Desperate Joy

  Over the last couple posts we have been discussing fasting and its importance in our recovery and spirituality. It is an often-neglected discipline, but it is a useful and powerful practice in growing our relationship with God. My first adventures in fasting were as an older teenager when I was in college. We were very much zealous for the ministry, and I wanted God to bless my efforts there. During my early attempts at fasting, I found it was nearly impossible to even go twenty-four hours. But I kept working at it and soon enough I had fasted up to three days. In recent years I have been able to do a seven day fast, which is the longest I have done. All that to say that fasting is extremely difficult at first, but the more we practice it, the easier it gets. Though it never really gets easy. The leading cause of death in America is heart disease, and the majority of heart diseases are related to issues with weight. In America, we eat too much, and eat too much junk, and it i...

  When God calls us to follow Christ, he calls us to a life of self-denial and self-sacrifice. This comes in direct conflict with our own natural proclivities and the messaging from our culture, which encourages us to pursue every carnal desire and indulge every fleshly appetite. If we want something, especially sexually, we are told that is a good thing and we should seek to satisfy it. Our tendency is to focus on our physical needs and desires, and neglect the deeper, spiritual needs that we have. Many, if not all, of us addicts fell into the tar pit of addiction because we were seduced by those voices of self-indulgence. We listened to the cravings of our flesh and made self-gratification our highest priority. We ignored our spiritual needs and desires and settled instead for making our bodies feel good. What we inevitably found was a life desolate of emotional and spiritual substance. This is far from God's intentions for us. God is calling us to self-control and self-maste...

One of the major driving forces of addiction is selfishness. I discovered this early on. Porn made me feel good, so I used it. It didn't matter that it didn't fit into my beliefs or values. It didn't matter that my faith called it a sin. It didn't matter how miserable I would feel after, I wanted it, I needed it and I would have it, no matter what. It is a strange and curious thing, that while I was selfishly indulging the addiction, I was busy in the church, helping and serving others. I had committed my life to serve the Lord and wanted nothing more than to honor and serve him. This was a good thing, even though my motives were often a mess. My heart was frequently twisted with guilt and shame. I would be serving from a position of lack, instead of serving because God had filled my heart up with so much love that it was overflowing. Acting out would empty and dry my heart, but I kept working and striving, hoping to fill that emptiness and dryness. I thought servic...