Never Lose Hope for Your Kids | Gordy Demarais

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Buckle up for some genuinely amazing stories of conversions. How Jesus is directly acting in people's lives to call them to himself, and how he uses us in that whole calling when we're open to it. And it turns all of life into an adventure. Buckle up today on the Chris Stefanick Show. Welcome to the Chris Stefanick Show. We're here every week to give you the tools and inspiration you need to live your everyday life with joy. Guys, we all need it and I'm proud of you for spending time to get it because you could spend so much time on stuff that frankly just brings you down and is just focusing on the negative things happening in the world today. Sure, be aware of them. Watch those things for five minutes. Watch the Chris Stefanick show for the entire hour to lift you up, to pump you up, to help you be the you that God is calling you to be. Missionaries of joy, thanks for making this work possible. If you're not one, jump off the sidelines, become one. Link is below this video With a small monthly gift, you help us change the world. Become part of the Daily Anchor family. Click below this video. Sign up for the Daily Anchor and let us inspire you every day. No strings attached. And this episode is sponsored in part by ewtn. You can catch this and so much more to bolster your faith on ewtn. Streaming link is below in the show notes. Let's dive in. Thank you. Thank you, man. Seriously. Yeah, I'm really grateful. It's so easy to look at that family and think, well, those people, they're perfect, you know, I mean, you were a guy in ministry, people would've looked at you on the outside, going to church with your family and think, oh, they're perfect. And not know that on the inside, everything's on fire and things are burning down. So we're going to dive into that story, how you came, what led to that, how you came out of it, to give people hope who are watching and maybe feel alone and who think, you know, I'm in the midst of chaos and it's never going to get better. But before we dive into that story, and thank you, by the way, for letting me hold a scalpel and say, can we go into the most painful memories of your life first? I want to know, though, who you are, what you do. You founded St. Paul's Outreach, which is a really big deal. [00:02:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:02:19] Speaker A: Tell us about that whole ministry and what got you doing that. [00:02:23] Speaker B: Well, I think the foundation of the ministry really goes back to my own story. I grew up in a good Catholic family, oldest of seven kids. I was an altar boy. I was an altar boy when they were still doing Latin masses. When I first started out, my dad was. [00:02:42] Speaker A: When it wasn't a fad or trend. No, no. Everybody was the only thing. [00:02:46] Speaker B: My dad was one of the first lay electors in our church after the Second Vatican Council. Wow. And everything shifted, you know, in the late 60s and early 70s. And, you know, you compare my. My grade school experience with the fully habited Franciscan nuns and my high school experiences where the brothers and the nuns had shed everything and you didn't talk about Jesus at all, and you never opened the scriptures in high school religion, but so great family. [00:03:14] Speaker A: What a bummer, man. [00:03:15] Speaker B: My mom and dad loved each other. I think the turning point event in my life was my dad died at the age of 43. He got cancer. And my mom was 36. She had seven kids. Wow. Ages 15 down to three. And I was the oldest at 15. [00:03:44] Speaker A: Wow. [00:03:45] Speaker B: And you really don't know what that's like until you're 36 and you've got kids yourself. And you think, oh, my gosh. [00:03:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that'd be the nightmare. Yeah. [00:03:52] Speaker B: And so this experience of actually difficulty and trauma in family life and brokenness in family life comes right out of my own original experience. And I don't know what would have happened in high school if that hadn't happened. I probably still would have become a juvenile and wrestled with the faith and kind of went the ways of the world. But for me, part of it was just this deep hole that was exposed to my own heart when my dad left. That's a hard time to lose a dad. [00:04:27] Speaker A: Oh. [00:04:28] Speaker B: And so by the time I graduated from high school, I wasn't going to church anymore. I wasn't doing too well on the Ten Commandments as I go down the list. But that summer after I graduated, I was really. I started to ask. I was searching for purpose and like, what's this life all about? And it was during that summer that a high school buddy of mine, his parents had come alive in their own faith through the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, kind of in the very early days. And they brought that into their home. And he hadn't embraced it yet, but he was around it. And we'd be out doing our stuff, and I'd get depressed and start wondering about the meaning of life. And Mike mention the Lord, and somehow or another, it's like Balaam and the donkey. The Lord spoke through the donkey to Balaam. [00:05:31] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. That gives me hope. Sometimes I'm thinking, if God could speak through a donkey. Maybe he could use this show. And me, you, and, I don't know. Look up the story, the story of Balaam's ass. There it is. [00:05:44] Speaker B: But anyway, something about what he was saying resonated, and his parents encouraged us to go down to an Archdiocesan Youth Center, St. Paul Catholic Youth Center. This was summer of 1976, and this youth center had come alive. And really, this youth center was the source of net ministries, of St. Paul's outreach of the Companions of Christ, of a lay Catholic community. All of this came out of this renewal that started to take place in the 70s at this youth center. [00:06:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I had no idea. Yeah, okay, if you're watching, you have no idea what those ministries are. You got to Google met ministries, St. Paul's Outreach, those things have, like, been major national ministries. Is this from a youth group? [00:06:28] Speaker B: It was from a youth center that was doing some high school retreats in the diocese and had a camp that they were running. [00:06:37] Speaker A: And I'll praise God for that youth center. [00:06:39] Speaker B: And, you know, the priest who was the director of the youth center went off on a retreat, and the person leading the retreat said, for too long we've been giving people good advice, and what they need is good. They need the gospel. They need the good news. And he had a conversion in his own priesthood and brought that back to the youth center and started to preach the gospel on these high school retreats. And that retreat program exploded. And that's where NET Ministries came from. That's where I really started. I started with net, the very beginning of net. [00:07:09] Speaker A: I love what you just said. The gospel is not good advice. It's good news. [00:07:12] Speaker B: It's good news. [00:07:13] Speaker A: Okay, define the difference between. Between those two things. Because one can challenge you to do things. Another just transforms you by someone's powers, not your own. And good advice follows that the Gospel [00:07:26] Speaker B: is, first of all, the truth, that God created us and God is love, and God is just not that God loves it, but God is love. That's the meaning of the Trinity, right? The central mystery of our faith, that God from all eternity is this exchange of the Father giving himself to the Son, and the Son giving all that he is to the Father, and the Holy Spirit, being this bond of love between the Father and the Son. And we're created to live and to know that eternal love, a love that's so incredible, so comprehensible. You know, Psalm 8 is one of my favorite psalms. It's David. You know, Psalm 8, David's looking at the Stars. Right. When I consider the heavens, the majesty of the heavens. What is. What is man? That you made him. And he just saw the stars like we see him now. We see this universe that's. We can't even begin to comprehend. You know, I don't know if you've done any of this. Stats like, oh, it's mind blowing. It's mind blowing. And his love is infinitely greater than all of that. And we're made to know that. And we were created for that. But in order to love, you have to freely. If God made us robots, it wouldn't be love. We have to freely respond to that love and receive that love. But we choose our free will all the time to make ourselves a sinner. Right. To make ourselves God. [00:09:12] Speaker A: Christianity that forgets, that becomes advice at best. [00:09:16] Speaker B: Yes. [00:09:18] Speaker A: Rules at worst. Or something that's just a ritualized system that we use to climb our way to God. Which advice, rules and systems are actually all good, but separate from the love you're talking about there. Yeah, it's a burden. It's all a big burden. [00:09:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:34] Speaker A: And what are we doing here? [00:09:35] Speaker B: And you know, this is what Catholics believe. I was reading something by Cardinal Cantala. Mesa. You know Cardinal Cantal? [00:09:47] Speaker A: Yeah, we did a program with him a couple years ago, which was a highlight of my life. Yeah. Preacher of the Papal house. [00:09:52] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. So filled with joy. You know, it's Christ who lives within him completely, man. But he says something in one of his writings that within our Catholic faith, we need a Copernican Revolution, like 180 degrees, because we have it backwards, not in terms of our doctrine, but in terms of how we live our lives and what we actually believe. And he said that as Catholics, we still act as if good works produce grace, that it's something that we do that then causes God to love us and to give us his Holy Spirit. And that's not the gospel. The gospel is good works flow from grace, the thing that saves us first of all and restores us in a relationship with our Father. And the thing that transforms us is the Father's love poured out in our hearts. [00:10:55] Speaker A: Amen. [00:10:55] Speaker B: And that changes us. And the more that we experience that, the more good works flow from that. [00:11:02] Speaker A: To dig into another Cantalamesa nugget, in that program he did with us, he said that a child doesn't earn the gift of its body. It's a purely free gift. And your new body, your new life in Christ, is that profoundly given to you? [00:11:17] Speaker B: Yes. [00:11:18] Speaker A: Now the child has to breathe and move its lungs and suck milk to stay alive. There's things we need to do to remain in his love. But. And people might think this is splitting hairs. The things that we do are response to the gift, not an earning of the gift. And this is the difference between Christianity and a condemned heresy of Pelagianism. This is night and day. And that wrong spirit is alive. And so many people who are going through the motions, thinking they're in it. [00:11:46] Speaker B: And when Jesus says, come unto me all you who are heavy burdened, I think this is the heavy burden. The heavy burden is our own self reliance, our own. The weight that we put upon ourselves to think that it's us who's going to make us good and we can't. I mean, Paul says the only purpose of the law is to show us that we can't fulfill the law. Like, if the Ten Commandments were enough, here they are. Just do it. Moses would have been enough. Jesus wouldn't have had to come. But we can't praise God. And there's something tremendously freeing about living in that truth. The truth that I can't. And even, you know, not even, maybe especially me, who's lived like his whole life in service of God, doing things for God. And I know it like, I know it all appeared in my head. [00:12:48] Speaker A: Well, I'm just rejoicing you. I'm really grateful for you, man. Because when I met you in that marriage retreat, you got me beat by 18 years. And I thought, I want to be Gordy when I grow up. Because you're a guy whose heart was captured by this as a teenager. [00:13:03] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:04] Speaker A: And this is not something you move past. You know, I love. There's Evangelii Gaudium. I think it's 164. Pope Francis wrote this, and it's this one paragraph. It's my favorite thing that he wrote that the gospel, the primary proclamation, isn't primary because you move past it. It's primary because it's the only. It's the main thing that matters. Everything comes back to it. Everything rests on it. Everything lives from it. We do all the things because of it. It's like a marriage that if you move past, past, hey, we exchanged hearts and we love each other. You don't graduate from that. No. The rest of the things that come from that are all connected to that. And when they get disconnected, you're left with a to do list, man. [00:13:44] Speaker B: Yeah. And at the end of it, that's all there is. You know, you talk about the end is further is closer for me than the beginning at 66. [00:13:58] Speaker A: It's closer for me already at 49. [00:14:00] Speaker B: It is. That's right. In a couple years, you'll be closer to 100 than you are to zero. [00:14:08] Speaker A: Come, Lord Jesus. That used to depress me. Now I'm like, I'm out, man. We're good. [00:14:13] Speaker B: Amen. [00:14:15] Speaker A: 30 more years, please. [00:14:17] Speaker B: Getting grandchildren makes it hard to think about leaving. [00:14:21] Speaker A: But your heart was captured by this as a kid, and you're still captured by it. And I could tell by what you're talking right now, but. So you went from that to working with NET Ministries, to founding St. Paul's Outreach. What is St. Paul's Outreach? And what did you guys do? Do you still do? [00:14:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, so, I mean, very quickly, I wasn't going to church. So if I. If you were going to meet. If I was going to come back to the church, you're going to have to meet me outside the church. It had to be Mike on a hill. Oh, I'm not recommending that you go sit out there with a case of beer or whatever. Evangelize, maybe. [00:14:55] Speaker A: I don't know if the Lord speaks [00:14:58] Speaker B: and, you know, and it happened in the context of a relationship. So that's point one. In my experience, I was relationally evangelized. The second is I had to come to a point in that process of being evangelized where I heard the gospel, proclaimed the kerygma. You know, like Peter on Pentecost Sunday, when he stands up and he preaches, and people were cut to the heart, and they say, what must we do that we can't do that when we're a baby? And most people don't do it when they're confirmed. There has to be this moment where we hear the gospel and we respond to it with faith and not just believing that it's true, but entrusting our lives to it and surrendering to it. So that's two. Number three is. Then I tried to go back in the dorms and live this newfound faith. It was hard. [00:15:55] Speaker A: Yeah. You think? [00:15:57] Speaker B: And I didn't do so well. [00:15:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [00:15:59] Speaker B: That sophomore year in college, it was back and forth and back and forth. So just realizing that one is, I needed support. I needed to have a community around me, and I needed more formation. I needed that faith which had come alive, needed to grow to maturity. And I think it's really those ingredients that when I was asked by this. And that's how SBO started, repeat those [00:16:28] Speaker A: three ingredients in rapid fire. [00:16:30] Speaker B: Well, four. Relational evangelization. Hearing the gospel and responding to it, [00:16:37] Speaker A: which is like a friend saying, literally giving you an invitation like the Lord gave himself to you, give yourself back to him, which is not. You know, some people hear that and think that sounds kind of Protestant. You don't know what Catholic is. If you think that sounds Protestant. You gotta make a decision for Jesus. Okay? [00:16:53] Speaker B: The number three is I need a community. [00:16:55] Speaker A: You need a community. [00:16:55] Speaker B: I need brothers and sisters. [00:16:57] Speaker A: I need support or this all dies, [00:16:58] Speaker B: or this all dies. And four, I need to not be a shooting star, like have this profound faith experience. But it doesn't, you know, it's like this seed that falls on shallow ground or on the hearts on the sidewalk or amongst the thistles. That faith needs to become mature. And so when I was asked to do university outreach, moving from the net ministries thing, we thought we should be doing something on college campuses. That experience formed what we did. And so we brought together a community of missionary disciples and we trained well. We were all just kind of figuring it out at the beginning, going out on a campus, meeting people relationally and not bringing them to church at first. Bringing them to the house for dinner or playing sports or going out to coffee or developing this friendship, this relationship with them and then bringing them into this community that, that we're building, that we're establishing with one another. You know, so they, I mean, and today, particularly when, when human life is so broken and so alone and so fractured, the, the witness of people actually living together in, in joyful Christian love is a powerful proclamation of the testimony. Jesus says, may they be one so that the world might know, accept the Son. [00:18:36] Speaker A: The world is so lonely right now. Okay, what's the website for St. Paul's Outreach, if people want to learn about it? Are your kids going to college campus? You want to see if it's there to plug them in? [00:18:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:44] Speaker A: Spo.org spo.org okay, so fast forward. People are looking at this guy who's in full time ministry with his well dressed family, going to church on Sunday. What was the story that they weren't seeing? Yeah, about what was going wrong in your own home. And it might shock some people because they think, well, you're in ministry, you know the gospel, you know the Lord, you're giving it to your kids. How could something go wrong? Right, Free will. [00:19:14] Speaker B: Exactly. Well, I think if you, if, you know, for the first 12 or 13 or 14 years we would have looked like that. Not that there weren't difficulties in trials and things that come along the way. I mean, one of my sons was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of nine. That changed our family life. And to be honest with you, even during those early years in our marriage and family life, I kind of would look at other families and say, how come they can't get their act together? [00:19:57] Speaker A: Oh, the Lord humbles us, doesn't he? [00:19:59] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. And then we started experiencing, I mean, each kid has their own journey. And I could tell you six different journeys that are still unfolding. But we started experiencing some real challenges with some of our kids. You know, I speak on this topic now because Our youngest is 23. Our oldest is 37. Today, all six of our children love Jesus. [00:20:34] Speaker A: Wow. [00:20:34] Speaker B: Four of them are married. They've married amazing people. Wow. Although when your daughters start to get married, the bar is pretty high. [00:20:43] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:20:43] Speaker B: I told my son in law they've been married eight years, like a year ago. I said, I think you finally. [00:20:49] Speaker A: Yeah, you finally arrived. So this is. I like that you're. I mean, the end of the story is a reason to hope. [00:20:55] Speaker B: Yeah, it is a reason to hope. And so I've given talks on this before and I tell people where we're at today. And I said, well, here's the rest of the story that, you know, my kids have vaped and some of them have done drugs and some have been sexually immoral and some of them have dated behind our back and I've called the cops on our children. [00:21:20] Speaker A: And that's a hard moment. [00:21:22] Speaker B: I picked up another one of my kids from jail, spent the night in jail once. And I mean, these are the moments that begin to try your faith as a parent. And then you start to wonder like if anyone's doing everything right. We're doing, I think we're doing a lot right here. [00:21:46] Speaker A: And so how would you sum up what went wrong? [00:21:51] Speaker B: What went wrong? [00:21:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:21:53] Speaker B: Well, I think two things. Well, one thing went wrong, which is sin. Sin in the human condition and not just sin in the kids as they're trying to figure out who they are, but sin in us. We're always imperfect in our parenting. There's always an element of brokenness in every human relationship, in every family. [00:22:22] Speaker A: And I tell my kids, look, you're gonna go to counseling cause of things that I did wrong. And you got to exist. So you're welcome. You know, there's, that's a, that's a bonus. But it's not, you know, at a certain point, it's not between me and the kids, it's between them and the Lord. That's their if I was perfect, they wouldn't seek God. [00:22:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:42] Speaker A: You know, but yeah, parents tend to blame themselves. And you said I was doing it right. Did you deal with the stigma or what was going through your head that maybe stopped? Did you get help right away or were you trying to hide the things that were going wrong as you a kid you actually had to call the cops on? [00:23:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, I'm a proud, self reliant man. So you're dealing with two things. One is like, I can handle this, which has been a big problem in my life. I thought I could do anything if, if I just worked hard enough, thought hard enough [00:23:21] Speaker A: and opposite the spirit of the gospel. [00:23:24] Speaker B: We're talking about opposite the spirit of God. And then the second thing is I'm not going to get help. To get help means I'm weak. And that's a hard thing particularly for a man to admit. But some of these situations really brought me to the point where I was beyond. I mean it drove me to a very dark place for a little while in my life. And it wasn't just that. It was some other circumstances that were going on in my life and you know, succession planning and the thing I founded and had given my whole life to and some people that were close to me that, that weren't treating me well. And it was almost one of these moments where you're so idealistic and hopeful and you come to the point where it almost looks like everything isn't working out at this point. And that happened for me about four years ago. And in the midst of that, someone recommended that I go on a retreat, a silent retreat, an extended silent retreat. And I hadn't been on such a thing since before I was married, like, you know, more than a weekend. And so they had the person for me and it was this 92 year old monsignor out in Scranton, Pennsylvania who he was Mother Teresa's. Gave Mother Teresa her last retreat or something like that. That's a good retreat master Bishop Cousins, whom you know. Yeah, great man said, you know, he can read souls. And I'm thinking, I don't think I want anybody read. Read my soul. [00:25:22] Speaker A: Like I think I'm gonna wear a lead vest to this retreat. Yeah. [00:25:27] Speaker B: So I got in and it was 2021, so it's Covid. So I was in a cabin up on Lake Superior and he was in and we skyped in every day and he says, what do you want from the Lord? I said, I don't know. I want to know the joy of my Salvation again, I think, is what I said to him. He said, well, here's the grace that I want you to pray for. I want you to pray that you would know the infinite love of your Father in an entirely new way. [00:25:57] Speaker A: Oh, that's a good prayer. [00:25:58] Speaker B: Isn't that a good prayer? Yeah, I think that's good prayer all the time. [00:26:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:01] Speaker B: And we got. We got on this retreat and got into the opening session, and I started to tell him who I thought I was and all the things that I've accomplished and new religious orders that have come out of our work and great marriages and 400 religious and priestly vocations and a bishop and mother superiors and all of this. And he. He just stopped me and he said, you didn't do that. I said, you're right, brother. He wanted me to call him brother. I'm just like the boy with the fish. And I offered him and to Jesus, and he multiplied him and he said, those loaves and fish, they weren't yours. And so I went out into this retreat and the Lord changed my life that week. I mean, the first thing he showed me was I was praying through Psalm 139. I was feeling really lonely at that point, if you can imagine, like, surrounded by, I know thousands and thousands of people, and I'm lonely and God was far. [00:27:08] Speaker A: And Psalm 139, you search and know me yeah. [00:27:12] Speaker B: Where can I run from your love? Like, I thought I was here and God was out there someplace, and that there was this long journey I had to take to get back to him. And the Lord right away spoke to me and said, no, I'm right there. If I go to the depths of Sheol, and this is a really important truth in life, like, no matter what you're experiencing, he's right there. He's right in the trial, he's right in the difficult, he's right in the sin, he's right in the brokenness. That's where we're going to find him. We're not going to find him out where we think he. He thinks we should be. We're going to beat him. He's going to meet us right there. That was the first thing. The second thing is I'm not alone. I've never been alone since I was put together in my mother's womb. He's been there with me at every step along the way. [00:28:09] Speaker A: Praise the Lord. That psalm means a lot to me. My dad, before he got open heart surgery, was praying that every day leading up to his surgery to bring him peace. Psalm 139. I recommend it. [00:28:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:21] Speaker A: Powerful psalm it is. But the story of self reliance and this I did it identity and the ideals that we surround ourselves with. The greatest blessing God sends as a bowling ball to knock every pin down is a kid that you need to call the cops on. [00:28:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:45] Speaker A: Which the hell of that moment is actually leads you to a place that's way better than the hell of self reliance and false identities. And I'm going through life by my own power. And he delivered you. You share with me on the retreat. Probably the lowest moment I've heard in a father's life. And how God used that to show you through yourself his love for you. Would you feel comfortable sharing that moment? [00:29:15] Speaker B: I would. And this is what happened on the retreat because. Well, first of all, God began to disabuse me of the idea that I controlled his love for me. And I had this mindset like, I do stuff and God loves me. I pray I pull that lever, I pull the prayer lever and God loves me. And I pull the service lever and God loves me. And I pull the growing in virtue lever and God loves me. But there's nothing that I can do to cause the Father to. To love me any more than he does or any less than he does. It's a gift. It's a free gift. And we know that like up here. But to get it from here to here. And part of that had to do with really seeing my sin. Like I was breaking the first commandment. I had made an idol. We can make an idol of good things. Anything that becomes the thing that we look to for our affirmation or our identity. You know, that family can. Your kids can become an idol for you, your job, your ministry can become an idol. And really that's what had happened with me. And so Monsignor was trying to help me get in touch with the love of the Father. And he spoke to me about my own dad. But that was so long ago that I couldn't remember. So he went to my. He went to my kids. And there were two. Two memories I had. One was when my one son was diagnosed with diabetes and my wife was homeschooling at the time, and she was trying to test his blood and give him shots. And he would just cry and scream and wouldn't let. So I'd have to come home from work and like kind of sit on him to do this. And I just had this memory at one point where I embraced him and I said, you know, son, if I could take this from you. I would do that if you're suffering, if I could take. And that's our father. But then the other was this, you know, another one of my children who I had to call the cops on. And like everything, I thought I was a parenting expert until this whole thing came along. Like, I figured this out and this I couldn't. And I remember one time when I called the cops and they said, what do you want us to do? I don't know, what are my options? We could take him to the mental ward. And so, you know, they came with the ambulance and they put him on a gurney and loaded him up into the ambulance. 10:00 clock at night. And I still remember this so clearly. We're driving down to the hospital and we come up to a stoplight and he's looking out the back and I'm looking at him and we catch eyes. And he goes [00:32:34] Speaker A: and gave you the finger? [00:32:35] Speaker B: He gave me the finger. I was telling Monsignor this on the retreat. My son gave me a gesture of contempt. And then he said, you know, that's what you've done. You know, you've said that to your heavenly Father. [00:32:57] Speaker A: And what were you feeling when you were watching your son? What did you want for him? [00:33:01] Speaker B: Well, I mean, that's, that's. My heart was broken. [00:33:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:05] Speaker B: All I wanted for was for him to know how much I loved him. And, you know, that's our Father and [00:33:14] Speaker A: that's all he wants. [00:33:15] Speaker B: That's all he wants is for us to know. And the love that he has for us is like it's everything. It's, you know, Paul in Ephesians 3. The height and the depth and the width and the breadth of his incomprehensible, unfathomable love. A love so amazing that it will take an eternity for us to comprehend it and to be filled with its fullness. [00:33:47] Speaker A: And when people are in a place where they're flipping God off and they've ruined themselves, the perception of our Heavenly Father is that he's usually just enraged or excited to punish us. That's how the ancients saw God. A lightning bolt wielding jerk waiting for us to mess up. All he's thinking is, I just wish this child knew my love. Because that would change everything. [00:34:12] Speaker B: Yes. [00:34:16] Speaker A: What happened between that lowest of moments and all your kids? Presumably also this one is practicing the faith. Not just saying, I'm a Christian, but actually engaged. What happened? Give us some hope. [00:34:31] Speaker B: St. John Paul II. We pray, we ask for his intercession before the I love that I feel close to him. But he wrote a letter to Familiaris Consortia, which is his letter to families. And there's a line in there where he says that the hopes that we legitimately place in marriage and family life can only be realized through a continuous conversion to the Gospel. And so before we talk about how do we handle these situations, I think the foundation is conversion. And if in our marriages and in our family life, we have not placed Christ at the center of our own life, if we have not heard that gospel message proclaimed and have responded to it with trust and surrender and commitment and invited him into our lives so that he's the center of our lives and have opened our lives up to his love, we can't do anything in our families. So that's where it's got to start. And that can start at any time. [00:35:52] Speaker A: It's never too late. [00:35:53] Speaker B: It's never too late. I'm sure there's people listening to your show that have not heard the gospel proclaimed in that kind of way as the father's love poured out in our hearts for sure. And have said, I believe, Lord, that what you've said is true and I trust you and surrender my life to you. I open my life up to your love. And if we're hoping for any kind of change in our marriage and with our children, it's got to start there. It's got to begin there, number one. Number two, you gotta love your spouse. If you have any hope for your kids, they have to see that love and unity between you and your wife or your husband. And that's so hard to. [00:36:53] Speaker A: It is hard. [00:36:53] Speaker B: It is hard. Especially when it seems like they're not loving you so well back. [00:37:02] Speaker A: Well, Natalie loves me perfectly. I try. [00:37:04] Speaker B: Right. Which is really, again, in my marriage, too. My wife was, like, voted most like Mary out of her high school class. She was going to be a nun when I first met her. [00:37:15] Speaker A: No. But it takes a very long time within marriage where I thought, like, okay, if Natalie died, I'm putting a habit on, dude, because it took 20 years to be able to just really enjoy each other and work through a lot of the kinks. And we have a great relationship from day one. And it's still incredible amounts of work. [00:37:31] Speaker B: It's just gonna keep getting better, too. [00:37:33] Speaker A: But that cutting pass. Parents can see their kid going off the deep end. And I think the tendency is. Let me fix it by flooding you with advice on all the externals to fix. That'll keep being a problem if your heart's not fixed. [00:37:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:37:46] Speaker A: And this is bringing me back. Just talking to you to. I'm reflecting on my own kids, and we've had incredible difficulties, and we've had, you know, just. I could tell you stories that, you know, people would never guess. Like, everything's. Oh, on the outside, everything's perfect. But they're all practicing the faith devoutly. And if there is a reason, not one that I could control. [00:38:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:10] Speaker A: It's that the main focus has not been on the million to dos, but on the father's love. [00:38:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:17] Speaker A: And I bring it back to my own wife, who had gone off the deep end, was an atheist, was selling weed was nothing to do with faith. And this is before selling weed was legal. [00:38:29] Speaker B: Right. [00:38:30] Speaker A: This was where I had to. [00:38:31] Speaker B: Colorado, aren't we? [00:38:32] Speaker A: Yeah. And I gave a talk on this and on her conversion, and it was on YouTube, and one of my kids saw it by accident. And Natalie's jaw dropped. She's like, what? But then she sat down with her and told her, this is how Jesus rescued Mommy. And it became a thing we did with every kid. To where Jesus was not a rule giver. Primarily, there are rules you gotta follow, but the heart of it is Jesus is the one who rescued Mom. Jesus is the one who's in love with you, who died for you. I mean, they could become a mess in a million ways, but that beating heart is there. [00:39:08] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think the point of that is they have to see it in you. They have to see faith in you, first of all, and in your marriage relationship. And you're right, you do have to have rules. You have to have boundary. You have to have guidelines. And sometimes it's really hard. It's really hard to navigate with your teenage children that line between having a relationship and the fact that you are a parent, that has to establish guidelines. [00:39:46] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:39:47] Speaker B: And. But the relationship has to come first. And the relationship is not reciprocal. I mean, I had one of my kids say to me, you know, dad, I don't think you're the kind of person I'd want to have a relationship with you. A teenager, like. But, you know, even the child that went off in the ambulance, I was talking to them recently, and they said a couple things. One is, they said, well, I always thought you and mom were perfect, and I was the problem. Which I thought was interesting because we weren't perfect. But the second is bike. No matter what was going on underneath everything, I always knew that you loved me. So, you know, thinking about our relationship with our children, even when they're at their most difficult Moment and seem so far removed. To continue to love and let them know that they're loved as the father loves us, I think is really key. And then every kid's different and every path is different. There's no cookie cutter approach. Do A, B, C, D. And then at the other end is going to come this perfect kid. It just doesn't happen that way. Doesn't happen with us that way. [00:41:21] Speaker A: Yeah. And when your kid goes crazy, sometimes it's not your fault you're not God. And actually, if you were God, the beginning of Genesis, we have a perfect father and two children. And what happens in the first few pages? [00:41:35] Speaker B: Yeah, so there's always the free will. But I would try to figure out how to spend time with my kids. I mean, one of my kids loved to play the guitar. I love to play the guitar. We couldn't have meaningful conversation because he just wasn't there. But sometimes we just sit in the living room and like, play guitar and improv together. And so there was something was going on there. [00:42:01] Speaker A: The only thing that communicates that you are worth me spending my life on is quantity, time. Yeah. [00:42:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:42:07] Speaker A: And just sitting there and being with you. Want to leave us with a word for parents who are in the midst of it right now? Just any, any one word of encouragement that might come to mind. In addition to all that you just [00:42:16] Speaker B: said, the truth is, no matter how much we love our kids, that they have a father in heaven who loves them infinitely more than we do. And he has one desire, and that's that they would know that love. And he is persistent, always pursuing, always pressing in, while at the same time respecting free will. And so we never lose hope. And we don't know how the rest of the story is going to play out. We don't know if it's going to play out when they're 13, when they had this experience of the lord, or they're 21 or 45. You know, my mom died a couple years ago, and that occasion of my mother's passing, she was a living saint. Has opened the door for some conversations around faith and conversion and by family, with my siblings. And, you know, so never lose hope and pray. And we think, well, just pray. Like, what does prayer really do? Well, I found out, my mom told me after I had come back to the faith, that my grandmother and my godmother were third Order Franciscans. And they prayed for me every day so I didn't have a chance. And my wife, when we started to have teenage children, got together with other mothers and Created what they call the St. Monica Society. [00:43:57] Speaker A: Oh, man, that's awesome. [00:43:58] Speaker B: Because, you know, Monica was Augustine's mother and he was a conversion late in life. And so don't lose the relationship. And the more that we become transformed into Christ, the more our children are going to experience Christ in us. And there's always hope. And the Father loves perfectly. [00:44:28] Speaker A: Praise God. [00:44:29] Speaker B: Period. [00:44:30] Speaker A: Praise God. I had a dear friend who was helping me set up this studio who last night told me about a beautiful church service he went to. He's a non denominational guy. During the service, they had everybody who was an older person whose heart was broken for some young person who wandered from the faith. And it's the greatest gift. And when you experience a kid rejecting it, it's such pain. I have parents and grandparents come to me all the time with that pain. [00:44:55] Speaker B: Deepest pain. [00:44:56] Speaker A: Oh yeah. Said everybody who's saying those prayers. I want you to come forward right now. So all the gray hairs came up to the front of the church and a bunch of young people were in the back and said, all the young people, extend your hands over them with me right now and pray with me over them in thanksgiving for all the older people who prayed you into this church right now. And they got to see all those younger people and think, okay, there's hope, there's hope. I mean, as long as there's God, there's always hope. As long as he loves us, there's always hope. [00:45:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know the paradox of the gospel, the great mystery is all things work for the good. And oftentimes it's the most profound difficulty and suffering that we experience in our life. And oftentimes that can come through our own children that brings us to a place which opens us more, more up to receive his grace. So even in that, the midst of that struggle which seems so hopeless sometimes, he's there and he's ready to come. [00:46:06] Speaker A: Would you do us in prayer? Yeah, maybe for someone listening who's had a hard time just receiving the unconditional love of God themselves and is clawing their way through life. Yeah, just maybe. Who's never prayed this way just to. Just to. Just to relax and receive it and let the Father love them. [00:46:24] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:46:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Let's pray. [00:46:26] Speaker B: The Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. And Father, we're mindful of your presence right here, right now, with us here, and with every person who might be listening to this or watching this. Father, you're there. You've always been there. Father, help us to. Approach you with true faith. Father, we believe, but we struggle. So help us, even in our unbelief, in our struggle, in our doubt. Father, you're everything. And without you, we have nothing. Father, I pray especially for those people who are far from you, who haven't yet known and experienced the joy of your presence, the hope, the peace that comes from knowing you. Come, Father, now into our hearts and our minds and our souls. We say yes to you. We trust you. We surrender to you. And Mary, intercede for us. Mary, you've been such a profound example of what this life of trust and surrender to the love of the Father and the love of your son in the midst of tremendous difficulty and trial. Come, Holy Spirit, pour out the love of the Father in our hearts. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. [00:48:29] Speaker A: And Lord, we want our kids to have faith and to die with faith so badly. And we just give them to you. We entrust them to you. We surrender them to you along with ourselves. Amen. [00:48:41] Speaker B: Amen. [00:48:42] Speaker A: Oh, and thank you for all the people who prayed us into faith and suffered as they watched us and held on. [00:48:49] Speaker B: Amen. [00:48:50] Speaker A: Thank you, Lord. I love you, brother. What a great conversation. It's really just so good to be with you, man. Thank you. Thanks for this. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for who you are. [00:48:59] Speaker B: It.