 So what I want to kind of impact today in the first session is what is life in the spirit? Because it is a term that has been probably as misunderstood as the Holy Spirit himself, right? There's a, we all come to this place with maybe a different type of formation, different background. Some of us may have been walking with the Lord and had the strong relationship, we're just looking for more. Some of us might have been invited by a friend, we're not really sure what we're getting ourselves into, the power and purpose, whatever that means at this conference, at Francis University, whatever that is, we're here, what do you got? What does the Lord have? Is there more? What does that look like? And some of you might even be here having come across some charismatic people in your life that just bugged you. They just seemed very weird to you, like a little off-putting, like they're just not quite right in the head. And sometimes the Holy Spirit can make it seem like that, but honestly, for me, I just come back to what Pope Benedict XVI said, that for most people, the Holy Spirit just simply remains the undiscovered member of the Trinity. Like it's easy for us to think of God as Father, right? And we did such a great job this morning with Sarah's talk, kind of unpacking that idea. And last night, you know, Peter did a great job just kind of saying, like we approached our Lord Jesus Christ as the Lord, as the Savior. So how do we approach the Holy Spirit? What is life in the Spirit? Maybe you've seen a book on life in the Spirit. Life in the Spirit is not a book. Maybe your church has offered a seminar called life in the Spirit. Life in the Spirit is not a seminar. It's not a retreat. It's not an eccentric spirituality for those wannabe saints and mystics. I believe that life in the Spirit, at its heart, is a way of life that God has called us to embrace wholeheartedly. What do I mean by that? Well, what initiates us all into the life in the Spirit, and your life in the Spirit has already begun. You may not realize it. Your life in the Spirit began the day you were baptized. When we talk about life in the Spirit, baptism is the doorway. It began your life in the Spirit. And through baptism, we are brought into relationship with the Trinity, and the third person of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit. And when we turn to our catechism, and if you don't have a catechism, this is not a shameless plug because I get no kickback at all. Go by a catechism before you leave. Go to our bookstore and buy a catechism if you don't own one because it is literally a goldmine of Catholic truth and inspirational teaching. It's not just theology. It's inspirational theology that will move you to deeper conversion as you meditate upon these words. And I want to just share four articles, 1996 through 1999. It talks about what happens in baptism in the life of grace. 1996 says, grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life. So when we talk about coming back to the Father, embracing the Father, understanding the Father, that is even God's initiative at working us. When we hear the story of the prodigal Son coming back, it was the Father's love waiting for that Son that drew him back, that caused the Son to repent and come back to his Father. And it's the love of the Father that restores him from being lost to being a son again. And it's free and undeserved help. And what we need from God is free and undeserved help to live as his children. It's not like God wants to give you the Holy Spirit a set of tools and say, okay, here's the Holy Spirit, here's some tools. Figure out how to be a child of God now. What the Holy Spirit wants to do is work in your life in such a way that the very essence of who you are becomes realigned to this understanding deep within your heart that you are a child of God, that you belong to the Father, that the Holy Spirit makes that reality alive in each one of us. Because we begin to see how we are partakers of the divine nature. And partaking in the divine nature, the fulfillment of our growth in the Spirit becoming more like God is eternal life. It goes on to say in 1997, it says, by baptism, the Christian participates in the grace of Christ. He receives the life of the Spirit who breathes charity into him and who forms the church. So when we are baptized, we receive life in the Spirit. And the Holy Spirit breathes the first gift of the Spirit, which is love into each one of us, the love of the Father. St. Paul realized this when he wrote Romans 5.5, he says, hope does not disappoint because the Holy Spirit has poured the Father's love into our hearts. It is the Holy Spirit that wants to make everything in our heads as Catholics a lived reality that changes our hearts, our souls, every part of us. In 1998, it goes on to say, this vocation to eternal life is supernatural. It depends entirely on God's gratuitous initiative, for he alone can reveal and give himself. We don't come to this conference to take what is ours. As his children, we have inheritance, but it's God himself that will reveal and give himself to us through the aid of the Holy Spirit. It depends entirely on God's gratuitous initiative. In our relationship with God, God always has to make the first move. It was God making the first move, sending the angel to Mary. First move, I guess, was conceiving her without sin, preparing her to be the vessel by which salvation would come into the world. But at some point, it also needed a sense of her will. Mary had to say, yes. And in the same way, the grace that was poured into your heart and baptism needs a yes, a response. It goes on to say finally in 1999, it says it is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in baptism that is the source of the work of sanctification. So this grace that we receive in baptism, it deifies us, it makes us like God. We talked a little bit about the garden. Peter talked about this, and I think Sarah mentioned it too, that when Adam and Eve sinned, God promised them if they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would die. And they did. Yet they were still standing before God, breathing, but had been given to them in their creation. When the Father breathed the Holy Spirit into Adam, into this man-shaped pile of dust, and becomes a living being, that Holy Spirit that was breathing to him, that was what was lost. That presence of God in the heart died. And the God's work of restoration of salvation is restoring us to that likeness, giving us the power to know God's love and to follow him as his children. We are always, we've always remained in God's image, but our likeness, our ability to live like God, to love like God, to serve like God, to be like Jesus, the visible image of the invisible Father was severely damaged through sin. We needed Jesus to come, and the fulfillment, the completion of his work is Pentecost. And I'll share more about that in a little bit. But in Article 1699 in the Catechism it says this, life in the Spirit fulfills the vocation of man. The fundamental call on your life, the reason why you're created will find its fulfillment in what we call life in the Spirit. This life is made up of divine charity and human solidarity. So it's love of God and love of neighbor. Once again, the foundational reality of life in the Spirit is love. I know that when we talk about being Spirit-filled, people have a tendency to want to gravitate towards things like speaking in tongues and putting your hands in the air, just shouting out praise to God or maybe giving words of prophecy or words of knowledge or healing. These are all extraordinary, wonderful signs of God's power and mercy. But the foundation of all that has always been and will always be love, love of God. How well do we love God? And how well do we love one another? That's what constitutes the depth of life in the Spirit, is a response of love. And I'm not going to downplay the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit that the Spirit wants to give us so that we'll be equipped for ministry, but even St. Paul says, look, there's all these amazing gifts, but make love your aim. If we aim for love, everything else that God gives us will be used properly. If we aim for something other than love, we're going to miss the target every time. So this life in the Spirit, it fulfills the vocation of man. So how is it then that we seem to be so poorly catechized or evangelized or brought to this reality? I don't know why. There's a number of reasons. It's not a new problem. If you read the stories and they ask the apostles, I think there's a point where one of the apostles goes and they find a group of believers and they say, have you been prayed with to receive the Holy Spirit? And they say, we didn't even hear that there's a Holy Spirit. So poor catechesis has been around since the beginning of the church, right? But even having great catechesis about the Holy Spirit is not the end all be all because the act of receiving the Holy Spirit is a means to an end, which is union with God, union with the Spirit, union with the Trinity. There was a rancher in Oklahoma in the late 1930s who had, you know, between half a million and a million heads of cattle had hundreds and hundreds of thousands of acres of land on which his cattle grazed. He was one of the richest cattlemen in the state of Oklahoma, probably one of the richest in the country at the time. But two things converged at the same time that wiped him out. Number one, the dust bowl. All the land that his cows grazed upon became wasted with sand covered in sand and the vegetation died. So he wasn't able to feed his cows. The second thing that happened was the stock of market crash and the price of beef plummeted. And all that he invested and all that he had saved and all that he had built started to crumble before him. He was literally selling his cows for a penny on the dollar trying to keep what he could. And when he ran out of cows to sell, he started selling off parcels of his land. And in months he had lost everything except the house that he lived in and a couple of hundred acres that he had left that his house was on. And one morning he was sitting at his table with a loaded gun on the table in front of him considering whether or not he even wanted to be alive anymore because he had lost it all. He had lost all hope with losing all. When he heard a knock on the door and when he opened the door there was a handful of college students from the University of Oklahoma who were studying geology. And they had been doing some seismographic studies in his area and said, Sir, would you mind if we did some research on your land as well? We believe there might be oil around here. Having nothing left to lose the man said go ahead do what you need to do. A week later they came back and said we are pretty certain that right underneath your property right here is a huge oil. We are not sure how big but it is huge. Would you mind if we brought some equipment in and started drilling? He said go ahead and do what you need to do. And a couple days later after they stood up the drill and started going down they hit one of the largest oil patches in the continental United States. The man immediately went back to the bank said they found oil in my land lend me this money they lent him all the money he needed. He bought back almost all the land that he had lost and set up oil rigs all across and became the richest oil man in the state of Oklahoma. Vastly more wealthy and more rich than he had ever been before. And I love this story because it highlights and it illustrates how we as Christians mostly live our lives. We live our lives in a state of spiritual poverty because each one of us when we were baptized received a deposit of grace the power of the Holy Spirit that is in your soul in the only reason why it's not transforming your life and making you a saint making you the person God created you to be is because we've never invited to tap into that and release that power that grace into our lives. I lived so many years of my life in pop spiritual poverty I had rich since my baptism and some of you coming out of this year of COVID have lost a lot you've lost loved ones you've lost businesses you've seen friends lose businesses you've seen your young people lose hope give up on life because what difference does it make why bother getting up it doesn't matter everything's gonna be taken from you you know and even us as we stand here we're like is God still faithful is there still hope for us as a people as a country as a church as we see continual another scandal after another scandal or another church closing down or more contraction like where's where's this bright future for the church is God still there and is God still faithful and God wants to you know if you're struggling with that I think the Holy Spirit just wants to come into your life and give you an outpouring of new faith to believe that the Lord who's brought us this far has not abandoned us but might be calling us just to that greater surrender to the power of the Holy Spirit that we might become all that he created us to be the catechism teaches us in article 260 it says the ultimate end of the whole divine economy is the entry of God's creatures into the perfect union of the blessed trinity like the ultimate end of all that God has done in the world after creation and all the covenants and Noah and Moses and David and the prophets pointing to Christ you know all this was pointing to Christ coming into the world so Christ comes into the world and and what Christ says is I want to I want to cast fire I want you to be baptized in the Holy Spirit he's talking about something even greater that's coming it's like a better it's for you to for me to go because then I can send you this Holy Spirit like I want you to receive this promise of the Father this power from on high I want to restore what was lost in the fall into your soul so that you can once again live as a child of God all that he's done has been to bring us home back into union with him and when we look at what life in the spirit does it releases the grace of that it says life in the spirit fulfills the vocation of man it is made up of God's love divine charity and love of neighbor human solidarity when we choose the Holy Spirit when we open our hearts to the Holy Spirit we find something that completes us makes us who we were made to be makes us holy gives us peace and satisfaction deep in the soul but even more importantly it says at the end of article 1699 it says it is graciously offered as salvation graciously just means free without cost you don't have to earn it you just have to ask for it come Holy Spirit and God freely gives his Holy Spirit as a means of our salvation so our catechism teaches us our salvation hinges on our openness to the Holy Spirit and his power at work in our hearts to sanctify us to teach us to say no to the world and no to sin and yes to Jesus Christ and yes to his kingdom that is why we need the Holy Spirit all the other things that the Holy Spirit gives us are great but the heart of it is love and salvation this new life that Jesus died on the cross to give each one of us we can understand how the Holy Spirit wants to work in our lives by looking at the words of Jesus the Spirit's greatest desire is that you love the Lord Jesus Christ Jesus's greatest desire is that you receive the Holy Spirit why because the commission of the Son and the Spirit together will save you will restore you to what was lost and give you the peace joy and satisfaction that should come from living as a child of the Father that's what the Spirit does Jesus calls him advocate in John 14 16 it says if you love me you will keep my commandments if we were to do a checklist of how well we keep the Lord's commandments on a scale of one to ten ten being that we're perfectly in love with God and one being where you need a lot a lot a lot of help where would we find on a scale of one to ten of us following God loving God by keeping his commandments it might look pretty brutal you know like a rude awakening like are we really loving God are we really keeping his commandments he throws that out there and it can be almost like a conviction like I there's no way I can do this there's no way I can keep God's commandments there's no way I can love the Lord the way he deserves but Jesus doesn't end his thought there he goes and it finishes it by saying this I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate to be with you always another advocate the word advocate comes from the Latin word ad vocatus which little literally translates into the one who is called to your side so Jesus says look I want to send you one that I'm calling down from heaven to fill your life to walk at your side always so that you're never alone and the reality of our lives I'm sure at different times during the last year you felt the sting of isolation from being separated from those that you loved not being able to reach out and touch those people that mean the most of you in your life and you felt terribly terribly isolated and alone that was the worst part of this pandemic was the emotional beat up that most people got but the reality is is we were never alone you were never alone God was with you because Jesus says I'm going to send you another advocate Jesus was with you as your first advocate the Holy Spirit was there as well then why didn't they help me when I was really lonely it's like because God is the kind of God he can't force himself into our lives this is the way God always is he respects you and loves you so much that he will not force you to be or do anything but always waits for us to invite him in to stir up what's inside of us already for us to tap into that grace and the problem with us is because we're fallen creatures and under the influence of sin as we forget very clearly and very quickly how awesome God truly is have this encounter with God and feel his love and peace and then when somebody cuts you off in the parking lot as you're leaving church to swear at them under your breath and you like you lose everything that God just was working on in your heart for the last hour you're like it's gone and you're like God I am so weak I'm so frail is there any hope and yes the great hope that we have is that God is always with us it's not that you're figure this out and wake up one day and pull you up by yourself up by the bootstraps and become a saint but rather you're going to realize finally how ridiculously fragile you are how unfaithful you can be how weak your will is when it comes to God and you will completely surrender to the Holy Spirit and he will be able then to give you these gifts you'll be open to receive them you'll see that God is able to do for you what you testing make sure this is working Jesus goes on to say in John 1426 he says the advocate the Holy Spirit he will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you I love this everything that's a good word is anyone like an everything bagel I love an everything bagel with butter toasted with butter everything bagel everything but in this case it's better than an everything bagel the the the Holy Spirit will teach you everything and Jesus knew the his apostles very well he'd seen their weakness on display over and over again he knew that Peter would deny he knew that James and John would fight about who's most important he knew that that when the rubber hit the road they would all run like cowards and disappear in their homes that you know that they would not be able to do much in terms of building the church and renewing the face of the earth on their own that's why he's promising them before he goes to his passion guys look I'm sending you an advocate he's going to remind you of my teachings he's going to teach you everything you know that great commission go make disciples of all nations I know none of you have ever done foreign mission work don't worry about it the Holy Spirit will teach you everything you need to know you know how to build a church no Jesus we don't don't worry I'm sending you the Holy Spirit he'll teach you everything and for you the Lord knows your weaknesses he knows your sins there's nothing hidden from him you might be able to fool yourself you may be able to fool your family your friends but God sees it all and guess what he looks beyond all that he sees the heart of love that he gave you when he created you and he loves that heart of love and he's always on your side that's what an advocate does an advocate is someone who defends you someone who mediates for you someone who counsels for you and even like a lawyer an advocate is somebody who even when they know you're guilty will still defend you and be on your side and God knows we are guilty of so much but he's always on our side to help us get right to get back to him what will what will the Holy Spirit teach you everything but I really struggle with loving my family right now well have you ever said Holy Spirit teach me how to love my family Holy Spirit's been waiting for you to pray that prayer if you struggle with a particular relationship and you've never prayed Holy Spirit teach me how to love this person because obviously God knows how to love them because God knows how to love everybody I'm supposed to love like God but I'm not God I'm just one of his I'm his child but I'm still weak Holy Spirit do something to me teach me how to get there how to love like you do it says in article 221 in the catechism it says St. John goes even further when he firms that God is love God's very being is love by sending his only son in the spirit of love in the fullness of time God has revealed his innermost secret God himself is an internal exchange of love father son and Holy Spirit and and listen to this he has destined us to share in that exchange so God is this family of love his father son and our destiny is to be an adopted child and part of that family of perfect love well the Holy Spirit will get us there the Holy Spirit will get us there he'll teach us how to forgive he'll teach us how to serve how to pray he'll how to teach us how to stay pure to impure world he'll teach us how to spiritually lead our parishes in our families he'll teach us how to lead our siblings and our our own children back to Christ he'll teach us how to celebrate the mass more fully alive and tuned into what's happening he'll teach us how to make a good confession everything that you want to know in order to get closer to Jesus the Holy Spirit your advocate is there to teach you we need to enter into this life in the spirit we need to foster this life in the spirit I love the ocean I'm not a big fan of the beach but I love the ocean but my wife loves the beach when we go to the ocean and we vacation on the ocean she is from the sun up to sundown sitting on a chair on the sand she brings a couple of books she brings a you know a couple of towels she brings an umbrella sometimes she's under the umbrella but most of the time she she tans really well me I go from you know white to red in five seconds and then I'm miserable so I have to be very judicious about the time I spend at the beach so I'll go down after I spend a half an hour slathering myself with PF SPF like 4537 sunscreen I'll still wear a shirt and a hat I'll swim in the ocean you know for for 15 minutes and then I'll go back inside and I sit on the balcony in the shade and watch the ocean I just watch it's mesmerizing it's like hypnotic I love I love it even more at night because then I can actually go down and spend an hour just sitting on the beach you know or I get up early as the sun is rising and watch the sun pop up over the Atlantic because we'd like to go to the outer banks right we like to go to top sail and like to go to uh anyone ever vacation at the outer banks of North Carolina yes it's a little slice of heaven um some fun facts about the ocean right who likes fun facts about the ocean right here's some trivia how how many square miles of ocean are there on the earth's surface square miles anyone have a guess we know that it's 70 percent of the earth's surface is ocean but how many square miles answer 140 million square miles of ocean it's a lot of ocean uh the deepest part of the ocean does anyone know what the deepest part of the ocean is the mariana trench and how far does it go down just short of seven miles about 35 36 000 feet that means that you know you could go diving straight down seven miles deeper deeper deeper after you get to about 2000 feet the pressure of the ocean upon your body would feel like you had had you were lying on the on the runway with 50 jumbo jets on your chest it would kill you that's the abyss once you hit 2000 feet you're now at in the abyss almost impossible you know for it is impossible for human life to be sustained down there without the aid of equipment and scientists i love there's a website where you can go and list all the new creatures that they discover in the ocean because they discover new creatures like almost weekly you're like well how could that be well right now they have classified and classified 1.5 million different kinds of life in the ocean different creatures right but on the low end they estimate there's another two million creatures yet to be discovered on the high end there are some scientists who say there's probably 50 million different kinds of creatures still to be discovered in our oceans isn't that amazing that there might be 50 million species of undiscovered creature in our oceans and why are we interested in going to mars i've seen pictures of mars it's rocks oh look there's more rocks oh and some dirt wow it looks like the desert why don't we just go to the desert and take pictures you're like yeah i mean nothing i know i know that chris is a science space geek you know but i think the coolest stuff is coming out of the ocean because they look like aliens and you know they got tentacles and teeth i mean some of these things look vicious you know and and they find them growing by volcanic uh institutes where there's the boiling water there's certain creatures that only live there the only place in the entire world where you can find this creatures it lives with a three-foot radius of a fissure in the ground that's amazing to me of all that life that's in the ocean 90 percent of it is two miles below the surface so two miles below the surface of the ocean is where most this life exists places we could never get on our own and and the last fun fact i'll share is this right now floating around in the ocean in tiny particulate form are about 20 million tons of gold so if you're wondering like okay i don't really have a retirement program i'm not sure if i'm going to be able to retire and you have a sieve and a lot of extra time on your hands you know you can sit down on the beach and keep scooping up water maybe in a thousand years or so you have enough to retire but 20 million tons out there for whoever has the the can figure out how to get it out of the ocean and the reason i share this all is because i think there's not a better metaphor for the holy spirit than the ocean the ocean is deep expansive it's mysterious it's teeming with life much of this life has yet to be discovered and it's full of treasure and there's places that we want to go that are so deep that we can't get there on our own i mean that that really is the holy spirit for us you know how much of the ocean we've discovered and explored 10 percent only 10 percent of our ocean i would say we've discovered a lot less of the holy spirit than 10 percent we're lucky if we've gotten to point point 10 percent there's so much more to god and both sarah and peter talked about this there's so much more to god there's so much more to this life in the holy spirit that if we're willing to invest a little god will give us a tremendous reward for our faith for our yes for our openness he will take us places we've never gone and right now 80 percent of all humans on our planet live on the shore of an ocean right 80 percent of all human life lives on the shore of an ocean and that's the way most of us live in regard to the holy spirit we love to get gaze out at the things of god and say wow god you're so beautiful you're so amazing and and and the holy spirit's like saying like dive in well i'm not ready to dive in maybe i'll stick my toe in yeah that's nice or maybe i'll wade it up to my knees oh that's nice and the holy spirit's like come deeper you're like oh the waves look kind of choppy don't worry about it just come see experience receive you know we could spend our entire life swimming in the shallow end of of a beach on the ocean and not become an expert on the ocean to become an expert on the ocean you've got to plumb the depths of the ocean you've got to go deep with the ocean you've got to study the ocean you've got to you know you've got to learn what you can everything you can about the ocean and that's the same way with our life in the spirit we have to have an informed mind we have to learn about the church teaches us what the saints teach us about the holy spirit but more importantly we've got to dive in we've got to be open this life in the spirit is something that's not meant to be a theoretical concept in our heads an idea or a teaching but a lived reality and it's meant to be a blessing not just for us but to help make us a blessing to other people you are meant to be a blessing to other people it says in John chapter 15 verses 26 and 27 Jesus says when the advocate comes whom I will send from the father the spirit of truth that proceeds from the father he will testify to me which means when the spirit comes to you the spirit will testify in your heart that Jesus Christ is Lord how do you get rock solid faith that Jesus is who he is you invite the Holy Spirit into your life and the Holy Spirit himself gives testimony in your soul that Jesus Christ is Lord and that's why Peter last night said look we can't even say Jesus Christ is Lord and mean it without the power of the Holy Spirit we can't say these words without the power of the Holy Spirit they won't be the anthem of our life it's not meant to be just a testimony or a statement of fact it's meant to be the anthem of our life Jesus Christ is Lord but more importantly be able to say with boldness Jesus Christ is my Lord because he's going to be Lord whether he's your Lord or not that my the difference in that word one word my means that you've made a significant change in who you are in the way you orient your life is it oriented towards yourself your self gratification the things that you want your desire or have you like Christ submitted your will to the Father and now everything in you is oriented to Jesus that's hard work conversion is hard dang work anyone who tells you that it's easier to be a Christian is is not doing it right it is hard work to be a disciple of Jesus Jesus likened it to taking up a cross daily and following him he also said though that that cross is where you're going to find rest so it is the best it is the most challenging aspect of your life to be a disciple of Jesus it's the most comforting like I love what Chris said you know it's the most comforting uncomfortable thing you'll experience everything in God is some sort of paradox in some way right but we need to because it goes on to say listen to this in John 15 and you must also testify because you've been been with me from the beginning I love this he says to his apostles and Jesus is saying this to all of us you must testify it's not enough to know that Jesus Christ is Lord it's not even enough to say Jesus Christ is my Lord we need to testify and be proclaiming that truth to anyone who will listen as God opens the doors for conversations we need to be able to step in with other people in their lives and say Jesus Christ is Lord and this is why I believe in him we must be ready to testify because right now do we not know that right now there are like people literally dying to know the love of Jesus Christ in our world literally dying to know the love of Jesus we must be ready to go God wants to use you as a blessing I've experienced this in my life so many ways big and small some some that were planned and well prepared for others that just caught me off guard I was taking my wife down to the beach and we stopped in West Virginia for the night because we got off to a late start we usually like to just get up in the morning drive straight through to the beach you know it's a long day but you get there on this particular day we couldn't leave in the morning because there's some things going on so we left in the afternoon we went halfway into into West Virginia and stopped for the night and in the morning I was I had my heart set on one thing right everyone has this thing in their heart when they go to a hotel's like a waffle a hotel waffle everyone loves the hotel waffle why because we can make it eat it and not have to clean up the waffle maker I mean that's the hardest they aren't about making a waffle is have to clean up the mess like mix the dough no they just give you a little cup you just pour the waffle cool I can do that you know I mean I usually make a pretty good mess trying to make a hotel waffle but I don't have to clean it up so I don't matter you don't say so I'm thinking okay hotel waffle this is going to be awesome so I you know I'll walk into the little what I think is the kitchen area and there's no waffle maker there are no cereal there's nothing there's nothing but coffee I'm like crud what kind of hotel in the 20th century doesn't have free breakfast they might as well have no internet what are we what are we like savages we're certainly not Amish come on where's my internet where's my where's my waffle and as I'm feeling this complaining whining grumbling spirit kind of stirring up in me the lord just says go talk to the woman there make fixing up coffee and there was a woman who she worked for the hotel she was like restocking things and cleaning up the coffee bar and I'm like are you sure lord he's just like just go because there's been many times I share the story I want you know there's many times when the lord has said go and I haven't gone I mean I'm not perfect I don't respond I don't bat a thousand none of us do but on this particular moment I said okay God I'll go so I walked over to her and I just say good morning how you doing and she goes I'm all right and I just said to her you know it's like I knew that there was more but I didn't know what so I just said well that is about the worst all right in the history of all rights are you sure you're okay and she's like no and I'm like well what's going on she went to explain her sister had just been taken to the hospital she had a brain aneurysm she was in the intensive care unit that they weren't sure if she was going to live that they had a team of doctors down in Charleston West Virginia working on her and like she was all freaked out and scared for her sister's life and then it became very obviously what the next move was and I just said well can I pray for her and pray with you and she said yes and then I said can I just gently place my hand on your shoulder and she said yes and then I just started praying Lord Jesus Christ send forth your Holy Spirit upon Vicki I'd ask her her name was Lord bless Vicki and bless the team of doctors looking after her sister just filled Vicki with peace filled the doctors with clarity of thought and knowledge and everything that they need to know to to take good care of her sister but we thank you for that you're a god of power a god of blessings just be with her and I went on praying like this for about maybe a minute minute and a half and when I was done she was bawling her eyes out because somebody in her life in the midst of this rundown little hotel on the side of the road in West Virginia stopped to invite God to touch her heart wasn't me was God who was touching her heart but because of my relationship with God and how I've grown in what the Lord has done for me I was able to hear the Spirit say go pray with her and she was blessed I don't know whatever happened don't know what happened to her sister don't know what happened to her never saw her again that's not my job my job is not to be the savior my job is not to change the world my job is to respond to the Spirit as the Spirit asks me to and do what I can in my own simple little way to bless the world around me and that's all that God is going to ask of you but we need the power of the Holy Spirit at work in our life if we're going to do this well it doesn't come from us this is why Jesus says in John 16 it's I tell you the truth it's better for you that I go for if I don't go the advocate that will not come to you but if I go I will send them to you and when he comes he will convict the world are you convicted by God that there's nothing better in this world than Jesus Christ I mean I think we know it up here but do you is it like a thorn in your in your in the side of your heart an ache that there is nothing in this world better than Jesus Christ that the purpose of your life is not to bounce from one thing to the next until you die but to have a plan that is exciting and joyful that our God calls you into powerful service and building of his kingdom because nobody got left behind in that invitation we are all called to be that blessing for the world and you know and to echo Mother Teresa who said we don't have to do great things we have to do simple things with great love great love is the gift of the Holy Spirit this is why our life in the spirit if we are going to do anything that makes any kind of difference in the world if it's not spirit filled it's not going to change anything really not in the long run how many how much money has our government thrown at poverty and trying to make our world a better place with money and what has it led us to nothing but more division and strife and greed and stealing by our politicians and lying by our politicians and then manipulated and playing with us as if you know like hey every four years they can tell us whatever they want to tell us we're just going to line up behind them and I don't care if you're you have an R or a D behind your name they're all a part of in my mind part of the same game because we keep trying to solve spiritual crisis with political solutions and it doesn't work because only the Holy Spirit can heal only the Holy Spirit and we thank you but we we've got to be the people who are surrendered to the Holy Spirit we have got to be the bearers of light that light of Christ that's what it means to be a Christian it means to bear the light of Christ the power of the Holy Spirit setting you on fire and you won't go out and change the world you won't even change the country but you might be able to change your community you might even just be able to change your family and that's enough that's enough everybody has cells let's save the body one cell at a time let's not you know because if we look at the whole thing and everything we're going to be so immobilized we won't be able to do anything let's look to the Lord and say Lord send me your spirit in that God wants to give us gifts to empower us to do this it says in the catechism this is article 801 802 it says whether extraordinary or simple and humble charisms are graces of the Holy Spirit which directly or indirectly benefit the church ordered as they are to her building up to the good of man and to the needs of the world so God wants to give you gifts some are extraordinary some are simple and humble but God wants to give each one of us gifts that will build up the church bring goodness into the lives of our fellow man and meet the needs of the world 801 and 802 it goes on to say charisms are to be accepted with gratitude not feared not shied away from you know like can we all admit like we're just not worthy of this and get over ourselves i mean like let's just get over ourselves because if we don't get over ourselves nothing's going to happen we are all unworthy but God has chosen us and because of that he has said the word and we have been healed we have been called we have been chosen we can move forward we can say yes to this charisms are to be accepted with gratitude by the person who receives them and by all all all members of the church they are wonderfully rich grace for the apostolic vitality does anybody doubt that we need a lot of apostolic vitality in our church today i mean like it's pretty bad out there and it's only because we haven't been calling upon the holy spirit right we've been trying to like once again use human effort to heal the mystical body of Christ we need spiritual grace at work that we're cooperating with to bring about the healing of the church the renewal of the church you know they need to be used in conformity with the mission of the church with the authentic prop team of the same spirit so we need to be rooted in prayer as individuals we need to be praying and asking God to lead us and we need to be using our gifts at the service of the church and that could be for some of you music some of you might have the gift of writing some of you have you ever been in a conversation in the Lord just put on your heart a word to say to somebody to help make their day better sometimes it's a very simple word just a word of encouragement some of you exercising mercy in compassion through corporal works of mercy feeding the poor now right now the church needs to see corporal works of mercy in the world needs to see the church serving the poor i mean we we have a savior who talked a lot about care for the poor yeah i don't want to go down too many rabbit holes but you know this is the government's idea we're going to end poverty jesus said the poor will always be with you i don't want you to end them i want you to love them because as saint philip nary said we're not here to save the poor the poor are here to save us to move our hearts to mercy and compassion so let's let the spirit lead us to greater works of mercy and compassion to service to giving hospitality but then yes healing and signs and wonders and evangelization and prophecy powerful signs that god is alive and powerful in our world today and it all comes about through one simple prayer it's an ancient prayer you prayed it just a few weekends ago benny sante spiritus come holy spirit the three most dangerous words you are ever gonna pray in your life because when you say come holy spirit and you say now that you're here i surrender anyone ever read the line which in the wardrobe i've got five children four of them are in their 20s one of them's 12 and i every one of them got read by me the the complete series who's read the line which in the wardrobe as line is the lion he's the christ figure in the story in the line which in the wardrobe and uh little lucy's asking mr beaver is he is he safe he sounds so fierce is the lion safe and he's like safe oh no he's not safe not safe at all but he is good and that's our god he's not coming to give us safety or comfort he's coming to fill us with his holy spirit so that we will become his children and do great and beautiful things in his name it's dangerous because if we actually want to live this life we will be rejected we will be mocked we will be ridiculed you will be hated how do i know this because jesus said we would i mean i trust in the words of jesus when he said look if they hate me they're gonna hate you if they rejected me they're gonna reject you there's a risk in this but it's well worth the risk so when we come back we're gonna finish with a closeout with a song with john paul that'll take us to three o'clock take a break stretch your legs go give me get something to drink come back here at 330 guys i'm gonna do a much shorter message for the second session the word spend the majority of the time praying for the holy spirit praying with one another and whatever you're coming with from a need that you know it says the spirit wants to be poured out according to the need of the church you're bringing that need of the church with you so maybe take a few minutes as you're coming back to reflect upon what is it that you want from the holy spirit what do you need right now in order to move forward as his disciple and what is it that you want from the holy spirit just let the spirit take you there so we name a father son holy spirit