A 7-Year-Old's Heroism Will Convict You

[00:00:00] When Jesus said the words, if you love your father or mother or even your life more than me, that was an indirect, though very powerful claim to his divinity. Because a lot of people want to say Jesus was. Was maybe a wise man, a great teacher. But, dude, if you have a great teacher who says, you need to love me more than anything or anyone in your life, that's the moment at which you bow down in worship or conclude, this guy is a diagnosable narcissist. There's really no in between. [00:00:32] So in that moment, he was making a claim to his divinity, but he was also showing us the path to heroism. [00:00:41] See, if we value our lives first and foremost, above everything else, we're going to grab onto our lives, and not only can we not enjoy them more because we'll be so afraid of losing everything, we'll live a life that's small because it'll be about the things that we love, that in the end, dude, your mortality is going to wrench your fingers away from those things. [00:01:03] But when we live holding life lightly and because we're not just devaluing life but saying, you know what, all the blessings in life come from somewhere else, and I'm grabbing onto that something else more than anything else, then we have the freedom to enjoy it, but we also have the freedom to sacrifice, which is the path to greatness. [00:01:24] And that's a path that's not just open to great men and knights in shining armor, but even children. [00:01:32] I'm at the place where an angel first appeared to the children of Fatima, Portugal. [00:01:37] And, guys, the scene at the time, there was a lot of political turmoil in Portugal because a monarchy had been overthrown. The royalty was killed. [00:01:46] And when the people heard that these children, these shepherd children from this region had seen a vision of Mary and of angels, what they heard was, you're saying something very political right now. Kids, you know often when people tell you to be quiet because your faith is interfering with something they think is political? What they're saying is, we don't want what you're saying in the public square because we disagree with you. So we're going to disqualify you because it's formed by your faith. Guys, everybody's got it by faith. Secularist atheists, like the ones who were trying to throw the baby out with the bathwater in Portugal. See, they overthrew the monarchy, and they associated the monarchy with Catholic Catholicism because the monarchy had been Catholic and made Portugal Catholic from the 1100s. So let's throw the whole thing out. Let's Throw the baby with the bath water. [00:02:32] They were saying, get your faith out of our country, guys. [00:02:35] Yeah, get your faith out of my politics. How about you get your politics out of my faith? Because I value God more than any political party, more than my mother, my father, more than my very life itself. [00:02:47] So they heard what these children were saying as a political statement. [00:02:51] And at the age of seven, Jacinta, the youngest of the visionaries, was thrown in jail with her brother Francisco, with Lucia. And they put Francisco in a cell next to her. And he was crying, he was wailing. [00:03:06] And they told her, these grown men came into this little girl and told her, we're torturing your brother. We're going to kill him if you don't deny this lie that you've seen Mary and angels. [00:03:17] And she said basically what Peter and Paul, who has grown men fully heroic, fully formed by Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, said in Acts chapter four, when they were tortured, told not to talk about Jesus, it said, surely we can't help but speak about what we've seen and heard. [00:03:34] And she said, I can't. I saw Mary. I can't lie to you. [00:03:38] Then they told her, we're going to kill you, Jacinta, age of seven. And she said, go ahead, if you kill me, I'll get to heaven faster. She was put in a jail cell that night with a bunch of adult men. Here's a little seven year old girl thrown in jail. [00:03:53] And you know what she did? She led them all in a rosary. [00:03:56] This jail so full of guys kneeling down, praying a rosary with a seven year old. [00:04:02] And then at the end of the rosary, her seven year old girlness came out and she cried. She's like, I miss my mommy. [00:04:08] But concurrent with that heart is a total heart of heroism. She was a spunky little kid, by the way, you see pictures of her at Fatima. She's always like this because 7 year old was kind of the youngest and most spoiled of her family. [00:04:21] She didn't like people making a Catholic rock star out of her. She didn't like the fact that pictures were taken of her, like smiley little girl. She's like. [00:04:28] But she brought that spunk to that prison cell that day. But guys, at 7, at 7 she had all the heroism that you see in Braveheart or in Gladiator or in Insert your favorite movie hero here. [00:04:43] And why? What was the key to the heroism? [00:04:46] It's that she held her life lightly. Guys, this is how Christians should go through life. Not because we don't value and love life but because we value and love Jesus more than life. [00:04:58] She held her life lightly paid because she was grabbing on to an eternal reward. [00:05:02] That is the key. That's the key to enjoying your life more. Because when you're small hearted and small minded trying to hold on to every experience that you have, then all you're doing is going through life with fear because life is eventually going to rip your grip off of those experiences. But when you go through life like this saying all is yours Lord. And I'm grabbing you because I value you more. You're the source of every blessing in my life. [00:05:26] You enjoy it more because you receive it as a gift coming in every moment from Almighty God. But it unlocks the key to heroism. Guys. People who make their life about self preservation, listen to me. I'm talking to you right now. You cannot be a heroic soul. [00:05:40] Saint Jacinta, pray for us. [00:05:44] And here's the spot where they first saw the angel.