re afraid about what if you pick this one or what if you pick that one and you don’t make a decision, you wind up losing an opportunity for both, right?

Because they’re going to hire somebody else. They’re not going to wait on you forever. And that’s why God and, and Jesus in, in parts of Matthew and other parts of scripture is very adamant about like standing guard and being ready and, and keeping watch and staying awake during Advent because it’s this, it’s this, it’s this constant calling to say you have to leave those other things behind.

You have to put that other stuff behind you. And if you don’t, you’re going to always struggle and there’s always going to be difficulty. Right. Well, you’re talking about essentially the soul. Our soul is essential because God created us, you know, God’s creation is our soul, but yet he gives us that, that free will to either love him or not love him, you know, and like going back, what I was saying is like, you know, I think everyone has this Exploratory phase in our life.

What is God in my life? What is my identity in Him? Do I believe in Him, or should I believe in Him? Those are fine. You know, we’re not questioning that. I mean, I did that when I was in my youth. You know, I say, okay, this is my mother and father’s faith, Presbyterian Church. You know, I believe in God, I believe in Jesus, but what does that mean?

It means something to them, but what does it mean to me? You know, and, and, uh, by the way, we’re, what we’re saying is like, if, if you know God is important in your life, Christ is important in your life, we’re just, this is a wake up call saying, dive deeper into it. We’re not, we’re not chastising people who are, who are, don’t know it about it because they weren’t taught about it, where this is a call to action, you know, but we’re talking for people who know better like myself and like you, we talk about, we know better and we know that we have to set aside.

What’s in our life is important, and that is serving God, that is loving God, that is loving others, and that is choosing God’s will above our own will. And we’ve had a lot of Hard Knocks Life lessons about how we would go against that sometimes. But for a lot of us, we’ve gotten to the point where we know what’s important.

What is healthy for us? And, and that is what this is all about is that, you know, we’re, we’re pleading for you guys who, who are, have your feet in both faith and also in the world. It’s not a happy place to be in. There’s no good returns on this. Right. You can’t, you can’t ever be whole. I mean, Because when you’re hedging your bet, you, you, you’re refusing to commit to anything, right?

It’s like, I’m just going to kind of be with both and never really fully commit. And you can’t have a relationship without commitment, right? Like you can’t have a real relationship. I remember in college, like I really liked this girl and she was very popular. You know, we started to see each other and then next thing you know, I was like, Hey, so, you know, where are we in the status of things?

Like, are we seeing other people? Are we not? She’s like, well, I like you a lot, but I want to see other people. Like, I want to continue to date other people. And I remember I took her out one night and then like, I took her back to her apartment. And it was early. We went to dinner or something just one night just to hang out.

And then I went and met some buddies at a bar and she was already there with another guy that she like had gone on two dates in one night. And I remember what that made me feel like. I was like. Geez, like I dropped you off like 20 minutes ago, you’re already like out with another guy, right? And it just made me like, I loved her.

I wanted her to love me. I, I, I don’t know if I was crazy in love with her, but I certainly had feelings for her. And, you know, and to see like, to be treated like that is not a way to treat anybody. And when we continue to walk in this light, that’s the way we treat God is like, God, I know you love me and you’re always going to be there for me because you said you will be.

And eventually I might choose that. But until then, like, I kind of want to, you know, I kind of want to keep dating around, you know, I want to date my job and my success and my money and my, you know, whatever else, my addictions and everything else, instead of like committing to the Lord and the Lord doesn’t like that behavior.

He doesn’t, and you can’t. You can’t do that in the faith because it leads you to indifference, right? You know, it leads you to indifference and that’s one of the biggest You know downfalls of christianity and the and the people that claim to follow it in the world today Is this just indifference i’ll do enough to check enough boxes But really like i’m indifferent to what happens like I just want to live a good life and whatever happens happens And it’s, it’s pretty dangerous and we’ve got some quotes here from some of our favorite folks.

You know, Bishop Sheen, Fulton Sheen, we’re going to, Archbishop Fulton Sheen, we’re going to quote him. But, you know, he says, by the mere fact that we do not go forward, we go backward. There are no planes in the spiritual life. We are either going uphill or coming down. Furthermore, the pose of indifference is only intellectual.

The will must choose. And even though an indifferent soul does not positively reject the infinite, the infinite rejects it. The talents that are unused are taken away and the scriptures tell us, but because thou art lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth. That’s Revelations, right?

Where, where Jesus is saying, like, you got to pick or I’m spitting you out of my mouth. Like, I’m not going to, I’m not going to be the side piece to the world. Right. Like, I hate to say it like that, but I’m not going to be the second option to the world. Like you give your life to me or there’s going to be consequences.

No one wants to be treated like that. And I love what he says. Like. You’re either going forward or you’re going backwards. There’s no flat land where you just get to stop and rest. The faith is forwards and backwards, uphill and downhill. And the, the pose of indifference is only intellectual. It’s, it’s in your mind, the will, your heart, the will has to choose.

Right. And so he really warns us there. And then St. Maximilian Colby, another great man. I mean, he says the most deadly poison of our time is indifference. And that’s what we see is like. I’m going to do enough of this and I’m still going to be this man over here. And whatever happens is like, either way, I sort of win because if I die and there is no God and there’s no heaven and none of that stuff, then at least I got to have a fun, successful, amazing life.

And awesome. I didn’t lose, but if there is a God and I do enough. To where I slide in the back door before St. Peter closes the gate all the way, then, then, Hey, I made it. And, and what did it hurt? Right? So it’s just this crazy place of not choosing and standing in the middle of the road, and when you do that, you get run over and.

That’s what, uh, the last thing I’ll quote here is Francis Chan. He’s a very popular Protestant pastor. I love some of the things he has to say. He says this lukewarm people don’t really want to be saved from their sin. They want to only be saved from the penalty of their sin. Right? So like, I don’t really want to live the life.

I just want the forgiveness. I just want the grace. I want the mercy, but I what makes me feel good, but not get penalized. Yeah, that’s it. I don’t really call it sin, but. But just minimize it. Yeah. Yeah. No, you’re exactly right. I mean, it’s just like, I want my cake and eat it too. And that’s not what we’re supposed to do.

We can’t hedge our bets. And, you know, there’s some old Testament examples of this that I wanted to bring out too. And really a bad example and a good example, because at the end of it all, like I said, it’s about committing to and cultivating a relationship with God. You cannot hedge your bets with God’s it’s like I’m either I’m not gonna play both sides of the field I’m either I’m all in like I’m pushing all my chips to God’s table and I’m gonna live my life that way If you don’t then then you’re gonna be pretty disappointed at the end of your life Right, and I think there’s gonna be a lot of so called christians in the world that are very disappointed when that day comes The thing all I have to do is just be saved by the blood of Christ and live a decent life, but not actually live the way that Christ called me to, right?

There’s action that has to take place with our, with our yes to the Lord. We have to, we have to partake in that salvation. It’s not just a one time thing. It’s at least that’s what we believe as Catholics and it’s what I knew to be true because why the heck would Wow, what’s the point of living any sort of good life or a christian life?

If you just get a free pass to heaven, right no matter what you do It’s it’s doesn’t make any sense and jesus certainly doesn’t preach that himself. So This is all about committing to and cultivating a relationship with God. It’s a choice. And, and the thing is like, God always asks people to make choices.

And I love this. I was reminded of Elijah and, and the prophets, right? When he had to basically go to the Mount of Mount Carmel. And, and, and have a one man standoff with like 400 prophets of mm-hmm . Of this, these false gods all God. Yeah. Right. The, the, the kingdom had fallen under the, the, the control and the power of these pagan gods and ball and all this stuff.

And so the Lord calls Elijah. Right. And even the king of Israel was under the influence of Yeah. Of Pagan. His wife. Yeah. All of them. And it happened multiple times in the Old Testament. I. Come on guys. Yeah. It’s like, how many times does God have to show you who he is? But like, Oh, signs and wonders. Well, how many do I have to give you a part of the red sea?

I, I did all of these things. I saved you from the lion’s den. I did all this stuff. Like, what else do I have to do for you? I sent you my son, right? I sent you a King that slaughtered a giant. Like I’ve done all these things, but. So, you know, obviously at this point, you know, we’re in first Kings, but, but, um, Elijah, you know, he goes this mountain and I love what it says here.

I mean, it’s just a couple of verses I want to read. It says, so Ahab sent to all the sons of Israel and gathered the prophets together at Mount Carmel and Elijah came near to all the people and said, how long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal, then follow him.

The next line is key. And it’s where a lot of people are today. And the people did not answer him a word so basically looked at him like yeah, we We’re gonna just kind of keep both feets in the same thing right now We’re gonna do enough to keep god pleased over here, but we’re also we’re going to do.

And so He’s calling out to us the way that God is calling us. We’re living in a society like that today, surrounded by all sorts of pagan gods and terrible things that are calling us away from the Christian life and away from the Catholic faith. And away from being the people that God calls us to be.

And we’re standing there in the middle of it going like, well, I don’t know, I kind of like these pagan gods. They’re a little bit more lax on the rules, right? And I get to do a little bit more of what I want over here. And, and, you know, I want to be a better person. I want these better things, but also like a lot of this over here too.

Right. You know, and so, What we’re trying to say through this episode today is what Elijah, you know, said to these people there when he’s saying, will you, how long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal, then follow him. Make up your mind. He didn’t say follow God or go to hell.

He’s like, make a choice, make a choice. You’re either in or you’re out. That’s what he’s saying. That’s what God sent him to say. And so he does, it calls down, you know, they build the two temples in the fires and he pours water three times over his fire and God lights it and everybody converts back to God.

But we shouldn’t have to continue to ask God for signs. We got the greatest sign in the world from Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ went all in. He didn’t hedge his bets. He didn’t sit up there and go. Well, you know father. I don’t know like I know you want me to do this But maybe something will happen, you know Maybe maybe the things that we think happen won’t happen and they’ll just kind of find their way back I’d rather sit up here because it’s comfortable and i’m in charge of everything and there’s not all that pain and death and whipping and nails and suffocation and Rejection and all that stuff.

So I’ll just I’ll kind of stay up here. Maybe the last minute I can just kind of swoop down there and snap my finger and fix things. He didn’t do that He pushed his chips all the way in as we’re going to see that starts in this advent season As he can’t chooses of his own will he made a choice right to become flesh to become vulnerable To live 33 years and then be tortured in the most horrible death that anybody’s ever faced Because he made a choice for love You And that love led him to choose us.

Right. And so that’s what we’re talking about here in the faith is it’s time to get off the fence. It’s time to quit hedging our bets. And we need to be like another person of the old Testament. I want to read one more thing really quickly. And then we’ll start talking about closing out here, Victor, but like, you know, David, you know, we, we’ve talked about David a bunch, David, warrior King, David falling to lust and adultery and sin.

David was human. He made mistakes, but at the end of the day, He’s a man after the lo over after my own heart is what God said about David. So we see David in Psalm 16 and he starts to cry out the Lord and it’s actually called a song of trust and security in God. This is what it looks like to make a choice.

David said, preserve me, oh God, for in you. I take refuge. I say to the Lord, you are my Lord. I have no good apart from you. Right? Then he says, as for the saints in the land, they are the noble and whom is all my delight. Those who choose another god multiply their sorrows. Their libations of blood I will not pour out, or take their names upon my lips.

The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup, you hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Yes, I have a god, a goodly heritage. I bless the Lord who gives me counsel. And the night also my heart instructs me. I keep the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand. I shall not be moved.

Therefore, my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices. My body also dwells secure, for you do not give me up to Sheol, or let your godly one see the pit. You show me the path of life, and your presence there is fullness of joy, and your right hand are pleasures forevermore. That’s somebody who’s making a choice.

David says right there. I don’t want, those who choose another God multiply their sorrows. Their libations of blood I will not pour out or take their names upon my lips. You are who I choose. You walk by my side. You are my part. You are my steadfastness. This is the men that we’re called to be. That’s like what Joshua said, you know, he said, as for me and my family, we worship the Lord.

I don’t know what you’re going to do, but we’re going to worship the Lord. Yeah. So make a decision and choice. Yeah. And, and, and it changed the dynamic because they came into the, the land with milk and honey, but there’s always been problems. There’s always been people who are wavered, who are indecisive.

And, and that is because probably, you know, in all aspects. Um, with, with the sense of study, with a sense of faith, with a sense of prayer, sometimes, you know, that’s, that’s great, but there’s probably something like a traumatic event or something that happened to them. We don’t know. Yeah. You know, and like I said, I’m not going to go dive deep into that in the, in the behavioral health side, but I know there’s been a lot of people have been hurt by people who have been in the power and authority of the church.

We’ve, we’ve, we’ve recognized this and we’re, we’re sorry to hear that that ever happened and within all kinds of faith. It happens, you know, and, and we recognize that, that that’s probably some people may be struggling with that. And we’re, we’re not getting onto you at all, but we’re saying we, we understand, but, but God is love.

God loves you very much. God, it wasn’t that person that harms you or the person that spoke evil of you or threw you out of the church. That wasn’t God. That was, that was that person’s own faith, their own philosophy that they were letting their lives. Lead their lives and not act as a Christian individual, right?

And that’s God gave his life for yours. Yes That’s what he did. He gave his life for yours He thought you were worth dying for so much So that as we’re gonna see in a couple weeks here as we celebrate his birth that he chose of his own volition Like I said, he didn’t hedge his bets He pushed all his chips the middle of the table and said I’m willing to give everything for them, right?

So and you hear it in John 17 So I am with you and they can be with you as I am with you, right? So that they can be and they can know that you love them as you have loved me. That’s what Jesus says. That’s his whole mission for coming here is to show that love. So we have to be like David, even though it is mistakes, right?

We’ve all made mistakes as you were just alluding to. David still pushed his chips to the middle of the table. He went and he asked for repentance. He asked to be forgiven. Then he lived the rest of his life as best he could in the, in the ways of the Lord. Right. Even though there were some consequences and things for his decisions He still grew that and cultivated that relationship.

That is what the christian life is about. It’s about making a choice It’s saying i’m not going to choose these things anymore. I’m going to choose you doesn’t mean i’m perfect Doesn’t mean i’m not going to fall But it does mean that with everything that I do just like when I go to confession I’m going to make a choice i’m going to make an amendment To live my life a different way.

Right. And I’m going to try everything in my power to make sure that I do that. That’s what the Christian life is called to. That’s what waits. That’s what, if you want joy and you want purpose and you want peace in your life, that is the cost is simply that I’m going to make that choice. I’m going to stop hedging my bets, push those chips in the middle of the table, and then live that way for the rest of my life.

So Evan is a chance Victor, for all of us. To to make a choice and to make a stand right? Let this be the year if you’re tired of it If you keep telling yourself well john, I try and I keep going back to little things Then you haven’t really made a a choice of the will is built as fulton sheen was saying you haven’t really chosen from your will Right you haven’t that choice of the will is i’m going to do this no matter what happens No matter if it kills me i’m going to give my life to the lord So we have to make that choice.

We have to take that stand And we have to let go of the things in the world that will never fulfill us and go all in our relationship with Christ. That’s the only way that we’re going to find the joy, the peace, and the happiness that we’re looking for. So. You know as we leave out here, I just want to say like make up your mind and do it Stop settling for a mediocre life.

Stop playing it safe Like push all your chips to the middle of christ’s table and watch what happens. That’s what happened in my life That’s what’s happened in yours and I know that both of our lives are better because of it Yeah If you spend time looking in the rearview mirror and thinking about what you’re going to lose and what you didn’t get Then you’re never going to be happy.

But if you turn straight forward, you keep your hand to the plow and you look ahead of you and stop looking back and you make that choice to continue to do that, you’re going to have a life that you can’t believe. So folks, again, thank you for listening to the show. Um, it’s been a joy traveling through Advent with you.

We’ve got another great show coming up next week. If you love the podcast, if you. If you’ve just happened upon us for the first time today, like and subscribe, whether it’s on Apple or a Spotify or YouTube channel, whatever it is, like and subscribe, that’s going to help us grow our subscribers, our followers.

It’s going to help us get out in front of more people. And then look, take and copy that link. If you were helped by this episode and share it with somebody in your life that needs to hear it, share it on Facebook, Instagram, share it with somebody that you know, one of your children, your neighbor, whoever it is that may need to hear it.

Because it’s an easy way to evangelize. And if you’ve gotten something out of it, chances are other people will too. So Victor, as we close in prayer here, I just want to read and pray. I want to pray this Psalm because that’s what we do. We pray the Psalms. I want to pray the beginning and the last part of the Psalm and then we’ll end the show.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Psalm 16. Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the Lord, you are my guide. I have no good apart from you. Therefore, my heart is glad and my soul rejoices. My body also dwells secure for you. Do not give me up to shield or let your Godly ones see the pit.

You show me the path of life and your presence. There is fullness of joy in your right hand or pleasures forevermore, and the name of the Father of the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Filed Under: Podcast

December 9, 2024 By justaguyinthep Leave a Comment

Advent: Preparing the Way of the Lord

Victor and I are diving into something really close to my heart—what Advent is truly about. It’s so easy to let this season slip by in the rush to Christmas, but Advent is such a gift if we really lean in. It’s not just about lighting candles or decorating—it’s about inviting Christ into the deepest parts of our lives.

We talk about how Advent challenges us to open the doors we’ve kept locked for far too long—the places of shame, hurt, and brokenness. Jesus came into the world as a baby, humble and vulnerable, and He’s waiting to come into our hearts in the same way.

In this episode, we break open scriptures like John 1 (“The Word became flesh”), Isaiah 61 (“He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted”), and Philippians 2 (“He emptied himself…”) to explore why Christ came and how we can prepare ourselves to welcome Him fully. We also share personal stories about letting Jesus into the messiness of our lives and what happens when we do.

I’m praying this episode inspires you to make this Advent more than just a countdown to Christmas. Let’s prepare our hearts, invite Him in, and let His light shine in our darkest places.

 

 

Well, welcome back to the Pew everybody. I’m your host, John Edwards, and here across the table from me. Is my co host and cohort Victor Adams. Yeah. I feel like I’ve been on sabbatical for a while. It seems like I’ve been busy, busy band. Tell us all this stuff about, uh, giving a Tuesday. Yeah, it was a lot of stuff, man.

First of all, like we’ve, it feels like sabbatical. Cause I think we did two or three episodes in a row together, like at one time. So it’s been several weeks. I know we thought about getting the wardrobe over here. That way we can change three, three shows in one day. And that guy’s what y’all wouldn’t know, but you know, if he had the same.

Yeah. Cause I think I took my vest off on one of those. So I saw the same under, you know, the button down under it, but the vest was gone. It’s kind of like Clark Kent and his glasses, I guess. I’m a different person. That’s right. But no, we did some episodes together, uh, there. So you and I hadn’t been together in a couple of weeks in here.

And then I had Heather Kim on last week that did the, uh, encountering Emmanuel on Advent and her book. Uh, it was really great to spend time with Heather. She’s great. Yeah, she is. She’s, she’s, uh, she’s a gift and we share a similar heart. Like I noticed a lot of the similar. ways that we talk about the Lord and preach about the Lord.

And it was just, it was neat to get to spend that time with her. I look forward to more opportunities in the future, you know, to, to minister with her and then her husband, Jake, who works with Dr. Bob too. I just love hearing people that just dive so deep in the Holy spirit. Yeah. I mean, it’s like, it’s so encouraging for me to go like, man, I can do that too.

Yeah. Yeah. She’s awesome. And she’s great at that. Um, but yeah, so we’re in here. As a follow up, you know, it’s our first Advent episode together this season, so I’m excited for that. Happy Advent, everybody. Yeah, happy Advent. That’s for sure. Fresh off an Advent retreat with Marie Miller the other night in her own parish, it went really well.

We had a lot of people there. It’s a beautiful night. A lot of people going to confession and just worked with Marie to call people into this time of preparation and understanding, you know, really, even though it’s a season, this is the way we need to enter in and, and the, Posture we need to have in our life all the time.

So it’s been a whirlwind of a few weeks. You know, Jacob broke his arm over Thanksgiving in two places. We’re still trying to get that surgery done and all that. And so folks out there, if you don’t mind, throw us prayer up for my son, Jacob and, uh, healing and for the surgeons, hopefully we can have that done.

But, uh, but yeah, so there’s a lot going on. I’ve just, you, you alluded to giving Tuesday. I wanted to thank everybody, uh, here in the beginning for, uh, All the giving they they gave on giving tuesday and before that we had advanced giving we wound up hitting our goal Um, we beat it by a thousand dollars or so And it was a lot of last minute stuff.

There was a lot of advanced giving there was a lot in between So thank you to anybody that gave whether it was 20 bucks five bucks a thousand dollars, whatever it was Thank you for giving uh in supporting our ministry It means the world and many of you sent nice comments and just kind things. You said You You know, is why you were giving it and all of that.

So thank you. It’s going to allow us to continue to move forward, to bring on the people we need to, um, right now we were in the, in the need of hiring a full time admin. Uh, my friend Derek has been working with me. He’s moved on to another ministry. And so we wish him the best and thank you for all the work he did here.

But we’re going to need some admin work. Uh, so if somebody, if you’re open to that or you have those skills, please apply. Yeah. Apply. You can send me an email at, uh, john at pew ministries. org. And we’ll look at that and see if it’s a good fit. Um, also we’re looking to hire missionaries to bring on the night train to Victor.

So that’s something else we’re doing there. But thank you all for helping us hit our goal. Um, you know, we. We put together a good campaign, a campaign. Derek really did a lot with that. And he was the reason we did so well with it. So thank you, Derek, for that. Uh, and all the work you did, but really folks, all of you that give each and every month, you’re the reason we get to do this and continue to do it.

So thank you. And please know that we’re going to use that ministry to help bring more men into healing and restoration each and every day, uh, through our Paris groups and through this podcast and through everything else. Uh, finally, I just want to tell folks that if you didn’t hear in the last couple of weeks with the black Friday sale and all of that.

Um, we are, I want to announce here again that I’m going to be going to Greece and Turkey. We’re going to be walking in the footsteps of St. Paul. I’m going to go alongside Father James Clark from here in the Diocese of Memphis. We’ve already started filling the trip. I think there’s already 10 or 12 people that are signed up in the first few days of So it’s a limited space.

I think we’re taking 45 people. It’s going to be one bus, but it’s going to be an amazing trip. You’re going to go to Athens Ephesus and Corinth and Thessalonica and all these other sites. You’re, you’re going to be able to go on a four day, a GNC cruise. You’re going to go to all these islands like Mykonos and.

And Patmos and all these places. It’s going to be great fun, but also food and you’re gonna learn a lot. Yeah, that’s the thing. It’s, you’re going to see the culture, the food, the drink, all that stuff, but you’re going to immerse yourself in the New Testament. I mean, really, what, what happened from Acts and beyond, um, beyond the gospels is where we’re going to be.

And you’re going to get to walk in the footsteps of St. Paul. You’re going to see where he preached. We’re going to visit the churches he wrote letters to, obviously, and the ones I mentioned there. Um, we’re going to Be able to visit the house where, uh, the blessed mother was said to have spent her last days before the assumption.

Um, obviously going to get to, to spend time in the cave, the grotto area of Patmos where St. John wrote revelation. Um, and then you’re going to visit the seven churches of revelation. So there’s so much there, places where Paul and Silas preached in so much Greek history and mythology and all that stuff at those places too, that we’re going to see.

So we’d love to have you with us. And I can tell you as always do if you travel with us. I can guarantee you that you’re going to feel seen, loved and heard that I’m going to spend time with you. I’m going to be glad you’re there. Father Cork’s going to be the same way. We’re going to laugh. We’re going to have fun.

We’re going to help you build memories that are going to last a lifetime. Not only are you going to grow in your faith, but you’re going to grow in relationships that you can have for the rest of your life. All of our pilgrims have experienced that, and I can’t wait to bring more and some old ones along with us.

So folks, if you want to, we’re headed to Greece and Turkey, September 9th through the 20th of 2025. So you can check the show notes down below. There’s a link there for the, uh, for the pilgrimage. Or if you want to, you can go to our website and now at the top, it says events, book John and pilgrimages. You can click that and you can find the links there below our calendar on our bookmeet page.

But folks, we’d love to have you. And again, If you’re going to do it register soon, because it’s going to fill up fast and we’re limited to 45 spots. So hope you’ll join us. Hope you’ll consider it and look forward to seeing you there in Greece and Turkey next year. So Vic, uh, now that that’s out of the way, and we can really focus on where we are in this episode.

And at the end of this year, Um, you know, we always like to do stuff in the liturgical seasons of the church and the church and all of her majesty and all of her, her intelligence and her great wisdom gives us these times of the liturgical year so that we stop and we pause and we quiet ourselves and we reflect on, on what we’re doing.

And, you know, I gave this talk the other night at this Advent retreat with Marie, it was really great and it was a lot of fun. It’s her beautiful voice. It was just, she’s amazing. Um, but I didn’t know what I was really going to say and I started praying into all this stuff and the name of the, of the retreat was preparing the way of love because her album is called the way of love.

And so she was going to present on St. Therese and tie in some of those things to Jesus in Advent. And so I just. You know, called my talk preparing the way of love, the word made flesh. And as I started to ponder and to read and to think about all this stuff, I started thinking about, man, what is it, what I really want to talk to people about and what I want to invite people into.

And while Advent is a penitential season, right? It’s, it’s one that’s often treated like the redheaded stepchild of the church. You know, I said that to Heather on the last episode too. Because when we think of these, these seasons, the church Lent is like, you know, King, and it should be because, you know, we get invited to walk into the desert with our Lord for 40 days.

We get invited into his passion. Um, you know, we, we, we’re there with him at the cross and his life, death and resurrection. Right. And, and, and there’s just, it’s such a powerful time to remember what the Lord has done for us. But. If you really stop and think about it, none of that would have been possible if the God of the universe hadn’t decided that he wanted to take on flesh and be born as a, as a, as a child, as a baby and to go through 33 years of life, um, before he even began or 30 years of life before he really began his mission.

Of redemption for the world as far as you know, what we know and what we see in the scriptures. Yeah. So he took on these things. He made himself vulnerable. He became this baby and was born in a feeding trough in a, in a town called the house of bread. Right. That’s what be mm-hmm. Bethlem means, and this foreshadowing of the Eucharist and all of these things.

But so often as you know, Victor, like we can get into the, the fray of the world and the rat rat race of the, of the season from Halloween on. Right. You hit Thanksgiving, you’re doing all the stuff. You’re, you know, going to both sides of the families doing all that. You’re barely done burping up the turkey.

And then all of a sudden it’s the first day of Advent, which really happened quick this year. You know, it was like Thursday, Sunday Advent. And so. We go from the Thanksgiving and all those things to Advent. And then what is, what really happens? Our mind goes from Thanksgiving to Christmas because quite honestly, they’re putting out, you know, Christmas stuff in July now, 4th of July, there’s Christmas stuff out.

And so the world’s pushing for their commercialism and all those things and to concentrate on Santa Claus and all the Hallmark movies and all that junk instead of what it’s really about. And. So, Advent, a lot of the time, gets looked over. It’s like, alright, let me throw my pink and purple candles out there.

Let me get out my chocolate Advent each day, a little piece of chocolate and eat it. And, you know, maybe try to go to some church a little bit more. But really what it is, is this time of waiting and preparation for the coming of the Lord. Now, the Lord’s already been born, right? We’re celebrating His first coming, uh, as a child in Bethlehem.

Here in Christmas in a few weeks, but really also what we’re celebrating is the, is, is what’s to come. Right. Right. This preparation and waiting for the, for the second return of the King. Right. Where he’s going to come back and, and, and, and bring everything to justice and, and, you know, and, and to, uh, us to fulfillment.

Right. Right. So this is where we are, but for so often, that’s what I meant by being a redhead stepchild, like Advent’s just kind of like, Oh yeah, it’s the purple season. Yeah. You know, candles and wreaths. And then eventually they’ll put up the trees and, and we blow by it. And if we do that, we’re really missing a.

A beautiful opportunity to journey with our Lord and to prepare and to really invite him into our hearts to see not only where To remember that he wasn’t only born into this world But he wants to be born into our lives and not just wherever we are in the moment But like every portion of our lives He wants to be born into every moment every situation every difficulty every suffering every joy is what he wants to be born into and That’s why in the past we’ve had shows called The Word Made Flesh or The Word Was Made Flesh and Has The Word Been Made Flesh in Your Life?

And that’s something I think we’re going to discuss again a little bit today and just really try to bring the further attention to Advent because I don’t want this to go by, you know, there have already been one week in the season that went by and there’s only like three and a half weeks of Advent this year.

So, um, I really want people to be able to enter into this and to receive Advent for what it is. In the moment to prepare for what we’re preparing for, but for the greater vision of really looking at what this means for the rest of your life. I mean, you, you kind of did exactly what, um, I was going to say is that Advent is, is sometimes it’s a blend of Christmas in a sense of, you know, it’s like, almost like we celebrate Jesus, but we don’t really like, um, Um, explore what that means because we’re distracted, like you said, by, by movies and by, uh, gifts and so like that.

But a lot of us know that the connection between the gifts or the connection of the Magi giving to Jesus Christ and then the history for that. But really for me, like Advent is a time for just being thankful, just being appreciative of, of the things that I have been awakened to. In my life, my spiritual sense of my connection with the Holy Spirit, with Christ, but also, like you said, Christ coming down, taking on flesh, becoming human, fully human, fully divine.

And, and also, it allows, I think it allows us to be more sensitive to God. To knowing Christ because he went through a lot of things we’re going through, you know, like he knows what it’s like to, to be talked bad about. He knows what it’s like to be rejected. He knows what it’s like to try to help someone who, who people who refuse, like the Pharisees, you know, like if you only knew why I was here, you would be celebrating my, my, my, my entry into this world, you know, like he would say stuff like that all the time, you know?

And just imagine how like happy he was when people got it and how disappointed and sad that people didn’t connect with what he was trying to say. Um, and, and for us, you know, for, for this season, we had to be careful and sure what we connect with, connect with the loving, the lovingness of a, of a, of an amazing and merciful God, you know, and be thankful for, you know, your family, your job, even though things happen, suffering happens, and it may not have gone the way that you wanted.

But the thing is, is, is, Is that you have things to look at and say, God, thank you for this. You know, thanks for allowing me to, to realize who you are in my life. Thank you for, even though the gifts are great and everything else, but thank you for allowing me to have time with my family, you know, and, and I think we really kind of have to be careful about.

Uh, you know, grading what this, this season is all about. Sure. You know, well, and I mean, it is the way the church looks at it. It’s two different seasons, right? It’s you have Christmas and then you have Advent, right? So Advent is really dispreparing and the journey of the Magi and all these things as we draw closer to Christmas and all of that, but it’s, you know, it draws, it begs the question what you were talking about, which is like, Why, why did the Lord come?

Like, why did he come? And it was to enter into our mess. It was to enter into our brokenness. It was to save us. You know, where the catechism says, um, where Jesus Christ humbled himself to become man, where Adam, um, uh, uh, asserted himself to become like God. Right. So because of that, that assertion of Adam to say, no, like I want to be my own God with Eve, everything was severed.

Everything was broken. And so Jesus comes to right the wrongs, to be the new Adam, where the old Adam, uh, messed up and made mistakes, and where he calls the brokenness and the sin and the death that’s coming to the world. So Jesus comes to restore, he comes to reconcile, right? And that’s why I love really three readings that I like to read this time of year that kind of get me in the mindset of Advent and really helped me kind of start looking deeper into why Christ came, because.

As I said, when you look about Lent, we think it draws us, Jesus Christ is our savior. And while yes, he is, he did come to save us. Um, you know, through his life and death and resurrection, he also came as healer. Mm-hmm . Right? He came as healer. He, he came as, as this divine physician. And that’s really what we hear when we read some of these readings and what he wants to do in us.

So he’s coming to reconcile, which means to heal. He’s coming to heal that broken relationship, and that means that he has to heal things in us, right? Or the things that we don’t want anybody to see. The shame, the things that we have locked away, the, the difficulties. The wounds that we have, the wounds that we’ve, you know, put into other people, like the Lord wants to come into all of that brokenness.

And he chose to do that. He looked at his father and said, I’ll go, you know, send me. And then I will take their place. I’ll take on all of that so that there’s a, there’s an open door. There’s a reconciliation for them to become. Part of the the holy family of God again, right? And and so I love reading John 1 parts of it because it just really gets me into the mindset and and Really talks about some of these truths.

And so I want to read that really quickly So John 1 1 in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God He was in the beginning with God, all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came for testimony to bear witness to the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light. The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. We have beheld His glory, glory as if the only begotten Son from the Father. And from His fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father.

He has seen and made Him known. Man, I love that and it gives me chills every time I read it. I mean, just all of it talking about the light was coming to the world and the darkness could not overcome it. And that’s what Jesus came to do. All of us have that darkness. And, and again, we have the tendency, Victor, to read something like that and go, Oh yeah, he came in because there was so much darkness in the world then.

Well, look around you now. Mm hmm. Not only in the world around us, but also in our own hearts, in our own lives, the darkness that we can find ourselves in, the brokenness, the, the way we get off track, the way that we get off the beaten path. And the Lord wants to come into that brokenness. And so we say, like, why did he, he come?

And, and what I told people here tonight was, He came to do these things, to reconcile, to call us to repentance, to call us to healing, and to call us into relationship. Like that’s what he came to do, relationship with the Father. And we see that said here in this first passage from John. It says, but to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.

That’s what we were originally. And then everything was severed when we made mistakes, right? When Adam and Eve chose themselves over God, as the catechism says. And so now Jesus comes to give power to those, to become children of God. Again, this is the reconciliation that he’s talking about that I’m talking about here.

He comes so that we can become children of God and we stop identifying ourselves with children of the world or, or, or. Uh, children of brokenness and children’s of mistake and some of mistakes and all those things. It’s for us to become children of God, right? And so Jesus, it says, as Paul says in other parts of scripture, became poor so that we could be rich in his grace.

He came to pour out his grace over us, which is the only reason that we are ever found worthy for redemption is because of his grace and his love. And so he comes the word was made flesh He chose to bring on flesh and he doesn’t want to just be made flesh 2, 000 years ago He wants to be made flesh in our life right here right now each and every day In the midst of our burdens in the midst of our mistakes in the midst of our problems In the midst of our hardships and our difficulties right of our calamities That’s what saint paul means when he says that in second corinthians 12 9 Like when I’m weak, when I’m strong, come into my burdens, my hardships, my difficulties, because I need you.

And so he humbles himself. And this Advent season is a call for us to remember that and to follow in his footsteps, to humble ourselves and to allow him into our lives for him to be born, not only into this world, but into every possible place in our hearts and in our lives. But Victor, as you all know, the problem is so many of us, this knowledge stays here in our heads and it never moves our heart, which is the place of transformation.

Right. And you’re talking about the compatiwhat is it? Let me say this real quickly, correctly. Combativeness of the heart. Yeah. Where the heart, there’s a lot of wounds in the heart. I think our mind, we, we recwe remember things or remember situations or, but it’s like, we feel everything emotionally here.

So when something doesn’t agree with how we want to feel or how we want to feel at that time, we ignore it. Like I said, if I’m angry, I want to be angry, you know? If I’m frustrated, I’m going to be frustrated. If I’m going to be appreciative, then I’m more appreciative. But if we’re not, like, focused on the emotion that we are at a time, we can dismiss a lot of the things that God’s trying to give to us, or other people are trying to share with us as well.

Um, you know, like I said, I’ve been in the hospital chaplain. Uh, at the VA in the St. Jude Hospital and, um, I’ve been witness to many, many blessings, many miracles, uh, many aspects of the human condition of wanting reconciliation with God. You know, where people carry burdens for their whole lives, and even though they may not be Catholic, I’ll be honest with you, there’s a deathbed confession for everybody.

Yeah. You know, because there’s, there’s this awakening of like, oh my gosh. Um, this is it, and I need to make things right. I need to apologize, or I need to kind of like, I need to do something right now that’s not selfish. Sure. Um, and I wish to God that everybody had that experience, you know? Some people are just going to be the way they are going to be, but, you know, the change of heart is, like you said, the most crucial aspect of being a Christian.

Because when you remove the selfish intentions, or the anger, or the pain, and the hurt that people, other people cause you, and you hold onto that, it’s like you said before in other shows, it’s poison. Yeah. And we’re dosing ourselves with poison, expecting us to be healed, but yet you’re, we’re the ones that aren’t taking the antidote, which is Christ.

No, you’re a hundred percent right. And, and this is why we need in this season of preparation to start asking those things like, Jesus, where do you want to be born into my life? What is it that you know me better than I do Lord? And, and where do you want to go? And, and, and, and trusting him and giving him permission.

That’s why he does these other things. Like he comes to reconcile any, and that starts with repentance, right? Like he calls to. He calls us to repentance. What is the first thing he says when he’s of age and he’s been baptized? What does he say? The first thing in his mission, uh, you know, um, uh, repent and believe in the gospel, right?

He says the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. The first thing he does is call us to repentance out of our, he calls us out of our brokenness and what is repentance really? It’s an invitation. To be honest, to be truthful, to be vulnerable with ourselves, right? We, we all know what we struggle with.

We know the things that aren’t healed. We know the things that are like, uh, uh, a rock in our shoe that every time we stay, take a step hurts. And we were just trying to gently step instead of trying to take the shoe off and remove the rock. And this is what we’re so many of us are. And he comes into this brokenness and into this broken world and into our lives to call us into that repentance.

And out of that vulnerability, it’s witnessed in his whole life. Like it’s bookended in jesus’s life like from the beginning at christmas. He comes into the world as a baby he doesn’t come into some triumphant king as as the Uh as as the jews thought he would as this military messiah that would come in with just armies and destroy the romans He comes in as this little child, as Heather said last week, that could be easily dropped, right?

That could be hurt. And she said, and we did eventually hurt him, right? We hurt him badly. We took his life, but he comes up in this vulnerable state. And then at the end of his life, he’s the most vulnerable man that’s ever lived on the planet. As he stretched out in the crucifix on the wall behind you offering everything, there’s nothing of me that you don’t have.

There’s nothing that I haven’t given right that vulnerability and so he calls us to repentance which is an an opportunity To to to mirror that vulnerability to say lord like I am broken. I am I am struggling. I can’t fix myself I need you. I haven’t been the person I need the things you were talking about on the deathbed confessions Like we don’t have to wait till our deathbed that.

Christ comes to give us that opportunity to be honest and vulnerable about our lives so we can repent and clear those things out and then we can look to heal. That’s the other thing he came to do, right? To reconcile us. He calls us to repentance and then he calls us to healing. And that’s one of my other favorite readings, which I’ve read a bunch of times on this podcast and I want to read again now is Isaiah 61, right?

But it’s this prophecy. And, and, and I love this because it reminds me in, in, in context, in conjunction with the word becoming flesh. Why? Well, here’s your answer. The spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God.

To comfort all who mourn to grant to those who mourn in zion to give them a garland instead of ashes The oil of gladness instead of mourning the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit that they may be called oaks of righteousness The planting of the lord that he may be glorified He came to heal us to reconcile us to the father So that we can glorify God, we can become the people we’re called to be.

And so, so many people, they think, as we’ve talked about a million times here, Victor, like, why should I care about Advent? Why should I give my life to Christ? What could he want with me? You have no idea what I’ve done. You don’t know how broken I am. You don’t know how messed up I am. You don’t know the mistakes I’ve made, what I’ve done to my family and to myself, or what’s been done to me.

But Jesus’s answer is the spirit of the Lord God is upon me. And I’ve been sent. To. Bring good tidings to the afflicted. Every one of us is afflicted. He sent me to bind up the broken hearted. All of us are broken hearted because of our mistakes and falling short of the glory of God because of sin and death to proclaim liberty to the captives.

How many of us are bound, right? How many of us are captive in our own addictions and our own prison cells that we’ve locked ourselves into, right? Because we’re so afraid to let anybody really see us because they may not, they may abandon us. Right. Those inadequacy wounds, those abandonment wounds. Then he says, I’m here to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.

All of us are bound to sin, right? To give us good tidings and gladness and all of these things to replace the brokenness that we’ve been walking around in this world for so long. To bring us joy. That’s what he says. I’ve come so that you may know my joy and that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.

Right? This is who Jesus is. And so many people see God and Jesus as something different and something that’s waiting to punish them and all that stuff. But here Jesus tells you that. And then guess what? When we’re healed, when we’re set free, when, when our hearts are mended, then we have the opportunity to, to claim this prophecy as our own.

To go out and to do for others this same goodness that Jesus did for us. That’s why he came to reconcile us to bring us into relationship. Well, he brings you and I into relationship Victor so that not so we can sit in it and revel in it go Yay, look at me. I’m a child of God. That’s great And we need to live from that identity and that knowledge But the purpose of that is so that we go out and we tell others that you’re a child of God that has worth That it was worth dying for That God has a plan for your life and all that begins with Jesus choosing to come as healer To do what we could not we couldn’t heal ourselves That’s why he says the light shines in the darkness that light coming into that darkness is the healing he wants to bring in our life It’s just like when you’re in a dark room and you’re in your maybe you’re a kid and you’re scared to death and you’re freaking out And there’s all these fears and And ideas of what could be in the room lurking and waiting for you.

That’s what it’s like when we’re caught up in all of our brokenness and all of our pain and our problems. But if you have a match, if you just like one single match, the light overcomes the darkness, right? It takes away all those fears. It takes away all those ideas of what could happen and what may happen.

There’s nothing but the truth. Right? There’s nothing but the truth and the light shines on all of that. And that’s who Jesus is. So he comes to heal. And this Advent season is an invitation to let him begin to do that as we’re preparing for him to his birth and the celebration of that. It’s an opportunity to let him into those places of our heart, those rooms we have locked away with the hidden things that we want nobody to see.

And this is why when he came to the earth, what did he say? Do you want to be healed? What do you want me to do for you? Right? He always asked people because he came to heal. Ultimately, Jesus came to save us, but he came to heal us too. And because he’s opened the door to heaven again, the healing work starts and continually combating the lies of the devil, restoring our identity, healing our wounds.

So that we can believe he is who he says he is. We are who he says we are and we can be reconciled to the Father. So that’s what he’s trying to do. And all of that is to bring us into relationship. Well, what you’re saying also is take hope in the healing. Yeah. You know, healing, um, that comes from Christ is, The most powerful medicine that there is because it allows you to kind of like let go of the things that Have been the stumbling block for your life, whether it’s like an individual that mistreats you or You know Things that you constantly stumble upon, you know, I mean like just just all this suffering all the pains all the disappointments all the aspects of Failure that you think is failure.

We have to understand that sometimes those are things put in front of us to see You know, how will we react to that? You know, the sufferings are always a lesson of learning of life, right? Yeah, how will we receive it? Uh, as, as a parent, I see my kid going through something that’s tough, and I want to say, how are they dealing with that?

Are they, are they going to persevere? Are they going to ask for help? Are they going to like have trust and faith? You know, I think for a lot of us is that we forget to ask God for help. Yeah. You know, God helped me in this, you know, God, allow me, uh, to, to be able to find what you want me to be. Allow me to be, uh, a perspective of faith to help other people in this process.

I mean, how many times we’ve gotten a phone call from a friend that’s going through something and we just got, you know, we’re not prepared for that conversation. That is a time to say, Lord, help be part of this conversation. Like every time we, we start this show, we begin with a prayer, we end with a prayer.

Knowing that whatever the words that, There may be some script, but majority of it is something that’s just, it’s just a process of a conversation that unfolds itself in front of us. It’s the power of the Holy Spirit and believing in the Lord is going to do what he says with us. And, and yeah, that’s, that’s what he calls us to do, to heal one another, to be there, to be those hands and feet.

And, you know, I experienced that in our men’s group last night. There were some new people that came and they opened up on the very first night and shared some things that, we were Most people wouldn’t share in 10 years of knowing somebody because the air of comfortability and I think is we’ve been able to establish that with the help of the Holy Spirit in our group because people are When you’re able to be open, it allows other people to be open and trusting.

Yeah, like wow, this is an amazing group You know, I’m saying this from from my perspective of years being there It’s like when someone’s willing to share about something that is a struggle for them That takes a lot of courage and strength to do that. Yeah. And then to kind of like, after you say it, you want to immediately take it back because all of a sudden there’s this quietness and not people are judging.

Yeah. Not that the people judging you is kind of like going, you know, there’s this quiet going, what’d you do? Yeah. Eat yourself. But what you hear is like, I’ve had the same thing. I struggle with the same thing. I know how you’re feeling, brother. I will pray for you. You know, this, this, this support that comes like Christ in, in our lives, that there’s this, this automatic kind of like warmth of the power of his, of his light.

You know? Yeah. It just kind of washes over us and saying, that’s who I want you to be. I want you to be open to, to the people I put in your life. Are there because I put you there or I put that pause you’re talking about the, you know, where you’re like, Oh, what did I just do? That’s the last ditch attempt of the devil to get you to draw back.

Like you’re, you’re, you’re one foot out of the prison cell you’ve been in and he’s trying to grab you by the shirt tail and go, where are you going? Where are you going? Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t. And, and it’s just so free. And that’s why healing is so important. That’s why Christ came right to. Like I said, to heal us and, and it’s for relationship.

Cause if you think about the process, he comes to reconcile. He calls us in vulnerability to be vulnerable, to share about what we’re broken in, to be open with them, to go and ask for forgiveness, to receive that grace and mercy so that healing can begin. And when healing starts, when we start to let Jesus into these places, then what happens, trust, surrender.

Love relationship, right? Think about it. When you meet anybody in your life or your wife or whoever it is, like you immediately didn’t like meet the girl of your dreams and walk up and go, Hey, like I have tremendous foreign problems. I’m this, I’m this, I’m this, I’m broken in this way. And Hey, would you be interested in going out with me?

Like, no, because they would be like, no, what the heck? No, thank you. Who are you? Are you talking to me? But like over time, as we get to know someone and we start to journey with them, And then we start to trust more and more, right? That relationship builds and Jesus starts that relationship by inviting us to repentance, right?

Look, just admit to yourself what’s wrong in your life and then bring it to me when you’re ready. And then when you, when you bring it to me, you see that I am gentle and meek of heart, as he says in scripture, right? I’m not here to punish you. I’m not standing here with a whip to beat you because you’re a moron and you made mistakes.

I am gentle and meek of heart. My, my burden is easy and my, you know, or my yoke is easy. My burden is light. This is what he invites us into in those moments. And then he can look at you and go, look, like now that you’ve seen I’m gentle, we can start to heal and you can start to trust and all those things.

And that’s how we build relationship. That’s how you start to open up to people is when that trust and that love builds. So that repentance and that healing is a desire of relationship. And Jesus waits at the door of our hearts. And that makes me remind, it reminds me. You know growing up baptist both my parents were baptist, right?

And so when we go to their house in mississippi, they both had the same image on the wall and it was this protestant image um of jesus standing outside of a like a home with a door And like a front door of a house and always as a kid was like, why is he standing there? Like there’s nobody else in the picture And why is he just standing outside when I got a little bit older?

Later in my teens, I looked at it one day and I was like, Oh, there’s no door handle, right? So Jesus was standing outside at the ready waiting to be invited in not to kick the door into the storm in But to be invited in right so he came into the world Of his own accord, but now he waits to be invited into our own hearts And the thing is the door handle is on the other side.

Jesus isn’t going to force his way in. He’s not mean He’s not hard on us. He’s gentle and so he knocks and he waits for us To answer and invite him in and so That’s what we have to do And this is what this advent season about is inviting the lord further into our heart And so some of you may be sitting there right now going in in victor This is what some people the other night that when I gave this talk we’re thinking about they were like well Okay, John, I’m already baptized.

I’m confirmed. I do all this great Catholic stuff. I’m in adoration all the time. I’ve already let Jesus in my house. Well, the thing is our home is full of other rooms, right? And think about it. Like if somebody calls you five minutes away from your house and like, Hey man, I’m gonna swing by a minute. And all of a sudden you look around and you’re like, Oh, dude, this place is a mess.

So what do you do? You start throwing everything in cabinets and in closets. You start dumping everything in your bedroom and shutting the door. And we start to lock away these things because we don’t want people to see us as we are. We don’t want people to see these things that we’re ashamed of or that we’re not proud of.

I don’t want somebody to see that. My, my house is a mess or in the context of this, my heart is a mess. And so we let Jesus in with all these things we do as we become Christian, but Jesus wants to go further into the home, into the home of our heart, right? He wants us to open up these doors and that’s what Advent and Lent and the journey of a Christian really is, is allowing Jesus in the front door.

He’s in the foyer. But he wants to go further into the house. He wants to go into these rooms and he wants to rearrange things and he wants to help you get rid of the mess that you, that you, you, you threw away to hide and shame and help you actually get rid of it. And so that’s what this can mean. And I’m so worried in my, in my prayer every day that myself, that you, that others are missing the beauty of this time of year that we’re in, because it can, as I said, be easily I got to get the lights up and I got to go get a tree and, and you know, when is this going to be Christmas time and I got to get all the presents and when’s Amazon having their sales and all that stuff instead of like, man, what a gift.

What a gift. The church in her, in her wisdom through the knowledge of God and the love of God has given us to remember exactly what we are preparing for. And it’s what I just said at the end to let Jesus out of the fourier. Out of the front room of our home in our hearts and into the depths of those homes To really sit and to make himself a place to take up residence so that he can heal us of those things We don’t have to hide those things anymore, right?

We don’t have to throw those things in rooms The Lord has come to reconcile us by calling us to repentance, by calling us to healing, so that we can have a relationship with Him and He can take us to His Father. That is what all this is about, and this is why He was chose to be born into the world. The question is, Victor, are we going to let Him be born into ours?

Right into our hearts into our lives in a more full way than we ever have. That’s the journey of a Christian It’s not a one time thing. It’s not a one time celebration the church and her wisdom We have these same seasons every year because it’s an invitation to continue to go further in our faith each and every day And so as we close out here Victor talking about this and hopefully people will take this to heart I want to read one last verse the third passage Or one last passage, I should say, that I read every year at Advent, and it calls me into remembrance of this.

And then I just want to talk about some things that we can do as we’re, we’re moving forward in this. So this is Philippians 2, verses 5 through, um, 11. Yeah. Yeah. So there you are with that seminary degree. I also saw your notes. Yeah. Oh, there you go. Cheater. I was giving you a compliment. You didn’t deserve it.

No, but. So it says this. Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.

Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. This is what this is about.

Journeying from our brokenness and the places of shame and all those things, this is why Jesus came to reconcile us, to call us to repentance, to call us to healing, to build relationship so that we can stand up no matter what situation we’re in in our life, no matter what the circumstance, and boldly proclaim that passage I just read.

And how did it happen? Because God did something. He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, not to be held on to, but emptied himself taking the form of a servant. So what should we do in this Advent season, the rest that we have here? And I pray that each and every one of you will do after this podcast.

I hope you can hear the passion in our voice and the cry of pleading with you to do this alongside of us is to empty yourself. Of everything forget the pride forget the the shame forget the the disgust you have with yourself and empty it all out So that the lord can come come into your life and to fill it with that Which is good with himself and give you the opportunity that you need to be reconciled and have the power to become a child of god That’s what this is about.

This is every day of our life and what we’re called to So the things I would all encourage everybody to do is start asking god questions right now Like he just pick up the Bible and start to read these passages, the ones I’ve shared. John one, Isaiah 61, Philippians two, five through 11. Sit with ’em, pray with ’em.

As you read through ’em, what stands out to you. And then start to ask God, Lord, like in Isaiah 61, where do you wanna free me? Where am I bound? Right? Where am I in captivity? Where am I mourning in my life? Like what do you, where do you want to go? In my house and in the home of my heart. What what do you want me to do where do you want an access to that?

I haven’t given you point that light shine that light into that darkness and then have the The the next prayer to lord Give me the strength and the courage to trust that you are who you say you are and to let you go in there And do the things you want to do you’ll have the most transformative advent And then realize that that is the work that we need to do every day in our lives, constantly examining ourselves and asking God, where do you want to go?

Where do you want to take up residence? And where do you want to become flesh in my life? So Victor, and to all of you out there, I hope that you’ve enjoyed this episode. I hope that it will lead you to a greater, uh, repentance and healing and relationship with the Lord and the rest of this Advent season.

As always, we’re praying for you. We’re always going to continue to do that. Thank you for listening today, and let’s take this to prayer. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Heavenly Father, you sent your Son, and your Son of His own will chose to take on flesh, and to become one of us.

To be born is a vulnerable baby, to walk this earth, and to die a vulnerable death. All so that we could be called into reconciliation through repentance and healing, so that we could be brought back into relationship. Lord, You and Your Son want to give us the power to become children of God. Help us to take that to heart.

And the rest of this Advent season, help us to let You into the home of our heart. To let you deeper into the residence of our homes, to unlock the doors that we’ve locked, to get rid of the shame and the brokenness and the mistakes, and all those things, to let you shine that light into that darkness, so that we can become the people that we’re called to be, so we can spend eternity with you, and we can bring others with us.

Lord, come into our hearts and set us free this Advent, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Filed Under: Podcast

December 2, 2024 By justaguyinthep Leave a Comment

Encountering Emmanuel w/ Heather Khym

This week, I’m thrilled to have Heather Khym, co-host of the Abiding Together Podcast, join me for a special episode. With Advent in full swing, Heather and I dive deep into the meaning of this beautiful season and how it’s so much more than just a countdown to Christmas.

Heather shares the inspiration behind her Advent journal, Encountering Emmanuel, and how Jesus wants to meet us in our “messy stables”—the broken, vulnerable places we often hide. We reflect on the importance of slowing down, making space for Christ, and letting Him enter our hearts to bring healing and freedom.

In this conversation, we explore some powerful truths:

👉Why Advent feels overlooked and how we can reclaim its importance.
👉How to recognize Christ as the healer who enters our struggles, not just a distant figure.
👉Heather’s personal stories of vulnerability and the real freedom that comes when we let go of control.
👉Practical ways to prepare your heart for Jesus this season, using Heather’s guided reflections and journaling prompts.

Advent is a time to pause, reflect, and encounter Christ anew. I hope this episode inspires you to open your heart to Him, whether that means diving into Heather’s journal or simply carving out quiet time to pray.

🔗 Get Encountering Emmanuel

PS – #igivecatholic on #givingtuesday is now LIVE 🚨

You can give today. Your support creates safe, transformative spaces for men in need. 👉 https://bit.ly/40TfJHs

 

Well, welcome back to the pew. Everybody. I’m your host, John Edwards, and I’m very excited for this week’s episode of just a guy on the pew this week. Victor’s off doing something for Thanksgiving or something. So my buddy, Heather Khym decided to jump in and take his seat today virtually.

And I’m excited to have her on the show folks. If you do not know who Heather Khym is. She is the co host of the internationally popular Abiding Together podcast with Sister Miriam and Michelle. She and her husband Jake are co founders of Life Restoration Ministries, where she serves as director of vision and ministry of the British Columbia based Apostolate.

So she is Canadian by, uh, by where she lives now, part time. She lives in Steubenville sometimes too, but she’s, uh, she also serves as the director of the Celtic Cross Foundation. She’s been doing ministry for over 25 years, uh, as a speaker, retreat leader, Given workshops and conferences. Uh, she also was a student and graduated from Franciscan where she studied theology and catechetic.

So I might’ve said that wrong. If I did, I promise you I’m more intelligent than that, but I might’ve gotten that word wrong. But, uh, she still lives in British Columbia with her husband and her three children. So without further ado, Heather, welcome to the show. It’s great to have you here. Thank you so much.

I’ve been really looking forward to our conversations. So thanks for having me here. Yeah, it’s awesome. I know you and I, uh, we met. I guess, uh, what we didn’t talk about this before we started recording, but you and I actually met When I was still part of virtual catholic conference I was one of the guys that founded that during covid and you and sister and michelle came on for one of our I want to say it was a healing conference or something, but we uh, we had you guys interviewed on there you did a show for the online conference during covid and So I got a few minutes with you there in the green room to To me, it’s been a while back.

So I don’t expect you to remember that, but then we got forgotten about that. Yeah, this is great. And then we met at the NEC properly. Sure. Sure. So all that came through sister, I met her first and then was lucky to get introduced to you guys and to start building a friendship there. So, like I said, I’m excited to have you here.

It was great to see you and Jake at the, uh, JP two healing center. All are kind of knitted into this whole, uh, JP2 healing, uh, healing, uh, ministry that Dr. Bob has. So it’s great to, to be in good company with y’all and the work that you guys are doing alongside of Bob and sister and everybody else. Yeah.

Thank you so much. It’s such a pleasure. Privilege really isn’t it to be in the vineyard, just, um, trying to help people come along, you know, I feel like for all of us, you you’ve been so vulnerable in sharing your own story, but I think that’s the real stuff, right? It’s like, we’re all on a journey together.

And as much as we can help each other along the way, I mean, that’s, that’s the good stuff right there. Yeah, it is. And I think that comes through. Uh, on y’all show. And then even like the stuff that you post online, I was looking at something you posted yesterday. That was, it was multiple pictures to, to look through.

And it was just this beautiful journey. We’re taking people on like statement by statement, talking about, um, just how God’s there and everything. And there’s a, you have a really unique quality to come across as very genuine and very, not to say other people aren’t, I don’t want to sound like I’m beating up on people, but like you just have, you come across as somebody who’s like, Hey, She just as soon sit down and have beer and wings with you, uh, is she would, you know, talk to you about Jesus too.

Right. So I think that’s very attractive to people and people really relate to y’all. Well, and I think that’s why you guys have the following you do and the, and the folks that are so moved every time you guys have a show come out. Yeah, I think, uh, for me, I don’t really know how to be any other way.

Thankfully, uh, the Lord has stripped a lot of that away along the years, you know, and I’ve realized that actually just being honest about who we are and where we are is, um, is really what the Lord desires. And there’s a lot of freedom that’s come in that for me. It took a long time to be able to sort of settle in to like who, who I am and, and who I’m becoming.

You know, and I think that’s part of it is like, we’re all becoming, and we’re all, like I said, we’re on a journey, but by that, I mean, like we get opportunities to grow. And that also recognizes, Hey, we don’t have it all together, you know, and the more that we can be honest about that, I think it allows a lot of room for God to be who he is in our life and wants to be who he is.

Yeah, no, I do too. I, I, I couldn’t agree with you more. There is a freedom when you’ve just come to realize that you’re not the sum of your mistakes and your failures and that God loves you through all of it. And, you know, you mentioned being vulnerable. I mean, you get up and you start telling people about the things in your life and they, they no longer have power over you anymore once you’ve let God into those things.

And there is a freedom. And I think that’s why vulnerability is so important. Uh, because not only. Is it helpful to you, but it’s also, it gives permission to others to see the freedom and Hey, nobody abandoned them or nobody ran the other way. In fact, they love them in spite of those things. And it’s really, uh, I think what Jesus calls all of us to is just that joy and that freedom to live in who we are in him.

And so I think that’s beautiful. Thanks for, for sharing your thoughts there. It’s, it’s, um, yeah, it’s like you said, it’s a gift to be able to do this. Sometimes when I’m coming here and turn on the microphone, I’m like, Lord, you should You, you, you still, you sure I’m still the right guy for the job or like there’s somebody else, you know, and he keeps telling me to do it.

So I’m sure you kind of feel that way sometimes too, but. But, uh, I’m excited to have you on here today, uh, in particular to talk about something that I know you’ve been working on and has recently come out. Um, it’s this Advent guided journal for prayer and meditation with Ave Maria and it’s called Encountering Emmanuel.

And we were talking before we came on the air, you know, over the last few years, uh, I’ve been picking these up, you know, I’ve had different people doing them every year. And so, you know, went through the one with father John Burns at Lent, I believe. And one was sister, I think it was called behold. And there’s just a lot of, I think they’ve got a really thing, go a good thing going in there.

They have, uh, obviously picked great people to do it. So I know we’re about to enter into Advent. In fact, this, this episode will be out the first week of end of Advent. So I’m excited to kind of talk to you a little bit today about. Advent and, and why it’s important and why you felt led to do this and to write this book.

And, you know, what you hope people are going to get out of it, because, you know, quite frankly, I said this to you as we were, we’re getting ready for the show too. I kind of feel like, you know, advent can sort of be the redheaded stepchild of the liturgical season of the year of the church. Sometimes it’s everybody gets all geared up for Lent and Advent.

It’s just sort of the, the pause between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Right. If you will. And, and, uh, it’s just, it’s so much more than that. And such a, a, a greater opportunity to, to really. Uh, prepare the way of the Lord, if you will. Yeah, exactly. And I just want to say, since this is already the first week of Advent, that people are listening to this, it’s not too late people.

If you haven’t started something, if you don’t have the book or whatever it is that you will want to do, it’s not too late, like in scripture. It says now is the time. So, today is a new day and you can get started on something today. And I love that the church does liturgical seasons for us because often I feel like, and maybe you feel the same, it’s like life is happening to me.

Everything is moving so quickly that I’m like, wait, am I in charge of my life or is life just like coming at me? And so I think liturgical seasons are really an opportunity to kind of wake us up and give us pause to go, Oh my gosh, like. Are my priorities straight? Like what actually is most important to me in my life?

And, and where do I need to allow Jesus to come in? Like what’s maybe gotten a bit out of control or what am I sort of like putting under the rug or I’m not making space for that’s most important. I guess it’s like a reset, you know, it gives us an opportunity to come back to ourselves, to come back to the Lord and come back to what’s most important.

So that’s really the hope for this journal and, you know, for Advent this year, I think is to. Put first. What should be first? Yeah. Make space for that. Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. It, it, it’s, I couldn’t agree more. I mean, even when you think about Lent, you know, it’s, I I always laugh ’cause you know, you’ll get so busy, like you were saying and, and starting the year or whatever it may be in that time of year, but.

Then somebody says like, you know, Ash Wednesday is like this week and you’re like, Oh, and you think of the one thing, you know, the Lord wants, and you kind of whistle past the graveyard. Like you didn’t hear it, you know? And, and it is, it’s an opportunity to reset. And, and as we talked about a few minutes ago, I mean, Advent is, it’s a penitential season too.

And it’s, it’s an opportunity to come back to the Lord with, with, uh, with everything in your life. And You know, what I, what I love about Advent is when you start to think about it, and I want you to speak more to this because I know you’ve obviously written a book on it now, and you’ve spent a lot of time here with it, but, um, I just, I love the idea of looking at it, not as just Christ being born as a child, but as Him coming as divine healer, right?

And wanting to come into these places of our hearts and, and, you know, And, and you have this whole period as you’re going towards the birth of Christ to really start to concentrate on that and really start to think and to ponder on those things and, and to offer back to them those things you talked about that maybe you hadn’t in your life.

Yeah, it really was like a lot of the focus for this particular book. I was praying, I mean, you could go in a hundred directions, you know, I feel like there’s so many different scriptures or themes you could pull for Advent. And as I was praying about it, I was thinking, okay, like the two bookends here where we look back.

Uh, to when Christ came 2, 000 years ago, a real event. We focused on that during Advent. Then we also looked where the second coming and this is what the church is, is saying to us. And as I was praying, I was walking down my driveway one day and I said, Lord, what do you want me to say in this book? And he said, I’m coming now.

I’m coming for people now, like, I want to come into the darkness now. I want to come into the places where there’s hopelessness, where there’s anxiety and depression. And I want to bring freedom. And I was like, okay, whoa, like, here we go. Like, let’s do this. So let me get some paper, scratch this down. So yeah.

So every meditation for each day starts with, he comes. And I think what got impressed upon my heart is in that, is that We can often get it mixed up, like, it’s all up to me, I gotta, like, do my self reliant thing that I always do to, like, muster up some grit and, like, get at it, you know, and we do have some decisions to make, of course, but Christ is always the one who initiates, He’s the one who’s already come, and He is coming, and He will come again, you know, so there is a seriousness there.

It’s around Advent that’s actually really good. Sometimes we hear serious news, we go, Oh man, that just sounds like hard, you know, but to just know he’s, he’s already, he’s already coming. He’s initiated. And for us, the opportunity is to respond and to open our hearts. Just like our lady did. It’s like the Lord came to her, the word came to her in the annunciation and it was like, what will you do?

You know? And she was like, well, I’m afraid. And then she said, yes. And I’m like, could we? You know, allow our lady to teach us something in that could we this Advent, like, be like her and open up ourselves in a real way, like a real way for Jesus to come into our life. And, and, and that’s the hope. I mean, all of those meditations that, that I wrote are just like real things that have happened.

that have happened in my life that the Lord has been, you know, just teaching me along the way that I think he just wants to teach all of us for what it’s worth. I think if people just read the book, it’s like, you’ll probably disappointed at the end of Advent. It’s just going to be a book, but, but if you actually do what’s in here, which is at the end of each meditation, there’s a time to pray and a time to, Like journal a little bit and go under the surface in your own heart.

And I think that’s where the real stuff is gonna happen, because that’s the opportunity for Jesus to meet you right where you are. Yeah. And I, uh, I couldn’t agree more because I, one, when some of these start first started coming out, I, you know, that’s what I did. I’d read it every day and go, okay, I read it with, you know, every other.

You know, reflection or daily journal, you know, book that has, uh, some sort of, uh, daily inspiration. And if you just, you know, get up, pray, read it, throw it on the bed and say, okay, I checked off another thing. It’s not going to be as helpful as it would be if you sat down with it the next year. I got one of those old black and white like, um, Mead high school books and just started journaling every day.

Like I’m going to do this and I’m going to sit down and I’m not going to blow off what it’s asking me to do. And I’m not going to tell myself I’m, I’m too busy and I have ministry stuff to do, so I don’t have time to pray or like sit with God. And when I did started doing that, these books really started coming to life and the Lord started shining a light.

You know, in the places like you’re talking about that he wanted to speak to me. And I think that’s the beauty of it. You’re a hundred percent right. Like we all struggle with the same things. If I’ve come to learn anything in the last few years of ministry, it’s like, we all, we’re all struggling with the same stuff.

Like there’s not, I don’t care if your theology is super sound and you can quote the Summa in your sleep, or if you’re just a beginner, we all struggle with the same stuff. And that’s where Christ wants to meet us. Isn’t that every day, every day, um, Just whatever we have going on in the moment. And so I’m excited for people to start doing that with this.

And I saw that you have, like, you broke it down for those who haven’t had it yet. Like you’ve got. You know, your introduction where you’re kind of talking about why and what you’re doing here and what the hopes are. And then every one of these books comes with, okay, like, how is this organized and how should I go through it?

So you’re not guessing at it. There’s a lot of stuff that starts leading you and encouraging you, encouraging you in specific ways to go through it. But then. you know, you, you break it into four different weeks that are titled four different things. And I thought maybe we could kind of jump into that a little bit and talk about, you know, those themes and why four and, you know, where are you starting and where are you going?

Yeah. I mean, I had that kind of idea. Okay. So Jesus wants to come, like, how do we, what do we nest this in? And what, what I was drawn to was the four reasons for the incarnation that we find in the catechism. So it’s nested in, not just like, Oh, some ideas Heather had, but What the church teaches, what Jesus has revealed as to why he came.

So, the first week is Jesus comes to save us. The second week is Jesus comes to make us sharers in his divine life. The third week is that he shows us how to live. He’s a model for holiness. And the fourth is that he shows us God’s love. And so, that’s important for us to note. Jesus came for reasons.

Mm-Hmm. , he’s very intentional about why he was coming here. And, and all of those things don’t just matter in the grand scheme of like, oh yes, the church says this, and as the world, you know, we should understand. It’s like, what does this mean for me? And that’s where this book is going. Like, in every single thing, this, this advent, it’s gonna be okay, that’s great.

This stuff out there, this, this scripture, or this idea, or this teaching, or this saint said this, but what does that mean for me? And what is my response to that? You know, also, and, um, yeah, so I, I love that there was like themes that were, I mean, obviously so clear that we could jump right into, um, but yeah, we’re going to keep going under the surface.

And for some people, they might be like, Oh man, I don’t, I don’t want to, like, I work really hard to stay away from those places. Why are you sticking your finger in it? You know? And I would just say. You know, take a breath, and maybe there’s some reasons there that are wrapped up in some misconceptions that you might have about who God is or who Jesus is.

And I think we all have them. John, I’m sure you could name off a few that you’ve struggled with in your life and maybe still do. And I could say the same, and there’s usually reasons. Why? It probably makes sense if I, you know, if people were to share their story with us, it would probably make sense why they believe certain lies or have misconceptions about who Jesus is and who God is.

And when we actually invite the real Jesus to come and meet us, what can happen there is that it shatters those misconceptions and then we could actually be loved by a God who is love, you know, where we could actually receive. fear and his tenderness and his kindness. And even, you know, the conviction that comes with, whoa, I need to change some things in my life.

Ultimately, he’s a God that wants to love us into freedom. You know, he doesn’t just want us to have better behavior. Although we should probably have better behavior in certain places, but, but that’s not the point, you know, and I think sometimes we reduce. Yeah. Our religion or our practice to just like, okay, I got to do this stuff.

I got to check the boxes. I got to, you know, like be a good boy or be a good, good girl. And we forget that this is like one massive love story that we’re in. And we actually are really desperate for a savior and we have one. Yeah. And we have an opportunity to experience that. Yeah, you’re man. That’s beautiful.

And that’s the truth. I mean, I. I was sitting there, you were talking about all the things in your life. And I’m like, yeah, I’ve got a giant scroll on the wall. I could just unroll across the room with everything. I still deal with in trouble, you know, struggle with and all those things. We have them, but like you’re saying, I can remember, um, being in the jail cell when I was, you know, in trouble.

And, and, uh, and I had been so ugly to God, like when my mother died and I blamed him and I. And I had just been so, uh, contrary to him and had given up on him, but he never gave up on me and in that gel cell, like he came into that moment when I just remember feeling a presence and going like, okay, what do you want?

Like, you’re probably here to punish me even further. And instead it was nothing but love. He was nothing but love. Like he just, he walked me through so many things in my memory and the things and just, you know, I, I began to feel great repentance in the moment and the need to, uh, in the realization that.

My life had gotten so off course, but, um, but yeah, he was gentle. He didn’t come in. And I think that a lot of men in particular, you know, we have a lot of men that listen to the show, obviously, but a lot of guys can feel like that. God is like a father figure. They had that maybe wasn’t the kindest or was very authoritative or punishing.

And the, you know, God’s kind of. On a cloud is a cosmic police officer waiting for us to die so he can punish us. But no, it’s just this great love of sending his own son and then Christ and his willingness coming here to, to do exactly that, to enter into those places. And. You’re right, we, we, we close our fist, we, we put up barricades, we double lock the doors of our hearts and, and don’t want them to come in.

But man, when we can find the courage, and sometimes that comes in rock bottom moments, sometimes it’s just a moment of grace, but I guess all of them are moments of grace. But, uh, when we finally meet them, we, and you see who, as you said, Christ really is, it blows you away. Like it blows you away that the God of the universe cares that much about you, you know?

Yeah, exactly. I love what you’re sharing there and just your, your vulnerability. And although I, I haven’t myself been in an actual jail cell, I can say, I feel like I’m, there are places of my heart that are in prison. You know, that I, I need Jesus to come into those places too. And one of the misconceptions that I had for a very long time in my life growing up was that God was far away and he didn’t care.

He was just unmoved by my suffering. And it was just like, he was just like this distant figure in the sky, um, with his arms folded just waiting for me to get it together, you know, and, and that experience that you’re talking about there at the end of him shattering those. Misconceptions and, and me actually being able to experience his close proximity and his care for me has been one of the most healing and powerful things in my life.

And, and is that not what Advent and Christmas is all about is like Jesus comes close. He doesn’t stay away as his distant, like in heaven, you know, wherever that is, if we can even imagine it, but he actually came to this earth, like you can go to the sea of Galilee where, where he walked on those shores and, and he became a human being and he became so little and vulnerable.

So it shows us like he didn’t come to intimidate us. Like he just came vulnerable with nothing, like as a little baby. Who would do that? It’s ridiculous. You know, we think about like, he actually let humans hold him. Like we could have dropped him. We could have hurt him. We did hurt him eventually, you know, but he came because of his great love for us.

Yeah. And because he does, he wants us to know he doesn’t want to be far away. And again, like that idea and that truth, um, we want to become a reality for us this Advent. And that’s, uh, I think that’s the thing we have to remind ourselves, especially as Catholics. I mean, I was a convert, you know, I was, grew up Baptist and there’s obviously a huge focus on personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Right. And you hear that a lot. And in fact, I make jokes about it. When I give a talk on the most important thing in personal relationship with Jesus Christ is I’ll always say, and yes, it’s Catholic because so many people hear that. And they’re like, that’s that Protestant stuff. But But really that’s what he wants and, and the, you know, he, he wants to come for relationship and, and wants to come close, as you said, like he, he chose not to stay distant to, to, to show himself to us.

And, you know, you talked earlier about how you read something matters. I think that’s important with scripture as well, too. That we, when we read it, it’s like, okay, well, here’s the adulterous woman in the glass houses and all that stuff. You can read it that way. Or, or what is Jesus trying to do in my life today?

Like, what is he, who am I in this today? Am I the woman on the ground reaching up, begging for mercy because I made a mistake? Or. Am I, am I Christ in someone else’s life, you know, reaching a hand of mercy down? Am I a Pharisee who’s standing in judgment over somebody in my life or, or an apostle that doesn’t know what’s going on?

Like, who am I today in that? And I think it’s beautiful that you said that because everything in our faith, we’re not careful, can become rules and regulations. And we can forget that all of that is the pathway and the interstate or the road to deeper relationship. And it starts here in Advent, right? The church starts here.

with Christ coming and as you said, becoming this vulnerable little baby. And when you start to even look into the, the nuances of Advent, like where he’s, he’s born into a feeding trough, you know, as he would, he would give himself as, as the Eucharist, uh, throughout the rest of time, uh, Bethlehem house of bread.

You know, you start to look at these things and, and you can’t make this stuff up, right? Like it’s, the Lord had all of this planned out and it started with him coming, not only to come into that, into that feeding trough, but to come into our hearts. And he’s there every day at mass waiting to do that.

Right. And, and, uh, I just, I, that’s what I get chills when I start thinking about all that with Advent. Mm hmm. Totally. And I mean, that he would come into a messy stable. I mean, wow, that sounds a lot like my heart, you know, so it’s really hopeful. It’s like really hopeful, like scripture, like you said, when we get into scripture, we can start to see the real Jesus.

And that, that also blows apart our misconceptions. And one of the questions that, you know, I think many of us need to ask is like, what if it’s true? And some people are like, what, like what? Like we sort of like assume we think it’s true, but do you believe that that’s true? And that he is the same one now as he was then.

He has the power to do the same things now as he did then. So, um, my dad, I don’t, I don’t know if you’ve heard this story, John, but when I was a senior in high school, my dad, he was a very capable businessman, very successful. a great negotiator. He could just work a room. Like he was just really good, competent, you know, he was always fixing everybody’s problems and helping out so generous.

And then he was diagnosed with non Hodgkin’s large cell lymphoma and they said he had three months left to live. And I mean, nothing will bring you to your knees like moments like that. And I think we all have them in different ways, whether it be somebody passes away or, you know, a deep suffering that we have to journey through where it strips us of our, our false idea that we have it all together, you know, and, and takes away our ability to be self reliant.

Cause we’re like, I actually can’t fix this. And it was, the cancer was all through his body. It was in his bone marrow and in his bloodstream and tumors all in different areas. And. He read this scripture one night when he was in the cancer clinic, and they were about to do a scan the next morning, and they just said, you have three months left to live, you need to get your affairs in order, and he read the scripture about the healing of the leper.

And he just lay there and he was like, he said, I prayed for myself for the first time. I never felt worthy to ask God for anything before, but he read that scripture and he was like, it was that. What if it’s true? You know, I think like that came into his mind. Like, what if it’s true? And so he just prayed and he had this incredible experience of the presence of God and his like power rushing through his body and he went in for the scan the next day and they knew there was tumors in his abdomen, his spleen, all the lymph nodes all over and they came back and they said, there’s nothing there.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. And he lives next door to me right now. I didn’t know. I thought you were going to tell me he passed and now all of a sudden, what a beautiful story. Yeah. Yeah. And I share that. I think as I share it a lot now, um, because I, I think there is a real sort of like belief under the surface that we’re like, he can’t do stuff anymore.

Jesus is powerless in some way. And not to say that he’s always going to do that because that would be heaven, you know, that if he healed everything and you know, hurt every desire or hurt like that, like ultimately that will be satisfied one day. But yes, he can right now. And if the answer is not yet, then he will come with his presence, which is even more incredible than just the pain being taken away.

You know, I think the holiest people have suffered and, and in their suffering, they have learned deep intimacy and friendship with Jesus. Yeah, I can, I can tell you, you know, I alluded to my mother passing and being angry at God. And I can remember the first time that I ever went to a doctor’s appointment with her, because I was in a very bad state of life.

I mean, I was addicted to all sorts of things. I was selfish. I was buying into everything. The world tells a man you should be money, fortune, fame, you know, accomplishments, all that stuff. And I remember I live right around the corner from the cancer clinic that she was going to. And, uh, they had sort of, they had a, Uh, they both were the same part of Mississippi and they had moved back down there.

Uh, but they still had a home up here in Memphis. They were trying to sell. And so she kept her appointments up here. And, and, uh, one day I was just making sales calls and I remembered out of the blue, like, I think mom has a doctor’s appointment. It’d been weeks since I saw them because I was always too busy and all that stuff.

And so I stopped by there and I go in and, uh, and I said, you know, it was miss Edwards here. And they said, yes, who are you? I’m her son. And they sent me back to the office and, or to the room. And I’m staying there and my, my father was not a very, uh, mostly capable guy. So he kind of looked at me like, son, when I came in, but my mother was overjoyed.

And that was the day the doctor walked in and said, like, you know, you must be John. Uh, Proving my point. I wasn’t around very much like my sisters that were there for her all the time and uh, she said it’s nice to meet you. I’m sorry. It’s under these circumstances, but um, and she turned to my mother and said, you know, she’d had some heart issues.

So they chose to stop the chemo to do heart surgery and then the cancer spread. And it went, you know, from her breast or lymph nodes and her lungs and then into her brain. And so the doctor looked and said, Ms. Edwards, I’m sorry, but you have, you know, two weeks to a month to live and I followed them back to their house in Midtown and, and, uh, they were getting clothes to take down to the farm so they could go by, be by themselves.

And to your point about your father, like I opened the car door and all six, eight, 275 pounds, my mother was like maybe five, three and a half. And I just fell into her lap and started crying, you know, and just said, mom, this isn’t right, this isn’t fair. And, and I’ll never forget. She just, she just sat there rubbing my head.

And I always tell people that’s why I’m bald now. She rubbed the hair right off. But like. But I remember just laying in her lap, it, you know, 35 years old, whatever I was at the time. And, and her just saying, it’s okay, John, like I knew this could happen, but I love Jesus. And I’ve known Jesus my whole life.

And while I’m going to miss you and, and, you know, I won’t get to, to be here for a lot of things. I know that I’m going to be with Jesus and I know that he’s going to be waiting for me, you know, and I. I just remember being angry, you know, because I was selfish and I was like, no, I want you here and he can have you later and all that stuff, but just being so impacted by the fact of like, you just found out you’re going to die.

You just found out like, this is it. Like, there’s no, you know, you can pray, but, and maybe something will happen in the case of like your father, but. But I just remember going like, what faith? And I honestly think when I look back at that, yeah, the jail and all that stuff. But I really think that that moment was the beginning of a turning point in my own journey of like just being hit in the face with what real faith and real relationship with Christ look like, you know?

And so my mother did not, she didn’t make it. I was there at her bedside when she passed with my family and I looked, watched her look at my dad and say, I love you. And him say, I love you back and, and, and, and pass peacefully. But, um, yeah, it just, It goes back to what you’re talking about, just this relationship and in somebody that had, it just spent her life trying to grow that and saw him and everything, um, was just so beautiful to witness, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. That, that, thank you for sharing that. Those are really sacred moments, aren’t they? Yeah. Like sacred, sacred moments. And, and I think for, you know, people listening, they’re probably right now going, Oh, wow. Yeah. That, that makes me remember this, you know, part of my life for a suffering, a deep place of suffering.

And, and what we do in those moments really matters. You know, what we do from the Those moments of suffering really matters. And it sounds like for you, you know, the anger and then deeper into some, some other things other than God, you know, eventually brought you back to him. And I think it’s because those are sobering moments where we have to face ourselves and we have to face what’s actually going on under the surface, you know, and for you, it sounds like it was exposing a lot of other things that were under there, you know, and eventually like you came to, came to where you need to be.

And, um, and so I think for people listening right now who are being reminded of deep places of suffering, the hope is that Jesus also suffered, and that he can take the most horrible things and make them into something beautiful. And although I, I’m telling you, you know, my dad was healed from cancer, there’s tons of other things that, you know, we prayed for that it’s like, oh, the answer wasn’t yes.

The answer was no, no or not yet. And um, and even some of those places now in my own life, but the presence of Christ there is changing everything for me. It really is like, I’m, I’m less going to the other things that I used to just drown my sorrows in. And the more that I come to him, the more I’m just like, Oh wow, like you’re, I’m still hurting, but like your presence here is so healing for me.

It is what I need. You know, it’s what, it’s what we want. And, um, I think the more we get honest, just to go back to where we kind of started, you know, it’s like the more we can get honest about those places, the more we can experience the relief of Jesus. Yeah. You know, it’s like, if we don’t get honest about that, then we’re just carrying it all on our own.

It doesn’t go away. We know that it’s just right under there all the time. It’s coming out in all kinds of ways. If you asked other people around you, they’d be like, Oh, I can see it. Even if you think you’re good at hiding it, like they can see it. It’s coming out in your anger and your selfishness and your, you know, whatever addictions you might be going into.

And so it’s like, Hey, what if we could just be honest and just said like, Lord, I need you in our desperation, like actually really need you. And then we could experience the relief of him. Yeah, no, a hundred percent. I, uh, you mentioned the Holy land earlier and I’ve walked in those places and I’ve been in that I went with father Larry Richards a year ago and.

Um, you know, but a pilgrimage over there and it was really powerful. And I remember one of the moments, um, you know, I, I’m not a guy that’s just like, okay, I’m going to give a lecture at every stop and all that, you know, I’m just like, Lord, if you moved me to say something, then, you know, then I will, and we were, um, at the healing pools, you know, uh, where Jesus says, do you want to be healed?

And, uh, he moved me with a group of people that were sitting there and I said, the guy said, do you want to say something? I was like, yeah, I’m not really sure what. But the Lord’s moving me, I opened my mouth and just the Lord started speaking. And, and, uh, and I just remember reading that passage and saying people to people like, do you ever wonder like why he didn’t call the person by their name?

Like he could have, he knew their name, like Josaphat, do you want to be healed or whatever? And instead he says, do you. Do you want to be healed? And the fact that I think the Lord did that because he knew thousands of years later that people would be reading that and that he would want them to be asking themselves that question, right?

Like, do you want to be healed? And where in your life do you want to be healed? And that’s, that’s who Jesus is. If you look at everything, every interaction he had with anybody healed, it was never like, Hey, I’m the son of God. And like, you know, I’m just going to come over and fix this for you real quick.

And just to, you know, to have an example, to show people that I am who I say I am. Amen. It was always very relational, you know, what do you see? What, what would you like me to do for you? Uh, do you want to be healed? Right. And that’s who God is in that gentleness. And, uh, sometimes I miss my old, uh, Protestant Bibles that had like the, the things Jesus said in red, right.

Where you could just look and flip it open and boom, there’s something, I mean, Jesus obviously wrote the whole thing, but like to have his spoken words, they’re highlighted. I could often flip to those things. I know we have some Catholic Bibles that do that too. But. Um, just to really go to those places because every time I, I need him, I open up that book and he has something to say to me, right.

And even in this Advent season, I, you know, I think about some of the things that I like to read and, and, you know, I want to hear if these are some things you like to go through too, and then maybe jump a little bit more into the book. But, um, Just, you know, John 1 where it’s talking about the word was made flesh and why he came and the world that was in darkness and he came to be a light like this time of year in particular like I read that and I’m almost I’m trying not to cry right now, like thinking about it, just this loving poetry that the Lord wrote through John and, and just this, this vision of why he came and then it ties back to Isaiah 61, right?

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me and why did he come to, to free those who were bound and to heal the brokenhearted and to, to comfort those who mourn and like, how could you not? Want to believe in that God, right? Like not the one that’s like the punishing in the crowds that the world tries to tell you he is and all that stuff.

But the one that is core is the Von Heeler. And it just wants to come into your life and he wants to make it better. And he wants you to, to realize that he’s your friend and ultimately the best friend you will ever have in your life. Right. And. I don’t know. Sorry, I could go on and on. I’m supposed to be interviewing you instead of talking.

That’s beautiful. I love it. Dude, you’re speaking the truth. You’re speaking the truth, and you’re speaking from your heart. And, and I, I do think you’re absolutely right. This is, this is what life is all about. This is why Advent is such a incredible time that we’ve just started. You know, it’s an opportunity for us to come back to our senses again, right?

It’s just like, okay, let me just clear out the clutter and get, get quiet again. And that’s an important part of Advent is that we would actually make space. So I know it’s a busy time. I know there’s going to be like a thousand Christmas concerts and parties and gift buying and traffic’s going to be terrible.

And you can’t go into the store without, you know, probably getting frustrated, but Hey, what if we could be intentional and maybe even put it in our phone, you know, on our calendar, like I’m going to get quiet for 20 minutes, like before my day starts, or maybe at the end of my day, how it, whatever works, um, to just try to make some space.

Yeah. To reprioritize again. Yeah. And that’s the thing, folks. I mean, I, I know we’re all creatures of habit. Like you’re saying, we can get busy and we can say we don’t have time, but like you, when you do, if you can sit there and you can, and you can promise yourself, like for this Advent, I’m just going to take 10, 15, 20 minutes, whatever you can muster.

And I’m going to get intentional about being quiet and sitting with the Lord. And this book, Encountering Emmanuel, is a good way to do that because I know when I sit. Yeah. If I don’t have something to guide me, oftentimes I’m off to the races and my mind’s everywhere. And you get more frustrated. All right, Jesus, I gave you time.

And all I did was thinking about, you know, what’s coming on Netflix later or whatever, you know, and, and you get frustrated and you quit when, when in fact, like that’s, you’re giving in very easily to the evil one. Who’s trying to keep you from. That time, but to have something like this, that’s a guide for you.

And it’s, and it’s a disease, like you’re going on a journey. It’s not random stuff. You’re what you seem to have done here. Heather is to, to give people a place to start, to journey alongside of them. Uh, you know, gently. Uh, as a surgeon would maybe poking and prodding at a little places to, to make people feel something and know that there’s something there that needs to be looked at, but, but then to guide them through it.

Right. I mean, just like with the Lord, the Lord doesn’t come and go like, you know, come up and flick you and go, did that hurt? Good. You know, he’s there to, to point those things out and then to help comfort you in those places that you need comfort. So with this, um, you know, it’s, it’s, It’s day one, the first week, you know, to start on, um, the first of Advent.

If you didn’t have it, I’m sure you could take, you know, catch up pretty quickly, uh, through that there’s short meditations. But I see here, like you said, we have Jesus saves us and then Jesus make us, uh, makes us share in the divine life. What would you talk about that just for a minute? Like what you mean by Jesus makes us share in the divine life?

Because I think sometimes people hear that. And then they’re like, okay, what does that mean? Like divine life, like what does that mean? Am I going to start glowing? Am I going to levitate? Like, what does that mean? Wouldn’t that be awesome? Yeah, it would. Wouldn’t that be awesome? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think just simply a lot of the meditations in there are like the first one is he comes into a family.

Like that’s what it means to share in divine life. Jesus came so that he would take on flesh and that we could then become a Adopted sons and daughters of the Father, that we would be one with him, that Jesus is our brother, you know, like that’s crazy, like the Savior of the world, the one we were just talking about, that like did all those miracles in scripture, like he’s our brother, you know, like that’s some of the meditations as you, as you go through Advent, it’s like, this isn’t just a story, like this is real, this is really real.

And so, um, sharing in divine life also means that we have power. that has been bestowed on us in our baptism, and as sons and daughters of God, we have an inheritance, you know? So, we have divine power, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in us, Scripture says. So, when we think about, oh man, I got, there’s so much I have to do, or like, this is so hard, it’s like, you’re not supposed to do it on your own power.

You actually can’t. So, we get to be dependent, uh. on God for who he is, because he wants to pour his very life into us. And he has just knit us together into his family. That’s, that’s powerful, but it’s also healing because it also means you belong. And I think for the, for at the core, for all of us, Oh my gosh, like I’m sure everybody listening to be like, Oh, let me tell you 10 stories off the top of my head of where I’ve been rejected.

Oh, yeah. Where I’ve been left out or where in my family there’s so much brokenness or where in relationships I’ve messed things up so badly that like now there’s just fracturing all over the place and to just know, hey, it was never meant to be that way. And the way back is Jesus. Jesus is the restorer of all the fractured pieces.

And one of those main places being fractured is family. And community, you know, and so it’s like, Hey, we have an opportunity like to receive from the family of God. So the places that have been broken for us, like God wants to fill those places with himself, with, with the family of the Trinity. Um, and then there’s a deep security that I think we can all experience that comes through that.

Like once we’re rooted in that place, There’s a lot of other things that we don’t need to depend on. We don’t need to prove ourselves, you know, to belong. And so those are some powerful themes that I think, again, we want to move beyond it just being an idea into an experience and something that we believe and something that we can go, no, I, I am a son of God.

I am a daughter of God. And that, that, that means something real to us. Yeah, and that’s a place we all have to go because if you if you ask most people who are you they I’m a doctor I’m a lawyer. I’m a police officer. I’m a this I’m a that and we’re we’re not identifying ourselves with the one thing That is actually our identity and it’s good.

So many of us don’t believe it and that’s the beauty of of these liturgical seasons Advent Lent, you know But it’s also the beauty of being able to journey through them looking for those answers, right? I mean, I I I know that one thing in my life that I struggle with a lot, and I still do, if I’m not careful, my wife’s very good at pointing it out for me, but, uh, is, is control, right?

Like I want to be in control and control is an illusion, right? And we fight against it so much because it’s just not something we’re supposed to have, right? Like that’s why it’s so difficult. And while we get angry and all these things and, The Lord wants to take that from us to, you know, you let go the steering wheel and you see that you’ve white knuckled the steering wheel.

So long you have arthritis, right? Like you just have been trying to control your life and the Lord wants to come into that. So. Yeah, and, and one thing about what you said here, and then we can start to kind of, uh, you know, just, just talk a little bit more about this as we go to close, um, about where people can find it and, um, all those things.

But, you know, to your point of, of, of not feeling seen and, and the Lord wants to come and restore, you know, we, Paul George and I, you’re another one of your friends did the restored men’s conference. The first one for the healing center last weekend, or yeah, two weeks ago. There was a guy that I was walking past when Paul was talking in the hallway.

It was just he and I, and he wouldn’t looking up at me, you know, and, and, and I just kind of walked by and the Lord moved my heart to tap him on the shoulder. And I just said, Hey, uh, I’m glad you’re here. And he kept walking and I kept walking and he came up at the end of the conference and he said, uh, He goes, why did you touch me and talk to me in the hallway?

And I was like, I don’t know if this guy, if I did something wrong or what, but I just, you know, Lord, give me the words to say. And I just said, I know what it’s like to be in places and not to feel seen, you know, not to feel seen and to feel like you don’t matter. And the guy just crumbled. He just buried his head in my chest, started sobbing.

And so many people are like that in the world. And, and to your point, this is what Jesus wants to show us is that he, yes, he came, but he still comes every day to meet us in those places and to, to journey with us. And it’s just such a powerful time, even, you know, here on the third day of Advent, right?

It’s, it’s not too late to start to pick up and folks, I mean, this is just a beautiful work by a person that has, you know, in Heather, that is, you know, She’s obviously told you here, some things that she’s been through and that she struggled with and, um, how the Lord has met her in those places. And, you know, we’re Catholic speakers and evangelists.

That doesn’t mean we’re fixed. Uh, we, we both still have those places the Lord wants to come into, but. I think for any of you out there that they’re looking for Advent to be more than just something on the calendar and the chocolates you eat every day and the purple and pink candles you put out that you really want something, uh, powerful to happen, that this is a wonderful place to start in this book that, that Heather is, um, you know, gifted the church with, uh, through her gifts that the Lord has given her.

So Heather, anything else you want to say about it or, or just invitation for people there as we come to close here, you’ve been really kind with your time. I want to honor it. Yeah. I mean, I love how Avi Maria lays out these books. One, we talked about this a little bit. It’s simple. There’s the reflections are like a page, a page in a little bit.

So I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t like feeling like I got homework and I’m just going to get way behind or whatever. So, so this is super easy. And then there’s brief prayers in here. Um, and then three, two or three like journaling questions that you can sit down with that you can ponder throughout the day.

There’s space to write them right here. So you don’t even have to get another book. Yeah. Uh, All of that I think is really intentional. Like some people might be like, I don’t journal or whatever, but, but maybe you might wanna try because it does actually help you to get below the surface and it gives you a little bit more time to ponder what’s going on.

And for some people you might be listening to John and I talking and go, whoa, I don’t have a whole bunch of stuff like this. Like, does everybody really need to be healed? Well, you know, like actually Pope Benedict talks about how healing is like the point of the whole Christian journey if you zoom out, you know, like that, that’s what it’s all about.

And, and maybe some of us. Just are unaware of the impact of certain things in our life. And it allows us time to be more self reflective, which I think we’re really lacking today because it’s so noisy all the time. So it’s like a great opportunity to get quiet. The other thing I love about this, because we’re talking about belonging and just people, you know, not being noticed and stuff like that.

There is a group guide that goes along with this for free that you can get on the Ave Maria press website that has, The prayer to open the questions for your group. It’s laid out so simply, you don’t even have to think about it. You just got to show up and invite some people so you can do it on, on zoom with a friend or, you know, at your house with a coffee or at the parish or whatever it might be.

And, and I think that that’s also a great opportunity for relationships to also go a bit deeper. Sometimes it’s hard to take those steps and be like, Oh, we’re going to talk about God and like our faith. Like that might feel a little weird with certain people. So the book kind of does it for you. It breaks the ice for you because, uh, the questions are right there.

You’re just answering a question, you know, instead of bringing it up yourself. So yeah, I think those are all valuable things. There’s little videos that go with it each week. We’re going to do it. Yeah. Companion videos. Yeah. And we’re going to do, we’re going to do Yeah, exactly. In our podcast, Abiding Together, we’re going to do it each week.

So even if you don’t have the book or you’re not going to get the book, you could just listen to the podcast and the discussion about it and then just ponder some things, um, and engage that way. So there’s a whole bunch of options and I know there’s lots of other books and options out there. And I would just say, don’t overwhelm yourself.

Just pick one thing and get quiet each day. And invite Jesus to come, you know, that’s the whole point. And I, I mean, I opened, uh, page 20. So in the first week and there’s three questions, I mean, what is the one place in your life right now where you’re not free? Where, what do you desire Jesus to do about that?

And what is holding you back from stepping into freedom? And I mean, that’s simple questions, but very, very powerful and very thought provoking. And folks that’s what you’re going to find in this. And The Lord, uh, the Lord wants to lead us back to him and that’s what this season is for. And I personally can’t wait to dive into this book.

I’m going to, uh, probably have to buy another one cause I’m gonna have to arm wrestle my wife for it every day. I would imagine. So, uh, I’m going to get another one. In fact, I’m headed over to the Catholic bookstore here in a minute after this. So I’m going to pick up another copy and folks, I mean, Heather, you’re, you’re a gift to the church.

And so folks, if you, if this is your first, um, encounter with Heather, if this is the first time you’ve ever heard, Um, who she is or what she does, uh, do yourself a favor and look further into the work that she’s a part of at abiding together and, um, through her life restoration ministries with Jake, her husband, and, uh, so many other things.

So Heather, like, I want you to just spend the last couple of minutes here, just telling people where they can find more about you, how I know you speak. So if you want to, you know, talk to about how people can book you to maybe for a mission or for an event at the church, please, please feel free to. Thank you so much, John.

Yeah. Uh, so I I’m personally on Instagram quite a bit, or Facebook, but mostly Instagram. Um, our podcast is abidingtogetherpodcast. com. That’s with Sister Miriam James Hyland and our friend, Michelle. And then, uh, Yeah, our ministry, my husband and I have is called life restoration and people life restoration.

ca so they can look us up there and Jake has a great podcast as well called restore the glory that he does with Dr. Paul, our good friend. And, and so, yeah, just even people who are like, I really want to learn more about what is it, what is healing all about and stuff like that. That’s a, that’s a great resource for people as well.

Yeah. All right. Well, Heather, um, you know, I really appreciate your time. It’s just a joy to call you a friend and to get here and to sit, sit here to get to sit here with you and talk about things that a lot of people don’t talk about, you know, wounds and healing and, and just this invitation that the Lord has for us this Advent.

So, uh, thank you for coming on. Thank you for taking the time. I hope we get to, to actually be in the same place sometime to get to spend some time and maybe grab some of those blessings. Beers and hot wings, but then we were, we were joking around about, but, uh, the best to you and your family. And, uh, if we don’t talk again, Merry Christmas and happy advent to you.

Yeah. Thank you. You too. And John, I do want to say like you also are a great gift. Especially to men. I think what you’re modeling with just vulnerability and openness and your heart that just desires God, you know, you, you have a heart that is like burning for Christ and I can see that. And I know that that’s a great witness to a lot of men in particular.

So thank you for what you’re doing to build the kingdom. Yeah. It’s a joy. I mean, I think he would say the same thing that Jesus Christ did something for me that I couldn’t do for myself. And so, uh, you know, the response is to do whatever he asked. Right. And so what we try to do the best of our ability, we don’t always get it right, but we try the best we can.

So, but Heather, thank you so much for the kind words and, and, uh, I will be praying for y’all again. Thank you for your time. And folks go out. I’ll Uh, to Ave Maria Press, or I believe Dr. Bob has it on his website there at the JP2 Healing Center, I believe. Amazon has it. Just go out and grab this book and make sure that you are journeying with the Lord through Advent.

Thank you again, Heather. Thanks so much. All right. God bless.

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© Just A Guy In The Pew 2025. All Rights Reserved.
An apostolic initiative of Pew Ministries, Inc.
A 501(c)3 nonprofit
Designed by Fuzati