As Christians, we talk a lot about humility and yet know little about it.
Like every other human being, I don’t like the characteristics of humility. It is often painful. I have learned that basically there are two paths to humility. The first path is clear. We can humble ourselves.
Humbling ourselves in sexual addiction recovery can mean reading, praying, calling people, going to meetings and praying again. Humbling ourselves in the sex addiction process may be going to a meeting where we may not believe 100% of another person’s theology and yet listening to them. It may be listening to someone who has more sobriety than you and yet is younger than you.
It can take on many facets as you recover from sexual addiction. I would have never dreamed that 32 years ago when God started speaking to me about sexual addiction (before books or support groups were available) He would give me the basics. I did them. I had to humble myself, which was a very painful experience. I had to tell a pastor and a roommate about my sexual addiction, which was humbling.
I didn’t know that years later God would open doors internationally, and I would share that testimony of personal recovery as to what works. I encourage you to humble yourself. It is the least painful way to humility.
The second road to humility is what I call humiliation. It is in this process that God will allow these principles to be exposed. This is when the sex addict gets caught with pornography by his spouse, or is accused of sexual misconduct at work or caught in an extramarital affair. He gets exposed.
We have seen this happen on a local level, and nationally. The humiliation wasn’t for anything but for God to move the addict into recovery. If the person who is humiliated in this manner will move into recovery, God can begin to restore and replace what they need. Humiliation is much more painful and devastating and can take much longer to get over than simply humbling ourselves.
Humility is a key element to recovery. You cannot remain proud and succeed in going to groups and talking about your thought life. Humbling ourselves is much better than humiliation because once the humiliation experience has taken effect, the pain can be overwhelming.
God is not concerned about whether we humble ourselves or get humiliated, as much as He is the result: that we are humble and learn how to recover. Either one is compassionate. It is compassion toward us if we humble ourselves and do what we need to do to recover so that we can heal.
And it is also compassionate of God to allow us to be exposed and heal. To keep someone in their addiction for years is the cruelest thing to let happen. So God, in His mercy, will humiliate us so that we can get to the bottom quicker and to recovery as soon as possible. {eoa}
Doug Weiss, Ph.D., is a nationally known author, speaker and licensed psychologist. He is the executive director of Heart to Heart Counseling Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and the author of several books, including The Final Freedom. You may contact Dr. Weiss via his website, drdougweiss.com, on hisFacebook, by phone at 719-278-3708 or through email at [email protected].
