Fr. Chad Ripperger, an exorcist, says there is a sentence that breaks the back of a demon's power over you, and you do not need a priest to say it. You need about four seconds. And if you cannot get it out of your mouth, that is the most useful thing you will learn this week. Fr. Ripperger is explaining how much of this is actually within reach of an ordinary person, and he is blunt about how little it takes: Sometimes people simply stop the thing they are doing, and that is enough. Not because stopping is holy in itself, but because of what it leaves the other side with: "SOMETIMES IF PEOPLE JUST STOP THE ACTIVITY THEN WHAT YOU'LL FIND IS THAT THEN THE DEMON JUST DOESN'T HAVE ANYTHING TO ... USE AGAINST YOU" And then he gives the second thing, which costs nothing and which almost nobody has ever been told to do: "THE OTHER THING THAT ... CAN BE VERY HELPFUL IS JUST MAKING A RENUNCIATION" Out loud. By name. Naming the thing, not dancing around it: "I RENOUNCE THE DEMON OF LYING. I RENOUNCE THE DEMON OF X" Whatever your X is. The temper. The bottle. The scrolling. The self loathing you have carried since you were nineteen. Now here is the part that makes this worth reading twice, because there is a test built into it. He says people who still have something attached in that area do not simply say it and move on: "THEY'LL EITHER BE BLOCKED IN BEING ABLE TO MAKE THE RENUNCIATION OR THEY'LL FIND MAKING THE RENUNCIATION VERY DIFFICULT" Read that again. The words stick. You go to say them and something in you does not want to. You feel silly, or you put it off until tomorrow, or you say it about the small one instead of the real one. That resistance is not embarrassment. It is information. And what happens on the other side of saying it anyway: "ONCE THEY MAKE THE RENUNCIATION IT WILL BREAK THE BACK OF HIS POWER IN RELATIONSHIP TO THEM" Not the end of the fight. The end of the grip. After that, he says, it is ordinary work: you grow the opposite virtue, and eventually the thing has nowhere left to stand. He is honest that most people never get here on their own. They have to be led to it. But not everybody: "ONCE IN A GREAT WHILE, YES. I JUST SAID I'M SICK OF THIS, I DON'T WANT THIS IN MY LIFE ANYMORE" That is the whole entry requirement. Being sick of it. So tonight, out loud, in an empty room. Name it properly, the real one, not the safe one: "In the name of Jesus Christ, I renounce the demon of ___. I take back what I gave it, and I want it out of my life. Amen." If it comes out easily, good. Say it again tomorrow. And if it sticks in your throat, you have just found out exactly where to start. 👇 One word if you know which one you have been avoiding naming: RENOUNCE. And send this to somebody who has been fighting the same thing for years without ever once saying its name out loud. Credit: Father Chad Community