Response to yesterday's blog

Most of those who read this blog probably know that when I was in college I lost a great deal of weight in about a year.  It was a time when I had to confront how my actions were contradictory to what my heart and head told me was right.  Before that time, I had always shrugged my shoulders to my bad eating habits or my tendency to eat for all the wrong reasons because "that is just what people do" - or at least the people I was around most of the time.  Then when I started a program called Weigh Down at my church, I realized that it wasn't just a problem with food, it was a problem with my entire life and the way I approached it.  I realized for the first time that I could maintain self-control, but only through replacing my love for food and control with a love for God.  While I was going through the program and for years following, I kept this Bible verse on my fridge: 
"Everything is permissible for me"--but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible for me"--but I will not be mastered by anything.  1 Cor. 6:12
This verse pretty much summarizes the lesson that I had to learn about my desires for food.  When it masters me, I have a problem.  And when I have a problem in one area with self-control, it normally extends to other areas as well, until excess makes me feel miserable.  One thing I noticed when I was going through Weigh Down is that I stopped mindlessly watching television.  I would still watch it occasionally, but it wasn't that mind-numbing, channel-flipping, restless viewing.  I made choices of what I wanted to watch and I was in control of my viewing, instead of the other way around.  And this is just one example of how another area was effected - really all areas of my life were effected when I centered my mind on my source of help - God - and not my problems.   
Now, fast forward just over 10 years and recall my last two posts.  I have realized again that I have a problem.  My eyes are set on what is mastering me and not on my source of help.  My addictions and reasoning behind them are not all the same, but they all have the same root.  I am too complacent and/or selfish to confront the things that are mastering me.  I know in my heart and my head what those things are, but I can't seem to let go of them.  But I know that my grasp on them is poisoning my life, even as they are the things I desire most.  So I think that is why the man at the pharmacy buying the alcohol was so troubling to me yesterday.  I am sure that in the beginning, and maybe even every evening still, he thinks to himself, "Tomorrow I won't take that drink.  I don't need it.  It is only doing me harm."  But then the next opportunity comes and he gives in, maybe with a weak or even strong resistance, but he gives in just the same.  I may not be addicted to alcohol, but our patterns are very similar.  I am a food addict.  I am a facebook addict (as embarrassing as it is for me to admit that).  Every day I have to make the decision of what will be my master.
Rich Mullins had a song based on the Apostle's Creed.  A verse of the song says: "And I believe what I believe is what makes me what I am; I did not make it; no it is making me; It is the very truth of God and not the invention of any man"  I think about that song a lot when I am struggling with the realization that I am not living what I know to be right.  I can shrug my shoulders and say, "Everyone else does it and even a lot of other things that are worse." or I can run to God seeking mercy and say just as Isaiah did,  "I am ruined! For I am a (wo)man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty."
I know which one is the right choice, but it always seems to be the harder one initially.  I know there is freedom in obedience, but I have to be obedient first to taste that freedom.  I don't have to give in.  I don't have to allow myself to be defeated.  Even if it seems hard to believe at the moment of temptation, I still have a choice.  I always have a choice.