Day 25 – How to Overcome Addictions ~ Dane Earl

Galatians 5:13-18

¹³ You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. ¹⁴ For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁵ If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.

¹⁶ So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. ¹⁷ For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. ¹⁸ But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

My Journey

When we walk by the Spirit we will not gratify the desires of the sinful flesh. I have personally seen this in my own walk with the Lord. When I was fifteen, I found pornography on my iPod touch and almost immediately got hooked. Over the next few years shame and guilt plagued me, and I got more and more desensitized to the sin in my life. At the end of my junior year in high school I felt dead inside. I told God, “If you are real, I want to know it,” so I started going to a youth group where the kids looked like they had something real and genuine. They were encountering God. This began my journey of overcoming porn addiction.

Walk by the Spirit

We all have different struggles and challenges that we deal with. For some it might be drug addiction, anger, alcohol abuse or multiple issues at once. Just like verse 16 says, we must all walk by the Spirit so that we won’t gratify the desires of the flesh. Here are some tips to help you walk by the Spirit to overcome sin in your everyday life:

• Fall in love with Jesus and you won’t want to do the things that break His heart.
• Focus on Jesus and make your relationship with Him your most important priority
• Rely on His strength – not your own. You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you!
• Realize that intimacy with Jesus (talking and listening with Him, spending time in the Bible, saying yes to His promptings, enjoying Him as He enjoys you) will transform you and fill you with His love, joy, peace, patience and self-control. God’s Spirit is within you!
• Shed all guilt and shame, and receive the righteousness Jesus died to give you. Once you know you have been made holy in God’s sight, it is much easier to become the holy person He sees you as.
• Don’t focus on sin – focus on God. You become what you focus on, so you will become like God as you focus on Him!
• Be practical, if you deal with alcohol addiction, don’t go to bars or hang out with people who drink. If you deal with pornography, set guards on the computer and have someone else help you. If you deal with food, keep sugar and junk out of the house.

I hope my vulnerability in sharing my struggles and my journey of overcoming pornography encourages you in whatever you are battling. You are an overcomer! If you have any questions, please get ahold of me.

God bless,

Dane Earl

[All scripture taken from the New International Version. Bold lettering mine.]