 to start in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord God, we thank you that you have come to us in your presence, in your personhood, in the Eucharist, in the sacraments, and in a particular way in this afternoon in the gift of your Word. And we ask just for you to send your Spirit, that Spirit who inspired the writers of the Gospels, who inspired the writers who have brought your love, your message to all of us throughout the ages, that that Spirit will be here, will be upon us this afternoon, will open our hearts and open our minds to the ways that you are calling us into a deeper relationship with you in the Word, and in particular in a way that you are calling us into battle, into battle for those that we love so dearly but those who you love even more. And so we open our hearts to this Word in this time, and we also ask that the mother who carried this womb, this Word within her womb, will pray with us and will pray for us for the next hour as we listen and hear for the ways that you are calling us as we pray together Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. So I am so excited to have the opportunity to share on this topic with you this afternoon because this is one of my favorite topics to share about but also because this is an incredible blessing to me because my story of why intercession is so important to me is a direct result of my experience with the Steubenville Conferences about 20 years ago. So when I was a teenager, I loved going to the Steubenville Youth Conferences and one summer, it was a summer before my senior year of high school, I was able to participate in a program that's now called Franciscan Lead. And so what lead is, is you go up actually the week before the Youth Conference, you go up on Monday and spend the whole week long really learning how to dive deep into your prayer life and kind of going to like these next level places in holiness beyond what you would normally get in an introduction kind of a Youth Conference experience. So there was about 35 of us that got to go. It was this incredible transforming experience of my life. And I remember very specifically over the course of that week just being very convicted that God had a plan for my life, that the God of the universe who knew everything about me, who created me, that he knew that there was a plan that was the best way for me to get to heaven. And I was praying through that that week and I'm sitting in front of the Blessed Sacrament and thinking about the Lord of the universe who knows what this plan is and he knows the best way for me to get to heaven. He knows whether that's for me to be married one day or whether that's for me to be a religious sister. And as I was thinking about that, thinking if this is true and if I am called to marriage one day, then God who knows everything knows who it is that one day I'm going to marry. And if that's true, I was thinking about being a teenager and realizing that this person that God knows that I will marry one day he's out there somewhere right now in this very moment. And thinking about all the different temptations and all the things that made it so difficult to be a teenager, I realized if that's true, then this man needs my prayers. He needs them and he needs them desperately. So I decided that week that I was going to go to war praying for my future husband, that I wanted to crawl into the trenches for him spiritually, that I wanted to offer him to the Lord, whatever it was that he was up against in his life, the temptations, the struggles, whether he knew the Lord or whether he did it, that I really, really wanted to battle. I wanted to battle for my future husband. So I went home from that week, really convicted in this call to pray for my future husband wherever he was and I wanted to make him really concrete in my life, that this was a real person that was out there. So I started to write these prayers in the form of letters to my husband to be. And so I started this notebook. I eventually shortened to DearHTB and I would write down all of these different letters and the ways that I was begging God, pouring out my heart, you know, Lord, if he's struggling with this, this, this, all of these different things, Lord, come into his life, come in with urgency and show him that life in you is better. Well, a few months later, I'm going to share a little bit more about this tonight in my keynote tonight, but a few months later, my dad left and I had just come off of this incredible mountaintop experience, really having all of this hope and excitement about my vocation and all of these kind of things. And suddenly I was wrecked. All of these things that I thought that I knew were true about love and about vocation and about marriage and all of these kind of things were suddenly brought into question. I was thinking, you know, my parents didn't get married thinking that one day that their marriage was going to end. You know, well, it can't really be true that I can have the trust and the faith and the Lord and then another person one day that the same thing won't happen for me. So I kind of had this crisis of faith so many times over the course of the next several years. What kept me grounded in hope that maybe things could be different for me was this intercession, was this, these letters and these ways that I was pouring out my heart and the things that I was seeing in the brokenness and the ugliness, it went from kind of being this really like exciting experience that I was having writing these letters and interceding for my future husband to this really painful, scary thing of just outpouring, you know, the things that I was asking the Lord to bless in his life, in my life and in our future. So several years passed, my dad left and he came back and I stayed at home for my first year of college so that I could be near my family. Well, eventually after my freshman year, my parents' divorce was finalized and I transferred here to Franciscan University and it was kind of this opportunity for like this fresh start and leaving everything behind. I'm from Colorado originally and nobody knew, you know, anything that I was coming from or anything like that and so I vividly remember the day that my mom and my brother dropped me off here on campus and I was standing there watching the rental car drive down the hill and I was like, oh no, like what have I done? I'm here by myself in Ohio, you know, and I'm like, I have no car, I know no people, what kind of plan was this, you know, and so panicking I decided I need to go and find some friends as fast as possible so I started going to all these different events at the beginning of the school year where you can go and meet people and I found that, you know, meeting tons of people but I wasn't really establishing like actual friendships. So I came up with this plan that I was going to sit in the same spot in all of my classes and then as I was sitting there waiting for class to start that all the people sitting around me would be trapped and so they wouldn't be able to get away from me so I would try to talk to them to see if any of them would want to be my friend and so I was sitting in my first theology class Principles of Biblical Study and I'm trying so hard to make small talk with these people sitting around me like really, really awkwardly and none of them were interested in being my friend apparently so I'm trying every day so finally after a couple weeks I'm like, alright, new plan, new plan so I look around the room and I see this open seat next to this really attractive young man and I'm like, okay, next time I come in that's my seat and then I'll have this whole new crop of people sitting around me and see if any of them want to be my friend so I go, I sit down in the next class and I did what I think any girl in this situation would do I avoided all eye contact with the cute boy who was sitting next to me because I was too nervous to talk to him and so what happened next was way more awkward than if I would have just had the courage to speak to him instead of the other people who were sitting around me and that was that I started seeing this guy everywhere that I went on campus I mean everywhere and it was a really small class that called Royal I figured he probably knew my name but we never talked to each other and so literally everywhere we're walking I see this guy and we're checking our mail walking to Mass, eating in the cafeteria walking to class over and over and over again several times every day but I know that he knows that I sit by him every day but that we've never spoken to each other before so I have these social anxiety moments every time I see him coming I don't know what to do because we've never talked to each other so he would be like coming and I'm like what do I do? Do I smile? Do I throw a head nod? Do I wave? Do I say hi? and do I continue to avoid all I contact? What do I do? So he's like coming closer closer and it's kind of like all of those things like oh my gosh I'm like hiding behind bushes it was horrible so this goes on for like two weeks and so finally one day I'm walking to class I'm walking from St. Thomas More and I'm giving myself this pep talk I got my backpack on and I'm like okay Katie today is the day you were going to talk to this boy and I'm you know telling myself over and over again I'm doing like this girl thing that you do where you're like play over I'm like I'm going to say this and then he'll say this and then we'll both laugh and then I'll say this I'm like getting myself all amped up like this is going to be great so I walk into class and I'm like today is the day sit down, class happens, class is over I'm like tomorrow is the day tomorrow is the day I'm going to have the courage to talk to this guy so I walk out of the classroom and that day I'm outside the door waiting for me and he was like hi I keep seeing you everywhere I go and I'm like yes I don't know who's talking who in this situation like is he the creeper am I the creeper I don't know and so he introduces himself he's like this is getting really strange I have to introduce myself, spoiler alert he's like my name is Mark Hartfield and he's like I'm actually on my way to lunch so am I I'm going the same place you are so as we're walking to lunch together we have basically the same schedule we have classes in the same buildings at the same time we've been going to Daily Mass at the same time all these kind of things thus Creeperville and so what kind of happened was that over time we merged these schedules together so we're going to Mass together we're studying together we're having all of our meals together all of these things so my plan totally worked just saying Mark became my very very best friend on campus and so as the months go go by and we're spending all this time together and a very very long story short actually you could read all about it in my book if you want to in the book store but a very long story short is we eventually in February of that year we start dating and so we deep into our dating relationship you know this whole time I'm still praying for my future husband when I started dating Mark I also started praying for his future wife just in case it wasn't me I didn't want to take any part of his heart or any part of his purity that didn't belong to me and so we we get very deep into our dating relationship and it's really looking like okay I think that this is where God is calling us so we're both at home from college for the summer and Mark's from Texas so I'm at home in Colorado and it was you know back in the day where you had to wait until after 9 o'clock to get free long distance on your cell phone so we're like emailing each other on dial up all day long and then waiting for us like 8 59 oh my gosh I missed you so much talking into the night and so one evening we were talking specifically about Mark's conversion experience and so I was like this youth group kid like so into you know everything that had that they offered at the church I was there Mark's experience was completely completely different so when he was in high school in Texas sports are a huge huge deal and he was very very gifted in basketball his dad coached the basketball team he started as a sophomore he played on the same high school team as Richard Lewis who went on to play in the NBA right out of high school won a championship with the Miami Heat so basketball was like his whole world well along with that came also popularity it came all the temptations within the party scene and all those kind of things so he would tell you you know he went to Mass with his family every single Sunday he loved God but it didn't have anything to do with the decisions that he was making and his main concern was basketball and then what he was going to be doing on Friday and Saturday night and so summer after Mark's senior year he is at home in his room and he says he's not thinking about God he's not in prayer anything like that and he describes it as if the Holy Spirit just came rushing into the room spontaneously and here's this 19 year old boy and all of a sudden he understood for the very first time really really understood for the very first time in his entire life that it was his face that Jesus saw as he was dying on the cross that suddenly those words God loves you meant something to him and this 19 year old boy fell to his knees sobbing he said he was sobbing because he was thinking about all of his sins and thinking about all of the decisions that he had made that had held the Lord to the cross that day but most of all more than anything he was sobbing because he was understanding the mercy and the love of the Lord and that that's what the Lord wanted to offer him and he left his room that night knowing that there was a handful of things he needed to stop doing and a handful of things that he needed to start doing but over the next several years as he really pursued what that life in Christ would look like it eventually led him to transfer to Franciscan University as well and so as we're talking about his conversion experience that night on the phone and I asked him you know Mark do you know the exact date the exact date of your conversion and so he told me this date in July and it was just one of those times that you have in your life you know where you know that the Lord is doing something so I walk over in my bedroom to the place where I kept my prayer journals and I pulled out my prayer journal from the week of Mark's conversion the same week of Mark's conversion was the week that I was at Franciscan Leed and it was the same week that I decided that I was going to go to war battling and praying and interceding for my future husband it was the week that I had started these letters and started these prayers and I had a list I mean very specific things a laundry list a page long that was if you're struggling with this this this and this and it was word for word Mark's list and so of course you know we're both on the phone and we're like you know crying realizing like here we are separated by all these thousands of miles but that years before years before this that the Lord had been working and that we had been separated by all these thousands of miles hadn't even met each other but that God knew God knew what he was going to be doing and I share the story with you guys this afternoon not because it's my love story and I really like it but I share with you because this is a story of what our God does this is a story of what our God does millions and millions of times every single day and when I share this story people are like oh my gosh it's so amazing but like really we shouldn't really be that surprised you know that the Lord hears us he hears us and he answers us and this was just one opportunity where God decided to allow us to know exactly what he was doing in that very moment but our prayers in our intercession they matter they matter and they might not look like what we think that they're going to look like they might not come in the timing that we're expecting them to come but that the Lord is listening and he is out pouring and so that's what we want to talk about this afternoon it's about this opportunity for us to intercede for those who are in our lives who we love so deeply and who need the Lord's word to come and to clothe them so I was telling this story several years ago at a group of women and there was a Q&A at the end and this lady raised her hand and she was like so how do you pray for your husband now? and I was like oh shoot thanks a lot Lord for calling me out in front of a room of 100 people that's great that's really fantastic and I was like I don't know I mean I pray for him I'm like God bless Mark you know but like not like I used to like I used to be so dedicated you know in this practice of intercession and all these specific things and all this kind of stuff and then I guess I just kind of got into this mode of like oh now we're married and it's great and so that really like stuck with me for weeks afterwards it was really really bothering me and I was trying to think about you know how I could go about this but the reality is that life was really different at that point like we have children and adult life you know you're busy it's a lot different than when I was younger and I was in high school and college and I was single and had all of this time to myself or whatever and I was thinking about like okay how can I really make this happen how can I dedicate myself to this and I heard to talk Father Mike Schmitz and he was talking about the difference between Martha and Mary and I think for all of us as adults period like we're all busy we all struggle with having time to really be able to dedicate ourselves to prayer and specifically to this type of prayer this type of prayer that we want to be able to intercede in battle for people and really that most of us really identify with Martha what gave me so much peace with Father Mike was sharing about was that you know Martha's a saint we say this like it's a really bad thing like oh my gosh like I'm such a Martha he's such a Martha she's such a Martha whatever but really that Martha was doing exactly what I think we would all be doing in this situation like she had the Lord come over to her home and she wanted everything to be perfect right and so here she is and she's serving and she's working and she's doing all of these really really good things and in this moment as Mary is sitting there and Martha's complaining to Jesus like shouldn't she be helping me you know whatever what Jesus doesn't say is hey Martha what you're doing is really bad and you should stop it you should stop right what he says to her is he says Martha Mary has chosen the better part right and there's always going to be responsibilities and things that we have to do in our life but what we can't do is miss out on the better part what Mary chose to do was to sit at the feet of the Lord and to experience everything that he had to offer for her in that moment because there's going to come a day when we don't have to do this and we don't have responsibilities we don't have all of these things that we have to get done and that's going to be when we're dead okay that's when we're going to have all the time in the world for all of eternity to sit at the feet of the Lord but what Mary saw in that moment was this opportunity to have a little bit of heaven here on earth and so that's what we can't miss we can't miss this time that we are called within our daily lives to sit at the feet of the Lord and to give ourselves to him. Father Mike Scanlon he had this talk I listened to it about a year ago changed my life talking about prayer and really talking about prayer and this kind of idea of intercession and what he said is you know everybody talks about how they don't have the time right that we have these struggles with finding time to carve out and what he says is that we have to ask ourselves do I not have the time or do not not have the faith and what he said was would we believe that something works when we believe that something is really going to be effective in our lives whether that is you know in our jobs in our home life whether that's in health we really believe that something works and that it's going to make things better for ourselves and for our families we do it we find a way that we are going to make it happen if we really really believe so do we not have the time or do we not have the faith and so with that as all of these kind of things we're stewing within my own heart of like I'm not doing my due diligence with my family I'm not interceding in the way that I want to be and in my own prayer I thought about that I was thinking about the story about Cain and Abel and how they both brought these sacrifices to the Lord right and so what they did you know one of them was a farmer and one of them had had animals and so what happened was Cain he brought what he had leftover alright he took the best of his yield from his farm and then he gave the Lord his leftovers but what Abel did is he gave the Lord the first he gave the Lord the very best of what he had and he offered that to the Lord first and Lord accepted both of the sacrifices but what he said was he was very pleased by the sacrifice that Abel had given him of his first fruits so I started asking myself what are my first fruits within my own life within my own day and I realized you know a lot of times when it came to my own prayer life and especially you're praying over my family was that I was giving God what I had leftover and a lot of times that was nothing you know or it was something you know while in pumping gas or while I'm trying to just kind of find like these little times but I had to ask myself what are my first fruits what are the time of the day where I'm at my best and I could do anything and there's things I need to do I need to answer emails I need to work on this talk I need to start dinner I need to do laundry you know there's all of these things but I really could do whatever I want in this moment and so for me I have four small children at home so for me that's nap time the best time of the day the best time of the day I put my kids in their rooms my older kids have a quiet time I walk out and I'm like let's have a margarita and watch Chip and Joanna this is the greatest time of day you know so so that is my first morning for me is not my first fruit some people that works for you I wake up in the morning I'm like Lord why did you create humanity please bring the apocalypse today now so I don't have to get out of bed is really my morning prayers are kind of ugly so for me nap time is a time where I'm functioning at this time I'm happy I'm feeling good and so I started to tithe give the first fruits of nap time to the Lord and so for me nap time lasts for about an hour in my house and so 10% is six minutes and so I take those very first six minutes before I do anything I found that if I try to take clothes out of the dryer first on my way to go sit in my prayer spot that all of a sudden I get distracted and the whole hour has passed before I do anything I go and I sit down and I set a timer for my first six minutes so I've tried to tell the Lord like if you make nap time last five hours this is mutually beneficial but it has not worked yet so we'll see I'm going to keep on trying though so what I do in those first six minutes as I sit down I set a timer and always take the very first minute just to be and to just kind of relax in a moment be in the Lord's presence because I find that if I just kind of dive right in then it's like another thing that's on my to-do list and I'm just trying to kind of get through it so I can get through the rest of the things so I take the first moment and I just sit in the presence of the Lord and then what I do from there is I get out my Bible and then I also take my phone and I choose for the day usually one person within my family that I'm going to pray for during that day it's usually my husband but I have a notebook for each of the people in my family a journal for each of them and it's usually really obvious like what that person needs prayer for that day sometimes it might be gratitude for them sometimes it might be protection patience joy trust obedience you know whatever it is that comes up on my heart and then what I do is I'll take my phone and I will type in scriptures for whatever whatever that thing is that I want to pray for that person scriptures for patience scriptures for joy whatever whatever that is and then ton of verses will come up so I scroll through quickly and find one that it's usually also very obvious again like this one really touched this is exactly this is exactly what we need in this moment and so I'll take my journal and I write down at the top whatever that verses that has stood out to me that day then I have to take my phone and like put it under the couch cushion or in the blender or anything so that it's not going to be distracting me for the rest of my time and then I take that verse and I pray it over whoever it is in my family and really try to like let that those words of the Lord seep into my heart pray them with conviction over my kids and over my husband or sometimes my brother or sometimes my dad whatever it may be and then I write out my prayer based on that verse begging the Lord to come true on his promises on the words that he has said on the things that he has promised for his children and so one of the ways that I really like to do this and by the way you know I said my timer for six minutes and I almost always end up using more of that time because what you find through prayer and through interceding for other people is that you're asking for all of these graces for these other people who are in your life but that that overflows back on you that when we spend this time in prayer that we are the ones that are changed and I find myself in these moments where I want to stay here I want to stay with you Lord I want to stay with you here in this moment but one of the things that I really like to do and this is on your handout so that I wanted you to have it on the slides up here but this is the practice of Lectio Divina which is really the official way that the church teaches for us to read the scripture so it's taken from a Jewish tradition of how they would go and they would read the scriptures and the word of the Lord but it's also something that like the monks who practice this they would talk about it as the ladder of our way of entering into this mystery of the word of God that each one of these steps and that each one of them is bringing us closer and deeper into the mystery of the word of who God is it's really really simple it's really really practical but it's also really fruitful and so I love to do this when I'm looking at a specific scripture verse for somebody that I'm praying for in my life as well and just to let the Lord also be able to speak through his scriptures because what's so amazing about the scriptures right is that they were written thousands and thousands of years ago but that will read it and be like I'm praying for me today like the Lord wrote this knowing that I was going to need this verse or knowing that somebody in my family was going to need it so it allows the Lord to speak so the very first step of Lectio Divina is Lectio which means reading and what you do here is you take a passage and this is not a time to like take a chapter or a book usually we would take just a couple of different verses a very short passage over several times so that those words kind of start to sink in deeply so the idea here is for us to not rush through and a lot of times I find myself with scriptures like okay I know this story I've heard this one a lot of times but that these words are alive and to give the opportunity for us to slow down and to let those words speak in a reflective type of way so after that the next step is meditation and so in this moment what you're going to do is you would read this passage again but this time instead of just looking at the passage as a whole and letting it sink in what you're doing is looking for a specific word or a specific phrase that really jumps out at you then this phrase might be something that makes you feel like it's something important that brings joy it might even be something that bothers you that kind of disturbs you looking for a couple words a phrase, something like that that the Lord is speaking and so what you're going to do in this moment in this moment of meditation is to just repeat over and over again whatever that word or that phrase is and so the way that the religious who practice this would kind of describe this as like chewing chewing on that scripture chewing on that passage letting it continue to seep in to break down and to become one of you so what this should do is you know in the first passage what we're doing is we're reading it over and over again and letting it sink in but what this step is going to do is going to take this opportunity to take these things from your head and really let them to sink into your heart so it should be a movement kind of in reading the scriptures in that way and then the next step is contemplation and so this at this moment you know you kind of have like this starting point of something to you but then in this time of contemplation this is where we allow the Lord to speak so this is where we take that to silence and we let the Lord speak within our hearts whatever it is within that passage within that word that you've been chewing on and let him reveal to you what it is that he wants to say to you so this is you're really giving the Lord permission and I love this last line here the step gives God permission to make our prayer not something that we do but something that God does in us and again this makes so much sense when we're looking to the scriptures specifically because the scriptures are alive and because they are filled with the spirit that the spirit would be able to well up within us within the reading of the scriptures and then the last step is our prayer and so this is our opportunity for us to therefore respond to the Lord and what he has opened up and what he has spoken to us through these passages and so again this is really I feel like fruitful for me in my own life but also in just opening up how the Lord wants me to intercede yes for the people in my family and in my life but also how he is calling me to deal with my children with my husband and with certain things like that and how he is going to be welling up and making that word alive within our relationships with one another and so a few years ago I mean well before that I want to to give you a couple verses just to show you know why this is effective and that this is kind of sassy but this is kind of what I say to the Lord especially when I'm really frustrated and I'm praying scripture over somebody is I feel like I'm saying Lord these are your words not mine you know like there are certain times in my life when I'm praying certain things and I feel like God's saying like you need to ask for the right prayer like you're asking for those things but that's not really what I'm seeking you know and when we pray the scriptures and we pray God's promises over people I feel like that's an opportunity for me to get out of the way and for me to say okay Lord this is what you want right this is what you're saying and I want to unite my heart to what you want for the people that I love and the reason why this works is I mean the Lord says in Hebrews 412 he says the word of God is alive it is sharper than any double-edged sword it penetrates even into dividing soul and spirit joints and marrow it judges the thoughts and the attitudes of the heart and he also says in Isaiah 5511 so it is that my word that goes out from my mouth it will not return to me empty but it will accomplish what I desire and will achieve the purpose for which I sent it so that the Lord and I are working together for his promise for his mission in this type of a thing and I started you know by talking about how in my life how I've for many many years I've had this desire to really want to battle and to really want to climb into the trenches for the people that I love and so a couple years ago my husband and I got invited to go to a pre-screening of this movie Hacksaw Ridge has anybody here ever seen Hacksaw Ridge okay a couple of people somehow we ended up on this list in Houston I have no idea how I don't need to ask because it might have been an accident but we get invited to these pre-screenings of faith based films and so before they come out and then there's like a survey process at the end and then they use that you know in their marketing and things like that so we've gotten to go for free several times to these faith based movies so we get this email inviting us to come and watch this movie Hacksaw Ridge so I didn't know what it was about I didn't know anything about it but I knew it was a free date night so we're like sure we'll go so nothing could have prepared me nothing could have prepared me for what we experienced that night and so for those of you who don't know it's an R rated movie and it's a true story that happened during World War II it was directed by Mel Gibson so in true he was actually there at the pre-screening and true Mel Gibson fashion so violent so gory I was amazed I was totally totally shocked so we're sitting there in the theater and my husband afterwards was like this is actually a really great date night movie because the whole time I'm like oh my gosh at one point this lady next to him was like clinging onto his arm that he didn't know and so it was intense and so the story is the true story is about this man named Desmond Doss and Desmond Doss is a seventh day Adventist who didn't believe in touching or carrying a weapon but at the time of World War II he felt very strongly that he needed to join the army and he needed to go and to serve his country and so in order to do that he signed up for the army as a medic so that he could go into battle that he could serve the people who were there but that he wouldn't actually carry a weapon so they go to this battle Hacksaw Ridge was one of the bloodiest battles of World War II and they actually had to climb up this 80 foot cliff on these rope ladders to be able to get up to the spot to fight the Japanese so the war or the battle is going on it's going very very badly for the Americans and they end up retreating so everybody leaves and leaves the wounded behind climbs back down this cliff well Desmond Doss decided that he was going to stay behind and that he was going to save as many people as possible as everybody else is running out of the battle here is this man who is running into the battle he's running into the battle and so what he did was he took some rope and he made this pulley system where he would go and he would run in and the Japanese are all still out there and he would grab a body and he would drag that person over to the edge of the cliff and tie the rope around them and then lower them down to the bottom of the cliff one at a time it shows he's laying there and he's bleeding and it's the middle of the night he's exhausted and he would lay there it showed the real Desmond Doss afterwards telling the story as well he would lay there and he was just heavy breathing barely trying to get out the words and praying God send me one more just one more just send me one more and he would get up and he would run back out and find another person the American soldiers came back to the cliff the next morning and found 70 men at the bottom of the cliff that he had had gone into battle and that he had saved that owed him their life that owed him their life and then as I'm watching this film and watching all of the blood and the glow and the violence and afterwards during the Q&A there was a woman who said she's been an ER nurse for 20 years and she was like I had to leave I've seen all of these parts of the body in real life and this was too much for me I had to leave and get a breather they also said that they also pre-screened this movie for veterans for people who had actually been in war and they said this is exactly what it looks like this is very very accurate and I was sitting in that theater watching this this movie and I was very struck by the fact like I've been talking all these years like I want to go to war, I want to go to battle I want to climb into the trenches you know all of this stuff that sounds like really romanticized talking about it like that and here before my eyes I'm seeing this is what it looks like this is what it looks like to be in the actual trenches terrifying, absolutely terrifying it was like I was looking into a window into hell is what I felt like and I realized in that moment I've been saying all this stuff for all of these years and you know what there's a battle there's a battle that is being waged over my family there's a battle that is being waged over my husband and the stakes are infinitely more violent and the stakes are infinitely higher and the question that I had to ask myself in that moment is what am I going to do about it what am I going to do about it am I willing to fight in a way that means every kind of sacrifice that I have to make is worth it am I willing to run into the battle for my family not ask like what's going to happen if I do but what's going to happen if I don't right am I willing to fight into battle for my family in this kind of way and you know the beautiful thing is that the Lord I was just reading this yesterday and the book of Exodus that the Lord he gives us this call to unite ourselves to his mission and to his desires for the people that we love but what he also says he says to Moses and he says to the people very clearly in the book of Exodus he says the Lord your God will fight for you if you will just be still and that's the trick right like in our lives I found myself in all of these moments like what am I going to do what am I going to do I have to get in there and I have to you know be the perfect wife and I have to be the perfect mother and what am I going to do in my ministry I want to like give the perfect talk and like all of these kind of things right but none of those things mean anything unless we're letting the Lord be the one who's battling for us unless we stop and we are in our stillness letting God be the one who's going to fight our battles and then also being willing to remember and accept that the Lord already won the victory we just have to claim it that the battle has been fought that evil has been run over and has been defeated but we have to remember that we have to claim that victory that we have to come present to the Lord in His Word in His will and in His conviction and we have to claim it so what I want to do this afternoon with the time that we have remaining is I want to put this into practice and so what you got when you walked in was a handout that some of my favorite verses kind of one of my schticks that I love to share about obviously about praying for my husband and these are some of my favorite verses specifically for my spouse they could be for future spouse for the person that you're married to they could also be used for other people in your life that you care about your children your grandchildren siblings parents whatever that may be and again you know there's millions of verses that could be applied in many different ways but these are some of my favorite so on one side of the paper is kind of some general petitions and then the other side of the paper is my favorite ways to pray over my husband is covering him in scripture from head to toes so there's prayers for his mind for his eyes for his ears for his wedding finger for his heart for his feet all of those kind of things but what I'd like to do this afternoon is just pick one of these verses for us to do this practice of Lectio Divina together and to offer for someone that we love and the one that we're going to do this afternoon is number six on the first page for a greater trust in the Lord and I think that this can apply to pretty much anybody in your life that you feel like needs a greater trust in the Lord and so I'm just going to lead you through this in this moment but if you want to follow along with number six there then you can do that as well so let's go ahead and start in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit and again we're just going to take that first minute this first minute just to still ourselves to sit in the presence of the Lord and let him be here with us so now I want to invite you to call to mind that person that you want to intercede for this afternoon whoever it may be call them to mind in your mind and in your heart now I'm going to do step one I'm going to read this passage three times slowly we're just going to let the entire passage take a moment to sort of sink in have no anxiety at all but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving make your requests known to God and then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus have no anxiety at all but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving make your requests known to God then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus have no anxiety at all but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving make your requests known to God and then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus so now for step two I'm going to read it one more time and this time I want you to look for that specific word or that phrase and as that jumps out at you to just take the rest of that time to repeat that word or phrase over and over chewing on it and really letting it move from your mind and into your heart have no anxiety at all but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving make your requests known to God and then the peace of the Lord that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus now for the third step what we're going to do is allow for the Lord to speak just giving him that opportunity for a prayer to not be something that we do but something that God does in us letting God reveal to you what it is that he wants to speak to you through this passage and then lastly we're going to take a moment to respond to what the Lord is speaking in your heart and this is the time for you to answer Lord we want to thank you for the dignity that you have given to us to allow us to cooperate with you in your love and in your desires for the people in our lives we thank you for the gift of free will even at the times when it doesn't seem like it was a good idea to us we thank you for giving us the opportunity to love you and we offer up all of the people in our lives who need you all of the people in our lives who don't know that they need you all of those in our lives that are searching for holiness and who want to love you deeper than they already do we just ask that you all continue to encourage us in the times that we feel discouraged and the times that we fear for those who we love the times that we hurt with them and for them enter into that time with us and allow us to never forget that you cry with us and that you love with us and that you fight our battles with us so once again we're going to turn to our Blessed Mother who is the great processor who is our mother looking at us praying for us asking for God's goodness and His blessing to enter into all of the areas of our life where we need Him and so we want to unite our prayers with her this afternoon and ask that she will carry us as always once again to the heart of her son as we pray Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus Hail Mary mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death amen in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit amen amen so one of my favorite things to do when we do have an opportunity like this to do with Lectio Divina within a group is we have a 30 minute break coming up here but often times like the Lord will speak something within our hearts in a practice like that and when we share it with someone else either they have this insight that the Lord wanted and gave it to you so that you could share it with them or sometimes it's confirming when it's the same thing that somebody else has heard so I'd really encourage you if you feel so called within the next 30 minutes to share what the Lord had spoken to you within that time with somebody who's here with you so I've been praying for all of you I'm going to continue to do so throughout this day and if you have a prayer to offer for me I'll take it as well so God bless you all thank you