They Do It Better Than We Do

Imagine with me a disciple-making culture that looked something like this.

Disciple-makers have decided to commit a minimum of 9-10 hours a week providing hands-on practical training. This commitment did not coming with compelling arguments. The disciple-makers love it. They want to invest their time in the work. There is a team of disciple-makers–seven in all–committed to making a total of 12 disciples together over the course of several months. The kind of teaching and training they provide is not a classroom lecture, though there certainly is an intellectual component to it. But it is more than that. It is hands-on with a high level of participation and practice where those being discipled have an immediate opportunity to work it out. Along with the practical instruction and increasing depth of knowledge, there is constant encouragement from the team of disciple-makers. Any opportunity to affirm change and progress is acknowledged, not only by the team of disciple-makers but also those being discipled. Corresponding to the high level of challenge is a high level of celebration as it becomes evident that there is a high level of change taking place in those being discipled. The heads (instruction), hearts (encouragement), and hands (practical application) of those being discipled are trained by those modeling the life and work before them in their own context.

Sounds like a pretty amazing disciple-making experience, right?

What I just shared with you is my 6-year-old’s city league baseball team.

One year ago, my son was playing tee ball with 4-year-olds, where toddlers would race to wherever the ball was hit (and then the gang pile). Now, he is learning game scenarios and fielding techniques from his coaches, and kids twice the age of those he played with last year modeling for him how to do everything from running bases to cheering on his fellow teammates. For the past 2-3 weeks, it has been an amazing sight to watch my son go from making “confetti” with grass in the outfield to learning how to react differently to fly balls and ground balls.

My son’s team practices three days a week, and each practice is approximately two hours long. Most of the seven coaches arrive 30 minutes early for kids who want to shag balls or get some extra one-on-one instruction. Each kid invests a minimum $200 for the season, which includes registration, batting helmet, glove, and bat. None of this is coerced or has to be explained. Both players and coaches just know these are the expectations, and the desire to play the game is greater than any of these expectations placed on them.

As I began to process what was taking place here, I could not help but notice the dynamic disciple-making culture of the team and wonder why the church does not take a similar approach to making disciples. If we took baseball out of the equation and placed it with gospel-centered living, would we find 7 disciple-makers committed to 12 disciples for 10 hours together each week over the course of 4 months? Would each disciple be willing to not only invest the time but hundreds of dollars to get the necessary resources and tools to be well-trained as a follower of Jesus Christ? Such a commitment seems ridiculous for Christians these days, but it is normative and expected for little league baseball run by the public recreation department! What gives?! And we wonder why disciples are not being made and lives are not seriously being impacted with the transforming power of the gospel?

The fact is: my son’s coaches make disciples better than us. They are more committed than we are. They are more excited and desirous to make disciples than we are. They don’t complain about it. They celebrate it. It’s a privilege and joy. They are not going through some pre-packaged “discipleship curriculum” for one hour a week with a few questions. They are on the field, not the classroom, and they are asking dozens and dozens of questions and helping kids answer them with application, not just information. They are doing it one-on-one, and they are doing it as a team of 7 dads serving as coaches to get the most out of these boys. And the boys are loving every minute of it because they are being challenged and changed in the process.

It’s a sad commentary and indictment when little league baseball coaches are more successful and committed to training and developing boys into baseball players than disciple-makers are to making and maturing disciples of Jesus. They have a sport; we have a Savior. They are given trophies; we are trophies of grace. They a game to win; we have a life to gain. At the very least, I have enjoyed going to school in learning how to make disciples of Jesus by being one of the seven coaches on the field training kids to play baseball. I’m going to be a better discple-maker for the sake of the gospel because of this. I just wish I had this kind of disciple-making training earlier.

Three Tips for Better Bible Reading

You probably don’t need to hear reasons that it’s important to read the Bible. You know it is.

But you might need some motivation. One way to get excited about reading the Bible is to rethink your Bible-reading strategy. Here are three tips for better Bible reading:

Tip #1. Listen to audio-Bibles.

When you listen to an audio-Bible, you’ll be surprised how quickly the time goes by and how much of the Bible you “read.”

Sometimes I listen while doing other tasks such as driving or cleaning or running, but I’ve found it to be incredibly profitable to listen while following along in a different English translation (or in the original languages). Listening to a different version than you are reading helps keep you engaged as you inquisitively consider various renderings. The pace is so fast that you miss all sorts of nuances, but you gain a valuable macro-perspective.

Audio-Bibles work well for the Bible’s many styles of literature, though they work best for stories as opposed to proverbs or letters. This is evident when listening to dramatized audio-Bibles (such as my family’s favorite: The Bible Experience). But it’s worth remembering that the congregations whom Paul addressed in his letters typically listened to Paul’s letters and did not own personal copies of them.

You might want to get started by downloading some free audio-Bibles from “Faith Comes by Hearing.”

Tip #2. Read books of the Bible in one sitting.

There is value in Bible-reading plans that divvy up the readings so that you read one chapter from four different books of the Bible. But if that’s the only way you read the Bible, it will be difficult to understand key literary features and the theological message of whole books of the Bible.

Have you ever read the Gospel according the Matthew straight through in one sitting? Or Romans? Or Job? Or Revelation? If not, you’re missing out. That’s the way they’re meant to be read. A book like Nehemiah would generally take about one hour. Ephesians would take 20 minutes. Here’s a full list of the approximate times it would take to read each book in our English Bible.

I understand the objection: “There’s no way I could possibly find time to do this.” But aren’t there other activities you do in life for prolonged periods of time? Do you read other books for a few hours at a time? Do you ever spend an hour watching a TV show or two hours watching a movie or three hours watching a football game? Why not prioritize lengthy, undistracted time in the life-giving word?

Tip #3. Read without any chapter or verse references.

I am not a fan of chapter and verse references in the Bible. Bible “verses” didn’t even exist until about 1550, and “chapters” go back only to the 1200s. They can obscure the text and create artificial and sometimes inaccurate divisions.

Yes, chapter and verse references help us locate specific sentences and phrases quickly. But sometimes they do more harm than good. They lead many people to think of the Bible as a reference book that collects bullet-pointed verse-nuggets — not as the literature that it really is.

So how do you read the Bible without any chapter or verse references? There are at least three options:

Get a Bible without them. For example, Biblica has one called The Books of the Bible, and Crossway is planning to release the ESV Reader’s Bible in May.Use a Bible software program like Logos to export a book or passage of Scripture to your favorite word processor without the chapter or verse numbers.Manually delete the chapter and verse references in a word document on your computer. This is time-consuming, but you could copy-and-paste text from a site like Bible Gateway and then delete all the numbering. That’s more feasible for shorter books. Even better, Bible Gateway has an option to hide verse numbers (click on “Page Options”).

Take up and read (and listen) a lot.

Shouldn’t They Know Better?

Shouldn’t They Know Better
One of the more successful tactics of our enemy is to turn our hearts against the ones under our care — to turn protectors into executioners.

For decades parents and doctors have legally killed unborn children in the name of “compassion” because the child would have lived with disabilities or would have died shortly after birth.

But killing unborn children apparently isn’t enough.
Child Euthanasia
Belgium’s Upper House approved a measure that would allow children to be legally murdered based on pain and suffering, as reported by AFP:

The bill allows minors to ask for euthanasia on the grounds that their illness is terminal, that they are in great pain and that there is no treatment to alleviate their distress.

The request has to be agreed by the patient’s medical team and approved by the child’s parents.

There are no age restrictions. Allegedly the child has to be considered competent to make a decision about killing himself or herself, in addition to the doctors and the child’s parents agreeing to it. Interestingly, they don’t allow children under the age of 18 to drive or vote regardless of how mature their parents or teachers think they are. Some decisions apparently are less important than others.
A Murderous System
And Belgium doesn’t exactly have a pure record in how its existing euthanasia laws are being implemented on adults. A ten-year study on the 2002 law covering adults outlined several serious concerns — concerns such as not defining what constitutes “constant and unbearable physical or psychological suffering,” as well as ineffective oversight by those who legally oversee the practice, including the inability of pharmacies to place controls on these death-inducing drugs.

In other words, they cannot assure the people of Belgium that the so-called protections for adults written into the law are actually being followed.

And now they want to include their children under this murderous system.
Destroying the Vulnerable, Again
You would think leaders in countries like Belgium would know better since they have experienced what it means to have life and death left in the hands of utilitarian power (i.e. the Holocaust). But of course that was the evil Nazi regime who killed people out of hatred. Today, in the name of compassion, they are preparing to kill children whose only crime is experiencing pain and suffering. It does not seem to dawn on the supporters of these measures that the outcome is exactly the same — the government is approving of the destruction of vulnerable people.

They are actually already doing it, so one of the arguments in support of the measure is that they might as well make it legal, as was reported in the New York Times
:

Mr. Mahoux (the sponsor of the legislation) said in an interview before the vote that euthanasia for terminally ill children was already practiced on occasion in some Belgian hospitals and that the law would not lead to a surge in medically accelerated death among sick children but would save doctors from potential criminal prosecution.

Normally we would seek out and prosecute those who break the law, and one would think especially so for those who kill children. But since it involves children who make us uncomfortable, Belgium is showing the way by just changing the law.

We must recognize that such actions show that the god of this world has blinded them (2 Corinthians 4:4). They can’t see the horrible reality of what they are actually advocating. They can’t see that they are destroying young ones made in the image of God. How else can they believe that those who argue against killing children lack compassion!
Value, Pray, Hope
As dark as this news is out of Belgium, we know that God can turn hearts. We do not need to live with a weary inevitability about how far society has fallen. We can cry out to God to do what only he can (Ezekiel 11:19), including change callous political leaders.

We should not be surprised that Satan would turn his cruelty on the weakest, the most vulnerable, the most dependent of this world. Satan knows he is a defeated foe, but he is not yet done killing as many as he can before his final judgment. He hates God and those valuable to him, especially the weak who bring him glory and are indispensable to his church (1 Corinthians 1:22;27–28).

May they be equally valuable to us! Let us pray for our leaders, asking God to move their hearts, as we know he can (Proverbs 21:1).

Because without the light of Christ penetrating into dark places, the decision of a small nation in Europe will creep into others, destroying even more young lives.

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A Better Country for Old Men

This is a plea from the younger generation to the older. We desperately need you.

Please don’t phone it in just when the King’s about to call. Don’t retire on the world’s terms and abandon your long-time local church.

As the tsunami of the Baby Boom begins to flood the shores of retirement, please don’t leave us Millennials to fend for ourselves and make the same mistakes all over again. Join John Piper in rethinking retirement, and complete the course, all the way to the finish line, proclaiming Jesus’s might to another generation (Psalm 71:18).

For your joy, and for our good, we need you in this family called “the church.” You are our fathers (1 Timothy 5:1). The apostle wrote not only to young men, but to you — not just to the younger generation, but to the “fathers” (1 John 2:12–14). Don’t leave us as orphans.

We need your wisdom. We need your experience. You have made the long journey, watched fads come and go, rejoiced with those who have rejoiced, wept with those who have wept, endured the dark night of the soul. As the young men see visions, we need you to dream dreams (Acts 2:17) and lean in, not out. Help us be courageous when we should be brave, and gently direct us to a different course when we should back off.

What will we hobbits do without our Gandalfs?

We need your example. The young bucks need your discipling and your encouragement to be self-controlled (Titus 2:6), to “flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace” (2 Timothy 2:22). We need you to model for us how “not to be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil” (2 Timothy 2:24).

We need you to be “sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness” (Titus 2:2), to temper the energy of our youth with your patience, to complement the young man’s ambition with the perspective of the happy, old man who’s already been around the block a few times.

We need your forgiveness. In our fervor to create the future, we often have seen things out of focus. At times, we have been so naïve as to think things would be better if your generation would get out of the way. It might be easier, but it emphatically would not be better. How deadly it is when spiritual ardor ferments into arrogance. We have been foolish. We have sinned against you. We need your mercy.

We need your patience. We need your grace. Young leaders are not always easy to deal with. We ask you to remember what it was like to be younger, even as we try to keep in mind that one day soon we will be older. We ask you to listen, truly listen, and give those of us who manifestly love Jesus the benefit of the doubt. We’re not trying to ruin your church, but prepare the way for greater things still yet to come. We’re not trying to kill your gospel legacy, but keep it alive.

And we need you to do all this, not in your own strength, but in the strength that God supplies, so that in everything he gets the glory through Jesus (1 Peter 4:11). He has promised explicitly not to forsake you (Psalm 71:18), but to carry you, even to old age and gray hairs (Isaiah 43:4). He will empower you, and preserve you to hear his voice, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21, 23).

For decades, you have walked as “strangers and exiles on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13). And now, as you slow down and grow weaker, and so acutely feel yourself closer than ever to heaven, more than ever “seeking a homeland” (Hebrews 11:14) — as you “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one,” a city prepared for you by God himself (Hebrews 11:15) — please don’t settle for a little Sabbath evening of rest on this side.

We need you — ordinary, average, imperfect you. Not only do we long for the likes of Raymond Lull (martyred among Muslims at age 80), and Polycarp (bishop of Smyrna, burned alive in 155 at age 86), and J. Oswald Sanders (who wrote a book a year beginning at age 70 and died a week after he turned 100). But we also earnestly need the unknown senior sages, laboring without renown in out-of-the-way local churches, participating without occupying the positions of privilege, engaged without making the final calls, on the bus without having to be in the driver’s seat.

“Most men don’t die of old age,” said Ralph Winter, “they die of retirement.”

Please don’t retire from the local church. We need you more than ever.

Recent posts from David Mathis:

View the original article here

Is Everything Bigger and Better in Texas?

What is so good about the gospel? Have you ever asked yourself that question? What’s the biggest and best thing God promises us? What is it exactly that makes it such good news?

In a sermon last week in Houston, Piper unwrapped “The Sweetest Good of the Good News.” And it’s something bigger and better than forgiveness, freedom, or an eternity of your favorite hobby — shopping, golfing, or watching movies. Yes, even bigger and better than Houston, San Antonio, and Big D. The greatest good of the gospel is God himself.

It was one of several new messages from Piper over the last week. Below is the buffet of conference talks and sermons from recent trips to Idaho and Texas. You will find something for the Northerner and Southerner alike, for the proud potato harvester, the rough longhorn wrangler, and everyone in between.

How can God truly love us when he demands that we worship him? Does his desire for his own glory deny his devotion to us? Pastor John shows us that our greatest satisfaction will only ever be found in his glory.

If the word “peoples” sounds odd to you, you really need to hear this missions message. Piper draws out the implications of this one little word and shows how the Bible shapes the Great Commission with its language. The task is clear and unfinished, and we need to engage the places — the peoples — yet unreached with the gospel.

Paul promises in Romans 8 that those who are God’s children are also his heirs — heirs of an eternal glory that will eventually be revealed to us. It is a promise so spectacular we can’t even imagine how good it is. But this promise comes to us through suffering — really, really scary pain, disease, conflict, failure, and more. Amazingly, when we finally receive our inheritance, all our suffering will look as nothing by comparison.

Leave This World a Better Place

I charge you never to neglect the duty of brotherly love, and practical, active, sympathetic kindness towards every one around you, whether high or low, or rich or poor. Try daily to do some good upon earth, and to leave the world a better world than it was when you were born. If you are really a child of God, strive to be like your Father and your great elder Brother in heaven. For Christ’s sake, do not be content to have religion for yourself alone. Love, charity, kindness, and sympathy are the truest proofs that we are real members of Christ, genuine children of God, and rightful heirs of the kingdom of heaven.

~ J.C. Ryle

Tract: One Blood

The Better Part: Fr. John Bartunek Shares Our Journey

“We’re all contradictory.  We all have the potential for great good and the potential for great sin — that’s the human condition.”

Gayle recently spoke with Father John Bartunek, a priest in the order of the Legion of Christ, a religious congregation.  Father Bartunek is the author of several books, including Inside the Passion: An Insider’s Look at the Passion of the Christ, and The Better Part: A Christ Centered Resource for Personal Prayer.  Fr. Bartunek received a Bachelor of Arts in History from Stanford University in 1990, graduating cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. After college, he worked as a high school history teacher, drama director, and baseball coach. He spent a year as a professional actor in Chicago before entering the Legionaries of Christ. Fr. Bartunek has since received degrees in philosophy and theology, worked in youth and college ministries, and was ordained a Catholic priest in 2003.  You can learn more about Father Bartunek here.

Click here to listen to our twenty-five minute discussion or read the transcript below.

Gayle Trotter: This is Gayle Trotter, today I’m speaking with Father John Bartunek, a priest in the Legionaries of Christ and the author of several books, including an insider’s view of Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ. Thank you so much for speaking with me today, Father Bartunek.

Fr. John Bartunek: It’s my pleasure. Great to be with you.

GT: Father, can you explain the contradiction of Mel Gibson and his film? How do we have such a spiritually deep and powerful movie as The Passion of Christ from someone whose personal story is so complicated and, many would say, less than exemplary.

JB: I think his own story, his own contradiction or challenges, his own journey, is really similar to all of our journeys because we’re all contradictory. We all have the potential for great good and the potential for great sin — that’s the human condition. I think in his case it’s been magnified for the public eye because he’s such a celebrity, such a public figure. And also sometimes I think that people who have been given great gifts in the area of creativity have a greater spiritual sensitivity, and they can even be more vulnerable when it comes to the spiritual warfare that every Christian is undergoing. So I think we all fight the spiritual battle, and unfortunately Mel has had to fight it in the public eye and that’s really exaggerated the bad parts but also maybe even the good parts. So I pray for him every day and I don’t think the good that his work has done should be ignored just because of the struggles he’s been having.

GT: Father, you did not come from a religious household. Would you agree that American culture is so infused with Christianity that you couldn’t resist becoming a Christian?

JB: [laughs] That’s an interesting question. No, I remember when I became a Christian, and it was a very intimate and personal encounter with Jesus Christ and the ambient of faith — him speaking to my heart. It was a very conscious decision to become his follower so I don’t think that it was just falling into where society was going or wherever a particular group was going. And, frankly, I know plenty of people who live in the same culture and are not following Christ, are not his disciples so I don’t think it’s an automatic thing. I think God always respects us. Obviously a culture can help or hinder our search for God, and I think we’re in a period now in American culture where the popular culture, anyway, is definitely hindering it, especially because it encourages so much immorality. It’s taken away respect for moral integrity and moral norms.

GT: I understand that your parents divorced when you were a child. Do you have any spiritual advice for kids who are currently experiencing the divorce of their parents?

JB: Absolutely. I think that children who are experiencing the divorce of their parents or whose parents are recently divorced really need to look to God as a father and to the blessed Virgin Mary as a mother if they are Catholic. God’s spiritual fatherhood — he is the source of every family. And his love doesn’t depend on circumstances and doesn’t get tired and doesn’t wear out and it’s real. And that can be an anchor and a foundation for a very fruitful life and a very meaningful life, even if your own family life isn’t ideal or has even completely fallen apart.

GT: That’s very encouraging. When you were in college, you spent some time in Italy soaking up the magnificent art and architecture. How did this affect you spiritually?

JB: My time in Europe and Italy and also in Poland and exposure to that magnificent, as you say, Catholic culture as expressed in the art and the architecture and even the liturgies had a profound effect on my spiritual life. It actually activated a whole sector of my own soul that I had never known existed. From the exposure to that kind of profound beauty that is explicitly linked to the Christian faith, I felt like I was waking up, spiritually. I felt like there was a whole new world to discover. A whole new path to go down to come closer to Jesus Christ that no one had ever even told me about and that God was leading me down. The art and the architecture — the elements of that profound Christian culture which had been developed through the centuries by men and women of faith — it spoke to me very deeply. It spoke to me very deeply and began to tell me that I was part of a bigger story. That the church — God’s family — wasn’t just my little church in my neighborhood. No, it was a much bigger story and there was more that God wanted to tell me and more that he wanted to show me and more than he wanted me to do. So it was a turning point in my life. It really was.

GT: Would you say that it was the time in your life when your faith really came alive for you?

JB: No, I would say my faith came alive when I was 13, and I started going to an evangelical Christian church. I went for about six months without really believing anything. And then there I first heard God speaking to my heart and I became a follower of Jesus. So that was the beginning — that’s where it started. What happened when I went to Italy was my particular vocation, my particular calling began to come over the horizon: my calling to the priesthood. To give my life, entirely, to serve God and his people in the church. That’s what came out of my year in Italy and in Poland and that immersion in that Catholic culture.

GT: How did you make that final decision to actually become a priest?

JB: The final moment of decision came after a long journey, as you can imagine, which began there in Italy. Then I finished college and I continued studying the Catholic faith because I had some doubts about the Catholic church. I had some misunderstandings, as well, about their teachings. So I worked through those. I didn’t want to pretend that I didn’t have those. So I met regularly with a priest for a couple years until I worked through those, and then I really became convinced that this is the church that Jesus had started and that he was calling me to attend to that church, and I wanted to become a priest right away. And it was funny, when I was confirmed in the Catholic church, the priest I had been meeting with told me, “Well, maybe you should wait. You don’t want to confuse your call to be Catholic with a call to be a priest. You know, one step at a time. Take it easy.” So at that point I left my teaching job. After college I had started a job teaching. And I went to Chicago and started a career in the entertainment industry, which is where I always thought I would go. That was kind of my long-term career goal. I’d always dreamed about making movies about historical subjects — writing and maybe directing. So I moved to Chicago and began doing that, and then the idea of the priesthood just wouldn’t go away. It was like a sunrise: It just kept getting brighter and brighter and brighter. And it’s funny, when that priest advised me to wait before joining the seminary, I decided, “Maybe that’s a sign from God that I’m not supposed to be a priest,” so I started to date again and actually met a wonderful woman and we had a very beautiful dating relationship. It was kind of like the perfect match. It was that relationship that was the final indicator to me that I at least had to try the seminary — that I really felt God was calling me. Because I actually loved that woman truly and sincerely; it was a more mature love than I’d ever had with anyone I’d dated before. And I knew that, because I loved her, she deserved a husband who could give himself entirely to her, be a true husband, die for her, live for her. And in my heart, when I looked into my heart, there was part of my heart — the deepest part — that I couldn’t give to her because I felt like God was asking me to give it to him. And so that to me was a profound insight into my own vocation to the priesthood.

GT: Do you think the priest who advised you was right in giving that original advice so that you could come to the place where you understood that?

JB: Oh, I don’t know. I think it worked out okay, but I don’t know if I would give the same advice to a young man in my position at that time. As we mentioned at the beginning, I really believe that in society, in the culture, there’s always a kind of spiritual battle going on and we can’t be naïve. When God comes and asks us something, when we delay, we give more room for the enemy of our soul to stir things up and confuse things.

GT: If someone is interested in being a priest, how would he learn more about it?

JB: The first step, an easy step, is a great website called vocation.com which a few of us put together a few years ago, and it continues to reach out to thousands of young people who are thinking about the priesthood and also religious life. So there are a lot of testimonies there and there are some things, like a guideline. If you feel that God is calling you, you need to respond. And that doesn’t mean that you need to join the seminary today, but you need to put yourself in a position where you can hear and heed God as he guides you along. That means daily prayer. That means finding someone who can give you some good advice, a spiritual mentor. It means beginning to take the steps to visit young men who are in the seminary. To talk with priests who you trust about their experiences in the priesthood. Instead of just sitting in your bedroom and going over it in your own mind, taking concrete steps is the best way to give the Holy Spirit room to really guide you.

GT: You mentioned that you started out as a professional actor before you became a priest. Did your training and experiences as an actor help you at all in your priestly duties?

JB: I think so. It’s hard to measure exactly. I’d been acting since I was five years old in the theater so it had always been part of my life — drama and theater. I think that it helped developed two things that have been helpful in the priesthood. One is a sensitivity or a capacity to listen, a sensitivity to the needs of others. In theater acting, you really form a bond with the other actors. To bring something alive, you have to form an emotional sensitivity and a capacity to really listen to what others are saying so you can make real on stage the exchanges that people are making. So that’s one thing and as a priest you really have to know how to listen. To know how to listen and to know how to determine what’s behind what’s being said, especially when you’re giving spiritual guidance, when you’re hearing confessions. And then the second thing is, obviously being on stage for many years made me comfortable in front of an audience. And in a sense, when you have to preach a homily or a retreat or when you’re giving a conference as a priest, there are similarities. You are in front of a congregation, which is like an audience, so I think it’s helped me to be able to do that more effectively.

GT: You shared that with Pope John Paul II, too, right?

JB: That’s right, although his theater was a little bit different.

GT: What inspired you to write The Better Part?

JB: The Better Part is a book designed to help people of today pray better and get to know Christ in a personal way. It’s so funny; the two books that I’ve written and that have done pretty well, neither one was my idea. The Better Part was an assignment I received. I’m a member of a religious order which has priests working throughout the world, giving retreats and giving a lot of one-on-one spiritual guidance to lay men and women. That’s the core of what we do in our order. A couple years ago there was a general sentiment among a lot of members of my order throughout the world that there was a need for some new resources that could help lay people today grow in their prayer life. They all saw that the Holy Spirit was leading these lay men and women to a deeper life of prayer, but the resources available to help them were older resources and didn’t really connect with the needs that they have in today’s world which is so digitalized and media-saturated and has so many challenges. So I got an email from my superior asking me to come up with something that could help people do that. So my vow of obedience was enacted, it triggered in there, and I started working on The Better Part.

GT: And what is the source of the title, The Better Part?

JB: The Better Part is a line from Luke chapter 10, when Martha and Mary are having Jesus and his apostles over for dinner and Mary, the younger sister, is sitting in the living room where Jesus is talking with his apostles and she’s just at his feet, drinking up every word he says. And Martha is in the kitchen and the dining room setting the table and getting everything ready and she’s doing all the work. And she gets fed up with her sister Mary so she comes up to Jesus and says, “Lord, can’t you tell Mary to help me out a little bit? I’m doing all this by myself.” And our Lord looks at Martha and says, “Martha, Martha, you’re worried and are fretting over many things but only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the better part, and it will not be taken from her.” So the better part is always to give first place to God and his activity, so that our activity flows from God’s love working in our hearts and from our knowledge of God’s will and that’s really what prayer is all about. Prayer is all about anchoring our lives in God, giving him the first place, and allowing our lives to be a response to discovering God’s love. So we thought it would be a great title to a book that helps people in their personal prayer.

GT: You write about many types of prayer. What type of prayer do you prefer?

JB: That’s an interesting question. I see the three main types of prayer going together. Vocal prayer, which is where you use someone else’s words, like when you pray the Our Father. Liturgical prayer, which is when you pray together as the family of God, when we go to mass, for instance. And then personal prayer, when you’re just one-on-one with God. I think they all go together. They’re all necessary, they’re all a part and they all have their individual purpose and benefits. But I think the keystone or the real piece that makes all three of those work well is your personal prayer, your personal God time every day, where you’re talking to God in the quiet of your own heart, about what’s important to him and what’s important to you. I try never to miss that. And when I do that then my ability to pray during mass is better. Then my ability to pray the vocal prayers — that for instance in my order when we pray together as a community — is better, because the Catechism teaches us that fundamentally prayer is a relationship, not an item on a to-do list. And so you need to have alone time with God where you reflect on his word and you allow his word to seep into your heart and to enlighten your mind and that is where you tune in to God’s mission for your life and the adventure he wants to lead you on. So that would be my preferred type, I think.

GT: All Christians at some point in their lives deal with doubt. Have you experienced doubt and how did you overcome it?

JB: Doubt is an interesting term. There’s actually a theological weight to that term. I would say I’ve experienced difficulties. A lot of difficulties. Challenges, moments of confusion, moments of weakness, moments of frustration, or even sometimes seasons of frustration. But I can’t say that I’ve ever doubted — since I became a believer — I can’t say that I’ve doubted that God exists. I can’t say that. But there have definitely been difficulties, times when it’s been hard to accept God’s love for me, for instance, or hard to do what he’s asking me. And how did I respond to that? I got on my knees and I prayed for strength. And you just pray for strength and you renew your commitment to Jesus. He’s trustworthy, and we learn that he’s trustworthy the more that we pray, the more that we do that personal prayer, that meditative prayer, that’s how we truly learn that he’s trustworthy. So then when the difficulties come, when darkness comes, as Psalm 23 says, “Even though I shall walk through a valley as dark as death, I shall not fear,” because he is by my side. And “As long as he is with us, who can be against us?” as Saint Paul says. So that’s how I deal with it — I just get on my knees and pray and then focus very much on what I know God wants me to do right now. And sometimes it’s so simple as, “Well, now it’s my turn to do the dishes.” So that’s what God wants me to do now. I can do that. And then the next thing, and then the next thing. I love Matthew chapter six, verse 34, where our Lord says, “Do not fret about tomorrow, let tomorrow fret over its own cares, for today, today’s troubles are enough.” And in times of difficulty I go back to that verse over and over again. I’m just going to focus on what you want me to do today, Lord, and leave the rest in your hands.

GT: So would you say that that’s your favorite Bible verse that gives you strength during hard times?

JB: That’s one of them. It depends on my mood.

GT: Do you have another one that you’d like to share with our listeners?

JB: I love that one and I love the one that comes right before it as well which is, “Set your hearts on his kingdom first and his righteousness and all these other things will be given to you as well.” It’s just putting God first, putting Jesus first, and surrendering that need that we all have because of original sin to kind of build a personal kingdom where we think we can control everything and create heaven on earth. And surrendering that need and shutting out and following wherever God leads every day. And that verse — both those verses — really help remind me. Although that verse from Jeremiah where our Lord says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you and before you were born I consecrated you.” That’s a powerful verse as well and I think I go back to that almost every year during my yearly retreat just because it shows that in the end, everything goes down to the fact that God loves each one of us personally and that is the bottom line. So I really do love that verse as well.

GT: Thank you so much, Father, for sharing your life with us so that we can be encouraged by what you have shared with us.

JB: You’re very welcome.