DOES IT HELP OR HINDER?
“…let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,”– Heb. 12:1
Bad habits and addictions can come in in different forms and degrees of harmfulness. Sometimes we are not even aware of an addiction—until we try to stop. We say, “I can quit anytime I want”, but we can’t. It just might be that although you don’t have an addiction to any of the things we generally associate with addictions you are enslaved to something.
Guy King wrote…How many are all unconsciously ensnared in that trap: they would be greatly surprised, and highly incensed, if they were told they were told they were, and it is only when they try to escape that they become really aware of their imprisonment. How cleverly the devil lures us, working with, and working upon, the thing that fascinates us. Mice don’t like traps; but they do like cheese – and there lies the tragedy. There is a passage (James 1:14), where we are given what one might call the physiology of temptation – “every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.” That is the way Satan lures us, draws us away: he plays upon our lust, our particular strong leaning or liking – that’s the cheese! So he gets us.”
John MacDuff said, “the world’s pleasures are often curses in disguise — like Cleopatra’s viper, which was hidden in a basket of flowers. There is often . . .an adder lurking in the bed of roses, a fly in the ointment, poison in the wine-cup! ”
Your addiction might not be sinful in and of itself, it might even be good in some way, but it keeps you from doing what is best. That’s when sinless things become sinful. Anything that decreases our passion for God, dampens our devotion to God, and deters us from the will of God is something we need rid of. It becomes your enemy and must be defeated rather than ignored.–HDS
David Stone
Lakeway Baptist Church
5801 FM 1960 E
Humble, TX. 77346
