The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - Important Content for Family Formation: Raising Disciples (Part 3)

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

Faith is something that is meant to be lived more than one hour a week. As parents it is essential that we show our children what it looks like to truly live the faith at every moment. How do you do that? Jeff Cavins offers his advice on how to keep the faith alive in your family and not let it get stagnant. Snippet from the Show Our children need to know that they can trust in God. 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 show 347, content for family formation, part three, raising disciples. Welcome to the show again. Well, I'm glad to be with you this week. Last week, we took a, a little detour from our series on important content for family formation and just wanted to give you some of my thoughts on what's going on in Israel, in Gaza, and what Israel is doing with the problem with Hamas. And I gave you five thoughts on that. Appreciate your positive feedback on that. And still, today, so much going on in the world. We're going to continue on in our series. And today I'm going to be talking about raising disciples.

Last session on this series, I was talking about salvation history and the importance of children knowing the story of salvation history. And that is so important how many families I run into and the kids absolutely do not know anything about God's overarching story in his plan. And yet we want the children to be excited about the particulars in that story when they don't. know the story. Doesn't make sense, does it? Not at all. And so I do hope that you can address that in your family and make sure that your kids understand salvation history. Show notes for that, by the way, that was show 345. And the show notes, I've given you some information on what you can do about that and some of the materials at Ascension that you can get. Today we're going to look at raising disciples. And if you do want the outline for the show today, which I'm giving a pretty

thorough outline on raising disciples for the family. You can get that by simply texting my name, Jeff Kavens. That's one word, Jeff Kavens, and text it to the number 33777. 3377. Back out deep in the woods today, it is beautiful. The lake is not even moving. It's like glass. And earlier this morning, I was telling Emily, look at that, smooth, glassy look to that. and she took a picture and she was showing it to me but she showed it to me upside down and I thought it looked like the regular picture because the reflection on the other side of the shore on the lake was perfect and we couldn't figure out which way the picture went that's how perfect it was but anyway it's beautiful out here today and I love this time of

the year when I don't know you take a walk in the woods and you can you can smell the deterioration of the leaves or something about that smell that always brings me back to junior high cross country meets for some reason I guess we ran through the woods then but I do love it I love this time of the year it's everything's beginning to change and it's kind of like the cycle in a family really you know family goes through cycles too where there is the new there's that new springtime you know and everything's new and family's young and and then you go through the summer months and then the fall and then the winter and you go through all those seasons.

Well, today we're going to talk about raising disciples. And I have a number of things that are important to remember when you are raising disciples. First of all, what do I mean by that? Well, when I say that it's really important for family formation, for the parents to raise children as disciples and to live as parents like a disciple, it goes way, way, way beyond simply going to church on Sunday and signing your kids up for sacraments, prep class, or CCD, way beyond that. It goes way beyond sending your kids to a Catholic school. Raising your children as disciples starts with you living as a disciple.

And a disciple is far, far more than just some Catholic in America who believes basically that the church is the church and they have been going. and their parents have been going and their grandparents have been going and their great-great-grandparents came over on a boat from Ireland. It's way more than that. To live as a disciple is to commit yourself to following Jesus, walking with him, and beginning to think like him and act like him. And the only way that you can do that is to be in a close relationship with the Lord.

So somehow, some way, parents, you have to communicate to your children, not necessarily with words, although they will come up from time to time, but you have to communicate with your children that you yourself are living as a disciple. And so it's very, very important, so important to give a sense of movement in your life, a sense of movement in the family.

You're not stagnant. You don't just sit there with the tag saying, I'm Catholic, and then on church on Sunday morning, go to church and then go back to your other life. that isn't being a disciple that's i guess you could say religion right but it's not being a disciple the family is going somewhere you are heading that family and there's a sense of movement in your lives you're growing you're you're discovering you are doing things the lord told you to do there's adventure uh there is hurdles to overcome there are times where the family comes together

how are we going to deal with this there's movement in the family it's not just a Sunday thing. You live your faith both inward and outward. In one of the problems that we experience in Catholic families is that the kids don't know what that faith looks like outward. Mom and dad say, well, yes, I believe and it's a personal thing. I don't discuss that with anyone. Well, what are your kids supposed to do then? Who are they going to learn from? It's inward and outward. There's two things to start off with when we talk about the life of a of a disciple is number one there is the calling on your life and that's something important to to discover you know jesus said in matthew chapter four verses 18 and 19 and i'll put it in the show notes it says as he walked by the sea of galilee he

saw two brothers simon who is called peter and andrew his brother casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen and he said to them, listen to this, follow me, and I'll make you fishers of men. Now, when Jesus said, follow me, that was not something that he just made up. That was a formulaic statement that all of the rabbis in the first century used to invite young men to become disciples. The average number of disciples a rabbi had was five, and Jesus had 12, Hillel had 70. so a rabbi if he was going to invite you would say leh aherai in hebrew lech ari come follow me come after me and that's the that's the formal invitation for you to leave everything come follow that rabbi and you begin then to learn from that rabbi you learn to think like him you learn to live like him

in every single way and that's what jesus said to the 12 he said leh aherai come follow me and he said that to Matthew, he said that to Peter and Andrew and the rest. That's what he said, even Judas, come follow me. Come follow me. And then in Matthew chapter 11, a little bit later on, Jesus says, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you'll find rest for your souls. So the second thing that a rabbi would say to a young man, the first is, come follow me. The second is, take my yoke upon yourself.

Take my yoke. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. So to take the yoke of a rabbi means to take on their complete 100%, the whole enchilada worldview, everything. That's what you're taking on. You're not looking at the Lord's teaching like a menu and saying, well, I think I'll have some of that social justice, but that part about dying to your, nah, I don't want you that. The part about the inheritance. I like that inheritance stuff.

What do you mean? Pray for those who hate me. I don't want that stuff. It's not a pick and choose thing. It's all of it. It's all of it. And parents have to get that across to their children, that they themselves, have taken on the yoke of Jesus and are following him.

That means that your kids will learn from time to time what you're doing, why you're doing it. Is this what Jesus has called you to? So to be a disciple is to be someone who really is completely committed to becoming like the master, Jesus. And we want to think like he thinks and live like he lives. So we live as though our life is not our own. parents this is really important if you want your children to grow up and to be disciples of the lord

you want them to be members of the catholic church and fruitful you have to live your life as a disciple and your life is not your own paul spells it out so well i'll put it in the show notes for you galatians 220 i have been crucified with christ it's no longer i who live but christ who lives in me And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who love me and gave himself up for me. I love that. I'm kind of cheating there because that's my life verse. I love that. And I'm not cheating.

That's the way it is. Do you have a life verse? I remember a show a while ago I was encouraging people to do that. Take a Bible verse that really means a lot to you and memorize it and start to live it. That's mine right there, Galatians 220. I will this week share that with you. You can take it too. So I've been crucified with Christ.

No longer I who live, but Christ is living in me. I love it. So what are some of the aspects of discipleship to cultivate in your family? We can go through these. I'll do a couple of them here before our first break. Number one, if you're going to cultivate an idea of discipleship in your children, number one, there needs to be prayer in your family. You need to pray.

and you need to teach them how to pray. You know, kids don't know how to pray. They don't. Take the disciples, for example. These are grown men, professionals, fishermen, so forth, lawyer. And they watch Jesus pray from a distance, sometimes probably close up. But they came to him one time and they said, Lord, teach us how to pray. And so they had to be taught.

Think of that. the original disciples had to be taught how to pray. How much more are your own children? And so the best way to teach your children to pray as disciples is to pray with them, W-I-T-H, pray with them. And there's a number of ways that you can do that. I'll put these in the show notes for you. There are certainly the prayers of the church.

We have the Lord's Prayer, Hail Mary. we have prayer to St. Michael the Archangel. There's all kinds of fixed prayers. And they are there and they are popular because they're good. And if you make a regular habit out of adopting some of these really good prayers, get them on a card on a holy card. Put it in the back of your Bible or if you have a prayer book. Let your children see you pull them out.

Let your children over the years see how that, card is aging. It's with you. It's in the movement. Your family's moving. I'll never forget when Bishop Paul Dudley took me to his home in Northfield, Minnesota, the place that Jesse James gang was finally caught. I remember he took us on a tour of his property, and he had a small leather book booklet held together with a rubber band, an old rubber band, and inside of it were prayer cards that his mother had. That's movement. That's movement. That's movement. every day for her and he has him now and so these great prayers of the church are fantastic but i think it's also important to teach our children to pray from the heart pray from the heart that one's a

harder one to do and a lot of times when catholics leave their church they leave the catholic church and they go into a non-denominational or a charismatic church like assembly of god they're going to run into a lot of people who pray extemporaneously. They pray on the spot from the heart. If you have not been a part of that, that can be scary, especially when you go to one of their meetings and they look at you

and say, brother, would you lead us in prayer? And you're like, oh my gosh, okay. Hail Mary, full of, you know, we got to learn to pray from the heart. And the kids can learn that from you, mom, you dad, as even if it's simple, you know, just saying, honey, let me pray for you as you

go to school today. The name of the father Son, Holy Spirit, Lord, watch over my son, watch over my daughter. I pray you'll protect them, give them opportunities to see your faithfulness in their life today. In Jesus' name, amen. Something like that you can start with, and then you can morph into those five, ten minute prayers, you know, that are non-denominational friends to pray. So prayers of the church are important. Prayers from the heart are important. And by the way, the Psalms are considered by the church fathers as the school of prayer.

That as you read the Psalms, you have to realize they are prayers and they teach you how to pray at the same time. By the way, I do have a great adventure study on the Psalms I did with Tim Gray. That's available if you want that. I'll put that in the show notes for you. Now, there's another beautiful way to pray. Certainly the mass is a prayer. And John Paul II said it was his favorite prayer. And then right after that was Lexio devena.

And Lexio Divina, and I'll put this in the notes, is four steps to pray the scriptures. And the first one is reading. It's called Lexio. You simply read for, you know, the couple of verses, two or three, four, five verses, and you pick out what really speaks to you. Then you move on to Meditatatio. The first one's Lexio reading. The second's Meditatio. That's meditation.

You enter the story with your mind. You begin to walk around and you see it. You see yourself with Jesus in that text. then you move to the third step which is or atzio that's prayer you're actually there now you're praying you're asking jesus questions about the verse the words that really really stood out to you and you talk to him about it and i believe that you can hear the lord in your heart and then the fourth one is contemplatio that's contemplation that's where you you just rest in the good things that the Lord gave you during that time of prayer. So prayer is very important to the disciples' life.

It really is. Now, last week, I talked about salvation history. So the second point of the disciple's life, I talked about quite a bit. Yes, last week it was, that's Bible reading. And nothing replaces a child seeing their parents reading scripture and underlining verses that mean something to them. Nothing. I, I, everybody that I talk to that has been a real student of the Word of God as a Catholic will tell me, well, not everyone, but many of them will tell me that they remember seeing their dad reading the Bible in the morning or their mother reading the Bible at noon. And so that is very important. So we have a number of things at ascension that are aids to this, certainly Bible in a year, unlocking the mystery.

of the Bible. That's my eight-part series. I'll take you through the entire Bible. The Great Adventure, a journey through the Bible, the Bible timeline study, the big one, the 24-week one. There's the Bible timeline chart itself, which is a visual look at salvation history. And then you got the Great Adventure Bible, which is color-coded, and the children's great-adventure storybook and the children's material. It's all in the notes. It's for you. So Bible reading is part of the disciples' life and Bible study. You can study it and you can read it in a meditative way, like a reflection. But studying it is important too.

Okay, so that's prayer and Bible reading. I have more to share with you, but I'm going to take a break. When I come back, I'm going to talk about three areas that are critical for you to teach your children. If they're going to grow up and be disciples of the Lord, You're listening to The Jeff Kaven Show. Did you know that your personal style can aid in understanding your worth? My name is Lillian Fallon, and I am the author of Theology of Style expressing the unique and unrepeatable you. And in this book, I dive into this very topic where we discuss how personal style is something that can actually help you grow in understanding in your worth and how you're made in the image of God.

You can buy my book at ascensionpress.com forward slash theology of style. Welcome back. We're talking this week about important content for family formation, and this week is raising disciples. Discipleship is very important to teach your children. Before the break, we were looking at prayer and Bible reading. The third area that is really important, and I got to be honest with you, when I was growing up, I knew the word sacraments.

I knew that. I knew what the word sacrament. I mean, I knew it. I heard it, but I didn't know what it meant. That's what I'm trying to say, is I didn't really know what it meant until I came back to the Catholic Church. The word sacrament is related to taking an oath, the idea of a Roman soldier taking an oath or us taking an oath in a covenant relationship with God. And it is this word sacramentum. The sacraments are related to the covenant we have with God, but the sacrament, the new covenant sacraments are ways that we encounter Jesus in some of the biggest events of his ministry, like baptism and confirmation, the Holy Spirit coming, in the Eucharist, the Last Supper, and all seven of the sacraments are ways,

of meeting Jesus. And as parents, we have to look at the sacraments as not being milestones in the life of a child, but there certainly is a milestone in that they have their first communion or the first time they go to confession or when they were baptized, of course. So there is the initial sacraments. In fact, three of them are called the sacraments of initiation, baptism, confirmation, and Eucharist. But it's not a one-time deal. I'm afraid for many people. Confirmation, particularly, is looked at as a one-time event. Like, yay, you're an adult now. Let's move on. But confirmation is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It is the completion of the baptismal promises. and it is vital to everyday living,

to be a disciple of the Lord and to walk in power and courage. Very, very important. So the sacraments of initiation are baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist. You can remind your kids that in baptism, their sins were forgiven. Original sin is forgiven. They receive at baptism the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. How many times do your kids come home with problems? And the answer is faith, or the answer is hope, or the answer is charity.

Well, they've got that in their soul at baptism. Parents fan into a flame. That flickering light that they received at baptism. You fan into a flame what's happening in their life. So you have the sacraments of initiation. then you have the sacraments of healing and along the way you know as well as I do we have problems

called sin and sin either weakens your relationship with God or breaks it well thanks be to the Lord Jesus Christ he gave us all seven sacraments and I'm so grateful that he gave us the sacrament of reconciliation penance the sacrament of confession oh what a feeling that is to walk out of

a confessional, isn't it? Yeah. We don't feel so good because you just had a conversation with someone. You feel so good because something happened. You are forgiven. You're released. And, man, the kids these days, you know, will you know what they're into? That's bondage. Sin will bring you into bondage and they need freedom. And so you can assist them in this in bringing your family to confession on a regular basis, I would suggest once a month. And you're going to get some pushback. You're going to get them saying, I don't have anything to confess. Well, you do now because you just lied. Okay. But, you know, going to the sacrament of reconciliation every month is an important thing. We also have the anointing of the sick. Grandma and grandpa are sick and doesn't look real good.

They may call on the parish priest to come over and anoint them before surgery. Anointing of the sick is powerful if you're if you're experiencing that then there's the sacraments of service we have two of them matrimony marriage and holy orders the priesthood the deaconate so that's how we serve we can serve through marriage the holy orders and i would also suggest as adults the generous single life there are single people who are not married they're not in holy orders but they are on a mission from God in service, and the Lord is going to walk with you. So that's the third one, sacraments, the fourth one, and I'm just going to go over quickly on this one, because in the show notes, I have given you the whole thing.

I mean, let's see, that's almost a whole page I give you in the show notes on the seven aspects of the corigma. What am I talking about? Well, the fourth area of discipleship that parents should be teaching their children is the gospel. Say, what, Jeff? Yeah, the gospel. Do you know how many Catholics cannot answer the question, what is the gospel? Do you know how many parents cannot tell you what it is?

And if they don't know what it is, their kids aren't going to know what it is. And if their kids aren't going to know what it is, then they're going to go out into life not knowing the good news. Now, the good news can be used as something that you would discuss with other people, the seven points of this good news. It's called the charygma. You've heard me talk about it before. The charygma. What does the word charygma mean, this Greek word? It means the proclamation of the gospel.

Now, what I did in the show notes here is I give you quite a description of each one of these points. and I would encourage you to look at the show notes because it's chock full of good stuff here. Okay, so here's the seven points of the of the, the chrygma or the good news, the gospel. And every single kid, by the time they leave a Catholic family, should know these seven points really well. When I say really well, I mean acing tests, especially if they go to a Catholic school. So number one, God loves you and has an amazing plan for your life. You've heard me talk about that so many times on the Jeff Kaven show in the past, but I'm giving you here some notes for that.

God loves you and has an amazing plan for your life, a plan of sheer goodness. That's the good news. Number two, sin will destroy your relationship. with God. Sin has a purpose, and that is to cause mayhem and confusion. And James says its end is death. Even if you stole a pack of gum from the store built into that DNA of sin is death. Yeah, you say, well, Jeff, you just stole a pack of gum. Yeah. And continue. Continue on. I'll tell you what. the DNA of sin is there. You keep doing this.

It will get bigger and bigger. Before you know it, death. That's just the way it is. If you're stealing gum, stop. So the second one is sin will destroy or break the relationship with God. The third is that Jesus Christ died to save you. He died to save you. He paid the price for sin in your life.

That's number three. Number four, now he wants you to repent or radically reorient your life to him. that's what the first step is after you hear the good news of Jesus Christ dying for you the first step is you repent you you reorient your life to Jesus and then number five you're baptized and you receive the power of the Holy Spirit to live that life we talked a little bit about baptism with the sacraments but on both of those you've got two sacraments here you got baptism and you have confirmation you receive the Holy Spirit. Then number six, abide in Christ and his body, the church. You're going to live your life now. You're going to live it in the context of the church. Church is the place where the

sacraments are. The church is a place of healing. The church is like an arc where we can run into and we can get direction and correction and solace and fellowship and so many different things. And then finally, if you make it to number seven, number seven is for you. What is it? you go and make disciples now. So that's the end of that. I tell you what, I'm going to put all that in the show notes for you. And I have, oh, I have a lot of shows on the Corrigma. All you got to do is go back into the catalog here. 347 shows so far. I bet I've done at least five of them on the carigma over the years. And so you can do that. Now, number five, the fifth thing that is important when it comes to raising children to be disciples is for them to understand what a covenant

relationship is with God. A lot of kids, they don't know this. They think that being Catholic is just kind of agreeing with mom and dad. It's a nice religious expression. It probably has some good morals to teach kids. I'll hang in there until I'm married and I'll give it a whirl and see if my kids get some good morals. No, it's a story. It's a completely. story that we're in and and part of this is understanding what a covenant relationship is with God all throughout salvation history we see covenants the covenant is when two entities come together they agree on the terms of the covenant like in the case of Abraham back in genesis 15 Abraham got together with God God made a covenant with Abraham you've got the terms of the

covenant on both sides, what God will do and what we will do. And then you have the sacrifice. You have the terms of the covenant. Then you have the sacrifice. And once you swear an oath that you are entering into this covenant relationship, the penalty for breaking the covenant is death. And here's the deal. paid the debt for us. He paid the debt for us, and now he invites us to enter into a new covenant with him. He will do what he said he would do, and we are committed to do what we said we would do. You see, it's important for kids to know the difference between a contract in a covenant. A contract is an exchange of things, possessions. Whereas a covenant is an exchange of persons. Whereas a covenant is an exchange of persons. And when you swear an oath, the result is kinship. It's family. It's familial.

And so when we enter into this covenant relationship with Jesus, we enter into a family relationship. And John Paul II reminds us that the Trinity is a family. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It's a family. The father loves the son. The son. The son loves the father, the love between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit poured out into our hearts. And we are destined to be a part of the Trinity, to live in the Trinity, to be divinized, to become what God is. And this is so much bigger than just going to church on Sunday and then getting home in time to watch the Vikings lose again.

But there's more to it than that. there's more to it than just confirmation pictures and baptism pictures it's a covenant relationship and when your kids are going through tough times in schools listen they're going to need far more far more than just some good at a boys at a girl they're going to need to know that they can depend upon god because they're in a covenant relationship and every time they go forward at mass and they receive the body and blood of Jesus, that is reupping and renewing the covenant that they have. When the priest or the extraordinary minister raises the body of Christ,

the host to your son or daughter and says, the body of Christ, when your son or daughter says, amen, they are saying, I believe and I am in this too. I will keep my end of this covenant relationship. Thank you, Lord, for your faithfulness. When times come and life is tough, your kids need more than a text. They need more than an out-a-boy, out-a-girl.

They need to know that God loves them so much, so much so that he died and he entered into a covenant with us. It's guaranteed it is solid, rock-solid. And everything in their life is moving. and shifting. Their life is filled with undependable people, things, events that go awry, disappointment. But listen, Jesus will never disappoint. Jesus is faithful. He's faithful. I love that. He is faithful. So what we want to share with our kids when it comes to discipleship is we want to teach them to pray. We want to teach them to read the Bible. They need to see you doing both of them.

Start this week. I mean it, man. Start this week and make sure they see you pray and you pray with them and you're reading the Bible. Maybe it's Bible in a year. You're sharing it with them or you're studying one of the great adventure studies or you get them for Christmas this year or their birthday. You get them a great adventure Bible. Hey, everyone's doing it. It's a color-coded Bible that young people love. They love that. Then the sacraments, make sure that they understand the sacraments and do a little study on that yourself, you know, on the sacraments. Then learning to share the corigma. I got a boatload of notes on the show notes on that one for you. And let's see. Yeah. And then the fifth one is understanding what a covenant relationship is, that we are in covenant

relationship with Jesus. You know, they had all these covenants in the Old Testament. You have the covenant with one holy couple with Adam and Eve, one holy family with Noah, it's growing, one holy tribe with Abraham, one holy nation with Moses at Mount Sinai, one holy kingdom with David, and in the New Testament, one holy Catholic and apostolic church. And we're a part of that. Well, I hope that helps you. On our next show, we're going to talk more about important content for our family formation. Got some good things lined up for you. And I do hope this helps you and kind of encourages you, you know, to go forward and

to be mom and dad and to teach your children and to be an example. Let me pray for you. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Lord Jesus, thank you so much. Thank you so much for the relationship we have with you and that you have called us to leave everything and follow you. You've called us to think like you and to act like you, to take on your yoke. We thank you, Lord, for the ability to pray, to hear your voice and for us to talk to you. May we teach that to our children. Thank you for giving us the scriptures that are

inspired by you. Lord, help us to ourselves be engaged in scripture and to bring our children into into it. I thank you, Lord, for the sacraments. We get to meet you at all these incredible moments in salvation history, your baptism, confirmation, Eucharist, penance, the anointing of the sick, marriage, and of course, the holy orders, all of these you instituted, Lord, because you want to be with us. And I pray that we can walk in such a way as parents that our kids will get that. And then Fourth, Lord, we pray that we pray that we would really live by the corigma, the proclamation of the gospel, and that that would be used, that seven point corigma would be used for

our kids to check their own hearts before they go to confession. And finally, Lord, again, thank you for the covenant that we have with you. You are so faithful. And it's in your mighty name, in the name of Jesus that we pray, amen. Name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. My friend, I love you. Look forward to talking to you next week, and I just pray that you continue on

and be that disciple and teach your kids how to do it too. God bless.