I can Make a Difference

Dave and I went to the Knights of Columbus meeting on Monday evening and we had a wonderful evening. They played a video with a speaker, Matthew Kelly, from Australia and his topic was....What does it mean to be a Christian. Since I can't remember anything anymore, I took lots of notes. After I transcribed the notes, I decided I would post them on the blog. It certainly is better than anything I could write. I thought it was a great video. Lots of things to ponder........so here goes:


File: Word-Pat-What does it mean to be Christian
3/27/06 – OLOL Knights of ColumbusVideo
Matthew Kelly
Sidney, Australia

The path of our Salvation is the JOURNEY OF OUR SOUL from point A (where we are now) to point B (where God wants us to be).

To become more Christ Like, we cannot stay as we are we must CHANGE and GROW.
. Be open to change
. Realize you are not perfect

Following church rules and not sinning is NOT being Christian. Changing and becoming Christ Like is our goal.

Read Genesis, Chapter 3 - Adam and Eve have just eaten the fruit of the forbidden tree – they are naked and are hiding when they here God coming.
God asks Adam….WHERE ARE YOU? …. Where are you Adam? God didn’t need to ask Adam where he was because he knew where Adam was. HE wanted Adam to think about where he was and what he was doing.

How can we change and grow and find out WHERE WE ARE? Well Jesus calls us to be true disciples and gives us the following helpful tools to use on this journey.
1) PRAYER
a. Why don’t we pray?
b. We have attitude that prayers don’t get answered, so Prayer doesn’t work?
c. Prayer is boring?
d. We don’t know how to pray?
e. We don’t know what to say in prayer?

If you aren’t changing and growing…you aren’t praying. God challenges us to change and we reject change. We don’t want to change. When we reject change we reject Christ. Prayer should bring about pure joy, peace, love and happiness. We are body and soul limited by our mind and our will.
How to pray :
1. Focus on GOD – be in Union with God
2. Sit and be STILL for a few minutes – focus on an image of God (i.e. a rose which represents the image of Christ)
3. Distractions will come and go in your mind….be still…focus on God and experience UNION with God
4. Be thankful for gifts we take for granted …then our hearts will dance with joy!

“JOY is the fruit of appreciation for all the things that you have.”

Count your blessings….gratitude list. Woke up this morning (some people don’t wake up – they have died in their sleep). Got up (some people cannot get out of bed due to illness) took a shower (some people don’t have clean water to drink or clean water to bathe in) got dressed (some people don’t have nice clothing to wear) ate breakfast (some people don’t have food to eat). Read the paper (some people cannot read) etc. Be thankful for what we have. Count our blessings.

God calls us to prayer for us…not for HIM. HE is Happy and HE wants us to be happy and share in HIS happiness and He invites us to Prayer to experience joy, peace and happiness with Him.

2) HUMILITY
a. Without God we can do nothing….WITH God there is nothing we cannot do.
b. God calls us to Humility and Gratitude
c. Jesus was humble.

To help us on our Journey God has given us
Prayer - to find our peace and joy
Sacraments - to help us see who we really are and challenge us to be more Christ like
The Church - to give us guidance and discipline
Scriptures - Road map for the journey of success & failures
Family and Friends and People who irritate you! They each serve a purpose. They act as mirrors. They show us the defects we have in ourselves. Especially the people that irritate us…sometimes we learn the most about ourselves from those people who are put into our lives. We see in them, the reflections of ourselves and God is saying……’WHERE ARE YOU” ???

3) PERSERVENCE - persistence

Ever notice people who want material things? They go for it…they are persistent…they work hard to get what they want.
They set a goal…write down what they want. Every morning they think about what their goal is and what they want to obtain. Every night they think about their goal to be wealthy and what they have to obtain that goal. They use every means they can to get to where they want to be. They work hard and then they reach their goal. They persevere.

Babe Ruth. Babe was persistent. He struck out 1,324 times. He had 114 home runs. He never quit and he reached his goal.

Vincent Van Gogh He painted 1,700 paintings. He only sold one for $85 while he was living. After he died, just ONE of his paintings sold for 40 million dollars! He never quit, he never stopped painting. And we are blessed with his paintings to enjoy today. He persevered.

We Christians don’t have perserverence for our journey of the soul like the folks who want material things do.

Prayer, humility and perseverance are what it takes for us to become more Christ like. Jesus never had wealth, he was betrayed by a friend, crucified unjustly and buried in a borrowed grave. YET….Jesus made a difference in people’s lives. We are called to be holy like Jesus was holy.

Have you ever gotten an unexpected letter? Didn’t it just make your day! So why don’t you write one to someone? Send some flowers, bake some cookies for someone, make a phone call, and tell someone how much they mean to you. Make a difference in someone’s life. If you are not happy today and you do everything the same tomorrow as you did today, you won’t be happy tomorrow either. If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got!

Story: There was a little boy walking along the ocean one day and he noticed that many star fish had been washed up on the sand. As he walked, he started picking up the star fish and throwing them back in the ocean so they might live. As he walked along throwing the star fish back in the ocean an old man came upon him and asked him what he was doing. When the boy replied he was saving the star fish by throwing them back into the ocean, the old man said, “son, look down the shore line as far as you can see there are many many star fish that have washed up on the beach and you can’t make a difference to them, you are wasting your time trying to save them.” As the man was talking, the small boy picked up another star fish and threw it way out into the ocean and said, “ I made a difference to that one, didn’t I?”

Jesus made a difference. Salvation depends on us making a difference. Now you go make a difference.