This week, Jake and Bob welcome John Edwards (Just a Guy in the Pew) back to the show to continue his story of conversion and the long journey of healing that followed. John opens up about what happened after his powerful encounter with Christ in a jail cell, including the hard work of rebuilding trust with his wife and children, learning to be vulnerable, and surrendering control. He also talks about the struggle to reconcile with himself, especially the self-hatred and false identities that can remain even after receiving forgiveness from God and others. Through his story, John reminds us that conversion and healing is not a one-time event, but an ongoing invitation to allow Christ to transform every part of our lives.

Key Points:

• Radical conversion does not instantly repair the relationships damaged over years of destructive behavior.
• Simply stopping addictive behaviors is many times not enough for complete healing. This is because deeper wounds like selfishness and self-focus also need to be healed.
• Life is not ultimately about ourselves but about loving and serving the people God had entrusted to us.
• Self-reliance, control, and selfishness are not merely struggles unique to addicts but can quietly affect the lives of many people.
• Vulnerability is not weakness but an act of courage that allows a person to acknowledge the truth about himself and receive help.
• Reconciliation reveals God not as an angry judge waiting to punish us but as a loving Father who desires our good and wants to walk with us.
• The reconciliation of our relationships requires us to examine our own responsibility rather than waiting for other people to change.
• Reconciling with ourselves requires confronting the lies that attack our identity and continually renewing our minds with the truth of who God says we are.
• Self-forgiveness is essential because refusing to receive God's forgiveness for ourselves can keep us bound to the identity of our past.

Resources:

• Power Made Perfect by John Edwards
• Just a Guy in The Pew Website
• Redeemed Men's Retreat with the JPII Healing Center
• Episode 149: Healing in Men (Part 1) w/ John Edwards

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

02:10 John's Unmasking

07:18 The One Priest Who Changed His Life

12:06 From Self-Focus to Self-Gift

19:41 The Courage to Become Vulnerable

26:20 Reconciliation with God

33:51 Reconciling with Yourself

37:28 Breaking the Voice of Self Hatred

49:11 The Long Road to Rebuilding Trust

57:30 Finding Freedom from Addiction

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This week, Jake and Bob discuss the subtle ways the enemy gains influence in our lives through the interpretations, judgements, and conclusions we draw in the ordinary moments of everyday life. They explore how these footholds can gradually become strongholds, why fear and shame often lie beneath our attempts to protect ourselves, and how distorted images of God shape the way we see the world. No matter where you may find footholds in your life, there is hope. Through simple acts of trust each day, we can learn to let God become our true stronghold.

Key Points:

• The enemy often gains influence through subtle interpretations in everyday life rather than obvious temptations.
• Strongholds are built through repeated agreements with lies, judgments, and false beliefs.
• Fear frequently lies underneath anger and drives many of our defensive reactions.
• Footholds become believable because they attach themselves to existing wounds and vulnerabilities.
• Pride convinces us that we fully understand another person's motives or God's actions.
• A lack of peace and the absence of the fruits of the Spirit can reveal areas of bondage.
• Confession is a powerful place to bring our agreements with lies and receive grace.
• Renouncing lies and proclaiming truth is a simple but effective daily practice to loosen the bonds of footholds.
• Lasting freedom grows through repeated, small acts of trust that allow God to become our true stronghold.

Resources:

• Healing Prayers and Renunciations Booklet

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

00:41 How the Enemy Gains A Foothold

10:07 Anger, Fear and Speaking Truth

14:45 Fear: Emotion vs Wound

24:44 Recognizing Strongholds in Daily Life

33:28 Breaking Agreements and Experiencing Freedom

42:35 The Power of Small Acts of Trust

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This week, Jake and Bob are joined by Andrew Laubacher, the Executive Director of Humanality, to explore how our digital world is reshaping our attention, attachments, and relationships. After stepping away from social media and smart phones to overcome addiction, Andrew realized that healing sometimes requires more than better habits, fasting, or more prayer—it requires recovering the way God created us to live and relate. Together, they discuss the false intimacy of online community, the loneliness epidemic, and why technology is never as neutral as we assume. Andrew also shares practical steps you can begin today to live intentionally with technology.

Key Points:

• Modern technology offers a false intimacy while leaving us increasingly isolated, lonely, and craving real in-person community.
• Human beings are biologically designed for face-to-face connection, not constant digital interaction.
• Technology is not neutral because every platform is intentionally designed to keep us using it.
• AI offers remarkable benefits but also presents significant dangers when it replaces authentic human relationships.
• Healing requires real encounter, attention, and attachment that technology can never fully provide.
• Many of today's mental health struggles exist alongside a broader crisis of addiction and overstimulation.
• Constant digital stimulation weakens our capacity for focus, presence, contemplation, and prayer. It also affects sleep, physical health, eyesight, and overall well-being.
• Living intentionally with technology allows people to recover creativity, purpose, authentic relationships, and a deeper encounter with God.

Resources:

• Humanality

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

06:49 How Technology Diminishes our Humanity

14:04 Artificial Community and False Intimacy

21:03 Can AI Heal Us?

31:10 The Tension of Virtual Communication

36:54 Attention, Attachment, and Addiction

52:33 Reclaiming Your Attention

57:07 Resources and Encouragement

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This week, Jake and Bob conclude their series on confession with Fr. John Horn and explore the root system behind two deadly sins: sloth (acedia) and lust. Through personal examples, they uncover the deeper attitudes, fears, and wounds that drive these struggles and keep us from intimacy with God. They also discuss how self- reliance, discouragement, and isolation can distort our desires and lead us away from the freedom God offers us through the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Key Points:

• Virtue grows when our desires are reordered toward God through love rather than fear.
• Sloth, or acedia, is often misunderstood as just laziness. It can also manifest as overactivity, restlessness, and self-reliance.
• Discouragement is frequently rooted in the belief that we must transform ourselves without God's help.
• The remedy for acedia begins with surrendering control and accepting poverty of spirit.
• Lust reflects a deeper attempt to satisfy desires apart from God.
• Shame, hopelessness, and a lack of purpose often lie beneath struggles with lust.
• Confession becomes more fruitful when we bring our underlying attitudes and beliefs rather than only our behaviors.
• The Sacrament of Reconciliation restores communion with God, ourselves, the Church, and others.
• Freedom grows as we learn to receive the Father's delight and stop holding our sins and weaknesses against ourselves.

Resources:

• Institute for Priestly Formation
• Confession Fourfold

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

02:26 The Goal is Not the Removal of Sin

10:57 What is Sloth (Acedia)?

18:40 Personal Examples of Acedia

27:19 Emotion is Not A Sin

38:15 What is Lust?

44:14 A Lack of Hope

65:45 Resources

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This week, Jake and Bob are joined by Fr. John Horn, co-founder of the Institute for Priestly Formation, to continue their series on confession. They explore how the sin of pride often hides beneath the surface of our spiritual lives and can even affect the way we approach the Sacrament of Reconciliation itself. Using the parable of the Prodigal Son, they also uncover how fear, shame, and self-reliance can keep us from fully receiving the Father's love. At its core, Confession is an encounter with a Father who rejoices over His children and allowing our hearts to receive this love leads us toward deeper healing and freedom

Key Points:

• Zephaniah's image of God rejoicing and singing over His people reveals the Father's true posture toward repentant sinners.
• Many of us approach confession assuming God is disappointed in them rather than delighting in their return.
• St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that "whatever is received is received according to the mode of the receiver." Which means, the disposition of our hearts is connected with our ability to receive the Father's love.
• Self-condemnation and self-hatred can be hidden forms of pride rather than genuine humility.
• Many deeply rooted patterns of sin become so familiar that we mistake them for normal life instead of areas needing healing.
• The younger son's demand for his inheritance reflects a desire for God's gifts apart from relationship with God Himself.
• The younger son's return reveals how shame can continue to operate even after repentance begins.
• The Father's embrace, kiss, robe, ring, and feast demonstrate God's extravagant response to repentance.
• The older brother reveals a different form of pride expressed through resentment, self-righteousness, and comparison.
• Resentment often exposes deeper fears, wounds, and unmet desires hidden beneath the surface.
• Joy can be difficult to receive when we are attached to self-protection, control, or self-judgment.
• True healing involves uncovering and renouncing the lies that keep us from trusting God's love.
• The Holy Spirit restores our original beauty by healing the places where we have rejected ourselves and doubted God's love.

Resources:

• Institute for Priestly Formation
• Zephaniah 3:14-18

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

03:25 The Father Rejoices Over His Children

13:38 Disposition Changes Everything

22:42 Entering into the Prodigal Son Story

33:02 Shame and the Younger Son

39:14 The Father's Embrace and Mercy

43:33 The Older Brother's Hidden Pride

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This week, Jake and Bob are joined by Fr. John Horn, co-founder of the Institute for Priestly Formation, to begin a series on the Sacrament of Reconciliation. They discuss the connection between our wounded image of God and sin, revealing how many of our repeated struggles are rooted in lies about our identity in the Father's love. Fr. John also shares how Confession can become more than just listing sins, why we should embrace our interior poverty, and the danger of scrupulosity.

Key Points:

• Unforgiveness is one of the greatest barriers to restoration.
• Many people remain trapped after confession because they continue holding unforgiveness toward themselves.
• God does not despise our wounds; He desires to love us directly within them.
• Much of habitual sin is driven by deeper lies and false beliefs about God, ourselves, and others.
• Spiritual poverty is the very place that attracts God's mercy.
• Confession becomes transformative when we examine not only the outward sin, but the beliefs underneath it.
• Our image of God is often shaped by early relational wounds and experiences with parents or authority figures.
• God is not reluctantly forgiving us; He rejoices over us and fights for our healing and freedom.

Resources:

• Institute for Priestly Formation
• Episode 131: Forgiveness and Spiritual Renewal w/ Fr. John Horn
• "....Not enough that the arrow has been extracted from the body, the wound, which it inflicted, must also be healed. So with regard to the soul. Not enough that the sin has been pardoned. The wound which it left must also be healed." (St. John Chrysostom)

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

02:21 Healing is Found Through Forgiveness

09:10 The Wound Left Behind by Sin

16:01 Why So Many Catholics Avoid Confession

24:29 Sin Begins with Unbelief

33:56 Scrupulosity and Self-Forgiveness

37:40 How Our Image of God Becomes Wounded

58:51 Practical Ways to Prepare for Confession

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This week, Jake and Bob talk about the two Sacraments of Healing, Reconciliation and the Anointing of the Sick, and what they reveal about Christ as the physician of both soul and body. They discuss how suffering itself can become healing, why not everyone who prays for healing is healed, and the role of forgiveness in both receiving and asking for healing. Healing ultimately is a restoration into wholeness and is found in communion with God. Jake and Bob end by sharing a few stories of miraculous healing as well as their experiences of receiving a quiet, yet strengthening grace.

Key Points:

• There are two Sacraments of Healing: Reconciliation and the Anointing of the Sick.
• Jesus is the physician of both body and soul.
• Healing is an ongoing encounter with God's love.
• Forgiveness of sins and physical healing are deeply interconnected.
• Unforgiveness can act as a barrier that prevents deeper healing from taking place.
• Sin causes fragmentation, while forgiveness restores unity and openness to grace.
• The Sacrament of Reconciliation offers forgiveness and healing for the heart.
• The Anointing of the Sick offers grace for physical healing, spiritual strength, and preparation for death.
• Suffering becomes healing when it draws a person into deeper communion with God.
• Not everyone receives physical healing, and this remains a real and difficult mystery.

Resources:

• CCC 1421
• CCC 1503
• CCC 1508-1509

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

01:33 The Two Sacraments of Healing

06:16 Forgiveness as A Barrier or Gateway to Healing

12:30 The Healing Nature of Suffering

15:30 Stories of the Anointing of the Sick

25:39 Why Not Everyone is Healed

34:21 God's Grace is Sufficient

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This week, Jake and Bob discuss the framework and theology behind the JPII Healing Center's "Healing the Whole Person" retreat. They begin by exploring how Christ's wounded yet glorified body reveals the path of redemption for every human life. Then, they reflect on how healing is essential to Christianity, how purgatory is ultimately about healing the soul, and how grace restores integration to our whole being. All suffering can become redemptive when united to Christ and they invite you into a journey of becoming whole, ordered, and ready for communion with God.

Key Points:

• Healing is not a niche aspect of Christianity but an essential dimension of discipleship.
• Christ's resurrected wounds reveal that suffering can be transformed into glory.
• Every person is invited to become like Christ by allowing their wounds to be redeemed.
• True healing brings us into wholeness and communion, not just relief from pain.
• Purgatory is best understood as a final state of purification and healing.
• The purpose of all healing is to prepare us for communion with God.
• Sin causes disintegration within the human person and in relationships.
• The Trinity is the model of perfect communion.
• Human identity is fundamentally relational—we are made by, from, and for relationship.
• There are four primary relationships: with God, others, self, and creation.
• Emotional dysfunction often reveals areas of unhealed wounds.
• Disconnection between body and soul leads to fragmentation and relational breakdown.
• Technology can create the illusion of communion without its true depth.
• Authentic communion requires presence, embodiment, and vulnerability.
• Suffering becomes redemptive when it draws us into deeper trust and union with God.
• The ultimate goal of healing is to make us capable of the beatific vision—eternal communion with God.

Resources:

• The Incredulity of St. Thomas by Caravaggio
• Spe Salvi Paragraph 47
• CCC Paragraph 221

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

03:47 Christ's Redemptive Wounds

07:18 Healing is at the Heart of Christianity

16:58 We are Created for Wholeness and Communion

21:57 Honestly Examining your Relationships

27:05 The Disconnect Between Body and Soul

31:38 The Disintegration of Desire and Emotions

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This week, Jake and Bob conclude their series and welcome Paul George, founder of The Art of Living Ministry. They explore the interior journey of a man learning to face his wounds, surrender control, and become who God created him to be. Paul shares his personal story— from childhood wounds and self-sufficiency to finding healing through marriage, prayer, and mentorship. They also discuss how unresolved pain can shape a man's identity, how it affects his relationships, and why vulnerability is the doorway to intimacy and freedom.

Key Points:

• Paul's childhood experiences, especially his parents' divorce, deeply influenced his identity and relational patterns. He developed a strong sense of independence that later became a barrier to intimacy.
• Marriage exposes unresolved wounds and emotional barriers.
• Self-sufficiency often times is a mask that covers the inability to receive someone else's love.
• Growth begins with recognizing patterns in your life and asking God why they exist.
• Many men believe they will never change which leads to resignation and feeling stuck.
• It is important not to dwell on "what if's" or regrets about the past.
• Being vulnerable with your spouse and opening up about your wounds is an important step to deepening intimacy.
• Both spouses must learn to love each other's brokenness.
• A man must take responsibility for his growth rather than blaming others.
• Change doesn't erase the impact of past behavior on loved ones.
• A man's (and woman's) ultimate call is to love sacrificially, especially when it's difficult or unseen.

Resources:

• Paul's Website
• Paul's Ministry: The Art of Living
• The Paul George Show
• Paul's Books
  • Feast
  • Fierce
  • Rethink Happiness
  • Holy Grit
• Redeemed Men's Conference with the JPII Healing Center

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

03:03 Paul's Story & Early Wounds

10:55 Spiritual Fatherhood & Mentorship

12:30 Ministry Through Sports

14:00 Trapped in Regret & "What Ifs"

18:24 Learning to Trust God's Provision

27:54 The Power of Self-Awareness

40:43 Inviting Your Spouse into Wounds

53:02 Why Growth Requires Struggle

56:06 Paul's Ministry & Resources

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This week, Jake and Bob continue their series and welcome Devin Schadt, founder of the Fathers of St. Joseph, to explore the journey of becoming a man through suffering, healing, and self-giving love. Devin shares his powerful story of childhood wounds, addiction, and broken relationships, and how an unexpected encounter and a profound experience of God's mercy began to transform his life. They also discuss how unmet needs for affirmation can drive men toward the false promises of the world, how true identity is restored through relationship with God the Father, and the masculine call to sacrificial love.

Key Points:

• Wounds created in childhood can shape how we perceive our identity as adults.
• When we don't root our identity in the Father, we turn to the things of this world that will not fulfil the human heart: prestige, prominence, power, profit, possessions, and pleasure.
• Our sins often flow from unmet needs.
• Marriage exposes and refines the heart.
• Self-giving love within marriage and family life is true masculinity.
• Devin began to experience growth when he accepted his "littleness" instead of running from it.
• Our limitations allow God's strength to be revealed more clearly.
• Spiritual battles often begin with doubting the Father's love for us.
• It is important men know they belong to the Father and that they are beloved sons.

Resources:

• Devin's Ministry: Fathers of St. Joseph
• CUSTOS by Devin Schadt
• The Rule by Devin Schadt
• Fourplay by Devin Schadt - Coming Soon!
• The Catholic Gentleman Podcast

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

01:40 From Childhood Abuse to Finding Jesus

15:41 Discovering the Meaning of Self Giving Love

23:09 Acting Out of Pain and Embracing Our Littleness

32:49 Loving Without Expecting Anything in Return

41:13 Remedies for the Wounds Many Men Experience

49:01 The Fathers of St. Joseph

51:32 Resources

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