Spiritual Life MAY PAW PRINT Bill Delvaux, Chaplain & Bible Dept. Chair Coming Out of Addictions
Last month, I focused on the problem of the cynic exemplified in the older son of the Parable of the Prodigal. The route out of hardness of heart is letting yourself grieve and allowing the Lord to meet you there. This month I want to go back to the younger son who demonstrates so beautifully the exit door out of a life of addiction and idolatry. The younger son came to his senses after coming to the end of the party lifestyle and made the crucial decision to go home to his father. He received not a lecture from his father, but instead a passionate embrace, a surprise that must have left him speechless. Simply put, the way out of all of our addictive behaviors is choosing to stay empty, coming back to the Father, and trusting that His embrace will satisfy you.
As a fellow sojourner on this route, I wanted to give you a few practical ideas that have really helped me come home to the Father and let go of my addictions:
• Identify the false lovers and idols in your life. This is the first step to any movement out of addiction. Some of our false lovers are apparent to us, but there are others that we have become so used to that we do not realize that they effect us in this way. They become like an old pair of jeans that we slip into effortlessly. We must even ask the Lord to give us clarity here so that we will not live in fogginess or denial. This is just what the younger son did when he came to his senses and saw his situation for what it really was.
• Recognize the false beliefs that go with the false lovers. One major false belief is simply “I must have ______ or I must do ______ in order to satisfy my discontentment and be happy.” This one runs so much of our lives in terms of idolatry. We really do not believe that Jesus Christ is the only one who can fill the “aching abyss of the human heart,” to use a phrase Oswald Chambers coined. Another major lie is that “I cannot face the pain in my life and so I must numb out.” This lie has been the beginning of so many addictive cycles. The behavior works by silencing the discontent and pain momentarily. But to keep covering the pain we must keep taking more and more of the heart anesthesia, whether it is a substance or a behavior. And eventually we start destroying ourselves or those around us.
• Choose to stay empty and go home to the Father when you are tempted to go back to your false lover. Repentance will often not feel like immediate relief. This is the trap of all idols. They offer immediate gratification and relief as well as control over the pain. But repentance and waiting on the Lord will sometimes cause you to feel worse at first, not better. All the covered over pain, all the anesthetized heartache, all the numbed out ache will rise to the surface and sometimes scream at you to run for relief. And I mean scream! How long will you have to wait? I do not know. But I do know that it has been various times for me, sometimes very short and sometimes a long time. But if you keep going back to the Father, He will run to meet you, find you, embrace you and love you as no false lover ever could.
