 All right. Good afternoon. Thank you for being a part of the second session for Life and the Spirit. I'm going to speak a lot less today. We're going to get into prayer about halfway through and just be praying for a greater release of the Holy Spirit in our lives. But that's what it all is about. The Holy Spirit is about action. It's about encounter. It's about transformation. And there's a lot that can be said from a theological and philosophical and just canonical teachings on who the Holy Spirit is. But really, in the end, He's the Spirit of Love that wants to animate every part of who we are. Amen? So let's just take a minute. Let's just call upon the Holy Spirit to guide us. And I'm just going to jump right in so that we have more time on the back end for worship and prayer. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. We praise you, Lord Jesus. We ask that you send forth your Holy Spirit. Come, Holy Spirit. We praise and worship and adore you, Lord God. Come, Holy Spirit, with your grace. Come with your power. Come with your forgiveness. Come with the mercy. Come with every spiritual gift, but we need to know love and serve God and to be known by God, to be loved by God. Holy Spirit, work deeply in our hearts today. We give your permission. We grant you the space and the time that you need to start that great work of transforming us from the inside out. Holy Spirit, we trust in your power. We trust in your goodness. And Lord, I just ask that your spirit would lead. I would yield in this moment to say what you want me to say, to do what you want me to do, to be who you want me to be. And I ask this all through the power of your Holy Name, Jesus. Amen. Being able to proclaim the gospel and being able to preach, even being able to talk is pretty amazing. When you think of all the different things that are happening in the moment and literally in real time in split seconds, I'm conceiving of a thought in my brain, that thought in my brain, you know, coming from my heart, my will, is telling my brain that I want to say something. And then my brain is taking all of that information and transcribing it into electrical impulses that are then going through my body to touch my vocal cords, teeth, lips, tongues, everything at the same time so that my words can annunciate and proclaim. My lungs are pushing the air through my vocal cords at the right moment and they're tightening and constricting. I don't even know how I'm doing it. But it's just happening. And even as I say it, I am then breathing out words that are moving air molecules. And what's even more cool is for some of you, what you're hearing is me breathing in my words into this microphone. And then the microphone takes the sound waves and then translates it back into electrical impulses, which then go through these wires or even through the air out of here into that. And that takes these electrical impulses and makes them into electrical impulses that go into the speakers and vibrate the speakers in a certain way so that you hear my voice. Now this is all happening in split seconds in real time. And when we get up to preach, we can move air molecules in such a way that it hits people, that makes them laugh, makes them smile, makes them cry. But if we want to be men who get up to proclaim the gospel and we want to move hearts to conversion, our human breath will never say enough words with enough meaning, passion, humor or conviction to do that. For the conviction that makes words meaningful and powerful for the proclamation of the gospel can only happen through the power of the Holy Spirit. If we are only moving air molecules that tickle the ears of our parishioners, we are failing. We need to ask God to saturate every one of our words with the Holy Spirit that when our voices go forth to proclaim that they are touching not just the eardrums, the mind, the funny bone, but penetrating the heart. How is it that St. Peter was able to get up and proclaim the gospel and the only response the people had was, what must we do to be saved? The convicting power of the Holy Spirit, the convincing power of the Holy Spirit, the converting power of the Holy Spirit, saturated his words. And if anything else, nothing else, you know, like I want you to fall more in love with Jesus, I want to have your own spiritual life renewed. But if you could take one takeaway for your ministry, it would be that maybe God would put a fresh anointing on your preaching ministry, that he would continue to use it to move hearts to conversion to, you know, we just celebrated St. Anthony of Padua, his one of his nicknames, he was the hammer of the heretics. And I'm sure he did all his hammering with a lot of love and a lot of grace, but to have that kind of strength and conviction in his words, that he could break down the enemy's stronghold in another man's heart. That's impressive. I think that's the kind of work that God wants us to do, and for us to do that, we need to yield to the power of the Holy Spirit. Let me read a passage from you, Ezekiel chapter 36, this is verses 25 through 27. He says, I will sprinkle clean water upon you and you shall be clean from all your uncleannessnessnessnessness. That's a weird word. And from all your idols, I will cleanse you a new heart I will give you at a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you and make you follow my statues and be careful to observe my ordinances. And up until this time in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit would come upon people and rest upon them to anoint them for the particular mission or task that God was calling them to. Kings, the spirit would rest upon the kings and give them that counsel and that wisdom. You know, David, the spirit would rest upon him. He would talk about how the spirit rushed upon somebody and rested upon them, but in the same way, the spirit could be withdrawn from somebody. And when Ezekiel starts prophesying in the midst of Babylonian exile, you know, he's talking about this new order, this new life in the spirit that God is going to be ushering in. He also talks about it in Ezekiel chapter 46, where he's having this vision where he sees the water flowing out of the temple, this flow of water. And he's walking there with God and God says to him, Son of man, have you seen this? And he leads them to the banks of the river and he said to me, the water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into Ereba. And when it enters the stagnant waters of the sea, the water will become fresh. And wherever the river goes, every living creature which swarms will live. And there will be very many fish for this water goes there that the waters of the sea may become fresh. So everything will live where the river goes. I believe that this current of grace, this Holy Spirit, the Lord wants to pour it upon us in abundance today. And He wants us to be instruments to pour it out on other people in abundance. So much so that St. Paul says we become temple of the Holy Spirit so that we will remember like the temple, the river that flowed from the temple in Ezekiel's prophecy, the Spirit would flow from us and bless those that we serve. For if we're not flowing with the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, if there's not a constant inflow, there will be no outflow. And I love that they say like wherever the river goes, the water that is stagnant will become fresh. And I don't know about you, but over the last 40 years I've had many periods where I felt my relationship with God had become very stagnant. It wasn't life giving. It was very arid. I was choked off of the concerns of the world. My water was polluted, my spirit inside of me with the temptations of this world, the distractions of the passing, pleasures of this world at different times had grabbed ahold of me and choked off the life of God. And every time I was restored and renewed through a movement of grace, the power of the Holy Spirit, I believe that baptism in the Holy Spirit is an experience that is given to the church to release and strengthen the effects of baptism and confirmation and truly make us everything that we were made to be. The term baptism in the Holy Spirit is a biblical term. And this is an experience that has been affirmed by many popes throughout the history of the church. Jesus himself said in Acts chapter one, while meeting with them, he enjoyed them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait. To wait for the promise of the Father about which you've heard me speak, for John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Like God is, you know, Jesus is saying to these guys, don't go anywhere, it's coming, this new life in the spirit. And what does he say about this baptism? He says, when you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem throughout Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. And what a great promise, what a great call, but what a great gift he's offering them, the power of the Holy Spirit. St. John the 23rd began the Second Vatican Council with this prayer, renew your wonders in our time as through a new Pentecost. And while they were praying that prayer in Rome as they're going through this huge Vatican II experience of moving the church forward, about an hour from here at the Ark and Dove, some students from Duquesne University received baptism in the Holy Spirit. They didn't know what they were experiencing, they had no idea the Holy Spirit came down with them on power. And from that little place, an hour from here, a river of grace has flown out across the world. Millions and millions of Catholics have experienced the baptism in the Holy Spirit, a new Pentecost for themselves. God has renewed their hearts in this time through a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit. St. John Paul the Great said, the institutional and charismatic aspects are co-essential, as it were, to the church's constitution. It is from this providential rediscovery of the church's charismatic dimension that before and after the council, a remarkable pattern of growth has been established for ecclesial movements and new communities. He said there's this great new revival of evangelization and community life where the Holy Spirit is coming in power upon the people. And he said it's a providential rediscovery of the church's charismatic dimension. So St. John Paul the Great, in his wisdom, looked at what was happening and said, this is nothing new, but rather a rediscovery of what the church should have been from the very beginning. And I love how he says there's the institutional and the charismatic. And I was very blessed a few years ago at graduation, Father Ronero Contolamesa, who's just like a super holy guy and was papal preacher for St. John Paul the Great, Pope Benedict the 16th, and Pope Francis. He came and got an honorary degree and spoke at our graduation and I was able to interview him and I sat down and just asked him about his life and the spirit and just listened to what he had to say. And he described it as these are the two lungs of the church, the institutional lung, the sacramental life. We need to be breathing really deeply of that sacramental life, but also the charismatic, the part where the spirit wills, what the spirit wills, and works in those who surrender and are docile to his action. And both those need to be healthy in a person, breathing deeply with both lungs for us to truly have the spiritual health and animation that we need to be men of God, lovers of Christ, disciples of Jesus Christ in the world today. Pope Benedict the 16th went on to affirm during his Regina Chaley message on Pentecost in 2008. He said, in effect Jesus' whole mission was aimed at giving the spirit of God to men and baptizing them in the bath of regeneration. Today I would like to extend this invitation to all. Let us rediscover, dear brothers and sisters, the beauty of being baptized in the Holy Spirit. Let us recover awareness of our baptism and our confirmation of timely sources of grace. And when he says that in the end the whole mission of Christ was aimed at that Pentecost moment, I think what he's affirming is even the cross where Jesus completed his pascal mystery was to tear down and build that road by which we could reach God, but also reestablish as he went back to heaven the coming of the Holy Spirit that would reinvigorate and renewing us what was lost in sin. You know being created in the image and likeness of God when we sinned we didn't stop being in God's image with the capacity to know and to receive his love and to share in that love. Who did was our ability to be like God, to actually live out that love. We lost the likeness, it was so severely damaged, but Jesus through sending of the Holy Spirit restores the likeness, gives us a new heart, a heart that is capable of receiving and actually living in the life of the Trinity. Baptism in the Holy Spirit is that experience that has been given to the church and to release and strengthen the effects of baptism and confirmation. It is a current of grace that transforms the human heart and builds the church. And right now we're looking at all the things that are lacking and we say there's a huge priest shortage and we say there's a money shortage. I say we've the reason we've gotten here because we've been living on a power shortage for too long. For too long we've been trying to sustain the mystical body of Christ with our own feeble human effort. And we have been impotent in many ways. And it's time for us as the church to admit in our poverty that we need more from God. Not just for our own salvation, yes for our own salvation, for our own sanctification, but for the sake of the bride. That we would empty ourselves completely before God and say make me a living tabernacle. Fill me as your vessel to overflow with your Holy Spirit and may the overflow of the Holy Spirit in my life be my ministry. May the overflow of what you're doing in my heart let that be my only ministry. Don't let me take a step forward without being anointed by your spirit, without praying for that anointing. Because as St. John the Cross would say, if we're not rooted in Jesus at best we're going to be ineffective and at worst we're going to cause scandal and we will end up frustrated and burned out because God will let us pursue and try to live out our vocations without his Holy Spirit but he will never let us succeed in it because God will not mock himself or make you for one second believe you can do it with Adam. When we think of the fruits of baptism and confirmation especially confirmation it says in the Catechism in articles 1302 and 1303 it says, it is evident from its celebration that the effect of the sacrament of confirmation is a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit as once granted to the apostles on the day of Pentecost. But what do most confirmations and celebrations look like? I mean the grace is there. God shows up, the Holy Spirit shows up, there's nothing lacking in the sacrament but are the young people really encountering the living God the same way the apostles encounter the living God? Are they experiencing the fullness? Do they know that it is Jesus himself that has baptized him in the Holy Spirit that this is a gift given to them? I think most of the young people, they see that this is my graduation ceremony from Catholicism. I'm going to go, I'm going to wear a suit or I'm going to wear a nice dress. I'm going to go through the sacrament, the celebration. Afterwards we might go back to my house and have cake. Grandma is going to give me a card with 50 bucks and my parents are never going to ask me to do much in my faith anymore because I've reached the sacramental limit and after they got confirmed they never did anything and the sad reality is 80% of the young people that are confirmed this year will no longer be practicing their faith out of high school. We are still hemorrhaging our young people at an alarming rate and those who stay 30% of those people who still call themselves Catholic don't believe in the real presence of Jesus Christ in the blessed sacrament. What is needed in our time is for this grace of the sacrament of confirmation to be stirred up and owned by people in such a way that it will actually change them. It says in the next article 1303 it says, Confirmation brings an increase in deepening of baptismal grace. It roots us more deeply in divine affiliation which makes us cry Abba Father. It unites us more firmly to Christ. It increases in us the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It renders our bond with the Church more perfect and it gives us special strength of the Holy Spirit to spread and defend the faith. But how many of your parishioners are walking away from confirmation and stepping into any of that in a real significant way? And once again this is not to beat anybody up. This is just I think this is just a chance for us to step back and say okay what is the answer then God? We don't know. We don't but you do. Let's let go and let's start trusting and God give us a new vision. Give us a new vision of what our churches could be and let this grace of the Holy Spirit that we want to take root across the church start me. Let me be ground zero for the spiritual renewal of my parish. Let me be the lightning rod that you strike first. Let your energy run wild and flow through me in such a way that when I preach, when I share, when I'm witnessing your power is going out through me. The Holy Spirit wants to make a lived reality everything that the church teaches in the lives of those who belong to the church especially the experience of God's personal unconditional never-ending never-changing love. Romans 5 5 says God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us but not if the Holy Spirit's not been activated. The Holy Spirit isn't chained or he's in a box in most people's hearts or he's like when you like I'm sure I'm not the only person in this room who love chocolate milk as a little kid right and you remember going to the remember when Hershey's Serp didn't come in a plastic bottle but it was a can and you had to open it with a can opener and it had a plastic lid you had to pull it off then you'd pour the chocolate syrup into the glass of milk and it would sink right to the bottom and you'd want to get it nice and thick you wanted a nice thick layer on the bottom because you know ideally a 50-50 ratio between milk and chocolate syrup would make the best chocolate syrup you know but this is before we cared about diabetes right we were just having we were just kids but no matter how much chocolate syrup you pour into that glass of milk until you stir it up the milk doesn't change the two coexist peacefully in that glass and one doesn't touch the other and the and the richness and beauty of chocolate syrup never changes the mouth and that's where the Holy Spirit is in most of the hearts of people at our church today he's in there he's in there begging to stir me up release me unleash me in your life do you understand who I am I'm the love of God in this gift is everything your heart craves and desires the light the peace the grace to know who you are and how you're to live to find joy and happiness in this life and in the next st. Louis de Montfort in his wonderful book true devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary wrote men say saint thomas make a vow at their baptism to renounce the devil in all his work saint augustin taught that this is the greatest and most indispensable of all vows yet who has kept this vow who has been truly faithful to the promises of holy baptism have not all christians been unfaithful to the promises made to jesus in their baptism where does this universal disobedience come from except from our forgetfulness of the promises and obligations of holy baptism and from the fact that hardly anyone ratifies for themselves the contract they made with god by those who stood as their sponsors and there it is in a nutshell somebody stood for us on the day of our baptism and said yes to everything and we have never personally ratified that for ourselves and you would say well no we do that at eastern of these different once again we know this these prayers are not magic if people are desirous of what the prayer is you can pray the prayer until you're blue in the face it won't change you faith needs to be stirred up people really need to be invited to look within themselves and say where am i lacking what do i need to listen to the spirit as the spirit wants to enter in even to their brokenness and messiness to stir up the grace of healing in their soul but that's not what most most people have experienced they've never for themselves owned the grace of the baptism and we know that every sacrament has two sides it says in the catechism in 1127 it says celebrated worthy in faith the sacraments confer the grace that they signify as fire transforms into itself everything it touches so the holy spirit transforms into the divine life whatever is subjected to his power so in that celebration of us of the sacrament number one it needs to be celebrated worthily and i'm sure everyone had a worthy celebration of baptism done with the correct right in the name of the father son of the holy spirit but have they subjected their lives to that power the holy spirit it says will transform into divine life whatever is subjected to his power yet how many people have been asked to subject their life to god's power it goes on to say it says in the next article 1128 says the fruits of the sacraments depend on the disposition of the one who receives them there's the opus operantum which is god's part there's an opus operantis which is our part the part we're in a proper state of receptivity namely freedom from mortal sin hearts and minds attuned to god a will desires of god's grace what is the opus operantis it is faith in receptivity you know for me i was 18 years old and when i look at the grace of confirmation and baptism the part that's ours the faith the receptivity true repentance of our sins our total desire to do what god wants us to do and a surrender those were things that were forward to me i'd been on a retreat when i was a junior in preparation for being confirmed on that i realized i did not believe in god and almost backed out of being confirmed but because i didn't want to get into a fight with my parents i went through with it i received the sacrament of confirmation but knew i didn't really believe anything let alone understand it i didn't really reject because i didn't really understand but i know i didn't really heartily believe it when i went on a retreat as a senior in high school it was a net retreat and it was a wonderful retreat and it got me curious about who this god might be because they spoke about the personal love of jesus christ in a way that resonated in my heart for the first time they invited me to come to this discipleship week a week long camp that was going to take place and in this was in 1983 in june right after i graduated from high school and at the time i had been all set to go to college i was going to go to central michigan university i was going to going to make a lot of money find a beautiful woman to marry and and have the american dream but i knew there was something fundamentally wrong in my life that i wanted god get one more shot at fixing before i went there so i went on this retreat and uh right before the retreat started i was there a day early um just because circumstances dictated that i have to be there a day early but i'm there and it's this beautiful lake in northern minnesota on this camp brown is absolutely gorgeous and i'm about to go fishing and one of the guys who's on the team comes up and he says hey john our team's about to pray for the retreat you want to join us and i'm like no like this is what i'm feeling inside like no the lake is there and it's calling me i'm going to go fish you guys go pray but catholic guilt as we know it's a real thing it takes a hold of us at all and so i just said okay i'll go pray with you thinking that we'd probably just you know like say a hail mary and our father and that would be it so i walked with him over to everyone else was and there was somebody there with a guitar and they were standing in a circle and they started singing a worship song like one of the songs john paul would lead for us very heartfelt song talking about the beauty and love of jesus and everyone in the circle who knew the song started singing really loudly and i did not know the song and so if that was the first thing is really awkward like they're just going for it the only manifestation of a spiritual gift that i'd had seen up to that point in my life was at my parish in michigan where everyone knew how to sing without moving their lips it was beautiful you know i mean like they never made a they never hit a wrong note let's put it that way although the canter never had right notes i guess it didn't matter but they were so into the song and singing it very loudly and then as i'm looking around some start putting their hands in the air other people put their hands on in front of them and i'm like oh they got their hand in the air they have a question and they need to go to the bathroom what's going on with that why are their hands in their air because i was sitting there like this with my eyes closed i mean this is the only way i'd seen the priest pray like hey put your head and fold your hands and i was like okay this is weird and i could just feel like every one of my defense is rising up inside of me like this is weird this is weird and then the song ended but the singing and the praise did not they started just from their own voices and in their own words like everyone was just like going for like praise you jesus we love you jesus god bless you we love you thank you jesus so you're awesome you deserve our praise hallelujah hallelujah there was a lot of hallelujahs they were really going hard on the hallelujah and i was like getting very uncomfortable by now my defense had risen this high and i knew once it hit here i was going to slowly back away into the bushes quietly because they were being loud they would never have noticed they were so enthralled with god that i could have just snuck into the bushes grabbed my stuff and hitchhiked home uh it was my plan and then as i'm standing there somebody next to me and i don't know what exactly was going on i think they bought a car and had regret because he started praying like this i should have bought a honda i should have bought a honda i should have bought a honda i should have bought a honda i should have bought a honda and like the the girl who was across from me lost her cat she was like here kitty here kitty here kitty and like this other guy was like saying something like i think he was just like really impressed with himself because he kept going like see my new bowtie see my new bowtie you know like what you're not wearing a bowtie what are you talking about and i mean that was it i was done singing to god fine put in your hands up in the air while you're singing starting to speak in tongues and do that weird stuff i'm out and i was just about to like say okay god i'm out when i open my eyes just for half a second right across the circle from me was a girl praying and she was a good-looking girl and that might have had something to do with it but more importantly than the beauty of her face was the beauty of what was reflected in her face for she just simply had her hands open in front of her like this going jesus i love you thank you for your love jesus i love you thank you for loving me and she said those words jesus i love you over and over again and and and she was somewhere i wanted to be and i realized at that point at age 18 i had never said jesus i love you and meant it in my life but i wanted to be able to know what she knew and and to experience what she experienced so i i just said okay god whatever you have for me i'm open just lead me and it wasn't until though i went to the sacrament of reconciliation on the third night of their treat because those next three days were me like trying to enter in like take a step forward and maybe you feel this some way some time when you're taking those steps with god like yeah i'm moving forward and all of a sudden satan who has that hook in you that familiar sin that lie you tell about yourself about you know about who you are the way you feel you're not worthy of god so even sometimes sabotage your own relationship with god because you just don't feel like you're worthy to be loved that deeply well satan had a lot of hooks in me and every time i felt like i was going to take a step with god on that retreat i could feel him yanking on my soul i was in this place of of tension and battle and when i went into the the sacrament of reconciliation and knelt down the priest was very pastoral and kind and i looked at him for a few minutes he looked at me and i just said i've only done this once in my life and it was when i was a little kid and it was in the old school going to the dark claw that pushed the thing and you know you got to talk through the screen and when i was a little kid the biggest movie in my life that influenced me in junior high was star wars and i swear when that thing went the person behind that screen was Darth Vader yes my child tell me your sins you know and and i was like i remember as a little kid thinking oh my gosh he's gonna force choke me through this and and i and i said something stupid like i i stole my sister barbie doll and i stole cookies from my mom and i punched my little brother and i'm out of here and that was it and i had spent the next you know 16 or 18 that was probably like five or six years old like the next 12 years running from god and running into a world of sin but the priest said well what do you want i said well i just feel like i want to love god but i'm just like i don't know how i'm just stuck and i like how did you you know what what are you stuck in and so i just started talking about my life i talked about when i was in junior high and i saw my grandfather killed in a car accident and how that one event caused my grandmother to become an alcoholic and my mother to abuse uh you know uh what do they call them anxiety pills whatever like shoes shoes on and it caused my dad to have to work three jobs and take care of his alcoholic mom to the point where i never saw my dad in high school for like three years and just how during that time i became angry and bitter and resentful you know my my my name my main way of uh defending my woundedness was through negative humor i never let anyone get close to me i had friends that we had things in common but we didn't know each other we were like in clubs but not like someone i could really talk about who i was and what i was going with with anybody i felt so alone at the same time i was working overtime to earn my parents love to earn to to hear that that i'm a good person so i was getting you know i was on the honor roll i was starting on the football team i was doing all the things i thought i had to do to get people to love me and it was during football season i was very good at football like all everyone was like yeah john we like well i'd go for it yeah and then after football season was like i had no friends and i felt like does anybody really know me and or love me and because of that you know started drinking and smoking weed you know there wasn't a lot of pornography in my life at that time but the stuff i found it was you know i got that that was another hook in my flesh pulling me away from god and i started explaining all this to the priest and as i'm explaining i start crying i'm like all this sorrow and all this pain that's been bottled up inside of me comes out of me and i can't control it and i'm bent over in the chair and he goes he leans forward to put his arm on me and in his stole swings out and it hits me in the face i think it's a handkerchief so i grabbed it and blew my nose on it when i opened up my eyes and the tears washed away i looked down and seen what i just did i was like mortified and he just laughed he thought it was the most hilarious thing and i i've never i don't know if i had to confess it i didn't but he had a good laugh so i figured it was cool with god um i've never hawked a luge on a priest stole after that it was once a one time thing but after i got done and we kind of i kind of caught my breath and had you know i had poured it all out he said well what do you want i said i just want to know the love of god i want to be forgiven he says okay so he extended his hands over me and prayed the prayer of absolution and in that moment it's like every medical drama you've ever seen where the body is limp on the table and they put the paddles on him and cleared and all of a sudden beep beep beep and they we've got him he's back you know like i felt like i was brought to life spiritual life in that moment i was dead in my sin and god brought me back to life and in that same moment the holy spirit rushed into my soul and imprinted an image of god's love that i can't describe i can't describe it to you i i can't put it into words but it's like a snapshot of god's personal love for me and when i go to pray sometimes god allows me to pull it out and look at it once again and remember what that moment that encounter was all about i walked out of that of the uh of the confessional a new person i walked out of the chapel out to the lake sat down on the dock this beautiful starry night night north northern minnesota and i completely surrendered my life to god i said you're you're in charge now you take it all you show me your love and in that prayer i could feel the holy spirit just fall upon me fall upon me like just giving me this joy this peace like all the things that had been so foreign and distant we're like mine and god's love was there and then the next day i you know the guy who founded net ministries comes up to me and he says uh i was praying last night i think god wants you to serve as a missionary with net in the fall and i'm like i don't think so i just came to know the love of jesus last night there's no way that god's gonna call me with all of my brokenness to do something that crazy that radical but he said no i'm pretty sure you just need to say yes and i did in that moment god changed everything you know a couple months later i was in st paul minnesota i was being prayed over to receive more of the holy spirit the gifts of the holy spirit all these great things that god would use in my life for for the last 40 years started in that moment with a complete surrender to the person of the holy spirit i'd made the grace of my confirmation and baptism my own in that moment it was released and if you've never experienced that i'm willing that's what we're gonna do now we're just gonna pray for that and we're just gonna continue to pray for it and just ask god to pour it out into bundas because i believe it is for all of us for now because we need this grace