The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - Activated Disciple Series Part 8: The 40 Day Journal Challenge

Episode Date: April 22, 2022

As the Activated Disciple series comes to a close, Jeff recaps our journey over the last couple of weeks and offers us some next steps in our personal discipleship with the Lord. Snippet from the Show Imitation is the foundation of discipleship. 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 Kavens show, where we talk about the Bible, discipleship, and evangelization, putting it all together and living as activated disciples. This is episode 267, the activated disciple retreat, the 40-day challenge. And here we are, post-resurrection. I hope you had a wonderful Easter. I'm Jeff Kavans, and it's always good to get together with you on a weekly basis to talk about everything discipleship, everything Bible, and what it means to walk with Jesus on a daily basis. And I've got to tell you, this last week was very, very exciting. And I had the opportunity to sponsor a young man coming into the church. I'll talk about that in just a little bit.

Have you ever sponsored somebody to come into the Catholic Church? That's something to think about. and a little bit later on in the show today, I'm going to talk about how you might be able to do that next year. If we're going to grow as a church, people like you and me, we have to start sponsoring people and bring them in into the church. We are concluding our activated disciple Lenton retreat. Today is kind of a reflection,

and we're going to do a little bit of discussing the activated disciple journal. It's a 40-day challenge. that I'm going to invite you to be a part of. And if you bought the bundle for this entire retreat, you've got the information, and I'm going to explain it. If not, you can still buy the activated disciple book and the activated disciple 40-day challenge journal. Because you can actually do it any time.

We just thought that Lent would be a beautiful time to actually go through and figure out how can we become activated disciples. All right, you know, if you don't get the show notes, I wanted to make mention of that. All you got to do is type my name, Jeff Kaven's one word, and type, text it to the number 3377. You'll be on the list, hopefully in perpetuity. And for some reason, you got knocked off the list, which I actually had a couple of people write me and say, hey, I stopped getting the weekly message of your notes. I apologize for that. I'm not sure what happened, but if you sign up again, you'll be on there.

And if we had any technical difficulties, we've got that worked out. Okay, so today I would like to talk to you about going on a challenge, a 40-day challenge, to act like a disciple in your life based on some of the things that we have been talking about over the last six weeks or so. And then I would like to talk to you about this next year and how you're going to grow the kingdom of God and how you can become a sponsor for some person that right now might not even know that they're going to be brought into the Catholic Church the next year, but you are going to be the key for that. You know, this last six weeks has been a joy for me to be able to talk to you about some of the basics of being a disciple of the Lord and what it means. And what's the difference between being what I would call an activated disciple and a cultural Catholic.

Of course, you probably know some of those differences right away that a cultural Catholic oftentimes doesn't know what they are doing, you know, in terms of the mass and what it's about, the papacy, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the concept of the Word of God. Our life in the Word of God and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, oftentimes people are oblivious to all of these major tools that we have. And that's unfortunate, because these are the tools that will actually activate you, and you can become that disciple that is fruitful in the kingdom of God. And plus, you get closer to the Lord.

It's more of an intimate relationship with the Lord. And it's also something that your being a disciple is something that you can model to the next generation. And there's nothing like making disciples in walking with Jesus. It's just absolutely wonderful. wonderful. Well, we've been talking about whether you are a fan or a follower in the first episode, there's a big difference between being a fan of Jesus and showing up at the conference and listening to his CDs and following them on Facebook. There's a big difference between that and actually following Jesus on a daily basis. I don't think that there's that many people who

just really want to be a fan. I think deep inside, even the fans want to be followers. It's just like the fans in the football stadium wish they could get on the field and do that, whatever sport it might be. But there's a big difference between being a fan or a follower. We also took a look at the basis of discipleship, which was imitation. And we looked back into Leviticus of all books and found that God called Israel out of bondage and said, I want you to be holy as I am holy. And I want you to discern between the clean and the unclean, and I want you to obey my word, not the words and the laws of the nation you came from or the nation you are going into Canaan. That's Egypt and Canaan, but obey my word. And so imitation is the foundation. And we find that Israel is called

to imitate God. And so God is going to live in their midst so that they can imitate them. And then in the New Testament, God becomes one of us. Jesus becomes a man. And he is one person, two natures, human and divine, but he fulfills all righteousness and shows you and me how to actually obey the Father. How to live this life. That's what Jesus was doing. And he chose disciples.

He chose disciples because he wanted to, replicate. He wanted to share the good news. He wanted to share his kingdom, his life with us. And so he started off by choosing 12 disciples, and he gave him that formulaic invitation that I spoke about, Lech Achray, come follow me, come after me. And he was going to make him fissures of men. And so for three years, they followed him daily every hour. I don't read anything about vacations going on in that three-year period. They made up their mind that they were going to say yes to the invitation and they were going to follow Jesus every moment of every day. And that means that they would get to know how he thinks, how he treats people, what is his philosophy, his worldview, what power

is accessible to us and as far as living the life that he's called us to, what is he expect of us as disciples? You see, this is what Christianity is all about. it's it's not just going to church on Sunday that is such a small part of what we are called to do throughout the entire week it's a big part don't get me wrong it in fact it's the most important and that's the Eucharist and the mass but he's called you to live the life throughout the entire day and that's why he had disciples with him the entire day if he wanted them just to follow on Sunday he would have said meet with me on Sunday and I'll show you how to get to church but if he wanted them to meet, to be with him all the time,

then they had to be with them all the time. And that's what we're called to today. No part-time disciples. Well, there are, but it's not that great. It's not that effective. And so we learned about who's choosing whom. And then we talked about this idea of going all in, making the decision that we are going to go all in with Jesus.

And we took a look at how do people become disciples, become disciples of the Lord today. And that happens in the R-C-I-A experience. That is the Roman Catholic initiation of adults. And they have the opportunity to come into the church the proper way. It's a very serious relationship with the Lord. It's not the kind of thing where you just take Jesus to Vegas. You know, you are entering into a covenant relationship in the context of the body of Christ,

in the context of history. This is a big deal. And so we discovered that when people want to make a decision that, yes, somebody has witnessed to them, maybe you shared the corigma with them. Maybe you shared the word of God or your story with someone. And they said, I want that in my own life. How do I get it? Well, you get it by coming into the church.

And the church will lead you and guide you into that culmination of the relationship on the the Easter trituum, the three days before Easter Sunday. You have Thursday and Good Friday and you have the Easter vigil. And that's when people come into the church in a very formal and very beautiful and serious way. And so we took a look at that, didn't we? And I'm going to get back to that in just a few minutes because that's part of what I want to talk to you about going forward year. If we want to grow next year at Easter and bring more people to Jesus, you've got to start thinking about it now. You really, really, really do. So we looked at that idea of going all in, and then we focused on prayer and study, got into some of the nitty-gritty on studying scripture

and Lexio Divina and your prayer life. And one of my favorites was episode six of this retreat where I was talking about a cup of charygma, a cup of charygma, good news, and how do you share the good news with people? What is, what is the gospel? You know, what are the main points of the gospel? And it was that God loves you and has an amazing plan for your life, number one. Number two, that sin has messed up this plan. That's, that's truth. That's number two. Number three, the good news is that Jesus died for your sin. Number four, he wants you to respond. He wants you to respond by radically reorienting your life to him, the whole thing.

And we call that repentance. And then he wants you to be baptized and receive the Holy Spirit. That's the sacrament of baptism. That's the sacrament of confirmation. Your sins are dealt with. You're empowered by the Holy Spirit to live this life. and he wants you to come into the fullness of the church and the sacraments and receive the Eucharist on the Easter Vigil.

That's the third of the three sacraments of initiation. And then finally, he wants you to grow and be a part of the kingdom of God and be a part of the church. And then you start in time, you start bringing people to Jesus. My friend, that's the call on our life. I was going to say, I wish it was easier, but I don't. don't wish it was easier. I wish it to be just as it is. This is the model that Jesus has given us, and we either do it or don't do it. And so maybe in a year from now, I'm going to ask that question, did you do anything about this? Did you bring anybody with you into the kingdom of God?

Ah, what a day that will be, won't it? When we get to heaven, please God, and we get to heaven and we look around and find all the people that we brought to Jesus. What a day. What would it be like to be in heaven and to realize that a lot of other people brought people with them, but you're kind of standing alone there, right? Well, you can avoid that. I'm not guilting you. We've got enough of that. But I'm just encouraging you.

Bring people with you. Bring people with you. Now, we also looked at this idea of building a life or constructing a life. The shape of your day reflects the love of your life. and we talked about being covered in the dust of the rabbi. Now, going forward now, going forward, we're going to challenge you to a 40-day challenge. You could have done this during the 40 days of Lent,

but a lot of people didn't. They just wanted to kind of soak in the teachings of this retreat and grow in that, knowing that there is actually a book called the Activated Disciple 40-day Challenge Journal. I'm holding it in my hands right now, and this journal accompanies the book that I wrote called The Activated Disciple, bringing your faith to the next level, a new level. And this journal is really for the purpose of accompanying you during a 40-day period of time.

And I'm going to explain how it's put together here, because you can actually do this any time. If you don't have it, you can order it now, and you can go through it. I mean, do it. Everyone's doing it. Everyone wants to live this activated disciple. We're in a period of time right now in the church that has a specific name, and it's the 40 days after the resurrection of Jesus. Maybe you haven't heard this before, but it's called the period of mystogogy, the period

of mystogogy. And we have this period of time that if you listen to Sunday's readings, you might kind of, you know, look a little like, hey, what's going on? We don't have Old Testament readings. This is different, and it is different because the 40 days after Jesus' resurrection, the scriptures tell us that Jesus continued to teach until the ascension, until he ascended to the Father. And that's a 40-day period. And in that 40-day period, he taught on the kingdom of God. That was the theme during the 40-day period. So if you just came into the church at the Easter vigil or you sponsored someone or you witnessed it at the Easter vigil, then you know that that person is being targeted. The neophyte

is being targeted with these particular readings for the 40 days, on the Sunday readings, and they are really meant for the new beginner. And if you're not a new beginner, then kind of consider it remedial learning. Listen to the readings for the 40 days after the resurrection in terms of it's getting you going. It's Jesus teaching you now that he's risen from the dead. What is he going to say to you? How is he going to challenge you? How is he going to equip you? I'll tell you what, I lived enough growing up in the Catholic Church to know I wasn't paying attention here. And I know enough to know that there's a lot of adults that aren't paying attention here and don't realize there's a 40-day mystogogy period

where God is teaching you. And it's like the milk. It's the things you need to know. And so tell that to someone so that when they hear the readings, they have some sense of what is going on here. That's really, really important. Okay, so for this 40-day challenge, this book that I'm holding, the journal,

is designed to take you on a 40-day challenge, and the journal has every single day, and every single day, you are going to read a portion of scripture that has been selected. You're going to do Lexio-Devina with it. You're going to read it. You're going to meditate on it. You're going to pray about it. You're going to contemplate it. You're going to imitate that particular verse. And every five days, we are encountering a new virtue during the 40-day challenge and the virtues that you're going to encounter during this 40 day challenge are love so there's going to be five days where every single day I'm going to focus on love and during that time period if you signed up and got the whole bundle and you still can at ascensionpress.com I have prepared

two videos for you that you can watch during that five day period two videos about love and they're each Well, five minutes long. So it's not a big commitment, but it is a helpful commitment because I put a lot of thought into it. And some really great, great technical crew help on this. It was really did a great job. And so for five days, you're going to focus on love. And then for five days, you're going to focus on forgiveness. These are all important things in the life of a disciple. Then you're going to focus on humility. Oh, that's so important in the disciple's life. Then you're going to focus on patience, then selflessness, then kindness, then attentiveness, and then contrition. So those are the eight, love, forgiveness, humility, patience, selflessness, kindness, attentiveness, and contrition. And for every single one of those topics, you're going to have a scripture every day to read and do meditation on in Lexio-Devina. and you're going to ask God, what are you saying to me? What can I take into my life as an activated disciple today? What can I take into my life that will help me grow in character, in virtue?

And then I have two videos for every period that are available to you as well. See, all of this is kind of thought out. And what you're going to do when you get the challenge, and you can do this if you've got the book already, is I want you to first of all describe how these are questions that are out. asked in the pre-challenge assessment. We have an introduction that you can read, pages one through five, then page seven, you're part of a movement. You can take the pre-challenge assessment on page eight and complete this preparing for your 40-day challenges on page 9 through 11. And you might

want to contemplate and pray about the pre-challenge assessment while sitting in adoration. Just to get an idea, where am I at right now with the Lord? And where do I? I want to end up? How do I want to grow? So I'm asking you questions like, how would you describe your life as a disciple today? How would you describe it? We're not asking for an essay or anything. We're just asking for a few words. How would you describe your life as a disciple? And number two, after contemplating this challenge, where do you hope to be as a disciple? Now, stop right there for a moment. Please do not listen to that like, oh, I got to do something else. No. this is work. This is rolling up the sleeves. This is what we're going for. This is what we asked for.

We want to be disciples. We're willing to put in some of the elbow grease. So after completing this challenge, where do you want to be as a disciple? And then we're going to do the 40-day challenge with focus on those eight virtues. You can find those on page three of the book. And each virtue is the focus for five days, as I mentioned. Now, I have provided an interesting. introduction to each virtue. At the end of each explanation, I give you a bit of a challenge there. So each day of the challenge is structured into four parts, okay? Number one is the Word of God. You're going to do Lexio Divina in the morning, hopefully. Number two, situational awareness. You're going to be aware of your presence throughout the day. And you're going to look for opportunities to be a blessing to others, to hear from the Lord, to pray with people.

to share the gospel with people, whatever it might be. It might be just a word of encouragement or something you're aware of that you can pray about it silently. And then there's a check-in every day. What's that? Well, the check-in is, the check-in really is checking in with your saints. It's your posse. We talked about that in the retreat.

The posse. Possi, yeah. Who am I going to walk with? Which saints are going to accompany me on the? this challenge. And you're going to think about the shape of your day that day. Is the shape of your day on that particular day? Does it reflect the love of your life? And that's what you're going to do at the end of the day. You're going to look back on your day and see, did my day, the shape of my day, really reflect the fact that I'm a disciple? Or did I forget about it? And I was

just wondering around on my own terms. So that's really, really important. And I have a video that will be available to start this off. You're going to assemble your posse. You're going to choose. And this is up to you. You can choose an accountability partner, somebody that you can check back with, you know, every week and say, how are you doing? I'm doing great. How are you doing? Well, I could use some prayer. Great. And so all of that is part of this 40-day challenge. I hope you do go on it. I really do. When I come back after the break here, I want to talk to you about going forward from here during this period of mystogogy, after the resurrection, after Easter, where are we going? And a couple of tips on how you can be a part of next year's Triduam.

You're listening to The Jeff Kaven Show. Okay, here's the gut check right here, because if nothing changes, nothing changes, do you want to be holy? And do you want to be an instrument of renewal in this world? And if so, do you believe it's possible? Do you know what it looks like? Do you know where to begin? Because if nothing changes, nothing changes.

My name is Father Mark Mary. I'm a Franciscan friar of the renewal, and I wrote a book called Habits for Holiness. And it pulls from over 800 years of Franciscan tradition, wisdom, and experience of radical and total discipleship in the midst of the world, but in a way which begins with little steps and works not only for religion, not only for priests, but for everybody. The change you desire is possible, the conversion your desire is possible, the renewal you desire as possible. The healing you desire is possible. And it begins with little steps. So to guide you on your way and to help you make the next best step of renewal in your life, I'd invite you to pick up a

copy of my book, Habits for Holiness. God bless you. Thanks for coming back. And by the way, I am very grateful. I really am for you joining me on this activated disciple retreat over the last six, seven weeks or so. Maybe it's eight now. And I also appreciate our great team at Ascension Press who has been working with us and making all these materials available to you to go on this challenge. And you can do it any time, any anytime. And you can always go back and listen to these podcasts. So if you have a friend that in a month from now, you want to go on the retreat and the challenge, these shows are online in perpetuity. And you can go through it with them. You don't have to say, well, I missed it. I'll wait till next year. Well, we might do something different

next year. So you can always go back to these. Okay, so we just got through Easter, and now we are in the period of mystogogy, and that is the period of Jesus' teaching about the kingdom of God, and we're going to be moving up to a point where people who came into the church are going to start living the faith. But I wanted to talk to you about going forward and I want to challenge you about this and you know I mean we've been together for a while now you know I mean I've been in your ear for a while we jog together we're in the car together you know we're in the back porch together we've had coffee and I have I have been talking so much over the last number of years on this show about about not being satisfied with just

hearing the truth, but doing the truth. And how James said, if you are a hearer of the word and not a doer, you're really, you're fooling yourself. You really are. You're fooling yourself because you kind of fool yourself into thinking you're doing it if you're hearing it. And, you know, my word in today's culture, you got so much around you. You can listen to podcast. You can listen to radio. You can watch YouTube videos, social media, television, radio in the car, conferences. Oh, conferences. You can do all of these. You can do all of these things. And there is this sneaky thing that happens. And it's, it kind of happens like this. Well, wow, I've been listening all week into conferences with 90 speakers. I must be doing it.

No, you're not necessarily. And I'm not. either, although it did fill a lot of our time, didn't it? No. You know, if you just brought down 50% of what you take in and you substitute it with 50% of doing, you'd be better off. And I would too. Our life as disciples is not a life that is called to eternally consuming. It just isn't. If you do that, you're the Dead Sea. The Sea of Galilee was taking water in and then give out water therefore it was fresh water and fish and wildlife grow in fresh water now down at the end of the jordan river way down south in the land of israel is the dead sea and by the way it's the richest uh water in the world it's where it's worth trillions in minerals and all kinds of valuable

you know, take out of there and it's used in electronics and salt and beauty products and everything else. But here's the deal. In the Dead Sea, there's no life. Hence, dead sea. And it's so filled with salt and minerals that you float. You can't even go down and stay down there. You float and people come from all around the world to do it and they bathe themselves and take care of psoriasis and all kinds of things and just relax but here's the deal nothing grows in it no birds land on it they'll die boats will rust if they go out on it if it's death but yet it's so rich and it's just consuming and consuming and consuming impressive the dead and we don't want to be like the Dead Sea. We want to be like the Sea of Galilee. So what I'm going to encourage you to do is

this, starting now, number one, find out in your church when RCAA starts next year for this coming year for Easter. Find out when it starts. Just call them, ask them after Mass, ask them if they will put it in the bulletin, ask Father if he'll make a big deal out of this at some Mass. And you want to be ready for it. Find out what RCIA. does in your church. How many weeks is it? Who's teaching it? What are they going to teach? Find it out. Ask Father if he can tell us after Mass maybe. Say, I want to take three minutes and tell you what's going to happen and who those six people were in white that came up and how they got up there. So find all this out. Find out the entry date into it. Put it on the schedule. And then here's the other point.

start to look around you and listen and watch. Is there someone that you can invite to Jesus? Is there someone that you can accompany through the RCIA process, this experience that will come into the church in a year from now? That's up to you. And listen, if we know this already, that most of the people that don't listen to this show are probably not going to do it,

but you listen every week and you listen to so many other things every week. you're the candidate. You're the one that's probably going to do it. And so now is the time to start thinking about that guy at work, that relative, your neighbor, the person you met in Walmart's parking lot. Those are the people. You want to start discipling and ask them at some point, would you like to fully come in? I'll accompany you. And if everybody in your church does that, your church will double. It'll double next year if everyone does it. And you know, my plan. My plan is a five-year plan. In five years, you got five years to bring one person in. And if everyone in your church does that in the next five years, your church will double.

And if you don't have one person after five years, I'm going to extend the invitation by two months. I'm being a little funny there, but it's really, really true, isn't it? You and I have a responsibility to go out and to share the good news and to accompany people to Jesus, to introduce them. to Jesus. Now, I say a lot about this on my morning show. I got to do a morning show on the Halo app with Jonathan Rumi. He reads the gospel and I do a devotion every morning. You can go to that hallow.com forward slash Jeff Kavens and register three months free, but I talk about this stuff a lot every single day and I would love to hear you over there as well. Okay, my friend, I want you to know I love you and thank you for going on this retreat. Next week we start up with a brand new topic and you got some

good stuff up ahead that will help you in living as a disciple, living in the Word of God. So may God bless you, may God give you a wonderful week. God bless. Thank you. Thank you.