 Good evening, everyone, and welcome to our webinar, The Holy Spirit, Lording, and Giver of Life. My name is John William. I work in Christianity at the Francis University of Louisville. I'm wearing probably my t-shirt. This is my alma mater. This is where I work. I love working here because it is such a pleasure when the Holy Spirit is alive and it's a lot of pleasure to be able to host this tonight, this webinar, so that you can grow, hopefully, in a deeper knowledge and love of the Holy Spirit and how he wants to work in your life. These webinars are part of our ongoing engagement. We just want to be able to serve people. We want to be able to help them on their journey, not just through our conference, obviously. Every week of the year, you know, 52 weeks of the year, we want to be with you and let you know that we care about you. We want to help you grow. And these webinars are a big part of it. To start us off, I'd just like to start with a prayer. And ask the Lord's spirit, even as we start a webinar, on the Holy Spirit, to fall fresh on everyone who is with us, everyone who wanted to be here tonight and couldn't be here, that we would not just embrace the Holy Spirit as a concept or as a good thought, but as our Lord and the giver of life to our own soul. So let us pray in the name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord Jesus Christ, in the fulfillment of your mission, you sent forth your spirit to work within our hearts to transform us, to make us into your image and likeness. And then just through the Holy Spirit that we have made adopted sons of our heavenly Father and are able to cry out a great passion about our Father. We thank you, Lord Jesus, in so many ways for the way that you've made yourself known to us and we just seek you in a deeper way tonight to work in our hearts in a new and powerful way. Lord, I thank you for David and DJ, who joined us here as part of the panel. We thank you for everyone who's come on board tonight. The last of this webinar, may it be from your glory for the sanctification of all of our souls. And we ask you to be the most precious in you, Jesus. Amen. Amen. Very much. Now, those of you who are tuned in here, look at the screen at the same time, I see two words. I see David, I see John, where's DJ? Well, we have a little bit of technical list of DJ. It's here in, go please say hi, DJ. Hey, hey, hey. All right, he's here. And when his sister, Michelle, you put a very, a very, a really suave picture of him. And they're just really guapo, really guapo. Me, not so guapo, but. Anyway, tonight our topic is the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life. You know, that's one of the most ancient part and profound titles given to one that's been affirmed. This is one of the earliest councils of the church. Even invented currently into the creed that we all pray together at Mass on Sunday. And why? Because he is part of the Trinitarian God. That the beauty of what we are as Catholics are, is we're family. And this family was established by a God who didn't exist as a singularity by himself or in heaven, but it exists as a community, as a family of love. And it's in this giving between the father and the son of the Holy Spirit that this family of love becomes just this world with this beautiful community that we are invited into baptism. And yet, it is all of our call to step into that, to enter into that, that life of the Trinity and the Holy Spirit really is the one in so many ways that makes us be able to do that and gives us access to this deeper, more mysterious, more beautiful life of God that makes the Catholic life so exciting and so enriching and so wonderful. We're gonna take turns sharing in a few minutes to share and the DJs must share and then I'm gonna kind of wrap up and say a few things, but you'll notice on your Go webinar control panel that on the side there, you're able to, under a box called questions, type in any questions or comments that you would like to share with us as a panel along the way. And we will take time as we go along if the questions are clarifying questions to stop and deal with your questions and be able to help you understand what we're talking about, do what new questions you have and we'll also have a good block of time at the end of this webinar where we're gonna have like a free-for-all, we'll have a large chunk of time just to answer your questions. So once again, that's on your Go webinar control panel, just type your questions in and hit enter and it'll pop up on our screens as we have the opportunity. We'll be glad to address if you look at those questions. So thank you once again for being here. Let's just go ahead and get started. And I want to encourage you if you're out there like, oh man, I want to take notes and I want to catch a real thing to say, I want to assure you that this webinar is being recorded and that's one of the cool things about this technology we're recording it so that you can listen to it later again or you can share it with a group or other people and you feel like benefit from listening to the content. So just relax, make yourself present, open your hearts to the spirit and what I'm just taking through this time and the other and we'll have a great time. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to David and David is willing to share what he's experienced and his card with you, what he sees the Holy Spirit have done and is doing through him and the church around him, David tell you whatever. Awesome, thanks John. Yeah, I'm super excited to be talking about this topic on the Holy Spirit. If you've been going to Mass regularly, you probably noticed that we're hearing a lot about the Holy Spirit, at least the early church in the book of Acts and we're kind of leading up to this huge Pentecost Sunday, which is gonna be phenomenal. And I love especially these readings right now because they show us the book of Acts and the book of Acts sometimes is referred to as the gospel of the Holy Spirit that when Jesus comes and he goes through his passion, his death and his resurrection, but he didn't just leave us. He didn't just say, I end the story, see you later. He established a church to carry on that mission and that message of his death and his resurrection. And so he started the church through the apostles and you see that starting to take shape in the gospels and the book of Acts is kind of that transition as Jesus begins to hand over this church to his apostles, to his disciples, to his people. But he does it in such a cool way. He actually gives them this mission but then he empowers them to do it. And you find this in the book of Acts. The book of Acts is actually, our church would say it's historically accurate. Now that's not just like spiritually edifying or it's not like some sort of religious just story or like kind of an analogy or something. This is important to think about because it's historically accurate means that what you find in the book of Acts in scripture actually happened. And you may be thinking like, big deal. Well, it's because maybe you're not too familiar with the book of Acts. Take a minute, each night before you go to bed or something for the next couple of weeks and just read a little bit of the book of Acts and you're gonna see our church. It's the beginnings of the Catholic church. It's the blueprint to Catholicism and you're gonna see normal human beings like you and I like the people that take of our cues on any given Sunday at Mass and you're gonna see the crazy life that they lived. And we call this life the life in the spirit. They did things that Jesus had empowered them to do. Things they could never do on their own. Things that only a supernatural power could do in and through them. And we see this happen at Pentecost. Jesus promises them, you receive power when my Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses until the end of the year. And I think if you're anything like me, like you're probably raised Catholic or you hear the word Holy Spirit at this term a lot. And the reality is for me, the Holy Spirit was just this kind of dove, right? This kind of like weird pet of Jesus or something and kept him in a cage and he chirped out some great verses every now and then but we're really sure who he was. But that's not it. Like this verse where he says, you receive power when my Holy Spirit comes upon you. That word power comes from a Greek word, dynamis. And this is where we actually get the word dynamite. Think about that real quick. This is the description Jesus is using to describe to us the power of his Holy Spirit, of his love dwelling in us. That it's this life changing power. You think about dynamite. I mean, dynamite blasts open mountains so they can pave roads through these mountains. Dynamite can be beautifully destructive in a lot of ways. And in the same way this power we've been given in the early church, you see it start to change who they are. You see Peter go from this doubter and this denier into the rock, St. Peter that we know him to be. You see St. Paul go from this, this man who persecutes Christians to be turned into one of the greatest evangelists the world will ever see. And he wrote down in part of the New Testament, the only power that could destroy that old person and bring about a new person is the Holy Spirit. And it's in the book of Acts, it's in who we're supposed to be as Catholics. And not only are we baptized in the name of the Father and Son of the Holy Spirit, but we're called to have an awakening to the Holy Spirit, a baptism of the Holy Spirit that we would be empowered, that we would be receptive to the gifts and the plans that God, the Holy Spirit wants to do and bring about in our lives. And when I read the book of Acts, I get really excited. But if I'm honest, I look around at my church, some of the churches I get to visit and I don't really see the same church that I see in the book of Acts. I don't really see people courageously praying for healings. I don't really see people interceding prophetically for people. I don't see people trusting in the Holy Spirit in the way they did in the book of Acts. But I can't stop there. Cause if I'm really honest, I don't really see it in the church. More so, I don't see it really in my life a lot. I really want to see it though. And I think this is where God kind of has me right now. He shows me the beauty of this Holy Spirit in the early church. And I see it in some of the amazing people I meet when I get to travel around. And I believe he's stirring up this desire in my heart for a greater outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And it doesn't mean that that outpouring is going to look like St. Peter or look like St. Paul, but it's going to look like what he has planned for me. And I believe right now for the season as we're preparing for Pentecost, as a church, but also in my own heart, I believe Jesus is stirring up a desire for his Holy Spirit in me. A desire to know him, not just to gifts, but to know him as a person, to want to long for him as a person dwelling in me. And I think this is really important because as I was kind of thinking about this, St. Paul talks about how we should be striving for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We should be striving for the Holy Spirit for his presence, for his love, and for his Corinthians. He calls us, he encourages us to eagerly seek this out through prayer and different things along those means in my own life. I noticed that this desire kind of creates an emptiness. Not a bad emptiness, but a hopeful emptiness because a glass is empty, it can be filled. And I think that's what God is doing in my own life right now. As I see the book of Acts, and I look around and I see maybe some discrepancies with my own life in terms of a life in the spirit, as he's awakening a holy desire. And where there's a desire, there's a longing. And where there's longing, Jesus can come and feel that longing. I think he's making room for his providence by leading me to desire more of the Holy Spirit. I believe for all of us in some way or another, if we stop and think about it, there's things in our life maybe that we want to see changed. Maybe there's a sin that we're struggling with, or maybe there's kind of just a cloud of maybe depression or darkness or something that we feel kind of in our lives. Maybe we can't really seem to grasp this idea of God's love for us. All these things are actually desires for the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit wants to bring you joy and unconditional love. He wants you to know who he is. And I think for us, if we're willing to, God's gonna show us that he's stirring that desire up. And he plans to fulfill that desire as we turn to him in prayer. I think what's important though, in my own life, God's kind of been taking me on this journey and as I've been praying about this desire for the Holy Spirit, for myself and a renewal for our church. He keeps taking me back to this verse that I found in the Gospel of Luke. And it's Gospel, it's Luke chapter 11. It starts at verse nine and it goes through verse 13. I'm gonna read it real quickly to you. Yeah, I'm sure you've heard it before, but let's hear it again. Jesus says, and I tell you, ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives. And the one who seeks finds. And the one who knocks, the door will be opened. What father among you would hand us on a snake when he asked for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asked for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask? And I love this, because Jesus uses some language here that for me is kind of like, duh, right? What dad among you, if your son asked for a fish would give him a snake? And that's a pretty awful dad, you know what I mean? Like, thankfully, I never had an experience of dad like that. My dad gave me fish whenever I wanted fish, right? When I asked for an egg, he didn't give me a scorpion. And it kind of seems like this dumb moment, like what dad would do that. And Jesus said exactly like, I want you to get this simply and plainly that my Father in heaven, your Father in heaven wants to give you good gifts. And if you think, if it makes sense to you that a Father would give good gifts to his child, how much more would this good Father in heaven give good gifts to you, his children? And he says, and he'll give the Holy Spirit to those who ask. And I love this verse, these verses. What blew me away as I've been kind of reading these verses in these past couple of weeks, is I read the verse right before this section. And it's actually Luke chapter 11 verse five through eight. And this took my understanding of Jesus telling me to ask for the Holy Spirit to a whole different level. And he gives this little story and he says, suppose one of you has a friend who goes at midnight and says, friend, friend, lend me three loaves of bread for another friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey and nothing to offer him. And he says, we're applied from within. Do not bother me. The door has already been locked and my children and I are already in bed. I cannot get up to give you anything. I tell you, if he does not get up to give you the loaves because of the friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence. Take a look at this image. Jesus is teaching us how he wants us to pray. And he gives us this analogy of this annoying neighbor in the middle of the night who comes banging on your door and your family's asleep. Your door back then had to be like physically locked up each night. It wasn't just like a dead bull. It took time to secure that door and to seal it each night. And Jesus is saying, your neighbor comes to your door and is demanding for you to open up how much work it would take for you to come downstairs to wake your family up to open that door just to give them a loaf of bread. And he says, I can't do it. The door has been locked. My family's asleep. And Jesus says, if he doesn't get up to answer to give them that loaves out of their friendship, he will do it because that neighbor will be persistent in asking. The neighbor's gonna keep knocking. The neighbor's gonna keep calling out, keep demanding so that gift of that loaves so he can have it in his own life. And this is what Jesus uses to preface, ask, seek and knock. To the point of what you and I would think would be annoying. He says, do you want the Holy Spirit? Ask for it. Do you seek wisdom? Ask for it. Do you wanna know more of my lungs living in you? Knock and seek and ask for it. And for me, this is incredibly hopeful. This is a desire that he's awakened me. I've prayed for more and more of the Holy Spirit a lot. And I may not have felt this crazy rush or seen the book of Acts unfold in front of me every time, but every time God is awakening my thirst and desire for him more and more. He's teaching me to be persistent and to ask this good father for the good gift of his Holy Spirit. And so I encourage you, wherever you are in life, what desires do you have? Where in your life do you wanna see something change, something renewed, something made new? And ask the Holy Spirit to come in and to be persistent, to give you himself. Ask the father to give those good gifts. And lastly, I wanna leave you this one thought. Father, Reneo Contalamesa. He's the preacher of the papal household. In other words, this is the guy, his job is to preach to the Pope. And that's a pretty big job. Like he's gotta know his stuff. He's gotta be in tune with the Holy Spirit. This is his role. And Father Contalamesa says, we should not be content with anything less than to experience a new Pentecost. We should not be content with anything less than to experience a new Pentecost. We shouldn't be content with just seeing the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts. We shouldn't be content with just hearing about the Holy Spirit in the lives of the saints. We shouldn't be content with that one time in retreat four years ago when I think I experienced a Holy Spirit. He says, we always have to be persistent in pursuing a new Pentecost and begging God to send the promise, the advocate, every single moment of every single day as we pursue him. And he's a faithful father and he will do it. He may not do it, I do want him to do it, but he will do it in the best way possible. And he will give himself to you the best gift that he can present in that Holy Spirit living within you. Think about it, pray about it. And pray for me as I like you or just during and thirsting for more of the Holy Spirit in my own life. Amen. Yeah, that was beautiful, thank you so much. You know, I've gone back to the words of Pope Benedict 16. Again, this was in 2008 at Pentecost Sunday. He said, look the church as it were is in a constant state of Pentecost. We're constantly seeking new outpourings, new effusions of the Holy Spirit into the life of the church. And he said, I want to invite all Catholics today to come to rediscover the joy of being baptized in all this spirit, to be renewing the graces that come to us in baptism and confirmation. And a couple of the questions that have popped up being like, how we become more open to the Holy Spirit? I'm gonna touch upon a little bit of that when we get to my point. So these answers are coming. You know, we're gonna deal with all the other questions that have popped up and I want to encourage you guys if you have questions along the way. Because here's the thing, if you look at the old testament, the same actually possible to that David reference. Yeah, at one point it talks about Paul going into this place and preaching to the gospel. And he says, have you guys been baptized? Or he asked you to be baptized with the baptism of John. And he asked him, well, have you received the Holy Spirit? And they all look at each other like, we've never even heard of the Holy Spirit. So even in the Acts of the Apostles, the church had a cataclysm problem. And we didn't teach well about the Holy Spirit. It's kind of a funny anecdote that the church even had to learn like, we need to teach people about the fullness of what it means to be alive. The fact that our God is Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you know, and they share this life and we can't have the fullness of God's life in us until we are fully alive in the Holy Spirit. And you know, for me, when I went through that, my dream opened up a whole bunch of more doors and deep in line relationship with Christ and with God the Father because I was now being brought into that medieval way through the power of the Holy Spirit. I'll talk more about that, but I want to pass it on right now. And I want to bring up a lovely, like I said, I promise you a great picture here that you can meditate on while he speaks. And it's going to be awesome for all of us involved. I'm going to share my screen so you should be able to see on your screen what I see, which is the one DJ Zulander himself, DJ Bernal. DJ take your way, Bernal. That's a good one. Yeah, yeah. Our Photoshop is amazing these days. I'll tell you, you can do it on any open. That's cool. I don't want to cut it. There you go, real deal. So we'll just hide it back and go for it then. Well, thank you. And first and foremost, you know, thank you, John. Thank you, David. And thank you to the student mill for, you know, Franciscan University for doing this. This is just an amazing, wonderful opportunity. Man, I just got to start off and say, we serve a mighty God, a mighty, mighty merciful God. And it's so amazing that he would choose you and I and all the people listening in to be, to be in his army. Man, what a privilege that is. What a trust that he put within our hearts when he made us those years ago, before the world was even formed, when he said, I will count the hairs on your head. What a beautiful, amazing purpose he has put in our path. And I'll tell you, you know, kind of just like David was talking about, you know, growing up and the church that I was in, it was a very mellow church, you know? And so being on this conference call about this webinar about the Holy Spirit is totally new. But I'll tell you what, whenever I had a reversion that I've been helping my whole life, but I just fell in love with the Lord in college, I found out that the Lord's love is anything but mellow. It is amazing, it is miraculous and what he does to heart. And I'll tell you, over the past couple of years, he's absolutely changed my life through the Holy Spirit. And it's like, it's like when you're walking in the Holy Spirit, the world around you changes. And it's not because the situation was changed, it's because the Holy Spirit, the Lord, they give our life through you, changes. Everything that's going on around you, you know, our world is facing a dilemma of darkness and the only way for the Lord to eliminate the shadows is to raise up Holy Spirit into evangelizers whose light never fades. If we're called to be a city on a hill and that our lamp should light up the world, that's exactly what we are to do. And we are able to do that. And we're able to wake up in the Holy Spirit, to go to sleep in the Holy Spirit, to walk in the Holy Spirit every day. Why? Because of what David just talked about in chapter one, is we've been given power through the spirit of adoption. I'm gonna read Acts one 8 through 11 once again where David already touched on this, I think it's so beautiful. It says, So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, it is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own ability, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Elegidea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Brothers and sisters, that's what we've been called to do. And we can do it because we now have the power. Jump 14 says the Holy Spirit already lives inside of us that we are not orphaned. Wow, what a beautiful inheritance that we have received. We've received the inheritance of a king and he's kind of laid out this path before us and said, hey, go to the ends of the earth and preach the good news. Brothers and sisters, this is the legacy that we share it. What a beautiful opportunity. You know, we have to, as Holy Spirit and evangelizers, whether it be in your Sunday school, whether it be in your work, whether it be in your schools, we have to be tired, we have to be fed up with people perishing for the lack of knowledge. I mean, you can go to anywhere, you go to school, work, especially on college campuses for young adults, everyone's on their phones and we're living in a community that needs life. And that's what this Holy Spirit does, it gives life. It doesn't necessarily make bad people good, it brings dead people to life. And that is beautiful. And so just offering the challenges, and this is kind of the way that I used to wake up and I said, okay, Lord, today, I've got it, Lord, okay, I got you, Lord, I'm ready, baby. I'm gonna evangelize five people today. And oh, man, I was content, I had the biggest smile on my face. Woo, I was ready to go until the Lord spoke to me and said, DJ, you're limiting yourself to five people a day? What if you walked so in love with me every day of your life that the situations around you change? That things just don't happen by coincidence anymore. It's God incidents. And if you have enough confidence in me, then you have a God for this. What if you had that? And I said, Jesus, I like that. I like God for this, I'm gonna use that. I remember a story, this kind of just bringing this kind of a story into it. I was walking into Macy's one day and I was wearing this bright pink shirt. I mean, this thing is bright. I mean, this shirt came with batteries, all right? It illuminates the darkness for sure. So I'm walking into Macy's and some guy screams at me from the curb. He said, it looks like he put somebody in the back seat that the door is open. He's closing his trunk. He says, hey, and it's kind of windy and I turned back, I said, yeah, well, what's going on? He said, hey, man, that's a pretty pink shirt. And I really had no idea how to take that. I was like, I don't know if this guy wants to fight me. I don't know if he likes to show it. What could we do? So I walk over there and I said, hey, I'm sorry. I'll probably be correct for you. He said, man, get a pretty pink shirt. And I said, hey, you know what, man, God bless you. That's amazing. I appreciate that you can compliment like that. And he says, oh, oh, you're a Christian? I said, absolutely. I'm a Catholic Christian. He says, oh, man, he goes, I'm a Christian too. He goes, what's your name? I said, my name's Daniel. He goes, oh my gosh, and an Old Testament name. He says, oh, my name's Joshua. And so we started going back to his fourth. Well, his mama, this gentleman has to be 40 years old. Well, his mama, he had just put her in the back seat and she's going, what do you say, Sonny? He's a Christian, man. And so all of a sudden, we're all laughing again. And you look, we said, pray her right there. I mean, right there, right outside of Macy's. And why? Because I said, God bless you? I mean, he didn't even sneeze. And it's when we, as Christian people, as Catholic people, we're so in love with Jesus, that the Holy Spirit uses every word to minister. The word says, be of every word that comes out from your lips of blessings to people. And when we allow the Holy Spirit, the blessed people, they're back to absolutely amazing. I mean, just to think about this, if we have the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, staring inside of us, what a difference we can make as well. What a shining light we can be. That this is the beautiful idea of a lighthouse. And you think about the lighthouse on the beach, on the bayfront, and what's the meaning of the lighthouse that you don't, there's so many rocks around the bay that ships can't come close, they can't come and dock there. That lighthouse is shining the way, saying, hey, if you keep going the same way that you're going, you're going to hit rocks and you're going to perish. And my brothers and sisters, people perish for the lack of knowledge. So you and I are called to be the lighthouse. We're called to say, hey, the rocky shores that you're going through, you're going to hit the rock bottom unless you decide to love Jesus. And unless you decide to let him transform life. You know, and I talk about this very, like it's very easily, easily done and it's not. And I don't pretend that it is to muster the courage, you know, standing in front of someone at Walmart and telling them, hey, you know what? I really sure the Holy Spirit is asking me to pay for your brochures today and to feel like maybe a social reject. These are very real things to us. But brothers and sisters, just because we live in the world does not mean we are of this world. We live for someone better. We don't live for the applause of this world. We live for the approval of our heavenly Father. And when people don't know what a good Father is, you know what I need to be that might have to show them what is that heavenly Father mean? So when you're at the store and you say to someone, or you're at the work and you say, hey, let me pray for you. And they say, oh, I don't do that type of thing. Hey, that's okay. I do. I know that God loves you anyway. So I'm going to say a prayer for you. You know, it reminds me of a story. Like I said, I don't pretend to be something that I'm not. I'm scared every day whenever I look at someone and I put it on my heart to pray for them. Or you can talk to somebody I know and I'll give you a part where I failed at that. So friends of mine had gone camping at the Big Band National Park here in Texas. It was about an eight-hour drive, I think it is. And we ended up getting there and we go on this amazing hike and I'm with these friends of mine and we get to the summit of the rock and we get up there and then we're tired and famished and thirsty. And so we're breaking out a little peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And there's a guy right next to us and he's sitting on the rock and he's a Native American looking here, very long hair, darker skin. And he had these blue jeans on and looking very rugged ready to kind of take on the world and we start talking to him and he talks about, if he loves camping, he loves going here and there. And as we're breaking out up, we're sitting there to talk to him or breaking out our sandwiches and stuff. And we were getting ready to pray for our sandwiches and we asked him, hey, you want one of the sandwiches? He said, yeah, yeah, I would love that, thank you. And just as we were about to pray for the food, the Holy Spirit, I felt, told me, DJ and fight that man to come party. And I'm going in my head, and then we started praying. It's going in our group started praying. And before I knew it, we were going on prayer. And so I gave the guy the sandwich and I thought to myself, wow, I can feed this guy naturally, but I can't even try to feed him spiritually. And I told God every day, Lord, you know, the Jesus Christ, put me up to bat, man, put me up to bat. I'm ready to go, you know, I'm ready to sit on the bench, put me in the game, Lord. I'm ready to be your servant. And you know what? He gave me, man, he gave me a round. And I didn't even sleep that. And the whole way back from Big Ben National Park, I hadn't let down the Holy Spirit. I said, shoot, the Holy Spirit told me and I didn't listen. Another funny story. We have to kind of do this when the Holy Spirit tells us because we might only have a small window of opportunity and I'll give you another story. We were at that church one day and this is a lady. And she was the young lady in her twenties maybe and two young kids. And it reminded me so much of my family and my mom and my brother myself. And I wanted to tell her, hey, you have a beautiful family. And I heard it's not enough. Maybe I should tell her that the Holy Spirit kind of, I mean, I wasn't hitting on the girl, right? The Holy Spirit is telling her to do it. And so the perfect opportunity happened during give the peace, right? Share your peace. And I, again, you know, I wished, I didn't even swing. I didn't even say, hey, the Lord just told me, yeah, the beautiful family. He goes, oh, an amazing plan for you. He has plans to props for you. And I just wanted to tell you the beautiful family. Well, I didn't do it, but I saw them leave church. And I said, oh, I know I'm going to follow them. What a stalker, right? So they ended up, I ended up following them. Two cars behind me in that traffic. Well, they went to a Jamba Juice over here, right? And so they go into the Jamba Juice and I parked my car and I'm saying, all right, here we go, Holy Spirit. One opportunity. So I go into Jamba Juice and they're ordering and the little girl, the little girl, one of the, she's made a couple of years old, she looks at me and she has this look of fear, like just death on her. She is so scared. And so she recognizes me. So she pulls her mom's pant leg and her mom turns around and just grabs her children, right? And she looked frightened. And I said, oh, I just wanted to know, I was, you know, I was behind you at charity. And I wanted to know, you have a beautiful family. And she looks at me and says, oh, okay. And she kind of gave us this look of, man, you are such a weirdo, get away from us. And I saw that my window of opportunity had closed on me. So we need to pay attention and be ready and willing to when the Holy Spirit tells us to act on it. And one of the last stories I'll give here and I'll start winding down is, I saw this gentleman across the street and he'd been working, he worked for Home Depot, you know, Home Lumberyard and he fixed up your house in case anybody doesn't know what Home Depot is. But he looked into my garage, you know, I know I have some weights in the garage and he comes over and he's a, he's this very strong, bulky looking gentleman. And he says, hey, man, you know, I like to work out too. I said, dude, that's awesome, man, that's great. And he's talking about the different things that are going on in his life. And I said, hey, man, have you ever thought you're meant to do something amazing? And he says, yeah, yeah, you know what? I'm in sales and I love people and I love doing this. And I've sold, you know, I hear a Home Depot and I've sold, I've been a retailer. He goes, man, I'm a good salesman. And I looked at him and I said, man, have you ever sold hope? And he stopped in his tracks and he gave me this look and he said, what did you say? I said, have you ever sold hope? And he said, no, what do you, I said, man, let me tell you what Jesus Christ has done for me. And it wasn't, I didn't have to force it. I didn't have to try to use the most simple, I mean, to use the most intricate phrases. I didn't even need to be the most eloquent speaker, you know, like Moses was the most eloquent speaker. But I just shared my heart with him and I said, hey, man, I think God wants to make a minister out of you. And I'll tell you what, he and I part of ways. I gave him my number and I haven't seen any food from that, but it's not my job to see the food that comes with that. My job is to plant the seed and that was my little win. Consider this brothers and sisters, you may encounter someone at Walmart and change a generational line through the Holy Spirit. Let me unpack that real quick. Because you tell someone at Walmart one day, hey, you know what, Jesus is in love with you or you pray with somebody at work one day, maybe their children's children's children's children are so impacted because you prayed with their great, great, great, great grandpa. And you know what, that great, great, great, great grandpa, he became a big part of the church and he went to ask for treats and he became a faithful member. And so his grand, grand, grand, grand, grandson, he comes the next home. I mean, I've never thought about that. Maybe the person that's sitting in line at the grocery store, it's the next mother Teresa. But unless we act with the Holy Spirit and unless we use that power that the Lord has given to us, people would be in a parish. The Lord has asked us, please be my representative. You may be the only Jesus anybody ever sees. Be not scared, be not moved. As a matter of fact, tell the mountain to move and it will be moved. If you just have the faith of the mustard seed. Women, oh my gosh, women, you just celebrated Mother's Day even if you're not a mother. What life you can bring to somebody's world if you just listen to the Holy Spirit. Man, it's like we as men aren't allowed to be in love with Jesus because that's a girl thing or something. Man, that's totally unbalanced because the most masculine man I know got up on that cross and died for his keyboard. So we as men can be that in love with Jesus. And I love the first Peter 4 says, if you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you is beautiful. And I'm gonna wrap up with this right here. Even if you are single, maybe you don't have a family, maybe you're in school, maybe you're just listening right now. Maybe you've gone through your life and maybe you still haven't found the right one. Maybe you're still considering your location. I love the business, no matter how young you are. Second Corinthians 3, who has made us competent to be ministers of the New Covenant, not of the letter of the spirit, for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. Brothers and sisters, my prayer for you and my deep desire of my heart is to see you walk in power, to change life as the young church did. And all the power and all of heaven will be with you because the Holy Spirit is already living inside of you. God bless you, God bless you. And we serve in merciful and wonderful God, God bless you. Amen, amen. I appreciate that. I love your passion and the joy that you give. And I think, you know, the takeaway through all that that D.J. Williams shares, like when we allow the Holy Spirit to work in our lives and give him the freedom to guide us where he needs us to go, he's gonna lead us to places where we're going to be on the cutting edge of, you know, the trinity of his life and doing the work that God wants and which is making his love known to this world. And people are literally, literally dying to know Jesus has love and it's the Holy Spirit that gives us the ability to communicate that. So I wanted to, before I kind of get into a little bit, you know, I wanted to really talk a little bit about, you know, some of the questions that people, you know, have brought up, you know, one of the personal, you know, so how can I be more open to the Holy Spirit? I want to personally, why do people say that confirmation is the completion of the Holy Spirit and baptism from baptism and what is baptism in the Holy Spirit? You know, is it important to distinguish who we need to feel God versus the Holy Spirit? You know, I think, you know, let me kind of just say a few things as to how this works. You know, and this is based on my experience plus what's in the catechism, which is the goal of my teaching the Holy Spirit, plus, you know, what David is sharing. And, you know, I want to recommend the book, you know, as part of this webinar, which is a book by a father, written in our confluent race, called Sovereign Intoxication in the Holy Spirit. But I think this book is really, in terms of outline what it means to be alive in the Holy Spirit. You know, first of all, you know, we have, you know, our God is just in this training. And we're invited into this life. And like I said before, it is a family. You have three distinct beings. And I heard it described by Dr. Scott on that, you know, the father gives all that he has to his son out of love. And all that's in the love is how he freely gives to his son. And the son, in return, gives everything that he has out of love to his father, empties himself out of love. And this exchange, this mutual exchange of love, it becomes like this whirlwind, a palpable whirlwind. And it is this whirlwind that manifests the third person in the training. You know, he's called the Spirit of Love because this love is so powerful that you have to give it a name. And the only analogy I can liken it to is, is the marriage between a man and a wife. You know, and this is so key because right before we got on the webinar, David Halevita's wife is expecting their first child, which is just glorious news. But when a husband and wife give themselves to each other completely without any barrier or restriction in love, that love becomes so real and palpable that nine months later, they're gonna give that love a name. And in the same way, the father and son in love, this exchange of love is so powerful that they gave it a name and he called it the Holy Spirit. And he goes by many times and comes to her. I mean, the consoler, you know, the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit of Love. But our God is truly, it's a mystery yet it's a family, you know what I mean? I can't explain it because it is mystery, but we're invited through baptism. And somebody said, well, why do people say confirmation is the completion of the Holy Spirit from baptism? And I would say we call these the sacraments of initiation parties. They're not the completion of it. In fact, it's kind of like, once you go through baptism and once you go through confirmation, you've received the sacraments of initiation so that you can really enter in now, really start to be equipped to lead the serious Catholic life. That you have the gifts and the strength from the Holy Spirit that you need in order to live an authentically Catholic life in a world that is stead-side as you're doing that. Right? The world does not want you to live in a Catholic life. And the God says, come on, be different. Be transformed. Be conformed to my son, the image and likeness of who he is here and let your heart hold and flow with his mouth. And so, if you think about sacrament, somebody said, well, why is it that most people that we see in our churches and many places don't seem to have a Holy Spirit? And in some people we're trying to, I feel a little bit stuck in the Holy Spirit. Like, I don't know if I'm feeling as much as I have in the past. And how can we help ourselves to have one another experience more than the Holy Spirit once? Well, the bottom line is, every sacrament that we receive as Catholics has the response that's necessary to that sacrament for the fullness of the sacrament has effect. We don't know that to receive the sacrament of Eucharist in the state of mortal sin is a sin. Because we need to, if we're not in communion with God, then we shouldn't be receiving the communion that is offering us at the table of Eucharist. And so, to not be in a state of grace and receive the Eucharist is to live a lie. It's doing sacramentally what's not a reality in our own hearts. This is why the church says, if you've got serious sin in your heart, go to confession first, because that sin can block the grace that would come to us through that sacrament and actually do harm to us if we're in it. It'll get to more sin. And this is a tough Catholic teaching, but it's one that's central to it. If we're really gonna be serious about living the authentic Catholic life, it's not going to allow us to receive the sacraments in the standard place. And so people would say, well, I never knew that. No one ever taught me that in receiving the Eucharist in the state of sin as well. And so you can have a grace as a factor that keeps the grace of Christ from working in your heart. So if we're ignorant of what's happening there and we have never been taught or if we have sin in our life that blocks, we can go through the motions of receiving sacraments, but the grace that's in those sacraments never really touches our heart. And it's like people who go to confession hoping to feel better, but they're not really turning from their sin. They're going, hoping to get a little bit of forgiveness so they don't feel as guilty as they do about the fact that they're not gonna stop sinning. If we go to confession, the response of our heart needs to be in turn from sin. And I say this all to bring it back to confirmation of baptism, to sacraments of initiation. The sacrament of baptism is the most important sacrament you'll ever receive in your life. In fact, if you receive baptism, you have all that you need in terms of grace, sanctifying grace, actual grace, to get you to heaven. You may never receive first communion, but if you're baptized, you can give them the indwelling of the life of God. His Holy Spirit is in you. And DJ talked about it. The Holy Spirit's already within you, but either if you neglect or sin or ignorance, that grace can fly dormant in our souls, unexperienced, unrealized, unreleased. And so we have found that, you know, constantly say, God, stir that gift of baptism in my life. And that may mean I go to confession to receive my life first, so that there's freedom for God to do that. It may mean I need to get right with people in my life so that I'm not being bound by anything that I am free to receive all that God wants to give me. I had this experience when I was 18 where I had people pray for me to receive my Holy Spirit. I realized I needed to get to confession. And it was after I went to confession and they prayed with me again, but the fullness of God's Spirit was being stirred up in my life. And I say fullness because I was as full as I could be at that time. But what I find is that as I live like my Holy Spirit, God is constantly expanding my capacity to experience his life and love in my life. There is no nemenator. That is, we continue to give our hearts to Jesus. As we continue to ask the Holy Spirit to come into our lives, he can transform us in changes. You know, how does this work? Let me just say, you know, the word that the Catechism teachers and that a lot of students talked about was learning how to be docile. And docile is one of those words that doesn't come easy to us. We're American. We're not the perfect things. We attack things, we build things. We do whatever we need to do. And in the spiritual life, it's kind of a paradox. It's like, we really want to move forward with God. We have to be more submissive and receptive than go out and conquer. Because with our Holy Spirit, there's just certain things we're incapable of doing anyway. There's certain things that own the Spirit and God will allow us to do it just to grow in in our identity as Catholics, in this church with God. That doesn't happen on our own. We need the Holy Spirit to show us that, to teach us that, don't leave us through it. You know, other things are overcoming sin. Well, if we're weak and broken, you know, how are we gonna overcome sin unless we have a higher power and work in our hearts and in our souls to help us do that? And so how do we ask the Holy Spirit? How do we strip that gig? How do we become more filled with the Holy Spirit? I think it starts with the facilities. So here's some of the things that I was just saying. On a daily basis, if you want to get the Holy Spirit to come into your life and you want to have a more transformative experience of a deep knowledge, it's important to remember the Old Testament story of the prophet who went to the cave and didn't hear God in the tempest or the wind or the thought you've heard in the still small voice, the still small breeze that was going to the cave. That's when you heard the voice of God. And so if you want to hear God and you want to be more into the Holy Spirit, you need to practice the part of being quiet and still before the Lord. So I encourage you to go to prayer, sit with the Lord and just breathe. Just become aware and as you're breathing in, just start singing, come home to the Spirit. You know, the same bond adventure set, the Holy Spirit goes where he's invited, where he's loved and where he's expected. And so many of us, it was like, I don't love the Holy Spirit and sometimes I don't expect God to do anything to my prayer. And you know, sometimes it goes through a day and I don't even invite the Holy Spirit to be a part of my day. Well, there you go. The first thing that we do is to start off at the name inviting the Holy Spirit to come in. Invite the Holy Spirit into your life. God is a respecter of our free will. He won't barge into your life and do something against your cooperation. We need to conform, not be obliterated in this process of conversion. The Holy Spirit will come to us as the invited guest and he will do in our hearts whatever we give him permission to do. So we say, Holy Spirit, come to me. Help me become free from this sin or this addiction. And we continue to pray that prayer by David said, persistently with faith. We are going to see the Holy Spirit bring about victory in our lives. We're going to see sin being overcome. If we say to God, look, I have anxiety. I have worries. I have so many things in my heart that rob me of my peace, that rob me of sleep. If we're not saying Holy Spirit, come into my life and be the interior master of my heart because Holy Spirit, you are stronger than my fears. You are stronger than my anxieties and I give you permission to squash those sin as the master of my heart to drive out those things that are God and give me a new sense of peace. I want that from you, Holy Spirit, I give you permission. I guarantee you, the Holy Spirit will come to you and he will do these things that you desire. And expect it when you're part of this living like in Holy Spirit, he is making an active faith. Saying with your mind, with an active will, Holy Spirit, I make you the interior master of my heart. I want you to be in charge. I want your light to shine upon the path that you want me to walk. Holy Spirit, I want you to enlighten my heart to show me where I need to change. Holy Spirit, I want you to set me on fire where I don't love people the way I need to or I don't love God the way I need to. Holy Spirit, have your way in me. When we pray this radical prayer, come Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will come. He can't have the rush to us. And a lot of people have experienced after being very far away from God and had to pray this prayer, a very dramatic conversion experience in that moment where once there was emptiness in their life, there's now this presence of God that's overwhelming. And they've experienced the reception of extraordinary gifts in this moment. And for some of us that might not be what happened, but for many of us it's going to be experiencing the ongoing normal presence of God that draws us out of self, puts itself to death so we can look for God. And we just need to have that trustful surrender. And believing that when we say, come Holy Spirit, we know that He's coming. We may not come as a feeling. You might not be sitting there like, okay, Holy Spirit, give me a warm feeling. You're going to feel something. Don't pursue a feeling. Pursue the one who gives the gifts and say, look, I put myself in your hands. Give me what I need, not what I want. Give me what I need to be holy. Give me what I need to be happy. Give me what I need to be loving like Christ is loving. Seek first the kingdom of God and all the other things that you want to be given to you. So seek first God's will in His lordship and the Holy Spirit's interior and the master shape of your life. And all those other things that you desire, they're going to be given to you. Our God is too kind and too generous to leave your orphaned, to leave him hanging and to leave you empty. He loves you too much to leave you the way you are. He loves us as we are. He loves us too much to let us say that what He wants to change your life. He's waiting for you to invite Him. He's waiting for you to continue to, like David said, be persistent in your prayer in surrendering your life every day to the Holy Spirit. But we need the interior master. The human heart is a complex mess of feelings, desires, emotions, affections, loves, fears, strengths, doubts. All of this is inside of us and it's all being ruled by, you know, a disordered nature because of original sin. We'll just have a general dysfunction. It doesn't make us bad. You know, sin doesn't make us bad. Sin has the ability to cut off the God's likeness. It can make us dead, which is worse than being bad because God doesn't look in terms of who's bad. He wants to know who's alive in my spirit, who's dead, who needs to come alive. Just read, you know what I mean? Just read the story of the Bible some one more time. He's saying my son who is dead is alive and that's why I rejoice. He wants us to be alive in Him. That's the most important thing to worry about in God. And if we don't have that interior minister, those things that are disordered in our life will continue to, like a cruel master, drive us towards addictions and sin and lies and selfishness and fear and all the things that cripple us in the walk with God. Whereas the Holy Spirit will lead us into truth and to power and to life and to conversion into a greater intimacy with God, the Trinity. You know, it says in the Catechism in paragraph 260, it says, the ultimate end of the whole divine economy is the entry of God's creatures into the perfect unity of the blessed truth. And normal person's talk, that means everything that God's done is to bring us into community with Him. He wants us to be in community with Him and the Holy Spirit's the one that does that. So if you just take time to surrender, to invite the Holy Spirit in, to be persistent and faithful in your prayer and just give the Holy Spirit all the permission and all the means to do what He wants to do in your heart, you'll become the dynamic evangelizer. And the man of boldness, like DJ or a woman of boldness, like DJ was talking about. We'll experience the same power that David talked about, that's revealed in the New Testament. And we'll see our own hearts change as we change those around us. Being not afraid, the Holy Spirit is our great friend, our consoler. The one that Christ said, it's better for we to leave the sin for you than we to stick around. And that's a great promise from Jesus himself. So that's all I want to share. I think maybe we can spend the next few minutes together to come up with some of your questions. I'll ask you first, David, anything that popped up that you saw in the questions that you were the one talking about? Yeah, for sure. Something that kind of caught my eye. Well, first of all, the question was, what type of gifts does the Holy Spirit give to us for others? I would say, in a sense, all of them. The one where we're a human family, we're a church, we're a body. And so when Christ gives maybe, just gives him my own life that work on my own redemption, my own conversion, that is very much for myself, but it's also for the sake of my family. It's for the sake of my friends. It's for the sake of people I speak to. As Christ is redeemed and bringing conversion about in your own life, it's also for my sake and for your family's sake and we're a communal being. And so any gift that we're given, whether again, that feels like an intimate personal gift, ultimately is gonna lead us to this idea of becoming more and more one in the body of Christ. But I think about it in terms of love, like if you have the ability to love, but no one to love, what good is love, right? I mean, if there's literally no one on earth for you to love, what good is your gift to love? Like love in order for it to be love leads an object to love. And the Holy Spirit who is love himself comes and dwells within us so that he can love others through us and those different gifts in our own conversion and supernatural charismatic gifts, but also the ability to love or forgive or just to see from a different perspective to welcome someone who no one else may be welcomed, something like that. Because love is for others, it's not for self and the Holy Spirit gives us that love for others. Hey man, I wanna affirm that word. You know, we take, it's first phrase is chapter 12 verse one that says, you know, every gift that's given by the Spirit is given to a person for the benefit of them. There's something very much about the Holy Spirit, right? You know, like we're not given the Holy Spirit, so we can say, oh, I have my Holy Spirit on me, especially with God loves me, this is the proof I've been waiting for. You know, I mean, it's like, we're given this gift so that we can turn around and give it to another person. It's a total pay it forward kind of thing. Whatever we're given, you know, somebody wrote, today I'm celebrating the anniversary of my confirmation, 45 years ago. What an amazing, amazing thing to say that 45 years ago I was confirmed and the question is, how can I thank God for all of these graces and all these things? I'm like, you can't, but that's why we have eternity. You have all of eternity to thank God for it. What we need to do right now is make the most of every moment, living it out and making sure whatever we receive, we're passing it on to Him. And, you know, David talked about love and I don't wanna ask you to kind of comment on this after, but you know, we're on this chapter five that says, God's love has been poured into our heart through the Holy Spirit who He gave to us. You know, think about that, it's the Holy Spirit that pours the love of God into our hearts. I believe with every fiber of one being that the Holy Spirit is the game changer in the Christian walk. For those who are trying to deliver their own strength, they're constantly hitting these walls like, I'm gone as far as I can and I can't overcome this. And it's right because we don't have a big building to overcome about the Holy Spirit. Like, I keep saying, you know, I'm seeking God's love and I want it and I want it. Why can't I have it? So, let the Holy Spirit mourn your life because He is the great teacher. He, the first thing that He will teach us about is the nature of God's divine love. Not by giving us a lot of head knowledge, but by pouring it into our hearts so that it becomes a living reality. And it says once again, I love the Catechism so I'll go back to paragraph 221. It says, St. John goes even further when he affirms that God is love. God's very being is love. And by sending His only Son in the spirit of love in the fullness of time, God has revealed His most innermost secret. His innermost secret of God, and that is this. That God Himself is an eternal exchange of love. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And He has dusted us to share in that exchange. Boom, drop right, walk away. And you're like, nah, Estyn, to enter into the external, I'm so excited, I'm so excited. The eternal exchange of love between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That's our destiny. Why don't we go to church with frowny faces and act like the frozen chosen? Our hearts should be rejoicing and on fire to the fact that we are called. And the Eucharist is one of those access points. Into that love. We get to see the embodiment, the incarnation of that love, to feed our souls in the Eucharist. And it's the Holy Spirit that comes down during the Epoclesis when the prayer is spread over the red wine that transforms it into this feast of love. What was, what was, what was red wine is now the body of blood of Jesus. And what invited the feast there? And how do I get on the last, that's the Holy Spirit to enlighten your heart as to what you're experiencing. It all comes back to, are we letting the Holy Spirit in as much as we need to? Are we constantly saying, Holy Spirit show me, Holy Spirit be my best friend, be with me, enlighten my eyes so that my eyes see more than just the flesh and the matter. That's important to me. Let me see things with a spiritual sense. And when I started praying this wedding, like I'm telling you everything in my life would actually change. And I can't help but tell people as we approach the feast of Pentecost if you feel like your tank is empty, if you feel like your faith is, you know, that the needle of your soul is getting dangerously close to that E. There's never any supply of grace that's already within you that needs to be stirred up. And you can go to God and say, God give me a fresh outpouring of your Holy Spirit. And those two experiences combined will start the fire burning in you. It will get your energy ready, it will get you spiritually where your heart desires for you to be. So go ahead, you know, you got to DJ at one, to let you in on this. This is good stuff. I wish I could add something that was just so mind-blowing that you and David didn't already say. But you know, David, I think your answer was absolutely on point in that everything that we're giving it is meant for others. I can't see Jesus sitting with his 12 disciples and saying, hey guys, just go home, relax. Don't worry about it. I'm gonna touch everybody's heart. You just stay home and read your scriptures. It'll be okay. No, right? He sends the 72, he sends them out in twos, wherever two or three are gathered in your name, there I am the Miss, you know, feed my sheep, feed my sheep, feed my sheep. I think over and over again, he calls us to communion. And I think what the beauty of the Holy Spirit is that it allows this community to be life-giving. And we talk so much in the church of being about life. And I don't think it's just, you know, I don't think it's to limit it from womb to tomb. I think I'd be limiting to what truly the Holy Spirit has for us, that it's not just the years that we're, our neurons are firing and our hearts are beating. It's what life are we bringing to the world that we live in? You know, I think we can all agree that. There's some people who, they're living, but are they really living? And I think that's the beauty of this Holy Spirit that allows us and this Pentecost, it allows us to bring life everywhere we go in the communities that we are. So I think you were right on, David. I think John, the beauty of the scriptures that you shared, I mean, kudos, man. I was over here cheering y'all on. You know, one of my favorite comments is that I just refined it. It looks like Peter Parker and Spider-Man. I did it at home. Okay, I don't want to get off topic. My 15-year-old son, I think that's what I'm so inspired to be when he grows up. Here's what he looks like. He's way cooler than I could ever hope to be. Alrighty, hey, I'll get back to some of these questions. I saw one. Is it okay if I throw it out? Brother, go for it. One of the kind of struck me was, Chris was, how does one discern that it is a Holy Spirit that's communicating? And I think in my own life, this is something I probably question or struggle with a lot and continue to struggle with. And maybe two kind of different approaches to this. Number one, if you feel the Holy Spirit's prompting you or speaking to you or calling you to do something, I kind of run it through a checklist. Number one, is it sinful? Just stop and think. And you may sound stupid, but like, I've been a youth minister for about 13 years and I've encountered a lot of usually well-meaning guys who find a very attractive girl and just, you know, well, God's calling me to be with you. Well, what does God call on you to do? Well, he just, he's staring at my heart. Like, hold on, check yourself, is what you think you're being called to do? Is it sinful or not? And that can be in any situation, because the Holy Spirit's not gonna call you to sin. He can't call you to sin. It's the opposite of who he is. It's the opposite of who you made you to be. So check that out for this. If God's calling you to lead to Catholic church and start your own religion, that's probably not good, but that's a sinful action to lead the fullness of the truth. He's not gonna call you to do that. So run it through that gamut. And two, I would say I'm kind of with that, ask yourself, does it lead you to holiness or does it lead someone else to holiness, right? Is it propelling you and your family towards holiness? Is it doing something good for someone around you? You know, I pray that I win the lottery all the time and I want to think it's the Holy Spirit telling me, but like the reality is like just the other day I dropped my iPad and I literally like I cried. Like I was so angry and I had to go to confession for the kind of words that came in my mouth. And I was like, God, I'm so stupid. Like it's just an iPad, like it's just a thing and yet I'm so upset about it, you know? And so I think maybe it's not the Holy Spirit calling me to win the lottery, you know? Ask yourself those kind of things. I think to go a step further in that is seek counsel. If you have close friends who you know live a life of God, live a holy life, follow the church's teachings, talk to them about it, ask them to pray with you about it, ask God to confirm those things you're questioning within you, and even a step further, I would say get a spiritual director, whether it's a priest or a religious or someone who you can really trust with, because God is gonna confirm what he's calling you to do and what he's speaking to your heart. And then the other way around, not a way around, but another approach, because sometimes in my own life, kind of like DJ was sharing like those moments where you're like, oh man, is God calling me to talk to that person or to maybe ask for prayer or whatever? A lot of times, like you just need to practice it. If you feel God maybe nudging you to buy that person a meal, practice it, step out. And a real, real quick story. I was coming out of the gym one day and in the shopping center, they were redoing some construction and there was this, I go running by and I was on my way running home and I was just praying like holy spirit, I just want to be attended to you. I want to know when you're speaking and I ran by and there's this huge construction worker, like huge construction worker, big old guy, like tank top, huge, covered in tattoos and stuff and just he was at work hard and I ran by and I crossed his path and I just said, hey, how are you doing as I kept running? And I felt something in my heart and like, no, that's not enough. He's like, what is that? And I kind of asked myself, is this the holy spirit? And I felt kind of, hey, go talk to him. I was like, no, you go talk to him. You know what I mean? Like, mm, no, just go talk to him. He asked to be kind of open. Maybe this is it. And so I took a step out and I went back and I said, hey, this probably is stupid because it sounds stupid to me but is there anything I could pray for you for? And this big old guy covered in sweat and dust, his posture changed and he looked at me and he's holding back tears and he said, my mom is incredibly sick and this morning I asked God if he would send someone to pray with me. And honestly, like, I can't do something. I got so excited. I was like, it worked. It worked. I thought I had this nudge, this urge and it worked. And I looked at him and I got, I was like, and I took off running and I said, whoa, hold on. Turned around and came back and I actually prayed with him for him and his mom. And his name was Miguel. Please pray for him and his mom. I don't know what came of that, but like, you kind of stepped out. If I never would have risked feeling like a fool, feeling like an idiot or being ridiculed, I never would have known that actually that was the Holy Spirit prompting me because I never gave him a chance to show me that it was him. There's been other times where I've asked people, hey, can I pray with you? No, okay, clearly, you know, and I'll move on and I'll pray for that person, but take a risk, step out. Practice it. The more you practice it, the more you kind of take a chance if that was God, the more you're actually gonna start to hear what God's voice sounds like. The more you're gonna recognize that tone of the Holy Spirit speaking to you. It's not gonna happen instantly. Practice it. Two thoughts on discerning the Holy Spirit. That's what I got. Sorry for rambling. Back to you, John, in the studios. Okay, I want to kind of step back, you know, because I think I don't want to give anyone the misperception of kind of what I was getting at and what I was sharing about what the Holy Spirit can do and our lives and helping us overcome fears and anxieties. You know, it is true that a good number of people who suffer from legitimate mental health disorders from that panic attacks, depression, anxiety and that kind of stuff, a lot of that can be brought on by chemical imbalances and also might need more than just a part of the Holy Spirit that they may constantly need. This is things that are an experimental thing. So I didn't want to give anyone the impression that yeah, sometimes God might do a miracle and free somebody from that from a miraculous way, but most of the time that God chooses to heal is through the ordinary. And he does not because we need to be, we need to grow in patience and perseverance. You know, right before Christmas this year, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. We had just celebrated 25 years of marriage this past summer into kind of like every 25 years. And it turns out I've all said, like, oh, I have breast cancer. And it's a very aggressive kind and she's going to keep on therapy right now. And I pray every day for her. I mean, if I would have said to God, heal my wife and pray to the Lord, heal my wife and my hands on her nose and she went back to the doctor the next day and said, I'm healing, I'm cancer-free. They can't find it anymore. I would probably have a pretty good story to tell. I mean, dancing around and excited and whooping and hollering and just praising God like crazy. But I would not have had the ability to die to myself over and over again on the last few months to welcome my wife and waste them. This illness has given me the ability to do to learn a deeper compassion after 25 years of marriage. I don't think we can understand the line of God. I don't discount miracles. God does miracles every day. But I feel like what he's doing in making me more compassionate and changing my heart towards my wife and drawing me into a deeper love, a more sacrificial love. It's just as miraculous and beautiful as a miracle can be. I see God, I see God so clear and I see the Holy Spirit working so profoundly that it's almost like the easy way out but it's been a miracle. But I'm walking a harder path but I'm finding every step I take, even the next step that's so challenging and watching my wife suffering being incapable of helping her just to be there with, to love her. It is something that I can't explain. I mean, I still pray God, give her complete healing and let everything that we're going through and all the radiation she has waiting for at the next phase, let it all lead to her healing and let us enjoy many years of cancer-free lives and memories and joy and happiness. But until we get there, Lord, let me not think about myself. Let me not think less of myself. Just let me think of myself a lot less. Let me think about my wife more. And let me think about how to love her and not be so caught up in anything of selfishness that I might have. If you want a healing from God and you're praying for that, people always want to say, when miracles happen, let's give God the glory and something that, oh, let's just say, oh, let's just, that just happened. God is in charge of everything. And he doesn't sit there and say, okay, here's the faith meter. Once you're faith, it's that level, you're not in that faith meter, go ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And it is not about that because God wants to be, like I said, in community with you. He wants you when you're on you. He wants to try you in the life of God. He wants to, and the path for Christ, once he came down his mission, okay, to enter back into heaven before the ascension, before the resurrection, it was the cross. You know, we can't leap from the cross in order to get to have ourselves. But it's the same spirit that gave Christ the ability to rise three times as he fell under the weight of the cross that will give us the ability to rise when we fall. It's the same spirit that gave Christ the joy to see beyond his cross, to see the salvation of the world, that will give us the joy to persevere through most things and see the wounded and cold as down. And that's as miraculous and beautiful and awesome to live through than actually seeing a bona fide, bio-coil definition of a miracle, like, you know, there's no other explanation for a miraculous human. And I've seen them. I've seen them in my life. I've seen God, you know, through the intercession of the blessed, through the trees, I've seen, you know, I've seen these miracles happen. And through praying, laying out of hands. And now we don't have enough time for me to get into my area. I can tell you that miracles happen. But they're not, you know, the greatest gift is not, you know, to rely on miracles, but to the energy we mean with God. We can do that through our suffering in ways that nothing else can draw us into. And that's it we're having with man, the Holy Spirit. He's the one that can lead us through all that. He's the one that can guide us. We're so in need of it. We're so desperate for us because we're working in our lives. And we understand how desperately we need the Holy Spirit, every moment of every day, to keep us right with God and to keep us on that path. David, any other questions that are jumping off the page? DJ, do you have anything that you see that you want to talk to? Actually, I can't see any questions. So I'm relying on you to get a vlog. That's right, that's right. Just one quick question, I'm sorry. It says, how can I help someone realize what you're saying is true? And I think, well, how do you know when a restaurant has really good food? It's probably busy, right? It's probably packed, it's probably lined up the door. So I'm probably totally about it, right? How do you know when a new exercise or a new CrossFit program is really effective? Probably see someone who got an amazing shape or lost a lot of weight, built some muscle. And I mean, the round is, the greatest way to convince other people that what we're talking about is true is you, you living it. Like you, you seeking the Holy Spirit when you're good or when you're bad, when you're holy, when you're sinful, whatever, you seeking the Holy Spirit when you're struggling, you are gonna be the greatest convencer that this is true, that this isn't a fairy tale, that this isn't a bunch of made-up philosophy, but that the Holy Spirit is a person, he's living in you. You changing your sinful habits, I'm sorry, back it up. You allowing the Holy Spirit to bring you change through your sinful habits. You surrendering to him. The Holy Spirit affecting your life through prayer and through putting mass as a priority and reconciliation as a priority, you're gonna be the greatest convencer to the people around you. You're the saint the world needs to see and the Holy Spirit desires to make you that saint. Same for me, same for you. We're getting ready to wrap up here. On the topic of the Holy Spirit, DJ, do you have any kind of parting thoughts that you wanted to share with anyone? Oh man, none that we could fit onto this webinar. I would go on for days and days, but you know, I think as far as being Holy Spirited evangelizes and just allowing the Holy Spirit to change our lives and to change everyone else's around us. You know, I'll be honest, I got tired of being so sheepish. I got tired of being so sheepish. I got tired of saying, well, I believe in you God, but I don't believe I can do your work. And I know that everybody listening right now, there's some sort of desire that there's a reason that you're on this conference that there's this webinar right now and the Lord is, and I hope that before he's even happened, you opened your heart because the Lord is planting seeds right now and there's seeds of greatness and there's seeds of change. There's seeds of season. We don't need to be in the wind winter all the time. It's summer time, baby. We need to be out there with the birds and the bees and spreading what the love is and what it means to us. And I think if you let the Holy Spirit do that, it's not people that deny you. It's not people that get mad at you. They deny you because they first denied him. So don't let your personal feelings, your personal needs of praises because it's something that had me for a long time. Don't let that control your life. Let the love of the Lord and the Holy Spirit control everything that you do. And with this dead, it's so funny the way the devil works. I love the way Jesse Defina says this, but he says, he doubt the doubt because when the devil comes into your head and says, I doubt that you, when you pick that person, they're just gonna laugh at you. I doubt you can do that. Then you need to say, you know what, devil? I doubt your doubt. And the devil's like, what did you just do? You just doubted my doubt. And you're like, yeah, I just doubted the doubt because once you doubt the doubt, you don't have to be in doubt about the doubt. You can pick out at the doubt. Okay? So I guess I'm trying to get out of doubt, be in love with the Lord and the Holy Spirit and transform the people that God bless. I love you Jesus Christ. Yeah, great. David, do you have any parting thoughts you wanna share? Just, I mean, the one thing that's driving me is just I thought there were a couple of ways to quote. Don't be content with anything less than the new Pentecost. Don't settle. The Holy Spirit is always advancing. He's always on the move. He may have done something previously, but it doesn't mean he stopped. Don't be settled. Complacency is the enemy of the Holy Spirit. Mediocrity is the enemy of the greatness that the Holy Spirit wants to unleash in our lives. So don't settle. Don't be content. Press in, pray, be annoying in your prayer, asking the good father to send the good kids of his Holy Spirit, of his love. And he'll be faithful to do it in his way. And then lastly, kind of selfishly, but I just wanna say hi and ask you to pray for my little nine-month-old godson, Benjamin, who's listening right now with his awesome dad, Francis Cabildo. Thank you, Benjamin. You're awesome. Awesome, awesome. And I'll just wrap up by saying once again, the Holy Spirit comes to us as the spirit of love. You know, whatever there is love, love drives away fear, love drives away doubt. You know, and maybe the anxieties and things we struggle with, you know, they might never leave us in this life, but they'll drive it away from our hearts where we will make right decisions. You know, we might always have a wound that leaves us, you know, not everything gets healed in life. Some things are not healed until heaven. The Holy Spirit will not let those wounds hold us back from becoming the people God intended us to be. This is all about saying come, Holy Spirit, the three most beautiful and not dangerous words that you could possibly pray in your life because you're inviting the power of God's love to come into your heart and have his way. But when we do that, he comes to us like the master sculptor, the story of Michelangelo, who found this misshapen lump of marble tucked away in the corner of this old warehouse. And after examining it for a couple of days, said, this is what I'm going to create my next beautiful statue out of it and after working on it for a few months, what was left was the statue of David, this beautiful, perfectly formed in this white, beautiful marble, this beautiful sculpture. And when people said, how did you snuggle that, that statue was contained in this misshapen, discarded lump of marble, he said, look, all I did was look at it. And I saw David in there and I knew all I had to do was to take away every part of the rock that wasn't David until all that remained was what that rubric rock was created to be. And that's what the Holy Spirit does. He comes into our hearts and He removes all those things, takes away all those things that are of God so that nothing remains but that which is of God and we become the saints and the holy disciples that He created us to be, that the church desires us to be and that the church needs us to be today right now. So with that, David, if people wanted to learn more about you and your ministry, where would you direct them? Well, first and foremost, my day job is with Life Team International. So at lifeteam.com, we have an awesome team there. And so I do the graphics with an awesome team of designers for the Life Team. And personally, you can go to holdfasthope.com which is being updated. So you'll find my email address there. But other than that on Twitter and Instagram, it's at David Cal and that's Cal as in Calabita, not Cal as in Lou, Cal, David Cal, C-A-L. Other than that, that's not it. Great. Great. And DJ, people want to learn more about you and your ministry, where would you direct them? Absolutely. I started ministry a couple of years ago and you can go check it out at www.djbernall. Big, big surprise, right? djbernall.com and you can get all my information. You can see some other videos, the different things that my ministry provides for traveling ministry and going to different places. So thank y'all and I'd love to be, but see y'all again. Excellent. And for me, the email that you had received for the invite to this webinar, that's my word email here at the university. I'll be speaking this summer at our Power and Purpose Conference which is a conference to help Catholics learn more about the power of Holy Spirit and I'll actually be running a Life in the Spirit track for those who may want to learn more. So if you want to learn more about that conference, there's also great speakers like Dr. Ralph Martin and some other spiritual giants, heroes of mine that I'll be on the ministry team with and you can learn all more about that at www.studentbuildconference.com. I also am going to be launching a ministry within the next few months called Metagrace. This just means transform the grace that helps us overcome and how we live the Catholic life and I'm available for parish missions, retreats and other events where people are interested in learning more about how to invite the Holy Spirit in their lives in a deeper way to experience more of God's love and transforming power. You can email me about that directly if you have any questions about brand me in or do it on a limited basis. More on the life of the undergoing or chemotherapy that's still available for a few limited dates. So if that's something that you're interested in having something you've perished on people going the Holy Spirit I'm glad it's sort of in that capacity. Let us close in a prayer. Hey John. Yes sir. I'm sorry, I don't mean to put you on the spot but would it be all right if maybe we just prayed for you and your wife just as a collective group here? Sure, sure. I'll start and if you want to jump in with any more sessions, we'll let you do it. Remind me your wife's name please. Lisa. Lisa. All right, thank you. So let's start with the name of Father and the Holy Spirit. Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. So come on, there's very good stuff there. Good gracious God, we thank you. That near time in the history of the church you sent forth your Holy Spirit to draw us into communion with you, our God who exists as a family of love. You know, we as Catholics on the earth right now be filled with your Holy Spirit and brought in for a deep return with your love and your sanctifying grace. Come Holy Spirit, be our interior minister. We submit to your direction, your guidance, your sanctifying grace. Come Holy Spirit and be the light that we need to see ourselves correctly. Show us our sin that we might repent correctly. Show us what you're doing in our lives that we might cooperate. Show us the path that we should walk on so that we can follow you faithfully. Holy Spirit, work in our lives to take away any desire, any affection, any feeling that is disordered in none of you. You want to be purified and so we submit to the fire of your love. And let that healing fire, that cleansing fire, purify our minds, our hearts and our souls that we would be made into perfect vessels of the love that is ours through Christ Jesus. I pray for everyone on this one memory. Fulfill the desires of their hearts and the power of your Holy Spirit. Transform the parts of their lives that need transformation. Conform the parts of their hearts that are not conformed to your will to that same perfect will that you have through the power of your Holy Spirit. Enflame them with a deeper love for you and for one another that we could be living witnesses of your goodness and glory here on this earth. We trust in you Holy Spirit to be our interior master and we ask, have your way. Jesus, we thank you for your death on the cross and for sending us the Holy Spirit. May our union with the Holy Spirit draw us into deep communion with you. And Father God, who out of the kindness and goodness and mercy of your heart created us and gave us life draws us into your perfect love and the spirit you just turn in and give you all the glory and honor and praise and do your holy name. May we live lives worthy of the trinity and the love that you've shown us. Well, excuse us. Thank you for, first of all, thank you for John for his heart and leadership through these webinars and that is just the courage to share with us. I thank you for the holiness and the love that you have placed in him for his wife. Thank you for that example. As a man, as a husband, as a father. And let me lift up to you this hardship for him and Lisa. We ask Lord that your Holy Spirit which is so tangibly seep into the depths of their heart seep into the pain and the questions and the struggles and Lord in only the way that you can that you would bring life and grace and redemption and healing out of this. Lord, we call down your power. We call it on your healing. We call it on your wisdom, Lord. That it would come into this present. That it would come upon Lisa and Holy Spirit that you would heal her in every level that you know she needs healed. That you would bring about is the greater receptivity for Holy Spirit in their lives. The greater awareness of the power that you've given them through this suffering. And as they suffer with Christ and experience the resurrective love of Christ in this moment. Mother Mary, please pray for this family. Pray for healing for grace. And most of all, just pray for a closeness to your son. As we pray, hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed are thou amongst women and blessed is it through the Bible in Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now at the hour of our death. Amen. That's some Holy Spirit in there. That is our day spirit dose. May you guys have a blessed and holy Pentecost. Thank you once again for being a part of this. It'll be up on our website, www.stimulethru.com in the next few days. Feel free to share it and buy the people who watch it. And before you sign off, you wanna add any other ideas that you would have for future webinars and other topics regarding the Holy Spirit that you'd like to see more webinars on. Type them in now. We'd be glad to serve you. We love you. God bless you and be sure of our prayers as you go forth. God bless.