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.
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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.
- 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.
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