Be Courageous! How to Overcome Your Addiction to Sin
Overcome your bad habits and sin by claiming authority as a child of God
1. Stop cowering in fear or acceptance of your weakness as if it’s “just the way it is, I’m stuck.”
2. Name and confront your enemy with courage. In other words, stop avoiding it, stop fearing it: admit the problem, take it to Confession and make a firm amendment to stop with the help of God’s grace.
3. Make a plan and approach your new habits with tenacity. Don’t expect to overcome temptation overnight or magically without effort.
4. Claim authority over your life and your choices, as given to you through the Eucharist and regular Confession. Meditate on the Gospel this week and on Jesus’ life in general through new habits in your prayer life.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark (1:21-28)
Then they came to Capernaum, and on the sabbath Jesus entered the synagogue and taught. The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. In their synagogue was a man with an unclean spirit; he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” Jesus rebuked him and said, “Quiet! Come out of him!”
The unclean spirit convulsed him and with a loud cry came out of him. All were amazed and asked one another, “What is this? A new teaching with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.”
His fame spread everywhere throughout the whole region of Galilee.
The Gospel of the Lord
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Photo credit: Vance Osterhout / Unsplash
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