The Journey Home - 2012-12-03 - CHRIS ZAJDZINSKI - Former Baptist

good evening and welcome to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host for this program once again I have this opportunity to bring into your home's a guest who is going to talk about how the Lord opened his heart and mind to the beauty of the fullness of the church and often the case is that that was the last thing the person was ever thinking or even wanting and that might be the case tonight so it's a great pleasure to have Chris lijinsky join us former Baptist and I guess it's a little nondenominational on your background rights right Chris welcome to the journey home has come a long way yes out from the the heat of Phoenix here to the the Midwest a little cooler yeah it's good to have you here thank you great to be here thank you but you're originally a Midwestern here's Chicago yes so I didn't realize how bune oh you you take for granted the charm of the Midwest and then I've been in the desert for over 20 years so coming back and seeing the trees and the grass and even the overcast skies and rain it's beautiful that's great well I love the Midwest because I I love the changes of the 4-2 state changes and every time they come I can't wait for the next one to come along but but they force you to change your life and they I love the pattern of that but anyway we're not here to talk about the weather it's good to have your Christmas you know I usually invite the guests to go way back and start a summary of where'd you come from spiritually so our audience understands stepping stones of your journey okay yeah well I grew up in a Christian family my parents did a great job of making spirituality and the Christian faith really who we were and a big part of our life growing up and I grew up Baptist and when I look back I have nothing but great memories of my formation and and my experience in this Baptist community because Baptist communities can be all across the board depending on where would you say you came from one that was truly and he evangelical II focus Bible yeah and I and I deeply appreciate that we were very focused on sharing our faith evangelizing obviously studying Scripture and it it really laid a foundation for me to know that that God loved me that I was a sinner and I was separated from a right relationship with God because of sin but Jesus died for me and I knew that very early on I had I really felt a personal relationship with Christ from a young age and so I'm very happy to grow up Baptist what's interesting to me though is I was never baptized oh we were in this Baptist Church till I was 17 and we left it actually left the Baptist affiliation and became a Bible Church and we left and we started going to a full gospel church in the south part of Chicago you might need to explain to the audience of difference between a full gospel I'm not sure I know I just thought okay well I'm gonna get the full gospel here I guess as if something was missing right yeah it was very charismatic though okay very charismatic that's usually the the gifts are the the part that they usually assume was missing in the other church yes yes and that's what my parents were seeking was a more charismatic worship baptized in the Holy Spirit yeah but I was I was a junior in high school and I realized I had never been baptized and you know I was always taught that it was a ritual to publicly profess your faith it's to show everyone that you're a Christian you're already you have faith in Christ you're a Christian you're saved and you get baptized to show people that and I thought well everyone knows this but you no one knows who I am in this church I just didn't see the need to get up in front of everybody and get dunked and I just never did it but as I got older and you read mark chapter 16 enough where Jesus says he who believes and is baptized it will be saved I Shermer thinking I'm sure and Jesus doesn't mean that I'm sure he means he who believes is saved and then you'll get baptized but I thought maybe I should just go ahead and knock that out just a you know at least tell Jesus yeah I got baptized yeah it's interesting the way you said that Jesus he didn't mean that I love the way you said that because sometimes I remember as a Protestant there were lots of scriptures where I kind of had to put that person interpretation on that which kind of teases you must not really have been serious about that right we mean that he doesn't mean that I have to be baptized of that baptism is part of this yeah so but you know I I was baptized and I truly experienced conversion though that year those last two years of high school were different and then we we did move from Chicago to Arizona and we started going to a non-denominational community and I was there seventeen years I met my wife there my parents went there her her entire family went there my entire family went there was she from that area she is she's from Arizona and we developed very deep roots in in this nondenominational church it was a large community so I had a lot of friends there and you know I I got a little lukewarm there I would say you kind of get I I got to a point where I'm like I kind of know all this you know and I'm not really learning anything new on Sunday mornings but we had a great pastor and he was entertaining and our friends were there but I would say is about eight years ago that I was challenged by a friend I was having lunch with a friend and he was a pastor and he said how important is the kingdom of God to you and I remember being honest with myself and thinking I mean in my head I can say it's important but you know you kind of get busy with your life and having kids and business and I didn't really have an evangelistic mentality and I embraced the spiritual disciplines of a fasting prayer and almsgiving in a very aggressive consistent way for the very first time in my life and through that I really had like a second conversion and I really experienced a the best way for me to explain it was this deep sense of abandoning myself to the will of God I just I just remember feeling like God whatever you ask of me whatever and however I need to live my like that's what I want to do and so there was real for the first time real contrition and real repentance in my life and changed my life forever no are you coming from the theology of a once saved always saved mentality absolutely yeah yes so the issue wasn't losing your salvation not at all no and I think that's what allowed me to get lukewarm is I'm saved I know I'm saved there's nothing I can do to lose it I didn't do anything to gain it and and so it's just easy to get focused on the things of this life and and that really happened to me and that's when my friend said how important is the kingdom of God to you I was honest it's probably not first on the list but over that that year so why were you now motivated to to be disciplined in you know I'm saying prayer and fasting and almsgiving give salvation isn't the issue was it to please god more to be to be able to stand before him without embarrassment that kind of an idea or to live it out or be a better witness when you think was the yeah I think initially it was kind of like baptism from the standpoint of I've read about baptism Jesus says he who believes and is baptized will be saved but I've never been baptized with fasting Here I am I've been a Christian my whole life I've never fasted but I've read enough scripture to see that just talked about quite a lot and so my friend said let's let's start a group and let's get together I started a Bible study and we would meet every Wednesday mornings at a coffee shop and we would pray we would get into the scriptures and we would fast together so one day a week this group of guys we'd fast one day and so when you're doing it with other in a group you have some accountability and I think I was doing it because hey the Bible says I should do it and I'm not I should at least implement it in my life but then what happens is you start experiencing the grace and you start thinking differently and for me scripture really came alive and I started getting involved in ministry at this church and I was helping my wife and I were helping with a young marriage class and I was working with the men's ministry so I'm doing a lot of teaching so I'm doing a lot of studying and I just can't get enough scripture I just can't get enough and so I'm attributing that to wow I'm spending this time fasting now I'm I'm spending more time in prayer which God's drawing me into that and now this is over the course of a year two years you see so it wasn't like an overnight you know conversion experience but I I could tell that God had gotten a hold of me and I definitely attributed it to those disciplines and now as a Catholic looking back in fact even before I converted I was reading in the Catechism that the church teaches that the three main forms of penance the three main forms of turning your heart to God fasting prayer almsgiving yeah I can imagine that the Catholics know about this so you're experiencing though without any I am assuming up until this time what was your view of the Catholic Church from childhood oh boy I'm yeah I'm embarrassing out to give you some perspective I remember when pope john paul ii died so it's 2005 and i remember watching his funeral in my office i'm watching it and i'm watching all the mourners at the vatican and and bishops and cardinals are walking by the body of the pope and i remember thinking if all of these catholics knew what has just happened to their leader that he has stood before jesus christ as a heretic and he's been condemned they would run right out of the vatican and go join a Bible believing Church like like mine that's so I you know I I you weren't open to the go no no and so I grew up in a Chris in home but I did grow up in a very anti-catholic home so when I was growing up you know my grandmother is Catholic so I would try and evangelize to her try to get her saved I was always trying to help my Catholic friends in high school and even in college come to a knowledge of the truth so yeah Catholicism was not on the radar whatsoever so you're experienced with the disciplines of prayer fasting and almost had nothing to do with any knowledge of the their place in the Catholic disciplines they were just Scripture as what scripture says I've been saved by grace to Christ but he's calling me live this way too so I'll give it a try and then you experience the beauty of that because the graces of that does it yes at the same time I was starting to see a different gospel message pop off the pages of Scripture though so this this thought that I'm saved by faith alone and it's an irrevocable transaction I wasn't getting that from the Gospels or from you know the letters of st. Paul so now I'm in this group with these guys and we start discussing that God is calling us to live a holy life and he's making it possible and I connected very deeply with the fact that God is my father and I am his son and he has given me guidelines for a life of happiness as opposed to gods my master I'm his slave and he restricts my life so I was seeing that God wants to change who I am he doesn't just want to declare me to be innocent of sin right now that's how I had seen salvation that I'm guilty I'm a sinner I deserve punishment but because of Christ God says I declare you innocent and now you can spend eternity in heaven but that does nothing to address my problem all right so that I was starting to see that God had created me to experience a relationship with him union with him he created me to experience love and harmony with everybody else but I wasn't equipped to do that and some salvation became God healing me and looking to restore in me that ability the the reason he created me to experience love and that I had to participate in that I had to cooperate with that and that was a countercultural message the other going to say that there's one verse that I remember particularly that at second Corinthians 5:17 anyone who is in Christ is a new creation the old has gone the new has come yes what did that mean in relationship to the the external judgmental declaration of innocence mm-hmm that we believed that you're talking about that really didn't change you you're still a sinner but you've been declared innocent but yet the Scriptures saying no no something changed we're different we're new creations and we're called to be different as a result of that it's a deeper thing which really the theology you're talking about doesn't get to it doesn't adjust the problem so I'm not saved from hell as much as I am saved for the relationship that God created me for so it's easy for people to agree that well Jesus is our Savior and he's he's he's the reason why we're able to go to heaven yes okay but now what okay now that we're saved what's life supposed to be like and practically how is God working in our lives what will he do for us that we can't do but what does he require of us or expect from that he won't do for us so that's where I really started having challenges in the community we were in because I was really involved in the men's ministry and we had brought in a program to help with chastity to help with sexual purity which is a huge issue in our culture a huge issue so now I'm I'm working with men in small groups and individually and there's issues ranging from men who can't stop going to prostitutes pornography addiction marital infidelity you know really serious sin well how what what does God do to help us what's available what what are our strategies so I'm just going off of my experience right and my understanding of Scripture and I'm telling guys you got a fast you have to you have to pray you have to embrace spiritual disciplines you have to exercise your will God will make it possible but that doesn't mean he's going to make it easy and it's a fight it's a it's a journey to purity and the program we brought in fostered that well that was met with a lot of resistance because then it got turned into well what are we doing we trying to earn our salvation by being sexually pure or you know you guys are trying to do all these good works what do you think you're going too fast or pretty you're gonna do something and God's gonna you know you're already saved so it kind of created some division within the community so you had pastors and and and certain men in the community leaning this way and you had others going in a different direction you had one group calling another group legalistic so it really that's where as a Christian as a Protestant Christian I'm thinking well God what is the formal solution to this and it really it really caused me to journey into the scriptures because that's where I thought all the answers would be horse where else would it be from your perspective as an evangelical of course it would be yes would be there are you finding any any of your friends or the men you are working with or even your wife were they seeing the same struggle that you were seeing there was a small group I would say that was seeing things differently but by and large it was a it was not the culture there in fact there our pastor is crate great guy he had a sound byte he would use to kind of collapse the faith into something you can get your arms around and he would say Jesus plus nothing and that changes everything that's the gospel truth around here Jesus plus nothing and that changes everything it's oh yeah you see here it sounds great amen right but but how does that work how do you define that like that changes everything part how did how does that have is it immediate is it overtime is it realistic is it just the hope you'll never see is it merely magic in other words Jesus just changes everything or are you stuck with the little bracelet what would Jesus do you know so you're trying to figure that out for yourself yeah but even down to the most basic thing is who's Jesus I mean today we've got sincere folk that have Craddock ly different views of who is this person Jesus right and what does he mean when he says pick up your cross and follow me what is so if you don't really believe if you don't know what Jesus means then you're not following Jesus you're following who you believe him to be but this was creating some conflict because I would I would encourage a guy to embrace some things in his life and he would say hey it's Jesus plus nothing and and so I was continually hearing that like Chris you're trying to add to the work of Christ and are you trying to save your soul are you trying to you tell me not a Christian and I remit until those are good questions and I'm thinking this through and I'm thinking both if you're if you're an unrepentant man committing adultery I'm not so sure I'm not telling you're condemned but I'm not telling you you're a Christian either there's something wrong there so that was causing some problems within the community I met with several of the pastors and I got the met the message was tone it down a little bit and and I understood where they were coming from but what was happening was I started to question what am I doing here because I'm hearing things from the pulpit on Sunday mornings that are telling me that how I live my life doesn't affect my relationship with God eternally how I live my life will not play a role in where I spend eternity and that wasn't what I was believing to be true and there were there were Sunday mornings where I would just I had it I had to walk out and I would go into the prayer room and and it was really hard on my wife because I would come home and I would I would complain and and and of course that's where our life was that's where our community was and she would cease woodies what do you say in are we are we gonna leave and it got to the point where she said listen either find us another church or stop complaining and I remember thinking who might have complained who am I to say I know better than these trained theologians who have master's degrees in PhDs and I think I understand Christianity better than them I understand the Bible better than them Who am I to do that and I remember praying one day and saying Lord you have put such a huge burden on man you give us the scriptures and say figure it out and we're not doing that very well and I remember just being very prayerful Marcus and saying Lord I want to know the truth I don't want to believe a lie to be true and I don't want to reject the truth as a lie help me Lord okay obviously I didn't know where I was gonna go with that but you know what I'm imagining Christmas I'm you know trying to place myself back when I was an evangelical II minded Presbyterian pastor as if I were listening do you just say what you said and I could almost imagine he wanted to jump up and give you the answer for that from my presbyterian perspective but what I can also imagine for my seminary background is I could picture in my mind some of my old friends Baptists wanting to jump right up and say well Chris here's the answer or Methodist here's the answer yes or a Lutheran here's the answer to that dilemma area or the Pentecostal here's the dilemma area but not realizing that those answers are different from one another from their perspective of the Bible because they have certain Bible texts the Bible is the right place to go but you're just missing this verse you're missing this angle on yes I mean that doesn't really help the picture because you were in the middle of that very thing being that in a church that was Jesus alone Scripture I mean I'm assuming that your pastor meant that Jesus plus nothing well that that means scripture and Jesus that solves everything yes so what but when I'm meeting with pastors individually and I have one pastor say you don't have to repent from your sins to be saved you have faith in Jesus and that saves you and repentance will come later and then I have another pastor says you know you you need to repent and believe like without repentance there is no salvation I have one pastor saying you don't have to be baptized and another pastor saying you absolutely need to be baptized in fact I had a pastor tell me how he was trying to talk the adult son of another pastor into being baptized so I had become to believe in sacramental baptism I remember a guy came to my house he was telling me about his struggles I had come to find out he was never baptized I say you need to get baptized never been baptized Paul writes those of us who have been baptized are United to the death and burial of Christ so now I'm telling him you got to get better than that that's really legalistic that's really counter to the message so I was struggling with this tremendously and I had I had had a a breakfast meeting with some of the leaders in the men's ministry and some of the pastors and we were arguing over who is going to be the next retreat speaker and we had one guy who the year before who is very much a as a man you have to pay a price your if you're not living life a certain way what makes you think you're a Christian and they wanted to balance that out and so they were going to bring in another speaker who was so in the opposite field but he literally said if you're struggling with sin you ignore it and let Christ mystically live his life through you and he took that scripture from st. Paul says it's no longer I who live but Christ in me he's like Jesus wants to animate your life like he'll live life through you where you're not living it Jesus's so I said why are we so divided here we can't serve both of these meals and I remember the pastor said well we felt this guy was a little left he this guy is a little right we're hoping that will bring us the center like oh let's just give guys the truth don't go way left way right and hope it brings us the center so it was that morning I left that meeting and I went to my brother-in-law's home and I knew he had been going to Mass every once in a while which I thought was a really bad idea it's got a great family and I thought I remember thinking what happens if one of my nieces or nephews like like starts dating a Catholic like you don't want to be messing around with that and I know he probably likes the reverence and and that's good for him but you know so I knew he was kind of looking at the church and I went over there and I just I laid it out so I'm so discouraged with how we do things and you know I'm gonna pause this right there because that's time for a break because I had to get something else is on my mind one make sure to mention this because what you were talking about the the radical difference Ness of these ideas I remember in the last town where I was a Presbyterian pastor that there were two specific guys one was Baptist the other I think was I can't think I don't think it was Lutheran but but the difference was the one was saying it doesn't you know you let Jesus live you don't have to repent you know it doesn't matter that side the other one his entire consoling ministry was built on the idea that your problem in life is that you have an uncontested reg up every sin it's got to be confessed otherwise it's lingering there to destroy your life totally opposite right both using scriptural text to defend their position everything was among Scripture that was the only book the counselor used in his in his counseling with Scripture to find that hidden sin or the other one it doesn't matter Christ died for you all right I mean there's the radicalness that you're talking about that that set you to this stepping into a mass will come back in the mid and find a little bit about that what happened to you on that see a bit welcome back to the journey home our guest tonight is Chris lijinsky and I've kind of paused you right in the middle of of you doing for the first time your life a kind of on daesh's thing that is what was your brother or someone that my brother-in-law brother-in-law had been he hadn't converted or don't know but he was he was experiencing some of the same issues that I was that I was wrestling with we had never talked about that but he was very involved as well but he was wrestling with some of the same things and so I'm sharing with him but hey I'm just really struggled with how we do things and it's really frustrating and I'll never forget this he says I know exactly what you're saying and that is why I am prayerfully considering a 2,000 year old church comprised of men who are smarter more prayerful than I and they do not agree to disagree and as soon as he said that I Catholic Church but he said it should like a light bulb did go off or on and I thought okay yeah that would be nice and he pulls out a catechism and he hands me a catechism he says start reading this and tell me what you think and this is the direction I'm going and you tell me where you think I'm going wrong and I'm thinking you're journeying towards the Catholic Church you want me to tell you where you think you're going wrong okay like let's just open this up let's just open the Catechism up to any page and I'll show you where you're going wrong it's kind of how I'm thinking but Marcus I took the Catechism home and I started reading it and it literally blew my mind I could not believe what I was reading because the church was taking the faith and connecting it in a way and taking it far deeper than I could even imagine and and laying it out so beautifully I couldn't believe it so here I'm here I'm reading the Catechism every night and my wife would be falling asleep and I'm elbowing her do you realized that Catholics don't worship Mary or here's why they have purgatory like I'm explaining these things and and getting drawn in to the faith realizing it wasn't what I had always been taught but what really grabbed me was how the church casted a vision for what humanity's purpose why God created us what life was supposed to be like what has gone wrong and how God wants to fix it and it was answering all the questions that I was looking for as it pertained to now that I'm a Christian what do I do how does God work in my life and it was actually kind of scary at first but at the same time it was very exciting so I started studying church history I start reading you know studying the Council of Trent and I'm looking at it from an argument standpoint I'm like wow I I'd be arguing with the Catholics here I'd be arguing against Protestantism and then I'm for the very first time I realize I'm a 21st century American Christian my formation has come from late 20th century American theologians this thing called Christianity it's been around a long time so what did we believe 600 years ago a thousand years ago 1500 years ago and when I realized that my version of Christianity when I understood that 60% of the world is Catholic 60 percent of Christians are Catholic you know 10 percent are used in Orthodox and then you've got some mainline Protestant groups but when you start talking nondenominational American Christianity it's a tiny little piece of the overall picture this was very humbling and I start studying church history and I could not believe that God had used the Roman Catholic Church to put together the Bible that freaked me out did well do you remember what your assumption had been before that but I had him from I I know I thought what was I think I think like a canonized copy fell out of Jesus's pocket when he's ascending into the in the heaven I'm like what did I think I had never thought about it and you start realizing we don't have any originals we have copies of copies of copies that the church pieced together protected translated safeguarded thinking how in the world did God use the Roman Catholic Church to do this and you start realizing that's all the world knew when it came to Christianity for almost eleven hundred years all the world knew was Roman Catholicism so I think I'm a pretty logical guy and I'm thinking that it's not reasonable to me that God would send his son who had launched this ministry and then it would take him until the mid 16th century to really bring the fullness of the truth through one of these Protestant reformers who I didn't even know who depict I took Luther Calvin swingley Wesley Knox Joseph Smith you have all of these guys saying God's using me to restore truth to bring truth to the world so in the back of my mind I knew I was going to become Catholic but honestly I've fought it a little bit I was trying to think how do I do both how do I take Catholic theology and remain Protestant and I had an offer to become a pastor I had a church that was started by a couple of friends great guys love God love people know the Scriptures well and they said we want you to come on board and be a pastor well that was what I wanted to do I wanted to be in ministry I wanted to bring to people the experience that I've had this encounter that I've had with Christ I wanted to help other people this let me make clear that our audience understands you have no seminary background known at this point now so you at this point you just a good bible-believing faithful follower of Jesus that's struggling with how do I know what's true and some guys are almost telling you well that's okay be in a band they didn't have any background either yeah so just go out and start this church yeah that's all you need is to know you know the truth and the ability to get up and talk to people and you're good you're you should be a pastor and so I said but I struggled I thought I really felt a calling in the ministry but obviously I can't be ministering in the Catholic world I'm not going to be a priest I didn't I didn't understand the Catholic culture of ministry so I thought and if I become Catholic I'm gonna have to give up this vision in this calling that I feel and it was it was difficult it was it was I struggled with it very briefly but I knew I had to say no because I I knew where I was headed I knew there was no way I was not going to become Catholic it was just a matter of time and my wife was getting that sense and she was struggling with that because her and I both come from similar similar backgrounds where Catholicism is not a valid option it's not a Christian option and I said let's just go to Mass let's go check it out and my brother-in-law had invited us and we went on this this is her brother though it is her brother so her and her sister-in-law are saying our husbands are going through a fad it's just a phase there it's just an intellectual journey of studying church history but they're gonna come to their senses right you know that's what they would say but we went to Mass and Marcus God just graced my wife and me to really enter into what was going on he wept I cried like a baby during the mass and I remember being freaked out though when they said this mass is being offered for the repose of the soul of so-and-so and I thought oh gosh so what am i doing where am i but I I truly entered into the mass and I graced me and and I knew it was I had to go back and I started going to daily Mass and obviously not receiving but I continued to study and now I'm like dialoguing with all my Protestant friends I'm trying to help them understand the church and I'm becoming an apologist without realizing I'm like arguing for the church and one day after Mass I approached a priest his name's Father Charlie garage and I introduced myself I kind of explained the journey I was on I said do you have any time to meet with me I'll never forget this he said Chris that is all I have time for he said call the office schedule time for us to meet so I did that and they scheduled it out like six weeks out I thought okay yeah okay put me in go to Mass the next week and right after Mass he comes right up to me and he says I see we're scheduled to meet in like five weeks or so he was that's no good Jesus Christ could come back before then we need to meet sooner he goes how about Friday I said absolutely it'd be great so my wife and I went and met with father Charlie and he is so pastoral loves the Lord very smart very gentle and he really answered our questions and helped us really understand what the Church teaches and we met with him a second time and my wife as I said was really it was it was hard for her one of her very closest friends had left the church and she was fearful of that relationship being strained and in fact it became very strained and she really gave up a lot not to mention her theology you know Protestant theology oftentimes his anti-catholic and in a in a indirect way like when you're told your whole life you're saved by faith alone well why can't you just say well we're saved by faith when you're saved by faith alone because someone might tell you there's more to it than faith or the Bible alone is your authority why not say the Bible is my eighth Authority no the Bible alone because someone might tell you there's a church that has Authority so we had been ingrained to not really embrace Catholicism so it was it was tough for her but she was open-minded and she's a great great woman and she knew that if I were to become Catholic she knew she was going to have to allow me to lead and so she was very open-minded but we met with father Charlie and the next morning she woke up and she said I just feel so much peace right now about journeying into the church she just father Charlie was he was praying he said he was gonna pray for me he prayed me in so would you come in what your guys Divine Mercy Sunday 2008 all four of my kids were baptized we had our first reconciliation was that your first baptism no I was baptized observed I had my wife and I had been baptized but none of my kids have been baptized so they were all baptized I mean the sacraments you talk about a powerful weekend you know we had our first reconciliation we were all confirmed and then we all received the Holy Communion it was just a tremendous tremendous experience and the high from that is still you know sure four years later it's just so real what would you say was the hardest barrier for you to get over in becoming Catholic I will say that I was watching EWTN and so you wtn was the hardest Barry physically no I was watching EWTN and something came on I forget what it was but there were these kids in the park singing a song about the Blessed Mother and about her being our mother and it kind of freaked me out a little bit yeah so Mary was tough a little bit not really though I don't want to overplay overstate it it wasn't she wasn't because I became so god graced me to have faith that the Catholic Church was truly the church infallible and authoritative and whatever she says I was in a position to say I'm the one who doesn't understand I'm the one who's misinformed I'm the one who needs to get the dots connected so I remember buying a rosary I'm like I gotta go get a rosary and see what this is all about we were actually up in Payson Arizona and I stopped in to a Catholic Church and I bought a rosary for like three dollars and we got up to the cabin and it was kind of stormy and I thought well I'm gonna pray this rosary and if lightning doesn't strike then I think I'm moving in the right direction you know but I can honestly tell you I was so ready for what the church offered me and by the grace of God it was not a very high hurdle for me to get over well and you'd mentioned in the brief time we had before the show you're talking about really what happens in in the rosary like you mentioned on Friday is the meditation on the you you know and the suffering of our Lord Jesus you know that yeah that it isn't a mere wrote that shouldn't be a mere rope saying of words but there is a really change in our heart and mind as we meditate on these yes histories yeah so I had studied the Rosary I didn't just grab one and and and run with it but so I studied it and I looked at the truth behind it and I thought this is this is beautiful why would God have a problem with this but what I want to mention is after my wife and I told father Charlie we'd like to become Catholic he offered to do a private RCIA in our home and we had seven other couples that joined us from this non-denominational community really oh wow it's a good group coming together yes now some of them had gone to other communities at this point but we all had our home there at one point so he we and we told him I said I have some other people that are on a similar journey and I've been talking to them about the church and they would they would like to be part of the process so he would come to our home for dinner once a week for like eight weeks and we had seven other couples come in and he basically did a private RCA and said at the end of this if you want to come into the church you'll be ready and all of those couples came in so it was really wonderful to journey with friends and family so my brother Steve and his wife and their kids my brother Dave my brother-in-law - and my brother-in-law's actually and two of our friends we all came in together and it was just to this day we get together and go can you believe what God has done it's beautiful I've got an email Jennifer from Wheeling writes I don't see why Catholics make such a big deal out of their having the Pope bishops tradition and say that authority is important all a Christian needs is the scriptures and a heart open to the Holy Spirit's inspiration the rest is just unnecessary and complicates our relationship with Jesus how do you respond well obviously I've experienced both but I've experienced both approaches and seen the Phinn seen the fruit of both but if I just look let's go to scripture if we were to do that if I were to look biblically what I would see is that Jesus came with authority and he passed those Authority that authority on to the apostles and that early on the the early church understood that they had the authority to tell them what was true in the Apostles didn't appeal to scripture to tell Christians you don't have to be circumcised or you can eat this food or that food the the scripture itself says that that the Holy Spirit is going to lead them into truth so from a practical standpoint from in a historical standpoint and a biblical standpoint this idea of Scripture alone that was never how the church did it it's a new idea that when I realized that the Bible alone with the Holy Spirit was a 483 your old idea and then you see the fruit all the men who claimed that to be true we're splintering off and the fruit of that is it's it's very chaotic so I would say it sounds good but if it did work then we there should be a consensus of what is true because the Holy Spirit can't tell me one thing and then tell you two that something else is true and you had done something in your own journey and that is you know why this book I mean where'd it come from you know why this Bible the other that idea all he needs the Bible well why the Bible and that's why all these different splinter groups ended up with another book that was the key to understanding the Bible John Calvin you have his Institute's yes all right Luther you have a number of his writings you have an Augsburg confession well that becomes the key to understanding Scripture the Mormons they've got their key books to understanding Scripture and they ended up being elevated to the same level as Scripture they have to be right well Scripture itself never affirms that all you need is the scripture in the Holy Spirit you're not going to find that so what you are going to see scripture affirm is that the church is the pillar and foundation for truth scripture will affirm Jesus saying if two Christians can't agree they need to go to the church and if someone won't listen to the church yeah so scripts Sola scriptura is not going to be backed up by the source that should back it up and so you'll find those verses and when I started reading like in Hebrews that obey your spiritual leaders they are men who watch over your soul well who's my spiritual leader email from Aaron from New Mexico a number of my Protestant friends are fond of asking me quote do you know you're going to heaven unquote then they try to convince me that I need to be saved by accepting Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior is that true well here's where we have to understand hope right so we the Scriptures tell us that we hope for salvation but what does hope mean it doesn't mean doubt it doesn't mean fear it means that I fully expect I want to be in heaven for all eternity with you and with God I I am confident that that is going to happen I trust God I trust His grace I trust that he wants me to be saved more than I even want it right so I trust that it's going to happen but it hasn't happened yet so I can still shipwreck my faith as the scriptures say I can still choose with my free will to abandon this calling that God has placed on us so for me to say oh I I already have it that's presumptuous and hope protects us from despair and it protects us from being presumptuous that no matter what no matter what I do I'll always be in God's grace yeah and you gave the example earlier when you kind of owed an awakening for you was that shift in thinking from master/slave to father's if you think of a father-son relationship yes you know and the idea is inheritance well that son automatically inherit all that he should inherit from the father well in reality is it depends on whether that son lives out being a son yes you know if the son chooses not to live as a son he could lose his inheritance yes the prodigal son he was lost he was dead you after coming into the church you still felt the God calling you to be in service talk a bit about what you're doing now if you come into the church yeah when I in becoming Catholic I realized two really unfortunate things that most Protestants don't know what they're rejecting when it comes to the faith and there are not enough Catholics who own their faith and are equipped to evangelize so what I wanted to do was inspire Catholics and encourage them and help equip them to really own their faith live it and be in a position to be able to answer questions and inspire people to look at the church right and and to see her for who she is so I started virtuous Life Ministries it's a Catholic outreach ministry and what I will do I'll do parish missions I give talks in parishes I do the different classes different series but there it's all about helping a Catholic really know their faith and what I really love Marcus is when someone comes up to me and says I've been a lifelong Catholic and God has opened my eyes to the faith after hearing you talk or going through a class that I I see it differently now and to help people realize they need to be evangelical they need they need to be able to dialogue with people who are who don't understand the truth beauty and goodness of the church you make a distinction between we need to know what we believe but also why you've make that important distinction for helping Catholics understand as well as non Catholics understand the Catholic faith yes especially with salvation if we reduce salvation to be I don't have to go to hell and I get to go to heaven what Catholicism's not going to make a lot of sense but when you understand that God created you to experience perfect union with him and love with others and once you realize I've lost the ability to do that and God wants to restore in me my ability to experience love and to love others now this prot this journey has context to it and so when people understand that God doesn't want to just per to protect you from going to hell or save you from that he wants to transform who you are restore in you the original design that's beautiful if people want to know more about your work how would they contact you I have a website virtuous Life Ministries org also on Facebook Facebook page virtuous life org come just be sure it's dark yes you can get there either way Ashley with virtuous Life Ministries alright cuz I think the point that you made this issue of also knowing why you believe some is so important because if Catholics they believe you know they take a stand against contraception because that's what the Church teaches they don't know why then they it's hard for them to defend it in the public forum it's impossible to yeah we because the Bible says so or because the church says so is not a reasonable argument there's a real there's real truth and real meaning behind everything we teach and we have to know that which is you still believe that the Catechism is a great gift to us right oh my yeah I tell everyone if you don't have a catechism you have to get one a lot of value in $8.99 ah yeah it's a great gift yes in our lifetime I mean what a great gift our Lord has given us through the church Chris thank you very thank you Marcus thank you and God bless you and your continued work and service yeah well there's a husband and a father and as a servant of our Lord Jesus Christ thank you thank you very much for joining us thank you for joining us on this episode of the journey home Chris own journey is a challenge to us all to know our faith to know why we believe it and to be a channel of this great gift other people that's what we're called to be is to share that love and that truth with others god bless you see you next week you

Channel: EWTN

Views: 28,108

Rating: 4.7727275 out of 5

Keywords: JHT01376

Id: nvLULMqANAU

Length: 56min 20sec (3380 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 03 2012