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Welcome to Unpacking the Mass with Keith Nestor. On this podcast, we dig into the week's readings for the upcoming Sunday for the Catholic Church so that when you go to Mass, you are ready to hear what God has to say to you through the Scriptures. So grab your Bibles and let's get digging. Hey, friends, welcome to Unpacking the Mass. So excited that you are here with me today to look at the readings for the fifth Sunday in Easter. Our first reading comes to us from Acts, chapter six, verses one through seven. But before we jump into that, let's begin with the word of prayer. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord, we get so much inspiration from looking at not only the words of the Gospel, but the account of what happened in the church in the very beginning. It inspires us, Lord, to draw near to you and to stand strong in the face of whatever persecution we find ourselves in, because we know that you have a plan. And because of your plan, we can keep our hearts from becoming troubled. I pray that for all of us as we step into these readings that you would wash over us with the power of the Holy Spirit, with the assurance that you love us and that we can trust you. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. All right, friends, let's take a look now at these readings. Now, in these days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists murmured against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. And the 12 summoned the body of the disciples and said, it is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brethren, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we made a point to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. And what they said pleased the whole multitude. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith, and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip and Prochyrus, and Nicanor and Timon and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. These they set up before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands upon them. And the word of God increased, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem. And a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith. Our second reading comes from 1 Peter, chapter 2, verses 4 through 9. And it reads this, Come to him to that living stone rejected by men, but in God's sight, chosen and precious. And like Living stones. Be yourselves built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture. Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone and a cornerstone, chosen and precious. And he who believes in him will not be put to shame. To you, therefore, who believe he is precious. But for those who do not believe, the very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner and a stone that will make men stumble, a rock that will make them fall. For they stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. And our gospel comes from John 14:1 12. And it reads this. Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in Me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you. And. And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself. That where I am, you may also be. And you know the way where I am going. Thomas said to him, lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. If you had known Me, you would have known my Father also. Henceforth you know him and have seen Him. Philip said to him, lord, show us the Father and we shall be satisfied. Jesus said to him, have I been with you so long and yet you do not know me? Philip, he who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in Me does His works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me. Or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do. And greater works than these will he do because I go to the Father. All right, my friends, pretty amazing stuff here that we see. First of all, let's look at our first reading in the Book of Acts. Now, what we see happening here is the development even early on of what happens in the Church as the needs of human beings come face to face with the Reality that there is a new way to live. And notice that the people in this first reading, there's a daily distribution of food. They're counting on one another. They're not going before the government and the social society networks and all that kind of stuff to. To have their needs met. They go to the church, which shows a difference in how societies function. But really what this also shows is the absolute all in ness. Is that a word? Can I say that? All in ness of what it meant to be part of the early Christian community. They gave up everything to join this community. Remember, we see in the Book of Acts, we see that they all had everything in common and that there was no one who was in need, so that everyone gave what they had and they all kind of shared together. Now this freaks people out. They're like, oh, this is communism. This is more than communism, my friends. This is a covenantal relationship that they all have with the Lord and with one another, really. And maybe there's some things we can learn about that. Now, I'm not advocating that we all move into some big commune and set up ourselves that way, although some people have done that. But what I think we need to pay attention is how the church views itself here from the standpoint of meeting the needs of the people and how even early on, people who love Jesus in the very beginning still had their disagreements and they still had their problems and they still had issues that needed to be resolved. Now notice what nobody goes and says, well, hold on a minute. Where is that in the Bible that you need to get this other group of people together to handle the daily distribution of food? Where's your chapter and verse on that? You know, and I can't help myself. Sometimes I just have to point these things out. Why is that important? Because as the church grows and develops, it's going to encounter situations and the church has the authority to figure out how to address these situations. Now, is this a doctrinal issue? No, it's not. But it's a disciplinary, functional issue and the church has to deal with both. And sometimes people get hung up on things in the Catholic Church that are these tactical matters. And they go, well, see, the church does these things and blah, blah, blah. And maybe there could have been a better way to do this. I don't know. I think this was fine. But sometimes when the church exercises her authority and also just manages things, people are always like, skeptical and they want to be. Where did you find that in the Bible? And where's this and where's that? The Church has to be able to function in these practical ways. And there has to be a distinction made, though, between what is regulated and relegated from the Scripture versus what is the Church just exercising her authority and her wisdom in leadership. Because sometimes people say things like, oh, well, I had somebody ask me the other day, why does the Church not have. And every time the Eucharist is offered the body and the blood, why does that happen? Or why can't babies be given the Eucharist or whatever? And you know, why is there a certain age and why does the Church require you to go through RCIA or OCIA for a certain number of months before you join? What about this? What about that? And some of those things have doctrinal things behind them, but a lot of times they're just the way that the Church does things from a tactical perspective. And those things could change over time. The Church could decide, hey, you know what, ocia, that person doesn't need to go through that because of whatever. I didn't go through that. So sometimes when people, like attack the Catholic Church because of the tactical things they disagree with, they don't realize that, look, the Church never claims to be infallible in these measures in these ways. Sometimes the Church needs to do things differently. Sure, of course. And that's normal. And what we see in the Book of Acts in this chapter is how the Church is responding to the various needs that come in all sorts of different ways. It will respond in doctrinal things and theological things and in practical things. So we have to allow the Church to do that. That's why we need a church. That's why we need the ability for the Church to be a living magisterium, not just locked into some time warp of how things were. People get hung up on that sometimes. Well, a Catholic church. Show me, you know, in. In the early church, where they had a big cathedral. Well, you can't, because they were worshiping in persecution and in many instances. But that doesn't mean that that that development over time that God wasn't behind, that evolved, that evolving nature of what's going on. You see, this is all part of this, my friends. We have to see how the Church uses her wisdom to address these theological, these philosophical and even these practical matters. And that's what they do. So they elect these deacons to serve in the practical matters. Why? So that. And this is important, I think, so that the priests can be focused on the ministry of the Word, not on these administrative matters. Now, I know there are some priests who watch unpacking the mask. And they're probably shouting he, yes and amen. Because I don't know any single priest, okay, who got into ministry because they wanted to be an administrator. And yet how often are priests put in that role? I don't know any priest who got into ministry who said, I really want to be in charge of parish policy and figuring all these things out. No, priests become priests because they want to be devoted to the ministry of the Word and Sacrament. They want to help people, they want to bring people to the Lord. But yet sometimes they're put in these positions where, let's face it, their time would be better spent in other areas. Now, do they just have the ability to say, well, then we're just not going to do those things? No, they need to have other people to step up and do that. That's why we have deacons, that's why we have lay employees and staff and all these things. And lay volunteers who can step up and say, hey, Father, you know what? You shouldn't be mowing the grass at the parish. I got that. Or you shouldn't be in charge of this. So you know what? When priest asks you to do something to help out with the parish life, maybe you're really good at administration and finance and all these things and your priest is struggling with it. Or maybe you're really good at organizing things and figuring things out in systems. If your priest asks you for help with that, offer yourself if you can to do that so that he doesn't have to. It's very important. So hopefully you priests that are watching this are going, yes and amen. And if there are some priests who are like, no, I love the administration, more power to you. Just don't neglect the Word to do those things. And I love what it says here. And the word of God increased and the number of the disciples multiplied and people were obedient to the faith. See, as the church functions not just theologically, but also practically dealing with the new people coming in, dealing with the widows, dealing with the people that are in need. That's what is going to allow the church to grow. The church just can't be one dimensional and say the only. I'm sorry, the only thing we do here is, you know, this particular thing. But we're not going to do anything else to meet your needs. No, it doesn't work that way. If a person is going to come into the fullness of the community of God, into the church, there has to be a mechanism by which their needs are met. Now, I'M not saying that it's the church's responsibility to feed everybody from a physical perspective. We live in a different type of society now where we have other things in society that do that. But at the same time, you know, the church absolutely should be helping the poor and widows and orphans and all those things. And when we have opportunities to do that, we need to be involved in that, my friends. All right, let's look at our second reading from First Peter. This is pretty cool. What we see in this reading, we recognize that Jesus was rejected by humans, but chosen by God. And there's this imagery that we're using here of, of this building. Okay? Think about what he says here. Like living stones, be yourselves built into a spiritual house. This is a picture of the church, of the family of God. And the imagery here is, I think, given to contrast the temple, okay? Because the Jews understood the temple to be the dwelling place of God, the most holy place. And of course, the temple was going to be destroyed. Jesus prophesied that. But Jesus was building something new, wasn't he? And the church is this new thing that God is building on. What. What's the foundation? Of course, we see from the scripture that the foundation is the apostles, of course, Jesus Christ as the cornerstone. And Jesus himself would tell us that. That he would build his church on the rock of Peter. Now, I know people get freaked out about this. No, no, no. This is one of those verses that people will say, no, you Catholics Mess up Matthew 16 when it says that Peter is the rock. No, no, Jesus is the rock. And here they point to this. But here's a mistake that we can often make. Sometimes if we don't understand how the Bible works, we can think that there's one and only one full meaning of any particular word in the Bible. And, and where there are several uses of that word throughout the Bible, we'll just impose one of those meanings on all of them and say, well, there you go. Now, I don't know about you, but in different contexts, I can use the same word in different ways. Can you do that? I do it all the time. You know, there can be plenty of instances where one word means one thing over here and it means another thing over here. And it doesn't mean that those things are contradictions. So when Jesus says to Peter, you are Peter, which literally means rock, and upon this rock I will build my church, that doesn't mean that Jesus Christ is not the cornerstone, because remember, Jesus is the ultimate foundation of everything. Who is the one building the church? It's Jesus. So of course he is in a certain sense the ultimate foundation. He's the ultimate builder. He's, he's everything. But that doesn't mean that we don't have other pieces of that puzzle and that he could say to Peter, you are the rock which I'm gonna build everything else on. But what does the rock sit on top of? The rock doesn't just float in space. No, it sits on the ground. And you know, you could say Jesus. Is that right? He's the cornerstone. What's the cornerstone? That which holds everything together. And absolutely Jesus Christ holds everything together. But the scripture also says that the church is built on the foundation that of the, of the apostles. And even when you look in Revelation, you see that these, these foundation stones, the apostles names are written upon. So how do we deal with that? We just have to not try to disprove Catholicism all the time with every little verse that we read. And the problem is people come into this with an agenda. Ah, well, it can't mean this, it can't mean that. The reality is it can mean all of those things and they don't contradict themselves. What Peter is doing is, and I think it's ironic that it's Peter himself doing this, is he's contrasting the temple with what Christ is building. I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone, chosen and precious, my friends. That's what he's doing. He's quoting Isaiah 28. And remember my friends, this new royal family, this royal priesthood that he's talking about is language they would understand. Because these people grow up in the realm of kingdoms. We don't do that right now. But what Peter is saying is, look, the church, the family of God is this royal race, this new group which is not comprised and delineated based on human division. So it's not about what color you are or where you come from. It's not about those divisions. It's about your faith in Jesus Christ. And if you've been born again through baptism, if you've been been adopted into his family, then now you are the fulfillment of everything that God was doing in the Old Testament to bring his chosen people to fruition. The church is the fulfillment of that, my friends. And that's what Peter is talking about. Okay? And Jesus is the foundation of all of that. But that doesn't mean that he can't build his church on the rock of Peter. At the same time we see both of these things at play. So when you become the part of the church, you become part of this family, this royal race, this new group that is being formed, my friends, it's powerful, but at the same time, right. That rock of Christ, that. That foundation of Christ, that cornerstone, if you don't believe in it, if you don't, it's going to be a. It's going to be a stumbling block for you. You're going to struggle with it. My friends, the very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner and a stone that will make men stumble, a rock that will make them fall. For they stumble because they disobey the word as they were destined to do. Right? This is the key. If people turn away from God, this is going to. They're going to be in trouble. And you and I, we have to keep this in mind, too. If we're going to walk in the truth, if we're going to walk in faith, then we don't stumble over Christ. We build ourselves upon him and upon his words, my friends, a holy nation, God's own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Now remember, he's speaking this to a people who are persecuted. He's speaking this to a people who in many ways were ostracized from their family, from their community, from their nation in some ways. And he's saying, look, all of these worldly things, you've been rejected. He was rejected. But you're not rejected by God. You can be thrown out of every social class. You can be thrown out of every social group. You can be even thrown out of your family. But when you become part of God's family, you're in. And that's a family that is destined for glory. Destined for glory, even when everything around seems difficult, even when it's tough. And what we see in the gospel here today is going to help us to process our own lives in the midst of that. I love what Jesus says here in the beginning of John 14. Let not your hearts be troubled. Let not your hearts be troubled. I want to camp out on this, my friends, because you can think about Jesus saying these things. He says a lot in here. We're not going to get to all of it as in depth as we are with this. But I really want to talk about this. You think about Jesus. How did he say this? Now, I know some of you like to watch the Chosen. Some of you like Jesus of Nazareth, some of you like, you know, these other different gospel presentations, like the Passion of the Christ. You know, we all have these. These things that we're kind of maybe drawn to a little bit when it comes to dramatic presentations of Jesus. And I remember watching one, it was the Gospel of Matthew. This was years and years ago. And it was basically a verse by verse telling of the Gospel of Matthew just acted out. So it was narrated in the parts that were narrated. And then when the parts that were spoken, the actors spoke them and they did not depart from the Gospel of Matthew at all. From the standpoint, there was nothing spoken that wasn't in the Gospel of Matthew. So, you know, it was okay. It was a little bit clunky at times because Matthew wasn't writing a screenplay. But even with that verse by verse telling, I found that there was a lot of artistic interpretation given to who Jesus was. One particular thing about this one, I don't even know the guy's name that played Jesus, but he had like this desire, I could tell, or the director did or whatever, to make everything Jesus said to be like super buddy, buddy and encouraging. So even when he's like yelling at the Pharisees, like, you brood of vipers, you know, hypocrites, you know, it just seemed kind of weird. Like the guy was just so. He had. He was not dynamic at all. It was one emotional, you know, wavelength. But I wonder when Jesus says this, you know, do not let your hearts be troubled. It's easy to hear that as though he's sort of talking to us in a nice, I don't know, soft way. Oh, you guys, don't let your hearts be troubled. They're there, it's gonna be okay. I think that's really what it looks like. But after I've read this a few times, I don't think so. I don't think that's how Jesus was talking to these guys. The other way that you could look at this, and maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. But it makes more sense if you think about this being an admonition, a command. So instead of, hey, guys, don't let your hearts be troubled. It's going to be okay to be more like, don't let your heart be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. Don't let it happen from the standpoint of this is a command being issued, not just some sort of Dr. Phil encouragement. Why? Because this is critical that these guys don't let that happen. And the understanding is that this is a choice for them, which means it's a choice for you and for me. And if you've ever been in a tough spot, you understand how critical this is, because if you're in a tough spot, there's this moment in time when you have to say to yourself, how am I going to be in this moment? Am I going to stand strong or am I going to let my heart be troubled? And there's a lot riding on the line here because think about what these guys were going to need to do and how they were going to need to be. These were men who were about to go through one of the greatest trials we've ever seen. Watching Jesus suffer in his passion, watching all of the authorities come against them. And even Peter would deny the Lord. This was a scary time. And even after Jesus resurrection and ascension, they would find themselves right here in the middle of Jerusalem, proclaiming the truth and being hauled before the courts and the prisons and. And seeing James killed by a sword by Herod. And they would see all this persecution. They would see Stephen, who we read about earlier, being stoned to death. And what does Jesus say? There, there, guys, don't let your hearts be troubled. No, he's saying, don't let that happen. Don't let your hearts be troubled, because the world is going to need you guys to stand strong in the face of all this persecution. And if these guys were to crumble, how would that have gone? How would that have gone? Imagine you're walking into battle and the leader of the army comes up against the front line of the enemy and looks at it and says, we're all going to die. Run for your lives, every man for himself. How would you feel? What would happen? Would that inspire you to fight hard to the death? Of course not. Now imagine that your leader comes up against and sees this army, and it's a difficult army to face. It's a formidable task ahead of them. The commander looks at everybody and says, guys, I know this is going to be hard. Some of us might not make it out of this, but we're going to be okay. I have absolute faith that in the end, we will triumph. So let's get ready and let's give this thing all we got. Let's go. It's all going to be okay. This is a picture of this, my friends. I just can't imagine Jesus knowing what these guys are about to walk into. Treating them, you know, like they're a bunch of little kids who are getting ready to go to a birthday party and they might not get invited to sit at the table with somebody, you know, don't let your heart be troubled. Little Peter, little Philip, it's gonna be okay. But that's how we soften Jesus. Sometimes we gotta quit doing that because we're in a fight, too. We got hard stuff coming at us. We got difficult things that we're facing. And Jesus wants us to stand firm in faith. And he wants to say to each of us, do not let your hearts be troubled. Because it's a choice. It's a choice. These men needed to be strong, and so do we. And we can, because he has a plan and because he loves us. If we believe this right, believe in God, Believe also in me. And then he goes on to give them this encouragement. In my Father's house are many rooms, so I would not have told you. And they're just like, we don't get it. Show us the Father. Don't you see? I've got a plan. He's got a plan. I am the way. I'm the boss. Come with me. Don't let your hearts be troubled. You want. You're obsessed with the Father. Guess what? If you've seen the Father, you've seen me. All the things that these guys were like, oh, we want this, we want that. Jesus says, I'm it, baby. I'm everything that you need. All of this pursuit you have for holiness and for God, and all of that's wrapped up in me. Show us the way. We don't know where to go. You come with me. That's what Jesus said. I am the way. Let's go. That's what he was saying. So I can't imagine with all of that. This is weak. It's crucial that they didn't let their hearts be troubled. And it's crucial that you don't either. Let's talk about why. What happens when we let our hearts be troubled? Well, number one, we'll lose faith. You know, when you let yourself go down that dark road into despair and letting your heart be troubled, when you run into adversity, then you know it's not a far distance between that and going, maybe God isn't even real. The reason why he needed to tell them to not let their hearts be troubled is because they were going to be. And the same is true for us. And if we let that happen, it's not a far distance before we just go, God's not real. I just listened to an interview from a young man today who was studying to become a priest, and now he's an atheist. And the reason why is because he couldn't make sense of things in the world, things that he was wrestling with in his own self. And rather than not letting his heart be troubled, he let his heart be troubled. And eventually it led him to athe he renounced his faith. And now he likes to go around and tell everybody how great it is to be an atheist and how he once was this amazing Catholic guy and now he's an atheist. But if you listen to why, it's because he let his heart be troubled. Don't let that happen to you. You could lose your faith. Number two, when we let our hearts be troubled, then fear will drive our decisions. How many of us have ever made a bad decision because we were scared and we didn't have security and we didn't have assurance that things were going to be okay? So we've made, like, rash or bad decisions. It's happened to me a million times. But if we allow our hearts not to be troubled, then we don't do that. But when we get thrown off, you know, it's like Mike Tyson said about boxing. He said, everybody's got a plan until you get punched in the face. And it's true, isn't it? I've seen this, you know, guys come in, and I spent some time with fighters in my past. No, I was not a fighter, but I've spent some time with these guys. And you see them go in, they're all cocked up, they're ready to go. They're just like, yeah. And they're just like, ah. You know, and they go in and then they have their game plan, they have it all figured out, and then bam. They get drilled in the face with something. And it's like, all of a sudden, now, everything they thought they were going to do, they don't know what to do, and they just cover up and freak out. When you lose heart, then all of a sudden, now you're not making your best decisions, are you? No. You are operating out of fear. And when you operate out of fear now, things get a little bit crazy. And you can't make your best decisions when you're driven by fear. The third thing that can happen when you let your heart be troubled is you can let yourself question God's love or his power. God, if you love me, why would you allow this to happen to me? That can happen very easily. If you let your heart become troubled, you can say, maybe God doesn't love me, or maybe God is powerless. It can hurt your faith. It can hurt your relationship with God. It's dangerous to let your heart go down that road of darkness. And ultimately, if you let your hearts become troubled, it hurts Your witness. Because how are you going to tell anybody about Jesus if the moment trouble enters into your life, you fall apart? I mean, I hate to say it. I hate to say it. It sounds kind of heartless, doesn't it? But it's true. Imagine what would have happened if the disciples would have stayed cowering in fear up in that upper room even when the Holy Spirit came upon them. What if they were like, oh, we can't go out there. No, no, my friends. One of the reasons why the church was able to grow was because people's witness was so powerful in how they stayed faithful in the face of persecution. That changed the world, my friends, and it still changes the world. This is why we can't let that happen. But on the contrary. Now, let's flip this around. What happens if you are able to not let your heart be troubled? I know that's kind of a double negative, but I want to stick with what Jesus said. Let not your hearts be troubled. If you can obey him in that, then what happens? Well, our faith is actually strengthened because we stand strong in that we. You know, you're always gonna. You're always gonna find what you're looking for. And if you're looking for reasons why you should collapse into a heap of brokenness, you'll find those reasons. But if you want to stand strong and say, yeah, I'm not letting my heart be troubled, then you're gonna be able to see how God is showing up in your life. It's gonna strengthen your faith. You're gonna be able to see God moving. Even in those difficult moments, even. Even in the valley of the shadow of death, you will perceive that he is with you in that. But if your heart's troubled, all you see is death. When we don't let our hearts be troubled, truth drives our decisions. We're not reacting emotionally. We're not filtering everything through the lens of our pain when we make decisions. Rather, we're clinging to what's true. And that's so important, especially when you're hurting, isn't it? It's so important that even when your heart is hurting, that your will is submitted to God. Think of Jesus in the agony in the garden. He was there, and he had to put this into place. You could say, well, wasn't his heart trouble? No, he was under distress, but his heart was never troubled. It's a different thing. See, I'm not talking about how you feel. I'm not talking about pretending that everything's okay when it's not. You can be in intense moments of grief and despair and all of those things. That's a different thing. Letting your heart be troubled is something deeper than that. It's allowing that moment to creep in or that mindset to creep in where you start to doubt God's plan, and Jesus never did that, that. So don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm not saying that you can somehow, through this, you know, weird mind control all of a sudden, not feel hurt. No, that's the absolute not. That's not what I'm saying. That's the point is that even in that, you stand strong and there will be moments, even if you don't let your heart be troubled, where you're going to hurt, where you're going to be in distress. That's. That's part of it. But not letting your heart be troubled gets you through it. Letting your heart be troubled is giving up the fight. And you got to stand firm in the truth if you're going to do that. It's the only way that you can make good decisions. When we don't let our hearts be troubled, we experience God's love more fully. Think about that. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. If you don't experience that mourning, you won't experience that comfort. When you hang tight with God in the midst of that pain, in the midst of that uncertainty, in the midst of that darkness, there's something that happens in there where Christ meets you in that. That's the road of the cross, isn't it? That's what we're all invited into. When he said, he who would be my disciple must take up his cross and follow me. This is that. This is joining him in his suffering. And when you do that, you experience his love in a more powerful way than if you run away from him in the midst of that. And that's what a lot of people don't get. Oh, God doesn't love me. He let me go through a hard time sometimes. We were just so close to experiencing the love of God more fully. But we missed out on it because we ran away from him instead of walked with him through it. If you don't let your heart be troubled, then in the tough stuff, you will experience God's love more fully. And consequently, when we don't let our hearts be troubled, we will bring more people to God. This is how the early church grew. People saw these disciples and these men and women who were coming into the faith and standing strong in the face of the persecution Seeing how they behaved, seeing how no matter what anyone did to them, they never stopped worshiping Jesus and they never stopped declaring the gospel. They never stopped coming together in faithfulness. And they said, wow, there's something powerful there. I want to know more about that. You might not be some great theologian and some Bible scholar, but if you walk through a difficult time in your life and you don't let your heart be troubled and you believe in God and you put your faith in him and you stand strong, you will be a greater example of the faith than just some guy who knows what Thomas Aquinas ate for breakfast on Tuesday. Some, you know, dude with his nose in a book who can tell you doctrine and tell you, you know, theological nuanced facts and all this information. That's fine, but I don't know about you, I'm going to learn more about Jesus from someone who's walked through hell and has kept their faith than someone who just knows how to read a book. Now, we need the book stuff, don't get me wrong. But more than that, we need the experience of God drawing near to us. And we need to see what that looks like lived out with people who don't let their hearts be troubled because Jesus is with them and they believe in Him. Friends, it's powerful stuff. And remember, you have to make that choice. You have to make that choice. And if you do, remember what Jesus said. I love this in verse 12. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do. And greater works than these will he do because I go to the Father. This is what we see in the Book of Acts and beyond. People who allow themselves to be in that amazing place where whatever happens, they don't let their hearts be troubled. God will do incredible things in and through you, things that you can't even comprehend by his grace. But you got to make that choice. And some of you are in that choice right now. Some of you are in a trial or a crisis, and you're sort of at that fork in the road where you're going to either run away from Jesus or draw closer to him than you ever have. I implore you, don't walk away from Him. Run to him, no matter what happens, no matter what the world does to you. Because remember, they rejected him too. And he's the cornerstone, and he's invited you into this royal race, this royal family destined for glory. Friends, it's amazing. There's nothing better than that. So make that choice today. Don't let your heart be troubled. I hope this was helpful. I tell you it's helpful for me. And I'm going to continue to do my best in that as well. And I pray that you will too. So pray for me, I'll pray for you. And we'll ask together that the Lord would help build us up into that family that he's called us into, full of faith and truth and the ability to withstand all kinds of hard things because of our faith in him and our belief in Him. Friends, it's powerful stuff here on Unpacking the Mask. I love this. Again, I've said this before, it's my favorite time of the year is the Easter season when we see God's work and God's will being done. Remember, he's got the plan and we stick with him. We stick with him. We don't let our hearts be troubled. We're gonna see God do amazing things. My friends, thanks so much for joining me here this week on Unpacking the Mask. Do me a favor and, and share this with somebody. Let people know. And I want to just thank you for taking time to do that. If you haven't done so yet, please subscribe to this YouTube channel and give this a five star review on the podcast app that you're listening on as well. Thank you so much, my friends. I'll see you back here next week for the sixth Sunday in Easter. Take care and God bless you.