Evaluating your prayer life is an objective way to see if you put God first. Have you prayed today? No? Have you eaten today? Did you hang out with your friends? Have you worked? If the answer is yes, then you put those things above your relationship with God. Prayer doesn’t help your relationship with God, prayer is your relationship with God.

When you go to pray, you don’t have to fight for God’s attention – He has been fighting for your attention. Anytime you pray, it’s always a response to a prompting from God. He’s asking for your heart.

One practical way to pray is through mental prayer. Remember the acronym PAL: praise, ask, and listen.

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There’s a difference between believing in God and trusting in God. We might believe that God is real and that He is good, but do we trust Him? What keeps us from giving ourselves fully to Him, and how do we grow in trust? Those are the questions Katie explored in her session this afternoon.

We like to pretend we have control over what will happen next, but we don’t. Giving God the control – trusting Him – is scary because we don’t have control over what will happen when we do. What is He going to want me to do – or stop doing?

One way we can grow in trust of God is to turn to our Blessed Mother. As a baby, Jesus relied on Mary for everything. Making Himself completely vulnerable, He showed us that we can trust Mary to guide us, too. Jesus allowed His heart to be formed by Mary so that we would know that our hearts could be formed by hers.

“Mary is the safest, easiest, shortest and most perfect way of approaching Jesus.” – St. Louis de Montfort

Mary knows Jesus in a way no one else does. She carried Him with her, and she adored Him daily in her home. As Katie said, “Who better to teach us about Jesus than the one who picked Him up when He fell, who was first to hold Him after He was born, and who held Him in her arms after He died?”

When men pray, things change. And, the world needs your voice.

What does masculinity look like? It’s important for us to understand what masculinity is, because God created it for a reason.

When we want to understand what masculinity is, we need to ask God what His intention was in creating man. God created men in His likeness, and a man reveals something unique about God. God gave Adam the important task of protecting and maintaining the world. But Adam didn’t trust God completely. So often we fall into this sin, “I’m my own man; I make my own way; I know what is right. I don’t need to trust You.”

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This summer, Chika Anyanwu is speaking at Steubenville conferences for the first time! Before lunch, she shared some beautiful insights with all the ladies, providing a vision for what authentically restored femininity looks like.

She began by reminding us that we were created good. In the book of Genesis, Adam looked around at all the creatures and named them. He saw that he did not belong with them. That’s when Eve entered the picture. She was good, and Adam saw in her a companion. Eve’s first identity is in being found and being seen as good. As women, we claim that identity, too.

Unfortunately, one little lie about our identities can spread. We start thinking that because we don’t have the same gifts or life as other people, we aren’t good. In the same way that Satan planted seeds of doubt in Eve’s heart about the goodness of God, we doubt our goodness.

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Joel challenged us tonight to recognize that holiness isn’t about being perfect; it’s about saying yes to the invitation for a journey.  When we say yes to the journey, we manage to find God in the unexpected. Think about monumental moments in your life – did you expect those to happen? When did you meet your best friend? Did you know they were going to be your best friend when you met them?

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