Confronting Addiction In Ourselves

If you are reading this maybe you are looking for some inspiration concerning yourself or someone close to you regarding the issue of change. Maybe you are looking for an easy solution or a quick fix answer to the issue of addiction. So not to mislead you, I am sorry to tell you that there are no simple answers to addiction. Maybe you are already well aware of that fact. If you or someone you know has developed an addiction and needs to change there are no easy solutions. It might be that the addiction has grown over a number of years holding you or the person in its grip. Sadly getting free from this grip will not come easy or quickly.

If you are still reading this and I have not managed to put you off then maybe you are serious about bringing change and you have some of the determination you will need to at least start this long road to recovery. If you are not the one who needs to change I must warn you now: The person who needs to change must take the first step themselves... your job is not to badger them to bring about the change, as this might only bring about short-term or surface change, most likely to please you. Your role is to be there to support them when they start to falter...just like Jesus was for Peter in the Bible in a favourite story of mine (Matthew 14:30

Change is something that most of us find a struggle. Change is about stepping out, doing something different and involves uncertainty. It is always easier to stay with what we know. To stay with the familiar, the safe involves little or no effort. Think of the effort involved for Peter in the story mentioned above. To keep a vehicle moving involves little work and we can almost fall asleep doing it!! But when we need to stop or turn the vehicle around, bringing change, we must think and apply more effort. But for many of us change brings new opportunities and challenges mixed with trepidation but also excitement (see below for details of my changes

The Gospel is all about change. The Gospel offers us a new life. When we come to Jesus and give our life over to Him we cannot possibly stay the way we are, we have to change. The message of Jesus is not just about bringing change then leaving us to go back to the way we were. But keeping the change going is easier said than done and can involve great effort. Who has not fallen back into their old ways after introducing change into their life? Grace. The Gospel brings the message of change but also the message of grace. This means that if we mess up, grace picks us up again. If we mess-up we don’t beat ourselves up but pick ourselves up and try again. But how does this work? Should we put less effort into our lifestyle change because of grace? Because we know that it is not a problem if we fail. Paul or our modern day translators really under play the answer in the Bible: ‘By no means’ (Romans 6:2). Surely the answer should be, as one of my lecturers at Bible College once said, an emphatic NO!! Paul continues: ‘we died to sin; how can we live it any longer?’ it is just like being brought some lovely new clothes but choosing to put on the old dirty rags that we have just taken off. We now have the freedom to walk away from sin – we are no longer enslaved to it. Did you hear that!! You are free to walk away! It no longer has mastery over you! This must surely bring freedom and liberation to us. Ideally this will then lead to us indulging in our addiction less and less.

How do you know that you need to change? The answer is easy. Try to give it up and see how you cope.
Someone once said ‘the chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken’  Samuel Johnson; 1709-1784

This is only partly true. The chains of habit are never too strong to be broken....freedom from your addiction is always possible. It will probably involve a high price and maybe a lot of effort and time on your part but you must never say it is impossible. Freedom is always an option it just depends what price you are willing to pay.

What are you enslaved to at the moment? What are you giving mastery to in your life at the moment? Do you know that change is possible? Please feel free to contact us if you would like to have us pray for you or discuss this further.