You still have five whole days to do that, and let’s say for example, you don’t hear this until after lent, there is never a bad time to pursue the Lord. There is never a time that the Lord says, Nope. Too little, too late. Never, so know that he’s always standing with you. He’s always standing there for you with open arms, ready to take anything that you’re willing to give him.

And the truth is that I truly believe that the Lord just wants our attention. I was coaching a woman the other day and she was talking about how. She just loves being with the Lord and how she really wanted to carve out more time to be with him. 

And the way that she was talking made it sound so arduous and burdensome. And I said, you know what? The way you’re saying that is almost like you’re saying, I really have to carve out time to look at my hand. 

And I want all of you right now to just look at your hand. And what did it take? It took a simple glance, a simple shifting of your eyes. You knew exactly where your hand was, you just had to look at it, and I want you to take that with you, that the Lord is always inside you.

You know exactly where he is, and it takes a simple shift of your attention to your interior. To find him to connect with him. And I’ll tell you, nobody loves, hours on my couch in quiet, just the yummy yumster time  with my journals in the Lord or in adoration. And I have to remember that he created me to do a lot of other things that aren’t on my couch or in adoration or in mass.

And although he loves that, I do that. He wants me to be. As present with him and all of the other things that he’s expecting me to do that he’s called me to do, including doing this podcast. And today we’re going to be reviewing for this holy week.  

We’re just going to take the Lord’s words from John 15 and the whole theme is, remain in me. He gave me and directed my attention to John 15  before Lent. And it was so powerful what he revealed to me, which is what I’m going to be revealing to you, that in our community we have.

Of course 63 surrendered, which is the introduction to this way of life, of surrendering your food and weight struggles to the Lord. But once you graduate that, our program is called restored, and restored is for our advanced women. Who just decided, oh my gosh, I want to integrate the Lord into every area of my life, especially into food and weight.

And we just lead them step by step in how to truly become so restored in his truth, restored to balanced emotions aligned with him rather than extremes, living in ups and downs and stress eating all the while. 

Uniting our lives to him and being strengthened by him and led by him, guided by the Holy Spirit and removing everything in our lives that’s standing in the way of us being at a healthy weight and everything in our lives that’s preventing us from uniting with the Lord, anything that opposes him.

It really is truly a program that helps you become restored. It’s one of the reasons why it leads you to being at a healthy weight for the rest of your life because it transforms you emotionally and spiritually, which when you’re emotionally balanced and spiritually strengthened, you can’t help but be physically balanced in addition to that.

But it was for those advanced women that we created a Lent program. And the title of it was Remain In Me, and it is based on John 15. And so as we enter into Holy Week, I want you to just listen to what the Lord wants to tell you about how he truly wants you to remain in him and what he will give you back for doing that.

Not only is it instructions on how to remain in him. And we’ll be really practical and very simple, but also the promises that he gives us in John 15. And so if you look in the description of this podcast, you’ll see the full scripture. We’ll be starting at John 15:7 and just allow his words to wash over you.

One of the other reasons I wanted to do this podcast was so that you can see how much he just absolutely loves you. And when we go through Lent, sometimes we can white knuckle through giving up coffee or sugar or chocolate or something like that. And then we get to the Easter. And we forget these words.

We forget that he just really wants our attention. He just really wants to be with us. So I hope you hear that come next week, even if you’re eating sugar and chocolate again, continue to pursue him. He wants so badly to just have your attention to just have you know that he is here for you. 

So let’s begin. And if you feel like you’ve heard these words before, I want you to just consider and listen to them in a new way. This John 15 says seven times either remain in me or remain in my love, remain in me five times and remain in my love two times. So he says, if you remain in, me. And what does that mean? Remain in me. It means think of me. 

If you think of me, if you remain in me, he says, my words will remain in you. So essentially, if you think of the Lord, you’ll remember what he has told you, and that’s what we know. The Holy Spirit is what really acts in our memory. And so if we continue to unite with the Holy Spirit, he will keep us mindful and connected and guide us to what the Lord’s will is for us.

Now next, he says, well, if you do not remain in me, you’ll wither and die and be thrown out and burned. Essentially. This is the scripture that talks about the Lord being. Our vine and us being the branches. And so it makes a lot of sense that if we aren’t remaining in him, we are no longer fed and we’ll wither up and be thrown out.

I want you to think of remaining in the Lord. I told you that it means that you’re thinking of him and when you keep his thoughts and when you align your thoughts with the Lord and your thoughts will be aligned with the Lord when you’re thinking more peacefully, uplifting, truth, light.  

We talk a lot in our program. About aligning our thoughts with the Lord, but I want you to just know that one of the important parts of that is when we think like the Lord, we are watering Jesus. We are watering our Jesus thoughts, our holy spirit’s thoughts, and we water them with our attention and energy. It has been proven by many neuroscientists.

The one that I like to follow is Dr. Carolyn Leaf, and she says that the thoughts that we water or the thoughts that we give our attention are what grows. And she likens our thoughts to trees, which is a perfect analogy here. it’s just a beautiful blending of our faith with the biology of the way that the Lord created us.

So when we keep his thoughts, we water our Jesus thoughts. With our attention. With our energy, they get bigger. What I think is so cool is that we’re talking about our thoughts. That’s how we remain, in him. 

With our thoughts. Now, I know that actions are important, king, but I just want you to see that keeping your thoughts aligned with him is prior, over your actions. Why? Because our thoughts are more of an indication of the purity of our intention.

All of us can go and serve. Our actions are not as much of an indication of our heart status as our thoughts are, right? Because we can both do the same action. Let’s say we see our neighbors garbage can at the end of their driveway and we say, oh, I’m gonna take that up for them. The garbage man came. I’m gonna wheel it all the way back up to their house.

They’re such a great neighbor. I love them. They’re so helpful. Or we could grumble and be like, this guy leaves it out for two days. I don’t wanna keep looking at this. I’m just gonna take it up myself. Same action. But our true heart’s intention is reflected more in our thoughts. So anyone who does not remain in me will wither and die and be thrown out and burned. 

All right, next, the Lord talks about the promises, which is so exciting. He says, if you remain in me and my words remain in you, he’s reminding us again that the way that you do that is you keep thinking thoughts like him.

And the first way to do that is to recognize when you’re not thinking like him. Okay. But anyway, if you remain in me and my words remain in you, number one, he says, ask for whatever you want. He’s inviting us to ask for whatever we want because number two, it will be done for you if you remain in me and my words remain in you. What you ask will be done for you. 

Number three, if you remain in me and my words remain in you, my father will be glorified. And you all are listening to the saying, I just want to please the Lord. There’s so many times I’m coaching someone and they say, I feel like the Lord is disappointed in me. 

Remaining in him and having his words remain in you thinking like Jesus is one of the best ways to glorify his father and to glorify Jesus. Number four, you will bear fruit. You’ll bear fruit. And our fruit is in our virtues. Our fruit is in how we bring the Lord. Into this world, how were his hands and feet? 

Number five, you’ll become Jesus’s disciples. We’ll become his disciples. We’ll be one of the 12. We’ll be chosen like that, and we’re gonna talk about being chosen in a little bit. So then I asked myself the question, how? How do I remain in, him? And with his thoughts, he goes on to say, if you keep my commandments, you’ll remain in me.

If you keep my commandments, you’ll remain in me. And I wanna tell you, next week’s podcast gang is on. An examination of conscience for women who are pursuing weight loss and food freedom, because it is very common for us to be walking around in a chronic, low level, worldly acceptable way and breaking some of the commandments in a low level way. 

And so I want you to know that next week you will get that examination of conscience so you can take it into confession and even be more aligned with the Lord and more keeping his commandments. So that’s just a little, like plug for that coming next week.

But if you keep my commandments, you’ll remain in me. He says, I have told you this so that my joy may be in you. Isn’t that incredible that his joy may be in you? In us? And then he says, and your joy may be complete, which I just think is number six and seven of the promises. He’s telling us this. So number six, his joy can be in us and then our joy can be complete.

And when you look up the word complete. Complete means finished, yes, but also restored. And I love to think of us  having the ability to be restored to our original creation. And so, yes, of course there’s original sin that we can overcome, but the Lord truly wants us to be whole and healed and prepared for heaven even before we get to heaven. That’s totally possible.

And our joy may be complete. So he is giving us instructions on how to prepare for heaven while we’re still doing our mission on Earth. He still has work for us here and that if we remain in him and have our work and our thoughts aligned with him. We are living his joy and he is restoring us. 

He goes on to say, no one has greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Alright, let’s break this down. So again, I think if we remain in him, the number eight, we have great love and I think Jesus gave us his life. We all know this. Jesus died on the cross. Jesus endured, scourging. Jesus endured  the crown of thorns.

He endured every step of carrying his cross up to his final crucifixion. He gave us his life. Do you know why? He was taking on everything that isn’t him, everything that is sinful, everything that’s keeping us from being totally aligned with him. 

He was taking all of that to his crucifixion so he could give back. to us that, restored. Existence, that restored creation so that we could be redeemed, that we could have new, that we could be whole and healed. He was taking on all of our sins. He says, no one. Has greater love than to lay down his life for one’s friends. 

And I just really wanna say, the Lord was like, I love you so much. I love you so much. I want your joy to be complete. I want my joy to be complete in you, and I’m going to take all of this. I wanna take my life away so that you can have this big beautiful. Life aligned with me. Jesus. ’cause that’s what brings us true joy. 

He showed us that great love and you will all, we in turn get to show him the same love by turning over our sinful lives, our brokenness, our woundedness, and talking to him about it. And inviting him into our brokenness and our woundedness, and asking for his help and asking for him to show us where we can move closer to him, asking him to bring us resources, asking him for what he sees. What is the truth here? 

He doesn’t want us to go into isolation and hide and run from him in shame, especially with our food and weight struggles. It can feel so isolating. and alone and shameful. That’s not it. We are all broken and we are all sinful, and we are all very wounded and he wants us to turn to him for that. 

And all of you think that that sounds super hard, but I want you to look at your hand right now. Do you see how simple that glance was? That’s all you have to do. When you’re having those wounded, broken, sinful thoughts, we can just turn our glance to him and invite him in. We don’t need to run from him. 

That’s when we just say, wow, I don’t love this part of being human. But I’m willing to let you in and at least be honest that I have this because it’s only when we turn our glance to him and bring our pieces to him that he can heal us and redeem us and restore us.

He goes on to say, and this is John 15:14. You are my friend. If you do what I command, which essentially is all the things I said, which is just, remain in me. Remain in me. You guys, stop running from me. Stop isolating yourself. Stop living in shame and believing that you’re not good enough. I want all of you. I want to lay my life down for you so I can redeem you. 

You guys, that’s what we’re celebrating this Easter, and I know it’s hard to believe that we’re loved that much, brow my belief. Okay? Brow, my belief, John 15:15, he goes, I no longer call you slaves. You guys listen to this. You are no longer a slave, he said, because a slave does not know what the master’s doing.

He said, I have called you friends because I have told you everything that I’ve heard from my father. That is him saying, walk alongside me. I wanna put my arm around you. We’re not a, slave. You’re not a slave. You’re my partner here. We’re doing this together. He said, I want to set you free. Which I think is number nine and remain, in him.

We will be set free. We are friends of Jesus. We are partners with him. When we invite him in, we give him full consent to redeem us, to heal us, to walk with us. We say, yes Lord, I will be in cooperation with you. Let’s do this together. We’re buds. 

You guys. I love that term of a passion project. You are Jesus’s passion project. You are Jesus’ Passion project. A passion project is something that, like, I don’t know the exact definition, but my understanding is that it’s like a millionaire who doesn’t need to do something to make money. 

But they do it because it just fills them and it just brings them so much joy that they’re willing to exert so much energy and attention and give their skills and their talents to bring something to fruition, to serve in some way or to fill a need. And that’s what you are. You are Jesus’ passion project. He wants to give you so much freedom. He wants you unchained. He wants your vices erased.

I was reading, oh, this is a total side note, but I was reading about the Institution of the Eucharist and I read a lot of the work, from Louisa Picarata. And she is, I feel like she is, either she has a cause for beatification or she has been, anyway, I know there’s a cause for beatification and she’s like, on her way.

But she wrote this book. That is the 24 hours of the passion of Christ, and I’ve been reading it for Lent, she’s a mystic, and it’s church approved. Jesus revealed to her his interior state at every hour of the passion. 

And when he is creating the instituting the Eucharist he knows that his time on earth is coming to an end. and he only has a few hours, and he says Father, and he takes the bread. He says, father, where will my children go? Who will help them? I do not want to leave them alone. 

And then he goes on to ask the father to, and in the words of consecration, which aren’t written in the book, but essentially he’s like, I don’t want to leave them alone. And so therefore I will create myself to be in the host so that he can then. I thought it was just so beautiful what he said that he created the host for, and well, I do have the book right here, so I might as well read the exact thing.

Oh, it’s so beautiful. Okay, so he says. A few hours of my life are left. Who would have the heart to leave? My children orphaned and alone, many other enemies. The obscurities, the passions, the weaknesses we list our enemies. 

The obscurities are things that are just, like really confusing to us in life, this was written and published like in the thirties, and Jesus took her back to when he was instituting the Eucharist.

And how true is that today many are our enemies. The things that are confusing, the passions, the weaknesses to which they’re subjected, Jesus goes on to say, who will help them. He says, oh, please, father, let me stay in each host to be, I think this is amazing. These are the five things he wants to be, to us life to each one.

Please let me stay in. the host to put to flight their enemies, which he already told us. What our enemies are, the obscurities, the passions, the weaknesses. Put me in each host to be their light, which I always love to say the word light means truth, to be their truth, to be their strength, and to help them in everything

He says. Otherwise, where shall they go, who will help them? And when I was reading this in adoration, I answered that question. He said otherwise, where will they go? Who will help them?  If we don’t turn to Jesus, where do we go? Who will help us? There’s nothing left for us except for humans. It’s the only other place for us to turn. If we don’t turn to the Lord. 

We just turn to human strength, which we know is just so stinking limited. Friends, it’s so limited and so prone. To being subjected to the enemies that the Lord just said, which are confusion, weakness, and passions.

And back to John 15:15 when says, I have called you friends. Because I have told you everything I have heard from the father. You guys, the Lord  wants our full cooperation. He wants to work with us. He wants to set us free. He wants to live in, us. That is why he gave us the Eucharist. 

And then finally my friends. John 15:16. If you take nothing from this podcast, he says, it was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and to bear fruit. You guys, you are free to consent and accept this invitation with full knowledge. That it was not you who chose the Lord. He chose you. He chose you. And he says he appointed you to go, for you to go.

And I think that we wanna like, go out into the world and, like, save the world. But you know what? I think he wants. I think he wants you to open your eyes and recognize that he chose you, and I want you to go look in the mirror and go, me. You chose me and I want you to then go. Go into your daily life, your life, just your life, and step into your life, your daily life with fullness.

And the truth of this message and, bear fruit, but you don’t have to bear fruit because he’s working in you and  he’s gonna do it. All he wants you to do is to accept the invitation and walk with him remaining in him by having your thoughts aligned with him. And to sum this up, he says. And to bear fruit that will remain. Isn’t that cool? Which means it’s lasting. 

And when I think of that with weight loss in our restored program, it is you, bear fruit. So listen, he chose you. You didn’t choose him. He wants you to go invite him into your food and weight struggles and bear fruit, which essentially is, get you healthy and restored. Healthy weight, healthy mindset, balanced emotions, strengthened spiritually bear fruit that will remain not fleeting.

You guys, we can trust him when we are with him, it endures forever. He never gives us things and takes them away. If they’re meant to stay with us, they’re meant to stay with us. If he takes something away, it was meant to be temporary. But as long as we stay with him, what is meant to endure will.

So if you’ve had weight loss and it goes away, it’s probably because it was not totally aligned with him. A hundred percent. And he finishes this and says, so that whatever you ask of the father in my name. He may give to you.

And I believe when he says, whatever you ask for the father in my name, whatever you ask, in truth and in pure pursuit of doing the Lord’s will of being aligned with Jesus, with the Holy Spirit, with pursuing, pleasing the Lord. 

Not people pleasing doing what we know the Lord wants for us. Surrendering to him, inviting him into the parts that don’t feel so shiny into our woundedness and brokenness so that whatever you ask the father in my name, he may give to you.

He wants to give it to us the last. Part of John 15 is he says, this, I command you, and we already know what he’s commanding for us to remain in him. And then he goes on to say, love one another, which you all are like, what? Now? I’m super confused,

But this literally is the message that I wrote next to this. When I was talking with the Lord about this. I said, Jesus. I just don’t feel this is the focus that whole like love one another. I said, I believe this feels so easy to understand. It’s like instant gratification. It’s like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m supposed to focus on everybody else.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Like go, go, go. Do do do, be out in the world. And this is what I wrote more. But the truth is, and the deeper message for me, this is Denise Jelinek, is that you’re asking me to remain in you. You’re asking me to remove everything that opposes you, to let you bear fruit through me. So that you are in every part of my life.

And Jesus is asking you to remain in him to recognize that the way that we give back to him, is as simple as looking at your hand. Turn your glance. You know where he is. He’s inside. He’s outside. When I, when my kids were little, we had this book and it said, I love your top side and your bottom side. Your inside and your outside, your silly side and your mad side.  

And the last part of the book was, I Love you through and through yesterday, today, and tomorrow too. And I just think it’s just that simple. Remain in me. John 15:16. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you.

Everyone, have a blessed Holy Week. Happy Easter.