4. TAKE HOSTAGES! My experience with addiction (and trust me, ’tis plentiful, as addiction and I have been buddies in various forms for many years) is that it is not so much a case of trying to talk oneself out of addiction but rather into it!
There was always a voice that started out as a suggestion, a mere offering of an idea to view porn or whatever current addiction I was flirting with. *Cue the internal to-and-fro dialogue: “No, that’s not a great idea. I don’t really want to do that. Sure you do, it’s fine, it’s just this once. No it’s not just once; I won’t stop. Sure you’ll stop! This is the perfect way to prove it. Just do it today, and you won’t have to do it tomorrow. Hmmmm. You can stop whenever you want. You’re not addicted to this, you’re just choosing to do it. This isn’t addiction anyway; it’s just a habit, you can break a habit whenever you want.”
Repeated daily.
So my next step was learning to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. There is a reason these verses are in the Bible (2 Cor. 10:4-5).
When you stop a thought in its track and acknowledge it, instead of allowing it to run with reckless abandon through your mind, you take it captive. That means it not longer masters you, but you master it.
Yes, it takes practice; this is a discipline that can feel like a full-time job. But it is a job that pays well! It even comes with a dental plan… (I may have just made that bit up. But you never know?).
When you take thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ, you are commanding them to fall into submission under the Lordship of Christ! That is no small deal!
It is here that Jesus takes over. It is in this moment that you are choosing to give Him control, to work and weave and mend and heal.
