Overcome by Addictions – These Are the 6 Strategies Satan Is Using Against You

You are here on earth for a purpose far greater than yourself. Your addiction keeps you unconscious so that you are distracted, not only by your addiction, but by the guilt and shame you feel because you can’t overcome it. Satan doesn’t want you to be the best person God created you to be. Why? You would have such a positive impact on so many people. These are the six simple strategies Satan uses to paralyze you.1. Fear. You’re afraid that if you try to stop your addiction, you will fail so you don’t even try. But the Word of God says, “Fear not, for I am with thee” (Gen. 26:24, KJV). Fearful thinking will birth a spirit of indecisiveness and powerlessness. The greatest threat to faith is the fear of failing.2. Weariness. Bad habits make you tired because, slowly but surely, they begin to consume more and more of your mind, energy, money and time. Weariness can birth a spirit of laziness, which manifests as uncleanness and crystallizes into poverty and selfish dependence.As your addiction begins to creep into more areas of your life you will fret and worry about the repercussions of not being able to stop. For example, if drug or alcohol addiction has taken over your life you maybe worrying “What if I can’t stop and I end up homeless. What will I do? What if I die like this?” Satan’s constant assault against your mind can make you weary. Weariness is one way Satan keeps you from hearing God.3. Lack of Discipline. What’s your grade point average in life? Are you flunking and repeating the same class over and over again? If so, you are probably choosing to satisfy your addictive wants now rather than endure some discomfort for a future reward. You need to develop discipline.The word discipline means “to delay gratification.” You will only progress in life when you are willing to delay your gratification. Along with discipline there must be balancing. Balancing means you must let the lesser things die so that the greater may live.4. Pursuit of Self-Interest. “God, I don’t have time to do what you told me to do. Let me do my thing, and then I’ll do your thing.” Instead of you exploding with God’s power, you implode because you’ve become afraid, and you hold on tightly to what you’ve got, even though God isn’t in it.5. Spiritual Decay Within. Here’s a principle that always works: You must defeat the devil or you’re going to face him again. You can’t just get him almost out. You can’t be a little addicted. If you cut a tree’s trunk but leave the roots what will happen? Any little bit of compromise with Satan will result in spiritual decay within. Like Esau, you sell your birthrights for trinkets. You sold your birthright for, “Don’t worry, you can quit tomorrow. Do it again just this once,” or, “Hey, man, take this hit. Don’t be afraid, nobody’s going to know about it.” Your God given birthrights are your confidence, your courage, your hope, your belief, your faith, your trust. These are things that you need on the inside of you in order to birth that addiction free lifestyle that God has for you.6. Lack of Motivation. Satan chips away your motivation in five ways:- Five Senses. He gets your senses and emotions involved so that you “just don’t feel like you will ever be able to overcome this.”- Reasoning. “I know the Bible says I can do all things through Jesus Christ who strengthens me (Phil 4:13), but it doesn’t make any logical sense.” But think about the logic you are using. You can’t get smarter than God. Your logic rebels against your faith in who He is.- Intellect. If it’s not popular with the Ph.D.s, you won’t believe it. You confirm God’s Word by what the scientists say, rather than confirming the scientists by what God’s Word says.- Vain Imaginings. You know what you have to do, but the enemy starts whispering. “You know what’s going to happen if you try to stop again and fail. They’ll laugh at you.”- Memory. The enemy whispers, “You remember the last time you tried that. You tried five times, and it didn’t work. So don’t even think about it again.” He takes you back to the past, but God is the God of the NOW.You can’t win the war if you don’t know who your enemy is. Right now look back at the six strategies you just read. Rank them in order from one to six, with one being the strategy that is most damaging to you personally, and six being the least damaging. Now that you know Satan’s strategies against you, don’t just sit there, go to the Bible and look for scriptures (weapons) and start fighting back. Just like Jesus did in the wilderness (Math. 4:1-4). Here are a few arrows you can start with: John 10:10-18, 2Corinth 5:17, Rom 8:31-37, John 1:1-3 NASB.Copyright 2011 Danielle Wise All rights reserved. You are free to use this article in part or full provided you include the author bio and a live website link