Desperate Joy

Image by  Vilius Kukanauskas from Pixabay . There has been a dark, secret force that has been oppressing me for much of my life. It was the hidden power that fueled my addiction to porn and compulsive masturbation. It eventually led me into captivity, literally, in a federal prison where I now reside. It festers and grows in the darkest parts of my soul and feeds on lies and deception. Its fruit is despair and destruction. It kept me hiding, creating facades and masks to hide who I really was. People would ask what was going on and I would say, "Fine." "Just really busy."  "Didn't sleep well."  Always hiding the truth of chaos in my soul. This dark force was toxic shame. The first time I found some relief from that shame was in my late twenties. I had just finished a master's degree in education at a small Christian college and was attending the large church that sponsored the school. I wasn't in full-time ministry or enrolled in a Chr...

  Photo by Julia Taubitz on Unsplash One of Satan's most powerful and frightening weapons is toxic shame. He sneaks into the deepest parts of our hearts and minds and uses it to cripples us. He makes us believe that our enemies are friends, and our friends are enemies. Toxic shame makes us doubt our own goodness and value and makes us believe that the best thing we can do is to destroy ourselves. It is the driving force behind depression, addiction, self-mutilation, eating disorders and myriad other issues. It was this toxic shame that Satan used to try to overthrow the Lord Jesus Christ when he faced his temptation in the wilderness. Matthew 4:3 records this, "...If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread."   And again, in verse 6, "And said to him, 'If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down...'"   In two out of three temptations Satan attacked Christ with the phrase, "If you are the Son of God..."   ...

  Addiction always has its roots in sin, and that sin in turn springs up from our own lustful, selfish desires. This is the idea that we have been looking at in James 1 over the last few posts. There is a process that sin always follows. We sometimes feel like we just stumble into it, or it just happened, like a meteor falling from the sky. But if we learn to pay attention, we will see that it happens gradually, step-by-step. The medieval Christian thinker Thomas a Kempis digs deeper into the ideas we saw from James and offers us some useful insight into the process that sin takes: "First there cometh into mind a bare thought of evil, then a strong imagination thereof, afterwards delight, and evil motion, and then consent. And so little by little our wicked enemy getteth complete entrance for that he is not resisted at the beginning." First, we have the "bare thought of evil."   The world, the flesh and the devil will all send images, thoughts, and ideas into ou...

  The Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones, Gustave Doré, 1866 One of the most significant and powerful tools we have in fighting addiction and living a life of righteousness is the Word of God. Often, we enter the struggle with the world, the flesh, and the devil as if it is an armed conflict and we must overcome them by strength of will alone. We believe if we just try harder then we can overcome. But we can never have enough willpower to overcome the devil, because he doesn't come at us that way. Satan always comes at us sideways, with lies and deception. He didn't overcome Eve by wrestling her into submission, no, he told her what she wanted to hear. He fed her honey-coated lies, and she swallowed them one by one until she had eaten the forbidden fruit and plunged the world into chaos. In order to effectively fight the lies of Satan and the addiction we must have the truth. The reason the Word of God is so effective is because it is the Truth. Not a truth. Not your truth or ...

I know very well what it feels like to be enslaved to an addiction. To feel trapped, bound, and unable to run, walk or even move. I would dig up some will power and manage to resist for a time, but the urges would always return, and I would find myself in the same old patterns time and time again. I was wrapped up in chains of sin and could not find a way to escape. It has taken years of work, but at last I have found some freedom and deliverance. I can look back now and see that while I was wrapped in chains, they were chains that I had forged myself. And while they were locked securely, I held the key, a key that had been given to me by the Lord. Those chains were in reality lies, deceptions and false beliefs about who I was. I had deep and damaging misconceptions about my identity. One of the keys I have found to unlock those chains has come through understanding my true identity in Christ. Satan's lies convinced me that I was not a true child of God, and I could not be a re...

  Many times, we believe that our struggles with habitual sin and addictions are a power struggle of some sort. We think we must be strong and have willpower, if we only had more self-control then we would be able to overcome. We discussed this in a previous post. The reality is that our conflicts are not a power struggle but a truth struggle. Addiction is about truth versus lies not strength versus strength. One of the most powerful truths I have found in my recovery journey is understanding the nature of my identity in Christ. The more I understand my position of power and authority in Christ, the more I can resist the temptations of the addiction. The more I have realized who I am in Christ, the more I have been able to combat the lies that contribute to my automatic thoughts and false beliefs. When the Devil attacks, one of the most common pressure points he targets is our identity. He convinces us that we are worthless and inadequate. He tells us that we are sinners, addic...

  One of the basic misunderstandings we often have around addiction is that we believe it is a sort of power encounter.  We think that if our willpower is strong enough then we will be able to overcome the addiction and live a sober life.  For those of us who are Christians we believe that we have the power of God in us and it is the power of God that will overcome the power of the addiction.  While I believe this is true in essence, it does not play itself out like we imagine. We often have this image of David versus Goliath.  David had God's power and was able to smite the giant in the name of the Lord God of Israel.  Perhaps for David in that particular context that is how it played out, but typically that is now how God's power works in our lives and in our addictions. Overcoming addiction, habitual sins, or any demon that may be afflicting us is not a conflict of power, like an arm wrestling match.  It is a conflict of ideas, it is a battle for tr...