Victory has a lot of it has to do with our identity. I used to be a sports nut, and I still will follow from a distance now the games but strive to not have the same affection I once did. The bible is big on redeeming the time and pro sports will tie up a lot of our time, affections, thoughts, and thirst for adventure that God really can fill a while lot better. Anything we love more than God is an idol, and American men, especially, are often guilty of sports idolatry. I say all this because ultimately this will be a post to encourage those stuck in addictions, and I don’t want to give someone a reason to stay addicted to sports, in case that is your addiction. The big challenge to Americans is sin takes so many forms today that most of our addictions are acceptable and not the kinds we have people pointing their fingers and sending us shame. Sometimes that is not a good thing. Especially when someone writing a post on addictions encourages something many are addicted to.
I am not here to write about sports, but despite all the struggles sports presents to a serious Christian wanting to live an abundant and fruitful life for the Lord, there are some positive things we can take from sports. I do like the lessons sports teach, and the life illustrations they often provide. I believe I can use sports to help others, without getting as close to them as I once did.
I will dabble and check scores and the conference championships and playoffs in the NFL are something I want to check in on, but no longer need to plan my whole weekend over catching the games. I will check scores on espn.com from my wife’s phone, or check in on Monday to see who won, but I am not sitting in front of the TV all day anymore.
One thing I notice is this. What I find interesting, is if you look at the teams playing for the Superbowl, they tend to be the same teams every year. You tend to see some consistent regulars over the past 15 years, and you tend to see some consistent teams on the bottom. Close to the Superbowl, you will usually see year in and year out teams like the Patriots and Steelers and Packers. And you won’t see the Browns and Bills. Unless they bought tickets to the game like everyone else.
Why? One reason is leadership. Another is coaching and talent. But I think even more is an identity, a culture of winning. Winning begets winning. Losers create losers. You will see 2 types of teams in the playoffs — one that consistently win over and over and if they miss the playoffs one year, they are right back in the thick of things the next season. The other one is a flash-in-the-pan had a great year sort of thing. They have a winning season, almost by accident, are surprised they won, are content with their past success, and then for the next 5 they are back in the bottom of the pack. They almost got there by accident and have no idea what they did to get there, so they lack the formula to even repeat it unless they accidentally end up there again. And yet again, they will still have no idea how to get back there the next season.
If you identify as a winner, you will not quit when things get tough. You won’t be surprised by a run of success. When you get behind, you will reach to the come-backs you vividly remember. You won’t take NO, you won’t let injuries or penalties or bad breaks be excuses why you lost. You will take personal responsibility for the success and failures you experience.
And how much better if you know your team wins in the end. I don’t know if the Packers will win the Superbowl. Let’s say they do. Let’s say you are on the team, and after the Superbowl you could go back in time to when they were 4-5 this year and everyone had written them off, and you were to show the entire team the Sports headlines showing them holding the trophy. Imagine the post-game speech you could give. You wouldn’t panic and would rise to your future. You wouldn’t worry when they dropped to 4-6. You wouldn’t settle when they suddenly were 6-6.
You might not know how you would get from a 4-6 record to winning the Superbowl, but you would persist until the season was over and ended like you thought. If when you were in the playoffs and found the game tied with 26 seconds left, you would have a quiet confidence you win in the end.
The Bible says in Proverbs 23:7
For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee.
You have heard, you are what you eat. That might reveal who we are physically, but who were are on the inside is determined by who we are.
Where we go is determined really by who we are. If we identify by the world’s handicaps, which say you can’t change, you are a victim of circumstances, and once an addict always an addict, you aren’t going to get very far in life.
I can’t win. I tried to beat these sins and addictions my entire life. Only when I gave up and gave them to God, was there victory. But with the Lord I can’t lose. Who’s on the Lord’s side?
I win in the end. I am on the winning side, which is the Lord’s side. And the Lord seems to translate that into turning me into a winner as well. Victory in Jesus. Victory over sin. Learning that failures and roadblocks are part of life. Learning not to quit when we face the storms of life. Everyone is either in a storm, coming out of a storm, or living in the calm before the storm. The key is not giving up when things get tough, but look to the one who calmed the storm.
Jesus.
Sometimes Jesus calms the storms.
More often Jesus calms the child.
My daughter may panic when the lights go out and the lightening is crashing in the middle of night. The thunder is booming and the lights flicker and she might run to our bed and we will comfort her. We know the storm will pass and Daddy has her in his arms. No worries, my daughter.
And Jesus is saying during the storms of life, No worries my son. I see the lights flicker in my life and hear the waves start to crash, and immediately I leave where I am and run to the arms of Jesus. Literally that means running to a place I have gone to over and over where I have a history of meeting Jesus there in His word and in prayer. Our break room at work. My office in my basement. Or maybe a bathroom stall or inside my car or on a rock by the water. I literally stop and step away from the situation and turn in my heart and mind to Jesus Christ and ask, pray, beg him to help, beg him for grace and mercy. I run to Him.
When before I was running to the addictions.
One key to life is running to Jesus when the storm hits and when the sea is calm to start preparing for the next storm. Addictions and bad habits will destroy us. Often storms hit, we aren’t running to Jesus and instead the addictions come calling. We add fuel to the fire in those instances. Imagine we are in a burning building and we run out and see two hoses. One is connected to a firetruck. The other one is connected to a gasoline truck. It is obvious the firetruck is the one you want, but when we are in sin and living for sin the knee-jerk response is to run to that Noco or Mobile or Shell fuel truck and start spraying gasoline all across the burning building. We destroy everything in our path and the hotter the fire burns the more we crank up the gasoline hose. It seems foolish, but in our minds we are confused because we are trying to put out that fire.
Victory often is as simple as realizing that before we run to the gasoline, realize that our knee jerk reaction is going to be wrong. Instead we think. What again does our owner’s manual say to do when there is fire? OK, page 32, pour water on the fire. Do not use gasoline. And when everything in your body screams “NO YOU IDIOT! USE GAS! YOU HAVE ALWAYS USED GAS! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”, go instead with what was already written down in the owner’s manual. And you already consulted that owner’s manual before the fire even started and hence you will know what to do in case of fire.
Jesus is the living water we need to drink from when we are thirsty. When we are tempted to sin, whatever our “drink of choice” is, we need to see it for what it really is. It will not quench the thirst.
We are what we think. If I recognize I am a child of God, saved, washed from my sins, and made a new creature by God, I will act much differently than someone who believes their Science teacher who told him he shares a common heritage with earth worms.
The righteous are as bold as a lion the bible says. God has not given me a spirit of fear but of love power and a sound mind. I am not the man I used to be– the man you see before you says the song, may look a lot the same. He may wear the same old clothes, have the same old name. But you are looking on the outside, if you could see inside instead, you would see a brand new man, for the old man is dead!
I am a new creature says the bible from the moment I got saved. When I embrace that and live that and believe that and tell the devil to go take a hike, I live radically different then when I live the scared, afraid of life, not sure if I want sin or want victory sort of living.
The bible says the way of transgressors is hard. The bible says Jesus yoke is easy.
AA is not the bible way. Switching addictions is not the bible way. Jesus promises living water. The lie of the world is snickers satisfies. Anything not JESUS will only leave you thirsty for more.
It might look like it will quench your thirst, but at best it is salt water. At worst it is radioactive poison.
The AA mindset is “once an alcoholic always an alcoholic” and if we relate to that, we will wander and wander and spend our lives white knuckling, and use the triggers of life as excuses to go down the same route we always went before.
However, real vibrant Christianity is possible.
We don’t have to stay stuck in the cycle of despair, falling, guilt, try harder, face yet another trigger, feel tempted, feel God let us down, give in and then be back in despair.
We can have victory. I have seen a big turn around in the past month, and I credit Jesus and reaching out to a forum of people who found victory for perhaps being the catalyst. God turned it around, ultimately, and changed things for me, and I am saying this to offer hope to those struggling or content with defeat, that a few keys seem to connect at once.
I got to see how my struggles were not unusual. The devil is great at getting you to think you are a special case, and that no one understands you. The devil will make you think you are a freak and that if you admitted your struggles to anyone you would be laughed out of town. I found you can struggle with some sinful desires for over 15 years for things you last tasted before salvation, yet the desires for “just one more of this” were more intense and more real than to do the right things I just did 15 minutes ago. I shared that struggle and found others felt that way. After we get saved, we will still face temptations. The only freedom from not giving into the temptations — and not giving into them and hating others who struggle with other sins or hating those that still enjoy what you can’t — is SALVATION. Jesus said come unto me, Jesus said Look unto me, Jesus said Call unto me. Look to Jesus for salvation and He will remove the guilt and the devil’s hounding.
I honestly was ashamed I still felt tempted despite being saved, and I was confused and ashamed I kept going for long periods of victory and then things would fall apart. And like a dog returning to his vomit, yet again I would be back in my sin wondering how in the world I ended up back here. How could I fall back into my sin? I just wrote a blog post on victory the week before! I just preached about victory earlier today! I just told a friend about how there’s victory in Jesus! And yet, bam, the temptations hit and I wasn’t looking to Jesus and I was back doing what I promised Jesus I never would do.
I have had over a 10 year battle of this back and forth double-minded Christianity, smooth sailing for weeks and weeks and BAM! Then i would have a 1 day binge back into my sin. And what was terrifying to everything but my flesh was knowing in those moments, if I had an opportunity to go back to the sin filled encounters in my past i would have.
Seeing this was rather a normal part of recovery helped. It starts by knowing and seeing that in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. I can be saved for 500 years and the desires for the sins of my youth won’t go away for more than a season. That doesn’t mean I am doing anything wrong but that is the curse of living this side of heaven. But I don’t have to live there, I don’t have to quit, and I don’t have to give into those times when everything feels like I have to give in.
I see that the allurement is still there and I heard it might never go away. But it is not something now I feed, it is not something I embrace, it is not something I can act on.
It is not WHO I am.
Why? Because of Jesus. He saved me, he changed me, he is changing me. It took God igniting my faith perhaps. When everything you FEEL at the moment you know by experience is a LIE, it can be quite easy to just give in and assume this is our lot in life. Sin is a lie, but many fall prey to it’s trap because it will FEEL true until you get caught in the trap. And sometimes you won’t even recognize the trap until it’s got you. Like a boa constrictor mesmerizing and hypnotizing you. You feel good being that close to sin, until you are starting to suffocate and can’t escape!
If you are seeing some intense spiritual battles and seeing God indeed made a way out, it will give you the confidence that victory is possible. Winning begets wining. If you, God forbid, end up falling back into your sin, that is not who you are. Get up, come to Jesus yet again, and learn from the fall. Instead of quitting because of the fall.
Is it easy? If it was we wouldn’t see so many people fall by the wayside. We wouldn’t hear the horror stories. But we can be the ones who can testify I LEARNED THAT GOD’S WAY is BETTER! I LEARNED TO not TRUST MY FEELINGS but to TRUST in the LORD with ALL MINE heart!