#527 The Plan of Life, Prayer, and the DNC In Chicago

I live out in the far west suburbs now , thankfully because the DNC just got underway and Planned Parenthood , I saw , is advertising outside of the DNC . The convention in Chicago Pay as you go , donor only you get it free .

If you want vasectomies and abortion services outside the event , they have a big blow up IUD there somewhere near the entrance and so access , of course , to abortions are front and center in this year's DNC is , from what I understand , kamala Harris of course loves to promote abortion .

John Paul would call this the party of the culture of death , and it's becoming clear every day that there's that battle being raged that I speak about so often between our Lord and Satan and in the spiritual realm is intensifying here on earth , between good and evil , between truth and lies , and people are choosing sides . It's the clearest thing .

It's amazing what's happening today . I've never seen it this clear . You know , people are vocally , loudly , sometimes , choosing sides . And may I suggest you choose life , choose the culture of life because it has eternal consequences . Our choices here , don't we ? To do that , we have to draw nearer and nearer to Jesus Christ .

When you choose life , you just feel this in your heart that you need a Redeemer , don't you ? With that in mind , I want to share a recent conversation I had with a young woman . But to open it , I want to share the story of the rich young man , or at least part of it , from either .

It's both in Matthew , matthew's gospel and also in Mark's gospel , where Jesus speaks to the rich young man . A young man seeking approaches Jesus and he says good teacher , what must I do to inherit eternal life ? Jesus replies with a question why do you call me good ? No one is good , but God alone .

Then he goes on you know the commandments Do not kill , do not commit adultery , do not steal , do not bear false witness , do not defraud , honor your father and mother . Then the conversation goes on . It doesn't end there . Remember Jesus is always about the human heart . He's always looking for your heart .

For the young man declares this Teacher , all these things I have observed since my youth . Then writes the evangelist Matthew and or Mark , who are writing this Jesus looked upon the young man and loved him and said to him you lack one thing . Go , sell what you have , give it to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven .

And then come and follow me Once again , and it's so interesting , this Jesus is after your heart . He doesn't impose , he doesn't judge the young man . He does not share an opinion , a worldview , propaganda , ideology . Jesus knows something at the level of the young man's heart what do you seek ? Come and see , follow me . He asks us all . What do you seek ?

Come and see , follow me . You will find what your heart desires . At this point , though , the atmosphere of the meeting between the young man and Jesus changes . The evangelist writes that , at that saying , his countenance fell and he went away sorrowful , for he had great possessions . He's attached to this earthly life , gk Chesterton would say about Christianity .

He says it's not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting in people's lives . It has been found difficult and left untried . And that's what happens here . He goes oh , I've got so much stuff , but we're trying to stay attached to this earthly , finite life , don't we , when infinite life is offered to us , this life goes by so quickly .

I call this the missing link . You know when you disengage like a cut flower , from God himself and what God is revealing to us . Don't we recognize the battle going on in this young man's heart ? He has many possessions , yet he hears at the same time , an echo in the depths of his heart for something more .

He has an echo in his heart for that missing link . This meeting between Jesus and the young man has a universal and a timeless character . It comes all the way through time and each of us , each you and I , we are potentially the one that Jesus is speaking to . What is the meaning and purpose of my life ?

I will not possess the treasure of youth much longer . Life passes quickly . Is it to have the latest phone , to get a car ? To find a career , to get to college , to make money ? Is that all there is ? Is that enough ? I want to tell you a story that happened to me recently with a young woman . Now she wanted to talk to me .

She was hopeful that her latest endeavor as a life coach for physicians and nurses who were burnt out , in disillusion with modern medicine , would prove to be fruitful and rewarding for both her and her clients .

Though she was only in her mid-30s , this young woman already a well-respected and accomplished doctor herself was stepping away from the occupation that had been her lifelong dream . Somewhere she found , somewhere along the way . Modern medicine had evolved , along with its cousin Big Pharma , into big medicine , big business .

It had become more about money , procedure and protocol than serving and caring for the health and healing of people . This reality struck her and those driven by the desire to serve very hard .

Fighting the system and advocating for the patients had caused burnout and frustration among them , and perhaps she could serve those physicians and those nurses , and , indirectly , their patients , by becoming their life coach and helping them get through these times . As a young doctor shared a new plan , my lack of enthusiasm upon hearing it must have been evident .

While I made a half-hearted attempt to sound encouraging , the reality was I had already seen this movie too many times in my life People with good hearts and intentions running around in circles trying to help one another , but ultimately their efforts are frustrated and burnout , along with their unfulfilled dreams , continue as little true satisfaction or solutions are

actually found . What's wrong , she asked . You don't seem overly thrilled with my plan . What are you thinking ? Be honest , yes , she made a mistake there . She said , be honest . I said this you're not going to find the answers you seek without the missing link . I replied and I had just read from scripture some wisdom literature . So I repeated to her this .

In the wisdom literature of the Old Testament , the book of Ecclesiastes , begins like this Vanity of vanities . All is vanity . What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun ? A generation goes and a generation comes , but the earth remains forever . The sun rises and the sun goes down , hastens the place where it rises .

The wind blows to the south and goes round to the north . Round and round goes the wind and on its circuits the wind returns . Remember Jesus said this you know neither where the wind comes from or where it's going . He said remember what Jesus said Look for the signs of the times , see what's going around you .

This is what this is and this is what in the Old Testament . This is what the wisdom literature is doing . These men and women are looking for the signs of the times and they're realizing , whoa , there's more to this story . I got to lift up my head . I have to look around , and then revelation .

And then their faith comes into play and it opens them to a larger story right To make sense of all of this , but without it , the Ecclesiastes goes down . Ecclesiastes goes down , ecclesiastes shares . Without all , these things are full of weariness . A man cannot utter it .

Without revelation , without understanding the signs of the times , without really understanding the human heart , we just get full of weariness . This is what this young doctor is describing . The eye is not satisfied with seeing , nor the ear filled with hearing .

John Paul II , unpacking this literature from the Old Testament in Fides and Ratio , faith and Reason , says this For the Old Testament , knowledge is not simply a matter of careful observation of the human being , of the world and of history , but supposes as well an indispensable link with faith and what has been revealed .

These are the challenges which the chosen people had to confront and which they had to respond . Pondering this as his situation , biblical man discovered that he could understand himself only being in relation with himself , with people , with the world and with God . See , it's a complete package we're walking into .

This is the awe and wonder of the story that we're walking into . When we meet God , when we get into faith with God , we start to see the world differently . This is the weeds and the wheat separating . This is what the story I told you in the beginning with the DNC . Why don't they see that killing children in the womb ?

Is there something evil about that ? They don't see it . It's about this life , only right . So this opening to the mystery , john Paul says , which came to him through revelation , was for him , in the end , the source of true knowledge .

It was this which allowed his reason to enter the realm of the infinite , where an understanding for which , until then , he had not dared to hope for , became a possibility . Ooh , something opened in his heart . I shared this with the young woman .

You may be of lasting value to those who come to you as a life coach , but only if you come to the understanding that the people who come to you have human hearts that desire something more than this world can give them . They're looking for that missing link . It's a desire of the heart for infinite life and infinite love .

And once discovered , we have a desire to share what we have freely received with others . Truly , it's not brain surgery . The two great commandments right . Be filled with divine life and love and then go out into the world and become life and love . This is our whole , main purpose of our lives .

Yet one must be filled with divine life and love , a free gift , before it can be shared with others . We cannot give this gift if we do not first possess it . That missing link is God , the source of the gift .

Dr Gerald May was a practicing psychiatrist who was also burnt out as he grew increasingly frustrated with his inability to do more for patients , his own tank running on empty for too long compelled him to turn to God and a portal to grace was opened . Grace , he wrote , grace being the participation in the life of God .

Of course , grace , he wrote , was able to flow into this emptiness he felt , and something new was able to take root and grow . Dr May opened his book Addiction and Grace this way . After 20 years of listening to the yearning of people's hearts , I am convinced that all human beings have an innate desire , an inborn desire for God .

Whether we are consciously religious or not , this desire is our deepest longing and our most precious treasure . It gives us meaning . Some of us have repressed this desire , burying it beneath so many other interests that we're completely unaware of it , or we may experience it in different ways , as a longing for wholeness , a longing for completion or fulfillment .

Regardless of how we describe it . It's a longing for love . It is a hunger to love and be loved and move closer to the source of all this love . This yearning is the essence of the human spirit . It's the origin of our highest hopes and our most noble dreams .

Let me say that again , this is the origin of our highest hopes and our most noble dreams the search to go into , to connect to , the source of infinite life and love . In his life's work of serving others , dr May began to pray . His prayer of life brought much fruit as he connected to the source of all healing and love .

The great physician and his practice , founded on serving others , came alive as he prayed . He discovered a connection to the eternal wellspring and found that he could give himself away as a gift and service to others without running on empty , for his own tank was always being filled .

It was grace that ultimately made the difference , first in his life and then in the life of those he served . Prayer is as natural to the human person as is breathing , eating , sleeping and loving .

For the philosopher , the poet and every human person , prayer is a connection to the awe and wonder , to all that is true , all that is good , all that is beautiful in our life . Prayer opens the individual person , body and soul , to the infusion of grace , the gift of divine life and love , which leads to the potential for human flourishing the potential only .

But this potential becomes efficacious , becomes real , it becomes active when one then decides to act upon the gift received and do what Become a gift for others , to serve others . This manifestation of love in this world builds up the city of God within our world . Here it's the body of Christ and so fulfills the very meaning and purpose of our lives .

This is the true Christian vocation , regardless of your occupation , to be a person of love . On the other hand , the default position of the person who does not pray , who consciously or unconsciously rejects the divine gift , is a body and a soul close to this infusion of grace . One cannot give again what one has not first received .

Lacking grace , which is again the potential , lacking grace , the potential for human flourishing is diminished by sin and death . Living in disconnection like a cut flower , the human person begins to grasp for life in a futile attempt to replace infinite grace with the finite things of this world .

Human beings become ravenous creatures , lustful creatures , selfish creatures , as all attempts to build a city upon the foundation of sin and death , the culture of death , fail to satisfy the deepest desires of the human heart . Isn't this what I described at the DNC deepest desires of the human heart ? Isn't this what I described at the DNC ?

Right Providing abortions , giving out IUDs , vasectomies . We're closing to this grace , this openness of life , in an attempt to selfishly take for ourselves , to use other people . Isn't it amazing that we are created to love others and to use the things of this world ?

But we flipped it around and we love the things of this world , our phones , our vasectomies , our abortions , and we're using people . We flipped the whole thing on its head . It's the culture of death . So the human heart was made for more . That's why we pray .

So infuse daily prayer into your occupation and your plans and you'll discover the Christian vocation that will then begin to bear much fruit , eternal fruit . All right , thank you so much for being with me . You know what ? Before I close , I want to ask you a favor .

For many , many years , the Become who you Are podcast has been audio only , and you can get it on any podcast or music app . Recently , we opened up to the video podcast on Rumble , and so I ask you to please share this link . Please follow us on the show . We have to start to open this thing up to others .

We need as many voices as possible coming together and sharing this culture of life , you know , especially with young people , so that they hear the truth and love and they learn to love others in the truth . Thanks for joining me . Glory be to God . Talk to you again soon , everybody . Bye-bye .