How to Handle Spiritual Setbacks

[Music] how many his father makes mints and this is essentially cents so I was recently reading a book they had to do with that willpower and habits and all these kind of things that was really fascinating to me at least but in the course of the book they gave a couple different examples and the examples were not necessarily related to willpower as much as they were related to our perception of failure so as an example here is that one person studying and they're they're trying they have to get the work done right so they're studying and they keep being tempted to take to take a break and they're like no no I'm gonna study for a you know a whole hour I'm gonna study for two hours and then I'll take my break and every time the temptation to take a break comes up they resist it and then finally it's okay the amount of time has passed and so I'll take my break and they took the rake and that was like sense of like oh that's great because their willpower was engaged and they were able to resist the temptation to take a break early and to like distract themselves they were stay stuck to the task super-good other example someone on a diet and they were trying to restrict their you know calories that's what it died that's what a diet is okay um I know stuff so here they go into the conference room at work and there's a box of donuts on the table and they say nope not gonna have Donuts because that's not a my diet that's not my thing and then later on there's the donuts are still sitting there and they're like nope not not am I not on my diet and I know to the donuts they say no as many times in two hours as the person who said no to the you know taking a break from studying for two hours and then finally they're like okay fine I'll have a donut now here's the difference here for the one it was I resisted the temptation to take a break and then I took a break in his everything's fine cuz I did I did a good job I exercise my my free will I exercise my discipline whatever and the other way it was like okay you you won you won you won you failed and so now your diet is shot now everything is over because you had a doughnut and it's done you see the difference between our perception of these kinds of things in the one it was like no wow I really did a great job I successfully stayed on task for the amount of time that I said I would going I was going to the other is no matter how many times I said no to the temptation the fact that I said yes once is just like is means that the diet for the day is done that basically that lean at least that's our perception of the whole thing as I'm going through this in the book I'm translating this into our our perception of the spiritual life right because when it comes to prayer say okay I'm gonna sit I'm gonna be praying for the whole 30 minutes or something like this and I keep being distracted to keep being tempted to leave and I don't I stay there all the way till minute 30 boom done success I won I did a great job now here's the temptation to sin and here's you might even have like in your personal life in your life a temptation to sin in a particular way that keeps coming up again and again maybe it's like one of those like besetting sins or might be a situation where it's like okay this is kind of my kind of my area this is the thing that I hate keep having go back to confession for say for example it's a common one area of lust or unchastity kind of a thing so a person has this discipline and they're like no I'm not gonna do that I'm not gonna do that Matt and they keep saying yes to virtue and no device they keep saying notice in and then what happens is you know that kind of like the donut person at one point they just they they cave and they fall into eating a donut in the context of sin right so they fall into some kind of sexual sin what we tell ourselves or the voices we give credence to after the fact is massively important how we perceive this is massively important why because and the one we say like I won III SRA's ista temptation and then I gave in to I I left great no problem the other is now resisted temptation and then I sinned and now all that resisting wasted just like the donut person like okay I said in over two hours but then I ultimately ended the doughnut ended up eating that on it therefore wasted yes and no here's the thing is it really important moving forward yes and no yes in the sense that okay if I intentionally you know willfully chose a more Senecas this is if this was grave area right graves in great matter then yes I mean I I'm not in a state of race anymore and I need to go to confession to allow the Lord to not only forgive me but reconcile me to the church okay so yes that's the yes part but the no part is this and this is super important because I know there are people who believe that all of the progress that they made for example um in any particular area of their similar that their lives were trying to leave sinned they're trying to grow in virtue they're trying to be more generous or more patient and then they have a blow-up you know or then they find themselves being stingy it's like no no all that growth gone they see it in the same sense of like someone eating a so imagine here's a person who's Anna getting back to the health thing a person who's exercising they're eating well and they Cavin have a doughnut now is all of their health and fitness destroyed no like it's not it's not rendered back to zero it's not even made negative it's just oh there was a little setback all of the gains the gains with the Z the whole the gains they had made are not lost with one donut in a similar way the gains in virtue that you've made by struggling for two hours and then like saying okay I'll cave when it comes to sin or struggling for two weeks and then caving when it comes to sin all that those gains that that growth in virtue is not lost this is so important yes I have to go to confession now yes so that's no longer state of grace but the progress one is made one has made is not rendered futile it's not zero when you go into confession it's not even restored to the level that you were before so here's kind of the image I like to use and I can use this because my hands all right so imagine here you're trucking on trucking along at this level of like we'll call it level of holiness level of grace whatever right love a virtue and how you're saying is to the Lord we believe that say you you you fall into sin so BAM ah collapse tears tears likes not a state of grace and now I mean in that in the in the pit right that sometimes we believe that when we go to confession the Lord raises us back up to you know here or maybe even here maybe even to the same he just brings us back up to where we were but here is what the Church teaches here's what Scripture teaches that when we were trucking along we fall into sin when God gives us His grace when we reconciled back to him he not only restores us but elevates us even further then this is the thing is what happens to you every single time every single time you go to confession falling into sin is yep there's the there's the crash like didn't want that to happen need to go to confession but when we do were elevated restored to that position and elevated even further st. Paul II says where sin abounds grace abounds all the more and this this teaching is so radical it's so hard for some people who to accept but he was so clear about it that he said st. Paul goes on to say he says wait does that mean that I should sin more to have more grace because if this is the math right if the math is you fall and you go to confession and he restored to 2 you get elevated even further then hastened even bigger then you get restored even more st. Paul he says where sin abounds grace grace abounds all the more does that mean we should send even bigger to get more grace and he says by no means right so he's like he knows what he's saying and he knows that this this truth is so profound that one would be tempted to thank well in that case I'll just send big to get big grace and he's like Dinanath don't do that don't do that but the core remains true and the core is all the progress you've had in the Lord although the growth you've had in Christ is not completely lost and obliterated when you fall into serious sin yes I'm not a state of grace but when I come back to the Lord you're not only restored you're elevated even further in Jesus Christ who is so generous with us that he not only restores us after we go to confession he elevates us even further than we were before so none of that growth is lost it's all regained it's all restored and even more is given back to you for that reason and a thousand other reasons none of us should ever fall into discouragement never be disheartened when it comes to our own weakness because in our weakness we need his strength and in our weakness he gives us his strength and in that he makes us not only new people it makes us like him don't be discouraged don't be disheartened don't give up for all of us here at Accenture presents my name is father Mike god bless

Channel: Ascension Presents

Views: 139,160

Keywords: how to handle spiritual setbacks, spiritual setbacks, handling setbacks, Romans 5:20, grace abounds, Fr. Mike on spiritual setbacks, confession, why confession, resisting temptation, losing it all, Fr. Mike on Ascension Presents, Ascension Catholic Fr. MIke, enthusiastic priest

Id: kz3tkCvRGm4

Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 11 2019