So let’s continue on with some more thoughts on people-addiction and food-addiction. What are we to do if we are compulsive eaters? If we run constantly to food, snacks, bingeing, Boston-creme filled donuts, KC Masterpiece BBQ Chips or Super Chunk Peanut Butter Choc ice-cream?
Well, first of all, we need to realize that what we’re hungering for, really ISN’T those items. (maybe my ‘comfort fooods’ aren’t yours…so fill in the blanks with what you run to!) Those goodies DO taste good, and they CAN be enjoyed in a way that doesn’t numb you, but delights you…but only if you know what your heart is really hungering for.
Psalm 34: 8 says that we are to TASTE and see that the Lord is good, and that we are blessed when we take refuge in HIM. We might also say we are blessed when we feast upon Him…through relationship with Jesus, through prayer, through trusting and obeying Him…through lives of surrender. Having Him be my banquet table, allows me to enjoy and delight in the gifts that are presented to me THROUGH the table as they are ON the table. Make sense?
This is so similar to people addiction…or the ‘worship’ of people. A few posts ago I wrote about how women (and it connects to men too) can be ‘enthralled’ with each other, or seek to ‘feast’ upon each other through emotional connecting, nurture, affection etc. This enthralling really isn’t about a certain woman or person or people in general…it’s about (like with food) our souls seeking what they were created for: SATISFACTION through the only One who can fill us, the Bread of Life, JESUS! This is great news for us and gives us so much hope if you are a people or food addict!
More to come…on: Ok, so I’ll feast on Jesus. But then what do I do with people, and what do I do with my Boston-Creme filled donuts?
When someone asked a mentor of mine, “Do you think you can be addicted to a relationship?”, Beth responded immediately :
“YEA-ESS!”
And it’s true…the dynamics that we experience in certain relationships can become habitually destructive when they become a perceived NEED to our lives. The feelings of comfort, security, value and acceptance are among the top nutrients that feed and nurture a co-idolatrous relationship. Not to say that those things are evil in and of themselves! But, when they become our driver, our aim, our goal of why we are relating to someone, it could be because a people-addiction is in the works.
And in my own journey of seeking to run to Jesus out of my people-idolatry, I’ve come to see how similar people addiction is to food addiction (another form of creation BTW, that I can lean towards, away from the Creator.) With this post, I just want to get some initial thoughts out there and then I’ll follow up with more ponderings on how cravings for food and the craving for people are more alike than different!
- People/relationships and food are good gifts of God. James 1:17
- We can’t just go “off” of people or food…we are called to live life in community and…well, we DO need food to survive! Romans 12:9-10 speaks to our call to be involved in relationships, and any cooking magazine will confirm our need for food.
- Both can become a ‘feel good’ subsitute for Jesus, a way to sooth heart pain.
- By God’s grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, we must learn to live in holy moderation of these good gifts…not clinging to the created thing in a way that only the Creator is worthy of.
More to come….
I frequently talk with women who are struggling, hurting, confused because either one certain relationship, or MANY relationships with other women have been obsessive…entangling…a captivity. It’s been a pattern of relating since they were young, or as an adult a relationship grew to become something that seemed to control them in a way that was destructive.
John Donne’s Holy Sonnet #14 has a line that expresses the answer to WHY? the experience of women being enthralled with each other will never work: “Unless You enthrall me, I shall never be free!” (my paraphrase). The craving to be enthralled BY someone, the driving desire to have our hearts filled up by the emotional (and perhaps physical) connection with another woman is evidence of our hearts being created to worship! Yes…God has created us to worship, to be fully, whole-heartedly enthralled with Another…with One: Jesus Christ. John Donne had it right: unless we find our deepest satisfaction, comfort, security in Him, we will NOT be free, and our relationships will be more often than not, UNenthralling!
Women seeking life in other women (emotionally, sexually, mentally), rather than in Jesus have at least two things in common: they are deeply loved by Jesus who wants to bring freedom and life to their hearts through HIM and also, they will continue to experience the ‘captivity of creation’ until they seek life in the Creator.
Do you need a safe place to talk about your struggles, tempations, questions, hurts in these areas? If so, call us here at Harvest USA…we warmly invite you and will seek to be a safe place for you to process your relational world! Jesus Christ is your Hope, Haven and Help! Here’s a song for you to listen to, to point you towards Jesus:
Warm greetings to everyone!
Our blog is slowly coming out of many months of hibernation…we hope that the thoughts we share here in the days to come will encourage our readers, stirring your thoughts and ponderings to Truth and Mercy!
Lots of media atttention was given to the assembly in DC yesterday focused on gay rights…and National Coming Out day.
Jesus and God’s precious Word speaks of ‘coming out’ too. 1 John 1:7 talks of walking “in the light”, which implies coming out of darkness…and into the rich freedom of enjoying God’s intimate knowledge of us, and true relationship with other people as we allow ourselves to be made known. Because of Jesus coming to the world as Light of the world, we can come out of any ‘dark’ place and find freedom, hope, comfort that is true.
What inhibits people from walking in the light? You?
We usually pray twice a week here in the Philadelphia office. It’s a good time to touch base as many of the staff are out teaching and training more often than not.
I was struck by one prayer offered by Bob Heywood recently. He was to speak to a group of seminarians and wanted to speak in a way that was both winsome and helpful. Since they would eventually pastor congregations Bob was anxious that he equip them well – especially as they ‘walked into people’s hearts’.
That phrase struck a chord with me. So often church leaders and teachers forget the impact they have on people’s lives simply because of their position! Even when I pick up the phone here in the office it’s easy to forget that I too have an impact on people – especially if they are taking their courage in both hands and calling for help for the first time.
Bob’s words were and are a reminder that we need to take care as we step into someone’s life – either as a pastor or simply as a friend. We need to enter carefully lest we do more damage then good; and we need to be sure that we have actually been invited! Often it isn’t advice thats needed. Often the best help we can offer is our presence and our awareness of their circumstance. A willingness to walk along side someone at a messy time in their lives.
We’ve all had someone not just walk into our hearts uninvited, but stomp around in great big muddy boots and not even close the door when they eventually left! My thoughts about such people are always less than edifying. Bob’s prayer keeps rattling around my brain and I hope I never forget it. May I always tread carefully, may you do the same!
This post was originally placed on the website of Covenant Eyes, www.covenanteyes.org, an amazing internet accountability ministry.
Welcome friend, hope it’s ok to call you friend? It’s fairly personal and we probably don’t know each other but I do want you to know my heart is tender towards you. And while I’m not entangled with pornography, I’m much more like you than different. Yeah, you and I both have been tempted by the desires of our heart to look to creation rather than to the Creator for life, for comfort, for satisfaction in our souls as we seek distraction from something, some one, some feeling.
I dabbled in porn as a junior high girl, before the internet was created so my experience was with magazines I found in my neighbors’ closet. Secret, lingering and lustful gazes were happening every time I went to babysit and the kids were in bed. My body reacted…aroused by things I’d never seen before. So enticing! So mesmerizing! And…addicting. Amazingly though, those magazines were missing one day when I showed up for my neighborly duties and try as I might, I couldn’t find them! And so…my porn history was cut short to my then disappointment, but now I shake my head in thankful wonder at God’s merciful intervention.
But I’ve more than dabbled in other addictive, ensnaring habits: food, entertainment, emotionally-enmeshing connections with people and in particular with women. I’ve been the kind of person that Jesus came for: a captive needing to be set free and a broken-hearted woman needing healing. (See Luke 4:18-20 and Isaiah 61:1-3 if you’re interested in His job description!)
Your enslavement to pornography is the fruit of a process that’s happening in your heart friend; or as Paul says in Galatians 6:7-8, it is the ‘harvest’ coming in from seeds you’ve sown. When desires and thoughts go astray from a Christ-ward and Word-centric focus, seeds are being sown toward the nurturing of our flesh. I wonder how you made your first click into a porn site? And how long you lingered there? And then how long it was before you were drinking in and feasting upon the images again? Then…when did you reach the sober destination of “How did I end up here? How in the world have I become so addicted to this stuff?”
You see, God’s promises often come to us with a combination sober warning and amazing hope. Galatians 6:7-8 is a passage I want to urge you to feast upon, to soak your thoughts upon and to take steps of obedience toward: “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked, a man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please the sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life!”
For as many women who are addicted to pornography, there are as many paths of sowing seeds that led each one closer to the edge of the pit, and then finally into a seemingly hopeless miry mess, a web of addiction from which escape seems impossible. A lonely heart, a heart in pain seeking escape so as to feel good. Disappointment with life, selfish demandingness that life flow my way on my terms. Thoughts unchecked and coasting in lust, secretly developed stories of sexual fantasy craving fulfillment. A body that longs for sexual intimacy, and the settling for arousing images that lead towards sex with self. Yearnings for romance with a man or woman, yearning for a person to fill my soul, the easy click into a world of relating where I am queen and have nothing asked of me…or so one thinks. Or so one thinks…seeking life in creation which is sin, will cost us more than we ever imagine and will take us further than we ever want to go. For all of the above, JESUS has come and is a knowing, loving, present Savior, Healer and Rescuer!
Desires, feelings, pain, dreams, fears, anxieties, soul ache happens to everyone in this world because it’s broken or fallen. This is why Jesus came: to restore creation from corruption and to return us to what we were created for, lives of glory-giving to God. To actually cause 2 Peter 1:3,4 to be reality, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. Through these He has given us His very great and precious promises, so that through them you may ESCAPE the corruption in the world caused by evil desires and participate in the divine nature.”
Friend, there IS true, freeing Hope for you…it is a person, Jesus. He knows the pains, sorrows, fears, anxieties, longings and groans that are in your heart. While porn will smother that pain for a brief time, it cannot heal it, or strengthen you to be the woman God’s beautifully designed you to be! He is your designer and your healer. Will you take the courageous step to be honest about your broken-heartedness, with God and a trusted person in your life? Jesus is saying to you, “Come to Me…as you are with your pornography enslavement and I will set you free.” Will you come?
In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C.S. Lewis) Lucy sees Aslan the great lion for the first time. She was afraid, and rightly so. Lucy whispered to Mrs. Beaver ‘Is he safe?’ ‘Safe?’ Mrs. Beaver replied, ‘Of course he’s not safe! But he is good, he’s the King I tell you!’
The great lion Aslan was meant by Lewis to be a picture of Jesus, not an exact imitation, but a “type”. And so this line from this well-loved book has been quoted extensively. I’ve most heard it quoted to counter the non-biblical view that following Jesus is a path of ease or boredom, or the quote is meant to show the ‘wild’ side of God, that He IS God and is the supreme ruler, that we can’t contain Him in our boxes of comfort. But does that mean that we shan’t (Lewisian influence here) call Him ‘safe’?
I do agree that devotion to Jesus is one of joy and radical surrender; and I DO agree that God is GOD, that He rules and reigns as loving creator LORD. However, I wouldn’t have said it the way Lewis said it. God IS safe and He is good. In Him, our fears, insecurities, anxieties get swallowed up by the safety of His loving refuge…His very presence. No, He’s not boring, and no, He’s not a genie in the bottle we pull out for our means. This is the radicalness of who He is: He IS the KING and He is powerful…yet very safe!
Keep me safe O God, for in You I take refuge. I said to the Lord, ‘You are my Lord’ apart from You I have NO good thing! Psalm 16:1,2
Loving people well, and living holy lives with our sexuality requires a good, powerful and safe God. We have one friends, we have One!
Fear is the enemy of love. Fear is the enemy of trust, honesty, sharing of oneself, and thus the enemy of intimacy.
Harry Schaumberg, in his book False Intimacy: Understanding the Struggle of Sexual Addiction, defines this concept of false intimacy as essentially a selfish strategy and self-created illusion for a person to avoid the relational pain inherent in real intimacy by pursuing sexual experiences — whether through fantasy, solo sex, or acting out with another person. False intimacy reveals a deep commitment to control or manage actual or potential emotional disappointment, pain and seeks emotional comfort, security, peace, and autonomy over the best interests of another person.
Given this notion from Schaumberg, how does this relate to fears and unbelief in your past or present struggles? Fear is the enemy of love, but love is the enemy of fear. Love and truth fight fear and unbelief. (Does this kinda sound like Yoda of Star Wars or a Haikou poem? Anyway…….) If love is a verb and living in truth means confession and vulnerability (self-disclosure), then how are you are doing in loving God and others and in doing truthful self-discovery and honest self-disclosure to others? “Heart work” is the hardest work of all.
Since God accepted you and me when we were still enemies (Romans 5:8,10), What have you been so afraid of? What has distorted your vision of God’s goodness and trustworthiness? How are you seeking honest relationships now?
Is this helping you in the temptation to: sexual false intimacy; or the not-blatantly sinful, garden-variety false intimacy such as being polite but not open-hearted, doing “nice” but being aloof, not getting to close, hiding in work or busyness, focusing on stuff, leisure and entertainment but not relationships, or banal conversations about the news, sports, the weather, shopping, but never sharing or listing to heart concerns.
False intimacy – and the fear that drives it – is epidemic in our culture and not just because of porn which is an extreme variety of avoiding real intimacy and controlling emotions by using real people. Someone has said that the three rules of a dysfunctional family are: 1. Don’t Talk, 2. Don’t Feel, and 3. Don’t Trust. Yet, we are called to be true brothers, the real family of God, a community of true honesty, acceptance, mutual support. Jesus said, “by this all men will know you are My disciples, in that you LOVE one another” (John 13:35). Jesus is against the fear of false intimacy. “Perfect love cast out fear” (1 John 4:18). And, “God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1:7). The true meaning of Christmas is to set us free from the fears that enslave our hearts.
A close and dear friend leaves town on Saturday and I’m already missing her, feeling the ache of her absence. You know, goodbyes are a part of this fallen world, and will be destroyed when Christ restores creation to the beauty of God’ sinless design. And yet, while we live on the soil of this earth, He calls us to love well and let go when paths go in different directions. And for me, goodbyes are HARD because emotional pain is hard…scary even at times.
So…what do we do with the pain of goodbyes and/or change? Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his amazing book Life Together teaches how as believers we are not to relate “directly” to one another but always through Christ. The person of Jesus is the One in whom we live and and move and have our being and He is to always be “inbetween” ourselves and others. The beauty of this is that we can trust Him to draw our hearts close, and to bring distance; to allow us to journey together, or perhaps to know one another from a distance. When Christ is central, He grants closeness and He grants distance.
To love deeply and sincerely does open our hearts to the pain of loss and change…but it’s worth it! We participate in the sufferings of Christ, who Himself experienced loss and change in His relationships. People MATTERED to Jesus and He invested His heart, life and affections in relational ways. I’m not nearly as courageous as Him…but I’m learning step by step to love…and to let go.
Irene Maguire
jdanielwilson
ellendykas