Normandt' meditations

[Normandt]

195. Being simple

We are invited to let go of pride. The release that this will accomplish will allow us to use the gifts and charisms we receive from God for others.

God comforts us:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and God of all encouragement, who encourages us in our every affliction, so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God.” 2 Corinthians, chapter 1, verses 3 to 4

When there’s an opportunity to let Jesus take care of our distress, our fears, our sorrows, pride, God comforts us. Or rather, we discover that God comforts us, since we’ve surround ourselves again with his Heart.

Book : Here, where we are
Normand Thomas

 

[Normandt]

196. Comforting

When we are comforted, we can think of comforting others. It’s a beautiful exchange that begins with God. He transforms us to be open to others and allows them to live the comfort of his Presence, thanks to the encounter we have with them.
Paul pushes even further:
“If we are afflicted, it is for your encouragement and salvation.” 2 Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 6

So even in distress, if we are in the Lord, we can be people inviting our contemporaries to salvation, supported by the comfort of God.
We can say:
“I will bless the Lord at all times; praise shall be always in my mouth. My soul will glory in the Lord that the poor may hear and be glad.” Psalm 34, verses 2 to 3

Blessing the Lord at all times and even misery will be transformed for the glory of God and the salvation of the world.

Book : Here, where we are
Normand Thomas

 

[Normandt]

197. Who are our friends?

“If you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that?” Matthew, chapter 5, verse 47

It’s not uncommon to regularly sit in a group and share continuously with the same people. Although it’s less pleasant and without putting them aside, it’s recommended, on occasion, not to sit with the same people all the time. This will create new relationships.

Let’s try to eat with different people and by telling our friends that we are not leaving them, that we’ll be back. We’ll discover new interesting exchanges and we’ll learn to know new people.

This allows discovering the wonders that Jesus realizes in their heart. Even if they are not naturally talking about their faith or the presence of Jesus in them, let’s listen to them all the same. Let’s listen to their silence. They have something to tell us. They allow us to pray for them.

Not only the priest, but everyone, we are invited to visit the people of our parish. The light of Jesus is there in their hearts. We discover charity, peace, joy? We can reveal to them how Jesus is present in their lives.

That said, it’s also important to have sincere friends that we sometimes eat and share with. But, above all, we raise the danger of always going to the same homes. We risk leaving other people behind. This is of great importance for the sowing mission to continue.

Let’s share the little we earned from Jesus and our faith will grow with others. Let’s share our welcome with others and the sense of welcome will develop, listening and it will increase, patience and we will become wise.

Let’s share with others what God puts in us and we’ll discover that God is also in others. Sometimes, it may take a while, but let’s not be afraid to sow what God offers us. Much delicately, because the place in which we sow is the heart.

Book : Here, where we are
Normand Thomas

 

[Normandt]

198. Paul challenges us

Paul took Timothy under his wing and he wants to increase his knowledge. He wants his spiritual son to have a good background for living and transmitting faith. Paul, although held captive, finds in this situation a motive for improving the faith of others. Paul says to him:
“Proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient; convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching.” 2 Timothy, chapter 4, verse 2

Let’s not stop proclaiming the Word, it’s the basis of the salvation for all. Let’s intervene with good words and with justice while respecting the people around us. This will require patience that will allow us to develop a greater and more accurate concern, to nurture and educate by relying on common sense and wisdom of Scripture.

Paul adds:
“Be self-possessed in all circumstances; put up with hardship; perform the work of an evangelist; fulfill your ministry.” 2 Timothy, chapter 4, verse 5

It’s grace for Paul to have a spiritual son to whom he can pass on his experience. Paul’s recommendations are accurate and timely. The ministry is also very joyful when faith is realized and developed in people’s hearts.

Too want to do too much, faith loses its meaning, it loses its lustre. It’s important to be ourselves, live the present and let the Lord act in and through our lives.

Even if we have received a lot, let’s remain simple, let’s be people with heart, soul, people with a clear mind, less about appearance and engaged in the good, plunged in Jesus Christ’s Good News for the world. All we are is to be faithful witnesses and serve God’s cause.

Let’s refocus our heart on God’s. May our life become filled with Trinitarian Love, to reach all the children of God. May there be so much love around us that even the most rebellious be touched and freely transformed.

Book : Here, where we are
Normand Thomas

 

[Normandt]

199. Let’s unite

The Lord our God is rallying. During the Old Testament period, God never stopped wanting to bring the people back into his covenant. He still has the same desire.

Even when we suffer and we live difficult passages of life, God is present with us and he supports us with Love. When we receive it daily in our lives, the much needed faith increases and helps us in the midst of the trials we experience.

Then there’s the community. God keeps inviting the living communities of faith to enter into his Intelligence and Wisdom, so that we may also feed people outside the Church. The common good is that all people have the chance to walk toward their salvation in God. All people, without exception, must know that God Loves them.

Jesus needed to surround himself with people like the Apostles. It’s necessary to surround ourselves with people who have faith. We read that crowds follow Jesus, want to hear him and receive his teaching. Jesus also taught Joseph and Mary how to become a holy family. The family is the basic cell for the community.

Let’s meditate in our hearts on the delicacy and wisdom of God to each person.

Book : Here, where we are
Normand Thomas

 

[Normandt]

200. God needs evangelizers

Jesus is the Good Shepherd who gathers the sheep of Israel and the whole world. Every lost sheep, he wants to bring back to the Father. He doesn’t want any of them to be lost. He continues to send prophets today. He wants to get his message of freedom and salvation to us.

Today, where we are, we’re called to share the Good News of our salvation in Jesus Christ. We are the people Jesus needs for our time. His Spirit will guide us to share his message so that the world hears it.

Jesus is there for everyone, but not everyone gives himself the means to meet with Jesus. When we cannot evangelize people near us, let’s look elsewhere for other sheep. May we work full time, continuously.

We often hear that in families and with their own children that it’s not always easy to keep up with faith. This isn’t the time to become stationary and discouraged. It opens the door for other people. If we join other people, they may join the children of the families someday. Meanwhile, our faith supports our children. Let’s keep going. In any case, we know that Jesus is in their heart.

Let’s not lose hope. Let’s place our trust in Jesus. In this way we will have vocations everywhere, committed people who will announce the good news. Paul does not force anyone, he leaves elsewhere:

‘From now on I will go to the Gentiles.’ So he left there and went to a house belonging to a man named Titus Justus, a worshiper of God; his house was next to a synagogue. Crispus, the synagogue official, came to believe in the Lord along with his entire household, and many of the Corinthians who heard believed and were baptized. Acts, chapter 18, verses 6 to 8

Jesus is with us. We want to keep his Love with us forever. May our sorrow of seeing a world seek and not find a shepherd turn into joy of being able to join them, personally, and to evangelize them.

May the world know that God is alive and that salvation has passed for every person of every generation. It’s this joy that we are called to transmit to others.


Book : Here, where we are

Normand Thomas

 

[Normandt]

201. Help humanity

Since the beginning of humanity, the rich want not to be poor and the poor would like to be rich or at least have what’s necessary to survive. Still, investing a little in the poorest and they would be active in society.

How many poor neighborhoods around big cities, with few resources and efforts, could be helped and recover? It’s a strange mystery that of the human being in front of poverty.

We still notice them today. They are begging on the street. Their budget is tight. They are easy to recognize and yet how many people are passing by them. The rulers don’t seem to be able to find answers to help out. Television shows are devoted to people from the most disadvantaged countries.

But it doesn’t stop there. Although it’s important and disappointing, there are other kinds of poverty. There are people who cannot go into a group or in a small place. There are those who cannot write, those who are intimidated, those who are marginalized, those who don’t eat (anorexic), those who cannot stop eating, sickness, sadness.

There are the disappointments of life, the bad weather, the horrors of war, and so on. Poverty then follows several slippery and often steep slopes.

There’s a multitude of people who help in all dimensions of poverty. Let’s encourage these people and help them to continue to invest time and resources in this mission of humanity.

Brother Andre of Mont-Royal knew how to find, by God’s grace, the wound of a person and ask Saint Joseph to intercede to Jesus for healing. Saint Bernadette Soubirous, by the faith of God in her, has made Lourdes a stronghold to many cures from which bodies and hearts can be healed. And in Medjugorje, people can find peace through Mary’s intercession.

Let’s observe and seek in our heart the precise point that is wrong with a person and offer it to Jesus. Sometimes that’s what bothers us most about this person. We may have similar poverties.

Book: Caring for our poverties
Normand Thomas

 

[Normandt]

202. Without hurting

As soon as we feel angry with a person’s gesture or word, it’s the signal that informs us to offer it and him to Jesus. Something hurts us in what he says or does? it’s also a signal to pray for him and to put his difficulty back to Jesus. It’s a mission to simply find faults and sins in others, without becoming instigators and without hurting them further.

It’s a mission to detect what is wrong with others and it is evangelization to hand it over to Jesus, so that he cleanses the wound and transforms their lives.

We are invited to observe what the poverty of the person is. What’s stopping him from moving forward? What prevents him from being free and confident? Where is his difficulty?

How many people close to us could we help? We are on a mission where we are, with Jesus and above all with his Spirit. Let’s also offer what is wrong with us to Jesus.

Caring for our poverty takes on a double meaning.

The first sense is that there is poverty among people who need help. We must help the poor recover from everything they lack of, mostly from a relationship with Jesus and be aware of what’s essential to their survival.

The second meaning to give to poverty is that it’s practical and necessary if it leads us to be free from the bonds of this world and leads us to Jesus. Being poor, for example, or free of drugs, is poverty that leads us to freedom. Fasting teaches us to become poor of superfluous or bad habits.

Book: Caring for our poverties
Normand Thomas

 

[Normandt]

203. Our weaknesses in God

Let’s meditate Paul’s reflection:
“Consider your own calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God. It is due to him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, as well as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Whoever boasts, should boast in the Lord.’” 1 Corinthians, Chapter 1, verses 26 to 31

Paul seems to have understood how a person on a mission is. He doesn’t elaborate much and defines it in a few words: “foolish, weak, lowly, despised”. That’s what Paul thinks of us. It’s not very flattering. But it depends on the point of view of the person who receives it.

For the world, being foolish, weak, despised, it’s the equivalent of nailing us onto a cross. In their eyes, we’re poor.
But when we place our weaknesses in God, in what Paul says about us, becomes strength. For the strength doesn’t come from our pride, our know-how, our wisdom, but from God. We place our pride in God.

We are foolish to believe in a Crucified Messiah. We are despised to follow Jesus, we are weak to trust only in Jesus. We mention this from the beginning to give us an idea of the different types of poverty. For some people, poverty is wealth, for others wealth is poverty. But, in reality, there is real wealth and real poverty, and all humans stand between these two realities.

As we read this book, we’re invited to reflect on our different personal experiences of poverty and the different kinds of poverty we see around us. These discovered poverties we can give them to Jesus. We will be on a mission to help improve the quality of people’s lives.

Book: Caring for our poverties
Nomand Thomas

 

[Normandt]

204. Life and happiness

We could still hear today the message Moses receives from the Lord:

“I have today set before you life and prosperity, death and doom.” Deuteronomy, chapter 30, verse 15

God proposes to all: “life and prosperity”. What comes at the beginning is life. Life is a gift of God’s Love and what’s complementary is happiness. Happiness is lived in the present. Happiness is to know we’re Loved. But above all, happiness comes from its source, which is God.

Happiness comes from the Lord. Nobody else has given it. Happiness is the fruit of God’s Love. It is to be shared and received between people.

It’s the ultimate choice of our faith. We have the choice between “life and prosperity, or death and doom”. Happiness is in God. God has nothing to do with evil, death and doom. He offers us Love. It is we who can either follow the road to happiness or descend the slope into evil.

Unlike welcoming God’s Love, the result is the misfortune that leads to death. Death is the gradual response that leads to refusing God. It’s our responsibility to choose one or the other, life or death, good or evil, truth or lies, forgiveness or hatred, joy or despair, etc.

The choice seems easy, but according to our experience, we know that sometimes we have wandered in the wrong at the expense of good.

Under the ashes of misery we see, there is often the embers of Love that we no longer see. In this world that too often proposes a culture of death in all its forms, we struggle to find embers under the ashes.

We are created to be the bearers of embers, to ignite the world of God’s Love. This ember, we carry in our heart, so that others discover “life and prosperity” which is suggested to us.

Jesus also speaks in the same sense:

“If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Luke, chapter 9, verse 23

This cross is very light when we know about the Love we bring to humanity. For people who do not know that the cross is Love, it can seem heavy. Heaviness comes with lack of love, either from others or from us.

The cross of Love that Jesus offers us is much easier to bear than misfortune. And the more we share God’s Love, the more our existence becomes meaningful. Let’s give misfortune, evil, poverty to Jesus and live fully with the embers of the Love of God.


Book: Caring for our poverties

Normand Thomas

 

[Normandt]

206. Let’s be vigilant

Paul gives this recommendation:

“See to it that no one be deprived of the grace of God.” Hebrews, chapter 12, verse 15

Of all the insurances that we can buy to give us a sense of security, the assurance of God’s grace is the one that exceeds all others. Let’s ask God for our assurance to stay with Jesus.

The assurance of God’s grace costs nothing. It’s true that today, we often think that what costs more is better, but it’s almost never true. With God, what’s necessary for life and for the road is free.

God offers his endless grace, but we can neglect it. How easy it is to get away from the exercise regime that we gave ourselves at the beginning of the year. It’s even easier to get away from the grace of God and lose sense of reality. Let’s be sure to be constantly under the coverage of God’s grace.

Let’s check if our “coverage” of the “grace of God” is still valid. God’s service is always open, but are we updating it in our lives? Otherwise, let’s regain confidence. Let’s take time for an appointment with Jesus and take up the coverage of the Holy Spirit on us. May his assurance be renewed every day. Let’s walk in faith with the complete and free coverage of God.


Book: Caring for our poverties

Normand Thomas

 

[Normandt]

207. Follow the call

Paul, from his prison cell, evangelizes his friends:
“I 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, chapter 4, verses 1 to 3

The call we’ve received from the Lord is to love him and to love one another. Paul invites us to be humble because we have received a lot, we have received everything from God and we could believe that what we have, especially when the habit settles in, is our possession.

Stopping to walk is like stopping eating and drinking. It’s even worse. It is necessary to renew the water and food in our body to continue living. We receive them from nature. We especially have to renew the Love we receive from God by standing near him.

Sometimes we lose a lot of spiritual vitality when we move away from the Love of God and we can’t find a way to replace ourselves in the right way. So, to help others, it is necessary to find ways to keep ourselves in the path of joy, serenity and holiness, on the road with Jesus.

Book: Caring for our poverties
Normand Thomas

 

[Normandt]

208. He moved away
“Quiet! Be still!” Mark, chapter 4, verse 39

We wouldn’t like it that much if someone said, “Quiet! Be still!” But this person would possibly serve us well. This is what we need to recognize the presence of the Trinity in our heart.

Only silence can help us hear what Jesus tells us. Only silence allows us to return to Jesus and be free. Silence also allows us to find ourselves and clean out our lives.

Let’s welcome silence as a gift of the Holy Spirit. Some people have the gift of talking, why not ask for the gift of being silent? We may be experiencing the poverty of lack of silence and to speak at the right time.

Silence is not necessarily lack of noise. Silence is a state where we are well, where we develop a sense of serenity and listen to the Lord, to ourselves and others.

We can write, sitting in a restaurant, with some pretty loud music and still be in silence, internally. We can write in a library and silence could bother us. The external noise isn’t the first cause of the lack of silence, but the inner noise, the noise in us. Let’s give the many sounds in us to Jesus.

We would be surprised at the number of people working in the noise, and yet this doesn’t stop them from praying while going along. We can be in silence and be with Jesus, even if our work is noisy.

As soon as we approach Jesus in silence, even if it’s a timid approach, immediately Jesus will be able to obtain us peace. The more we are silent, the more Jesus will touch us subtly and the more we’ll feel his presence.

Is Jesus really present? The question gives out the answer. Yes, he is present. When we say Jesus’s name he is immediately present. We cannot live, love, breathe, sleep, hope, laugh, and so on, without Jesus in us. May we welcome him.

The Holy Spirit is the very sweetness and he displays his strength in the silence of the soul. Now, the Spirit of Jesus will fill us as a breeze in our soul.

Book: Caring for our poverties
Normand Thomas

 

[Normandt]

209. Jesus keeps evil away

Jesus sees a man come out of the tombs. It is someone who consciously or unconsciously allowed himself to be influenced and trapped in evil:

“Catching sight of Jesus from a distance, he ran up and prostrated himself before him, crying out in a loud voice, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me!’ (He had been saying to him, ‘Unclean spirit, come out of the man!’)” Mark, chapter 5, verses 6 to 8

With Jesus, the evil in this man doesn’t resist, doesn’t hide. Jesus recognizes that there’s an evil spirit in this man. Even the evil spirit obeys him, it leaves and abandons the man who is now set free. We could also say that humanity is free, like this man, if we decide to let Jesus free us.

Notice when the conversion begins for this man. In spite of the evil that annihilates him, it’s when he advances to join Jesus, that he’s being released. Jesus is the key, the answer. Always moving forward to reach Jesus, always adjusting our lives to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, always placing ourselves under the Light of God and letting him act in our existence, saves us.

Jesus wants us to tell him now that we want to follow him and be transformed by his graces. Ready? Let’s run to him!

Book: Caring for our poverties
Normand Thomas

 

[Normandt]

210. Outing evil must hurt

Often, we encounter situations, more or less painful, that we live or that people live. And sometimes, when a person gives us an easy way out, we don’t think it will work or fear makes us think that we’ll have more pain.

We think that to solve a problem, there must be pain. And very often, actually, it will hurt. But, getting out of harm’s way is more of a healing. And it doesn’t hurt in the same way.

How often, when we discover the truth of a painful situation, we say that it hurts: “You cannot imagine how it hurt when I knew the truth!” What a falser expression than this one! The truth has never hurt anyone. It’s not the truth that hurts, but the discovery of the lie, of a painful situation. It’s the lie that contains evil. The discovery of truth leads to freedom.

One of our greatest poverties is not knowing how to differentiate between good and bad. The line is thin when we don’t understand, at the time of discovery, whether it’s good or bad that hurts. Let’s be certain, it’s always evil that causes evil, hurt, sorrow.

Let’s take the example of a person who is bitten in the leg by a venomous snake. The bite and the venom are the cause of evil. And to pluck the venom in the leg hurts even more. If the doctor has to cut the flesh around the bite of the snake, the person will certainly cringe. Ouch!

What’s good? It’s the person who helps extract the venom. The hurt wasn’t caused by the person helping, but by the bite and the venom. Once the venom is gone, the life of the person is saved. He will have avoided death and he will continue to live.

The “evil hurt” he felt by curing from the venom is related to the bite and venom. The good that spared him from death, even though he felt the pain, is the good intention of the person who has helped heal the dying man. Let’s be sure to distinguish between what’s really good or bad.

Book: Caring for our poverties
Normand Thomas

 

[Normandt]

211. Returning

Let’s return to Love, let’s get away from what isn’t good:
“You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” Matthew, chapter 22, verse 39

To love oneself with the Love of God is to avoid violence and evil to stick to our life. When we listen to people talking to us, we don’t accept that they yell at us. Why do we accept it in certain programs and music, for example?

Suffering is already in the world because of evil. But we are invited to become saints by being ourselves and spread peace, joy and hope of life in Jesus Christ for the glory of God and the salvation of the world.

We are continually doing our best not to enter into a plan of misfortune. We must also help the world around us not to embark on ideas that will cause misfortune.

Quite simply, we are responsible for bringing the good news that Jesus is to the world and for keeping us, as we can, away from evil. It’s a decision: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”

Book: Caring for our poverties
Normand Thomas

 

[Normandt]

212. God is patient

God has all eternity. We only have a few years. He’s totally patient with us. He is mercy. He continues to want the fig tree to produce fruit and is ready to weed it and put new soil around it. God takes care of it.

Let’s imagine that this next story is forever repeated. We understand that God constantly wants to give us opportunities to come back to him. Jesus tells this parable:

“There once was a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard, and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none, he said to the gardener, ‘For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree but have found none. (So) cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?’ He said to him in reply, ‘Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future. If not you can cut it down.’” Luke, chapter 13, verses 6 to 9

God, the gardener, by his great mercy, doesn’t stop wanting to help us to develop roots into his Love. The tree of our existence cannot flourish and bear fruit unless it is rooted in God. He wants the tree to take root in him. It would be easy to tell ourselves that this is false, since we seem to have everything to stay alive.

We live? Indeed, we live. But we can close our lives in a well-insulated cave without the constant and beneficent source of God. The cave is all that attracts us and keeps us in front of a treasure that sparkles, unattainable, illusory, instead of rooting us in the ground that is ours, in our own heart in the centre of God’s garden.

We are invited to convert every day. Every moment when we take the advantage to place ourselves in the Heart of Jesus it’s always a precious moment. This moment is worth an infinite quantity of treasures.

The Trinity is always there for us, but from time to time we are in our shelter, focused on something else and not watchful to receive God in our life.


Book: Caring for our poverties

Normand Thomas

 

[Normandt]

213. The thorn

There may be something left in us that still need transformation. We’ll always be able to move forward, even if sometimes we feel tried or we seem stationary.

In spite of the journey that Paul has gone through, remains the test that will increase his faith and lead him to the best of himself. Since he has not finished living the purification of his being to lead him in the Love of God, Paul describes to us the ordeal he bears:
A thorn in the flesh (…) Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me. 2 Corinthians, chapter 12, verses 7 to 9

To put one’s pride in one’s weaknesses is not so pleasing, to let ourselves be drawn into our weaknesses, but to remind us that God Loves us no matter what our difficulties are is a blessing.

To acknowledge that we have weaknesses allows us not to pride ourselves on the strengths, qualities that God offers us, and to create false ideas about ourselves. We have received everything from the Trinity, so we must place our pride in God.

The closer we come and discover God, the more our being leaves what makes it proud, and the more we become like God by recognizing him as the “everything” of our life. Let’s seek the Love of the Trinity in everything we have.

Book: Caring for our poverties
Normand Thomas

 

[Normandt]

214. Evangelize the Apostles

Jesus chose people of his time to send on a mission, such as Peter, John, and the other Apostles. The first to be evangelized are the Apostles. After Jesus’s resurrection, they are left to themselves, but they are not alone. Jesus has already breathed his Spirit upon them and they are sent into the world to join all nations, languages and peoples:

“Receive the Holy Spirit.” John, chapter 20, verse 22

Today, where we are, every person is called to share the Good News of our salvation in Jesus Christ. Jesus sends us as we are. We’re the people Jesus needs for our time and his Spirit will guide us to share what he wants the world to receive and hear. We are not alone. We: “receive the Holy Spirit,” says Jesus.

The only effort is to be sure we’re really listening to Jesus and his Spirit. For this we must become his disciples. We think we cannot be true disciples? We’re not perfect? The important thing is to stay close to Jesus. And he will guide us. Let’s accept to not be perfect. From our imperfections, the Lord will surprise us.

Jesus is there for the world, but not all people give themselves the means to meet Jesus. When we cannot evangelize people near us, let’s look elsewhere for other people.

Let’s not lose hope and place our trust in Jesus. In this way there will be everywhere people who have the vocation to announce the good news. A huge crowd; postmen, engineers, doctors, schoolchildren, carpenters, every person can transform the world, thanks to Jesus.


Book: Let’s evangelize

Normand Thomas

 

[Normandt]

215. The mission that saves

“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.

For the scripture says, ‘No one who believes in him will be put to shame.’ For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all, enriching all who call upon him. For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’

But how can they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach?

And how can people preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring (the) good news!’

But not everyone has heeded the good news; for Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed what was heard from us?’

Thus faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.

But I ask, did they not hear? Certainly they did; for ‘Their voice has gone forth to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.’” Romans, chapter 10, verses 9 to 18

Let’s stop and meditate these questions: “How can they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach?”

Christ invites us to the mission that saves.


Book: Let’s evangelize

Normand Thomas