 Hey everybody, this is John with the Christian Outreach Office and I just want to share with you a little bit about what it means to me to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. And I think the fundamental characteristic for me in my walk as a disciple with Jesus is learning how to trust God. You know, when we talk about discipleship we can get caught up in all the things we do, like go to Mass every day or read the Bible every day or pray every day. And those disciplines are good because without discipline you really can't live as a disciple, but being a disciple is so much more than the things that we do. It is a state of our heart where we really fall in love with Jesus and trust Him with everything that we have and everything that we are, our entire lives we put back into Jesus' hands. You know, salvation history in a nutshell is simply we were created by God who is perfect love and called to communion with this perfect love. And yet in the Garden it says in the Catechism, man let trust die in his heart and when that trust died he chose sin and we broke that communion. We broke communion with perfect love and the only way God could restore that brokenness is to send perfect love as the sacrifice to redeem us and to restore us. And the final act of our redemption is us learning how to trust God with our whole lives, our whole soul, our eternal destiny. We put it into Christ's hands. And so to live as a disciple means that we are actively working not just to do the things that, you know, the church says our disciplines but we're looking for God to renew and redeem the trust we have for Him in our own hearts. It is not easy to live in trust with God. There's a lot of things that try to pull us out of it. The first is just our feelings where we look at ourselves and we doubt ourselves because we see our brokenness and our weaknesses and we start to say that oh well that's who I am, I'm broken and I'm weak and I'm not lovable. But the reality is God sees beyond that and he sees into our heart and he loves us perfectly. And we can't let our own weaknesses be projected upon God. Yes we are imperfect but his love for us is perfect and his mercy never fails even though we fail all the time. The second thing that we have to avoid is sin because every time we sin we say to God I don't trust your ways. I want what I want on my terms. I don't want what you have for me. And in these little acts of sin we constantly undo what Christ is trying to do which is redeem our trust in the Father. So what can we do to redeem our trust in God and to grow in our trust for God as disciples? Number one, practice gratitude. Everything that comes from us is from God and if we believe that and trust in that no matter what the circumstances we will find ourselves thanking God and we need to be doing that. We can't be grumbling and complaining even when things are difficult we have to thank God. You know the second thing is just make acts of trust and surrender throughout the day. Jesus I trust in you. Jesus I surrender my life to you. When you start to feel these doubts these insecurities and anxieties just squash them by saying Jesus I believe in your ways and I trust in you. Living as a disciple has never been easy but for us it's never been impossible. God will give us everything we need to have our trust redeemed in him and to truly live in his love with that confidence that he's on our side no matter what and in that we will be able to overcome any obstacles fears doubts and truly live as Jesus's disciples. God bless you.