“Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.” (Colossians 3:5).
As I was praying at our weekly prayer time at church last week, I had asked the Lord to deliver anyone in our congregation who were trapped in addictions. I was thinking of the usual addictions most of us recognize; alcohol, drugs, sex and those mentioned in the verse above. But then I heard the Spirit say, “Almost everyone has an addiction of some kind.” I thought, “Wow!” And then the word, “idols” came to mind. And I realized, yes, we all may have some kind of an idol. “Dear children, keep away from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts.” (1 John 5:21). Anything that we would place above God on our list. “Oh, I’d never do that!” we might say. Well, think about the things we cherish: people, sports, social media, cars, food, celebrities, hobbies, TV programs/movies, clothes…the list could go on and on. We can probably add many things to it. Anything that we may put above God is an idol and we may be addicted to it.
So, what do we do with an addiction or an idol? The Bible talks about our flesh and our Spirit and how they are opposite and in a constant battle, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” (Galatians 5:16). I could paraphrase that to say, “Feed your Spirit and starve your flesh.” We were born with that “sin nature” from what happened in the Garden of Eden but Jesus has given us an “advocate” (John 14:16), the Holy Spirit that abides within us. We can overcome.
I’m reminded of another blog post from 2009, Don’t Feed It! and an update from 2020, HERE in which I painted a scene of someone who got a cute little black puppy but, after feeding and caring for it for a while, it became a large, mean, uncontrollable dog. Another scene is someone who had finally gotten a harassing demon under control in a cage, starving it, but felt sorry for it and fed it and it broke out of the cage stronger than before. Starve the flesh and strengthen the Spirit.
We have to identify, recognize and confess what our idols are and take actions to starve them or, at least, move them further down our list. If God is at the top, we will be able to handle our addictions and idols. “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” (Galatians 5:24).
Maybe it’s time to do some house cleaning and getting our list in order.
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