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011320_Putting God First

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PUTTING GOD FIRST

January 12, 2020

This is the Bible study Evangelista show where we love and lift always been given. I’m Sonia Corbitt your host here on the Bible study Evangelista show. I am the Bible study Evangelista. I am so excited to be back y’all. It’s been a wonderful fulfilling renewing break for me. I hope it has for you as you are and have finished up the anger series for a Catholic TV. You may know that I conducted a poll on Facebook to find out if you liked the 28-minute podcast that the Catholic TV shows were - that was the format that was used for that, or if you prefer the 48 minute show which is how Bible study Evangelista began and continued for several years.

It seems that the majority of you want the 48 Minute Podcast and I am going to respect that. Although there were very many of you also who prefer the 28th minute and I’m going to give you my thinking behind that. It is easier to give more information and accommodate those of you who want the longer Hour podcast than it is for the 28-minute simply because I always have way more information than I have time to give you. But also, because it’s easier for you if you prefer the 28 minutes to just only listen to part of it. So, because the radio stations across the country that also use the 48-minute format and they prefer that I’m going to stick with that. So for those of you who prefer that then you’re going to get what you want and those that don’t you can listen to half of it on one day and half on another. But I was just trying my very best to accommodate all of you and I think that that does it best, so that’s what I’m going to do. So, this will be a 48-minute show, and we are talking about the new year and a vision for the new year for spiritual growth specifically. So, it it’s called Then Sings My Soul. What makes the soul sing? And the big idea then of this entire series is I’m hoping to help you get a vision for the coming year. And it’s not a vision statement, but as I said it’s a vision for spiritual growth. So we want to make 2020 a year where you’re focused on Jesus, where you’re making him the center of your life, and we’re going to look at passages in both the Old and the New Testaments and explore some ways that we can place Jesus at the center of our everyday living, our vocations specifically, our worship, our rest, and our work.

So, vocation and work are two different ideas and the Catholic church. if you’re not familiar with that a vocation is second only to our worship of God. Our vacation is either marriage or singleness specific to the religious life. And for those who are non-Catholic - well I just remember being in the Protestant church and hearing that some people were called to singleness and that is absolutely true. And I’m not saying that it’s not true like and I wide sweeping generalization because it can be, but for the most part in the Catholic church when we say singleness, we mean that that singleness is oriented to the religious life. So, monks and nuns, those who live in community with one another those types of things are where that singleness is a vocation and usually what comes with that is obedience, and celibacy, and purity. Those are the evangelical counsel’s vow to live their lives under: poverty, chastity, and obedience. And so, they are obedient then to the leader of that community and to their superiors who are directly over them, and we all are actually. Wives are to submit to their husbands as unto the Lord, and the husband obviously is the head who submits himself to


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Christ. We all submit ourselves to Christ but that’s the way it works in marriage. But vocation then is number two. That was actually something that I learned when I came into the Catholic church and it really, really helped orient me properly because as one who also has a secondary location to evangelization in the church, the new evangelization. As one of those people who is called to that Mother Teresa also said that she had a vocation within a vocation, and many of us do.

So, our vocation then first of all is our family, our community, the community in which we are being formed, in which we serve, and that community that we help get to heaven, and that helps us get to heaven, and so for me that is marriage. So, first is God, second is vocation, and then is work. Work is that employment that - it could be a career it could just be that you have a job that pays the bills ha-ha, but either way those are all priorities that we live under and that we thrive under, we should. And when they get out of balance as they had for me and they do a lot of times for Protestant pastors because they don’t have the teaching on vocation. So, we want to really make sure that our priorities in 2020 are in the correct order so that our soul can sing because there’s nothing worse than getting pulled in two different directions and this is what I experienced.

Because I do have a vocation within a vocation I did not - you know when God calls you to do something and you strive to obey him and that you want to do absolutely everything that you possibly can to achieve whatever it is that he has in mind. And so, you put all of your energy behind that and this happens with pastors in non-Catholic churches quite a bit. They sacrificed their families because they are so driven to follow God and Ministry, and actually that’s backwards. It should be God first, and that’s that personal relationship, that personal worship which we are going to talk about today, and then the family, and then the work; the second call, if you have one, and if you don’t then that’s going to be your employment which is also a call in itself really because God only puts us in places that he knows can contribute to our formation and our eventual salvation.

And so that’s why for me it was such a relief to get that to turn on vocations in the church because I was sacrificing my family and I was willing to do it. I was spending 40 hours a week or more studying and not cleaning the house, and not cooking dinner, and not even getting a shower because I was so engrossed in what I was learning and what I was hoping to share with other people. And I remember just receiving this check in my spirit you know? It would be 4 o’clock and my husband was about to come home and I hadn’t had a shower, and I hadn’t planned dinner, and I hadn’t cleaned the house and you know, this was before I had kids thankfully, because God really kind of intervened before that, thank goodness, because it would have gotten worse. But I did have that check in my spirit even though I didn't have the teaching on vocations until I started to come into the church. So that then is what we’re going to talk about throughout this series and rest fits in that. We’re going to talk about rest next week because rest actually doesn’t go at the bottom ha-ha, and we’ll see why. I don’t want to get into that too much today.

But we are going to talk then today - our text will be in Ephesians Ch. 2:1-10. So, we’re going to talk about life and death and meaning and purpose. Our faith and our life they are both a gift


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from God. The new life that we have in Christ as a gift. It’s given to us by God and we say thank you to him by living for him and putting him first. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. I don’t know about you but at the close of every year I sort of have this drive to look forward to renewal. I think we all do, and I love that our new year actually follows after the Christmas season because it is do you know the whole resolution idea is an opportunity than to see Improvement in life. And when I talk about improvement, we are specifically talking about the spiritual life here, but all growth is spiritual. I say that a lot in Unleashed, and Fearless, but all growth is spiritual. So, if you are growing mentally, intellectually, if you are growing emotionally, maybe you are working through some trauma or emotional issues, or blocks, or maybe you’re just thriving you know under the love of God and your family. Whatever it is though if it’s mental, emotional, if it’s physical, if we make resolutions, or if we are trying to get more healthy, if we’re trying to be better stewards of our finances, or our planet, maybe we are trying to recycle more whatever, all of those things contribute to our growth, and so they are all spiritual. So physical, mental, emotional, spiritual all of those are, sort of, one thing. They all contribute to the spirit and so all growth is spiritual. So, when we are thinking about resolutions and a new year, we can think then in terms of health, finances, relationships, career changes any of that stuff, but it all must come under the heading of God first. That’s our first commandment. We worship God only and we make him the center of our lives and this is so appropriate now because in December is that winter solstice.

In fact, Christmas it was actually – we don’t know for sure when or what date Jesus was actually born on. So, the church has chosen that winter solstice because it’s the longest darkest day of the whole year. And right as Jesus was born a new light has come. All of our reading in the Liturgy have been about this light and life because when Jesus comes life and light are given to the world. We see that in the Gospel of John and that very first glorious soaring chapter. In the beginning was God and God was life, and light, and he was in the bosom of God and we have seen him and seen his glory John says. He’s talking about the apostles they saw his glory. And so, because of that solstice then you know we’ve spent this time. You know I don’t know about you guys but sometimes I experience that SAD; the seasonal affective disorder where it’s been dark, and it’s been rainy and it’s just gloomy for so long. And so, at this point then; the solstice; the days begin to get longer and the light- we get more light with each passing day. So spring is coming there are longer days, there’s new life and as we consider all the areas in which we want to improve we want to ask the question: where is God in this new year? What are our spiritual goals? Is he front and center? Is he the number one priority? So, this new year this time now is a great opportunity to go finally if you’ve never done it, all in. To lay all your cards on the table with him and completely commit your whole life to Christ and following him. And if you’ve already done that then to recommit yourself to following Christ and growing in your relationship and we can do that and that’s really what we want to do. We’ll be back in a moment.

Priorities ha-ha. What makes your soul same? Well first of all we know for sure that each of us is a song that God sang into being. In fact, the Psalms and some of the prophetic scriptures talk about how God created in song and we see that picture in The Chronicles of Narnia where, I


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love this illustration it’s absolutely beautiful where Aslan opens his mouth and he begins to sing and who sings Narnia into existence. And each note is a different organism. So, the plants have one note and the grass has a note and the Animals each have their own notes and each of us according to the scriptures also have that song. We Are the song. We learned that in our series on Mary’s Magnificat; that Mary doesn’t sing the Magnificat; Mary is the Magnificat and she invites us into that same idea. We too are meant to be a Magnificat.

So, what makes our souls sing? What makes our soul sing is being everything that God created us to be. You can get that whole story in Exalted my latest book. But we are meant to be that song, and so in being all that God created us to be, by making him first, we know what that is, we can find that purpose, we can find the meaning of our lives and it doesn’t have to be some great big thing, right? Because each of us is a link in the chain between ourselves and the people that we come in contact with and that’s for good or ill. So, that involves, Our Song involves all of the people with whom we are connected. And so, it's important to have God at the center because we don’t know always in each situation what he wants us to do, and what will make our song clearest for the people around us and for ourselves as well.

So, the new year then is this beautiful great opportunity for renewal, and a more firm commitment than ever before. So, the number one priority that we need to be setting ourselves for this year is a commitment to following Christ in every single area of our life. Why? Because it’s not our life. It’s not your life dear one it’s God’s, and he gave it to you for a purpose. Let’s look at Ephesians 2:1-10. I’m going to read it first and then I’ll give some commentary, so chapter 2 verse 1:

And you he made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

Isn’t that funny? That one paragraph is all one sentence. So that’s Paul for your right? Ha-ha he likes those run-on sentences.

Verse 4:

But God, who is rich in Mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by Grace you have been saved, and he raised us up together, and made us sit together in the Heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by Grace you have been saved through faith,

he says again the second time.

And that, not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast, for we are his workmanship.

That word workmanship means poetry or song. We are his song.


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Created in Jesus Christ for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

So, Paul then is talking about how Jesus Christ has made us alive. We were dead in our trespasses and sins and we all walked in those trespasses and sins according to the course of the world, according to the prince of the power of the air. So, he’s talking there about spiritually dead, we are spiritually dead and lost when we are walking in trespass and sin. We’ll get to that in a moment in a little more detail.

But walking is a Biblical expression and it pictures a steady normal progress with God. And so, Paul is referring here to – he is kind of drawing a contrast between the old walk, which was dead in trespasses and sin, and that could be a path of immorality, it could be a dark alley of evil and mortal sin. Basically, what he's saying is that we should no longer be walking according to those past evil ways. And baptism is the beginning, it’s the seed of that salvation in Christ, but we all fall short of the glory of God Paul says in other places in Romans. But throughout his writings he makes that point that we all fall short. And so, we have been baptized, and the seed of Salvation has been placed in us through Christ through that baptism. And if we were baptized as adults then that seed was planted there and we must still, we must all still make a commitment as we grow in formation, and we grow in development, and we age, as we get older, we must each make that commitment over and over and over again. It’s not a one-time thing, which I’ll come back to in a moment.

But we are saved, we are given that salvation, that seed of Salvation so that we can have a life characterized by good works and virtue. And so, we are supposed to be walking worthy of our calling it says in verse 1. And that means to walk and love and charity, in Agape, sacrificial love and in light and in wisdom. And so Paul is pointing out to the people in Ephesus, this letter Ephesians is a letter that Paul wrote to the Christians in Ephesus and he saying that they formerly walked according to the world’s ways oh, and he’s talking about that way being the way of Satan, the spiritual adversary, the prince of the power of the air he says. And that was an ancient way of looking at where the demon’s habitat is, which is around us, everywhere. In the spiritual realm, but it’s like in the air. Right? I mean all of the spirits actually inhabit that area, but because that’s true, the angels, Saint Paul says specifically, that he is the prince of the power of the air.

And so, the sons of, when he talks about being the sons of disobedience, he’s saying, that’s a Hebrew way of saying; those who are characterized by. So, they’re characterized by disobedience. So, if you are living in disobedience that is a trespass, it is sinful. Disobedience, and rebellion, was the very first sin ever committed in heaven by the angels, they rebelled. And why? Because they were disobedient. And so, sons of disobedience are people who are disobedient. They are people of unfaith, whereas Christians then, are supposed to be people of wisdom and light and virtue and good works, and lusts then means a strong desire. The church calls those passions, okay? So even with the flesh, it actually pertains more towards, more than just sensual cravings of the flesh. It actually includes fame, the desire for fame, and power, and riches. So those are also ways that we walk in disobedience; when we are striving after fame, power, and riches, or the lusts of the flesh. That can mean addiction, that can mean sex, that


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can mean porn, it can mean romance novels, those trashy romance novels, the stuff we watch on TV. Anymore every single thing on TV is just full of trash, is it not?

So, he says that we were dead then. Why? Because of Adam’s sin, that sin of the original sin, but also concupiscence that came after that. That’s one of those big old church words that’s very hard to say, but it just means the tendency then towards sin. We all have that, and that causes us to walk in spiritual death, and only God can grant new life and save us from that terrible predicament. And out of his Mercy, Paul says, God gave us his son while we were even his enemies. Long before, he loved us. He loved us first, he took the initiative. So, in addition then, to making us spiritually alive through baptism, he also determined that eventually we would sit in heavenly places with Jesus, our savior, in the ages to come, he says in verses 9 and 10. And He, God, wants to demonstrate his overwhelming mercy, and his kindness, throughout all eternity to all the angels and Saints, to all the humans who have ever lived, and whoever will live. And all, everyone, all of creation groans, it says, to see the revelation of those who have been saved in Christ. And Paul, he’s the one who says that actually, and so it has nothing to do with whether we deserve it or not, or whether we have merited it, or earned it. In fact, you cannot earn it. You cannot earn these graces. You cannot earn salvation, you cannot earn Grace, you cannot earn virtue, you cannot earn wisdom, you cannot earn sacrificial love. It is a gift, a gift from God. And it’s only because God is merciful and kind that he reaches out with that initiative, to save us, and offer those graces to us.

So, Christians then, he says in verses 8 through 10: We have been saved by this grace, and saved then, we’ll look at in a few moments, is not a moment in time where we say a prayer. Salvation in the scriptures has motion. We’ll come back to that in a few minutes. I was just trying to do an overview in the segment. But faith it’s the channel, it’s not the cause, because faith itself is a gift from God. God gives us the faith and he alone saves. So, salvation never originates in the efforts of us. Why? Because we labor under that concupiscence of original sin that continues on throughout our lives. If God did not intervene then temptation would always be overpowering to us, and it’s the Graces that he gives us that give us the faith to reach out to him to begin with. So, nothing originates with us except for sin. In fact, the Psalms say that our righteousness itself are as filthy rags, and that filthy rags is actually, those are menstrual rags, menstrual linens. So, he’s using very graphic terminology there in the Psalms to say that even our very best, even as good as we could possibly be it’s still filthy compared to God. And so, we cannot earn anything from God. We don’t deserve anything; we don’t earn anything. Nothing we do alone by itself can earn God’s love and his grace, because it is, because it originates in him, he must give it to us, and he does, through Christ, is what Paul is saying. So, salvation then is of the Lord, and the past tense of that verb 'saved', throughout this passage, is showing us that our salvation, it has occurred in the past at the cross, and it is a gift, and it continues on. We’ll be back in a moment. This is Sonja Corbitt your Bible study Evangelista.

So now that we’ve done an overview of the passage Ephesians 2 verses 1 through 10, I want to go back to the idea that it’s not our life. Our life itself originates from God he breathed it forward in this song, and we are meant to grow into the fullness of what he intended that song to finally be. So, the moment that we are baptized then, we are incorporated into the family of


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God. It is the seed of Salvation the catechism tells us. And Confirmation ads the grass is necessary for us to be able to live as a evangelizers and Witnesses in the world. A witness, or an evangelist, or an Evangelista if you are female, as I am, thank you. An evangelist is simply someone who shares their faith from their own point of view. And each of us then is meant to be an evangelist and even unto martyrdom if need be. And so, the grace we received a confirmation are meant to give us the power and the authority and the strength to go all the way with God.

So, there is no excuse for us to stand before God at the judgement and say well I couldn’t quite get there. Because God has given us every single possible help. All the Graces necessary. The salvation was his initiative. Jesus died on the cross. He left us the sacraments. He gave us a guardian angel. We have access to the mediation and the prayers of all the angels and Saints. We have what I love, I love the sprayer that’s in the Liturgy right now. I heard it this morning at Mass and I want to read it to you. It’s the prayer after communion it says:

May your people, O Lord, whom you guide and sustain in many ways, experience, both now and in the future, the remedies which you bestow, that, with the needed solace of things that pass away, they may strive with ever deepened trust for things eternal.

So not only do we have the sacraments, the expiatory sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, we have all of the graces necessary to be saved, we have our guardian angels, we have access to the prayers and intercession of all the angels and saints, but we also have the solace of things that pass away. What does that mean? That means the things that brings us joy in everyday life; our families, our children, a glass of wine, one glass, sitting on the porch, that’s my favorite thing, I love to sit on the porch, or in front of the fire in the winter when it’s too cold to be outside, there’s Simple Pleasures in life are all the Solace of things that pass away. Whatever brings you pleasure, reading a book, conversations with friends, whatever. Those things are meant - they are things that pass away, but God gives them to us as a gift because they give us solace. It says the needed solace of things that pass away. So, God has given us every possible grace necessary for us to grow into the song that he made us to be. So, I want to actually mention this idea in Confirmation, the Sacrament of Confirmation.

Sacraments are outward signs of an inward reality, so there’s a physical form to a sacrament. In baptism is water, and in the Eucharist it’s bread and wine. In confirmation it’s the laying on of hands, and the oils, but then there’s also the spiritual reality that goes with those. So, in baptism, it is the seed of salvation, and the cleansing from original sin. In the Eucharist it is the body, blood, soul and Divinity of Christ himself. And the grace is necessary to nourish us spiritually every single day, and help us to remain faithful to God in all of those ways of obedience that we seek to follow. And then confirmation; it is the Graces necessary to be a witness in the world even unto martyrdom if necessary and there was a prediction and I think it was at Fatima or La Salette. I can’t remember which one, but it was, the prediction was made


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that the great apostasy that will happen in the end times well, when it comes to the people of the church, Christians who have been baptized, those who will apostatize in the latter days, most of those will be because they haven’t been confirmed. Isn’t that interesting? So, if you have not received confirmation dear one, I beg you go to RCIA and get in that, and make sure that you are confirmed.

It’s very, very important to our spiritual formation and the graces that we need to live out this calling that God has made on our lives. It’s not our life, it’s his. Ha-ha he gives it to us to participate and the salvation of the whole world. So, here’s my question, it’s not about you, it’s not about me; has it ever stopped being about you, and started being about him completely? Have you gone all-in with God? And St Paul makes that point in the chapter in Ephesians 2. He says you were dead in the trespasses in the sins in which you once walked and that’s true of each of us, we all fall off the road and this is actually two levels. Trespasses and sins are actually two different things. So, original sin and concupiscence then that’s our heritage as children of Adam and Eve. Sons and daughters of Eve it says in The Chronicles of Narnia. But we are sons and daughters of Eve, so we are born into original sin and we were born into that concupiscence, which is the tendency to sin, and so we want to know what is the status of our life before Christ? So, we didn’t have a life, we were dead. That’s the reason the church gives permission to baptize. Anyone can baptize as long as they use the three-fold formula; in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and water, as long as you do that. If someone is in danger of death, or a baby, or an aborted baby, or in any of those cases regular life people are allowed to baptize because it’s that important. It removes the original sin and it gives us the seed of salvation, and so that concupiscence is mitigated. So, until that we don’t have a life, we’re dead.

Now and non-Catholic churches the one I grew up in, the denomination that I grew up in it was always said that as long as you have prayed that Prayer of Salvation then you are saved, and baptism is not necessary. But I would say now when you know better you do better, and the sacraments then are both. It’s both a matter of faith. and a matter of form, and in fact that’s biblical throughout Titus. If you want to look more at that you can get Fulfilled, and look at the laver in the Old Testament and how that laver was the Forerunner of baptism in so many different metaphors; the Red Sea, lots and lots of stuff, but that laver, and the Red Sea and then those foreshadow baptism, and baptism then cleanses us. But then after that as Jesus told Peter and the upper room just before he made his sacrifice and he experienced and offered his passion, he said we still need our feet washed because we still trespass. What does that mean? It means that you go somewhere maybe intentionally that you’re not supposed to be, or it may be unintentionally. I actually heard a story about a guy who was going to go to dinner with a friend, and he was unfamiliar with the city and he missed the turn for the restaurant and instead you turned around in this huge parking lot and his friend looked at him and was like a freaking out at him. And he said we can’t be here we have to leave right now. And the driver for the guy said why? And he said because we’re in the Pentagon. Ha-ha And just right away all these vehicles were headed toward them from all different directions. Set the trespassing wasn’t intentional, but in either case they were in a place they shouldn’t have


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been, and that’s what it means to trespass; to be somewhere you’re not supposed to be whether it’s intentional or not.

But sin is just that sin. Sin is I was always thought it means missing the mark. The Mark is the bull’s eye of Christ and each of us tries maybe we don’t try, but if we are living and trying to live for Christ, then we try to hit the mark, right? But we miss, and so that too can be intentional or unintentional, but either way, in the book of Romans St Paul says to his Roman Christians there that the wages, or the payment of sin is death, whether it’s intentional or not. Now your responsibility for it can be mitigated by whether it’s intentional or not, but the consequences, many times, are there, they come whether or not you meant to. I mean it’s the same. Like you’re jamming out in the car and you’re listening to one of your favorite songs and you’re singing at the top of your lungs and you look down and you’re doing 80 and how do you know because there’s a cop in your rearview mirror. Right? He doesn’t care that you’re living a happy life and you’re a singing your favorite song. Who’s going to give you a ticket anyway. And so, whether it’s intentional or unintentional sin is sin. And why is that important? Because Jesus came to give us life and give us life more abundantly. That means vehemently, it means overflowing life it means the kind that makes you sing, that kind of life and everything sucks life out of your spiritually and emotionally and physically. In every single way send is detrimental to the human person and that’s why we shouldn’t sin because it brings death.

Every single time sin brings death and so I would live before Jesus intervened is one of death of trespasses and sins and death and darkness, but verse 4 says, 'but God'. I love that, 'but God'. Everything starts to swing there on that 'but'; Jesus takes the initiative. So right there in that verse four we see that there’s this huge turn of events about to take place. God in his goodness and mercy does not leave creation in this awful state. We deserve his wrath because we are disobedient and we are rebellious, but God will do something to fix the situation. And I believe as I say in Fearless that he does that specifically to kind of thumb his nose at the fallen angels because he does not save the angels. They fell, right? Why? Well I go into it in great detail in Fearless, but because Angels don’t have a body to limit them, so they know everything that they know, all at one time. They knew the consequences of their fallen state, what it would be, and they chose it anyway, and then they went on to try to deceive us because God loves us so much. And because we do have a physical body we’re actually, right now, we’re lower than the angels. We are limited in that physical body to receive information in increments of time and because of that we are not as intelligent, and we’re not as, well intelligent as angels are. And so, we’re below them right now, but there will come a time when Paul says that we will judge the angels. We will be higher than the angels and they hate us because Jesus loves us so much more, well not more than the angels, but he loves us enough to save us in our limitations. We'll be back.

I want to thank my newest friends of the show Natalie K, and Bob R. Thank you each for loving and lifting me. I want to mention our retreats: Standing in the Word in Hanceville Alabama at The Shrine of Mother Angelica. That will be in June. That’s going to be a great, great time together. We’re going to have lots of talks. I’ll be doing several, and then we’ll have breakout sessions with lots of other speakers. The details on that will be coming out shortly. I need to


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just coordinate a few things with them still. I hope that you’ll make arrangements to be there if you can if you’re close especially you might be able to drive and if you’re down in the South that’s in Alabama cow pasture way out in the middle of nowhere. So, it’s a beautiful, beautiful setting. Also, the tour of Italy the Italian pilgrimage is coming up in October the 5th through the 16th. We’re going to be stopping in several places. We'll have mass every day, we’ll have confession, we’ll have adoration, we’re going to go to Tuscany to a winery, we’re going to go to the Vatican, we’ll have a Papal audience, lots and lots of stuff going on there too, so just take a look at the website. Also, the Catholic TV episodes are all there on my site. I’ve kind of been working on that a little more too, kind of updating some things so anyway oh that’s going on.

We left off talking about how sin – we may think we are alive, but sin makes life smoke and mirrors. It’s hiding the fact that we’re lacking Abundant Life, we’re lacking self-control, we lack peace, we lack stability and balance. And the catechism tells us, and I mentioned this earlier, that without God’s grace, with the grace that Jesus won for us on the cross, the devil’s temptations are always going to overpower us. So that’s why we pray every day in the Our Father, lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Now God doesn’t lead us into temptation. He’s not out to tempt us. That’s kind of a bad way to word it. It basically means just don’t let me be tempted and deliver me from evil. And so, we pray that and in fact that’s actually a mini exorcism. The Exorcists say that that’s a mini exorcism every time we pray it and every time you go to confession - confession is actually more powerful than an exorcism they say because it’s voluntary and it is stopping it before it’s gotten any further. We’ll talk about that in a few more minutes.

But Paul gives us lessons in humility. He’s talking about how we’re dead in trespasses and sins and in Romans in Chapter 7:18-19 he says himself, this is Saint Paul now, the apostle. He says I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh. I will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want, is what I do. I mean we all feel like that, sometimes, don’t we? I love that he says that. He says I delight in the law of God according to the inward man, the spiritual man, but I see another law in my members, his body, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. Oh, wretched man that I am who will deliver me from this body of death? But then look what he says, I thank God he praises through Jesus Christ Our Lord because with the mind I myself serve the law of God through Christ even though with the flesh I serve the law of sin. So he is, he is praising Jesus for giving us the power and the authority in his sacrifice in his passion he has one for us to Grace to be able to control our passions so that we don’t have to sin.

Dear one here’s the truth and I say this a lot, if we’re sinning, if we’re living in a life of sin and trespasses it’s because we are choosing it. We have to have a strategy to cooperate with grace. And how do we get more grace? We’ll talk about that in a few minutes, but we want to go back here, we want to talk about salvation. God has saved us. This is an amazing thought; we deserve wrath, we deserve eternal death, but God steps in and intervenes to fix it. He offers us the solution. It's amazing! What does he do? He saves us. He pulls us out of the pit he says in the Psalms. He gives us strength in the inner man. He strengthens the bars of our gates he says


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so that we have a stronger defense against the temptations and the attacks of the evil one. That's the solution. The salvation of God on a daily basis is the answer to the question what do we do? So, what is salvation? As I mentioned earlier as we did the overview it is past, present, and future. Verbs in the scriptures especially in the Greek they have motion.

So salvation is spoken of in the scriptures even in Paul and three ways, it’s done in the past because Jesus won it for us on the cross, it is a occurring now on a daily basis as we cooperate with his Grace's, and it will finally be done when we stand before God in Heaven. So, salvation then is not a moment in time. It is an ongoing conversion as the church teaches. It must occur on a daily basis. We must renew that commitment to Christ every single day. Wake up with that absolute determination of the will, I am going to serve God today here. And if you don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing here’s a challenge: what’s the last thing he said for you to do, and have you done it? And if you haven’t why not? Now I can say that because he had been after me for over a year probably two really for me to begin going to Daily Mass. And I’ve always wanted to do that. We homeschool our kids though and there was a season in which it just wasn’t practical, and we also live 25 minutes away from church in either direction. There are two churches that are actually almost equal distance from our house and so it just wasn’t practical for me to leave them, or to drag them to church and spend our school morning doing that because it's so far away from our home. So that season didn’t work out to begin with, but he had placed that longing in my heart, and it wasn’t just a longing it was also almost a command. He was inviting me, which is also - a word of God is a command, it’s a promise and a command. So, he was inviting me and asking me to make that commitment. I couldn’t at the time. And then my excuse was well my husband and I don’t have a lot of time just him and I. But we were - every morning we would get up and go to the porch and have a coffee together and sit and talk you know? We'd do our morning prayer and then we would you know chat a little bit, and have our coffee, and I didn’t want to just leave him and then run to church you know because I’m already a little Jesus freak probably according to other people and I didn’t want to just add that abandonment you know to it in case he felt that way, and so that was my excuse, you know?

So, what did he do? He worked it out so that eventually I – he was getting up earlier than I was so he was having his coffee and was finished by the time I got up and I sat down to do my morning prayer in a separate place because he was already sitting at the computer when he got up, because he had already had his coffee and done his prayer. So, I would get up and do mine in a separate place and that’s when God kept saying, “okay, so now that’s not an issue anymore, when are you going to do it?” And then I just couldn’t get up on time. I mean I am; I need a lot of sleep I’ll be honest, I need at least 9 to 10 hours a night to be a human the next morning and I just couldn’t make myself get up, and he just said kept saying well go to bed earlier. And I was like oh Lord, and eventually I finally did and so this is my second week of daily mass every single day and I’m loving that I have not only been able to do it, but that I have done it and I have committed to it and that I am reaping the fruit of that. So, what has God asked you to do? What was the last thing he asked you to do? and commit to doing it. Make a plan, and if it’s impossible right now, ask him to work the circumstances out so that you’re able


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to do it, because that’s the last thing he wanted and if we haven’t done that then we haven’t been obedient in that area so we’re trespassing. We’re in not a mortal sin, well it could be a mortal sin depending on what it is. If you’re in a habit or something that you really need to lay down and be rid of, that could definitely end up being a mortal sin. But you and he know. I’m not here to dogpile on anybody, I’m just saying do what God said, okay?

So, when God saves us, he has done the work of deliverance. This is a great point; if you are involved in some sort of sin habit, a stronghold, maybe it’s taking over you, maybe it has already overtaken you, and you don’t see a way out, you don’t know a way out, you’re in a pit. He has delivered. Jesus Christ has giving you the grace and the power to lay that down. All we have to do is go to him in our misery and in our nothingness, and in our poverty, and in our wretchedness, and say to him I must have your help, I must have grace Lord help me and he will do it. I believe that right now we’re living in a time in history in the church that God is pouring out his graces so that we can be free of the sin that is holding us back from being the song that has made us to be and limiting how our soul sings, or doesn’t sing. This is a Grace Paul says twice, we have been saved through Grace. What is Grace? Grace is God treating us better than we deserve. As I said he didn’t save the angels, He gave us the gift, it’s a gift we don’t deserve and we cannot earn. He saved us by grace, but not just Grace he says it is the gift of God. Grace gives gifts. It’s not faith that saves us but that’s the object of our faith that saves us, he is the object.

So, I remember being in Michigan when the lake was frozen over and there were cars driving on it, right? And so, the initial driving out onto that frozen lake is an act of faith, but it’s not faith that keeps the truck or the car from falling into the water, it is the thickness of the ice. So, with us it’s not our faith that saves us, it’s the faith in the work of Christ that saves us and that’s why we must latch onto him and beg him for the Graces to leave that sin behind. It is a gift it is our gift; God is offering that gift to you right now with a sound of my voice that’s why you’re listening to this show. He’s offering you the gift of the grasses that will help you to come out of those trespasses and sin and live and light and life. There’s nothing that makes us right with God except for God. So, when we’re talking about having 20/20 vision we need to start with the face in the mirror. Who do you see when you look at yourself? Are you dead in sin, are you an enemy of God by your lifestyle, are you someone who is abiding in the wrath of God because of mortal sin? He has saved you and brought you back to life.

Here are your action items; count your blessings, take up the chalice of salvation it says, psalm 1:15, 'what shall I render to the Lord for all of the things he has rendered to me?' (the gifts) 'I will take up the Chalice of salvation, I will call on the name of the Lord.' So, go to mass, receive the sacrament of Eucharist and then do your good works. In Ephesians 2:8 Paul says that we were created for those works from the foundation of the world. And for God’s sake please, put in place a strategy to stop sinning. Don’t cherish sin. Psalm 66 says that when we cherish those trespasses and sins, God does not hear our prayers. They don't make it, they're not according to his will, and so that's why he can’t hear them, because we are praying against his will. The will of God is that we be free from sin dear one, that is what makes him first, that is what


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makes the soul sing. We’ll talk more about that. Specifically, we’re going to talk about rest next week. This is Sonja Corbitt your Bible study Evangelista.

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