A friend of mine in the blogosphere has written this fine piece on addictions. Love how he starts it…that we think repentance should kill temptation. Further, he goes on to talk about Satan’s end-game with addictions. Is it getting you to imbibe in your addiction or is it something else?
And what is our end game? Not having to struggle with saying no to an addiction? Maybe it should be something else. Click the link above and read his short but helpful response.
Musings on Faith and Psychology 
I think another false god that people who struggle with addictions often set up an altar to is “beating the addiction.” In my counselor training, I sat for the first time in a 12-step meeting at a local residential addictions treatment center, and it struck me that several participants seemed to more than rejoice in their no longer behaving like addicts…they reveled and gloried in it, to the point that they chafed when the conversation turned to matters other than their sobriety or “clean-ness”.
Here’s a rut any one of us can tumble in to and have difficulty getting out of: rejoicing more in our abstinence from sin, rather than in our freedom to love and serve. Perhaps continuing vulnerability to temptation of an old addiction/sin keeps us from setting up our altars to “being free from” and reminds us of what we long for, what we want to “be free to”.
big takeaway line (Ferguson quote):
“…ultimately, the most sinister thoughts that Satan insinuates into our minds are not enticements to sin but suspicions about God Himself.”
Seems it has always been so:
— tempting Eve to believe God is not really GOOD … that he is withholding something from us (“Has God said…?”) and that he is not worthy of our praise & trust.
–tempting us all to neither GLORIFY God nor GIVE THANKS (Rom. 1 – where we are prone to focus on the ‘technicolor sins’ named a few verses later, and not in the heart-ROOT of these and all our sins).