Fighting Against Sin

Most of the time, caring for our inner garden is more a matter of attention than of effort. The weeds of sinful and passionate thoughts can be pulled out pretty easily by merely recognizing them as sinful and turning your attention to Christ in prayer. The Jesus Prayer is probably the most common, or at least the most famous, form of prayer used by Orthodox Christians to turn their attention to Christ and away from sinful thoughts. However, sometimes the weeds get out of control. Sometimes weeds grow in the back corners of our garden where we don’t pay a lot of attention—until it is too late. Suddenly we realize that a pattern of thought that we had not looked at very carefully turns out to be harboring some pretty nasty sinful passions.