The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - Your Questions and My Answers (Part 3)

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

Do you have some tips for moving on after forgiving someone? What is your method for highlighting your Bible? Did Peter and Paul get along? These are just some of the questions that Jeff answers in this week’s podcast. The questions address forgiveness, how Jeff marks his Bible, where he gets his tea, and more! Snippet from the Show “Nothing so likens you to God, as to forgive him who has injured you.” -St. Thomas Aquinas 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 Kaven Show, where we talk about the Bible, discipleship, and evangelization, putting it all together in living as activated disciples. This is show 386. Your questions, my answers, part three. Hey, welcome to the show this week. Good to have you again. Boy, we've been getting a lot of questions. I have been getting so many questions about different. aspects of study and becoming a disciple and a couple of personal questions today. Seven altogether questions. We're going to talk about methods of highlighting your Bible.

We're going to talk about how do you really get your arms around the whole story of salvation history? Did Peter and Paul compete? That's a question that came up. And can you, let's see, another question we're going to be taking a look at is really forgiving someone when it doesn't feel like you did. and then also a question about Russell Brand, all that today on this episode of the Jeff Kaven show. Hey, if you want the notes to any show that I'm doing, all you have to do is text

my name, Jeff Kaven's, and you can text it to the number 33777. Trinity twice, seven, three times. That's quite a holy number. So it's 33777. We'll get you on board. and the nice thing about a show like this is that we can stop every once in a while and just say, well, let's take a look at a few of the questions that have been coming in. Like, for example, show 362 was Questions and Answers Part 1. Questions and Answers Part 2 was a show 367. So five shows went by there. And now we have, oh my, we have one, two, three, four, five, six, 17.

We have about 17, 17, 18 shows ago. so it's time to answer some of your questions, shall we? All right. Number one, when I forgive someone, Jeff, I find myself dwelling on it just as much as I did before I went to confession. What now? That is a good question. It's probably a question that more people would like to ask than do because there is this feeling, I guess, that if you are still struggling with some anger or resentment as far as the situation went down, in the past. And you went to confession, made a good confession, and you don't feel a whole lot better inside what do you do? So here's what I would say. And I would hope that this is something that would put into practice in my own life as well. And that is that forgiving somebody is, first of all, is not dependent upon feelings. You don't just suddenly forgive someone when you say, you know, I'm feeling it now. I'm going to forgive you. I release you. Man, that's better. it's not quite like that when someone injures you in some way whether it's speech or physically or

your reputation whatever it might be you're naturally in a state of wanting it to be all right in other words i wish it never happened but now that it happened i'm going to rely on them to make me feel like this truly has been put to bed that's a bad position to be in because you are not in control of them in fact you don't even know what they're thinking most likely what's hidden deep in their heart you don't know maybe they are ready to strike again maybe they are ready to repent and you don't know it and i you know i've often thought in my own life that when i i had to make a tough decision like forgiving someone there typically was something on the other side of that that was catapulting me to a new level of my walk with the

lord and so it was almost like this was a test that i had to go through because life happened this way, where somebody hurt me and I needed, I needed to forgive them. And I have experienced that, that feeling that, that you have, and that is that it didn't work. Well, as I said, forgiving is not about feelings. It's about obedience. And because you are releasing someone from the hurt that was laid on you doesn't mean that a wound goes, goes away overnight. Wounds take time to hear. heal, but forgiving someone, releasing them, allows now the salve of the Lord, the balm of Gilead to affect that wound in your life. And you are going to get better. And there's going to be

better days where you're not dwelling on it, where you might actually end up loving the person. And so I would suggest pay attention to your own soul right now. If you have forgiven, do not allow that to come back. Just keep saying to yourself, I have forgiven, I have released them, I'm not taking this baggage and this bondage on of a feeling hurt, not baggage as person, but baggage as wound. I'm not going to take that back. And so that takes some fortitude. That takes some intentionality to do that. So as it took some intentionality to go into confession, it takes intentionality to walk out too and to know what you are prepared to do if those feelings start to jump on you once again.

And so what I would really recommend another thing is this, and that is that when that happens, and you feel that old feeling jumping back on you, and it scares you, it's like, I don't want to be there. I would recommend doing something kind for someone. I would recommend saying something to others about that person that is positive, the things you appreciate, I have found that my heart changes when I start to confess what is right and to say person so-and-so sure has a gift for this or that.

Or I appreciated one time when they said and you don't have to make stuff up. You can just say the truth and pray for them. If they are deceased, you can always go to a gravesite if you're within driving distance and you can go and just offer up a prayer for that. person. But I guess my main point for you is that this intentionality that brought you to confession needs to stay with you when you leave confession because you still need to work on not taking that back. Hope that helps a little bit. Number two, can you briefly discuss your method of highlighting your Bible? Well, yes, I can. You probably have heard me talk from time to time about the joy that I get from marking my Bible. And I really do. In fact, it was just this morning,

my wife and I, when we were in prayer, I had my old Bible and we were in Amos. We were reading Amos. And I started to leaf around some of the other prophets around there, Josea and others. And I was noticing some of the markings that I made from 15, 20 years ago. And my other Bible that I have, I have markings now that are 48 years old. They're 48 years old there. And I'm seeing what I wrote when I was 18 years old. And would you do it the same? Well, no, probably not, but that's the way I did it.

You know, you kind of life happened and you wrote in your Bible and highlighted with some really good highlighters and some terrible highlighters and over time you learn. And so, yeah, I know something of Bible highlighting. I'll tell you what I do. And I think there's another question that came in about what my colors meant. So I'll just put these two together for that. So in my Bible, first of all, I don't use wet markers because wet markers can bleed through. There's two things, bleeding through and ghosting.

Ghosting, you can't help. It's just there. But bleeding through, you can. That's why I use colored pencils. But let me give you, what I think you want to know in that is how do I use my colors, which you can hear here. in this nice tin box, I have Karin Dash 12 supercolor soft. It's a nice little case that goes in my briefcase, and I have 12 colors in here.

Truth be told, I only use 10 of them, mostly. I have two other ones that get used a little bit. But here it is on general highlights that I just want to draw my attention to something that doesn't have a particular topic, like don't do this or do this, or the charygma, the proclamation of the gospel prayer or something to do with the structure of the church. I just highlight in yellow. And these colors are so good, and these pencils last.

Even if you drop them, they last. A lot of them don't. You drop one of those, those cheap ones, and that core breaks in nine, ten pieces, not with these. And I believe it's a good thing to put a little bit more money into what you have. So I got the yellow. Red is anything, don't do. Do sin. It's not becoming. You don't want to do this. You want to avoid. So that's red. Green is you want to do this. That's like the green light and the red light. You want to do this. This is positive. This is what the church should be doing. This is what you should be doing in your life. So I can look on a page and see green and red right away. And I can almost stand back three feet and tell you in this chapter I'm going to talk about three things we don't do and two things we should. I can just do that.

that by looking at the colors. Now, I also have orange, which orange is the carigma. It's the proclamation of the gospel, eight times in the book of Acts. But there's aspects of the gospel that is preached in other parts of the Bible, and I highlight those in orange as well. Purple, anything to do with God and Jesus and deity and things that are unique to God. I use purple, self-evident there, royal color. Baby blue. Actually, it's what do they call it on here? Turquoise. It's turquoise blue.

I use that for prayer and worship. Anything that aids and words and phrases and chapters about praising God and prayer. And then I have a real light green called light green. And each color has a number as well. That one's number 3888. And I use that for things dealing with the church, the sacraments, Eucharist, and things like that. And the other question that I had also ask,

what do you do when you've already highlighted something, but you see something new? And now you've already highlighted. Well, that's a good question too. What I do is I take the color that also should go with that verse, and I underline or I draw a square around it in that other color. Gray, I use this pretty well, and that is that anything quoted from the Old Testament,

I highlight in gray, and then I go back to the Old Testament and highlight it too. So there's a cross-reference there. You say, why gray? Well, when I first started thinking of these things years ago, gray was like the color of print on a newspaper, and so it was, read all about it, you know, from the Old Testament. It's just my way of doing it. Brown is wisdom. Brown is wisdom.

Why did I choose brown? Because wisdom is earthy. It is to be lived out here on earth. blue is encouragement. It's for the blues. If you have the blues, I will highlight verses that will address the blues. That's why I have blue. And pink is things in the Bible that are pivotal. They are actions or words or events that change the entire course of salvation history. And then I have an okra at the end here. And I don't know what I use that one for. I don't use it much. I think it's been sharpened once. So that's it. That's how I use them. number three the third question can you tell me some things i should be doing to get to know the bible as you say as god's story it seems so big so let me see that again can you tell me some things i should be doing to get to know the bible as you say as god's story i can tell by the rest of your letter here that you already are aware of the great adventure so what i would say is this and i

actually had a guy come up to me back in, boy, isn't it, early 80s? And he was studying with me, and I was teaching him how to read the Bible with the great adventure in the 80s. And I said to him, I want you, first of all, to read the 14 narrative books. And if you don't know what those are, the Bible timeline has, we have a Bible timeline chart that you can lay out in front of you the entire story, all the books, the 14 narrative books, the 14 narrative books, the 14 narrative books are the books that take you through the story. They take you through the story. So, you know, you start with Genesis and then Exodus and, and then you move on to numbers and Joshua and judges and First and Second Kings and First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings,

Ezra, Nehemiah, First Maccabees, and then Luke and Axe. Those are the 14. So I imagine you're stopping right now so you can go back and write those down. but that's how you start to read you really get the story down and then you start going through it again and you place some of the the books that fit in the story but they're not necessarily the narrative like psalms for example and you start to read those in the context of samuel and kings and you get a better you get a better idea now to just take this one step further let me say this that yes learn the 14 narrative books learn the 12 periods that those 14 books apply to. You can do it in a morning.

You really can. You can do it in a morning. And then once you get that, here's an exercise that I have advocated, not only in helping other people read the Bible, but it's something that I do myself. And that is this. I will take a person from each period. So, for example, the patriarchs, Abraham. Abraham is the first, and then you have Isaac, then you have Jacob, and then you have

Joseph. And so what I encourage people to do is take Abraham, stop right there, write Abraham's name on a piece of paper, and now I want you to take 10 minutes, and I want you to write every relationship to Abraham that you can think of. For example, Isaac, son of Abraham, Jacob, grandson of Abraham, Joseph, great, great grandson of Abraham. And so then you start saying, well, Sarah, wife of Abraham, Ishmael, first son of Abraham, but not Isaac. And so I go through Mariah, the place he sat was going to sacrifice Isaac, Er of the Caldez, where Abraham came from. Covenant with Abraham is Genesis 15 to 22. And so I just write down everything that I can think of. And the more that you can connect to what you know, the more you learn it and you start

to see the connections between periods. Trust me, it works. You just got to put the time in. And that's what I do. And that's what I've done for years. So I'll be sitting at a red light and I'll just come up with Joshua. And I'll start thinking about all the connections to Joshua.

Old and New Testament, right? So that's how I do that. I would really encourage you to do it. And to do it regularly, you know, learning the Bible is not a one-time thing. You're not going to do it. if I would have stopped when I made the Bible timeline chart in 1985, was it 83, and if I would have stopped then, I would not be able to teach it like I do today.

I teach it like I do today because I stuck with it and it's been my life now for 46 years. And that's how you do it, you know, and that's what I would encourage you to do. Hey, we're going to take a break. When I come back, I want to take in a look at this question that someone has about Peter and Paul. did they compete with each other? You're listening to the Jeff Kaven show. I'm 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. This is incredible. You also get the entire text of the catechism of the Catholic Church, as long with the Catechism in a year podcast, the Bible in year podcast. 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 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 and 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 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 a thousand 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. It's kind of an open Friday. It's an open Friday. Questions from you. Good ones. Appreciate that. By the way, if you do want to ask me a question that ends up on one of these, your questions, my answer show, all you got to do is email me. And if your question is something that I think I can answer, I'll certainly put it on the show. But you can write me at The Jeff Kaven Show at ascensionpress.com. The Jeff Kavan Show at Ascension Press.com. The Jeff Cave and Show at ascensionpress.com. And, yeah, I look forward to hearing from you. Okay, continuing on, do you think that Peter and Paul competed with each other in terms of

honor and respect from the community? Or do you think they worked well together? That is such a good question. And I don't really, I don't recall anybody asking that before. And so I appreciate your thinking on that. I appreciate getting in there and kind of, you know, I wonder how all this worked. well here's the deal i would say two things one peter at least it seems from the bible has respect for paul and he appreciates the learning of paul now everybody has personalities and we're not talking

about the personalities necessarily but he seems to get along with paul and he's in fact he has a lot of respect for him and even warns his his listeners and he his, you know, the people listening to his writing his writings, he encourages them to stick with Paul. Here's what he says in 2 Peter 316. He says, there are some things, and this is writing, he's commenting on Paul's writings. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do other scriptures. So Peter is aware that Paul is deep. Sometimes it's hard to understand where he's going with it.

That's Peter, being humble and honest, he's saying that because Paul is sometimes hard to understand because of the depth, the ignorant and the unstable twist to their own destruction the things that he is saying, and they do this with other scriptures as well. So I think Peter had tremendous respect for Paul, and Paul, he recognized Paul as the one who's going to the Gentiles, and Peter will be going to the Jews, and both of them are super apostles. Whether Peter felt totally 100% comfortable with Paul, I don't know, but I can tell you this, that Jesus, his work was copied, what he said and what he did, and I go through this in my Acts of the Apostles class. It's 20 sessions to go through Acts at Ascension, and I show you the

parallel between Peter and Paul that Peter did what Jesus did and said what Jesus said in his ministry in the book of Acts. And Paul does the same with the Gentiles. It's amazing. It's like both of the super apostles are in sync with what Jesus said, what Jesus did, how he dealt with circumstances, how he dealt with people who were ill or even dead. It is remarkable. So I think the fact that that scripture itself has them in parallel moving along to different audiences. I would say that that is a testimony that these two are thought to be together. In fact, in fact, the early church, get this, the early church, they would draw pictures of Peter and Paul looking at each other like Remus and Romulus, the founders of Rome.

And in doing that, they were saying, these two guys are the new founders of Rome. So that's good. Now, Paul, Paul did not begin his public ministry, in fact, until he spent time with Peter. You know, he spent some time, significant time in Arabia alone. And it suggested that Jesus met with him there. And then when he was done, even after talking to Jesus, he went to Peter to confer. And he wanted to make sure that what he has is in line with the deposit of faith. And so he spent that time and then it seems at least all evidence points to paul understanding the structure and authority of of christ and what he gave to the church and he respects he respects peter oh and there's this also in philippians one 15 to 18 i'll put this in the show notes for you i put all all of it

in the show notes it says in philippians uh paul apparently has a rival gang somewhere that is preaching Christ and it's brought up to Paul's attention in Philippians 1 that hey Paul there's some people out there who are preaching Christ but it's out of envy and rivalry what do you think Paul here's what Paul says this is so beautiful and I think this says something about his heart and how he would see Peter as well he said in Philippians 1 15 through 18 some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry but others from goodwill the latter do it out of love knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaimed Christ out of partisanship, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Hey, only that in

every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed. And in that, I rejoice. What an attitude. What an attitude Paul had. Isn't that great? Okay, we have a see question number five i saw you on russell brand show and you were talking about how searching for christ was similar to what truman did in that movie how is russell doing well that's a kind question i appreciate you asking that by the way you know what i'll do in the show notes i will put a link to what russell brand did with my comments he took my comments about the truman show and searching for Christ, and he actually put the Truman show behind my words in about a one-minute excerpt. He did a phenomenal job. I appreciated that so much. And I'll put that link in the show notes for

you. Okay, got to remind myself for that. Okay, so how is Russell Brand doing? He is doing great. I got to tell you, in my talking with him, in my sharing, I am so impressed at the depth of questioning that he's going through and the the ability to hold all of these things in tension and he seems to know so much of the Bible already and philosophy and theology and bringing in some of the other you know grates of the past and integrating this in a beautiful beautiful way and so you know he continues to walk out that Christian life and I'm hats off to him for doing it publicly. I don't know that many people would want to do that. But I think it says something about his humility and that I truly, when I share with him,

when we share our thoughts together post show, he is impressive. And I'm continuing to pray for him. I stand with him as a brother in Christ. And I'm asking you to pray for him as well. This is what we do as Christians. And here is a man that is publicly noted. People know him, and he is publicly saying, I want Jesus, I want to learn more about Jesus. I think it's a great thing. And I believe that he's probably going to have an influence on other people as well. So continue to pray for him and pray that God works out in him, in his life, everything he wants to. So, praise God. Number six, okay, a couple of personal questions here. Number six, I know that this is off topic, but please tell me the brand of the hat you wear.

a lot on videos. I have my hat. I have my hat right here. If you're looking hard, no, I'm kidding. I have it here. I have two of them. I have a, what do they call it? It's light, beaver, rabbit. It's a Stetson, and it's called the Gun Club. It has nothing to do with guns. I don't know why they called the Gun Club. I think originally it was Duck Hunters or something like that. But that's what I have, John Stetson. How many X's? X's are kind of like the value of it, I guess. And this one's five. Five X, fur felt. And I have a light one. I can try to remember the name that they call these light ones. Anyway, and I have a brown one and they're identical. And so I wear them when I'm doing videos or I wear them all the time. Wear hats all the time. I have to. I have a very light

skin. So that's the answer to that. There you go. Stetson, the gun club. And I'll have to come up with the name of that light color it's like a almost a whiteish brown all right that's uh that's good now number seven where do you get your tea you talk about tea all the time well i get mine from a place that i'm not related to in any way but i get it from a place called tea source in st paul and that guy goes all around the world and sources his teas and there's so many green teas and and white tea yellow tea and black tea everything so that's where i get it i get it i get it and And I get one, I get a tea called 88th night is a great Japanese green tea that my wife and I drink in the morning. And then we also drink puer, P-U-E-R-H-Puerre.

And puer tea is from China. It's from Yunnan province, I believe. And it's a very earthy tea. It tastes like almost dirt when you first start tasting it, but then you get used to it and start loving it. And my wife will drink four or five of these cups. morning and I'll drink two or three cups of green tea and maybe one of puer that's how we start off our day and when we do lexio de vina together that's my tea story okay well hey thanks a lot for the questions that you have this week they're very good questions and I encourage more and I enjoy

this where we can just answer a few questions here enjoy your summer okay let me pray for you in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit amen Lord Jesus thank you for my friend and I lift I lift them up right now I lift my friend up to you and ask you to bless them to hold them and and to keep them safe and may they hear your voice on a daily basis give them a hunger for your word Lord help them to lead other people to you and we ask this all in your name in the name of Jesus saints Peter and Paul pray for us amen name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit Thank you.