Tag Archives: Addiction

Change is hard, September 24, 2018

Today’s Podcast

No one ever said change was easy. Sometimes it seems like the hardest thing in the world to do, but sometimes that change is the most necessary thing in your life.

Sometimes it’s really hard for me to believe the number of cigarettes sold in the United States today. Are you ready for this? One study says about 10 million cigarettes are sold every minute. Think about that. The population of New York City is less than 9 million. It’s like everyone in New York City, infants through centenarians, buying a package of cigarettes every nine minutes, 24 hours a day.

Why does that surprise me so much? Because the last television ad for cigarettes was aired on December 31, 1970 during the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. I was sixteen. I’m now sixty-four. It has been almost 50 years since a cigarette commercial went across the airwaves, yet we still sell them at the rate of 10 million a minute in this country alone. Proven to cause cancer. Proven to harm unborn children. Even secondary smoke has been proven to be a health hazard, particularly for the young and the elderly. So why do we see so many people with a cigarette in the hand and sucking their life away?

Why? The same reason illegal drugs are a problem in this country. The same reason alcohol is a problem in this country. The same reason prescription drug about is a problem in this country. Someone tells a teenager they can get a buzz or escape reality for a few minutes if they try this pill or that cigarette. Doing something just a little illegal makes them cool. Skating on the edge shows how tough they are. All those little things to make them different, except now they are the same as all the others trapped in a vice they can’t escape.

So in 2015, the stats tell us we had more than 88 thousand alcohol related accidental deaths. We also had more than 66 thousand drug abuse deaths and 33 thousand alcohol induced deaths above and beyond those 88 thousand traffic accidents and boating accidents. The alcohol and drug induced deaths were things like cirrhosis of the liver or pancreas, alcohol poisoning, overdose, and so forth. The average age of those victims was about thirty so those that do these statistics estimate that more than 2 ½ million years of life were snuffed out because of abusing drugs and alcohol in this country.

We know all that stuff is bad. We know the dangers of using tobacco products and abusing both legal and illegal drugs. We know the dangers alcohol abuse causes. We know all those things. So why do we have such a huge problem in this country? Are we all just stupid to be buying 10 million cigarettes a minute and wasting 2 ½ million years of life from those we kill every year for no reason except we fail to change?

These are sobering numbers from statistics three years old. I wish I could tell you the numbers have gotten better over the last three years, but they haven’t. They’ve gotten worse. Drive down the street wherever you live. Pay attention to the teenagers and young adults you see on the street and driving around in some fairly expensive cars. How many do you see that are smoking? How many have eyes that just don’t seem to focus well? How many are in places that you know trouble is bound to happen if they just hang around? And where did they learn all these neat tricks?

From us. We indulge ourselves in the current generations. The Silent Generation, Baby boomers, Me Generation, Generation X, Millennials, Generation Y, Gen Z, Post-millennials, iGen, Centennials, Plurals, pick from whatever list or title you like. We are guilty of thinking of me first. We don’t want to change our ways. We don’t want to do the hard things that will fix us. Kicking those habits is hard, so we don’t. Teaching our kids to do the right thing regardless what their friends say or do is hard, so we don’t teach them. Consistent discipline and living those morals we want our children to have is hard, so we compromise. Being the model, the example of godliness in our homes and at work and in the grocery store is hard these days, so we fudge a little here and there.

Then we wonder why our kids think we are hypocrites. We wonder why our kids have abandoned the church and God. We wonder why they take up habits and try to be different only to look and act like the rest of the growing different look alike crowd. They take the easy way because they see us take the easy way. Change is hard. But change is worth the effort. Change is important. Change is necessary sometimes. Change to get out of the trap of today’s culture requires strength we do not have. It requires strength we can only get when armored with God’s help. Change means being different in this world. It means being a true non-conformist, because the world wants you to conform to its moral values, its selfish ways, its downhill slope to eternal damnation.

God never said following him would be easy. Those that tell you being a Christian is all rose petals, blue skies, and fluffy clouds have never been a Christian and don’t have a clue what they are talking about. Being a Christian is hard in this world. Satan works his best to destroy followers of Christ. The world hates Jesus’ followers just as he said they would. Everywhere you turn you will find those who hate you and everything you stand for just because you declare Jesus as Savior and Lord of your life. Walking the Christian life take all the effort you can muster every day from the time you wake up in the morning until you close your eyes at night. Jesus said it would be that way. He promised pain and suffering. He promised that to those who followed him.

But he also promised his legacy of peace. An inner peace that is inexplicable until you experience it. He promised an eternity with him when he returns to take us to his home in heaven. He promised us his presence with us and in us in the form of his spirit alive and well. Enabling us to live the life he wants us to live. Hard. Yes. Worth it. Absolutely. Not much in this life worth having comes to us without hard work. Changing our mindset to follow him is no different.

I can assure you that God will not change. He did a pretty good job at creation. He didn’t need to change. He did a pretty good job of setting the rules for Adam and Eve. They changed. He didn’t. Life was never the same for them and the disobedience they introduced in the world changed everything. God didn’t change. But they did. God is still holy. He hasn’t changed. So if everything keeps going downhill in this world, if evil keeps creeping up since the fall of man, if humanity gets worse and worse in what we do to each other, and we are supposed to be the intelligent beings living on this rock. We’ve changed and we’ve made a mess of things. God still hasn’t changed. He’s the same as he was before creation. He will be the same when time ends. If we expect to see him, guess who needs to change? Not God. He’s doing just fine. After all, he’s God. He makes the rules. Change is hard. But sometimes change is necessary and even though it’s hard, it is certainly worth it in the end. How is your change coming along?

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn’t, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved. In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

Killing giants takes a little faith, July 9, 2018

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Today’s Podcast

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Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.

Today we will talk about the last in our series of what can help us defeat Goliaths of addiction and habits in our lives that we just can’t seem to conquer. Those things that seem to just linger on and seem impossible to change. You’ll recall we first said you can’t fight Goliath alone. God will go with us if we ask him. We should also try to take with us trusted friends, accountability partners, prayer partners, those that understand the battle we face and can help us through those struggles because they have been there before us.

We talked about overcoming our fears when we face our Goliaths. That doesn’t mean we won’t have any fears as we face them, but we must control our fear and use the energy, drive, emotions, and all the positive things that come from that singular emotion to help us focus on the addiction or habit we want to overcome.

We said we sometimes hold on to those habits and addictions because of our fear of rejection. We think if others know what is going on with us, they won’t like us. They will turn away from us. They will think poorly of us. If they knew, they might push us out of their lives and we would be alone. To be honest, some will, but you probably don’t want those in your repertoire of people trying to help you through victory over your problem anyway. You need to be surrounded by people who will be honest with you and not condone the habits or addictions you want to rid yourself, but you need people who will love you and stick with you through the tough times of change, as well.

We discovered that sometimes we hold on to those bad habits and addictions because we are comfortable with them. Change is hard even though we know the change is better for us than the circumstances we created for ourselves in our present state, but most of us do not like change and will stick to the devil we know rather than chance the angel we don’t know. So we stick with the comfortable thing we know even when we know it’s bad.

We learned that anger can sometimes help us overcome those Goliaths of addiction. But anger can also hinder us in facing those giants. Anger is not good or bad. It is an emotion God built into us. The question is what sparks our anger and how and where do we focus it. When we focus our anger appropriately, we can use the energy and strength that comes with it to attack those addictions and habits we want gone. When we use that emotion inappropriately, we might strike out against the people that could help us the most.

Last week we talked about the importance of openness about the thing you want to change. Until you identify and name the thing you want to fix, you are at best attacking symptoms, but never getting at the real root of the problem.

Today we look at one more exceptionally important trait that you must exercise to face the Goliaths in your life, those addictions, bad habits, things in your life you need to change. What is that trait? Faith. If you don’t believe you can change, you won’t. If you believe there is no hope, you will create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Without faith, you’ll find all your attempts at change are futile.

Faith, the writer of Hebrews says, is the substance of things hoped for, the assurance of things not seen. It is knowing that an unseen future will circumstance will be true. We all exercise faith in our daily lives. We all have it and really could not live without it. Imagine going through life without faith. Not believing the lights would come on when flipped the light switch. Not knowing if the car would start when you turned the key. Not believing the sun would rise in the morning or the moon at night. Living without faith means wondering if the food you just ate is good for you or poisoned.

No faith in life makes you question whether the next step you take will be on solid ground or something that just looks solid. No faith makes you hold your breath because the air might be filled with toxic fumes instead of good clean oxygen.

So does all of that sound a little crazy? Maybe, but it really shows that everyone has faith. We have faith that the world works in certain ways that we can trust. We exercise faith to just live our lives in ordinary ways every day. It takes a lot of faith just to exist. Faith is faith is faith. The question is how do we direct that faith? In what or in whom do we have faith? I have a lot of faith in myself in certain aspect of life. In other aspects, I have very little faith in myself.

As a simple example, I have faith that I can drive without having an accident, so tomorrow I will get in my car, turn the key in the ignition, and back out of my driveway with full confidence that I will make it across town and arrive at my destination before my appointed time to be there. But I have very little faith that I can climb Mount Everest successfully, so don’t expect to see me even close to those slopes…ever. It would be crazy for me to even attempt the climb because I know my physical limitations and I have like no confidence I would get to even the 7,000 foot camps alive.

What does that have to do with addictions, habits, Goliaths we want to conquer? We need faith that we can actually change if we expect to change. If I don’t think I can kick a habit, I won’t. If I don’t think I can change my behavior, I’ll fail to change it. If I don’t have enough faith in myself to believe God and others can help me through some process to replace those things that need replacing in my life, I will sabotage the efforts and I will keep those things resident in my everyday life.

So, if I want to defeat a Goliath of addiction in my life, whether it is a simple thing like dropping dirty clothes on the floor instead of the hamper or a very complex thing like addiction to heroin. If I can’t picture and believe in a different future, I am stuck with the present life with no chance for change. I must have faith God and those he puts in my path as his helpers can make a new future for me.

Faith. Maybe today you’ll think about faith a little different than you have in the past. Remember, we all have it. Without out faith, I’m not sure any of us would survive. We’d go absolutely nuts. But with just a little faith, we not only survive, but we thrive. And with faith in the right who, Jesus said we would do even more than he did when he lived among us. Think about it. What future can you envision if you let him help you get rid of the Goliaths of bad habits and addictions that have seemed impossible to resolve. It’s time to start today.

Breaking bad habits takes openness, July 2, 2018

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Today’s Podcast

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Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.

We’ve been talking about some of the things that keep us from getting rid of our Goliaths. Thinking that some of our Goliaths are addictions and habits we want to rid ourselves. One such addiction all of us inherit because of that first act of disobedience in the Garden of Eden is the addiction of sin. We all sin. It’s a habit we might try to stop on our own, but it is just not possible. Paul talks about at the end of Chapter 7 in his letter to the Romans when he says, “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. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am…”

That’s what we inherit from the very beginning of humanity. We can’t get away from it. It’s in our genes. It’s passed perfectly from generation to generation. And just like all our ancestors from the very first man and woman, we think the best thing to do is try and hide our addictive behavior from others. Just like Adam and Eve, we feel shame and guilt and all those other ugly emotions that go along with habits and addictions we know are wrong and we don’t want anyone else to know about them.

But you know what? We can’t hide them any more than Adam and Eve could hide them. We might be able to pull the wool over people’s eyes for a while, maybe even for a long time, but those things will make themselves known at some point. If nothing else, they come through in the stress and anxiety and wasted effort in trying to cover up that bleeds energy and effectiveness from you that could be used in more positive ways.

We think we are so good at hiding those dark things in our lives, but we really are not so good at it. Others can see through you. They can see the slippery slope you’re on. They may not know what it is, but people can sense there is something wrong. They can sense something is not quite right. How, because we all have that inherited trait and have all tried to hide at some time or other.

But how do you get over it? How can we work through those addictive behaviors? First, we recognize we can’t do it alone as we talked about earlier. But another point we’ll talk about to day, we need to get that thing, that habit, that behavior out in the open. We need to bring it into the light.

As long as my kids lived at home we had a rule for them. Curfew was always before midnight whatever their age. They didn’t like it when they were in their mid to late teens and all their friends parents let their kids set their own curfew, but our kids had to be in the house before midnight…period. And why did we set that time? I’ve found as a general rule through the years that nothing good happens after midnight.

Take a look at domestic crime, murders, rapes, robberies, violent crime, DUIs, just go on down the list. You’ll find the percentage of those that happen in the dark hours of the night after midnight far outweigh the number that happen in the light of day. Evil hides. Good is not afraid of the light. But that’s how we begin to shed the things we want to change in ourselves. We bring it into the light.

First we admit we have those things in our behavioral repertoire to God and seek his help. But we very often need to get it out some at least a few close accountability partners know we struggle with something. We need to get it into the light so we can get help. Think about it. Few alcoholics can drop the habit without medical and psychological help. Without some kind of organized support like Alcoholics Anonymous to help them out. Few drug addicts can just stop using without significant help and support from groups that understand the progression of the addiction and how to curb it.

What we often don’t realize is that every habit, every addiction has some of those same traits. They become ingrained in certain parts of the brain that brings us pleasure. No matter how much we loath what we have done after the fact, those moments of pleasure we experience bring out the behavior and we have a hard time breaking it.

So what we need is a deterrent more powerful than that tickler in the pleasure centers of our brain. We need some counterbalance that will overrule that behavior and help us break that habit, that addiction. One way to do that is through the help of an accountability partner. Someone you trust that is not afraid to tell you the truth. Someone that knows the problem you’re facing and the habit you’re trying to fix. Someone that will hold you accountable and not tell you it’s okay when it’s both of you know it’s not okay.

So many times we try to keep these hidden secrets, but they are really not so secret and they are not so hidden. We just fool ourselves into thinking they are. The telltale signs always seem to show up at just the wrong time for us and then everything unravels. All our secrets just roll out for everyone to see. So if that’s true and it usually, normally, most of the time is, then why not find that trusted friend, open up to God and them, and just get to work on those things that must change.

Will it be easy? No. Will it sometimes feel embarrassing? Yes. Will there be times that you seem to fail in the process? Probably. But in our McDonald’s world we expect things to happen instantly and in life they seldom do. This instant gratification that we want usually sparks the bad behavior we struggle with in the first place. When we recognize it takes a lifetime to develop into Christlikeness, we will be much more forgiving of ourselves and others when we misstep and end up confessing one more time about that addiction that seems to have us in its grip.

That isn’t the end of the journey, though. One false step doesn’t mean failure. It means we ask forgiveness, pick ourselves up, figure out what triggered that bad response, do our best to set up ways to avoid that trigger and move on. God will help us tackle that giant if we let him. He is faithful to forgive us when we confess and truly repent. He will help us conquer those things displeasing to him. Why? Because he wants that intimate relationship with us that he had with Adam and Eve when we walked with them in the cool of the day in the Garden of Eden

Is our confession to him something he doesn’t already know about? No. He knows us better than we know ourselves, but until we can name the problem we deal with, we cannot solve it. Until we name that thing we need to turn over to him, we can only stab at relieving symptoms, not getting to the root of things. It’s kind of like weeds in a garden. You can cut them, but they come right back until you dig out the roots of the weed. Only then are you rid of the weed, and even then, unless you have also removed any seeds that weed has left in the ground, it may pop up again later. You have to purge the ground of every part of that unwanted plant. And the good gardener knows he needs help to do that. He uses the right tools, the right chemicals, and applies all of them at the right time with frequent inspection over time to make sure the weeds are really gone.

So it is with the seeds of addiction and bad habits, Goliaths, giants that have us acting like cowards hiding in our tents Saul’s army in the Valley of Elah. Until we get them in the light, name them, share them with a trusted accountability partner, turn them over to God for his help, and apply every tool at our disposal against them, they will be like weeds in the garden of our lives. Not easy to get rid of them, but not impossible. Because nothing is impossible with God.

Fighting giants means getting uncomfortable, June 18, 2018

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Today’s Podcast

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Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.

We’ve been talking about Goliaths in our life the last few weeks. We’ve discovered everyone has giants in their lives at some time or other. We’ve learned we should not face them alone, but always face them with God by your side and with a friend, a mentor, a praying church when you can. We discussed the fact that often fear keeps us from fighting that Goliath in our path and we must push through that fear to face it head on. We also discussed the fact that we often fail to face those giants in life because we are afraid that when we get rid of those giants in our life, we will be rejected by those around us. None of these are healthy, but they exist nonetheless and keep us attacking that thing that destroys our joy and freedom in Christ that we long for.

Today we continue that theme with another issue that keeps us from facing those giants that seems to overwhelm us, whatever they might be. Whether some addiction, some task you think God has laid out for you, some apology or act of forgiveness you know you should make, some act of kindness you should demonstrate. Whatever that giant might be in your life, let’s look at another reason we today we just don’t want to face that bully in the valley.

What is it that gets in our way? Sometimes it’s comfort. Now that might sound a little ridiculous at first, but stop and think about it for a few minutes. It’s hard to see how giants that you want to get rid of and comfort go together but let’s go back and look at the story again. Goliath came out into the Valley of Elah every morning and taunted Saul’s army. His men heard the challenge. They knew the reputation of this beast. They saw his stature. He stood some nine feet tall and his spear looked like the trunk of a tree. No one wanted to go down into that valley and face him.

What did Saul’s soldiers do instead? They sat by their fires and filled their bellies with food. They kicked back in their tents and took a nap. They sat around sharpening their spears and shining their armor. They got comfortable around the camp because they didn’t want to go into the valley to fight. Fighting meant using muscles they weren’t used to using. Fighting meant getting out of their tents and leaving their campfires. Fighting meant facing these professional warriors. Fighting meant risking pain and death.

They were comfortable where they were. They were comfortable just sizing up the enemy on the other side of the valley. As long as the Philistines stayed on their side of the valley and Goliath just keep shouting at them, they were okay with that. As long as the armies didn’t have to clash in the middle of the battlefield, they were content to stay where they were. It wasn’t as nice as their bed at home. The food wasn’t home cooked and they sometimes were a little wet and cold. They didn’t get to see their wives and kids much. Life wasn’t what they would like it to be, but that was okay. They could put up with the comfort of the camp compared to the unknown discomfort of the battlefield.

There is a old saying that goes something like this: “People will keep the devil they know before they will accept the angel they don’t know.”

What does that mean? It means we just don’t like change. It’s the problem the Israelites faced in that valley. It’s the problem we sometimes face when we take on the Goliaths in our lives. It’s the problem we must overcome if we are going to get rid of those habits and challenges and giants that plague us. We have to accept the fact that change must happen and whether or not we like change, we must embrace it if we are going to face those giants in life. We have to recognize the damages that devils keep doing and know that there are angels out there that are anxious to help us find a better way.

Part of our problem with these comfortable habits, these Goliaths that plague us comes from something akin to muscle memory. We get so use to something that we must train our bodies and mind to do something different. That muscle memory reflex happens so easily and is so difficult to change. It becomes ingrained in our subconscious so we are often not even aware that it is there. Take for instance your driving skills. When you first got behind the wheel of a car, it was probably a horrifying experience. How do you coordinate all the movements you have to make with your hands, feet, head, eyes, virtually every part of your body to make those rapid movements required to operate that 3,000 pound monster?

But after a couple of months you’re not even thinking about it. Feet find the accelerator and brake pedals without thinking. There are no jerking motions when you start and stop any more. You don’t have to look to see where the turn signal is, you just flip it at the appropriate time and don’t even think about when and how much to turn the steering wheel to make the turn in to the appropriate lane of traffic. Merging into traffic, parking into spaces in the parking lot, backing out of the driveway, all those things that seemed like nightmares the first few times in those early days of driving are now routine. You don’t have to think about them. You even carry on conversations with those in the car with you as you make all those tiny maneuvers because you’ve trained your muscles to do them almost without thinking.

You can think of hundreds of those kinds of muscle memory things you do every day without thinking. I would venture to guess when you brush your teeth, you start at the same side at the same spot every time. You probably put your first sock on the same foot every day. You more than likely put the same foot in your pants first almost every time. I would guess you wash and dry your body in the same pattern every time you bathe.

The same is true for all of us. We build these patterns in our behaviors and don’t even think about them after a while. It’s why bad habits are so hard to break. They become ingrained muscle movements that just happen. That’s one of the reason it is so hard for long term smokers to break the habit. It’s not just the nicotine, although the drug is extremely addictive in its own right. But it is also about the muscle memory developed over time. You eat a meal, a cigarette appears in your hand. You get into a car, you light up. You finish a project, a flame touches the end of that paper stick. All those cues that have told your body to make those movements must be relearned and replaced with something else.

It is much more difficult to unlearn muscle memory and relearn something that it is to learn it the first time. The brain is such a complex organ, more capable of storing and sorting memories than any computer. And unless there is some sort of trauma to the brain, that memory is there…forever. Stored away, never overwritten. Never erased. Always available for recall. So why is an alcoholic always a recovering alcoholic? For just that reason. The memory never goes away. They muscle memory is always there. Don’t get me wrong, change can happen. But habits must always be replaced with equally strong habits. You just have to make them good habits instead of bad. The better angel out there. The uncomfortable change. The unknown that we know must be better but our minds and bodies are afraid to try because of the comfort of our habits no matter how bad they are.

So, as we close today and think about the Goliaths in our lives, those habits that are out of control that we wish to change. The giants that we face that seem to just envelop us. Think about the muscle memory we’ve discussed and the comfort we must push away from if we really want to change. When we face the giants, we will be uncomfortable for a time. When we get into the valley with those things that seem to overwhelm us everyday, we will find our bodies wanting to revert back to old patterns and old ways, but we can overcome with God’s help and sometimes the help of a friend. Remember he will never leave us or forsake us. He will fight our battles for us, but he expects us to carry the shield into the battleground.

Nobody loves me, June 11, 2018

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What addictive behaviors do you hang on to because you think others think poorly of you? Let’s talk about that today.

Many of you know my wife is a registered nurse. She often watches programs, videos, and podcasts that might sound a little weird to the average person. For instance, I often find her watching a pimple popping doctor. Of course, these aren’t ordinary pimples. They are the ones that are deep rooted and need minor surgery to get to the root of them. Yuck! Not good viewing for late snack entertainment or for the squeamish.

And sometimes she watches a program that involves some people that you wonder how in the world they got into the circumstances they did. The program follows patients of a Houston doctor that tip the scale at 600 pounds or more. When you first see some of these folks you get a little mad at them and blame them for their condition. After a while you discover it’s not them. At that weight, they can no longer lift themself from the bed or get through the door of their room. The only way they can get the food that is gradually killing them is for someone to bring it to them.

Among alcoholics and drug abusers we have a term for that person. They are titled co-dependent of the person with the problem. The truth is that both the addicted person and the person feeding the habit both have a problem. For these 600 pound people, those last couple of hundred pounds come only because someone else provides the calories to them. Someone else provides the very thing that shortens their life.

So why do both of these groups, the addict and the codependent do what they do? Every single one has said they don’t want to be that way. Every single one has declared they want to lose the weight. They don’t want to eat so much or they don’t want to deliver so much food to the person in the bed. Every one of them say they want help to get the morbidly obese person back to a better state of health and get them up and moving on their own again.

But every one of them at first, fail to recognize their problem doesn’t start with the consumption of calories. The overeating is just an expression of a much deeper problem. The doctor who treats these men and women always insists on some pretty intense counseling before he will consider gastric bypass surgery to curb the appetite of the morbidly obese and try to bring their weight back to a level which will not mean certain death within months.

As part of the program, the individuals let us take a peek into their private lives and invariably we find they have a pretty high dislike for themselves and assume everyone else feels the same about them. They feel alone in the world. They tell themselves the mantra, “No one loves me.” a thousand times a day. When you tell yourself those negative thoughts enough, you begin to believe them. And for these morbidly obese individuals, their escape from the self loathing dialog is in food. Then because the codependent partner or child doesn’t want them to feel that they are unloved, they give them what they want…more food. It becomes a vicious cycle until before long the individual finds they cannot move themselves off the bed and they know they are dying by their own habits.

My heart goes out to these individuals, but they are not alone in their negative self-talk. They escape is more obvious than some because they wear their escape in the form of added pounds. But thousands upon thousands have that same conversation with themselves every day. “No one loves me. I’m all alone in the world and no one cares.” And they feed that negative emotion with some dangerous addiction that pushes them to believe their lie more each day.

Satan does a great job of putting blinders on us so we can’t see what’s really going on around us. He puts roadblocks in our path and puts the right negative people in front of us or maybe even the right positive people to make us feel even worse about ourselves. “If I could only be happy like that person.” Ever been there? I expect you have at some point in your life. It is one of the world’s greatest lies.

Saul’s soldiers felt that way in the Valley of Elah, Death Valley. Goliath came out every day to tell them how worthless they were. “Lazy. Cowards. Can’t fight. Dung heaps wasting good air. Unbelievers can’t even trust your own God to rescue you.” Forty days he came out telling them the same thing. They began to believe it of themselves. A friend of mine calls it “stinkin’ thinkin’”. She is very right.

So what can we do about it? How can we get past Goliath and his negative taunts rolling around in our head when the voice sounds just like ours? Because we would certainly tell ourselves the truth, right? How do we turn those thoughts around and begin to get an edge on that giant to we can win against him?

First, remember who made you. God is the creator of all things. He made you. As much as science would like to say you are just the conglomeration of some biological process. We haven’t been able to come close to creating life. That’s God’s job and he does it very well. By the way, if you go back and read Genesis Chapter 1, you won’t find a single time in the creation story where God says, “Oops, I made a mistake with that one.” He declared everything he made as good. Everything. So that means he didn’t make a mistake with you either. God created you to be you and he did it well.

Second, if God says everything he created is good, who are we to argue with him? How can we turn around and say, “Hey God, you got this one wrong.” Not possible. He did it right and you are included in that creativity he started those uncountable years ago.

Third, with those two things in mind, write down a positive mantra for yourself. Something as simple as “God makes all things well and I’m one of those things he made.” Then when the stinkin’ thinkin’ starts to rear its ugly head, turn it on its ear with that mantra. Whether you want to believe it or not isn’t the point when you start. Just say it. Out loud or in your head, say it. Focus on it. Believe it. Get the stinkin’ thinkin’ out of your head by pushing it away with that positive mantra. Let that be your release instead of whatever habit you have been using to pacify yourself when the “woe is me” thoughts creep in.

Will this positive thinking cure all your ills, habits, and addictions? Not by itself, but it’s a start. At least it gets that noisy negative guy pushed into the recesses of your mind for a while so you get a break. And who knows, with some positive reinforcement and God on your side, Goliath doesn’t stand a chance.