Overcoming What Overcomes You

There are so many mixed messages that circulate about sin, habits, and addiction as they pertain to a Christian’s life. Unfortunately many individuals are stuck in the thought process that a true Christ follower is free from these hang ups and never has to deal with them. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth.

Hurts, habits, and hang ups affect us all. We live in a fallen and sinful world where temptation is all around us. Having the misconception that addictions and habits don’t plague the Christ follower can make it difficult to actually face our temptations. Living in denial can bring shame and actually strengthen the hold that sin has on us.

How Should a Christian View Addiction

The word addiction brings strong mental images of people who are out of control. No one wishes to be viewed in this way, so often, we as Christians try to hide the desires that overcome us, in an effort to avoid embarrassment. That is probably the worst thing we can do. Why? First of all, hiding and denial only serve to strengthen sin. The Word of God tells us in James 5:16 to “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.” When sin is exposed, it loses its strength and its hold on us. When we try to hide and deny that it exists in our lives, that’s when we are in trouble.

Another game that we often play with ourselves is the ‘comparison’ game. Let’s say that we are struggling with an addiction to shopping or binge eating. Often we will mentally compare our situation to those around us who we foolishly perceive to be in worse shape. By doing so, we temporarily feel better about our own shortcomings, but once again, the sin we hide is the sin we strengthen.

False Ownership

One of the reasons why we tend to feel shameful about habits and hang ups is because we take ownership of them. This is exactly what the enemy wants us to do (and exactly what we should NOT do). A temptation begins as a thought that comes into our mind. It is not necessarily OUR thought, yet. The Bible tells us that we must guard our thought life by “taking every thought captive.” What does that mean? It means living in a constant state of awareness of what we are thinking and meditating upon. If a thought or temptation comes into our mind that is ungodly, guess what? It’s not our thought. We don’t have to accept it and meditate on it. We can simply reject it and move on.

When we recognize these thoughts as foreign, we have no problem talking about them to others, because we don’t associate these sinful thoughts with ‘who we are.’ When we live in isolation, not sharing or praying with others, we are much more likely to let our minds wander, fall into temptation and eventually allow the temptation to become a habit or addiction in our life.

What Kind of People Struggle With Addiction?

The kind of people that struggle with the thought patterns that lead to addictive behaviors are the people you see every day. No one is exempt; not your parent, your spouse, your pastor, no one. The bottom line here is that we all struggle with ’something.’ We may not all struggle with the SAME thing but guess what? It’s all judged the same in God’s eyes. Temptation and sin are our enemies and the best thing we can do are to expose them and get rid of them so they don’t lead to sin and addiction.

What is addiction exactly? It is the act of ‘occupying oneself with or involving oneself in something habitually or compulsively.’ An unnatural obsession can be with ‘anything.’ We can become addicted to sports, work, mind altering substances, food, tobacco, video games, the internet, certain people, over-achieving…anything. The Bible tells us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our might. If we believe this, then we can conclude that an addiction to anything or anyone other than God will eventually harm us.

God alone is worthy of our complete focus, attention, love, and worship. Addicted to Jesus? Now that’s a concept.

If this blog post has helped you deal with any personal issues, or if you have any thoughts on addiction in the Christian life, please leave a comment…we would love to hear from you. Our purpose is to help you build a solid foundation and to draw closer to God in your daily life.