The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - Activated Disciple Series Part 5: Prayer and Study

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

If Jesus asked you to follow him today, would tomorrow be any different than yesterday? Jeff discusses some the disciplines of a disciple and reveals their importance in the life of a follower of Christ. Snippet from the Show If you want to know what Jesus prayed about, look at what he did. Email us with comments or questions at [e-mail]. Text “jeffcavins” to 33-777 to subscribe and get Jeff’s shownotes delivered straight to your email! Or visit ascensionpress.com/thejeffcavinsshow for full shownotes!

Welcome to the Jeff Kaven Show, where we talk about the Bible, discipleship, and evangelization, putting it all together in living as activated disciples. This is episode 264, the Activated Disciple Retreat, Prayer, and Study. And I'm so glad you're joining me again this week, as we are in the middle of our activated disciple Lenton Retreat, where we are going through my book, the activated disciple, and really pointing out some of the major points that are necessary to become that disciple of the Lord, to have that life that you have been dreaming of when it comes to walking with Jesus. And I know what that's like. You know, I've been teaching and studying for over 40 years now, and I still want more. I still want to go deeper into God's word. I still want to have a better prayer life. And I want to have that relationship with Jesus

that my heart really, really craves. And I'm on my way. I am. And I hope to fully, fully experience him in heaven. And I know you do too. You wouldn't be listening to this kind of stuff if you didn't have a heart that was interested, you know, in the Lord. And so welcome, welcome. We're going to be talking today about some of the disciplines of a disciple, some of the daily things that will fill the schedule of a disciple. And you have to determine how you're going to do it and when you're going to do it, but you really need to do these disciplines. We're going to focus primarily on prayer and study, and there's different aspects of all of that that are really important. Hey, before I get into that, I want you to know that you can get the show notes. Every single show that I put out has a lot

of notes and I give scriptures and catechism references and sometimes quotes from the saints and rather than pulling over at the side of the road and writing it down and rather than stop in the midst of your jogging and write it down I'm going to put it all together for you and all you got to do is is text my name Jeff Kavens to this number 3377 it's that easy 33777. All right. One thing before we get in here, I want to let you know that this coming June, you can go to the Holy Land with Emily and myself. We have some seats that are open right now for our pilgrimage to the Holy Land in June. It's not too late. You've got a passport. You're good to go. And you can find out that information on my website, jeffcavens.com. We also have in the fall in October

a pilgrimage called Walking in the Footsteps of Paul. And we're going to go to Turkey and Greece. It's actually a cruise. And it's a cruise, but we also get off on the land, you know. And like in Ephesus, it's going to be so cool, so fun to follow the footsteps of St. Paul. And I'd love to do it with you. And if you can do it, we'd love to have you. So that is Israel in June and Turkey and Greece in October.

All the information is there. at jeffcavens.com and just go up to the top under pilgrimages and you'll get the information, but we'll put a link in the show notes for you. All right, so what is your life going to look like now? Now that you have said yes to Jesus, in the prior episodes, we talked about fan or follower, we talked about imitation being the really the basis or the foundation of discipleship, imitating God. We talked about who's choosing whom, that is, how do you actually become a disciple. And we saw that it really comes down to him choosing you because he knows you can become like him, but he knows you can't become like him without being with him. And so we last week

talked about going all in, which is the whole process of conversion in the church today. And today we're going to look at some of the disciplines of a disciple. But what will your life look like now that you have said yes. And here's a question that I love to ask, I love to ask people, and that is this, if Jesus asked you today to follow him, if he asked you to follow him today, said, come follow me, then would tomorrow be any different than yesterday? I'll say that again. And if he asked you to follow him today and you said, yes, would tomorrow be any different than yesterday? Well, I guess so. I mean, most of us would say, uh, duh, yeah.

Well, then how? How? I mean, this is, this is really serious stuff. How is your life going to look different tomorrow than it did yesterday? If you're saying yes, today. There are some disciplines that we want to take a look at. And before we look at those. disciplines of prayer and Bible study. I want to talk briefly about a principle in the kingdom of

God and a principle in becoming more like Jesus, which, for the lack of a better phrase, I would call it isolate and perfect. Isolate and perfect. So many times people will write me and they'll say, well, I really feel the Lord's calling me to do this or that and it just seems so big. I don't know where to begin. I don't know how to start. And when it comes to a becoming like Jesus, yeah, if you just look at the big picture, that's a lot, you know, where do I begin? Do I begin reading? What do I begin doing?

What church, you know, masses, do I go to all of that, you know? Do I need a spiritual director? It goes on and on. But one of the principles that's very, very important, is to isolate and perfect the disciplines of the life of a disciple. People don't generally do everything well from the beginning. They don't. They really don't.

But what they do is they isolate and perfect through repetition. And that is how you develop virtue in your life. It is isolating and perfecting different disciplines of the Christian life through repetition and then blend the disciplines together to create emotion that seems to come almost effortlessly. this power of isolating and spiritual disciplines was so well demonstrated in that movie. Do you remember that movie, The Karate Kid? Maybe you saw that. It's really the story of this young guy that he has got a great teacher and he's going to learn about karate.

And he has a problem with guys that are bigger than him beating him up. And the teacher is getting him, this young kid, to isolate different disciplines. Remember that? He talked about the window, wipe on, wipe off, wipe on, wipe off, wipe on, wipe off, over and over and over, just focusing on that discipline. And who could forget painting the fence with his hand from down and up. like painting and down and up painting over and over. And so he took these disciplines,

isolated them and perfected them. I still remember that scene where he says, always look eye. Remember? Always look eye. And so when the kid finally got out there and he hurt his leg and this big, monstrous guy was just going to whoop him, well, he went back to his basic disciplines.

and, ha-ha, he won. But it was through isolating and perfecting the various disciplines. So the first one I like to talk about is prayer. And right away, when you ask someone, how is your prayer life? The typical answer that you're going to get is, it could be better. And I've always said throughout the years, well then, make it better. Make it better. Do it and do it regularly.

prayer when we say to people you just simply need to pray they they kind of lock up because well what do i do what do i say is there a book i should have is there some magical words that i need to say or what do what do i do you got to remember that the disciples relationship with the lord is not some kind of cardboard formula out of a book the relationship that you have with the lord is just that it is a real relationship It isn't practicing religion in the sense of, I'm just going to memorize this or that. No, it is a real relationship. If you're married, it's just like a relationship in marriage. It's like a relationship with a best friend.

It's like a relationship with a king, you know. And prayer is a conversation with God. It really is. And sometimes I think we make it so difficult, but it really is a conversation with God. The Catechism says, and I'll put it in the notes for you, in paragraph 2602, Catechism tells us what the relationship was between Jesus' time of prayer and his public life. Listen to this. This is gold. This is the kind of stuff that goes in the inside journal. The Catechism says that, speaking of Jesus, his words and works are the visible manifestation of his prayer in secret.

So you see, Jesus didn't just carry a devotional book in with him in prayer every time. Not that there's anything wrong with devotional books. Don't get me wrong there. Don't write me up on that. But what I am saying is that Jesus, when he met with the Father, he spoke to the Father. He listened to the Father. And we do that through scripture and prayer and maybe even a devotional here and there that God might speak to us. but his words and his works after prayer throughout the day were actually the visible manifestation

of his time with his father. So if you want to know what Jesus prayed about, then look at what he did. There you go. And in your life as well and in mind, there should be a relationship between the time that we spend with God and prayer and what our day looks like after that. So I want to give you some suggestions on how to have a fruit. relationship with Jesus where you can hear him. You heard me right. You can hear him. You might not hear a lot of people say that, but I truly believe, and I know the church teaches that we can

indeed hear the voice of God. So if you're going to have a relationship with Jesus, you must believe that he can speak to you and that you can speak to him. Now there's a battle that takes place out there. And you have to remember this when you pray. Jesus told the granddaddy of all the parables in the parable of the sower and the seed. And he tells the parable. And the parable is about sowing the word of God into our lives. And then he talks about how that word can take root in our heart and how it's stolen, how it is stolen. But the things that you're going to experience as a disciple that you would put under hardships or persecution or your eyes are taken off of Jesus because of the need for riches or the worries out there, you know, or or you, or you just plain

hear something about Jesus and you walk away from that. You just don't even give it time to take root. You've got to remember that that word that he wants to give you as a disciple on a daily basis needs good soil. And I remember when I was in high school, I was a, I was a, I was a running back. I was a fairly fast runner. And so as a running back, I got the ball about two-thirds of the time running up, you know, trap or round-in, power sweep, all times, all kinds of plays that I ran. Well, what would my attitude be like if I brought the football up to my coach and said, coach, I've had it. Every single time I get this ball, every time I get this ball, the other team hates me. They don't go after anybody else on our team. They're always going after.

me, what's up? Well, the coach would say to me, Jeff, it's not you. It's the ball. The ball is what they want. You happen to be carrying it. And in the same way, when it comes to persecution and our minds being taken off track, it's the ball. It's the word of God that you have. And so if you're going to have a powerful prayer life and a fruitful prayer life, there are some things that you have to do as disciplines because the enemy would love to take you away from prayer. Trust me, he would love to take you away from prayer. Oh, you want to be a disciple? Yay, you do that.

Prayer? Not so much. That's the enemy's view. Not so much. I'll let you walk around saying you're a disciple, but I don't want you praying. I don't. So one of the things that you need to do is, and it seems very elementary, but if you are like myself and many of the people that I've taught over the years, you don't.

do this you might because you might waver from it and that is this pick a time that's right pick a time when you can pray you say well i'm just going to do it whenever well whenever doesn't usually work does it you pick a time for for my wife and myself we pray every morning first thing after we get up where we spend some healthy time together in the word of god in prayer every single morning now we do this a lot because we've done it a lot i'm not saying you have to do exactly what we do, but we spend at least an hour together every morning praying. And you can spend 10 minutes praying to start, just all by yourself if you want. Maybe you're not ready to pray with someone else. I get it. But you can spend 10 minutes, 15 minutes with the Lord in prayer. Now, this whole

idea of I'll pray whenever doesn't work. Things that are really, really important usually have a time pinned on them. Can you imagine calling up St. James Parish or St. Mary's Parish or a Macon at Conception Parish and calling them up and saying, you know, I'm looking for your mass times. And they say, well, that's in the bulletin. So I get the bulletin, and I look at the bulletin, and it says, Sunday morning mass times. And underneath it, it says, whenever. I look at it, go, say what? Whenever.

And so I called the church back up, and I said, your bulletin doesn't have the times in it. They say, oh, yes, it does. No, it doesn't. It says whenever. What does that mean? And they say, well, it means whenever. well i need to know when to come to the church for mass on sunday and the secretary says i told you whenever well see you're not going to have a lot of fruitfulness if you just say you're going to

have mass whenever you got a one hour in 24 shot you know one in 24 of getting it right and if you're going to do that in your own private life your prayer life with the lord most likely it's going to fall apart I just know from experience. I really, I know that. So I really recommend that you pray in the morning. Why? You're the freshest and it will impact the rest of your day. And what you receive from the Lord in prayer, whether it's just straight prayer and listening or whether you are using scripture, which I'll get to in a moment, you're going to have something to go with that day, something to feed you and correct you and encourage you. And so also, I believe that the first thing in the morning is the best time because you're the freshest, but you're giving the Lord

the first fruits. And you can always be flexible at the beginning of the day. You might not be able to be flexible at lunch. That might get crowded out due to meetings, you know what I mean, and Zoom calls. But you have flexibility at the beginning of the day. And someone might say, well, Jeff, you know, I'm not a morning person. Okay, let's just stop that. Okay, seriously. Let's just stop it. No more of that. That is so lame. Seriously, can you imagine Jesus showing up in your town and speaking at your church in the flesh, robes, everything? And he's got a line after he speaks where he's signing all 73 books in the Bible. And he's introducing himself to every person. You get like a minute to be with him. And you get up to the front of the line and there he is. Wow, it's the Lord. I can't believe

this is a crazy. Oh, I can't believe it. And he says, he says, hey, it's good to see you. I'd like to meet with you in the morning. Now, seriously, would you look him in the eye and say, well, Jesus, I'm not a morning person. I didn't think so. I knew you wouldn't. I knew you wouldn't because the Lord would have looked right back at you if you said that. And he was said, now you are. Because I want to meet with you. pick a time and then pick a place. I think it's a good idea to try to pick the same place every day where that place is associated with your relationship with the Lord. And it gives you the opportunity to perhaps set up a Bible,

maybe a candle, maybe an icon. It's a place that's a little bit different. It doesn't mean you have to keep all that stuff there if it's on the back porch or whatever, but find a place. All right, that's important. So when it comes to meeting with the Lord, you need a time, you need a place, and don't chew, you know, take off more than you can chew.

That's the old phrase, isn't it? Don't bite off more than you can chew. Don't make it too difficult. Just start to meet with the Lord every day. See, Lord, I'm going to meet with you every single day because that, my friend, is what a disciple does. We're going to take a break here. When I come back, I'm going to get into the Bible part of this. and we're going to see that there is a way actually to blend the Bible with prayer on a daily basis that will ensure, ensure that you can hear God every single day of your life. You're listening to the Jeff Kaven show. What if you could see that the infinite God is present in your life? What if it was as simple as stopping, opening your heart, and allowing yourself to be found?

I'm Danielle Bean, an author, speaker, and host of the Girlfriend's Podcast. In my new book, Whisper, Finding God in the Every Day, I share wisdom from the saints, real-life experiences, and prayer practices that help you to see, know, and grow closer to God in your everyday life, no matter how busy you are. If you've ever been inspired by stories of great saints but wondered where that leaves the rest of us, this book is for you. In it, we explore how we meet God in joy, pain, other people, prayer,

and in the awesome gift of the sacraments. Join me on this journey of letting go, being still, and allowing God to meet us right here, right now, right where we are. Order your copy of Whisper, Finding God in the Every Day, at ascensionpress.com. Appreciate you coming back, talking about prayer and study, the disciplines of a disciple. We were taking a look at prayer, which is so important to have a time and a place. And now we want to turn our attention to the Word of God. I have my Bible right here. Actually, on my desk, I have six of different Bibles.

And I've got my Bible here. And first I want to say is before we get into this about the Bible and then incorporating the Bible into prayer, you and I are very blessed. You know that? We're very, very blessed because we're one of the generations in world history. that actually has the opportunity to own our own personal copy of the Bible. That's amazing. That is really amazing.

You know that for many, many hundreds of years, nobody owned a personal Bible. They had to go to church and hear one unusual Bible read, and the Jews had a big scroll that they would bring out and read. You get to have a Bible in front of you. Maybe you have one in your office. Maybe you have a New Testament in the car. Maybe down in the family room there's a couple of Bibles. Maybe there's a family Bible.

Wow, we're blessed. God wants to meet with you. Vatican II said that in the Bible, our father meets with his children. That's what this is about. We're not going to make it too difficult. So pick a Bible. Naturally, I would encourage you to get a great adventure Bible because not only is it the Bible, but it actually teaches you how to read the Bible.

as a narrative in chronological order. That's the Bible that Father Mike Schmitz and I use and Bible in a year. So you can get that at ascensionpress.com. But get a Bible that you can live in. That means you can underline and take some notes in. And if you want to, you can get a notebook. Father Mike and I develop the Insight Journal that accompanies your Bible, gives you some more room in the margin, so to speak,

to write down some things that the Lord is saying to you. So you want the Bible. you want a notebook and you want a pen. A pen. Doesn't matter. A pen. And then you want to pick out every single day some portion of scripture. What do Emily and I do? Well, we read the gospel reading every day. Actually, we read both readings from the liturgy every single day, but we focus on the gospel and do Lexio Divina, which I'll get to here. We do Lexio Divina and take note of what God is saying to us today. day. And wow. Wow. Oh, almost every day. Almost every day, something comes up where I think about what I read that morning. I say, thank you, God. Thank you for instructing me. Or I get something in the morning that I can share with somebody else. Maybe my daughters or a friend or somebody on the phone. Just yesterday, I got a call from a friend who put me online with a teacher. a teacher clear across the world who was really struggling, and I was able to get on the phone

and just encourage that teacher with what I was studying in the morning. No kidding. That's exactly how it happened. It was beautiful. So you, at this point, want to get the Bible, you want a pen, you want a notebook, choose what you're going to read. As I said, we do the gospel of the day, and now we're going to do it. Now we're going to meet with God.

and this is what disciples do. This is what the early apostles did. They met with Jesus frequently. Frequently. But you got to answer a couple of questions before we go further. One, do you believe that God can speak to you? Yes or no. Do you believe that God can speak to you?

I do. Number two, do you believe that you can hear him? Yes. do. And the reason is, is because that's what scripture teaches, that's what the church teaches, is that you're created in such a way that you can hear God speak to you, and you can speak to God. So yes to yes and yes. I'm both of those. And if you answer no to either one of those, then you have to adjust your perspective. So how do we hear God when we are beginning to do Lexio-Devina and reading scripture? Now, this is very important because if you set the bar too

high. You're not going to hear them. What do I mean by set the bar too high? What I mean is, is that God has to speak to you in an audible voice. It's probably not going to happen. Or God has to speak to you in a dramatic fashion, like a airplane going over your city with a trailer that says, Jeff, I want to speak to you. That's not probably going to happen, right? So how's he going to speak to you? Well, I would submit to you that when you hear this in the Bible that God spoke to someone like David or some of the apostles in the New Testament or they were called by prayer to go to Macedonia. I really believe that it was a thought. When they were praying, they began to think about this. Now, it doesn't mean that every time you think of something, it's God, but once you

come to know the heart of God and you know his word, you come to know the types of things that he might say to you. And if it's just sort of out of the blue, you have to ask yourself, wow, God, are you speaking to me? And the only way you're going to know is to get out of the boat and do it, you know, get out of the boat, walk on water. Or what I like to say is talk on water. Talk on water. Go out there and be a witness. Now, Lexio de Vina is a real gift to the church. And Pope Benedict, the 16th, said that Lexio de Vina, which I'm going to explain it to you here very briefly, he said, it is the key to the new springtime. So I would ask you, could you use a new springtime in your life?

I guess so. I could. A new springtime. It's a good time of the year, too, Lent. You need a new springtime in your life? Well, he said, and this is powerful, when you get a pope saying, this is the key, you got to listen.

And he said, this Lexio de Vina is the key to the new springtime. Okay, so what is lexio de vina? Devena. Well, Lexio Divina is a four-part practice of encountering Jesus in the Word through prayer, ending in you hearing or receiving something from God for your day. And isn't that what you want as a disciple? Of course. So the number one, you want to pick your scripture, the gospel, for example, and you want to do the first step out of the four, which is called Lexio. Lexio means reading. Lexio divina means divine reading. So the first thing you want to do is read that gospel or read whatever it is in the Bible you want to.

You read it once slowly, and I like to do it out loud. And with my pen in hand, I am listening right now. I'm listening. I'm not trying to interpret or anything. I'm listening to what is popping out at me, what stands out, and I write that down. And I usually read that text twice. So this only takes a few minutes. to do this, but you're listening for what? Not why or anything else, but what? And you write that

down. That might be what God wants to get across to you today, that portion of it. So then you enter into step number two, meditazio, which is, you guessed it, meditation. And here's where you mentally enter into that word. If that word is the last supper, you're there. You find yourself in that text. And you walk around. The Lord is in there. And you begin to see your life in that text. And then number three is Oratio. This is prayer. Prayer. And not funny. The third step is actually prayer. Oratio is when you begin to talk to God about this. Well, why did you, why when I read Psalm 23, why did you, why did I feel like you were telling me that you wanted to lead me in paths of righteousness? and you begin to talk to the Lord.

Maybe the Lord will begin to share with you that you're worn out, you're tired, you're spent, you're burnt. You need to let me lead you in the paths of righteousness. You might ask about what that means in your life, and maybe the Lord will show you that. It's a beautiful thing. And then finally, contemplation, you just enjoy the presence of the Lord. Enjoy the presence of the Lord in your time together.

Now, these four steps are very, very fruitful, but you have to do it for a while before you begin to get comfortable with it. And once you do that, you're going to have an opportunity every day for God to speak to you. And if you have that notebook, you're going to go through page after page after page of what God was saying to you on each day. It's very fruitful. Now, I know this isn't super duper deep at this point, but it's a beginning. If you want to have the life of a disciple, this is the beginning for you. And so prayer, having that place, that time, Bible study, and Lexio Divina, praying scripture, you got a Bible, you got a notebook and a pen.

You blend all this together at the beginning of the day. My friend, you are not going to be disappointed. You really are not going to be disappointed. If you'd like to get my book, The Activated Disciple, I'll put that in the show notes as well. and I pray for you, my friend, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. God, may you bless my beautiful friends and bring them, Lord, to a new place in their relationship with you. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. God bless you. Thank you.