Bob Rice

This Is Where I Am

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:35:05 -0400

After strumming the last chord of the final Mass of the St. John Bosco Conference, I hurried home, packed the car, and drove my family through the night to end up in beautiful New Hampshire where my parents have a place. I’m looking forward to a restful few weeks. I’m sure I’ll soon post something about how amazing the conferences were, but for now I’m taking a nap :)

Growing Strong through Fasting

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:16:42 -0400

An ongoing blog about “Six Tips for Sexual Purity”:
1) Whatever
2) Flee
3) Avoid
4) Trust
5) Mercy
1) Fasting
This final tip is the most challenging, but the one of most effective ways to stay sexually pure:
Fast.
Yes, I’m talking about giving something up. Fasting isn’t just for Lent. In the sermon of the mount, Jesus said, “When you fast,” not “if you fast.” (Matthew 6:16) Jesus spent lots of time fasting. Don’t we want to be like Him? Fasting should be a regular part of our spiritual lives.
The Church encourages her faithful to fast every Friday. What she requires in Lent she requests the rest of the year, namely to abstain from eating meat. But there are a lot of other ways to fast. Don’t listen to the radio for a day. Take a day off of drinking soda.
You might be wondering at this point, how will giving up soda for a day help me with sexual temptation?
Here are three reasons why you should fast:
1) The power of no
Jesus told us, “Anyone who is faithful in little things will be faithful in great.” (Luke 16:10)
We live in a culture of instant gratification. We expect to satisfied at all times by everything we see. Web pages must appear instantly. Clerks at stores must serve us completely. What we want, we want to get right now.
It is very rare that we ever say “no” to ourselves. But that’s what fasting does. It’s a bunch of little “no”s that help us with the big “no”s.
Think of your desires like a little child. If a child cries for candy, what should you do? Sure, you could give him candy. But then he will cry again and you’ll be left with the same dilemma. Eventually, you’ve got to teach the child what “no” means or you’ll be left at the whims of the child’s temper.
I think that many of our bodies act like spoiled children. It cries out and we seek to instantly satisfy it. So when we have a lustful desire, we’re more prone to act on it than deny it.
That’s why fasting is so important. It gives us discipline. It puts into practice the ability to say “no” to ourselves on a regular basis. The fast doesn’t have to be a big or dramatic one. Just little things we can do to offer up our desires to God. When we get used to saying no in the small things, we find strength to say no in the big things.
2) The power of God
Jesus also tells us that fasting is a powerful prayer. When the apostles were unable to cast out a demon, Jesus told them, “That kind of demon can only be driven out by prayer and fasting.” (Matthew 17:21)
Do you think there aren’t demons abounding in our world today? Though none of us can blame our sexual sin on satan, claiming “the devil made me do it,” we must “stay sober and alert, because your enemy the devil is on the prowl like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.” (1 Peter 4:8) A lion goes after the slow, fat beasts that fall behind from the pack. So don’t be that way!
The Scriptures are full of holy men and women who added fasting to their prayers and accomplished powerful results. Armies were defeated, the dead were raised, and nature itself bent to the will of God in response to those prayers. Can adding fasting to your prayers of purity make such a difference? You bet.
3) The power of repentance
The last reason for fasting is that it is a powerful way of repenting for our sins. It is a small act of penance that doesn’t make up for what we did, but it shows that our heart desires to turn away from sin and come completely back to God.
It is a common theme in Scripture that when the people fell away from God, they fasted. And God heard their prayer. He always brought them back.
But it’s important to keep our focus on the mercy of God. At times, God chastised His people because they fasted but didn’t change their lives. At one point Jesus blasts the Pharisees by telling them, “If you had understood the meaning of the words: Mercy is what pleases me, not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the blameless.” (Matthew 12:7) If we think our fasting is somehow earning our way back into God’s love, we are really mistaken!
Think of it like this: There was one time I got in a fight with my wife. I don’t want to go into the details, but the bottom line is: I was an idiot. Later that night, I apologized. She accepted my apology and we were cool. But I decided to do a small act of love to show her (and myself) that I would change. Without saying anything, I started cleaning the kitchen each night. It wasn’t a big deal, and it certainly didn’t “make up” for what I had said, but it meant a lot to her. And it really brought a deeper sense of reconciliation between us.
Through the grace of God, fasting is a prayer that teaches us discipline, adds power to our prayer, and allows us to more fully repent. What a gift!
So… what are you going to fast from this Friday?
And that’s it for my tips on sexual purity! I hope you’ve been blessed by them. I’ve gotten a few emails from youth ministers wondering if they could print them out and share them with teens, and the answer is a resounding “yes!” Just put “copyright 2010 bob-rice.com” somewhere on it and attribute the authorship to me. God bless!

Mercy

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 10:13:51 -0400

An ongoing blog about ways to avoid sexual sin:
1) Whatever
2) Flee
3) Avoid
4) Trust
5) Mercy
For God so loved the world that he sent his only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish, but have eternal life.
If those words sound familiar it’s because it’s John 3:16, the most popular verse in the Bible. Why is it so popular? Because it captures the Good News, the message of salvation. For God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but so that through Him the world might be saved. (John 3:16-17)
Over and over, Scripture tells us of the mercy of God. The letter to Hebrews tells us:
Let us have no fear in approaching the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace when we are in need of help. (Hebrews 4:16)
Because as St. John wrote:
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)
He not only forgives, but He purifies us. As it says in Psalm 103:
As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our faults from us.
And speaking through the prophet Isaiah, the Lord tells us:
Though your sins be like scarlet, they shall be white as snow. (Isaiah 1:18)
The Saints of the Church have long reflected on the incredible mercy of God. St. John Vianney said that, “Our sins are nothing but a grain of sand alongside the great mountain of the mercy of God.” And St. Francis de Sales said that anyone who thinks that God can’t forgive all and every sin is guilty of arrogance: “Where is the foolish person who would think it in his power to commit a sin more than God could forgive?”
The catechism tells us that:
There is no one, however wicked and guilty, who may not confidently hope for forgiveness, provided his repentance is honest. Christ who died for all men desires that in his Church the gates of forgiveness would always be open to anyone who turns away from sin. (CCC 982)
Are you getting the point?
Christ himself died once and for all for sins, the upright for the sake of the guilty, to lead us to God. (1 Peter 3:18)
There is no sin you can commit that God can’t forgive.
There is no sin you can commit that God doesn’t want to forgive. Because, as St. Augustine said, “God loves each one of us as though there were only one of us to be loved.” He didn’t die on the cross for us because He had to. It was because He wanted us. Because He loves us. And because wants to show us His mercy.
The very name of Jesus in Hebrew, Yeshua, is literally translated as “I Save”. It’s what He does. It’s what He wants to do. It’s what we need to let Him do in our lives when we fall into sin.
For all the tips and tricks you might hear about how to avoid sin, sexual or otherwise, at times you are still going to sin. Because you’re a sinner. And I’m a sinner. And God knows this… and He still loves us.
When we confess our sins and accept His grace, it purifies us and makes us stronger for the next battle. The devil would like to hit us with a one-two punch. The first is to lead us into sin, and the second (and more deadly) is to despair of His mercy.
For God so loved the world… For God so loves you, that He sent His only Son, so that through Him you won’t perish, but have eternal life. That’s a promise. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just. And we shall be white as snow.
Next blog: The final tip!

Trust

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:03:06 -0400

An ongoing blog about ways to avoid sexual sin:
1) Whatever
2) Flee
3) Avoid
4) Trust
Here’s my favorite verse when it comes to dealing with temptation, sexual or otherwise. It’s worth memorizing:
“No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. But God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. And when you are tempted, he will give you a way to stand up under it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13)
Let me break that verse down into three parts:
No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. The battle you are fighting is not so unique that you can claim you are alone in your struggles. Dealing with sexual sin is one of the most common experiences of the human condition. All the saints have faced it. Even before the Internet was created, people were dealing with sexual sin. So be comforted that you’re not alone in your struggle, and that many have overcome this trial by the grace of God. You can, too.
God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. Listen again to those words of Sacred Scripture: God will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. He allows us to be tempted because he respects our free will, and if we are honest with ourselves we realize that we sin because we want to. Or at least a part of us does. But God will not allow temptation to overwhelm us. We always have a choice. Just as He respects our free will, He makes the devil respect it as well.
This promise assumes a few things. First, that we’ve been prudent, and haven’t thrown ourselves into a sinful situation. Second, that we’re not dealing with an addiction, which by its very definition means we can’t control our actions. But even in those dire situations, God is mighty to save. He can shine a light in the darkest places. And He can help us overcome our addictions, though the path to do so might be long and difficult.
And when you are tempted, He will give you a way to stand up under it. When we cry out, “God, help me!” He always throws us a lifeline. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve struggled with sexual sin and my phone would ring, or someone would be at my door, or my computer would crash. If we find ourselves falling into sin, look for a way out. God will provide one. You can trust in that promise. You can trust in Him to save you.