The Holy Spirit. That is the answer to every question.
How do I overcome this addiction? The Holy Spirit.
How do I become healed of this hurt? The Holy Spirit.
How do I become free from this hangup? The Holy Spirit.
Somehow, as Christians, we believe we needed the Holy Spirit’s help to become saved, but then think we can take it from there. How silly of us.
As we say every week at Celebrate Recovery at Ministry House, if we could have fixed ourselves by now, we would have. But we can’t. It is impossible. And God doesn’t expect us to white-knuckle it, and do it all by the force of our will.
Every time we face a temptation, our only hope is to call out to the Holy Spirit in prayer and ask for His divine intervention and power to rescue us from the situation, either by removing the temptation or giving us the ability to withstand it.
1 Corinthians 10:13
13 No temptation[a] has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted[b] beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted,[c] he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.
It is the habit that will SAVE you every time. But it takes breaking the old deceptive habit of self-preservation and doing things the way we’ve always done them. It takes being willing to feel emotions you have been avoiding, and experience pain and disappointment without covering them up with substances and distractions.
Yesterday, I had an “aha” moment that made me feel foolish. I am at the 11 month mark of successfully surrendering my eating disorder. The way I have had victory is by NOT doing any of the things I have done before – extreme dieting or starving or exercise, followed by stuffing and losing control, followed by extreme hopelessness and feelings of shame and failure.
The way I have done it is solely by crying out to the Lord every time I face a food or situation that has the power to trigger me, and asking Him to help me experience my emotions and the discomfort of this situation as it is, un-soothed and un-distracted by my drug of choice – food. I ask Him to rescue me AT THIS MOMENT from THIS TEMPTATION. And he has, every time.
So when I asked God why I was struggling with the next issue He has instructed me to deal with, emotional vulnerability, He showed me it was simply out of fear of being emotionally hurt, betrayed, or even attacked again. I asked how I can possibly overcome that fear. He said the same way you have overcome your eating disorder.
“Pray for my Holy Spirit to give you the supernatural power to experience and move through any negative emotions and disturbing situations without self-soothing. And I will do it.”
How simple. Why did I not realize that the same Holy Spirit power that has saved me from destroying myself with food is the same power that can protect me from the emotional pain that living in this world can bring?
So call upon the Holy Spirit, every time, over and over again, so you can get through each day, one moment at a time. The answer to every question is The Holy Spirit.