Journey Home - 2017-11-20 - Nadia Mitchell

[Music] good evening and welcome to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host for this program it's time for us to sit back and relax and hear the story of how the Holy Spirit touched someone's heart and mind and drew them closer to Jesus Christ in his church and our guest tonight is Nadia Mitchell former Christian and Missionary Alliance Nadia it's great to have you finally on the program you know you have known each other for a couple years I don't know if I had a big place to play in your journey but I had a little just a little time in there when you tended something coming on Network retreats you might talk about that late if it's good to have you thank you here because when I first met you you weren't ready to become classic by any means so I've seen the whole journey so let me get out of the way and invite you to go way back and let's start the journey on July 22nd 2012 I was a happy satisfied Evangelical Protestant serving on staff at my local church and never a thought of any kind of change especially theologically and two days later I knew I was going to become Catholic so it was so sudden and so unexpected that that transition was very traumatic for me all right so let's go back and get the details I mean what that tells me as we affirm every week on the program that it's grace all right so let's go away back then and start you off in fact I'm interesting to see whether you had a Catholic in your veins at all all the way back well just recently I realized that even though I don't have any immediate family that's Catholic that five hundred years ago I had many many many Catholic relatives because my ancestors came from Germany and Ireland and England and that was just a fairly recent realization because I had been feeling still sort of lonely in terms of not having immediate Catholic relatives and I realized I have thousands of Catholics way back in my in my family because before 1517 that's right everybody and my family probably was was Catholic and the big part of the world just a couple weeks ago celebrated that celebrate it or at least remember debt and that 503 and exactly true and the majority of at least Christians in America if you trace their lineage back same right with me and I went back three or four generations but you were brought up Catholic at all right no I was not I was born in Japan where my parents were missionaries with via Evangelical Alliance mission spent my early years there and in fact my grandparents had served as missionaries in the Philippines and then later on I became an overseas missionary in North Africa so it's really three generations at least and Wow and my family so you had a real solid Christian not just education but I've been told total culture very much so and then I ended up going to Bible School and with a Bible School graduate before I went on and then did graduate degrees later later on so I had I'm very grateful to the Lord because I had as she said a very solid Christian upbringing we read the Bible every day there were Bible stories before my brother and I went to bed at night a big emphasis on scripture memory and so I'm very very grateful for the upbringing that that I had that my parents gave me would you say looking back on those days that not only did you get the memory versus the externals but that as we would have said Jesus is in your heart yes yes of course that deep relationship that's so important and it was when I was six years old that I remember going to my mom and saying I don't know what's going to happen to me when I die and I want to make sure that Jesus is in my heart and I can be in heaven and so she led me in that simple simple prayer Jesus into my heart and ever since then he's been so important and that personal relationship has been absolutely critical yeah I can't emphasize how important that is in all the journaling programs but you're here today just because at some point along the line maybe the Catholic is you came up because of that that moment your mother led you to Jesus Christ and used to rendered your life to Christ and grace changed your your world No so you're over there as a young missionary child and then yourself a missionary when you're out in the mission field are you with other Christian groups Protestant and Catholic well of course not Catholic because that that was never anything that was part of my upbringing and I felt as though Catholics might sort of squeak into heaven but they were just so focused on ritual and just all these barnacles had crept in over the years and so it was interesting I didn't want anything to do with the Catholic Church but on the other hand I didn't want to hear people criticize the Catholic Church I'm not quite sure where that came from maybe that's the the seed of good Christian charity that was there as a young girl that your mother had planted in you your father planted you from that but so in the mission field itself you were bumping heads with other Catholic missionaries that were there but you would have been maybe other Christians right other non Catholic Christian I served in a very small small town and it was everyone around us for Muslims so it was a North Africa Wow okay so you were fighting that battle long before it became the battle that is today right or in the mission field I should put as a battle a lot of our viewers might wonder what the CMA is all about could you maybe tell them a little bit about the Christian Missionary Alliance I know you're with it for a period yes most of my growing up years and then as an adult I attended mostly non-denominational churches occasionally Methodist I was baptized by Presbyterian pastor and then the last about five years before I became Catholic I was part of Christian Missionary Alliance which obviously has a big emphasis on missions and great emphasis on Scripture and just a dynamic sense of Christ's presence in one's life and I'm again very grateful to God for from my time in the CMC and I'm a church all right so with all my interruptions let's get us back to the journey so you were brought up as a missionary kid I was and became a missionary myself and then came back to the States raised a family I became on staff at the Christian Missionary Alliance Church in the area of assimilation and women's discipleship so I was working there part-time and then I also was working part time as director of client services at our local Pregnancy Resource Center and it was really through the pro-life movement that I began to realize that there were many Catholics that really had a strong commitment to the reality of Jesus in their lives and also respect for for human life and for a while I was a little bit upset about that I thought one of the Catholics just stand of the way and let us Protestants deal with this whole pro-life thing why do they have to creep in there but I I came to really deeply respect the Catholics that were standing strong on that on that issue and so as a director of client services I was trying to keep my finger on the pulse of what was going on in our in our country and I would read blogs and things on the Internet and some of this was from Catholic sites and so on July 22nd 2012 I was reading a blog about a young Catholic man Andrew Moore who had been on a walk a pro-life walk across the country with a group called crossroads an outside of Indianapolis two days before he had been struck by a car as he was praying and killed instantly and so my immediate reaction was oh that's too bad I'm sorry about that but then I've read some comments that people had posted on that site and some Catholic had written well at least we can hope he's in heaven with Mary and that comment just bugged me so much I couldn't get that out of my mind and I kept thinking why do Catholics say this kind of thing why do they say we hope he's in heaven because obviously they have no assurance of salvation and then why do they say that heaven was Mary why not just say he's in heaven with Jesus and it was it was like a red flag in front of them Bowl I just could not get that comment out of my mind your background CMA would have been of the theology because I think CMA was informed by a former Presbyterian pastor so it would have been you know once you've accepted Christ you're in my grace and I can't lose it that's right right right so I thought about that comment we can hope he's on heaven with Mary for a couple of days and I just could not get it out of my mind and so a couple of days later on July 24th I was riding in the car with a my one Catholic friends especially a friend that I trusted that was Catholic and so I said to her Sharon why do Catholics say something like this and the Holy Spirit just worked through her she knew how to respond to that comment and I didn't know at the time but she had come into the church as an adult and so we had a conversation for about half an hour and I asked her a question after question and I was very intrigued by her by her answers and so I went home that night and I stayed up all night on the internet googling Catholic apologetics and instantly I came across sites that answered what I thought were my objections to Catholic teaching and I did the same thing the next night and within about two days I knew I was going to become Catholic and I was horrified at the idea I guess is not Ian Mitchell well let's back up just a little bit there can you can you give the audience an example of what would have been some of the issues brought up between you and Sharon there that she was answering I mean are you going to get to those later but I was wondering in the midst of that short period there you are you've gone through a cataclysmic change in their life like what kind of issues was she dealing with specifically one today that I remember is the issue of asking Mary for intercession because my thought was that there was an Iron Curtain between heaven and earth and that people in heaven could not look down on earth because otherwise they would be sad because they would see all the horrible things that are happening on earth so they must be just having a happy time up there and will go up and join them someday and Sharon was able to explain to me that there's great intercession going on in the in the heavenly realm and I had never really thought about that before and thinking of of Mary as a prayer warrior on our behalf was an idea that resonated with with me because as Protestants we would have well I'll just go to the the Sapphire throne myself I'll just put my prayers right there to Jesus why do I need to go through anyone else except I might ask you to pray for me too right right and so Sharon would say well have you ever asked anybody else to pray for you and I said of course I do all the time and she said well then why not ask the people that are closest to Jesus to pray for you all right so you're you're realizing on the one hand that you're drawn I mean that's really interesting so after a number of this conversation you you believe already you're drawn to the church right after that first half-hour conversation I I thought I need to find out more about this and then I went to two websites and there was one by a man that I think's been on your show David McDonald from Canada and his website was particularly helpful and there were others and right away I came across the coming home network as as well so within within a day or two I I knew that Catholicism had truth to offer that I had been missing out on but I didn't I was not happy about it I knew many things were gonna have to change in my life my whole social structure my job I was gonna have to give up my job at the CMA Church and just everything about Catholicism was strange to me and and Floren and it took me a while to work through some of the theological issues but pretty pretty soon within within a couple of days everything had collapsed in terms of my objections but I didn't want to be and it was interesting because a few months later I flew out to California to see my parents and my father was very open to the idea of my becoming Catholic and on Christmas Day we were walking to the Lutheran Church that my parents attended and he said to me so where are you and you're thinking about becoming Catholic and I said well intellectually I'm convinced but I'm waiting for the feelings to kick in and he made an interesting comment he said well that's your protest an upbringing that's influencing you there and I was quite astonished by his comment and I meant to ask him more the next day about that and the next day he had a stroke and died and so that was his final comment to me and I realized looking back on it that he was saying you should become Catholic and I found out afterwards he had Catholic radio the car radio was tuned to the Catholic station he'd been going to a Catholic Bible study so that was my father's contribution I think that one comment about not waiting for your feelings to kick in right yeah seemed like there was an old Protestant thing that talked about the train of I think it was fact faith or feeling or faith fact and feeling I forget which is the order remember I remember but the idea that the feelings third you know it kind of follows me you know you're not basing your life but yet it's still important there because cma worship wasn't the same liturgy that your big countering if he went to local had you been doing mass now let's blame okay I had never been to a to a mass before I talked with Sharon I had gone to a private Episcopal girls school in high school and we had Chapel a couple of times a week so I was familiar with the Episcopal liturgy but that had been many many 40 years earlier did you take it at the time of your father's sudden passing did you put the connections there with what he had told you the day before did you see that kind of as a message immediately yeah okay I did and from those first few nights looking on the Internet I I had become intellectually convinced and so it was a matter of obedience for me of realizing I have to go where the truth is no matter how I feel about it but I just didn't want and so I struggled for a whole whole year I dropped out of our CIA I had started I see that giving it well after talking with Sharon and then a couple of weeks later I resigned from my job at the CMA Church and about a month after that first conversation I started attending Mass regularly every every week all right but still right I knew I was going to become Catholic I just kept trying to find a valid objection and so I one by one my objections fell fell away and a year to the date after that first conversation with Sharon I entered into the Catholic Church and was confirmed but again it was out of obedience and even the Eucharist some people who are coming into the church say that they long for the Eucharist I did not because I had been raised to believe that Catholics were just sort of like cannibals that why would you drink the blood and eat the flesh of Jesus that was just a grotesque thought to me so it was not something that I long for at all for some that's the grace that the Lord uses to draw them and for others actually for others I've known they spend the rest of their life praying that prayer I believe help my unbelief because it's just a different path that God takes us on and sometimes the issue of obedience which is something we might want to talk about the second half because there are if I remember right this is the CMA which is based on a bit of Calvinist theology depravity of the will is that you don't have the freedom to choose anyway but the reality is you're becoming Catholic was affirming the reality of the will your choice to choose what God's wants you to do now you visited our I remember our first retreat you were on you weren't quite Catholic in that journey well I had found out about the coming home network I had been in an email correspondence and so I thought I would I would go to the retreat because I know I was going to become Catholic even though I still didn't didn't want to it at that point and I was struggling with I'm still struggling with things about Catholicism and one of them was art I just was not attracted to anything to do with Catholic art and especially the images of Jesus with Ray's shooting out of his heart and Mary with swords in her heart and it just was so off-putting to to me and it was something that I think was delaying my becoming Catholic even though I knew I had to again get over it and then being at the retreat and meeting other people who were at various stages was was a real help to me and I thought oh so I could be honest about it because many of the people that I met at my local parish who had been raised Catholic just could not identify at all with any of the struggles that I was that I was going through they're used to seeing that artwork all their life right and it's part of their culture and for me this was a huge sense of culture shock and I realized that pretty early on from living in other countries myself that this was not so much a theological issue for me now with the church but it was just getting used to Catholic culture I remember dealing with the same issues myself and what what it awakened me to is that unlike the Protestant traditions that I was a part of Catholicism is universal all the cultures all the different civilizations around our world so the artwork and the the devotions that come to America as this melting pot of ideas come from different radically different cultures different artwork different way of seeing things and so by accepting that right it opens us up to the artwork we might say well that was maybe not my favorite but I understand it I mean was that a part of your own journey saying well I at least I understand where it's coming from I think I just I just struggled so much and even after becoming Catholic and people would say Oh welcome home and inwardly I would think I don't feel like this is home at all and but it was really a physical journey for me that last year and this year made me finally feel at home in the Catholic Church we're gonna take a break it a little bit not quite yet because we're gonna jump a bit of a head so you in your story you're in the church but you just finished something that I want you to tell the audience about that I'm wondering was that a further confirmation of your your coming home right you just finished something of talking about the physical journey you mean or right well you just did a nice long walk that's right so after I had been a Catholic for a few years and I was still struggling with Catholic culture and feeling as though all right so I hear about these different people who become Catholic and then it just seems like everything's just wonderful for them and why isn't it wonderful for me and why don't I feel at home and I think it may have been partly too because my job at the CMA Church was in the area of assimilation so my job was to welcome everybody who came in the doors of that church to help them get to know other people to help them come to know Christ if they didn't know him already and then to get involved in ministries at the church and there was a lot going on even though it was a little church and so I didn't experience that coming into a large Catholic parish it was almost as though oh you're not Catholic like what are you doing here and so it was just a different different milieu and a different a different culture and it just took me a long time to get used to how Catholics do things so I thought after a couple years I got I need to do something here just because this is this is not what I'm it's not the fullness of what I'm hoping it will be in terms of my own feeling of belonging it'll actually yes I'm a Catholic but I don't I still don't feel like it and so I had heard about this long pilgrimage trail that goes across the northern part of Spain called the Camino to Santiago de Compostela and it's been a pilgrimage trail since the 800s so over a thousand years and over those years millions of pilgrims from all over the world have traveled that trail and so I did that last year and for the first time and felt finally so much at home because this was something that I could do along with all of these other pilgrims from throughout the centuries there was a huge huge blessing and grace to me do you see the art were you like where there well this year I went back and did another portion of the of the trail and this year I came to the point where I appreciate Catholic art for the first time because this year you went from Lourdes right it went from Lourdes yes started there Wow well that's awesome let's take a break now not even we'll come back a little bit fine ask a couple questions about some of those barriers you had our time getting over but but great to have you in the program back just a moment with Nadia Mitchell [Music] [Music] [Music] welcome back to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host for this program and our guest tonight is Nadia Mitchell and just a couple questions and then I have some emails one thing I meant to ask earlier about your pro-life work so when you were staunch practicing CMA without a interest in the Catholic Church there you were pro-life and very active leading that's not always true of our separated brethren let me ask was your particular denomination although I don't think CMA wants to call itself a denomination where they pro-life as a group so they're very much that's a great thing that isn't always true so it would have been natural for you to be a part of that because your your particular evangelical Christian group was very committed to that now then there's those Catholics that you're bumping now there used to be a kind of a phrase we used to say that you know the Catholics and evangelicals on the pro-life or get along great when they're focusing together at the pro-life is when they get thrown in jail together they can't get because they have to spend time with each other during that time of doing that pro-life work you got to know some Catholics and one of them was Sharon right well right although I had known Sharon for a number of years previous did your did your Catholic and Protestant differences ever come out in those relationships while you were doing the pro-life work no so we were able to keep that in the background and focus on on the need at hand it was with defending life what about after becoming Catholic did you continue in in that work I did I did so I was director of client services for about five or six years and now Sharon actually has taken over that position at the local PRC okay you also mentioned that when you came into the church where before you were very active helping new members of the local church become welcomed and accepted in a part of the family and then you became Catholic and what quite there right talk about about that did you I've done something to correct that yet or or talk about that experience of maybe a little bit of being alone coming into the church I think one of the things that I noticed right off is that the Protestant churches that I had attended people sat together in the pews and you didn't want somebody sort of sitting off by themselves in a in a chair off in a corner that would be unfriendly so you'd go over and talk to that person and of course there was plenty of chatter before and during fellowship time and afterwards and in the Fourier and and going to church really was a social event and so I would go into the Catholic Church and I'd be one person here and a couple over there another person in this pew and it would be very strange to go right up and right next to somebody else I said I did that a couple of times and I think I freaked out like what are you doing here it's talking mirrors of me why would you come and sit right next to me where as part of my culture as a Protestant that's what we would do to make somebody feel welcome so they're sitting in the pews all separated is a normal Catholic thing I guess but it wasn't for me and it was something I had to get used to yeah you know I do think I'm not a theologian on this point but I've for me I've explained that see if this makes sense when we were non Catholic Christians the center of that gathering of worship was the sermon mm-hmm and the pulpit and so the idea is everybody gets close as you can and that's the focus or when we're gathered in Catholic worship it's the presence of Christ in the Eucharist okay so it's far more devotional meditative it should be right right and you're not whispering and talking to somebody else and you're not going there to meet your friend and talk before or after the the mass go in and it's quiet and it's meditative and so now I appreciate that but again it was different cultural shift for me so it would have been helpful for someone to explain and I think people tried to but so again intellectually I understood why but it was just different and I my children had grown you know I wasn't married so I would go in and sit alone and Mass every time and that just made me I think also feel lonely because in a present Church I wouldn't go in and sit alone so again just a difference and I had to come and realize that this was not right versus wrong it was just a different culture and I'm guessing as a lifelong missionary that you probably didn't know of very many committed evangelical Christians who became Catholic no I didn't although as soon as I had that conversation and started looking on these websites then I came across the stories of many Protestants who had made that leap and that was a help to me to realize the struggles that they had had and what they had gone through and that they were now happy committed Christians who also work at were Catholic that it wasn't giving up my relationship with Jesus in order to just become ritualistic that I was fulfilling even more what Jesus had for me what other areas of misunderstandings needed to get cleared up when you became Catholic vocabulary that was a huge one for me and I was very offended at the beginning when I would go to Mass and the vocabulary was about Jesus being evicted a victim and I a victim Jesus is not a victim he willingly gave his life for us and why are they using this word victim and then I would read in the early church fathers what and reading the early fathers was a huge help to me but st. Cyril talked about Jesus as a as as a victim meaning a sacrifice for us and this notion of victim being used as for example a crime victim was much much later many hundreds of years later so I I got to the point where when the word victim was shoes I would just automatically in my mind think okay it just means he's our sacrifice and then Mary being referred to as a spouse of the Holy Spirit that was a big one and then I find out st. Augustine talks about Mary being the spouse so reading more in early church history was a huge help to me yeah well it's interesting you picked those two examples because there's two examples that connected the fact that the the non Catholic world has kind of erased the idea sacrifice out of worship the whole idea of sacrifice which is so central to understanding the mass and then Mary again those are two things so your vocabulary will have been erased of all that connections anyway right and you mentioned Mary a little bit earlier how was she on the journey for you well I think she was calling me from the very beginning because of that first conversation which was about that comment that somebody had put on the internet about well we can hope that Andrews in heaven with with Mary and so it was a struggle in some ways because I I kept thinking but if I'm giving any honor to Mary then I'm taking that away from Jesus and I had to work through that and realize that wasn't true at all that she's the one that is calling me to to her son yeah I mean if you if you give honor to a son because of his great achievements you haven't taken honour away from the mother who so loves that son that mother is grateful eternally grateful for the honor you're sowing the son because of what he's accomplished and this and that when we celebrate not just witty doesn't marry but if I celebrate what he's what he's done in you I mean it's well and and also it was explained to me that an artist doesn't resent somebody admiring his or her painting and meri is the preeminent of the creatures of God one of the bigger differences between where you came from and where you are now is this understanding of hope that we can't excuse the word hope talk about that because that's a bit different than the way you would have understood the idea of assurance as a Christian as its CMA Christian well and when a Catholic says I hope it doesn't mean well maybe but maybe not it was it was just used in a different in a different way that yes with with the grace of God we know that Anderson and heaven and I do want to say that since that the death of that young man and her Moore was what catapulted me into the Catholic Church I've been in touch with Anders Andrews parents and we do email and text back and back and forth and I'm I'm very very grateful to them for raising a young man like like Andrew who had a very strong pro-life commitment because that's what brought me into the church it's interesting that the assurance of salvation that a non Catholic Christian might hold special a Calvinist standpoint and the Catholic recognition of Hope can both be understood two extremes right the assurance could lead you to be so sure that I don't have to do anything to clean up my act where the Catholic view of hope can be so fearful mm-hmm you could spend a life not feeling the joy of salvation right that's it's a misunderstanding of fools right so it's the beauty of bringing them together the assurance because don't grace and know that even to this dying day you know my obedience in faith is still grace and talk about the obedience thing too because that's a little different than the cma understanding of faith alone which would have been key to that I think there was more emphasis on feelings as a Protestant I mean there was an understanding of something as true whether you feel that way or not but there was still more of an emphasis on how you felt led and and just your emotions in regard to something and it wasn't until a few years after becoming Catholic that I really finally came to an understanding of the Eucharist of something that I desired even though I would go to Mass every week and and partake I still was influenced by my Protestant former Protestant thinking of the Eucharist being something that was cannibalistic and I had to get past that and it was my experience as a mother and being involved in the pro-life movement that helped me get get past that because I I realized that when you see a child breastfeeding from his or her mother you don't immediately think oh that's a cannibal baby you think how beautiful that that mother is giving of her own body to her child and I was able to make that connection to the Eucharist and then when Chenoa I find out the early church fathers had already made that connection [Laughter] yeah the again going from I think CMA your background would have seen the Lord's Supper which I assume you did once in a while right usually once a month once a month totally symbolic correct remembering something Jesus did 22,000 years ago but in celebrating that all right and it was done in a solemn and sacred way but only symbolic and so it was it was hard for me to accept it it was more than just symbolic how'd you get there it was just quite obedient of realizing this is what the Catholic Church is is teaching and it was explained to me by dear Sharon because I would say well what about this and what about this and what about this what about indulgences and what about purgatory and she said Nadia you're gonna drive yourself crazy we're trying to work through every single theological issue either what the Catholic Church teaches is true all of it or else it's not you can't just pick and choose and so once I had come to realize that yes the the Magisterium of the of the church the scriptures the oral tradition it all comes together as as truth then I wasn't stumbling over this and that's finesse in this sometimes a person on the journey can say okay I finally understand all the misunderstandings I have about the Catholic Church okay you know I understand what the truth Jesus by Mary I understand whole I understand this and that okay it's I clarified all this stuff so they're not as bad as I thought okay there's there's what I understand what they're saying but still a long way from recognizing the authority of the church to the point where as you said I don't quite understand it but if the Church teaches it then I will accept that that's true how did you get there I I just have to say it was what's the Holy Spirit because again I knew right off somehow that it was true even though I didn't like it but Pope Benedict made a comment that all all of humanity is on a journey in search of truth and once I realized right off that this was true I had to go there no matter how I felt about it and it was really a number of years after becoming Catholic before my feelings started to come in line yeah and there will be people who will be people on the one hand who made the rest of their life the feelings are their guts they got baggage and they bring with them but on the other hand our feelings go all over the place anyway day to day depending on what's going on in our life and Johnna the cross kind of taught about the fact that sometimes you're at the closest to God when you feel farthest away right I mean what's the Catholic spirituality have anything to do with your journey in terms of the writings of the same yeah yeah the writings the Saints their ideas about spirituality I don't know if that was a new thing for you on your journey well I didn't know anything about the Saints until I I started exploring Catholicism except st. Francis loved animals and and I'd heard about st. Thomas Aquinas of course and and Gustin or Augustine as as we would say and I began to feel a little Miss that I had been misled earlier in my Protestant life because augusten was trotted out by Protestants whenever he said something that agreed with but then the things that he did say about praying for the dead and and other Catholic aspects were completely ignored and so I was shocked to find some of the things that Agustin said that were right in line with Catholic teaching and you did mention early church fathers had a big part to play on your journey I'm assuming that before you probably hadn't read one or two statements at all the church fathers was a Sheeran that introduced you to those or was of those websites no websites all right we've got an email Paul from Santa Fe writes several people I know have become Catholic over the past few years out of curiosity I have begun reading more about Catholicism and her claims I don't want to become Catholic in any way but I am beginning to have a hard time refuting the logic and history behind what the Catholic faith teaches should I go against my feelings and personal inclination and become Catholic or wait and see if time helps the decision become more palpable I can identify with that with that comment and one of the books of the Bible that particularly helped me as I was thinking about this whole issue with with feelings it's a book of Exodus because God gives to Moses a long long list of things that should be done in building the tabernacle and he gives laws and an Exodus and Leviticus and and so it wasn't just oh just build a tabernacle however you want and worship me however you want it was it's this long and you cover it with this color and you build it out of this material and God did not say to the people of Israel so here are all these laws and this is what you should do how do you how do you feel about that does this does this interest you at all he just said do it and I thought that's the way that it is for me now God is saying to me do this and this is what the church says and it's not so how do you feel about it and when we get to a New Testament it's not just okay there were all of these specifics and now just do it however you want and I think it's important to realize too that we need to trust the Lord that he knows what's best for us and that our feelings probably sooner or later are going to kick in once we follow what is true all right let's take another email Jason from Kentucky my wife and I recently converted we've had a disappointing experience since the church we are attending isn't welcoming and we haven't made any friends my wife particularly is lonely and it's thinking about going back to our great evangelical church what can we do to get better experience of Catholicism one thing that helped me a lot was going to adoration and just having that hour to sit in front of Jesus and just pour out my heart to him and just listen to what he was saying to me to read scripture and to realize that it's not all about fellowship with other people that are right next to me in the Catholic Church that we have this great fellowship with Saints from hundreds of years ago that can become our good friends even though we're not living on Earth at the same time right right now and so when I go to Mass now it's not primarily just to meet other people and to have my social needs met and I would encourage anyone who's feeling this way to maybe start talk with their priest start a small group a Bible City and be the that is welcoming that you want everybody else to be like to you I don't have friends I don't difference I don't have friends I don't ever it's what's about being a friend right it's well being a friend you can get caught in a in a dark hole on a black hole of self-pity by I don't have friends out my friends its be a friend mm-hmm be a friend all right that's right so maybe this woman is being called to start a women's Bible study at at her parish right don't wait for someone else to to do what you want to have done for you yeah you know we're not sitting or pointing a finger at you because we know how hard it is especially some of us are outgoing and some of us aren't but it's not we don't want to change what goes on inside that sanctuary because we're there in the presence of our Lord but afterwards you're walking outside hi I'm doing here what's your name you know it just takes us we need two examples doing that another email kaitland from Pennsylvania writes Catholics sometimes can get a reputation as being bad at evangelization and reaching out to non Catholics in order to share their faith how does Nadia view and implement evangelization in their church walk now as a Catholic does it differ much from how she approached evangelization as a Protestant also how would you suggest that Catholics can be more effective evangelizers one thing I notice is that many Catholics don't feel really comfortable talking about what Jesus has done for them and whereas in the Protestant churches that I attended people wanted to know what's your testimony because even if you were raised as a Christian you needed to have that defining moment in your life when you asked Jesus into your heart and so we would talk about it and and people were confident praying extemporaneously this was another big issue for me culturally because so many Catholics that I met didn't feel comfortable just praying out loud on their on on their own as a Protestant in talking with someone about the Lord I felt very very comfortable doing that talking with them about their background what their beliefs were seeing if they were interested in giving their life over to Christ and then that was it you know if they said that prayer hopefully they would continue on in becoming a more mature disciple of Christ but if they said that prayer that was the key the key thing and so I struggled for a couple of years as a Catholic feeling okay so I don't just feel comfortable going out and inviting somebody and saying oh why don't you come to mass if they weren't Catholic so I had to realize that there were different ways of now sharing my face and it didn't always mean just inviting somebody to church with me yeah this is well as important issue that's true for Catholics as well as non Catholics and that is when Paul said I can do all things through him who strengthens me and behind that verse is the idea of recognizing that everything we have is what Jesus has done in our life and being grateful and the more you grow in that the more your witness grows the more you have something to tell somebody this is what Christ did because you recognize everything we have it's been a gift of His grace let's say there's some CMA folk watching right now watching you sitting what would you tell to them about why they should consider making the same journey home that you'd made well I would say that the CMA has and other Protestant denominations as well have a wonderful heritage of scripture study of personal relationships with personal relationship with with Jesus but is that all in life or was there something else that God meant for us too to have in terms of a universal Church led by people of authority because in most Protestant denominations it's up to a committee to to decide and that doesn't seem to be the biblical biblical pattern even as you just mentioned the word denomination you you expressed it in the plural the fact that there's the plural it points to the fact that authority on deciding which of these many beliefs are all over the place but recognizing the beauty of Christ establishes a church that we can trust especially with those questions that we don't quite understand I'll press that the holy spirit has guided the church well and if Jesus established the church to be solid then where did it go off the way that I was taught was that somewhere around Constantine it got off and then there was just sort of a remnant that was faithful until Martin Luther and others started leading it back but we're not Lutheran so and we're not even Wesleyan so then were they off how come now all of a sudden we have the pure doctrine so the logic of that was Mary became very clear whatever split after split up this what right look well Nadia thank you for joining us on the journey home I've taken a lot of questions I hope I was able to get your whole story in but thank you for sharing your journey with us on the journey home and and God bless you continue to work in the church thank you thank you for joining us on this episode of the journey home I do pray that Nadia's journey is an encouragement to you god bless you see you next week [Music]

Channel: EWTN

Views: 10,173

Rating: 4.552 out of 5

Keywords: JHT, JHT01593

Id: N982N8RE0FM

Length: 56min 11sec (3371 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 20 2017