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The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast

How to Handle Spiritual Setbacks

The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast

Ascension

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture

4.97.1K Ratings

🗓️ 12 September 2019

⏱️ 9 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

After reading a book on will power, Fr. Mike discovered an important lesson when it comes to how we handle spiritual setbacks. He noticed how resisting sin is a lot like resisting a donut when on a diet. If we resist for some time but then end up giving in and eating the donut, that doesn’t mean all of our progress in the diet is lost.

In the same way, if we resist sin for some time but then give in, the grace God offers us through confession can restore us. In fact, it can restore to even higher than we were before.

“Law came in, to increase the trespass; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20).

So let’s not give up when we fall into sin, but keep our eyes on heaven and God’s grace and live accordingly.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

How many of his father-march myths and this is a sense of reasons?

0:09.8

So I was recently reading a book that had to do with like willpower and habits and all

0:13.7

these kind of things that were really fascinating to me at least.

0:16.9

But in the course of the book, they gave a couple different examples and the examples

0:23.0

were not necessarily related to willpower as much as they were related to our perception

0:27.8

of failure.

0:29.6

So as an example, here's one person studying and they have to get their work done, right?

0:34.3

So they're studying and they keep being tempted to take a break.

0:37.0

And they're like, no, no, I'm going to study for a whole hour.

0:39.5

I'm going to study for two hours.

0:41.2

And then I'll take my break.

0:42.4

And every time that temptation to take a break comes up, they resist it.

0:47.3

And then finally, it's okay.

0:49.2

The amount of time has passed and so I'll take my break.

0:53.2

And they took their break.

0:54.6

And that was like sense of like, oh, that's great because their willpower was engaged and

0:58.4

they were able to resist the temptation to take a break early and to like distract themselves.

1:02.4

They were stuck to the task.

1:04.0

Super good.

1:05.2

Other example, someone on a diet and they were trying to restrict their, you know, calories.

1:10.6

That's what a diet is.

1:12.6

Okay.

...

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