martin

The speaker addresses a group of men and talks about the challenges they are facing in today's world. He emphasizes that although times may be tough, they present great opportunities for greatness. He encourages the men to take these challenges seriously and to make changes in their lives. He also highlights the importance of passing on values and lessons to the next generation. The speaker shares a story about a boy and an old man trying to please everyone and ends by stressing the importance of seeking to please Jesus Christ above all else. He believes that the United States has the potential to be great but that it depends on whether the country remains one nation under God. Gentlemen, how are you doing? Very good. It is my job to walk through your post-lunch food coma. And I'm excited to be with you all, to be able to share a message that has been changing my life the last couple of years, to be able to talk to you and challenge you, because I think we're living in challenging times. I think I can speak into this room, maybe by a show of hands, how many of you guys have felt a little bit of pinch in the last four or six months? All right, I'm in the right group. Good. I want to look a little bit at the challenge, but here I'll just cut to the end. I really do believe that the bad news is the good news. It's not good news in the sense that life is going to get easier. It's not good news in the sense that we're going to be able to coast through this. It's good news in the sense that you were made for greatness, and you're made for greatness, and that means that bad times are great opportunities. Think about it for a minute. If it wasn't for a civil rights crisis in the 50s and 60s, Martin Luther King Jr. would have been just another preacher in the South. But because there was a crisis in his life and in our culture, he stepped forward and became a man of greatness. And I think that same opportunity, in fact, I think even greater opportunities than that are standing before us today if we can take that seriously. So what I'd like to do is I'd like to spend a little bit of time setting perspective and then looking at the challenges, and what does that mean? Because here's the fundamental issue. If we always do what we've always done, we're always going to have what we've always had. And I'm not satisfied. I don't like what we have. And so I don't want to do what we've always done. It's time to change. What I love about this group, and I've heard about your men's ministry here for more than 10 years. This is a great men's conference. I'm honored to be here, and I'm grateful. But one of the real reasons I like about this, I've had the opportunity to speak at conferences around the country, some of them big conferences, others not so big. But one of the things that kind of ate at me as I go to these conferences is I kind of felt as though you're going and you're kind of like a conference could be a pep rally. But in a lot of these conferences, there's no game that follows. You just go home and it's life as usual, and a pep rally without a game is a waste of time. And so what I love about this is a lot of you guys are in small groups. You're meeting with other men. You're confronting the challenges in your life. And those challenges have gotten bigger in the last few years, last few months. And that's not all bad, because God is spurring us on to greatness. He has a plan for your life, and it includes the present challenges and trials, the things that are keeping you up at night. Those things are part of it. God wants to wake you from where you are today and bring you to another level. And I love the fact that you guys are meeting in small groups. How many of you are meeting regularly in a small group with some other group of guys? Before you put your hands down, guys who don't have their hands, I hope that after this talk is over, you'll find a guy near you who's got his hand up right now and go talk to him. Because if you leave here today and say, oh, I really like those talks, particularly the third one. If you say that you really enjoy the talk and you go home and nothing changes, then I'm wasting my time and I'm wasting your time. We need to do things differently. There's a great opportunity in front of us, and that's what we're looking to do. We want to change the way we live because we're living in a culture that is waiting for us to change, desperately waiting for us. Our young men are waiting for you older men to wake up. Because here's the deal. Life's a relay race. I don't care how fast you run. I don't care how good you are. I don't care how successful you've been. If you fail to pass the baton to the next guy in the next generation down, you lose. It's over. You lost. It's all about passing the baton to the next generation. And so I'm grateful that we've got young guys here today. It's never too late to start, but we've got to get our eyes on the next generation. Because if we win the battle for the hearts and minds of the next generation, we win. We win. It's that simple. So how are we going to do it? Well, I'd like to look at a story that I think illustrates this issue for me, kind of drives this home. It's a story of an old man and a young boy on a long journey. And the two of them are on this long journey, and they're walking on this hot, dusty, dirty road, and they've got a donkey. And they're walking along, and the boy gets tired. It's hot. The road's dusty. And so he gets tired. He says, you know, I'm just going to climb on the back of this donkey and let the man lead the donkey. So he's on the back of the donkey, and he's riding along. And as they're going along this long road, there's some people in the other direction that start coming. You can see them off in the distance, and then they get closer and closer. They're coming to pass. And as they get close enough, you can see their faces. You can see they're talking. And as you get real close, you can hear they're actually talking, but they're talking about the boy and the man, and they're complaining. They're muttering, that's just wrong. I mean, that's just wrong. Perfectly healthy boy, making that old man walk. He's going to kill that old man. And the boy is kind of humiliated. He's like, I don't know what I was thinking. So he gets off the back of the donkey. He says, really, you know what, you should ride on the donkey, and I'll lead the donkey. So they switch places. And they go along a little bit further. It's hot. It's dusty. And some other people come in the other direction, and they're also talking about the couple. And they're arguing, that's just wrong. Grown man, making that boy walk. He's going to kill that boy. So the old man says, I guess I better get off the donkey. So they get off the donkey, and they said, what are we going to do? They said, well, let's both get on the donkey. So they both get on the donkey, and they're riding along, and guess what? Some people come along, and they're grumbling, that's just wrong, two people on one donkey. They're going to kill the donkey. So they get off, and they're leading the donkey. Now nobody's riding. And they're walking along. And some more people come along, and they're upset. Perfectly healthy donkey, nobody riding it, that's a waste of a donkey. And they're looking at one another like, I rode, you rode, nobody rode, we both rode, what are we going to do? So they do the only thing they can think. And they pick up the donkey and start to carry the donkey. And they're walking along, and this donkey's pretty heavy, and they're feeling kind of stupid. And they come across this bridge, and this bridge goes down, and it covers this ravine that has steep sides, and at the bottom of the ravine, there's a river that's rushing down at the bottom that has carved this ravine, and they're going across the bridge, and the boy, he loses his hold of the donkey, and the donkey starts to slip out of his hands. Well, the old man can't hold the donkey all by himself, and so he also loses control of the donkey. The donkey falls out of their hands, falls onto the bridge, slips off the side of the bridge, rolls into the ravine, hits the side of the wall of the ravine, rolls down, falls into the river, falls into the river, and the donkey drowns. And the moral of the story is, if you try to please everyone, you can kiss your ass goodbye. Now I'm going to try to make a point out of that. I do have a point to make, actually, and that is this. There's one person in your life that you need to learn how to please. One person. You get that right, everything falls into place. Miss that, and you're going to be struggling with your finances, and your family, the economy, the politics, whatever's driving you crazy right now is going to continue to drive you crazy unless you get this one thing right. You get this one thing right, it all starts to fall into place, and I think you know where I'm going with this. That one person is Jesus Christ. We have the Christ feet right here. Jesus, whenever two or more are gathered in our place, He's in our midst. The custom here is to have a seat of honor for Him, and we need to get right with Him because Jesus made it really simple. He told us a lot of great things about how to care for the poor, and we need to do a better job of caring for the poor. He gave us a lot of things about how to live a life of forgiveness and mercy, and we need to be merciful. He promised if we're merciful, then we'll be shown mercy. But if you ask Jesus, Jesus, what's the one thing that you want of me? He's already answered the question. Matthew 6.33, seek first my kingdom and righteousness, and all these things will be added onto you. Seek first the kingdom and righteousness, and everything will be added onto you. We need to get serious about pleasing Christ in our culture. I think we live in a culture that's the greatest culture in the history of the world. The United States, greatest, I think, in the history of the world. Are we honored and blessed to live here? No doubt about it. I don't know that we're at our finest hour, and I think what will decide whether we're at our finest hour or not is what we do next. Are we on our way to better times or worse? And I think the only way we're going to answer that question is we're going to answer the fundamental question, are we one nation under God or not? Are we? Now's the time to test. Oh, we can get distracted by real distracting things, and there are real serious issues out there, and we're going to go after that in just a few minutes. But none of them are going to make any sense unless we get first things first. In His very first Mass, His very first Mass, Pope Benedict said this, turn to the young people of the world. He said, and you young people, I want to speak to you for just a moment. And then he said this, the world offers you comfort. You were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness. You were made for greatness. And that's the challenge here today. Do you want to be comfortable or do you want to be great? Because you can't do both. You can't. And here's the challenge of that. We're kind of wired for comfort. I mean, we're sitting in these nice, cushy chairs, aren't we? But even so, guess what, as we're sitting here talking, you know, I know what you're doing. Without even really thinking about it, you're like, the left cheek is getting a little tired. I think I will scoot over to the right cheek. And we just kind of do this all day long, right? We just kind of pursue comfort. You don't even have to be conscious to pursue comfort. Have you ever gone to sleep with just a sheet and awakened and the blanket that was at the foot of the bed is also on top of you? In the middle of the sleep, while you're unconscious, you can pursue comfort. You're amazing. It's very impressive. So we're wired in our bodies for comfort. But we weren't made for comfort. We were made for greatness. And we need to get out of our comfort zone, and we need to step up, and we need to get serious about greatness. Here's the deal. God made you for a reason. You didn't happen to occur. You're not the accident of biology and the smattering of molecules. You're composed of all those things, but there's a deeper story of you. And that is that Almighty God created you out of nothing. Before you existed, the idea of you existed. We're told in the book of Genesis, in the beginning, God created. Now, you weren't created in the beginning. At a certain point in time in history, right under your mother's heart, you came into existence at the moment of your conception. You didn't exist before then. But the idea of you existed before then. God, when He created everything, created the idea of you. And then He waited until the perfect time to bring you into precisely that time in human history when you should be here. And He gives you, He has a specific plan and a vision, a reason that He calls you into existence out of nothing. A very specific reason, and it is not for mediocrity. It isn't. There is no patron saint of mediocrity. I looked it up. Well, I was going to look it up, but I got distracted. There's no patron saint of mediocrity. You were never supposed to be mediocre. You're supposed to be great, what the church calls holy. There's a secret about Christ, and He shared it with three of His closest friends. In Luke chapter 9, He brings Peter, James, and John with Him up to the Mount of Transfiguration. And it's almost as if you can say, look, I've got to show you guys. I want to show you this, but we've got to come a little further. I want to make sure it's just the three of you. Come on, we've got to go all the way. No, we have to go closer to the top of the mountain. In fact, we've got to go all the way to the top of the mountain, guys. I think we're just here now. All right, here's the secret I want to share with you. I glow in the dark. But He made you to glow in the dark, too. He made you to glow in the dark, too. So the fact that it's bad out there, but it's dark out there, means your time has come. It's time to get serious and live your life. It's time to get serious and live your life. It's time to get serious and live your life. It's time to get serious and live your life. It's time to get serious and live your life. It's time to get serious and live your life. It's time to get serious and live your life. It's time to get serious and live your life. It's time to get serious and live your life. It's time to get serious and live your life. It's time to get serious and live your life. It's time to get serious and live your life. I need you to step up with me, because if you don't do it, I won't do it. I'm chicken just like you. But if we do it together, we can step up and God can do amazing things in our life. He's waiting. The world is waiting. I mean, you picked your corner. I mean, you picked your corner. I mean, you picked your corner. I mean, you picked your corner. I mean, you picked your corner. I mean, you picked your corner. I mean, you picked your corner. I mean, you picked your corner. I mean, you picked your corner. I mean, you picked your corner. 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The devil loves to humiliate you because he knows you don't want to share that. And so you're going to just pull off by yourself. And guess what? See, it's like a cockroach loves the dark. This is why confession in small groups are so important. We've got to repent and come to the Lord and say, I want out. Help me. And then we've got to get our rear ends to confession. And we've got to find some buddies that we can trust enough to sit back and say, I was on the Internet last night and I looked at some images I shouldn't have looked at. And I fell in trouble. I've got groups of guys in our college campuses we serve who are gathering now, groups of five, seven, whatever the number is, and they pray together one day a week. And here's the deal. If any one of them fall in the area of chastity through Internet pornography and masturbation, they call the other guys and say, I fell. They don't get any details. I fell. Everybody in the group skips the next meal and fasts for their brother. And they get back together and pray. Now dozens and now hundreds of guys are getting liberated from the trap of pornography. And I know in a room this size, there are hundreds of guys who know what I'm talking about. We just sit quietly and try to pretend that we're civilized. We're not civilized. We're getting destroyed, guys. Just a few weeks ago, I've been blessed with eight kids. And they're all girls, except for seven. And just a few weeks ago, just after Christmas, one of my son's girlfriends went home. She'd been over our house watching a movie. Went home before midnight. Her mom was held up at work, and she was home alone. And a guy broke into her house. And for two hours, he beat her and he raped her. And then when he was done, he said, now I'm going to kill you. He went into the kitchen. He grabbed a knife to come out and murder her. And she saw a pair of scissors on the bookcase. And she got him first and hit him and startled him. A fight ensued. She got out into the hallway and went on for about another 15 minutes. Three times he dragged her by the hair back into the apartment and tried to kill her. And some neighbors finally woke up and rescued her. And the guy's in jail today. Now here's the deal, guys. There's a part inside of me that's just a natural man. And all I want, she's not my daughter, but I like her. She's a neat girl. All I want is 30 minutes in a baseball bat and I'll beat the crap out of this guy. He'll never hurt another girl. Ever, ever. I will take it. I want to go after it. You know what God's saying? That's not the answer. Take the anger and turn it towards what made the guy the animal he is. Don't turn your anger on the guy. He's a victim, too. This culture chews guys up. You watch pornography for hours and days on end, you'll start doing some wacky stuff, man. You'll start hurting people. We've got to get serious. This is not, oh, I wish more people would go to church on Sunday, type stuff. This is life and death. And if we think life and death is a big deal, there's a bigger deal. There's life and death at the eternal level. People die and they either live with God forever or they die and live in eternal separation because of sin in everlasting torment in the fires of hell. And if you'd believe it and it doesn't wake you up, there's something wrong inside of us. We've got to get serious about this. People are getting messed up. And it's not for our wives to fix. It's for you and for me to sit back and say, now is the time. How much worse does it have to get before we're going to say, enough is enough? I was in Kansas City at a men's conference and met a guy who served a couple of tours in Iraq. And he was driving home after his last tour and somebody opened up a pornography shop at the interstate on his exit. He was like, no way. I've been risking my life and while I've been gone they put a porno shop on my exit? That's just not going to work with me. So through prayer and civil petitioning and praying the rosary outside, he worked. And after months of working and fighting nonviolently, he shut the place down. He shut it down. After he shut it down, he said, you know what, I think I figured out how to do this. He has now shut down 30 porno shops through prayer and nonviolence and just commitment. And he's no different than you. He just had enough. He just had enough. Because here's the definition of insanity. To keep doing the same thing and expect different results. Just keep doing the same thing and hope it's going to get better. You're completely insane and so am I. Come on, it's not going to change unless you change. It's not going to change unless I change. I'm here not to encourage you or inspire you. I want to challenge you to find a group of guys and get serious about following Christ together. Saints don't come alone. They always come in clusters. Look at the writings of the church. Look at the saints. They always come in groups. When there's a St. Augustine, there's a St. Monica and a St. Ambrose. When there's a St. Francis, there's a St. Clair. They come in groups because you just can't do this on your own. You ever had a barbecue with one charcoal? It just doesn't work. In fact, you could have a whole stack of charcoal burning hot. Take one of them out and put it on the side. Guess what? That one cools down. The other ones stay hot. We're made to do this together. To run in groups. To be brothers with one another. Because you guys, there's two moments in your life that are more important than any other moments. Two. Two moments. More important than all the rest. Past. We want to learn from it. Future we have no real control over. First moment is right now. That moves with us. This moment right now is one of the two most important moments in your life. Now. Right now. Second one is the very last moment you're going to have on earth. The moment of your death. See, finishing well is key. From a Catholic standpoint, really, finishing well is what it's all about. That's why we elevate the feet on the cross, right? Talking about finishing well. Yeah. Total slime ball. Oh, Lord, remember me. In. That is so cool. You want to finish well. The best way, the only way you can have realistic hope that you will finish well is to live well right now. It's the only way you have realistic hope. And so I want to talk about those two moments for a minute. In fact, we know these two moments, right? When we were children, we were taught these two moments. When? In the Hail Mary. Pray for us now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Pray for us now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Two most important moments in our lives. And to use this moment to think about that other moment is something we need to do from time to time. What does it mean to finish well? Because here is the deal. If you live this life in success, you achieve all of the goals. Your 201K becomes a 401K again. You get your retirement back. You get a promotion. You get a pay raise. You're doing well financially. You get to buy that new car you really wanted. You get to move into the neighborhood that all the cool people live in. You got all the friends. People start telling you how great you are. You get honors. You're sitting back and everybody says, man, I wish I could be more like you. You're a great success. Everything you ever wanted in life and you die without Christ in your life and you go to hell. You are an absolute total failure. Total failure. Nothing else will matter. Here's a conversation that never takes place in hell. Well, at least I had a Ferrari. Who cares? And so it doesn't matter what your goals are. If you hit any or all of those goals and miss that one, you're a loser. And if you never quite nailed any of those goals, yeah, you've got a house in a safe neighborhood, but there's always something broken in it. And you've got a car, but it's not very cool. And you're making a living, or maybe not. Maybe you're just squeaking by. Actually going into debt every month right now. Let's say that your relationship with your family members could be better. And nobody sits back and says, I want to be more like you. And you die in relationship with Jesus Christ. And you go to heaven. You are an unbelievable success. Unbelievable. This is the one thing you want to get right. Amen. God wants to work in our lives. He wants to work in our lives. He wants to call us to greatness. He wants you, He wants me to glow in the dark. He wants us to have a vision of how important we are to Him. See, God wants to know you. He does know you. But do we know Him? He wants to be in relationship with us. More than 1,500 years ago, St. Augustine said, You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You. God made you for Himself. Not so that you would go to church on Sunday. Go to church on Sunday. That's not why He made you. Not so that you would obey Him. Obey Him. That's not why He made you. Look around. God is not thrilled by obedience. He really isn't. Everything in the created universe obeys Him, except for us. You know, rocks? Stays. It is. And I don't think God's going, Look what it's doing. It's so cool. It just stays there. I love obedience. Or how about go to church? Pews are in church all day long. Church pews. And I don't think God sits back and says, I love pews more than any other chair. Because they're always in church. You know, that's great. He doesn't want you to go to church. He doesn't want you to obey Him. He wants you to want to obey Him. He wants you to want to go to church. He's not after your external obedience. He's after our hearts. He wants to show you. He wants to be that coach. I love hearing Coach D talk about that. Yes, a coach can have a huge impact on a guy's life. I know that. I have three sons in high school right now. They won a state high school track last spring. And they went undefeated and won state football in the fall. Great, unbelievable year. My eldest son was the defensive state player of the year in small high schools in the state of Colorado this year. Great year. And it was a lot of fun. Don't get me wrong. I totally live vicariously through my kids. There's no doubt about it. I mean, I'm reliving high school. They're actually much better athletes than I was, so it's even better the second time around. But what I love is the football coach is a man of God. What I love is that this guy has access to my kids in a way I don't. I actually sit back and marvel at it. I mean, he will get my kids to run up and down and back and forth until they puke their guts out and laugh at one another. Ha, I puked more than you did. And they love it. Oh, we love you, coach. And I'm like, I just want you to walk back and forth with a lawnmower in front of you, and I can't get them to do nothing. God wants to coach you. He wants to be that father figure in your life because he is your father and your coach. And we as men, we're freaked out by one thing. We're afraid of something terribly, paralyzed afraid of failure. We're afraid of failure. It's terrible to fail. It just happened two nights ago. This week I was down in Jamaica all week with my eldest son on a mission trip. And my son and I would be the only Catholics in the group. And I'm sitting with a group of evangelical Protestants, and I'm thinking it would be great to get a conversation with the dads about the Catholic faith. I'd love to do that. These are great guys. They're men of God. And I have a lot of dear evangelical friends. I was an evangelical for five years. I love evangelicals. But there are things I know because having been an evangelical and now being Catholic, there are things that I would love to share with them, like the Eucharist. I don't love them less because they don't have the Eucharist, but because I love these guys, I'd love to share the Eucharist with them because it's true. And it's awesome. And I'd love to have a conversation with these guys. So one afternoon, a couple of them and I had about an hour and a half long conversation. It went pretty well. It was great. They were like, let's get back together and do this again. That was really cool. I'm learning stuff about the Catholic Church. So the next night I get together with five of them. It's five on one. I don't know if you play a lot of basketball. It's hard to guard five guys. And it didn't go that well. It didn't go terribly, but I left feeling like a failure. And I didn't sleep well that night. I hate to fail. I kept sitting back, oh man, why did I do that? It's like I'm replaying the video in my mind going, oh, why didn't I do this or that? It just was driving me crazy. And I thought, oh man, I hate it. And you hate it too. We hate to fail. We hate to fail. In the spiritual life, it's even worse because we feel like, well, if we fail, we're sinning. Right? Not always. Not always. And you know this because you've got the heart of a father. You know this. Do I hate it when my kids fail? No, not always. In fact, frequently, it's actually one of the cooler moments than being a dad. It really is. I had a son, my son had just graduated, walked on his football field as a freshman and lettered as a freshman. And then he went to basketball and he didn't even make the varsity team. He didn't even start on the JV team. He wanted to quit because football came easily to him and basketball was tough for him. And I've got to tell you, I love being his dad in basketball even more than football because we sat down and worked at it and said, buddy, you can get better. Let's practice. Let's get intense. And he was a captain of his basketball team this year. And I love the success he had in basketball because it was harder. He had to work for it. I love that. God loves it when it's tough for you and you are willing to risk failure. He wants that for you. He wants to step out and do great things when it's tough. Because he's a dad. I mean, every dad, you know this. All you guys who are dads, those guys who will be dads later, we've all seen this. How do we learn how to walk? We learn how to walk the same way as little kids. They crawl around and finally they find something they can lean against, you know, and they're like, you know, drunk guys, their legs go like this, and they're sitting there. And then finally after they kind of got the coffee table down or whatever, they're like, what happened? And then when their mom or dad get down, they're like, come on, come on, you can do it. And they're like, what are you talking about? Are you crazy? There's no way. And then one day what happens? A squiggle in the eye, right? Come on, you can do it. And there's that great moment. And they turn, and they look at you, and they stretch out, and they take the first step, and bam, on the ground they go, right? They fall right, you know, right on their face. And after about four kids, my wife and I said, we should probably be doing this on the carpet. I'm kidding. What I have never seen, never once, what I have never seen, when a baby tries to take its first steps, it inevitably falls on the ground. I have never seen a father or a mother respond this way. You idiot, you're such a failure. Loser. Give it up, man, you'll never get there. Never once, ever. What do they do? They run over and they're like, hey, it's okay, that was great. Here, try again. You know? That's what God wants you to do. I don't know what He wants you to do. That's between you and Him. He just wants you to do something. Two feet, one butt. Get off of it and stand on the two feet. And to be able to get up and go. I don't know where you're going, but God can do anything. Guess what God can't do? God can't steer a parked car. He needs you to get up and do something. Well, how are you going to figure out what it is? I don't know exactly what it is. I do know how you figure it out. You go to Him. Today, this afternoon, tonight, sometime this weekend, soon. If you don't do it by Monday, you'll forget. Sometime. Go in your room, go to a church, go to the Blessed Sacrament, that's great. If not, find a quiet place in your house. Go for a drive and park somewhere. I don't care where you go. Go somewhere and get alone with God. Get alone with God. Put your list down that says, oh, God, I want you to do this and this and this and this and this. He knows what you want Him to do. Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all those things will be added unto you. Put the list down. This is good, but this is more important. Put the list down and say, God, this is where my heart is. These are the things that are terrifying me right now. I don't know what's going on financially. I don't know what's going on with my kids. Maybe divorce has ripped your family apart. Maybe divorce has ripped your family apart. Either in your own marriage, marriage of your parents, marriage of one or more of your children. Maybe abortion has wounded your family. Maybe pornography. I don't know what the issue is. But something, in a very short amount of time, God will raise one or two things to the front of your mind and right to the center of your heart, which are on your mind and in your heart. That's where He wants you to go. That's where He wants you to go. We, you, me, we've got to shut down abortion. This generation, we've got to shut it down. Over. We've got to pray, civil disobedience. We've got to do everything we can and just shut it down. The first time I went and did Operation Rescue, back in the 80s, I was sitting down, risking arrest, just blocking the door to an abortion clinic. First time I'd ever done it. It was a good Friday, years and years ago. My wife and I were newly married. We were down there together. And a guy came up to me and said, Hey, can I sit next to you guys? And we sat down, and he sat down next to us, and he goes, Yes. I was driving down the road, and I saw you guys. And I wanted to keep going, and then it hit me. I've got a 2-year-old daughter, and someday she's going to say, Daddy, what were you doing when they were killing all the kids? And I realized I had to park my car and come back and sit down with you guys. What were you doing when they were killing all the kids? Well, I prayed. Good, you've got to pray. But you've got to do more than pray. You're a man. You're not an angel. You're a man. It is what's going to make you perfect to get up. Well, I might make mistakes. I know. You'll learn how to walk, though. And God will love it when you make mistakes. He loves it. Just get back up. What he doesn't like is what no father would like. Well, I screwed. I quit. Okay, that breaks his heart. He's deeply invested in you. He willed you into existence. Willed you into existence. The very idea of you he thought up. Willed you into existence. It has a vision for your personal greatness. And that greatness is to address the ills and the challenges of our culture today. Not the generations that went before. He made people to be alive in those generations. Not the problems that we're going to have in 2200. He's got people waiting in line to come and take care of those. Your problems are the ones we've got right now. And you were made to fix them. You were made to fix them. He wouldn't have allowed them if he didn't have a solution for them. And when you respond, oh, you're glowing in the dark. You're glowing in the dark. How are we going to do it? Well, we're going to have to stand face-to-face with our Lord. And we're going to have to enter into a relationship with him. Most of us here today are Catholic men. We know God. The Spanish have two words for no. Saber. To be acquainted with the knowledge of something. We know that two plus two is four. And conocer. To be in relationship. Do we as Catholic men that know that God doesn't want us to just know, saber, to be aware of him, but to conocer. To be in relationship. He wants to coach you. He wants to forgive you when you fall. He wants to help you up and get you going again. But he wants you to realize his hopes for you. That's why you're here. Part of that plan are the sacraments of the church. Get your confession. Many of you have already today. And then find some buddies who will run with you. We have got to do this. On a college campus, focus works drawing young men into small groups. To pray together. To do Bible studies together. To hold each other accountable. And it's an amazing thing. We've been at it for ten years. Ten years. Started with two part-time guys. We now have 250 full-time staff. My buddy Steve Priest is upstairs at our table. 250 full-time staff. In the last ten years, we're in the middle of a vocation crisis. In the last ten years, God has called 144 men out of our program into the seminary. 144 guys. I'm running out of time, and I'd love to tell you more, but I'm going to have to leave you in just a second, so I'm going to leave you with a challenge. But here's the deal. Why are we successful? Because we've allowed guys to learn how to run after the Lord, even in the midst of their stumbles. And that's okay. In fact, it's really awesome. It is really awesome. To have the freedom to fall down and get back up. And then eventually laugh about it. There will be a day, at the end of your life, when you will look back and say, either I just crushed it. God gave me a life, and I knocked it out of the park. Or, we will live with regrets for the rest of eternity, saying, I wish I had known then what I know now. Please, join with me. We're going to close in prayer right now. I'm going to ask our Lord to make Himself real and personal to us. Each one of us. Join with me. And then I ask you, I just implore you, to go someplace quietly and speak to our Lord, and ask Him, what is it you want me to do? What He shares with you might freak you out. You want me to do what? And then get to work. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Just start. God will magnify your efforts in amazing ways. Let's pray. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Father, we thank You that You have created us and willed us into existence so that we could be great. So that we could be men of whom the world is not worthy. But we're not there yet. And so we come to You now and ask You, Lord, please, come into our lives in a new way. I don't want it just to be something we think about, or a God we're loyal to. Lord, we're asking You right now to come into our lives and be the Lord of our lives. Guide me and direct me. Lead me wherever You want. You're my coach. Lead me wherever You want me to go. I'll trust You to risk failure in pursuit of the greatness You desire for me. I love You, Lord. I'm weak and I will stumble. But if You'll pick me up, I'll continue to run after You all the days of my life. I pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. Thank you.