There is an old saying that nothing in this life comes for free, but this is particularly true of everything that the demons would tempt us with. Every pleasure, every promise made to us by the demons comes with a hidden price, and not just a hidden price, but the greatest price of all: spiritual death.

As Saint Paul says in his letter to the Romans, 'The wages of sin is death.' The demons have been practicing and perfecting the art of deception for thousands of years. Their skills in deception are extraordinarily developed; they look for our weaknesses and exploit them,

not just weaknesses of behavior and action, but especially weaknesses of thought. [Music] Now we only have a short time on this Earth, and so we must look to the Church Fathers and the Saints of the Church who have been victorious in this struggle

over evil thoughts. What do they teach us? What do they share with us from their experience of victory? We need it more than ever because we know that mental ill health has reached a level never seen before in the world, especially amongst young people.

Young people are growing up with the unreality of a digital world; young people are being taught in schools and through the media that evil is good and good is evil.  To the degree that if I named those evils, this video would be removed. Evil and its prompting of thought are rife;

it is everywhere; we are surrounded by it to a new degree. Voices through the radio, on the television, music constantly bombarding us with deception. So, what do the Church Fathers teach us? What do the Holy Saints tell us is the road to victory over evil?

Thoughts? Well, of course, not surprisingly, the first stage is prayer, but not just general prayer. The Church Fathers talk about the humility of prayer. Victory over evil thoughts has a foundation in standing before God and acknowledging our weakness. The Church Fathers tell us that the

demons are powerless against one who is shielded by the strength of God, and that we can only truly be shielded in this way by God, by His strength, when we practice humility. Only when we admit our weakness before Him, acknowledge that we cannot be victorious

without His grace, that we are truly powerless without Him, that we are utterly dependent on His strength, which is infinite. And, of course, so often Christ commands us to love, to forgive; it is the central teaching of our Christian faith. But the Church Fathers also tell us—they

warn us—yes, we must love each other and we must love God, but we must hate, we must learn to hate sin and the author of sin ultimately, which is Satan. We must hate Satan, learn to despise Satan, as he is the enemy of Christ; he is also our enemy.

He would not only deceive us, but he would drag us to hell with him on Judgment Day. He hates us; he works against us, works against our salvation. And if we allow him to lead us just a little to the left or right, we may be lost.

Hate sin, hate Satan, despise everything that he offers to us: the world, the flesh, the devil. Reject all the daughters of Babylon. Of course, 'daughters of Babylon' are evil thoughts, and we must

Crush them on the rocks in their infancy, before they grow strong, before they take root in our hearts and minds, affecting our souls. We must, of course, to do this become watchful; watchful of every movement, every thought, every feeling that we allow to grow within us.

Let's guard ourselves, learning to recognize evil thoughts when they first appear, when they are first tempting and prompting us, while they are still in their infancy. And when we fall, when we sin, look back; recognize the thoughts that led to that fall, recognize where they began, recognize

them as the infants that must be crushed before they get so deeply rooted in us they become passions. We must drive these evil thoughts away, but the Church Fathers tell us that it isn't enough to drive evil thoughts away from our minds; the empty mind will simply be filled

again. The demons will return and fill the mind with yet more evil thoughts. So we must drive them away, but we must replace them with virtue; fill the mind with light, with prayer, with verses from the scriptures, with the lives of the Saints,

[Music] with thoughts of death and our own mortality, with gratitude to God for all that He gives us. Fill our minds with these good things so that evil has no place. The light will illuminate the corners of our hearts and minds, and so there will be no room for the

shadows, the darkness. When we're bombarded, and as so often we are, with evil thoughts, we must remember the choirs of angels—the choirs of angels—that are with us, the Saints and the angels that pray for us, the army that fights with us, which

is so much greater than the army of our enemy. We must never despair, however. Alone, the demons will trick us or convince us into feeling we are never alone. When we struggle for Christ, we struggle with the greatest army ever created: God's army of angels and saints.

And, of course, when we cry out to her, the Holy Theotokos protects us, nurtures us, surrounds us with her motherly love. We have to cry out to them all, pray for us. And though we refuse evil thoughts, we shouldn't engage and allow ourselves

to be troubled by them. We should reject them without becoming distressed or disturbed by their presence. Who amongst us should be surprised that we think evil things at times? Aren't we sinners? Is it so shocking to discover that we're sinners?

Yes, we're sinners, and these things will come. The devil will find a way to sow evil thoughts, but, same peace, my sisters, we must flick them away like unwanted flies; not to struggle and become distressed or despair. [Music] Push them aside.

Tell Satan to get behind us! Don't engage and become troubled. See them for what they are; brush them away. They can have no power over us if we don't engage with them; we don't begin to wrestle and allow them to enter us.

Refuse them. And to do all of this, of course, we must remain in God. We must stay alert to our thoughts, to our feelings, and we must do this because we know that God sees and God will judge to the very depths of the most secret part of the soul.

COMBATING EVIL THOUGHTS

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