Section 3

Cultural Challenge 3

Accept life’s greatest challenges.

Spiritual Awakening:
Moment by moment accept life’s greatest challenges, or crosses, using the primary values to let the Spirit and Power of God keep you on track to God, and so God might use your example. Use a wallet sized card to stay on the path to God moment by moment. If you never leave God in the moment you will never leave your path to God.

Presentation – In the Moment

 

Video Resource
: In the Moment | Jeffrey Liautaud, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS_wgrUMr9E
14 minutes

 

Jeff Liautaud, Founder of Loquate a charity for peace, will share two real life stories of using primary values in the moment to stay on track to come to God. In the moment is so important for if ever we leave God it will be in the moment. By carrying our cross and using the primary values we can stay on track to God.

Accept Our Cross Moment by Moment

Habitual use of the wallet sized card and its breakthrough prayers results in significant spiritual growth. Suffering leads to spiritual growth when accepted and transcended by grace using this breakthrough prayer card.
After we make a conscious decision to throw our lot in with Jesus, then we will be tempted to set aside God’s call for us by temptations of the world’s plan for us. We must accept our cross. John 18:11. The tool to accept our cross is to think of the worst that can happen to us, and accept even that if that is God’s will for us. If we pray for our acceptance of our cross, again and again as often as we are tempted to reject our cross, then by grace our cross will become light. We will know we have succeeded by the joy we experience. We can try this and experience joy.

1 Corinthians 2:1-5 USCCB

When I came to you, brothers, proclaiming the mystery of God, I did not come with sublimity of words or of wisdom. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

I came to you in weakness and fear and much trembling, and my message and my proclamation were not with persuasive (words of) wisdom, but with a demonstration of spirit and power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.

St. John Paul II in his encyclical Fides et ratio in no. 23 said:

Reason cannot eliminate the mystery of love which the Cross represents, while the Cross can give to reason the ultimate answer which it seeks…

The preaching of Christ crucified and risen is the reef upon which the link between faith and philosophy can break up, but it is also the reef beyond which the two can set forth upon the boundless ocean of truth. Here we see not only the border between reason and faith, but also the space where the two may meet…

The wisdom of the Cross, therefore, breaks free of all cultural limitations which seek to contain it and insists upon an openness to the universality of the truth which it bears. What a challenge this is to our reason, and how great the gain for reason if it yields to this wisdom! Of itself, philosophy is able to recognize the human being’s ceaselessly self-transcendent orientation towards the truth; and, with the assistance of faith, it is capable of accepting the “foolishness” of the Cross as the authentic critique of those who delude themselves that they possess the truth, when in fact they run it aground on the shoals of a system of their own devising.

“The Holy Spirit is the principal agent of the new evangelization” (Tertio Millennio Adveniente, nos. 18, 45). By accepting our cross we become holier. The cross strips us clean of attachments to things of this world that keep us from loving more fully. And as Keith Strohm, New Evangelization Director,
Archdiocese of Chicago said in a blog on 5/20/13, “In other words, as we grow in holiness, we become freer to utilize the charisms we have received for the sake of the world.”

The cross is efficacious when offered up for the poor souls in Purgatory, for ourselves, for our loved ones, and for the world because Christ suffered first on the cross. It is in following Christ’s example that St. Paul chose more than anything else, and so St. Paul says about suffering in Romans 8:37 “No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through Him who loved us.”

Using the primary values to stay on the path to God moment by moment.

The primary values help us to understand our feelings. We already discussed one primary value which is: operating in an area of meaningful expansion for yourself.

Another primary value is doing that which is truly in the best interests of others. This primary value is the Franciscan definition of love. We are to love all before us.

Another primary value is attaining a goal or other end not necessarily preconceived as a goal, but which becomes a goal once experienced.

Hypothesis

There are natural law primary values behind our feelings toward which every person of every religion, and every person ever born, is drawn. Each of these primary values is discreet and pre-potent over our feelings of good and bad.

Dignity Comes from Primary Values

Can You Find Scripture that Supports Dignity for all?

1. Love. Doing that which is truly in the best interests of others.

Love

· Do to others as you would have them do to you. Luke 6:31;

· This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. John 15:12;

· You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Leviticus 19:18;

· Hatred stirs up disputes, but love covers all offenses. Proverbs 10:12;

2. Work. Attaining a goal or other end not necessarily preconceived as a goal but which becomes a goal once experienced.

Work

· My Father is at work until now, so I am at work. John 5:17;

· Not that I say this because of need, for I have learned, in whatever situation I find myself, to be self-sufficient. Philippians 4:11;

· The LORD God then took the man and settled him in the Garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it. Genesis 2:15;

· Prosper the work of our hands! Psalm 90:17;

3. Meaningful Expansion. Operating in an area of meaningful expansion for yourself.

Meaningful Expansion

· Whatever you do, do from the heart, as for the Lord and not for others, Colossians 3:23;

· I, then, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace: Ephesians
4:1-3;

· For the vision is a witness for the appointed time, a testimony to the end; it will not disappoint. If it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late. Habakkuk 2:3

· For I know well the plans I have in mind for you—oracle of the LORD—plans for your welfare and not for woe, so as to give you a future of hope. Jeremiah 29:11;

The Rule

If one or more of the values is present and the experience does not go against any of the other values, you will feel good. If the experience goes against one or more of the values, you will feel bad, even if other values are present. Dignity means feeling good about our self, and about others.

Seeming Exception

A seeming exception to the primary values is a dual experience, for example in a religious experience. On the one hand a person could feel bad because an experience went against a primary value, but on the other hand the person had joy in a dual experience of choosing to live according to one’s beliefs, in spite of not feeling good. Such a person experienced joy at living according to their beliefs, and in the midst of suffering, felt good about living according to one’s beliefs and felt bad about the harshness of an environment that went against one or more of the primary values. So such a person would need to know how to interpret each of two experiences using a specific point in time to clarify use of the primary values.

That is why the wallet sized card is so useful. It teaches us how to accept our cross and do the will of God. It teaches us how to never get off the path to God. Our cross will strip us clean of attachments to things of the world that keep us from loving God or loving others.

 

Stay on track to God. Use wallet sized card in the moment.

 

For example, I (Jeff L.) had trades to make. The markets were moving up quickly. As I tried to be patient and accurate, I was tempted that my clients would leave me if I did not succeed. I took time out. I thought of the worst that could happen to me…my clients leaving me. I made a decision. I accepted even my clients leaving me if that was God’s will for me. On my own I could not accept my clients leaving me. This is my livelihood. I prayed for the grace to accept even that if that was God’s will for me. God intervened. My temptation left me. My cross became light. I experienced joy, and calm. I realized I only wished to do what was best for my clients, God’s plan for me. If that was not good enough, I had no more to offer. So be it. I trusted God. God has been good to me thus far in my life. I have no reason to believe He will not be good to me going forward. My cross became light. I stayed in the bosom of God.

Also please come up with an example of what you did to accept one of life’s greatest challenges.

Using the “in the moment wallet sized card” above, is there anything you would or could do differently in facing your example of what you did to accept one of life’s greatest challenges?

In hind sight what did God have in mind for you in your acceptance of that great challenge of life?

Satan always attacks us by trying to get us to think that God does not quite have it right. Did Jesus have it right in dying on the cross? Did God have it right in giving you that great challenge of life?