A WORD ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF SPIRITUAL TRAINING FROM THE FOUNDER OF THE MAID OF HEAVEN FOUNDATION BEN D. KENNEDY
Jesus called upon every Christian to be “Light” and “Salt” in our dark and evil infested world which means He expects us to do a lot more than just hide from evil in a church building once a week. Just as Light always overcomes darkness (John 1:5) so Christians today should be aggressively overcoming all the evil in our world. Just as Salt is a preservative so Christians today should be preserving the great spiritual heritage that God has given to us that can help us become powerful forces for good overcoming evil. Unfortunately we can all clearly see that this is not happening which is why we are living at such an egregious time as this when mothers actually murder their own babies and the sacred institution of marriage ordained by God Himself has been turned into what the Apostle Paul defined as a perversion.
After spending the better part of my life training both athletes and pilots to excel in ways beyond what the average person even believes possible I understand how important proper training is to being able to have success at anything that we do in life. Nobody would ever expect a person who has never been trained to fly an airplane to actually be able to fly proficiently yet most Christians today do not understand the extreme importance of doing proper spiritual training in order to be able to actually fulfill our calling from God to be Light and Salt in our world.
When we talk about spiritual training we are really only talking about spending more time alone with God which is something that every Christian should be doing anyways. An hour or so in a church once a week is certainly not training in any way shape or form. Just consider what would happen if a professional football team today decided that all they would do is spend an hour once a week in a meeting for their training when all the other teams are training every day of the week for long hours. Does anyone think that such a team would have any chance whatsoever at beating the other teams? In much the same way how can anyone expect to effectively fight and overcome the forces of evil by spending so little time with God Who is THE SOURCE of power for defeating evil.
“Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever!” 1 Corinthians 9:25
The reality today that so many Christians do not seem to want to get is that we are in an all-out war with evil and God expects us to be winning instead of losing. Just as soldiers have always had to undergo proper training to be able to function effectively in battle so Christians today must undergo proper spiritual training just like our ancestors before us so that we can live up to their illustrious example of service as soldiers in God’s Army. And as St. Bernard of Clairvaux said when he wrote In Praise of the New Knighthood we as Christian soldiers are called to be “God’s minister[s] for the punishment of evildoers” (1 Peter 2:14) which means we need to be taking the fight to the forces of evil instead of just allowing them to take over our world as is happening today.
If you are ready to become the "Light" and "Salt" that God has called you to be as a faithful soldier in His Army then start training yourself spiritually with the FREE training program provided for you HERE by The Maid of Heaven Foundation on the following page. This program can help anyone to become “strong in the Lord and in His mighty power” which is the key to overcoming evil. All the steps in this program are based upon our incredible Christian heritage that God wants us to learn from and be inspired by and each weekly devotional message will help to train you in the ways of God’s greatest soldiers like St. Joan of Arc. SPIRITUAL TRAINING IS THE ANSWER TODAY SO THAT EVERY CHRISTIAN WILL BE ABLE TO “FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT!” (1 Timothy 6:12)
