Keith Nester's Catholic Conversion Story

I want to begin tonight by reading some scripture Matthew's Gospel chapter 13 verse 44 Jesus says these words the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field which a man found and covered then in his joy he goes and sells all he has and buys that field tonight I want to talk to you about what happens when you find the treasure you can be going through life and everything can be pretty good you're doing your own thing and life is good you may even be serving God or you can be a total sinner far from God or you can be some place in the middle maybe you have a faith that is nominal you believe in God and even make it to church once in a while when the kids don't have a game or there's nothing better to do you may be in any of these states or something completely different and then it happens somehow you find the treasure maybe you are looking for it maybe it was looking for you it's not always easy to tell the difference the only problem is the treasure is in a field that doesn't belong to you what do you do tonight I want to tell you what I did but more importantly I want to challenge each of you to consider for yourselves what you will do when the treasure is made known to you thank you so much for having me here tonight I've preached many sermons in this town but this is the first time I've given a talk as a Roman Catholic in this town how did that happen you haven't heard it yet maybe we should just call it a night right now there's probably soup downstairs well how did this happen I mean people ask me that all the time what would cause someone whose job it was to work in a church and preach the gospel to leave that all behind and become of all things a Roman Catholic well tonight for the next three hours I'd like to share some of my journey with you they think I'm kidding no and I'm father Chris as I know you're not kidding I'm gonna be honest with you and I'm gonna be as transparent as appropriate and some of this talk might be hard for some people to hear because in this church tonight there are some people who who knew me and know me as pastor Keith and they don't understand why I left them others are here who loved the Catholic faith deeply and don't understand why some Protestants have such a negative view of the Catholic Church I was like that so some of the things I say might sting a bit but just keep in mind where I am today I'm not a saint I'm not some great theologian or apologist regardless of what you might have heard I'm not like Scott Hahn or anything like that I don't have all the answers about the Catholic faith or about God at my best I'm a sinner saved by grace I grew up the son of a United Methodist pastor and my upbringing was great I came from a great home my parents loved me and supported me I was raised in the church and I honestly can't remember a time when I didn't believe in Jesus but if you had to ask me when did you first become a Christian I would tell you that it was when I was 11 years old and I went to a church camp and at this church camp a fiery sermon was preached and an invitation was even to come forward and pray a prayer to receive Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior so with as much passion as an 11 year old can muster up I came down to the front and I prayed that prayer and I gave my heart to Jesus well life for me after that was pretty typical of a teenager who loved Jesus at church camp but didn't really have much of a visible faith at home I attended church sporadically which was weird because my dad was the pastor I talked about Jesus once in a while to my friends and I did my best to avoid the typical sins that characterize teenage life and to be honest with you I felt like that was good enough it made me feel better than what a lot of my friends were doing you know I wasn't as bad as everybody else was looking back on it I realized that I'd fallen into this trap of self-righteous pride and self-promoting comparison have you ever fallen into that trap where you you look at other people and you go Oh least now I'm not as bad as they are I mean I do some stuff for God right I don't think that's reserved just for teenagers by the way so my problem wasn't so much about these big visible sins in my life my problem and my issue was that I had a dream and the dreams I had for my life really didn't have a lot to do with serving God see I wanted to be a professional rock star I loved playing the drums more than anything else in life and that was all I cared about it was all I thought about and everyone and everything including my faith in God took a back seat to that I dropped out of college twice in order to pursue that dream ultimately moving across the country to the city of Philadelphia at the ripe old age of 19 to play drums in a band with guys who were much older and much more seasoned in the ways of the world was can you imagine how proud my parents must have been of me now even though I was far from home and following a path that was at the very least not God's best for me I still had a faith and I wanted to grow in my relationship with God but the truth is what I really wanted was God to bless my plan I didn't need to know what God's plan was for me I had already figured that out I'd come up with a perfectly great plan for my life and I just needed God to make it happen anybody ever pray that prayer god bless my plan make it happen now the band was going great and I even found a church to be a part of it was a great church I went to church at least two or three times a week which was a lot for me I was growing in my faith but I was headed for a fork in the road one night our pastor he preached a sermon about the sacrifice that God called Abraham to make Abraham and his wife Sarah had wanted a son more than anything else for years and God had miraculously granted to them their beloved Isaac then one day God told Isaac to take his son to the top of Mount Moriah and sacrifice him Abraham agreed and was stopped only at the last moment by an angel it had all been a test of his faith and he had passed our pastor then related that story to all of us and he asked a very important question he said what's your Isaac what's that thing in your life that means so much to you that if God called you to give it up you're not so sure you could do it it's pretty scary question isn't it I knew what the answer was for me I knew that it was my musical ambition and I knew that God was calling me to sacrifice it so I prayed a prayer that night that was a very scary prayer God if you want me to lay all this down I will just tell me what to do I had hoped that like Abraham God would send an angel to stop the whole thing and tell me that I passed the test but that is not what happened a day or so later a good friend of mine who is a United Methodist pastor he happens to or he was an item at this pastor he happens to be here tonight he called me he's from my church camp days and he called me up and he said hey Keith I'd like to talk to you about becoming our youth pastor at our Methodist Church in Davenport Iowa now remember I'm a college dropout I have no education no experience I'm 19 years old I'm playing drums in a bar band in Philadelphia that's the kind of guy you want working with your students isn't it I thought there's no way in the world these people will ever give me this job so I tried to sabotage my interview hey Keith how would you handle this situation if you were put in this position and and someone asked you this question I haven't got the first clue what I do in that situation you're hired my bluff had been called and I knew I had to accept this job it was hard to leave the band behind but it was even harder to leave behind this beautiful girl I had met her name was Estelle still as a stone Estelle was raised Catholic and she was a good person but her faith wasn't a big part of her life at all so when I invited her to attend this nondenominational church I was going to she gladly came I'm sure that a time or two I explained to her that the faith of her upbringing Roman Catholicism was old and tired and she needed to leave it all behind you see I was convinced that the Catholic Church was unbiblical and filled with man-made doctrines and traditions that had nothing to do with the gospel and I did not hesitate to explain that what she really needed to do was to leave all that behind and become a real Christian that's exactly what she did but that's not all she left behind after a few short months apart we decided that we wanted to be together so I convinced her that Iowa was the most beautiful state in the United States so at 19 she packed up and moved to Davenport to be with me can you imagine how proud her parents must have been of her well 23 years and three incredible kids later I'd say it was a pretty good move you know yeah you better clap for that so we began our life together and our youth ministry really without a clue what we were doing I had no training didn't know what was happening and I was about the same age as some of the kids but God was good I finished college my parents were proud at the University of Dubuque our little youth group that started with about 12 kids began to grow amazing things were happening and for a few years in the early 2000s we had nearly 300 kids come every single Wednesday night to our church for our youth services now this entire time my view of Catholicism hadn't changed at all I had no reason to give it another thought see the only Catholics I knew never even went to church in fact every month I met more than a few ex Catholics who were joining our church with great excitement and they all basically told the same story as a style well as our ministry began to grow I realized we needed to change things up and give ourselves a professional image so I decided I needed to hire a graphic designer to create a logo for our youth ministry you know because you got to have something cool to put on t-shirts and stickers and signs and you can't just say hey kids come to youth group you got to have some cool name I wanted to do it the right way so I wasn't gonna have like a designer logo contest in the church I wanted to hire a professional so I started going through the yellow pages kids that's this book that has like all these names in it and phone numbers this was like 1999 ish so looking for a graphic designer and I found this woman I called her up and explained to her what I was looking for and she said well I'm not interested in that at all but I know someone who is his name's Devon Schad he's an amazing designer and he would be interested in this type of thing so I called up this guy named Devon and talked to him he sounded pretty cool over the phone he was excited to hear about my youth ministry and he wanted to help Devin sounded like a guy who loved Jesus and believed in reaching kids maybe I could recruit this guy to work in my church on Wednesday night so I was thinking Devin agreed to come up with some initial ideas and meet me at his home and I was very excited to see what he came up with and meet him face to face so the night that Devin and I were supposed to meet was a Stella nice wedding anniversary so I promised a.style I'd be back soon I drove across town to an older neighborhood in the center of town and I found Devon's house and as I was approaching his front door I was a little thrown off by these statues that were by the steps maybe I was at the wrong place why would this guy have statues of the Virgin Mary and some other guy in his front yard maybe this wasn't his how maybe this was his grandmother's house why would he live with his grandmother if he's supposed to be some hotshot designer this is what's going through my head as I knock on his door right well when Devin answered the door I was immediately welcomed into his home with a warm greeting now Devin's house looks just a little bit more Catholic than this church there were paintings of Jesus and Mary all over the place and and I was freaked out tons of other what I called Catholic looking people in pictures on the walls there were even more statues there was this weird bowl by the door with water in it the house was beautiful there was no TV and there was nothing that decorated it other than things that must have either been stolen from a European museum or gleaned from a Catholic Church going out of business Estate Sale so we sat at his dining room table and Devon asked me to tell him more about our church and our youth ministry so as I told him about our plans and the vision that we had he became very excited and he seemed to really believe in what I was saying then he opened up a folder containing some some of his initial ideas and I was in love with the very first one I said that's it this guy has incredible talent man I've got to recruit him this is all amazing Devon I said to him but before I leave I just have to ask you something sure what is it he replied I said to him you sound like a very strong Christian to me and and I don't mean to be disrespectful but what's with all this Catholic stuff you seem like an on fire Christian and he just laughed and laughed and laughed and he said to me Keith yeah I'm a very on fire Christian I love Jesus and I'm that way because I am Catholic so went through my mind next was a mixture of two things first I thought well if this guy really loves Jesus I can convert him easily by just showing him a couple of verses from the Bible that demonstrates why Catholics don't follow the Bible or Jesus in favor of man-made traditions if if he really wants Jesus he can leave all this superstitious stuff behind once I show him a couple verses the second thing I thought was I better not make this guy mad because he's designing my logo and it's really good all of this is going through my head while I'm remembering that it's my anniversary and my wife's at home waiting for me so I decided I needed to cut to the chase and I asked Devon what I thought to be the most direct but revealing question I could think of I said Devon when were you saved you see that's a trick question I was asking a question that meant different things to different people but I wanted to see how a Catholic would respond to that question now I knew that the in my version the correct answer dealt with the specific time that he asked Jesus Christ into his heart to be his personal Lord and Savior but I didn't think that Catholics believed anything like that well then Devon proceeded to tell me about his life and his faith he told me about how at one point he had abandoned God altogether but through the sacraments and I'm like what and the church I'm like which one he had been given tremendous grace by God and dedicated his life to serving God I was like who is this guy he Devon described his faith in relationship with Jesus in a way that was so inspiring and in some bizarre way on a different level than anything I was familiar with and I was speechless I had never heard a Catholic talk like this before and I still wanted to see how he would react to some of the verses that I had in mind but those conversations would have to come later and they did a lot but thankfully Devon's wife Kim called down from upstairs she said you guys it's Keith's anniversary he needs to go home oh man I gotta get out of here he said Keith before you leave let me give you something to watch that might be interesting he handed me a VHS tape okay kids that's one of those things that you put in this machine and right this VHS tape had a grainy photo of a guy that looked like my dad shaking hands with the Pope and it was called the Scott Hahn conversion story this guy was like you only worse and he became Catholic ha ha ha Dennis says you know we both laughed and then I left when I got home I said to my wife you aren't gonna believe this she's like ok great tell me about it oh hey awesome you rented a movie for us to watch for our anniversary not exactly now I don't know how many of you know who Scott Hahn is probably a lot of you do but for those of you that don't I'll just he's like he's a convert to the Catholic Church but he's not just a guy who who found out about Catholicism one day he was a minister who was decidedly anti-catholic he believed that the Pope was like the Antichrist okay so he was pretty convinced that Catholicism wasn't true and despite all of those things he tells his story of how he becomes a Catholic and it blew my mind I had never heard anything like that before if you haven't heard or checked out his conversion story you need to and I was curious about how a guy like kid can become Catholic he was a pastor what was he thinking well watching this talk was pretty life-changing because here was a man who knew the Bible backwards and forwards he had a passionate relationship with Jesus he was educated in a top seminary and he had everything to lose by becoming a Catholic and he did it anyway why you see a fluke were there others like him these questions needed answers now Devon and I would continue to get together and talk and sometimes yell theology it seems as if I had made it my mission to convert him out of the Catholic Church and he had made it his to convert me into it and we live like that for a few years well as the years went by and my ministry continued to grow I had this Catholic stuff sort of put on the back burner and Devon called me one day and I want to introduce you to to a friend of mine so I went to this restaurant to meet this man named Greg Greg sits down across from me at this Chinese restaurant and says Keith my daughter goes to your youth group which normally I would think awesome but what I also understood was that when Greg came down to pray he did this and I thought oh oh he's a Catholic and he's friends with Devin my daughter goes to his U or his daughter goes to my youth group he's probably here to yell at me that wasn't the case he said thank you for all you're doing to help my daughter grow in her faith she comes home on Wednesday is excited about Jesus and then he says I'd like to invite you on an all-expenses-paid trip to a place in Europe called mega Gloria and we're gonna go to Rome and some other places I'd never heard a mega gory I don't know what that is some place in Bosnia he said and I looked it up and it's this place where it has been claimed that the Virgin Mary appeared to six children in 1981 and still appears regularly to them now I thought that sounded completely crazy but it was a free trip to Europe so I thought well I can probably deal with all this Catholic stuff there were 30 of us in total including a priest it kind of sounds like a joke you know 29 Catholics a priest and a youth pastor walk into a magic Oriya you know well as we were considering going on this trip meet and Greg we'd get up to leave in my fortune no joke in the Chinese restaurant says you will be going on an exciting journey I learned two things on that trip that I'm going to share with you I learned others that I won't just yet first thing I learned was this Catholics know how to party we had so much fun together I couldn't believe how much fun this trip was now inner woven into all of that was a sense of Christian community that was on a deeper level than what I expected because this was a diverse group of people there weren't too many people that had a lot in common so you know when you get groups of people together they kind of form up into people that have our common ages or life stages it wasn't like that everyone was just there together worshipping God in this amazing community bonded together because of their love for Jesus and his mother the second thing that hit me was I saw a group of Catholics practicing their faith in a way like I had never seen before people were more excited to pray and attend Mass every day than they were to eat the devotion to Jesus that I saw and these Catholics left a huge impression on me and even though I was in a Protestant I was invited to participate and it really opened my eyes and shattered the misconception I had that Catholics really didn't have a personal relationship with Jesus and that they merely practiced their religion in a ritualistic in lifeless way I thought about my own life and if I was being honest with myself I was feeling drawn toward Catholicism but there were some things I just couldn't get over how could I convert I mean this was my job what would I tell my wife what about my ministry well one day on my trip I went alone up on the side of Cross Mountain and I met a man from South Africa and as we talked he just asked me well why aren't you a Catholic and I told him about myself and the ministry that was so important to me and he said to me this well you know sometimes you have to let go of the good in order to receive the great it stuck with me but I wasn't ready to do it I was too afraid of the cost well the trip ended and we went home and I went back to my life and my church and I had a few moments in the coming years where I would admit to myself and only to myself that I was really feeling the pull towards the Catholic Church but I did my very best to suppress it because it was too scary more years went by and we went through some pretty tough times in our faith and in our marriage I ended up stepping out of ministry for a couple years I needed to get some some perspective on not who I was as Keith the minister but who I was as a husband and a father and most importantly who I was as a child of God see it can be easy to lose perspective when your faith is intertwined with your job the way that mine was and I needed to get to a place where I didn't think of myself only in terms of what I can do for God see when you think that God only cares about you because of what you can do for him that's a pretty dangerous way to live it's the ultimate display and pride God's love for you is not about what you can do for him he's God he doesn't need you to do things for him what God wants is your heart and in my case I needed to be stripped away of all the things that I thought made me valuable to God so that I could just experience God so when brokenness and humility we all know God in a much deeper way than when we approach God in pride standing on our own laurels and accomplishments it was a hard season but it was fruitful and I'm grateful that for that left over after a couple years God opened up some doors for me to reenter ministry and it was different than what I had done in the past but I was different and I was happy for a change so I became a part-time senior pastor of a small Evangelical Free Church in a town about 90 minutes away from where I lived while at the same I took a job as a part-time associate pastor in an Assemblies of God Church right down the street from where we live so you might ask yourself how is it possible to be a pastor in two different churches in two different denominations in two different towns at the same time I have multiple personality disorder among I wasn't know it really wasn't that hard you see on Sunday morning I would drive down to where my church was and I would preach the sermon to the evangelicals and then I Drive back in Sunday night I'd preach it to the Pentecostals it was awesome it was during this time that Estelle and I started our own photography business things were going great I was back in ministry and much healthier our family was doing awesome life was good well after a couple years I was offered and accepted a full-time position at First United Methodist Church in Marion I was a little apprehensive about going back into youth ministry because that would be part of my job working in a large full-time role but the senior pastor Mike was a good man and he'd been a good friend over the years so our family moved to this community in 2011 to begin what we hoped would be a long and fruitful season of life and ministry well this church was busy and full of activity and high demands and I was excited to be a part of it my role at the church was pretty diverse I was in charge of youth ministry I was in charge of missions and I split the preaching duties with Pastor Mike so every other week I would preach to to all the people in the regular service we all do and everything else - it was a demanding but rewarding place to serve our photography business took off like a like a rocket ship when we moved to this area we ended up buying the old military surplus store in Uptown Marion and converted it into it into a photography studio and we were having a blast we still are we were busy but life was good now I need to say this and I need everyone to hear me when I say this I love the people a first night Methodist in Marion I love them however the denomination that we served has been in a in a tough spot for a long time when it comes to issues of theology Authority and other things and in many Protestant denominations questions about doctrine and theology aren't simply passed down through the ages the way they are in Catholicism rather they're up for debate and discussion and can be changed frequently so what that can mean is that the church can find itself constantly in a state of deep division and one group pushing this agenda and another group pushing this agenda well in the past five years or so the conflict had intensified to the point where many churches have left the denomination while others had formed groups and associations and some even thinking about doing a new thing and this is what happens in the Protestant world when people can't agree or get along they just go do their own thing and one way or another well I was struggling with this and it wasn't too much time before those long-forgotten arguments about the authority of the Catholic Church started making their way to the surface of my mind and in discussions with people about the authority of Scripture and tradition I would often be faced with comments like well Keith that's just your interpretation or you know the church just needs to get with the times and I was realizing that the problem was that there was nowhere to go for an ultimate authoritative view on these or any other matters of faith because you couldn't just open the Bible and read the Bible because anybody could make the Bible say what they wanted it to say it's just your interpretation you couldn't appeal to your tradition because the people in the past were no smarter than we are here today and in fact they taught things long ago that don't fit with today's times so we reject them so what's left where can a person a church denomination go to understand what the truth of the Christian faith is these were the questions that I was wrestling with and I once asked a seminary professor of theology this question we were eating lunch at this event and I said to him as we were talking about these issues I said without a divinely inspired established authority to interpret Scripture how are we all supposed to fix this you know what he said he looked at me and he goes well sometimes it really stinks to be Protestant doesn't it he was laughing I wasn't he had no idea what I was going through he just thought it was a funny joke well around this same time my friend Greg and Sandi the one who went to measure gorya with they came to town and they took Estelle and I to go see a screening of the movie apparition Hill which is a documentary that follows real-life people as they go to measure Gloria and to see what their trips like and the movie was well done and it was fun to relive some of the experiences I had when I was there years earlier but as we watched it my heart began to stir I wasn't sure if it was just nostalgia at first but I couldn't get the Blessed Mother out of my mind I found that I was thinking about her more and more it was as if she was reaching out to me it felt so strange now when I was encountering Catholicism years before like so many other non Catholics that the Marian doctrines to me were huge obstacles intellectually I couldn't overcome them but something can happen when you expose yourself to the reality of who the Blessed Mother really is and how much she loves you it stops being about intellect and it starts becoming emotional it's very strange but that's what was happening to me well after the movie was over the four of us went out to lunch and I opened up about the struggles I was having you know and there were people that would say to me at times you know I understand if you're not fitting into this denomination anymore but catholic can't you find something else well you know i can't speak for anybody else but I knew that the root cause of the issues that we were struggling with weren't gonna be solved by just a new denomination these were questions about the nature and the idea of church itself what kind of authority if any had Jesus instituted when he started his church and what does it mean for us today because of all my previous time spent studying Catholicism I knew there was only one thing this could mean and it wasn't going to be found simply in another denomination however the walls that I had built in my heart around Catholicism were pretty high these were dangerous questions and life was good I love my church my kids were happy my marriage was good we had plenty of money don't mess this up with thoughts of doing something drastic I told myself well during when one of my planning meetings with Pastor Mike we were going over a few things and Pastor Mike he's a good guy he's a he's a he's a friend of mine and I decided I needed to share with him what I was feeling so I told him said Mike I think I found a way to deal with all the problems in our denomination he says though I bet you have what is it now you know said Mike I'm thinking about becoming a Roman Catholic well as you can imagine he didn't know what to think about that other than has Keith completely lost his mind so here's what he said Keith I'm gonna give you a job I want you to write a sermon series to preach in our church on the history and the nature of the church that Jesus Christ started I said are you serious you want me to preach that I'm not so sure you're gonna like what I'm gonna say because the stuff I'm learning is gonna be pretty radical you see I knew that when Jesus established the church in Matthew 16 that he did so upon the rock of Peter I knew that the Apostles led the church with authority given them by Jesus himself and as they died they passed on that authority to their successors and I asked Mike how he thought these ideas would play out in our congregation you know what he said he said Keith if that's the truth then why wouldn't you want to preach that to our people game on right the series he said what was going on I was blown away by that well right around that time Greg came to see me and he he told me he met a priest here in Cedar Rapids through CEO he said you need to meet this guy and talk to him about your situation so I emailed father Chris and he agreed to have lunch with me after the 12:05 mass here at IC now it had been years since I had attended a mass I did not have any great expectations or think much of it I just thought well I'm just meeting him before lunch I was not ready for what God was gonna do I came in and I immediately took notice of how the space itself seemed to draw me into prayer like it felt holy to me it was amazing and this was while we were still rocking the 1960s motif in here okay this is before the renovation but something about being in here just took me to a place of peace I looked around and I noticed all the people that were here in the middle of the week at 1205 in the afternoon I was impressed by that now when the processional started father Chris came down and the Deacon passed by holding the Bible high in the air and I was hit with awe and reverence given to the Word of God the mass began as it always does in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and I was moved by that and what struck me as the mass progressed was its simplicity and its complete focus on Jesus and once the Eucharistic liturgy began I felt something powerful inside me something that hit me at a deeper level than theological arguments or anything like that it was emotional in a way that I can't describe you see the best words anyone can ever say to you are found right here in the mass behold the lamb of God behold him who takes away the sins of the world blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb there's nothing like that anywhere else in the world and when you realize that this isn't just a symbol but rather the fulfillment of a promise of Jesus to be with us until the end of the age what else can compare this was hitting me right in the soul so after mass I met father Chris for lunch and I shared with him what was going on and he was as many of you know easy to talk to you and he offered to help in any way he could at one point in one of our conversations I was saying oh I just need to pray more about this I need more time and he just said very clearly you need to make a decision you know at the end of the day isn't that the truth for all of us we can go round and round we can pray we can seek God we can ask advice from those we trust we can do all of those things and more but it all means nothing until we make a decision the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field which a man found and covered and then in his joy he goes and sells all he has and buys that field at some point in time the man had to make the decision to sell all he had and buy the field he didn't own it already the point that Jesus was making with this parable was that the kingdom of heaven is a great treasure but it belongs only to those who are willing to sell all they have in order to buy the field this modern idea that God exists merely to enhance our lives and give us worldly successes according to our own design Fyers is alive from the pit of hell that's not what Jesus ever taught he said My Kingdom is not of this world so why do so many of us believe that we get to have it both ways why does our obedience only go so far I'll follow Jesus but he better make it easy I'll give myself to God but I need to keep this to at some point in time a decision has to be made but make no mistake about it it's never gonna be easy it won't be cheap it will cost you how much did the man in the story have to pay it says he had to pay everything didn't it what this was hitting me in a new way and honestly I didn't know if I could do it I didn't know what this would do to my family one thing I haven't told you yet is that during this time my mother had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and this shocking news had devastated our family my mom was a vibrant woman of faith who was so beloved by so many people and as her battle against this disease waged we tried to spend as much time as we could together endless trips to the Mayo Clinic for radiation and chemo treatments that for a few months held the cancer at bay but destroyed her body as so many of you who have fought this battle know it was heartbreaking well during one of the visits to my parent's home my dad and I went for a walk I told him what I was contemplating now he didn't need anything extra to worry about but he listened and he tried to help what he told me was that if I was going to convert I would need to find a way I couldn't just walk away from my job there had to be some pathway to make things work I had responsibilities I have things I have to take care of people who depend on me now what that could look like was a mystery to me but I appreciated his wizz meanwhile Estelle and I were having lots of talks she too was concerned about the practical realities but more than that she wanted to support me and what I felt like God was calling us to do now you have to remember this wasn't her deal she wasn't feeling called to become Catholic because she was originally a Catholic sometimes people say oh I picked you've been praying hard to bring him back that's not where she was she wasn't ready to return to that again she shared my frustrations but what my wife was ready to do was to trust me with this she knew I was only trying to do what God was calling me to do and that's pretty huge well at the same time I started preaching some pretty Catholic sounding sermons to my Methodist brothers and sisters I preached him I preached about Peter and the keys of the kingdom during the Advent year I preached the sermon about the Blessed Mother and I talked about how the Bible describes her both as the new Ark of the Covenant and as the new eve I shared how she is the fulfillment of the prophecy about the woman whose seed would crush the head of the serpent in genesis 3:15 as well as the woman clothed with the Sun and crowned in heaven in Revelation 12 I would often become with emotion as I was preparing that sermon and as I preached it I noticed that there are people in the in the congregation with tears in their eyes some even came forward after the sermon to prepare the Blessed Mother reaches out to us in a motherly way that goes beyond our understanding and I remember explaining this to Greg once and he even started crying and he doesn't do that it was becoming clear to me that she was after me well the night that I knew I had to convert took place on a day that I'll never forget so my normal routine is to wake up a little earlier than Estelle make the coffee spend some time in prayer before starting the day's tasks one morning as I was praying I felt like this strong sense of the Lord that I had to connect with this guy named Steve ray okay now Steve ray is a former Baptist who became a Catholic and he's been in this church you know he travels around and he gives talks and I'd seen his talk on YouTube or something but I had no idea who he was or how to get ahold of them it's just God said you need to talk to a guy named Steve ray I thought how is that gonna happen what does this even mean well I happen to have the day off from work that day at the church and Greg and I decided we'd get together and I was City to have dinner at 4 p.m. now I don't know who has dinner at 4 p.m. that's under the age of 70 but the fact is we did well when I got down to this Iowa City placed walk in sit down Greg walks in comes in six down before anything happens he gets a text from his wife sandy and he opens it up and it says hey Greg tell Keith that Catholic apologist and author Steve Ray is giving a talk tonight in Silvis Illinois maybe you guys should go I'll tell you these women are smart fellas hey Greg looks up he says have you ever heard of this guy I couldn't believe what he just said well it was a good thing with that we decided to meet at 4 p.m. because silvus is about an hour away from Iowa City and when I told Greg about my morning revelation he knew we had to make this happen so we snarfed our burgers and drove straight to Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in Silvis well when we arrived the church was packed and mass was underway and even though I couldn't receive the Eucharist I often went forward for a blessing I wanted to get as close to Jesus as I could well after my blessing I knelt down to pray and I stared up at this large wooden crucifix in that church and I began to pour out my heart to God God what is happening to me what are you doing I believe that you want me to become a Catholic but I need you to make a way there has to be a way I can't just do this with no plan or ability to take care of my family Jesus I need you to make a way well as clearly as as ever as I've ever felt the voice of God speak to me from the cross jesus said I am the way the truth and the life you don't need me to make a way you just need me well that night Steve gave a great talk about how the early Christians suffered and died rather than to compromise the gospel the brave men and women of the early church gave up everything rather than deny their faith so who was I to put some condition on my obedience who is I to say to God okay I'll follow you but you got to make it easy for me you got to spell it out for me you have to make sure that I don't suffer too much see in essence that's what I was saying I'll follow you but only if you make it easy for me and all my quest for the true faith I had finally come to the place where I was faced with the reality of what the gospel calls all of us to give up in order to attain the faith if any man would come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me for whoever would save his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it Matthew 16 24 and 25 you see what I realized that night was that even if I lost my income in my career if I gained Jesus it was more than worth it Jesus calls us to pick up our cross and follow him but in order to truly do that we must deny ourselves now that can mean different things for different people can't it well for me it meant denying my need for security my cross in that moment was not the loss of my life but rather the loss of my control despite all that God had been showing me I still wanted to be in control I wanted to know that everything would be okay according to my plans and what Jesus was showing me that night was that following him into his church would require a level of obedience and Trust that had no conditions you see none of us truly need anything more than what we already possess in Jesus and he's not a means to an end he is the end so after Steve's talk Gregg said to me we're going to talk to him he has to meet you now I'm not normally the guy that goes up and talks to the speaker at conferences you know or events but Gregg wasn't giving me a choice so we made our feet and Gregg was like throwing elbows at people who were like ready to show Steve pictures of their grandkids on their phone and stuff like that crutches like get out of it and we get up there and Gregg says to Steve ray says Steve this is Keith Nestor he's a Protestant pastor and he's feeling the call to become a Catholic Church will you give him your cell phone number please I love I love Gregg Steve looked at me and he said brother I know exactly where you are and I'm gonna give you a piece of advice you either need to become Catholic right now or you need to turn and run as far away the other direction as you possibly can because if you don't you're gonna drive yourself crazy then he gave me a copy of his book upon this rock and inside he wrote his cell phone number on the way home I told Greg I said this is it man I've got to do this when I got home I told us tell everything that happened that night and she hugged me tightly and said Keith I'm so proud of you whatever happens we are going to be all right now that's a pretty awesome thing after that there was no turning back the day I joined the Catholic Church was October 8th 2017 downstairs Greg and Sandee and Devon and Kim and their kids and my friends yvonne and berlin from my old Methodist Church in Davenport who also are now Catholic they all came for the mass and when I stood to receive the Eucharist for the first time I was so humbled I had finally done it I felt so fulfilled in peace not long at at peace not long after that when it was time to pass the peace I felt a tap on my shoulder and I turned around and none other than Steve Ray was standing right there he said welcome home brother you'll never look back he was right the field had been bought but if you notice in the parable the treasure isn't just sitting there is it it's buried that means that you have to dig it's not just handed to you you have to sweat you have to work it's not always fun however the joy you have in knowing that the treasure is there keeps you moving forward things weren't always easy for us once we joined there was some pain there was some sweat because digging is sometimes hard our family which revolved around my being a pastor was now completely scattered on Sunday mornings we have three kids and they're all old enough to make up their own minds where they're going to go to church and we tried to bring them to Mass with us but they weren't interested in that and I learned that you can't force conversion on them so we've entrusted them to to God into the Blessed Mother and I'm thankful that all three of them profess Christ and still attend church even if it's not with us well this would often cause my wife many tears sitting in mass wondering what God was doing in our family over time things have improved we've learned to offer the things that we don't understand to God because there are plenty that we do understand you see the more you dig the better it gets because you know the treasure is right there and that's what the church is to me well like me when you first joined the church I heard this you'll hear things like welcome home it may seem weird to hear that when you're in a place that you haven't been for very long because we like to think of home as a place where we've come from but the reality is that home isn't about where you've been or what's familiar home is about where you belong jesus said in my father's house are many rooms I go to prepare a place for you so that where I am you may also be now we know that he's speaking about heaven but we understand that the church and the mass is in the realest sense an extension of heaven right here on earth see that's what we participate in when we come to mass so in reality this is home in a place that no other place on earth ever will be because Jesus is here he built this he gave all he had he bought the field he did the digging he suffered he sweat he dug and he still digs for your heart he's still working because the treasure of his kingdom is still being built and he offers to share it with you but you have to dig - if anyone would follow after me he must pick up his shovel and dig now I've spent a lot of time telling you what this means for me somebody want yes you did a lot of time I'm almost done I promise this is what it means to me but more importantly what does it mean for you what are you missing out on because you haven't bought the field what are you missing out on because you aren't digging what treasure does God have buried for you will you live your life wondering what was under there and what would have happened if you unconditionally obeyed and trusted God or will you let go of whatever it is you've been holding on to even if it's a good thing so that you can receive that which is great my prayer for all of us tonight is that we would let nothing hold us back from the treasure that God has for us for wherever your treasure is your heart will be also so let's get digging thank you for listening [Music]

Channel: Keith Nester

Views: 294,656

Rating: 4.887897 out of 5

Keywords: iMovie, Keith Nester, Roman Catholic, Catholic Convert, Catholic Feedback, Catholic, Catholic Podcast, Catholic Talk Show, Catholic Radio, Catholic TV, Catholic Show, Taylor Marshall, Matt Fradd, Mike Schmitz, Robert Barron, Catholic Answers, Catholic Stuff You Should Know, Church Militant, Bishop Barron

Id: l5r608T3Bm8

Length: 57min 39sec (3459 seconds)

Published: Fri May 10 2019