Living Free: Effective Principles to Finding Freedom from Harmful Habits #Campmeeting

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Can good and bad habits become addictions? Can we find freedom from habits that are harming us?

Habits are routines that allow us to do various activities with minimum mental effort. They assist us in repeating actions and instilling regularity in our lives.

When bad habits develop, they can sometimes become addictions; whether they involve food, substances, or behaviors – they can hijack our life.

Addiction of any kind may have a variety of causes, including emotional, spiritual, physical, environmental, and hereditary factors. Finding freedom requires a change in all of these areas, but God makes it possible for us to succeed. He can transform us anew and set us free from these addictions.

Breaking and staying free from addictions and unhealthy habits requires applying biblical principles to our lives, influencing our thinking, behavior, and relationships. We can only do so with God’s grace and guidance.

Watch the full video as Vicki Griffin shares how to live free and find freedom from habits that hurt.

Want to learn more about the Seventh-day Adventist Church? Let us help you understand the Bible to find freedom, healing and hope in Jesus. Visit our website at: https://www.adventist.org/

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11 thoughts on “Living Free: Effective Principles to Finding Freedom from Harmful Habits #Campmeeting”

  6. I appreciate your passion for helping others live more meaningful and purposeful lives by shedding habits that create obstacles to living the lives we want to live. Behavioral methods to manage addiction and “bad habits” fall woefully short on their own. Often we dismiss deeper emotional pain as “bad moods”. In the church especially, we are encouraged to dismiss the ways in which we have been hurt in the name of being forgiving and joyful. Dr. Gabor Mate worked for 30+ years with heroin addicts, treating their disease and learning their stories. One of his conclusions was that “the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it’s connection”. If we do not address the root emotional and relational causes behind “bad habits” and addiction, we end up reinforcing the addiction cycle. Healing is not found in trying harder and accountability. It is found when go with each other into the pain and grief and disconnection that have resulted in our seeking out addictive means to deal with emotional pain. It’s in the soil of our pain that healing sprouts, because it is in our broken-heartedness that we experience the presence of Jesus most strongly. He came to “bind up the broken-hearted and set the captives free”. When we deny our pain, we deny the means to be healed from it, and we become captives to the means by which we seek to numb ourselves to it. Grief, lamenting, and crying out are holy responses to pain. Bad habits and addiction are not simply indicators of bad choices, they are indicators of un-grieved emotional pain. Any counsel we give that may implicitly, or explicitly imply that our addiction or bad habits are not connected to unprocessed pain reinforces a shame/addiction cycle. Let’s be courageous and go with each other to the places of our deep pain. It’s in that vulnerable place that we avoid so often that we have nothing to offer but our presence. It’s also in that place where we find our utter weakness to help or be helped. It’s in those dark places that we witness most clearly the strength, presence, and healing of Jesus.

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