Breaking the bonds of addiction

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” (Matthew 16:24–26)

How do you overcome a besetting sin or addiction? How do you break the bonds of a craving for something of this world? It’s an important question, and a vital one for the man or woman who wants to follow Jesus. Throughout my discipleship, I have relied on various spiritual disciplines, particularly Bible reading and memorization, prayer, and accountability to other Christians, with mixed results. Even when I see some progress, I still feel the pull of worldly desires that compete with (and often defeat) my desire to walk in holiness with the Lord. As Paul so aptly put it in Romans 7:15 & 19: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”

As I was listening recently to a John Mark Comer teaching, I realized that I have been overlooking a critical spiritual discipline in my struggle for holiness:  fasting. Fasting, which at its essence is abstaining from food for a period of time in order to seek the Lord with more intentionality and fervency, is neglected by most Christians today but is a practice through which God can work mightily. There is something about the stomach that is a doorway to the rest of our desires, and something about denying ourselves food and choosing God instead that impacts our other cravings. As Thomas a Kempis, the 15th century author of The Imitation of Christ, put it, “Restrain from gluttony, and you will the more easily restrain all of the inclinations of the flesh.”

In his classic work “Confessions,” Augustine defines sin as “disordered love.” In other words, when we desire anything more than we desire God, we are in sin, and all of our sinful actions flow out of this disordered love. When I can not stop giving in to my desires and cravings, my loves are out of order. But when I fast – when I say no to food and yes to God – I find that my cravings begin to fall in line. My desire for God increases, and all my other cravings become less appealing. Before long, instead of instinctively turning to my desires for comfort or pleasure, I find myself turning to God and letting Him evaluate whether or not I should indulge in that which I am craving. This is the power of fasting. As Augustine wrote about why we should fast: “Because it is sometimes necessary to check the delight of the flesh with respect to licit pleasures in order to keep it from yielding to illicit joys.”

In Romans 12:1, Paul wrote “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.” When we fast, we are offering our bodies to the Lord as an act of worship. I believe that God honors that decision, and, when we deny ourselves food in order to serve Him, He gives us His supernatural power to break the bonds of sin and place them in their proper order under His Lordship.

The good news is that you don’t need to undergo a 40-day fast to test God in this. You can fast for one meal, or skip breakfast and dinner for one day, drinking water instead and asking God to purify your heart and properly order your desires. As you do, I pray that Jesus’ words would be true for you: “I have food to eat that you know nothing about… My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4:32,34).