Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] What's up, you guys? Greetings from yet another hotel room, this time somewhere in the middle of Missouri. Now, listen. To give you an insight into the life of a Catholic rock star once again. While you were having an average, boring night, doing dishes, putting your kids down, I was in this hotel room eating lunchables.
[00:00:17] Now, you ever look at your life and think, like, okay, I didn't sign up for this. I'm not referring to my lunchables. They were delicious. But the million experiences that we go through that we're just thinking, okay, I had these ideals of what would happen, what would pan out, how awesome it would be. And here's what I got. And there's all sorts of trials and pains in the actual experience of life that I just didn't sign up for. I mean, I've literally said this in prayer, like, lord, I didn't sign up for this. This is not how I planned on things going. This happened to the apostles just before the experience of the transfiguration. They were walking along with Jesus, and Jesus prophesied to them about his pending passion and death. And worse, the. The humiliation that their haters, that the chief priests and scribes and the people who have given him hard time all along, would be the ones that would put him through this, and he'd be handed over to the Roman authorities, all the people that they wanted to see Jesus come out on top of, and they would come out on top with him as the conquering king.
[00:01:15] And naturally, their internal response is repulsion at this idea.
[00:01:20] Lord, that's not why we're following you.
[00:01:23] We didn't sign up for that.
[00:01:25] I mean, see, they thought, we're following the Messiah, the king.
[00:01:29] Now, of course, we know in hindsight that the Messiah is the king, the king of the entire universe.
[00:01:36] But what they didn't like was that the Messiah is also the Lamb of God who would sacrifice himself to take away the sins of the world. And in fact, the way he'd become the conquering king is by.
[00:01:48] By conquering death, by death itself. As the old Byzantine hymn says, by death, he conquered death. By being conquered, he would conquer. Yeah, the apostles didn't like that part. So he prophesied about his pending death and his resurrection. He said, three days later, I'll rise. The resurrection part went right over their heads. They didn't understand it, but boom, it hit them right between the eyes. Wait, you're gonna. What?
[00:02:10] You're gonna. No, no, no, no, no. You're getting the plan wrong. Jesus and Peter actually pulled Jesus aside And check this out, guys. It says Peter rebuked him and said, never, Lord, shall this happen to you.
[00:02:25] And this prompted Jesus just a few lines after naming Peter the rock in which he built his church, to pull him aside and say, get behind me, Satan. Okay, note to self, don't ever rebuke Jesus.
[00:02:37] He actually knows what he's talking about. But look, I know you've experienced what the apostles experienced in that reading. I know you've experienced the shock hitting you in the face.
[00:02:48] Like you have all these ideals of what you signed up for about what it would mean to be a parent and what it would feel like where you'd have all your charts on the wall for homeschooling and your books and the kids would sit at your feet like pictures that you have from of old where there's a wise teacher and children learning from mommy and Daddy and then taking the rosary out at the age of three and four and devoutly praying on their knees with you. And I had all these ideals that I would play guit of my kids. I love playing guitar. I love music. But I'll tell you what, man. Like, I thought I would sit down and play songs that I've written, and they would just sit there and they just soak it in. And of course, my actual experience was that the coolest part of the guitar for the kids was those shiny knobs. And as I'm trying to play to my children, they would get up and start twisting the knobs and pulling on the strings, because that's what you do, right? And it was a big toy and demolished all the ideals I had of playing guitar. So you have these ideals about parenting, and it turns out that parenting is actually totally exhausting.
[00:03:44] You have these ideals about your vocation that this is going to be my chance to shine. I'm going to show the world how awesome I am and the gifts that I can bring.
[00:03:51] And it turns out that your calling is also the way that you're going to be poured out and be exhausted, just like your parenting. Check this out. This is what Paul said about his calling and his job fatigue as he was talking to Timothy. I am being poured out like a libation. Like a libation. Okay, so the Greeks had these offerings. They would be sacrificial offerings to their gods. They're called a libation. They would take. Take some fine wine and just pour it on a rock.
[00:04:17] And this is the image that Paul says, this is me. I'm being poured out to where there just feels like there's nothing Left sometimes. Or you enter marriage, for instance, and you think it's going to be all, to quote Raggedy Ann, candy hearts and paper flowers.
[00:04:33] It's going to be all just cut out, hearts and candy and love and flowers and romance all the time. Because it's the culmination of what you experience while you're dating, of course, right? So there's going to be better and better and better. And. And it turns out that while your spouse, in one sense is the healing balm that God is going to pour on your wounds, your spouse is also the diagnosing finger of God to locate exactly where you are broken.
[00:05:02] If you've been married long enough, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you haven't been married long enough. This is new. Just fast forward this part. It's all just wonderful, the entire thing. There's no pain involved whatsoever.
[00:05:13] But no, seriously, the sacrifices, the joys and the sacrifices and the love have all far exceeded what I possibly could have possibly imagined.
[00:05:21] And so that while God has healed me of wounds, he's also exposed wounds. Because God loves us too much to let us sit with unexposed wounds through life. And he wants to crack us open so that he can love us even more deeply. And his love and healing and grace can go into deeper and deeper parts of our souls.
[00:05:37] But I think of that diagnosing finger of God. You know, like before there were X ray machines, a doctor would be like, hey, is your arm broken here? No, it feels fine there, Doc. How about here? Ah, yep, that's it. You just hit the brake, man.
[00:05:51] Guys, this is what the apostles experienced when Jesus said, I'm going to suffer and die, Lord, this is not what I sign up for.
[00:06:00] But here's the thing, guys.
[00:06:02] What the Lord signed you up for is actually better than all your stupid ideals and what you signed up for and all your visions of what perfect would be.
[00:06:11] And right there, as they're reeling, Jesus brings them into that reality, the transfiguration that he takes them up a mountaintop, he is transfigured before them. And here's the beauty of the transfiguration, guys. The transfiguration was not a vision into the future.
[00:06:26] That after my resurrection, my apostles, after the victory, after the resurrection, this is what I'll look like. No, no, no. He was showing them. Hey, guys, scratch the surface. Right under the ordinary, right under the pain, right under the exhaustion, right here, right now is my glory. And the Lord could have. This gives me chills thinking about it, man. He could have had had them see how he really looked in glory. The transfiguration could have easily included a vision of him on a throne with a crown and a scepter.
[00:06:56] Instead, the clothing that it specifically references, the clothing beaming from light from within the clothing.
[00:07:03] And by the way, people have near death experiences, they sometimes talk about the clothing being light. It's in some, in some weird way, but the clothing that we came all illuminated for them.
[00:07:13] It wasn't a royal cloak. I mean, this is the average clothing that a poor man would have worn 2000 years ago when walking through the Holy Land.
[00:07:24] Right there in the average ordinary, the thing they didn't dream of right there was the glory. And it was the reminder that, you know, as you watch Jesus carry his cross and be betrayed and be denied and all the pain and all the suffering, that glory is still there right in the middle of it. Yes, it's not what you sign up for, but it's far more beautiful, you see, because it's the glory that you only understand through sacrifice.
[00:07:48] It's the glory of actual, actual love. And guys, if you followed our story, me and Natalie before, you know, I didn't know that she had been the victim of childhood abuse, that she had baggage and pain that she brought into our marriage. She didn't know either. We didn't know that this stuff was waiting for us. I didn't know. I didn't admit to myself for the first 10 years of our marriage how that had been dividing us and different ways that had been playing out within our marriage.
[00:08:15] And it wasn't what I signed up for. When I realized it. I mean, that thought, I literally prayed that to the Lord, I didn't sign up for this.
[00:08:23] And as she was going through healing and facing her wounds head on and the scab she had formed over her heart were being ripped open. And she was doing this out of love for me and for our marriage.
[00:08:34] And she was feeling so much pain as if this stuff had just happened as she was learning how to de. Traumatize herself to the things that had traumatized her so they weren't being kicked up constantly. And guys, during that phase, there was like, man, the pain. I, as the male in her life who hadn't hurt her, embodied all the things that had hurt her.
[00:08:58] And I'll never forget, one time I just, I pulled my car over, I was so overwhelmed. I'm like, lord, why can't I have a normal marriage?
[00:09:06] Okay. By the way, does anyone watching me have a normal marriage?
[00:09:11] Yeah. I didn't think so, see, we have all these ideals about what normal is. Dude, give it up, man. Sacrifice your ideals on the altar of reality and give it to God. As I brought that pain to God, in honesty, he gave me the grace to change my prayer, because I realized in that moment that people with a normal marriage will never know what it's like to have your wife walk through hell just to show up for you.
[00:09:38] And my prayer changed to, lord, thank you for my not normal marriage, because it's a love that I know that others will never understand.
[00:09:46] And let me tell you what else, guys.
[00:09:48] Because of my not normal marriage, because I got the thing I didn't sign up for, which was actually better than what I could have possibly imagined.
[00:09:57] I learned how to actually stand by someone in their pain, how to make my marriage not all about me and my stupid ideals of what would make me happy. Me, me, me, me, me. How to be what actual purity of heart meant. It cracked open wounds that I had that I didn't realize that the Lord needed to heal all because it wasn't what I signed up for.
[00:10:20] It was better.
[00:10:23] Guys, everyone who stuck with it, who has sacrificed in love knows this, that when you stick with it, what the Lord is going to give you on the way of the cross is far better than all your ideals of what a messiah would look like.
[00:10:41] So here's my challenge this week. Number one, I want you to spend some time reflecting on the trials of your life and how, if you look a little deeper, how the Lord showed up and showed you his glory in the midst of those trials. And it's so dang important to remember that, because if you don't remember what God has done for you in the midst of your trials, you start to forget what God can do for you when the next trial comes along. So spend some time just thinking about it. What are some of the great pains that he's brought you through? Well, how has that made you the person that, you know, that you didn't dream of becoming, but that God dreamt of you becoming, how did that make you the person that you are today? Because I got to tell you, man, for all that, like, I think of all the cool vacations I've been on with Natalie and one of the. I mean, while I often experience being in a hotel room in Missouri, eating lunchables, you know, I get to go really cool places for free with my family, sometimes giving talks and so many beautiful, blessed experiences. But I tell you, man, if I were forced to, like, sacrifice all those cool experiences or give up the time in my life that was the most painful with my wife.
[00:11:42] Dude, I would sacrifice every vacation, but I wouldn't trade the the cross that we've borne together for anything because it's taught me who I am, it's shown me the redeeming love of God, it's helped me love more like God, and it showed me how much my wife loves me.
[00:12:01] Wow, man. It's awesome. So spend some time just thinking it in gratitude for the trials that God's brought you through and how he showed up in the midst of those.
[00:12:10] And the number two second part of this is not just a cheap ad, but I want you to click below this video and sign up for the Daily Anchor because there's so much more depth and richness in the transfiguration and what it means and it shows us how Jesus prayed that I have no time to go into in this video, but if you go and sign up for the Daily Anchor, it's a daily meditations. I'm going to dive in this week, every day, this week into more and more what the transfiguration means.
[00:12:36] That was heavier than I thought it would go. I love you guys. God bless you.
[00:12:41] Keep going with Lent, man. Press on.
