A man and his wife are awakened at 3 o'clock in the morning by a loud pounding on the back door. The man gets up and goes to the door where a drunken stranger, standing in the pouring rain, is asking for a push.
"Not a chance," says the husband, "It is three o'clock in the morning." He slams the door and returns to bed.
"Who was that?" asked his wife. "Just some drunk guy asking for a push," he answers.
"Did you help him?" she asks. "No. I did not. It is three o'clock in the morning and it is pouring rain outside!"
His wife said, "Don't you remember about three months ago when we broke down and those two guys helped us? I think you should help him, and you should be ashamed of yourself!"
The man does as he is told, gets dressed and goes out into the pouring rain. He calls out into the dark, "Hello. Are you still there?"
"Yes," comes back the answer.
"Do you still need a push?" calls out the husband.
"Yes! Please!" comes the reply from the darkness.
"Where are you?" asks the husband.
"Over here on the swing!!" replies the drunk.
Now we can joke about this stuff because a lot of funny things happen as a result of abusing alcohol and other things, but the reality is that addiction is a very serious and costly thing in our world.
Alcohol abuse is the main cause of accidental death, the main cause of domestic violence, the main avenue for trying other drugs, and is almost always involved in unwanted pregnancy and sexual promiscuity. People make a big fuss about all the illicit drugs out there, but it is the legal one, alcohol, that causes more trouble than all the others put together.
In the Bible drunkenness always seems to be associated with debauchery and sinful behaviour. They did not have the many drugs we have today, but it would certainly apply to them as well. Jesus said blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
I am convinced that using substances to alter oneself opens us up to negative spirits as well. It seems like it somehow opens a natural protective gate that God has put there. As we try to fill the hole that God is supposed to fill, we open it up to other spirits that are demonic.
What about all the other things people get addicted to: gambling, sex, work, technology, sports, TV, food. What is underlying all this? None of these things are bad in and of themselves, they’re not illegal, they don’t necessarily destroy your life, but they still keep us from dealing with the true void in our lives. It’s our nature that makes all this stuff cause trouble.
These things give us either good feelings or escape from uncomfortable feelings, and as they show their effectiveness early on, we seem to need more of them so that the uncomfortable stuff never gets a chance to come to our awareness. Many people will say, “I just do these things for fun”, “I can stop if I wanted to”.
The second statement may be true, but if they do stop, guaranteed they will experience the root of their problem which we’ll discuss a little later. They are denying the real problem, and don’t want to stop because it would mean facing the real problem.
There comes a time though when we have to make a choice between these dependencies and something else, whether it be our life, our job, our family, our health, our financial well-being, or God.
All of these things when used too much are a replacement for God, and the reason none of them provide lasting joy and a satisfying life in the long-term is because nothing can replace God.
But there is one such addiction that plagues Christians perhaps more than many others, and that is busyness. It’s true we’re not to be lazy or slothful, but we tend to have a habit of just filling our time with activities that have little eternal value, that keep us from experiencing the discomfort inside us.
I know many people who have a very hard time being quiet, doing nothing. These are the times when we can commune not only with ourselves, but also with God. These are often times that God is calling us. How many of you get very restless when you’re just sitting quietly, not reading, not listening to music, not saying a specific prayer that as soon as it’s over you get on to doing something else. Just being in the presence of yourself and God?
We must learn to persevere through the discomfort of doing nothing because that is when the truth about ourselves is revealed, and yes we may not always like what we see, but we need to see it just the same. We not only need a relationship with God, but we need an honest, open relationship with ourselves. Having inner conversations about important things in the presence of God are very valuable.
Pascal, the French philosopher and inventor, wrote: "All the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber."
And when we refuse to spend quiet time with ourselves, we are in essence saying we don’t want a relationship with that person. We will do anything to avoid spending time with that person. God says in Jeremiah 17 that the human heart is a wicked and deceitful thing, and He searches hearts and examines secret motives.
An unexamined heart is a dangerous thing. It’s during these quiet times with ourselves that God gives us the results of the examination. In Lamentations 3 it says, “let us test and examine our ways. Let us turn back to the Lord”. We spend quiet time before taking communion because we are told by Paul to examine ourselves before we eat the bread and drink the cup.
William Wilberforce was once almost consumed by the prospect political fame and he attributes his not succumbing to it to his discipline of spending quiet reflective every Sunday and every morning. He called these times sweeping out the heart. He said of his morning time, "In the calmness of the morning before the mind is heated and weary by the turmoil of the day, you have a season of unusual importance for communing with God and with yourself."
These sins and addictions are also all forms of idolatry. These things become not only more important than God, but also more important than the really meaningful things in life. They are the most severe form of instant self-gratification, and choosing our will over God’s, and other people’s godly wisdom. We may not admit they are more important than these other things, but our behaviour shows that they are.
• Use the story of Rebekah (heroin) because of the pressure she felt from her mother to succeed. Wanted to be a doctor.
How do we overcome these dependencies?
There are a few basics, stopping is a good place to start, building accountability into our lives, discovering the root problems and personality flaws that exist even when abstaining from these things, surrendering our will and seeking not to gratify the flesh.
I can’t tell you how many sober addicts I have worked with, where they are truly not active in their addiction, but they are still the same people. Nothing has changed other than the fact they are not using anymore. And when this is the case relapse is imminent. For some it takes a few weeks, for others it can take several years. We call this dry drunk syndrome, because the addiction is just a symptom of something deeper.
You may have heard about the 12 Step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous. These programs have been successful over the years because if they are done the way they are supposed to be, they address the most important underlying issues.
• Step 1 - We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable
• Step 2 - Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
• Step 3 - Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God
• Step 4 - Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
• Step 5 - Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
• Step 6 - Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
• Step 7 - Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings
• Step 8 - Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all
• Step 9 - Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
• Step 10 - Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it
• Step 11 - Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out
• Step 12 - Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs
These twelve steps parallel the becoming and maturing of a Christian, 1) Admit our helplessness over sin and depend on God to save us by choosing His will over our own; 2) Confess, ask for forgiveness, repent, and ask God to cleanse us from our sin; 3) Seek to increase our knowledge and deepen our relationship to God through prayer and meditation on His word so we can have knowledge of His will and the power to carry it out through the Holy Spirit; and 4) Having had a spiritual awakening, try to practice all these things and carry the message to others.
Basically the 12 steps in their original form were to become real Christians, applying it to our addictions. Die to self and be taken over by God. Unfortunately many people just go to the meetings, and this provides some accountability, and lets them feel like they are not the only ones with a problem. But often these meetings become just another addiction. The program only really works if they work the steps.
God doesn’t give us specific instructions for dealing with many problems in life, but He gives us the general instructions on how to deal with everything in life. Renewal of the mind for instance is absolutely necessary when dealing with dependency on something. Romans 12:2 (read) is a very important verse with regards to addiction, and Titus 3:5 also speaks of the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.
Whether or not we partake in sin, or our addiction is always a choice that begins in the mind. Denial and justification are the keys to continuing. Satan is the great deceiver and if you want a reason to continue in your sin, he will give you very good ones that sound very reasonable to our minds, but are opposed to God’s mind.
Any addiction or dependency is sin, there are none that are really any worse or better than the other. Some just bring the destruction on quicker than others. They are all taking us away from God and keep us from dealing with the emotional distress that he wants to heal us from in this life.
I want to just give us some primary emotions underlying the need for self-medicating, and some of the more common dependencies related to that emotion:
Depression/Hopelessness: stimulants (cocaine, speed, nicotine, caffeine), alcohol, gambling, food, spending money, sex.
Anxiety/fear: alcohol, marajuana, prescription drugs, heroin, obsessive compulsive behaviours.
Anger: pot, alcohol, sports, sex
Physical/Emotional Pain: alcohol, prescription drugs, marajuana
Loneliness: alcohol, food, TV, sex, technology
Boredom: alcohol, stimulants, TV, sex, work, technology
Shame: alcohol, work, sports, sex, heroin, stimulants.
I worked with a woman of about 40 who was addicted to alcohol and sex. She was attractive, had a good job and had been married three times. She said that she had a good childhood, was relatively popular in school, yet she had incredible shame inside her and felt very unwanted.
I asked her to close her eyes and try to remember when she first started feeling this way. After a minute or so she surprised both of us when she said, “I remember being in my mother’s womb when she found out she was pregnant, and her first words were, “Oh no, I don’t want this”.
Now it’s impossible to know if this actually happened or if somehow she imagined it, but it was definitely real to her because she broke out sobbing when she remembered it. If it did happen, it sure is support for being pro-life. The point was that she believed that her mother had never wanted her and she held this inside of her for forty years trying to medicate the pain, and guilt, and shame she felt.
She was then able to start working though that and changing her thoughts about herself from this one statement she thought she heard that she was never even aware of prior to this. She eventually did recover from drinking to medicate the pain, and having sex to make her feel wanted.
There are others emotions but these are the most prevalent, and if we look closely, the Word of God speaks to all of them. Knowing who we are in Christ, knowing His word, being part of the Body of Christ, having hope for the future, taking the focus off self and living for others, are all things that can resolve these emotional states. With of course the work of the Holy Spirit renewing us.
I spent fifteen years working with people who struggled with all these things and I can’t remember one of them who didn’t get completely better because of a spiritual change.
I only wish I would have known then what I know now. I could have helped so many more.
Addiction and dependency make up the most prevalent spiritual disease in our culture. It is the epitome of Solomon’s words in Ecclesiastes 1:14, from a guy who knew by experience what he was talking about when he said, “I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after the wind”. He said in chapter two that all self-indulgence is vanity, there was nothing to be gained from it long-term.
Isaiah says “Woe to those who rise early in the morning that they may run after strong drink, who tarry late into the evening as wine inflames them! Those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink. They have all this fun stuff but they do not regard the deeds of the Lord or see the work of His hands”.
1 Corinthians 6:10 says that drunkards will not inherit the Kingdom of God. Proverbs 23:20-21, “Be not amoung drunkards or amoung gluttonous eaters of meat, for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and slumber will clothe them with rags”. What a truth that is. Proverbs 5 says that being intoxicated with worldly delight ensnares you and you are held fast in the cords of sin. This person dies for lack of discipline, and because of his folly he is led astray.
It’s in Luke 21:34-35 that Jesus really caught my attention though, talking about his return to earth (read). That word dissipation is an interesting one. It literally means to be overcome by a headache or a seizure of pain, or to get caught up in debauchery. So Jesus is saying, don’t get caught up in seeking pleasure or focusing on the cares of this life. For as a “snare” or a trap, or a trick, these things will come upon everyone who dwells on the earth. And if we don’t escape these things, we may not be permitted to stand before the Son of Man. Being dependent on something outside of God is a prison.
Jesus is telling us that all these things are just traps to keep us away from Him. Not that he doesn’t want us when he comes, but that we will be choosing these other things instead of him. And before we know it, here we will be left with nothing else but these empty things we chose over Him.
Now before you say, “well this doesn’t really apply to me, I’m not addicted or dependent on anything”, I encourage you to look very closely at your life. Are you sure there is nothing in your life that by the way you live, you put ahead of God and His will? Is there anything in your life that is unnecessary but you cannot or will not put it out of your life? The only way to really find out is to get rid of it for a long period of time and see what happens. Do you replace it with something else, or do you turn to God?
Perhaps the crux of the matter is found again in 1 Corinthians 6:12 and 19-20 that was read earlier. I will not be enslaved by anything, you are not your own, your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit that was bought with a huge price. Paul also alludes to this in Romans that we are to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. Our eyes, our mouths, every part of our body belongs to God and should be used to glorify Him.
So it really makes this a simple matter. Addiction is clearly misusing God’s Temple. Before I do something, I simply need to ask, “would God want me to use my body in this way, is what I am doing glorifying God, if Jesus was standing beside me, would I do this? If not, fight with everything you have and pray to God for help in not doing it.
Today I have covered what addictions and dependencies are, and once you know this information, there’s nothing anyone else can do. It becomes up to the person to make the choice to stop doing what they are doing, and deal with whatever surfaces because of stopping. One thing I do know is that you can’t overcome these things on your own, you need support, guidance, and accountability from others. But most importantly you need the power of the Holy Spirit.
Action Plan:
Take one thing or activity in your life that is not absolutely necessary and is interfering with God’s will and spending time with Him. Admit you don’t have complete control over it, then remove it, stop it, fast from it indefinitely. Keep track of how you feel, and what you replace it with. See if you really can live comfortably without it. If not you may want to seek help in dealing with the real underlying need.
Everyone of us is struggling with something we don’t really need that we put ahead of God. Something we don’t want to give up because it makes us feel good. Nothing is unlawful, but not everything is helpful. We can use this to justify our dependencies. The only thing we shouldn’t be able to live without is God. If there is anything else that you really feel you can’t live without besides basic necessities, we need to get rid of it and put God in its place.
