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What was your weak point that he got in and attacked you on? I mean, a lot of my sins came from a mother wound. So a lot of my action, serial relationships and things like that were a result of me attempting to find love, what I thought love was, which was not.

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actually what love was because I didn't have a proper understanding of trying to fill the void. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. I didn't know this was a fight. That's why you're losing. Today we are beginning either to domesticate the devil or else to deny him. He is most powerful when he is denied. Welcome to the devil's in the details. The devil may be in the details, but God is on the throne.

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Amen. Today we are covering rule 14 of spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits. And it was, it's funny. I'm reading, I was kind of reading this before we started and we might get to it. The paragraph on the second page of the chapter is really, really good. So I do want to read that for everyone because they haven't read it. But before we get there, before I jump ahead, let's talk about rule 14. Yeah. So this is the last rule of the first rules there. And if,

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We hadn't told you. I think we had. There are two sets of rules. And you really can't practice the second set until you've lived the first for a while. Maybe it's just too confusing. So we're finishing this. We'll see where we go from here. I am wanting to write a book on the second rules called Spiritual Warfare and Deeper Discernment. I have started it.

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but I'm, you know, as usual, I've got two or three books started in two or three books. No, so I get that habit from you then. Cause that's the same way. Okay. Well, I'm under, what I have to be careful when I sign a contract because I have to be like, okay, yeah, I'm doing this just finished though. Spiritual warfare. I mean, turned in to an editor, spiritual warfare and sermon spirits for the young at heart, young of mine at heart. Uh,

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that's aimed at like high, late high school to college. So for those listening, you heard it here first, there was going to be a new version. Yeah. This year, thankfully later in the year. So we'll, we'll let folks know if they, if they want to get in actually,

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I don't know. Do you have like an email for this show where people can send in if they want to? Questions at my Avalon. But I mean, if you if folks are excited about that book. Yeah. Just sign up for the emails at spiritualdirection.com. Well, it all goes through there. True. But what I was thinking is, is I don't know how much overlap there is on the audience. The I can just make this offer now. And I don't know when this show airs. But yeah.

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If you're watching this and you have been really helped by it as an adult and you have young adults or, you know, high school age, upper end of high school, and you want to be a part of the launch team. What that means is you'll get an early PDF copy of the book. You'll get named in the book. And what we ask is you become a part of the prayer team.

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once the book's available on Amazon, you buy one from Amazon and then you write a review. And the reason buy one is, one, you're incented to give it away. You can buy one from Sophia if you want to, but then there's multiple copies. Give it away. Give one or two away. And then when you write the review, it's a verified review because they get kind of picked. Well, I mean, obvious for good reason. They get picky about those. They don't want people spamming.

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So if you want to be a part of that, questions at myavala.com. And you need to put in the subject line, spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits for the young. Just do that. Launch team. Spiritual warfare and the discernment of spirits. Young. Launch team. If you want to shorten it, S-W-A-D-O-S. Young. Swados. Young. Launch team. Yeah. Okay. That's probably an easier way to do it. All right. Well, there's your offer there.

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All right. Rule 14. Yeah. Likewise, he conducts himself as a leader intent upon conquering and robbing what he desires. For just as a captain and a leader of an army in the field, pitching his camp and exploring the fortifications and defenses of a stronghold, attacks it at its weakest point. In the same way, the enemy of human nature roving about looks in turn at all our theological, cardinal and moral virtues and where he finds us weakest and most in need for eternal salvation.

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There he attacks us and attempts to take us. So it's a pretty simple idea. I remember when I was in Israel for the first time, which was a long time ago, I went to Masada and it's this huge, it's this huge place.

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I don't know what you call it, pillar of rock in the middle of the desert. And King Herod built a palace on it and there's a cistern. So they don't get much water, but they built this big,

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way of capturing the water and it, but it's, I don't know if it's, uh, didn't we go out there on when I went on this? You did not go to Masada. You never saw Masada. But when you look down from Masada, you can see the, the Romans were, uh, had an encampment. The remains of the encampment are still there. And obviously this is more than a thousand years old.

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And why they were camped down there is they were going after the Jews who were rebelling and who were hiding out in Masada. And because of the, you know, how treacherous it is, because it is, you know, I don't know, I'm assuming thousands of feet. It's spooky, I will tell you, as someone who's not all that afraid of heights to be up there. And so it's a very difficult thing to assault because it doesn't have any...

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any, uh, you know, it's just cliffs and you can, I mean, you can literally throw rocks at people, you know, and knock them off the, the narrow trails on and whatever arrows and whatever people had. And so they camped there in order to figure out a way to assault this impossible to assault, uh, structure. The way they figured out to do it was there was, uh,

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Another hill kind of separate from it with a cliff. And they just started to fill in the dirt and they filled in the dirt. They filled in the dirt and they assaulted it. And when they got in, all the Jews had committed suicide because they didn't want to be taken by the. That's crazy. I didn't. I don't. I feel like I've heard that story before, but.

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it's a little insane to consider the Romans, you know, it reminded me of the, when we built the Island here at the retreat center and Kyle's driving a thousand truckloads of dirt, but they didn't have dump trucks back by hand and they're filling up between these two mountains.

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Right. No, it's crazy. And the Jews watching it the whole time thinking, this is coming. Right. Well, and of course, they could have also waited them out. They could have waited them out because they had water, but they didn't have continuous supplies of food. But they're just brutal, right? So there's still some remains of the wild, you know, the way they got up there. But the thing, this just reminds me of the devil...

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So he camps out, in essence, and he's just constantly watching and trying to figure out, okay, I can't get up this way, can't get up that way. If I get up this way, okay, there's three ways up. This one is the most treacherous, not doing that. They'll see us coming. This one, you know, just that kind of scheming is why I never forgot in connection with Rule 14. But, you know, and of course this echoes what

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saint peter said you know devil prowls about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour so what does it look like in a practical sense and i was thinking about going back to your story maybe i can even talk about some of my own you know issues but you know you were baptized you you converted to call it catholicism do you mind or do you know are you aware of of answering the question

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Where did he, what was your weak point that he got in and attacked you on? That's a really good question. I mean, a lot of my sins came from a mother wound.

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So a lot of my action, serial relationships and things like that were a result of me attempting to find love, what I thought love was, which was not actually what love was because I didn't have a proper understanding of it.

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Trying to fill the void. Right. Now, Stephanie is your stepmom. Yeah. You call her your mom. Right, right. But you're talking about biological mom. Yeah. Yeah. Situation. Because of the wounds that were done then. Because obviously I can, if I were, I mean.

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A lot of the timeline is still kind of foggy at certain points. But if I recall correctly, y'all ended up getting custody of me and I converted later. Is that right? Yeah, because you ended up in a police station and then we found out that she didn't have you in school.

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And by the way, her name has changed and all this. And we don't despair at all. She suffered a lot in her life. You have to recognize what was done so that you can understand why certain behaviors persisted and existed. That's why I've been going to therapy for as long as I have. Multiple different times, multiple different therapists. Thank you, Rockstar One right now. Super faithful.

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Yeah. So I think that that was probably one of the primary means of the enemy kind of getting in. Yeah. It's just, and I think that, you know, to back up, I think that's true for a lot of people. I think, you know, there's the outright sin that we commit, whether, you know, it's pride, gluttony, lust, name it. These tendencies that we have.

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As well as, you know, these wounds, you know, everyone's wounded. Everyone who's listening, you're wounded in one way or another. You know, it may be as we kind of we're trying to figure out language. I've noticed that we do this here at the retreat center where we talk about these things because a lot of these languages have been co-opted by kind of bad actors in the psychological space.

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So I like using little T trauma and big T trauma. Yeah. So everyone, you may have little T trauma and you may have big T trauma, but there's, that is if, if not treated, meaning if not given to God and work through with God for whatever reason, God, God,

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permitted that to happen then that's going to be an open doorway for the enemy in one way or another and whether you view the world or how you interact with stuff so all that to say i think my big t trauma uh was a major opening yeah so and so yeah because we got custody of you and then of

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When we were, when the whole family was together with your mom, we were going to Protestant churches. And you went through this process of you and I having these conversations. And you're like, I don't get this. I don't get that. Yeah. Well, we were Anglican at one point. Yes. Yeah. I was an Anglican seminarian. But then you decided to convert. I don't know if you did it for me or for you. No, it was. Well, when I tell my story, this is part of it. It made at that time still does.

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but the primary cause for my conversion was purely intellectual. It made sense to you. Yeah. When you explained apostolic succession and I was looking at that stuff, I was like, how does anyone not, this is like, this is all I need to know. Right. Yeah. Good. That's good. But it was, you know, and we've talked about this before, the head, heart languages or knowledge is different. So, but it was, that's why, but as you were converting, so we kind of found this out retrospectively,

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We had a great guy named Robert who's an Air Force guy who helped. My sponsor. Your sponsor, a super smart guy. He helped you through stuff. But as you were converting, you were either sexually active or overly physically active.

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Yeah. I don't remember at the time. I mean, probably. Yeah. I don't remember specifically. And it's interesting because I, you know, I've, I've talked about this before and I've thought about it and I think that, I mean, Robert was awesome. And I think it's just an unfortunate either. I think it comes down to two things. Either my sin was so attached or deep and,

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that if they talked about those things, I just didn't hear it, which is possible. Or they just didn't talk about those things. Yeah, when I wasn't in the classes with you. But we did do some theology of the body work at home. Regardless, in the end, what wrecked your marriage in big part was... Well, I don't want to say it. I mean, you've been public about it. So you describe what... It was impropriety. I mean, I never...

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uh, they, there was an emotional affairs. Yeah. Okay. So you never had a sexual one, but, but you went to a treatment center for sexual addiction. Why was that? What was the, I, well, I hit rock bottom. Are you asking what the center was or what the cause was? Well, I'm asking, I'm just trying to hone down on this issue and how you got taken out. So I, you know what, actually we don't have to go there. Here's the bottom line. What got you,

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was that you were you know you had other virtues yeah yeah i you you were a good son and you know up to that point given what you had to deal with right you know your mom was i don't know how you would describe your relationship with your mom but i think you've been open that it did a lot of damage to you um for various reasons so um

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the issue you had was an open door on the sexual side, sexual slash relational. Yeah. Interestingly enough, it was primarily relational, but the self-inebriation was sexual. I got you. Does that make sense? Okay, you just nailed it for me. But in the end, then you had a serious relationship and a marriage, but that started out with it was...

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the enemy had an entree into your heart because you weren't fully converted. You were just kind of, you were culture. Well, you're better than cultural Catholic, but not much better. Is that fair? Yeah, I think you're being generous. I mean, I'm pretty harsh on my past self because. Yeah, but I remember if I could argue with you. Sure. And I'm sorry to cut you off, but I already did. So is, you know, like you, you would, I would, you would, we would be together at one point and you'd say I had a really bad day.

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And you wanted to go to church. Yeah. No, there was always a, man, it's making me emotional thinking about it. There's always a draw on my heart, which I think was a grace and a blessing.

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Cause I don't want to credit it to myself. Cause I was such a wreck in so many ways and offending God so deeply in so many ways. And yet he was always there, you know, no, come to me. Right. I felt it, you know, cause it's like, yeah, I had a bad day. I want to go to church. I'm just going to sit in church. Yeah. And I remember you even sitting and weeping and we didn't know what was going on.

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But I was grateful that you wanted to go there to deal with your darkness. Yeah. So you had better than a cultural Catholic sense, but you had this big, huge open door. We've probably used it on this show before, if I've overdone it, I apologize, but maybe you haven't heard it, is we used to live in Bessemer, Alabama, which has the, it's always in the top 10 list for the violent crimes and under 100,000 populations.

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And having habitual sin like you had is like living in Bessemer, Alabama with no front door and nice things all in the house for everybody to see, which you're just going to get pillaged. And you got pillaged. The enemy said, hey, here's this girl for you. And he knew, and we don't need to obviously despair and none of that, but

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that a very wounded person, otherwise it wouldn't have been attracted to you anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Very wounded person. And then you, then you joined your woundedness together and it was a disaster. So that's just like the worst example. Okay. Now, so that was years ago. Now let's bring it to today.

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And I think about if I, if I was on and I've thought about this before the show, so I don't even know if I could come up with, you know, like what, where do I have to be careful? I think, you know, I have to be careful in a couple of places. One is,

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efficiency with those that are closest to me. And, and so the closer a person is to me, so I mean, particularly Jordan, Stephanie, the more I, I grew up this way, the more utilitarian I can be. And it's just not good.

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Yeah, it's funny. I was explaining this to somebody recently because they kind of had a question and...

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an experience. They didn't really know how to take it. And I had to say, you got to understand, you know, and I'm not saying this is a good thing. I'm not saying it's an excuse. You know, we, we cut the Burks kind of assume that if you're in the inner circle, then you know that we love you and we don't have to say it all the time. Right. Right. It's like, I'm not saying that's a good thing. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. Yeah. That's just how this works. Yeah. I mean, my dad, my dad didn't tell me he loved me until,

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my middle brother who was sort of like the prodigy of the family attempted suicide, you know? So, and that was pretty late in the game. And he was pretty shook up by, because everyone thought this kid's going to be the golden boy, the middle one. I won't say his name. And, uh, and so that, yeah. So I never heard that from my dad though. Though he's a good man, God rest his soul died as a Catholic. He converted before he died. But so that efficiency is one of my weaknesses.

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And I have to be very careful, which is a task orientation. I think the other area is physiological issues. So, you know, as we sit here, I'm suffering. And I'm better than I've ever been in my life. I am stronger. I'm, you know, I work out Monday through Saturday, pretty much. And this morning, worked very hard on the treadmill.

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And very hard in weightlifting, you know, both did personal records in a bunch of categories and weightlifting, but I don't feel good. Yeah. And so, but even before this show, I have to be super disciplined. Like I have to be very ordered about all the things I have on my plate and it has to be just dead clear. This is the next thing. Otherwise I go into a fog. Yeah.

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and then I can go, okay, I'm just going to watch a YouTube video or something like that, which is funny because I'm purchasing the latest Lite phone, and it has a little more capability than the previous version, and I am dead serious about getting off of the smartphone except in very specific instances. Even though I have all my notifications turned off,

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um it is still just too much of a draw to kind of you you get in this fog where i'm not feeling great and in it and then it's like okay i'm gonna look i'm gonna watch now what do i watch catholic stuff yeah you don't do porn i don't do anything like that but those are my things that the enemy knows he can get me to waste a bunch of time or get distracted on things that are not primary to my mission um

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And he can do harm to relationships. So, by the way, both are in my rule of life. So I know they're there, and I have specific things I'm doing against them, both for Lent and just normal in my life. What do you think your things the enemy can push on? I mean, it's not like we're revealing anything he doesn't already know, by the way. Well, it's interesting. When it switched from pornography and all of that nonsense—

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I remember when it happened and the switch and I was like, Whoa, I'm dealing with anger.

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I have an anger issue. I'm not lashing out at anybody. It's not like I'm necessarily quick to anger unless it comes to electronics and then I'm very quick to anger. But you have an irritability thing. But I do. But it was interesting at that time. I don't know where you got that, by the way. It was interesting at that time when I noticed the switch and thinking, oh, this is new. This is something new.

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And thankfully now it is just an irritability thing. I don't, I don't tend to get, um, very angry anymore. And even if I do, it's purely internal and I've never lashed out. I've never had that issue. I've never had that side of anger. Um,

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But if I do get towards that, you know, on a scale of one to one to 10, if I'm at like a six, I don't think I've ever gotten higher than that. And I'm analyzing now, as I say, to make sure that that's true. You did as a cop. Oh, sure. Yeah. Different, different context. Yeah. But now, even if I get up to like a six, which I don't think I've ever gotten higher than that, it is purely internal and it's not controlling me. It's it. I immediately go into analyzing mode, which is.

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What's going on? Why do I feel this way? Is this rational? Let me talk to somebody. They can tell me if I'm crazy. You know, I need to, how do I need to correct this?

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And then most of the time it's just me being mad that I'm mad, you know, which is the bitter irony of that situation. I'm just frustrated that I'm frustrated over something silly. And I have to remind myself, especially recently remind myself, okay, God's, I think you said it and it struck me and I know it because I, I recommended the book, but God's permitting this. And if I get mad, then I'm mad at God. Right. Right. Right.

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So, yeah, so that's, but that's still my biggest thing, I think, is, is just dealing with that irritability. And it's, and it's not, you know, and to be totally fair to myself, because we are our own worst enemies and beat ourselves up worse than anyone on the planet ever could. It's all rational. You know, it's what do I have to do for the foundation? At the same time, how do I juggle these contractors and these things that have to be done for the retreat center? Yeah.

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At the same time, how do I maintain personal relationships? At the same time, how do I do all this? So it's all rational good stuff. And okay, this happened, so now I'm delayed on this project by who knows how long, or so-and-so won't call me back. How do we get this thing fixed? Oh, a pipe burst. Can we get in touch with somebody? You know what I mean? So I offer that for people because I think that a lot of folks

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take anger and it's just, oh, it's bad. And I think it is good to reckon. Oh, I know it's good to recognize sometimes. No, anger is a recognition of an injustice of some sort. That's an indicator. Yeah. And it's okay. You just can't let it control you. Yeah. Well, and I will say a lot of people did talk about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I was asking, is there any place in the Bible where the person is filled with the Holy Spirit and they're angry? Are you aware, by the way?

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You know, I'm going to go out on a limb. If I'm wrong, people can laugh at me in the comments. I could have sworn there's at least two cases. There's only one that I'm aware. Okay, one. Old Testament. Yeah. I don't remember what it is. It's Saul, King Saul and the prophet. And, yeah. So, yeah, it says he was filled with the Holy Spirit and he was angry. It may have been...

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I don't know if when Isaiah was dealing with the prophets of Baal. Oh, Elijah. Elijah and the prophets of Baal. I don't know if there was any energy there, but anyway. I love his taunting. I don't know if he was angry because he had some really funny taunts the entire time. Right, right.

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So in Scripture, of course, the New Testament says, be angry and do not sin, which presumes the reality, presumes that it's possibly to be angry to sin and angry not to sin. And my favorite definition of anger is the God-given energy to do the right thing. Yeah, it's like I said, recognition of injustice. Yeah. So the reason I'm just processing through this in front of the world and admitting things is...

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that this is how the devil works is that he, he already knows these things about you and me. And, and, and he's constantly watching and trying to find opportunities to exploit these areas, which is why I'm working so hard on the opposite virtues in my rule of life or my plan of love, which I do an examination against every day.

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Am I joyful, gentle, you know, that sort of thing? Well, it's people need to know it's a commonly held belief. This isn't a dogma. This isn't you'd be you'd find it hard to even find it written down in most places unless you have a library like ours where we have text that's has been out of print for who knows how long.

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But it's a commonly held belief that just as we are given a guardian angel at the moment of conception, that the enemy basically assigns a demon to you at the moment of your conception. And what does that imply? There's a demon. Yeah.

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That is following you knows you from the moment that you were born knows everything about you. They're far more intelligent than we are. And they use that, you know, they know every single weakness. That's why I love it. I mean, I can just read it now. That paragraph that you have in here.

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The enemy pitches his camp to prepare for his assault on you. He watches you day and night without rest, for he needs no rest. He learns your sins, your weaknesses, your proclivities, and your inclinations. With respect to the structure of the fortress around your soul and the gates of the entry, these are the virtues or lack thereof in your life.

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He sends out scout demons to test every gate. They push on them to see if they're strong or weak. They're weak. The demons take note. Then they go back and make an assessment with the lead demon. They determine your weakest gate. Prepare for an assault when you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired, bored, I would add. But it goes back to the Council of Trent, what we read in, I think, the introduction episode when we started this thing. You know, they are relentless. The war with them is endless. Right.

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And if you're not taking it seriously and if you're not recognizing that there is someone who is assigned to me to make sure that I fall, that is their job to do that. And they are really good at it. You have no excuse to not.

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you know, work as hard as you can to, to counteract it and to give yourself grace when things mess up, because that's still a grace from God and an opportunity to learn so you can improve and gain virtue. But there has to be a, an active measure in place. So let's wrap the series up with like antidotes, the most important antidotes.

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So one, you got to have self-knowledge, and that's just you can't snap your finger. And you can't go to a psychologist to get that. They can help, but you have to have it at a foundational level. So I strongly recommend you get my book, Navigating the Interior Life, that gives you a beginner's guide to a self-assessment on root sins according to the Joannine tripartite pillars of sin.

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It's it's it's not it's an entry level. You know, it's it's pride, vanity and sensuality. And it comes from the epistles of John. Now, the church later developed the seven deadly sins, if you will.

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And, um, but you, if you've never done it before, you're going to have enough trouble just with the three. So start with the three with navigating the interior life. There's a whole section that helps you to process through that later. Go to Kevin Vost's book. So seven deadly sins. Yeah. And it, and then, you know, probably minimum of a year after you tried from navigating the interior life and you start battling, give yourself a year. You won't.

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Kevin's book is very good, but it'll be overwhelming, you know, for those who have never done this work. So that daily mental prayer, if you're not spending time with Jesus, not give me prayer, not fix this, give me that. It's the kind of prayer that is the illustration used by the saints and doctors are. It's prayer that is best mirrored by the holy marital embrace of husband and wife.

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Because when you're with your wife, when I'm with my wife or you're whoever, you're not like checking off to do lists. You're not doing anything but focused on loving your spouse. So that's mental prayer. I wrote a book called Into the Deep. I'll be up behind Jordan. Into the Deep teaches you how to do that. There's a film series.

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There's a film series on Into the Deep that's free, spiritualdirection.com forward slash pray, I think. Pray or prayer, one of the two. There's a film series on this book that shows it's a retreat context. Stephanie was part of that. She did a great job on the rule seven renunciations to kind of get this into a small group.

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Um, so daily examine, I was going to say against your roots in and your new strategy to overcome that daily mental prayer, um,

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And I think those are the, of course, sound sacramental participation. You got to be going to the Eucharist or Eucharist as frequently as possible, especially if you struggle with habitual mortal sin. Confession as frequently as possible. What did I say? Eucharist. Both. Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah. I mean, if you're, if you have mortal sin, habitual mortal sin, you need to go as often as you need to go. And it's, you know, as often as it happens in order to get past that. Otherwise you're just, you know,

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If you're not availing yourself of the sacraments, like I said, you have no front door in downtown Bessemer. And you're going to get plundered and pillaged. So daily mental prayer, examine, understanding your root sin, regular sacramental participation. That's the beginning of your journey. If you are wanting more help, I would say I have to have community. I think we're wired for community.

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We live in community here. God be praised. Can I say something on that? Yeah. So, you know, one of our coworkers just a couple days ago crashed and flipped his car, rolled his car, car caught on fire. He's fine. Praise be to God.

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And it just so happened that I had canceled a trip to another filming that we heard. You were supposed to be with me in PA. And it was really evident why, because I helped him. You were the one. Yeah. You took care of him. Got him to the hospital, you know, got him home.

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We live in a rural area. People are wondering, well, why wasn't it an ambulance? Yeah. Because we live. And the fire department did come check him out. I used to be a cop. I'm not an idiot. I know. Yeah. Yeah. I know how to do that stuff. I've been traveling around the past couple of days because his mom was out of town as well. Yeah. She was with me in the filming. Anyway, point is, in the midst of all of that, I kept thinking.

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man, I don't know how people live on their own. I don't, I cannot fathom. He would have been stuck. Yeah. He would have been completely stuck, you know? And it's what a blessing that we have community in that way. Now that's a very tangible physical way, but what you're talking about is also. Spiritual. Yeah. No, I was talking with Father Boniface X this weekend and we did a two-part film series on devotional journey into the mass, Chris Carson's great book that we,

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Commission and Father Boniface, The Hidden Power of Silence in the Mass. We did two film series on that. I was talking with Father Boniface, and I said, I don't have enough motivation to care for myself. And so I think everybody needs to be in community, by the way. But my reason is that my love for others and helping them to the Lord, and I know that there's some defect in this,

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is more motivating than self-care. That makes sense. And so why do I write the books that I write, you know, to help others? Cause I don't like to write. Yeah. You know, there are certain things about what we do that I like this. I like a lot, you know, but, um, anyway, community is super important. And if you are not part of a Catholic, faithful Catholic community, I don't mean a club, you know, there are, there's a difference between a club and what we call a charism.

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So, you know, and this can happen in any spirituality in the church where you get a bunch of lay people around and to feel good about themselves. There's no high bar. There's no requirements. They just read the spirituality and kind of pat each other on the back. I guess that's good. I'm not interested in that kind of shallow stuff. What I need is accountability. I need people watching me all the time, you know, and just knowing that I need encouragement.

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I need to give encouragement. I need, you know, a lot of this sort of thing. So if you're not a part of a community or you're a part of what you think might be a club instead of a charism, check out apostoleva.org, A-P-O-S-T-O-L-I-V-I-A-E dot O-R-G, apostoleva.org.

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about 4,000 members worldwide. We have priests, religious, and lady. I think we have like 27 priests or something in that. And literally worldwide. Yeah, it is. In Portland, Australia. Yeah, Croatia. Croatia, yeah. Japan, yeah. So no matter where you are. But anyway, I pray this series was a blessing to you.

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Pick up the book if you haven't yet. There's also some insights in the back of the book that basically summarize what's next, which we were telling you what's next. And we pray that you find the freedom the Lord died to give you. And the show is, just in case that sounds like a series finale,

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I guess it technically is a series finale, but the podcast will continue. Yeah, that's right. So if you have any questions about any of this, feel free to send it in. We did get some great feedback from a Protestant who listens to the show who was finding it super helpful, which is really encouraging. Questions at MyAvila, right? I wish I could remember the name of that. Shout them out. Until next time, Romans 1620, the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you. Amen. Amen.
