The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - If You Could Do One Thing

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

Do you have a plan for spiritual growth? It is essential in the spiritual life that we do not allow ourselves to become stagnant. So, what are the opportunities you have to grow spiritually? Jeff Cavins breaks down his advice on how to grow spiritually, especially the importance of isolating spiritual disciplines. Snippet from the Show If you are afraid to share Christ with others, identify what skills you need to refine in order to feel confident when sharing your faith. 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 https://media.ascensionpress.com/?s=&page=2&category%5B0%5D=Ascension%20Podcasts&category%5B1%5D=The%20Jeff%20Cavins%20Show for full shownotes!

Welcome to the Jeff Kavan Show, where we talk about the Bible, discipleship, and evangelization, putting it all together and living as activated disciples. This is show 390, if you could do one thing. All right, my friend, welcome. Just opening up the doors to the cabin out here in the woods. everything is as I left it last time that I talked to you, except it's warmer right now. We went through a few days where I felt like it was fall in Minnesota and we woke up. It's 80 some degrees now.

And so it's nice to be at the lake because it's a little bit cooler with some of the wind that comes across the lake. And life is slower. And so that's always nice to do once in a while. So, you know, I thought about today sharing with you a number of things. and then I finally decided on one particular thing that I wanted to share with you. And oddly enough, it is called if you could do one thing, what would you do? We'll kind of frame this for you.

But before we get going, if you do want show notes on anything that I have, like, for example, today I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, I've got like eight scriptures. And rather than you trying to write those down with your waterproof pen while you're doing laps at the pool, I'll just send them to you. And all you got to do is text my name, Jeff Kavens, one word, Jeff Kavins, and text it to the number 3-3-777s. It's pretty easy to remember. It's all biblical. Three for Trinity, 33-3-3-7s, the number for covenant, 777. 3-33-777.

That's it. Have you ever said a word so much the word the word didn't mean anything to you anymore? It almost sounded like a foreign language. sometimes that happens when you have a number to call in and you say it enough times to whether where it doesn't mean anything after a while but 3-3-7-7 that's it and we'll get you on the on the list and give you the show notes in perpetuity if you somehow are knocked off the list go ahead and sign up again we'll get you back on you're always growing with technology in the modern era you know i remember i was one of those guys back in the 80s back in the

that when Mac first came out, I was one of the first guys out there working with the Mac computer. And it was amazing what the technology was doing. But today it's like, wow, wow. It is, it's very, very different, very, very different. And that's actually part of the problem of why we have a hard time focusing in on one thing in our life. But what I'd like to talk to you about today when we talk about if you could do one thing is this whole issue of growing spiritually and dealing with the junk in your life. You know, if we were able to get together and I could interview you, which I would love to do, we could get to a place where we understand the areas that you're struggling in, whether it's being a parent or a husband-wife or you're

really struggling with food, you know, and obesity. You're struggling with lying. You're struggling with lust. You're struggling with being lazy. You know, there's just so many areas in life where you look at your life and you say, man, I wish, I really wish I could do something about that. Well, I want to encourage you at the top of today's show. You can. And you can. And the power of God is available to help us to walk in holiness, righteousness, and to walk in obedience to Jesus. And that power is available for you to do that. And I have seen over and over and over people who really struggled and kind of gave up

on some aspect of their life because they didn't think they were ever going to be able to turn it around. Now, that's a frustrating place to be, you know. It really is. and every time you go against that which you, you swore you would do, you made an oath, you know, oh, you just feel worse. And then you get to the point, you know, where you say, why should I try? Why should I try? I've tried before.

It's not going to work. And you give in and then you just ratchet up that frustration in your life. You don't need to live like that. You really don't. You don't need to live like that. And the power of God is available to you to change that. So what I want to do today is I want to talk. about this idea of, and I talked about this about three years ago, I think, the power of

isolating spiritual disciplines. There's so many things that we really need to become better at as far as expertise and passion, better, you know, things I'm talking about are prayer, Bible reading, doing the things that we do as Christians, talking to someone, dealing with a fear in your life, of whatever it might be. You have the power available to you. to walk that new life, to walk that new walk. But here's what I think is one of the big problems, to be honest with you, is that people tend to look at their life. And it's like looking at yourself in the mirror,

you see just you. There you are. And you can see 10, 15, 20 things that you might change. And that overwhelms us, doesn't it? It's like, where do I begin? You don't want to put that up for public vote or anything like that. but where do I begin and how do I go about it? So when you look at professional sports today or you look at acting, we were just with the Olympics,

some of that was acting, but we just had the Olympics where people came together from around the world to Paris and France, and they competed. They competed. Now, I would venture to say that every single person, every single person that competing, did in Paris, 24, I would guess they really practiced. You say, well, yeah, I suppose they did. You're running the 100 meters and nine something. Yeah, I think you probably practiced.

You jumped seven feet, nine inches in the high jump? Yeah. And you only did it once? No, I've been doing it for 15 years. Then practicing and practicing and practicing. And this is what we find. that at any sport in the Olympics that we just watched so many of them, you know, table tennis and handball and swimming, running, and horses, you know, everything.

Whatever they did, they isolated elements of that, of that exercise, like they'll say pole vaulting, a young man from Louisiana got the world record again. He was going for Sweden. I don't know why he did that. We could use them back home here, but I guess he has roots in Sweden. And anyway, he broke his world record. Now, that guy for years has been focusing on isolating the disciplines when it comes to pole vaulting to where he could jump. What is it?

Is it 19 feet or something like that now? It's unbelievable how high up they are. The other day, someone said that he interfered with air traffic control, but I don't know if that's true. So that's not true. But when they jump that high or run that fast, they focused on the individual aspects of that discipline and they perfected them. So, for example, we'll use the pole vault. It is holding the pole better, you know, more efficiently. It's when you're running towards the pole vault height, whatever they call it, the bar, the bar.

You know, you have to run a certain way. You've got to look ahead. You've got to hold that pole. And when you finally get there, there's certain individual disciplines that you have to do to pull that, pull down, get your feet up in the air, twist when you're up there and come back down over your stomach. Oh, it's just an amazing thing. So what you do is you isolate all of the disciplines that are necessary to be a good pole vulture. And that takes time and you keep repeating those and repeating them and repeating them until it becomes almost second nature to you. So when it comes to your spiritual life, and I consider things like your emotions and your anger and your jealousy and envy and mercy and kindness, all of these things are the result of exercising holiness or not exercising holiness and getting run over with anger or envy or hatred or whatever it might be, that's what's going to happen in our life if we don't take.

authority over these areas by exercising our will to walk as Christ walks. And I've got to be honest with you. I'm surprised. And I've done this, I guess, at different times in my life. So I'm not saying that I'm better and I'm not saying I'm unique or anything like that. But I'm surprised at how many people that I run into are not today actively working on something. That blows my mind. They're not actively working on something in their life, in their personality, in their faith, in their courage to witness, all of these things. And then six months goes by, a year goes by, five years goes by, a decade goes by, and you're the same person.

I don't know about you, but I think that is, as they say in Greek, icky. I hate that, you know, to think that in 10 years from now, I'm going to be the same as I am today, unless I wake up and start to go after some of these things in my life that cause frustration not only for myself, but certainly for other people. And so my question to you is, do you have a plan for spiritual growth? Do you have a plan? If you could do one thing, what would it be? What would you do?

So sometimes I think life seems like too much of a tackle. And I've been there. So rather than starting in on something, we give up. life gets worse and it compiles, and we wake up and I'm a loser. So what we need to do is forget about the past, but learn from it. Focus on what lies ahead. That is what God is calling us to. Now, Paul understood this whole idea of, I guess what I would call the one thing.

He said to the Philippians, this is Paul, chapter 3, verse 13. I'll put it in the show notes, absolutely free. But do me a favor. Tell other people about the podcast. Why? Because I do think that we are doing a fairly good job of trying to encourage people with the Word of God. And that's the goal of it. It's not about you. It's not about me. It's about Jesus. And you and I can work together as tag team partners to bring people to Jesus. So thank you for liking it. Thank you for making comments. And thank you for sharing it with 1,000 people by midnight tonight. So Paul says in Philippians chapter 3 in verse 13, he says, brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do, but one thing I do. Okay. So listen to what he said. He said, brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal.

for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. So at this particular point, when Paul is writing to the Philippians, he says, this one thing I'm going to do, I'm going to forget what lies behind, which in a lot of situations, that's very healthy, and I'm going to strain forward to what lies ahead. And then he becomes more specific. He says, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. In other words, he wants to, he wants to strive. to obtain that prize of being a part of the call of Jesus, the family of Jesus, the kingdom of Jesus. This is my goal. And there's a lot of things I need to forget about and need to

strive ahead. The writer of Hebrews, which some people think is Paul or Apollo, in chapter 12, says, therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight in sin which clings so closely and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of our faith. So there again, Paul says, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us. And so there's Paul or Apollos talking about focusing on Jesus, as the key in running that race and not being bogged down by the past or worrying about the future. Another one, Psalm 274, one thing I have asked is to be with God.

It says in Psalm 27, one thing have I asked of the Lord. That will I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. that's so beautiful you know that when we talk about isolating various disciplines so that you can perfect the whole let me give you an example okay so let's say let's say i have a real fear i'm not going to use baseball or football or hockey or anything else as an analogy let's just use real life here if i am afraid to share christ with someone at work and every time i think i'm going to do it man i get all wound up inside. I get so nervous. I don't know what I'm going to do. And then I talk myself out of it

saying, certainly there's somebody else here at this corporation of 23,000 employees that can share Christ better than I can. Thank you, Lord, for delivering me from this burden. Well, if you've got a fear about sharing the Lord with people, well, then let's break it apart here and let's perfect the parts, shall we? So there is a little bit of skill that's needed in sharing Christ with people. There's no doubt about it. But it can be done. And so if you have a fear of sharing even the smallest thing about Jesus with somebody else,

well, then let's isolate that. Let's start on a daily basis of initiating a discussion with someone. It doesn't have to be about the Lord. It doesn't have to be about heaven and hell. It doesn't have to be about purgatory and creation and all that. You just started up a conversation with someone. Hey, Frank, how are you doing today? Frank, I'm talking to you.

You start a conversation with Frank. Maybe you don't normally do that, and that's a big deal. Frank, how is your weekend? You never would have said that before, but you are now focusing in on what is necessary for you to actively share your faith. Start up a conversation. Do it over and over and over. and over and over and over and then you can even tag on a question how is your weekend frank

did you guys go to church maybe that's a little too quick but how is your weekend frank so it's getting used to opening up a conversation opening up a conversation and then you might start focusing on once you ask someone how is your weekend and they tell you oh we we did this went up to the lake oh you did. My family and I, and God can give you the words, you know, out of truth and reality. Last week, we were up at the lake up there and we went over to St. Teresa Church. Did you guys buy there? Well, yeah, we are. Oh, yeah, that's where we go to church when we're up there. You're off and running, you know. And so it's just starting with those early burdens and those hurdles to get over that you're constantly saying, well, that's not me. I'm not going to do it.

and just practice it. You know, in baseball, I will use an analogy in baseball, okay? So if you are a hitter in baseball and you go up there with that bat, hitting the ball is more than just going up there and when you see the pitcher throwing it, you're going to swing. It's more than that. It's made up of a number of individual disciplines. If you're going to be a good hitter, it's the stance, it's the bat, it's your eye,

it's the position of your legs, how many men are on first and second, where are you going to aim for? What does it take to knock this thing out of the park? What does it take to do a bunt? What does it take for a right-handed batter to just half-swing and put it over the second basement? All of these things can be practiced over and over and over and over. Okay, a couple more things before we take a break. One, Mark, chapter 10, verse 21, Jesus looking upon him, loved him, and said to him, you lack one thing. Go. sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven and come follow me. So there's this constant theme of one thing is really needful.

Oh, you remember the story of Martha, Mary and Martha? Remember that one? The Lord answered her, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things. See, Mary was the one that was really choosing the right thing. And she was the one that really wanted to sit at the feet of Jesus. And Martha's all bent out of shape about it. and Jesus says, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things. One thing is needful.

Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her. So, and then I love this one too, and then we'll take a break. This stuff is so good. And it's powerful. The Word of God is powerful. Ephesians 5, look carefully then how you walk. Not as unwise men, but as wise. making the most of the time because the days are evil.

So when it comes to isolating and perfecting disciplines, when it comes to you stretching and doing the things that you never did before, you have to make the most of your time. You have to know what you're going after, how you're going to do that, and then do it. But you know what? I got to give you a tip here, a little warning. The majority of people know this.

Deep down inside, the majority of people know this. and they don't do it. Why do you think that is? You know, I mean, why do you think that is that that they would even go to a conference and pay $25 for the weekend? And there'd be two or three things in there that they knew, bingo, that's for me.

That was for me. And then they'd leave and they go home and they'd watch the Olympics that they taped. And then the next day they'd get up and go about their life and start talking about the conference that's coming to town in three weeks from now.

You've got to ask yourself, why don't we do it? Why don't, well, the reason is it's overwhelming and that's why we need to isolate the disciplines and just go after it. If it takes you six months to learn and not be angry when you come home from work, then do it. Otherwise, it's going to be six months from now and you're still going to come home from work angry. And that makes other people angry. I'm getting, no, I'm kidding.

So let's take a break. When we come back, I want to talk about the areas of your life where this really is needed. You're listening to The Jeff Kaven Show. Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz. I want to let you know about an exciting announcement that could revolutionize the way you listen to the Bible in the air and the catechism in the year. Ascension has released a new Bible and Catechism app called the Ascension app. No, here's what you get. In this app, you get the entire text of the Great Adventure Bible. Just incredible. You also get the entire text of the Catechism. with the Catholic Church, as long with the catechism in your podcast and the Bible into your podcast and transcripts for each episode. If you're like, I'm tired of listening to that guy. I just want to read it. There's incomplete transcripts from each and every episode. One thing that makes this app incredibly unique is that it includes special features that they make connections between the Bible and the catechism so crystal clear through

color-coded references and all these links. The hyperlinks are amazing. I tried it out. I'm like, oh my gosh, it kind of has changed the way I read through the catechism, kind of changed the way I read through the Bible. These features will help you navigate the Bible and Catechism even more seamlessly so you can get more out of your experience. Also, the app provides almost 1,000 answers to Bible questions. The people who listen to the Bible in the year, they wrote in with their questions. Almost 1,000 answers. And those answers come in the form of audio clips, video clips, as well as resources excerpted from some of Ascension's published works.

If you want to download this app for free, super simple. Just go to the app store and search for Ascension app. I am telling you, if learning about the Bible and the catechism is important to you, then this app will change your life. Welcome back, my friend. Isn't this great that we can get together like this, sitting in your plush VW van from the 1960s, listening to podcasts and how to walk with Jesus? I love it. I really do love this relationship, you know, where we can talk together every single week. Okay, so we're talking about making the most of your time. There are points where isolation. spiritual disciplines can take place.

Now, there's obviously hundreds of different places in your life where you can really isolate spiritual disciplines. But let me give you an example of a few, just to kind of prime the pump. Number one is at the intersection of family. What do I mean by that? Oh, and by the way, I'll get you the notes on this. At the intersection of family, what do I mean? Anytime there are members of the family coming or going in your home

or in the garage or in the car you have this intersection of family and that's when things can go awry you're late you came in late you didn't prepare to go i thought i told you we had this at night you know it's this intersection of the family and right before school you could use some discipline in how you will address your teens right before school you say right before school i always say the wrong thing and to get ticked off at me, and I end up embarrassing him, I'm dropping them off. Mom, I want dad to drop me off. Well, you've got to isolate here and figure out what's going on. How do I do this differently?

Coming home from work, wow, this one's a big one. Coming home from work, whether it's dad or its mom or husband, wife, coming home from work, and there's someone at home who has been there for a while, that one coming home can come home with more than more than a full day's work but a lot of garbage that happened throughout the day. So my question is when you come home from work right now, what do you do right now when you come home from work? You may say, well, if I stopped by the bar and I meet my buddies and they have, they got me all worked up about, uh, politics and all that 30 minutes later you enter your family room and the fireworks begin well the

battle was lost back there at brian's bar and you got all worked up with your friends you've been doing it every day for seven years now your wife can almost mark it off on a calendar it's when you started getting so angry when you got home well think think you want to continue with that dog and pony show i say nay no no No way. Number two is the intersection of culture. Sometimes people open themselves up to cultural influence and sometimes they get caught. They keep making the wrong decisions about ethical and moral issues. Now, if you're that guy or you're that gal who always seems to make a poor decision and your world is blowing up, you must isolate those areas where you are making

poor decisions. Isolate and perfect. Isolate and perfect. What are you doing repeatedly wrong? When you come home, what are you doing? Do you always go down that same road? Do you have to? Do you have to go by Brian's bar every single day where your buddies want you to meet with them and you get all jacked up and then you go home and your family, you take it out on them? Hmm, isolate. I'm not going by Brian's bar. By the way, if there's a Brian's bar, I'm so sorry. I should have had like Zerubbables bar or something. I wouldn't. I wouldn't face the wrath of Brian. Number three, do you constantly make excuses as to why you didn't do your job? Isolate that one area of your life. Stop making excuses for yourself. Face the truth and get on down the road as far as solving your problem. And during that time, when you're isolating the disciplines and perfecting them, it doesn't mean that you've also got to take care of the other 50 areas. Frankly, that's been your problem up until now is that you're trying to perfect about 10 different areas.

That's a lot, especially if you're me. And so, you know, that old adage, how do you eat an elephant, you know? And the answer isn't all at one time. you eat the elephant bite by bite, right? That's what we're talking about here in isolating and perfecting. Okay, what about this? What about prayer? Now, if I ask you, how are you doing in your prayer life?

I know exactly what you're going to say. It could be different. It could be better. It could be better, Jeff. I know, mine too. So, what's your plan? I don't know if we got a plan. I mean, it just could be better.

I know. I'm asking you, what's your plan? well i don't have a plan jeff okay so if you want to grow in your prayer life then you take it apart and you start to perfect the disciplines for example if you want a prayer life decide when are you going to pray when are you going to pray you cannot use that whenever i get a chance because you know the schedule you know the routine chances don't come your way you know that's part of the frustration, don't you? So when are you going to pray? Where are you going to pray? How are you going to pray? Are you going to start with a whole hour of prayer? You're going to start with five minutes.

Are you going to be alone? Are you going to have your spouse or a friend with you? Are you going to do it at church or at home? Are you going to do it in the car or in the back porch? And so you start to isolate. I want a prayer life. And so I'm going to start with five minutes every morning and I am going to read the gospel. And I'm going to do Lexio de Vina. I don't know Lexio de Vina. That's part of it. Learn it.

Learn what it is. It's very easy. It's only four stages. By the way, Dr. Tim Gray, he's got a wonderful book on that. Ascension has it. It's called praying scripture for a change. Yeah, that's a good one. Bible reading the same thing.

People say, well, I just don't get the time to read the Bible. Jeff, I am not a professional Christian like you. Really? Well, I'm not a professional Christian, but I know what you're saying. I do get time during the day to get into the Word of God. That really has been my whole life. But you know what? If you want a relationship with the Lord through His Word, then we start to take it apart.

And the place I would recommend is start by going through unlocking the mystery of the Bible. That's the Bible study that lays out eight half-hour lessons to go through. the whole Bible and then following that with the great adventure the Bible timeline 24 hours that I teach going through the whole Bible but you got to make up your mind when are you going to read you got a Bible how much you're going to read a day are you going to learn what lexio de vina is you can do all of this in one day my friend one day okay so how about this here's a good one you get angry easily and it's almost like you know it and you sense it's coming on and you fall to it and Everybody is out of sorts.

So you get angry, easily. What are you doing about it? Have a plan? You can exercise virtue when it comes to combating anger or envy or greed or laziness. All of these wonderful attributes that we don't want. You can deal with those by the power of the Holy Spirit by isolating and saying that, that aspect in my life is going to change. That's going to change.

So I'm challenging you as a brother. I had to come clear out here in the woods to tell you this. But I'm challenging you as a brother to isolate the area that you're struggling with and just go after it. Don't worry about the rest of the world right now. You know, it's going to run and everything, but you're going to be better. off focusing on that one area, then worrying about all the areas. And so I would encourage you to do that. And I think if you put a list together of the areas of your life that could use some attention and then start to go after them, you would be surprised at what good habits can

accomplish in your life. And you would be surprised. You'd be surprised at what can happen in your life and how you can change. I know I have. And I've had people say to me, I've known you for years, and I notice that this is happening now in your life, and you really handle it differently. It's because of isolating and perfecting and spending that time with the Lord. So do something different. Admit it, like me.

That's not working. Now I need to really zero in with the Lord, and let's just take care of this one thing right now. Even if it takes two or three weeks or six months, we're going to take care of it. And listen to this. Wow, how many weeks do we have in a year, right? And how many months do we have in a year?

Just assign one issue to a month. Say, in the month of, let's say, September, I'm going to deal with anger. And then in the month of October, I'm going to deal with generosity. And then I'm going to deal with temper or I'm going to deal with lust or whatever it might be. Can you imagine that after a year, if you took a month on 12 disciplines, imagine what your life would be like in one year from now. Now, if you don't do it, I'll tell you exactly what your life is going to be like in a year from now. It's going to be like it is today minus two or three. Those are just numbers. But you know what I'm talking about there. So, and let me just leave you with this too.

When it comes to isolating and perfecting, please do not get all caught up and wrapped up in the equipment. It's skill that you are learning, not the equipment. The equipment will help you to do that. It's like the baseball bat for a pro baseball hitter, a major league baseball hitter, the bat is his tool. The fact that he batted 372 is the deal. That's the miracle of it all. It wasn't the bat. It was him using the bat. And that's why if you buy the right Bible, it doesn't mean that everything's going to change.

Oh, unless it's a great adventure Bible, something might change. But you know what I'm saying. It's not buying the rosary and then everything changes. It's not buying the prayer book, and wow, life is, man, I tackled prayer on that one. No, those are the, that's the equipment. That's what the equipment manager handles and passes it all out. It's up to you to do something with it. So don't get caught up in the equipment.

It's the practice that matters. After all, don't we always say I'm practicing my faith? Like someday you're going to be up in the big dance, the big leagues. I'm practicing my faith. Live your faith. Practice your faith. Do your faith. and there is power, my friend, in isolating skill sets.

There really is. Okay, so look up in the show notes. I've got some things I've been talking about during the show here. We'll put those in, including that prayer or that book that Tim Gray had. That was a very good book. I highly recommend that. Let me pray with you. In the name of the Father's Son and the Holy Spirit, Jesus, we love you so much.

And we thank you, Lord, for calling us to become you. divinization to become you. And I pray, Lord, as we offer to you the area of our life that we're struggling with, that you will help us to isolate and perfect the sub-disciplines to this major category, whether it be anger or envy or fear, whatever it might be. We thank you, Lord, for helping us to isolate and perfect the disciplines of our faith in the various areas. In Jesus' name, amen. the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit i love you i'm praying for you and ask you to pray for me as well can't wait to talk to you next week