Childlike Faith

"For God so loved the World that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).

This verse is one that most people have heard repeatedly, and yet sometimes forget it's true meaning or take it for granted. When people lose someone or something they love the first reaction so often is to blame God rather then humbly ask Him for His help. It is easy to forget that He suffered a far greater pain then we could ever imagine and He will always understand and help us through our most difficult times.

The video below is a recording from a phone call made by a 12 year old boy to Houston radio station KSBJ FM 89.3. The radio station was so moved that they recorded it and put it on their website. The video really inspired me because it showed God's love through the eyes of a child, and we could all learn from his faith!

Communicating Faith

Okay, so the real focus of this blog is communicating our faith to others - especially the personal experience of our relationship with Jesus Christ. It's not easy, though, to just begin talking with people about Jesus. How many times have I wanted to talk with others explicitly about Jesus and his importance in my life and his redemption and all of that great stuff - but felt like I would offend the hearer?

Well, I have two helps for this. First, Chad, ChristLife's 06-07 intern, and I had an awesome podcast interview with an international speaker and evangelist, named Becky Pippert. The podcast is called Jesus is Irresistible - check it out - it directly addresses the above fears of being "offensive" and makes evangelism much easier!

Secondly, some friends of ChristLife, Greg and Jennifer Wilitz, who have a great podcast called Rosary Army and are also connected with the Catholic podcasting hub, SQPN - are producing periodic short video clips called That Catholic Show. Its funny, creative, faith-building, and inspirational. Here is there most recent clip on "Statues and Icons"



What does this have to do with this blog? Well, a lot. While we don't spend lots of time talking about statues and icons - we do spend a lot of time talking about faith and communicating it to others hopefully. What I love is the way Jennifer explains this aspect of our faith in an easy, light-hearted, and Christ-centered way!

Did you find the video helpful? Why? What can you learn from the way Jennifer communicates elements of faith?

And Action!

I don't know about you but I don't get the opportunity to be in movies very often, so when I had the chance to go to Philly to be an extra in a new movie called Our Lady of Victory I was pretty excited. Although doing "extra" work was not everything I ever hoped and dreamed of, it was a pretty good time. In addition to spending hours waiting to go on set and then hours on set being really quiet and doing the same thing over and over, I had the opportunity to talk about Jesus! Now, it wasn't anything amazing – no mass conversions or anything - but just talking about faith a couple times reminded me of how simple sharing Christ can be.
The first opportunity I had was while on a bus on the way to the set. It was about a 10 min. ride but I had to sit with a stranger. Of course we went through the normal introductions listing who, what, where, ect. and eventually we got into where we work. She is married and does "extra" work a good amount and I introduced myself as a summer intern at ChristLife: a Catholic ministry of Evangelization. From then we continued on, chatting about faith here and there and discussing the importance of knowing Christ as your personal Savior and then sharing your faith. This little chat got me excited for the rest of the day as I looked for more opportunities to share Christ's love.
To my surprise and joy the scene we were shooting was in a Catholic Church. So, sitting quietly for 4 hours on hard wooden pews was a task my body was all too well trained for and of course the setting lent itself to an easy discussion of faith. During the scene the "priest" read from 1 Peter making sure to emphasize the verse “wives submit to your husbands” and that women are the weaker sex and then, according to the script, the priest was to go on giving a very sexist homily. During a short scene break I turned to a girl near me and we discussed the verse from 1 Peter. We shook our heads sadly at the movie's misuse of the verse, recognizing important parts that were dropped and I summarized Ephesians 5:25, 28 which says, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.” The other women near us overheard our conversation and began chatting on their own about the movie’s misrepresentation of the Catholic Church and the Mass in various ways.
After a few similar conversations I inwardly rejoiced in the Lord for having the chance to talk about faith in an easy casual way. Hopefully I’ll continue to take advantage of the little ways I can share Christ’s love daily on set and off.