11 Feb De-Hooked – Learning to overcome addiction in your life PART 4

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A couple of summers ago at about 9:00 pm, I hooked into a monster shark from the shore.  It took me up and down the beach! I would reel it in to about 20 yards from the shore and then it would take off hundreds of yards from the shore.  After a while, it would come back in and I would think I had the shark landed. Then it would take off again a great distance from shore. It literally took me six hours to get this shark all the way in!

When I first hooked the shark, a crowd of about 60 people had gathered to watch me catch it.  By the time I got it in at 3:00 in the morning, the crowd had dwindled to just my wife and son (you truly do find out who your true friends are in a six hour shark battle)!  When I finally got the shark in it was approximately eight feet long and weighed over 300 pounds. The shark’s mouth was huge and I would have had a very difficult and dangerous time retrieving my hook. So I wisely (and under the advice of my wife) cut the line, leaving the hook in the shark’s mouth.  It would have been very difficult getting the shark de-hooked! The good news is I don’t care how big your addiction is…God has given us the knowledge and ability to get “de-hooked” and overcome any addiction in life!

       Last month we shared with you “Four Addiction Aspects”:

  1. We turn to something in time of anxiety
  2. We try to get something from it that it does not have the ability to provide
  3. We then turn to higher levels of it to gain the same experience (or high)
  4. Addiction occurs when you no longer have it…now it has you.

Then we began to discover four different entry points of addiction:

  1. Don’t admit you have a problem (Jer. 3:13).  Simply begin making excuses for yourself.

Here are 3 Excuse Excursions:

  1. “I can quit anytime”.  
  2.  “This is just how God made me”.  
  3. Run to permission not to correction.

2. Gratify your fleshly desires (Gal. 5:16-17). 

This month let’s resume our teaching session….

3. Keep your addiction secret (Prov. 28:13).

Here the Bible tells us, “He that covers his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesses and forsakes them shall find mercy.”  Notice the phrase “covers his sin shall not prosper”.  Remember this:  Sin always grows best in the dark.  Many times because of pride and embarrassment we don’t tell anyone about the challenges we are experiencing.  The power of sin is its secrecy.  

I always encourage people to invite trustworthy people in when your “dragons” are little.  Yes, you will be a bit embarrassed. However, this is what I know about “little dragons”…left in the dark and well fed, “little dragons” always become “big dragons”.  Therefore, you might as well invite trustworthy friends who love you in when your dragons are little. Then only the people who love you will see your “little dragons”.  If you wait until your “dragons” are big, everyone will see your dragons. The people who love you and those who don’t love you will see them, and you will be greatly embarrassed.

Remember this:  Little compromises that no one sees, always result in great failure that everyone sees.

Join us next week as we continue this series…