Roasted When You Order
Get 10% off and FREE shipping on your first coffee subscription order.
Use code “BREW” at checkout.
Shop Now
Get 10% off and FREE shipping on your first coffee subscription order.
0
Photo: ©FredFroese from Getty Images Signature via Canva.com
You may want to read:
It’s a picture of our hearts. When you beat down one idol, another one pops up to take its place. John Calvin supposedly said that our hearts are like idol factories. My friend, Biff, would agree. He had a secret porn addiction for nearly three decades. Through a series of providential circumstances, his sin was found out by his boss. Biff was humbled by being exposed, and he repented from the addiction. Mercifully, his boss decided not to fire him. He appealed to Biff to let his wife and pastor know about his porn problem. Biff followed through with his request.
After speaking with his pastor, Biff sought counseling, which he attended bi-weekly. During the counseling, Biff continued to show evidence of repentance. He put safety software on his computer and other devices. He gave his wife all his passwords and access to his tech toys. He joined a men’s group at his church. Biff was hitting all the right buttons, and his addiction began to wane. After about six weeks of counseling, Biff shared how he had gained weight. His counselor had already observed this but did not bring it to Biff’s attention.
Biff’s admission opened a door for the counselor to have a more in-depth conversation about matters of the heart and self-reliance. The counselor began by encouraging him about his behavioral changes (Matthew 5:29-30) but noted that his repentance was incomplete. With great care and gentle accountability, Biff was freeing himself from the porn addiction. The more in-depth problem was not addressing the root cause of the addiction—a man not fully trusting God, choosing to rely on himself instead. His counselor had been hoping to get into this discussion because he knew if Biff did not deal with self-reliance, he would do one of two things:
In Biff’s case, he stopped porn and started eating too much. He had essentially swapped his original idol for food. Biff did not understand how his self-reliance still affected him. External idols like porn, eating too much, alcohol, watching too much TV, overspending, or lack of exercise can have the same insidious root cause. They can be God-substitutes designed to relieve a person who struggles with relying on God. This attitude of the heart is one reason we should not condemn our friends who are stuck in sins, unlike ours. The lady who sinfully seeks comfort through overspending or overeating can be ruled by a similar heart of unbelief like Biff. Though our outer lives can be vastly different and somewhat unique in what we enjoy, we come from the same “Adamic cloth” (Romans 5:12). Trusting God moment by moment is a daily challenge.
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9).
At the core of Biff’s heart, he had not changed. He merely swapped his idol of choice from one addiction to the next. If not for the weight gain, it could have been possible never to realize his idol-swapping. While you don’t want to micro-manage a person, you want to be discerning and loving enough to regard the heart’s deceptions. The goal is not to condemn or overly scrutinize anyone but to serve and love them through wise soul care. God has given us a spirit of discernment, and we should use this Spirit’s gifts for His glory and the good of others. We should think deeper than how our world thinks (John 2:24-25). We should make sound biblical assessments that take our care of people to greater depths. Understanding biblical psychology—the study of the soul—permits Christians to do what no other demographic can (Genesis 2:7; 2 Timothy 3:16-17). We can address the fruit (porn) and the root of our problems (unbelief).
Idol swapping should be a biblical assumption when counseling someone habituated in long-term sin patterns (Galatians 6:1). Putting away a former manner of life (Ephesians 4:22) that has characterized a person for 30 years cannot come without a fight (1 Peter 5:8). Sin is chaos of the soul. It takes time to restore order to a person who has been habituated to a pattern of thinking and behaving for most of their life. This challenge gives us an advantage in soul care. We understand how habituation in external sin is more than what a person can see. Though you want to applaud Biff for cutting the original addiction out of his life (Matthew 5:30), you want to ensure he has sufficiently put to death the heart of sin that fed his first addiction—his functional atheism, an unwillingness to fully trust God (Romans 8:13).
Fruit trees begin the growth process beneath the soil. Long before the fruit manifests, there is a lot of activity beyond the gaze of the human eye. This illustration depicts how sin works. Cutting down a tree does not kill the tree. There is still life silently forming in the root system, mostly undisturbed. You could unwisely assume the tree is dead. It’s only a season or two later when you learn that you did not complete the job. Biff had been doing an excellent job cutting the rotten fruit out of his life and trimming back a few limbs. According to many of his friends, he was not the same guy; he was noticeably different, and a spiritual revival was occurring. From a cursory perspective, he appeared to be okay, but if you spent time with him, you would notice how some things under the surface of his life had not changed.
Though we can tweak our physical selves into something that may resemble Jesus, we can’t as easily do the same for the hidden man of the heart. This kind of internal change is a gift from the Lord (2 Timothy 2:25). It’s a cooperative effort: God grants repentance, and we obediently respond to His kindness. Biff had not honestly dealt with his long-term underlying unbelief that motivated him to rely on himself. I’m not suggesting he was blatantly deceitful or not a believer. He did not know what was wrong with him. He was like many Christians who have not been discipled to where they can shepherd their hearts. Biff was doing what he knew to do—rely on himself, which led to the porn problem. He knew the porn was wrong, so he stopped. His problem was he did not know what else was wrong with him—what was the cause that created the temptation to porn.
He had a worship disorder of the heart—a self-reliant spirit that lived in defiance of God. Biff was an unbelieving believer; instead of trusting God, he preferred to operate his world according to the outcomes he determined. When you looked inside his heart, you saw the idols that fed his self-reliant spirit—the same idols for all self-reliant people. This deeper looked revealed how the porn problem was a respite for a man trying to run his world according to his dreams. When you attempt to run your life according to your plans, you will grow weary, which is the predicate for an escape. Porn was Biff’s escape that gave him temporary relief from the audacious task of relying on himself. Here are the four specific idols that fed his self-reliance, propelling him to create an addictive escape.
The first thing you see in Biff’s heart—that fuels his self-reliance—is the idol of control. The self-reliant person has to be in control, the only way to manage his self-reliance. Biff is what the world calls a “Type A” personality, not a compliment as much as it is a liability to the biblically uncalibrated heart. Biff did not fully trust the Lord, which is why control was so critical for him. He had to maintain control of his world, an impossible task. For Biff, this impossibility is where his escape comes into play. The overworked soul, who refuses to rely on God, needs an occasional escape. It’s the “you need a break today” syndrome. Porn became a quickie pit stop for Biff to escape from the pressures of running his world without God.
Looking farther into his idol factory, you would observe the idol of comfort. If you reject God as your source of strength, choosing to rely on yourself, you must figure out how to run your universe under your own power. Biff’s comfort zone was working within his finite strengths, which made him amazing as long as he could control all things “through Biff who strengthen Biff” (Philippians 2:13). Of course, the pressure was too much, so Biff would escape into porn for relief. You can see how his idols of comfort and control interconnect with each other.
As we explore his idol factory further, we find low-level fear operating in his heart. Biff was afraid to trust God. He always had a profound sense of masked fear, which was not perceptible from ground level. People who knew Biff would not categorize him as fearful. This “Type A” man was an insecure man. His low-grade insecurity motivated him to crave comfort—operating within his own strengths. When he found his sweet spot, he maintained absolute control of his world. Of course, as I’ve already noted, it’s hard to be a god. You must take breaks from running your universe. Hence his addictive behavior.
The biggest idol of them all, the one that fed his fears, motivated him to crave comfort and convinced him to seize control of his world, was unbelief. Though Biff was a believer from a salvation perspective, he was not a believer from a sanctification perspective. He had an immature relationship with God. There were many reasons for this.
Though he never walked away from God, his heart drifted from the Lord. Like a man falling asleep on a boat, he awoke miles from where he had gone to sleep. Biff had been in a spiritual slumber for many years. He slowly habituated himself to his addiction, and the hardening of his heart blinded him to where he could not discern his functional atheism (Hebrews 3:7-8). Because of the mercy of the Lord, the scales were removed from his eyes. This divine kindness happened after his boss busted him for his porn addiction. He gained the clarity to stop but still could not see the hidden idolatry of self-reliance in his heart.
As the counselor addressed these idols, Biff began to see the corruptness of his soul and how he had defamed the Lord all these years. He began to learn how to renew his mind (Ephesians 4:23) about the true and living God. He learned about the gospel and how the Lord went to death to rescue him from hell. In time, Biff became a believing believer. He learned the Lord is not like his dad and that true religion is not fear-based. He also knew that even though God was not safe, He was good and would challenge him but never harm him (Hebrews 12:6). A distaste began to form in Biff’s heart for these cravings for comfort and control. He was no longer managed by fear. He was learning to do “all things through Christ who strengthen him” (Philippians 4:13).
Biff began to put his self-reliance to death by trusting God in ways he had not in the past. His most significant tests came when the stress and busyness of life tempted him to find refuge through his old habits. In the past, he would find escapes through addictions. Today, he seeks refuge through prayer, Bible reading, and honest conversations with his wife and friends. The Lord has given him a servant’s heart. Instead of selfishly heaping pleasure on himself, he has a passion for spreading the love of Christ to others by serving them in tangible ways. His transformation became complete. He not only stopped the external manifestation of idolatry that got him into trouble, but he defeated the idols of his heart, which fed those behaviors.
Rick launched the Life Over Coffee global training network in 2008 to bring hope and help for you and others by creating resources that spark conversations for transformation. His primary responsibilities are resource creation and leadership development, which he does through speaking, writing, podcasting, and educating.
In 1990 he earned a BA in Theology and, in 1991, a BS in Education. In 1993, he received his ordination into Christian ministry, and in 2000 he graduated with an MA in Counseling from The Master’s University. In 2006 he was recognized as a Fellow of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC).
