How do I overcome addiction?

Watch the complete sermon here: https://www.bridges.church/messages/set-free-mark-5-1-20/

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent sermons. This last week we heard a little bit of DK’s story, our director of student ministries, and how it relates to an account recorded in the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus sets free a man who had been possessed by a demon. As far as we know, DK was not possessed by a demon, but he did describe being possessed by Anger and not being able to overcome it. Jesus coming into his life in a dramatic encounter and really lifting that off of him in a way that it never had control over him again.

So the question this week is, is that the normal way to overcome besetting sins, Christians used to call them a long time ago, or is that the way to overcome addictions?

Is that the way to overcome kind of deeply embedded? Maybe if it’s anger, maybe that’s a psychological issue, or maybe that’s a personality trait. Is this how we normally overcome sins, as a kind of dramatic encounters with Jesus? And so we would say, certainly it can happen. We just heard it did happen for DK.

I think particularly with addictions, it can happen again. But it’s not usually the path to overcoming addictions. I’d say normally the path is much more so. What we see in a lot of twelve step programs is admitting that we’re powerless over the issue, reaching out to God, admitting our faults, being radically vulnerable of what is going on with us, being completely transparent of what we’re dealing with every time we deal with it. Walking with a group of people, we can normally will not overcome addictions or besetting sins just on our own.

It really takes a group of people walking with us and it could take some time. Those kind of twelve step programs, which we would recommend kind of build somebody back up from the inside out. They’re looking for an overall kind of wholeness again, you know, admitting our weakness, our inability to do something about it, seeking God, admitting all of our faults, you know, making a list of everybody that we’ve ever wronged and then going and apologizing to them. It’s really kind of scraping all of our insides down to the bare floor, you know, and starting over, rebuilding what’s there.

And so if you have a besetting sin or an addiction that you would like to talk about with us, absolutely reach out and we’ll try to, we’ll try to help get you in contact with others or get you set up in the appropriate type of recovery program, if that would be.

If that would be the right thing to do. So thanks for the question and we’ll be praying for you. And you’d be praying for us. That we would be set free from everything that weighs us down.