Ralph Martin - A Slow Cure Is the Best Cure

[Music] hello sisters and brothers friends and relatives strangers acquaintances supporters of renewal ministries it's a joy for me to speak to like this every couple weeks by the youtube channel and today what i'd like to do is to speak to you about something that francis de sales said he said that a slow cure is the best cure and i'm going to kind of try to unpack that a little bit because it provides an important perspective the christian life isn't a sprint it's a marathon now when you think about cures you know one of the things that pops into my mind is cement curing you know people pour cement when they're renewing driveways or roads or construction projects and they have to make sure that the temperature is right they have to make sure that nobody walks on or puts pressure on it and it needs time to cure it needs time to come together in the right kind of way from the bottom up inside out i also think about cures when it comes to medical issues i've had my own experience periodically with various kinds of dermatology type stuff and you can probably see the effects of it a little bit on my face right now but uh you know all these uh when i was growing up as a boy in new jersey we used to go to the jersey shore and in those days people thought it'd be really great to get a lot of sunshine and sunburns were good and so i have a lot of skin damage so periodically i need to get stuff kind of frozen off or put cream on and kind of does stuff and every now and then though they discover a skin cancer and they have to ins in size to get rid of it and a couple times there's some pretty deep incisions and uh they have to put stitches in they put stitches in i didn't know this they don't they start inside they have rows of stitches from from the inside out and then there's the final row of stitches on the outside that you see but there's other rows of stitches underneath and they say it has to heal from the inside out and it's a little bit like that uh with with our spiritual life so i just had an experience that recently with uh granddaughter number 19 our youngest granddaughter maggie jane baldante the only grandchild that lived near us here in ann arbor michigan and she broke her arm and put a cast on it uh it probably wasn't put on well enough although it's tough to get it on just right because they don't want to squeeze the arm when they're swelling but anyway it fell off the cast fell off they had to go back in and they had to recast it then they had to go in again it turns out it wasn't healing right so they had to adjust it under anesthesia and uh now she has another cast on and they say you just have to give it time it just really needs time to uh for the bones to come together and start growing together and you can't put pressure on it too soon you need to kind of be patient so uh her mother and father are kind of following her around the house hoping she's only like a year and a month or so hoping that she's full again and she doesn't need to go through that whole for her kind of traumatic experience so anyway here we are in the spiritual life the lord is trying to heal our wounded souls uh there's really deep wounds in our soul because of original sin there's a there's a song a christian song that we used to sing years ago called born into a battle and we are born into a battle we are not born into peace time there's a war inside of us even little babies are fighting about the issue of obedience i just did a youtube video a little while ago called the struggle to obey and that struggle to obey is right there from the beginning that struggle to obey is hard denying ourself and doing the right thing so there's a wound deep in our being and then when you add to that the sins of other people the the sinful environment or the world maybe even in some families the abusive experience of in families or missing fathers or uh orphans or you know just all the terrible things that could happen to people that wound the soul and then there's our own sins of course that also wound the soul so there's quite a healing process being saved is really important being reconciled with god is absolutely critical coming to faith in jesus christ is super important i mean it makes all the difference repenting of our sins being reconciled to god but that as wonderful as it is needs to be followed up by a healing of our soul because unless healing starts to happen in our soul we're not going to end up obeying lord in a stable way over a period of time and the cure of our soul will never be solid that's pretty dangerous so different ones of us experience conversion in different ways some of us like saint paul are heading the wrong direction big time and the lord has mercy on us and knocks us to the ground in a certain way like surprises us by himself and that happened of course for saint paul he was really zealously persecuting christ then he came to be a extremely fervent follower of christ but even though he experienced a very strong conversion he needed a lot of soul healing as well he needed people to fill him in on a lot of things he needed a friend he needed barnabas and others who would kind of take him under their wings and say this is what's going on and this is how we do it but he also needed the lord to do a lot of work in the soul so he went away to arabia we don't know much about what happened there but it was sort of like a monastic retreat for a couple years i think and so there's a lot of stuff that the lord had to do in his soul after the conversion to kind of bring about the kind of cure uh the settling that would enable him to be stable and to continue to be zealous for the lord for the rest of his life uh something like that happened for me quite honestly i was caught up in the confusion of the 60s and i was a senior at the university of notre dame and a friend prevailed on me to make a weekend retreat called the cursillo and on that cursillo i got surprised by the lord i just i couldn't deny that he was there in that retreat house i couldn't deny that he was the lord i couldn't i couldn't pretend that any half-hearted response would really be adequate to the recognition of who jesus is so i i did i surrendered i i surrendered i i converted i uh repented uh i opened my life to the holy spirit and i had a strong experience of god of jesus of the holy spirit uh and i even felt called to be a missionary i mean not i didn't think in those terms but i wanted to help other people know the real god that jesus is alive and he's really raised from the dead and he really is inviting us to open our hearts to him and enter into relationship with him but it took years for the healing of my soul to progress to the point where there was just a really great stability in me that i wasn't tossed about by emotions i wasn't tossed about by temptations where i was able to stand firm you know like ephesians chapter 6 talks about it i talked about that in a video a little while ago about uh uh join the resistance you know i think that was the title of the video and uh in there i talked about how we need to resist the devil and he'll flee from us we need to stand and uh i think paul repeats it four different times in ephesians said chapter six he said stand when all is said and done stand so it took me years of healing uh from the inside out to uh to get to the point of being able to stand and not be shaken up by persecution not to be shaken up by temptation not to be shaken up by disappointments not to be shaken up by just whatever might be thrown at us and so to reach that stability is really really important and so after an initial even a strong conversion there's a lot of work that needs to be done so a lot of people are suspicious of strong emotional experiences what they call it but they can be very real but it doesn't it doesn't mean to say that it doesn't need still need a lot of contact with the spiritual sacramental prayer tradition of the church doctoral church of the church we need we need to fill in the blanks so to speak the lord's maybe catapulted us forward in the spiritual life in terms of our experience and our zeal but now he needs to kind of build the infrastructure for other people the infrastructure is there like for teresa of avalon she grew up in a good catholic family and she even entered the convent just short of her 21st birthday because she wanted to be the safest place to save her soul but she was still kind of lukewarm and even though the infrastructure was there there was a lot of stuff in her life that wasn't right there was a lot of compromises with the world and compromises with comfort uh you know some vanity and other kinds of things and it was until she was almost 40 years old that that she looked upon the the statue a bust of the head of jesus suffering crucified and she just felt convicted that look how much he loves me and look how little i've loved him and so she had an infrastructure there it was really solid she was a religious she was vowed to poverty chastity and obedience she had times of set prayer she had all kinds of helps but she needed more she needed more and the lord gave it to her she needed a little spark to kind of ignite it together just like the disciples needed it on the day of pentecost they had the best bible study anybody ever had they had the best spiritual direction they had the best apostolic supervision they had the best guidance from jesus himself and they still didn't quite have it all come together for them until the holy spirit came so whether the holy spirit has come to us in a sudden way uh we still need the slow healing whether the holy spirit's been working in a very gentle gradual way we still need that spark so that's why we did our pentecost mission uh you know this past pentecost season and it's still on our youtube channel you can still access us the four four talks before prayer sessions because we all need the holy spirit whether we've had a strong experience of conversion or whether we've been kind of lukewarm or whether we have the infrastructure we're plugging away we all need more of the holy spirit so i encourage you to not neglect that teresa of lazu came from a fantastic catholic family both her parents are counted on saints some of her sisters are probably going to be canonized she just had a really holy family but she needed a lot of healing in her soul she writes in the story of her soul that a priest told her one time she's never committed a mortal sin so here's somebody who's never committed mortal sin grew up in a family of saints still had a lot of emotional disorder and and motive and and you know she lacked a lot of virtues uh there was a self selfishness of self-seeking uh there were hurts there were wounds there was uh demands there was willfulness there was a lot of stuff in her life that needed to be healed so the lord gave special grace for the healing but there was also the discipline also a discipline of regular prayer regular sacraments of perseverance of pointing forward no matter what you experience or don't experience she sometimes wrote about how she just couldn't feel the lord or see the lord and she she reminded that she thought she was a little bit like a bird and there was a storm and the sky was dark and the bird couldn't see the sun but the bird knew the sun was up there and was pointing towards the sun even though he couldn't perceive the sun and couldn't see the sun if she says that's what we need to do in the spiritual life we need to persevere we need to persist we need to keep pointing towards the lord no matter what okay now there is a lot to be purified of there's a lot to be cured and the lord doesn't let us see it all at once because if we saw it all at once we'd probably we'd faint there's just a lot of things that are wounded a lot of mixed motives uh a lot of self-seeking a lot of vanity a lot of pride a lot of discouragement a lot of anger there's a lot of stuff in our soul that needs healing and so many many times in the sacred scripture the lord talks about the purification that's needed and here in maliki chapter 3 the lord says through the prophet malachi i am sending my messenger he will prepare the way before me and the lord whom you seek will come suddenly to his temple that's what happened jesus came to the temple unexpected people weren't expecting the messiah to look like jesus but the lord came to his temple and declared purification he overthrew the the tables drove out the animals and said my father's house is to be a house of prayer and you've made a dead of thieves the lord comes to the temple which our bodies are and he declares purification he says i'm going to do what it's going to take so that you can be with me forever because quite honestly until this deep cure takes place until this deep purification takes place we'll never be able to be with the lord face to face and that's what we want that's what heaven is before we're admitted to heaven and god so much wants to admit us to heaven has died so we can be in heaven there's a deep purification that needs to happen the messenger of the covenant whom you desire see he is coming says the lord of hosts he's come but who can endure the day of his coming who can stand firm when he appears ephesians 6 paul says fourteen times stand firm who can for he will be like a refiner's fire like fuller's lie he will sit refining and purifying silver he will purify the levites refining them like gold or silver that they may bring offerings to the lord in righteousness then the offering of judah and jerusalem will please the lord i will draw near to you for judgment i will be swift to bear witness against sorcerers adulterers and perjurers those who deprive a laborer of wages those who oppress a widow or an orphan or turn aside a resident alien without fearing me says the lord of hosts this is this is malaki the last prophet minor prophet you see the same thing spoken about in the last book of the bible the book of revelation where the holy spirit speaks through the apostle john about the lake of fire and the second death who's going to be thrown into the lake of fire the cowards the murderers the fornicators liars i mean those who grievously break the ten commandments those who kill or support the killing of babies those who lie to to gain power preserve power those who commit sexual immorality the lord has declared war these things have to be removed and if people don't repent of these things that aren't purified of these things they will not be able to enter the kingdom of god and i'm not going to go through all the other texts that speak of this but here it is of the prophet maleki i'll be swift to bear witness against sorcerers adulterers and perjurers and those who unjustly oppress people and don't give people a living wage and aren't fair with people and exploit them and are greedy and give into the vice of avarice but let's not forget here the sorcerers one of the things that's happening today is people abandon the one true god they're opening themselves up to the old demons they're opening themselves up to the old gods just recently in california somebody wanted to introduce into the school curriculum for california elementary kids honoring and learning how to do aztec rights opening themselves up to the demonic forces that led the aztecs to slaughter so many people on the altar to their gods which are demons paul says the false gods of the nations are demons when you're sacrificing to these gods you're sacrificing to demons so a lot of people unfortunately a lot of catholics have gotten involved in the occult have gotten involved going to fortune tellers or ouija boards or stupid new age stuff and they're rubbing crystals and they're trying to invent themselves they're trying to find the god within which isn't the one true god but it's a god of our own making they start worshiping themselves oh repent if you've gotten involved in the occult at all repent it's going to kill you it's going to drag you down to hell it's going to put a veil over your mind so you can't see clearly anymore and you can't know the truth leave while there's still time as the apostle peter said flee from the wrath that is to come as the apostle peter said save yourself from this wicked generation whereas paul said flee from the wrath that is to come flee from john the baptist said flee from the wrath that is to come well that's the prophet malachi john of the cross gives a vivid picture of the depths of the purification that the lord wants to do he says for the sake of further clarity in this manner i'm going to give you an example an analogy the soul is purified and prepared for union with the divine light just as the wood is prepared for transformation into the fire fire when applied to wood first dehumidifies it dispelling all moisture and making it give off any water it contains then it gradually turns the wood black makes it dark and ugly and even causes it to emit a bad odor by drying out the wood accidents that are contrary to fire secondary characteristics finally by heating and killing it from without the fire transforms the wood into itself and makes it as beautiful as it is itself so this is a metaphor and analogy about uh the depth of the purifying work of god's holy spirit and necessity this kind of purification reading this from from the book the fulfillment of all desire which has the best wisdom the catholic church has and has francis the sales stuff in here joining across the stuff and treasures of the zoos and teresa of avila just all the things i'm drawing on which is the best reason the catholic church has is in this book called the fulfillment of all desire i've written it i've just been a servant of it it's not my wisdom it's the wisdom of the catholic church in a clear orderly way you can get it by going to renewalministries.net we always run a discount on it we always give free shipping sometimes it's as good as amazon sometimes it's not as good as amazon amazon keeps changing things but this is a significant discount and free shipping if you go to renewalministries.net well one more thing and probably the most important thing is from the new testament luke chapter 8 verses 9 to 15. this is the parable of the sower and the seed and i bet every time we hear this in church we say we tune out we say i've heard that before i know that parable i get it but it's really relevant right now for us it's about how to assure that we get on the slow cure track because the slow cure is the best cure and we need cure we need curing when his disciples asked him what this parable meant he said to you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of god but for others they're in parables so that's seeing they may not see and hearing they may not understand in other words the lord wants people to make an effort people who really don't care about the word of god people who really don't care about what jesus is saying aren't going to get it so the lord is looking for hearts that are disposed to know the truth and if a heart isn't disposed to know the truth they're not going to find it now you might say wow that's kind of radical that's not fair the lord wants to know who values him enough to seek him the lord wants to know who cares enough about who he is and what he's saying to pay attention to his word and if we don't we're liable to to drift away now the parable is this the seed is the word of god the ones along the path are those who have heard then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts that they may not believe and be saved i think we've seen this happen i think i've seen people who have heard the word of god and you know they've heard it they've really heard it but they let temptation or they let emotions or they let uh somebody else or they let an old pattern of sin take it away when you hear the word of god when you understand that something's being said to you that's important you've got to grab a hold of it and not forget it you've got to grab a hold of it and not let it be snatched out of your mind write it down if you have to write it on your hand if you have to uh you've got to hold on to the word and not let it be snatched away in the stream of media and the stream of distraction in the stream of noise in which we live if you hear the word of god you gotta grab it and hold on to it your lifeline it's your lifeline to salvation we don't want a risk of not believing and we don't want to run the risk of not being saved and the ones in the rock are those who when they hear the word receive it with joy but these have no root they believe for a while in a time of temptation fall away haven't we seen this people come home from retreat or people come home from a life in a spirit seminar or ignatian retreat or cursillo and they're on fire they're excited but then they drift away you know it's harder to pray it's harder when they're not there with others it's harder when old temptations come back it's harder when bad friends they had companions who are not good influencers i was saying ah come on joe come on man come on come on to the bar with us tonight and we kind of let go of something the lord's given us we really have responded enthusiastically but we're not willing to pay even a little price to stick with the lord in the face of temptation trials mockery what if they start calling us holy joes why don't we start calling us holy rollers but if they start making fun of us can we stand firm the lord is going to give us the grace to hold on to the word we don't have to be like the one who the devil snatches the word from the lord is going to give us the grace to stand firm when we run into that initial mockery that initial temptation those old sins coming back those bad companions urging us away or the laziness in our soul he's going to give us the grace to deny ourself and take up our cross and resist what will take us away from eternal life what will take us away from salvation and as for what fell among the thorns they are those who hear but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life and their fruit does not mature haven't we seen this happen to people too people when maybe they were in college and they got involved with focus or uh maybe they made a retreat and uh while they were single they were in a single men's or singles woman's group and they they were they were faithfully persevering but then they got married and and marriage brings with the complications doesn't it marriage brings with the challenges marriage is actually one of the very best ways of surfacing in us what needs to be purified but then financial concerns come and it's normal to have financial concerns but here's where we have to make a decision are the financial concerns are the pleasure concerns are the relationship concerns gonna so consume our life that we drift away from believing and trusting i had to make this decision early on in my my life when i was about to get married i had to decide whether i believed that putting god first in my life no matter what the circumstances no matter what the needs no matter what the pressures was the right thing or not for me it was luke chapter 12 where jesus says unbelievers are always worrying about what they're going to eat what they're going to wear we could just throw in a whole grab bag there but i say to you seek first the kingdom of god and his holiness and these other things will be added as well because your heavenly father wants to give them to you i had to hold on to that promise i still hold on to that promise my wife and myself are still trying to base our life now as our children are grown we have grandchildren we have other kinds of pressures and concerns but that that promise from the lord it's a solemn promise has kept us putting first the lord and not getting dragged away by the cares and anxieties of life by riches by the pleasures of life and and thanks be to god some fruit is being born in our life not by our own doing but by the mercy of god who's kept us on the path and as for that in the good soil there are those who hearing the word hold it fast in an honest and good heart and bring forth fruit with patience patience patience a slow cure is the best cure one of the ways of john lacrosse says that cloaks pride in our life is when we get too impatient with our faults and to impatience with the slow pace of our progress in a spiritual life he says that's manifesting hidden pride getting too impatient about the progress of the cure on the other hand he said some people are too indifferent to the slow pace of the cure so there's this kind of middle ground where we're striving for that holiness without which nobody will see god and we're resting in the promise of the lord and abiding with him i think uh quite a while ago i did a youtube video and striving and abiding at the same time maybe i'll do it again someday but we need to be eagerly striving for that holiness without which nobody could see god at the same time completely relying on the lord completely trusting his promise and knowing beyond the shadow of doubt that we can't make ourselves holy only god can bring about the cure but we've got to want it we've got to fight for it we've got to be willing to pay a price for it we've got to be willing every day to deny ourselves and take her across and follow jesus and hold on to his wordless promise so let's conclude one of the things that teresa of avila says is that if you don't have a very great desire for god you won't make much progress another time she says unless you have a very great determination you're not going to make much progress but then she says and here's the hope for all of us if you lack a great desire for god ask him to give it to you and he will if you lack a great determination to persevere to the end and pick up your cross every day and follow jesus ask him to give it to you and he will and those who seek will find those who knock the door will be open to them and those who ask will receive him so brothers and sisters i i hope we've been sober to a certain extent by the depth of the cure that needs to happen in our soul but i hope we also leave with a tremendous hope that this is god's will for us he told us the parable of the sower and the seed not to condemn us into one of those categories but to call us out of each of those categories into the final category of those who treasure the word and bear great fruit so you don't have to be the person who hears the word have it snatched away you don't have to be the person who wilts under the first temptation or mockery or difficulty you don't have to be the person who wilts or drips off course because your life's gotten complicated as tremendous pressures you can be the person who keeps before you the promise and the call the challenge and the consolation slow cure is the best cure so set yourself for the finish line christian life is a marathon don't get impatient with how long it's taking but just keep moving forward just keep your eyes on the goal just keep your eyes on jesus like that little bird kept its eyes on the sun even when he couldn't see the sun even when there were storms storm clouds in the sun no matter what you feel or don't feel no matter what uh challenges or temptations your face stand steady stand firm keep on moving forward and you'll find healing in your soul a steadying in your life and a bit greater greater ability to bear fruit and to persevere and to be a blessing to everybody else in your life amen [Music] you

Channel: Renewal Ministries

Views: 18,447

Rating: 4.942029 out of 5

Keywords: Christianity, Jesus, Christ, Evangelism, Mission, Spirituality, Evangelization, Religion, Catholic, Church, God, Trinity

Id: cKVEJAGT26U

Length: 35min 1sec (2101 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 10 2021