Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey, friend. I just had the honor of being at Paul J. Kim's son's funeral. Little Micah Kim just died recently at the age of five.
[00:00:09] And the pain of losing a five year old kid who he obviously like, he wanted to be his dad. I mean, I see pictures of him and his dad's into jiu jitsu and Micah's like this in the pictures. And the pain is unimaginable.
[00:00:27] But let me tell you what's equally unimaginable and hard to fathom.
[00:00:32] While seeing very real pain at that funeral, I also saw actual real, incredible and deep joy.
[00:00:46] I could get chills thinking about it.
[00:00:49] At the wake, Paul stood by his son's body as he's in the casket with little cowboy boots on.
[00:00:56] And he pointed to the casket and said, look, that's my son's body. He's not there.
[00:01:02] My son is alive.
[00:01:04] My son is not dead.
[00:01:07] My son is very much alive.
[00:01:10] And he said, we gave my son the greatest gift, the gift of baptism.
[00:01:16] We gave him his passport to heaven.
[00:01:18] I know where he is right now. He's in a better place right now.
[00:01:23] I will never forget the image of that family walking down the aisle in the procession at the funeral with Paul and his wife and their little kids with their hands all in the casket and tears streaming down Paul's face. And his other hand was lifted up in the air in praise as they sang, come thou fount of every blessing.
[00:01:42] Guys, the grace of Jesus Christ is real. He changes everything. Because of him, we have hope. Thank you so much, Lord Jesus, for what you give to us.
[00:01:50] But guys, here's where the words of Paul Kim about his son sync up with the words of John the Baptist in the Gospel. And we have a few beautiful Sundays where we focus on the scene of baptism, the scene where we get that great gift from God, the gift of baptism.
[00:02:06] And as the scene plays out, John the Baptist says, I saw the Spirit come down upon him, upon Jesus like a dove from heaven and remain upon him. I did not know him. But the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, on whomever you see, the Spirit come down and remain, he is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. Now I've seen and testified that he is the son of God. Guys, Jesus didn't actually need to be baptized.
[00:02:32] He did it not so that the waters would sanctify him, but to sanctify the waters. Actually quite literally, those waters are sanctified. Going to the Holy Land this June. Come with me. But in The Catholic ritual for baptism. The only place in the world where you don't bless the holy water is if you happen to be baptizing on the River Jordan. Because we're not going to try to add to what Jesus already did by blessing those waters and stepping into them.
[00:02:57] But guys, we're shown by what happened to Jesus, by that only place in the Gospels where the Trinity, the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, are all revealed. In one scene, we're shown what happens to us at our baptisms.
[00:03:08] That the heavens are opened, that we are filled with the Holy Spirit, that the Father looks down and says, that's my son, that's my daughter.
[00:03:21] I want you to think for a minute about, because we say things like, I'm a son of God, I'm a daughter of God. Think about the miracle that that is.
[00:03:28] Guys, there's a distance between me and an ant on the ground.
[00:03:31] It's a pretty profound distance. I mean, an ant can't look at me and say, daddy.
[00:03:36] The distance between me, a finite creature, and my infinite God is far greater than the distance between me and an ant on the ground.
[00:03:46] And yet I can look up to God the Father and say, abba, father, you're my dad because of what Jesus gives us by bringing us into his divine life in baptism.
[00:03:59] Whoa.
[00:04:00] I heard the story once. I'm not sure it's true, but if it's not, it should be of Saint Catherine of Siena that she had a vision.
[00:04:06] She often had visions of Jesus, but she had a vision of this blazing light and knelt down, put her head to the ground, presumed it was the Lord, and she felt a hand on her shoulder. She looks up, it's Jesus. He says, what are you doing? She said, oh, I thought that was you. No, no, that's just a baptized Christian.
[00:04:20] If you could see the divine life that the maker of all is inside the baptized soul, you could see that in the baptized person next to you. It liter melt your face off.
[00:04:33] This is the grace we walk around with all the time.
[00:04:37] Wow, guys, a couple takeaways here.
[00:04:41] You know, as you think of the death of a five year old, one of the great tragedies people would think is, well, that kid didn't accomplish anything he didn't get to do.
[00:04:50] X, Y and Z.
[00:04:52] Guys, there is nothing you can accomplish in life. Nothing that will remotely compare with what the Heavenly Father has already accomplished in you if you are a baptized Christian, nothing. And in fact, I want to propose a paradigm shift to you here when it comes to the Christian life, when it comes to chiseling your life out into something great when it comes to trying to be somebody, when it comes to trying to work on your sins, guys, this is not about you making yourself something more than God has already made you, guys. And if you don't get this straight, the Christian life starts to feel so dang exhausted because you think you bear the full weight, the full burden of making yourself worth something.
[00:05:36] And there are men who I see who work out of that. That headspace, and they're terrified. They have this underlying fear, anger, exhaustion, because they're trying to prove their value to their family. Their family's thinking, dad, just come home and be Dad. I just love you.
[00:05:53] But the Christian life becomes exhausting, too. It becomes this journey of, I want to earn the love of God, and so I do all this Catholic stuff so that God will love me. No, no, no, guys, you're getting it all wrong. You don't do this stuff so that he will love you. You do it because of what he already did for you and because he loved you first. I've said this many times. I'll say it again.
[00:06:11] The difference between those two approaches to Christianity is not just splitting hairs. That's the difference between a condemned heresy called Pelagianism or another one called Jansenism and actual Christianity that we're living out of and trying to live up to what God has already done for us.
[00:06:30] The greatest accomplishment in life has been done for you, to you, by a God who loves you, just because you're His.
[00:06:40] Whether you go into the ground at 5 or 95, that's accomplishment number one.
[00:06:47] And the second takeaway is this, guys.
[00:06:50] When Paul said, that's the greatest gift we can give our kid, the gift of baptism.
[00:06:55] And frankly, I want to add to that the gift of helping a kid live out the grace of baptism. Greatest gift you could possibly give.
[00:07:01] Guys, I've talked to so many parents whose kids have left the faith, and if that's you, by the way, I don't want to try to. I'm not trying to guilt you here, okay? Because a parent could do everything right and check all the boxes, and then the kid just goes off on their own because, dang it, free will, right? But there's sometimes I'll talk to parents who their kid just goes off the rails. And I'm thinking, okay, so what? What happened?
[00:07:27] And they tell me a story about sending their kid to a secular, progressive university that had zero campus ministry. Didn't even try to introduce the kid to campus ministry. It just wasn't a priority. The priority was the Ivy League school, the career, the money.
[00:07:40] And I'm thinking, okay, well, maybe that has something to do with it.
[00:07:45] Guys, of all the priorities we can set for our kids, I gotta challenge you.
[00:07:49] What good is it to gain the whole world but lose your soul?
[00:07:54] Of all the priorities that you strive to bless your kid in so many way and set them up for success.
[00:08:01] Guys, make holiness number one.
[00:08:04] Because for all of us, our days in this life are numbered.
[00:08:09] But heaven, what happens on the other side is real life. It lasts forever.
[00:08:15] As Paul said today, as we were literally grabbing shovels and burying his son, he said, micah is alive.
[00:08:26] Micah is more alive than all of us standing here right now.
[00:08:33] Lord, help us to live out of the life that you've already given us in baptism.
[00:08:37] Jesus, we trust in you and little Micah and all you saints who have gone before us, whether canonized saints, or maybe Micah will be canonized someday. Watch. Watch the news on Paul Kim's Instagram. It's kind of blowing my mind. The Lord's actually allowing miracles to be worked with the intercession of this kid right now. It's kind of crazy, but whatever that looks like, you canonized saints, or you maybe children who have gone before us and died, marked with the sign of faith. We know you're with the Lord. We ask you as a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, to intercede for us, that we live out the eternal life that Jesus called us to in our everyday life. Amen. I love you guys. God bless you.
