Yesterday (Saturday) I went to Lewiston to shoot the "Out of Darkness" video with the help of Gerry LePage of Salvation's House and Russ Thorgerson of Living Waters Productions. During the shoot I had to pretend to be watching porn on a computer and even though it was just a blank monitor that wasn't even hooked up to anything I was so ashamed to be seen sitting there because of what I was "doing". I found it odd that even though I wasn't watching anything at all I still felt as though I had been caught doing something I shouldn't have been. A part of me felt like Gerry and Russ had actually caught me in the act even though it's been years since I've engaged in that behavior. What was worse was coming home and finding that I was actually tempted to do the very thing I had been pretending to do earlier in the day and had felt ashamed of. To say my zombie was working overtime doesn't even begin to cover it.
Fortunately I was able to resist the urge through prayer and going to bed a bit early. Addictions are funny things, we can seem to be completely free of them and think they are no longer a point of temptation for us and then BAM, from out of nowhere they strike and try to move back into your life and take over. The kicker is that if you give in they come back seven times stronger than before. How do I know? Easy, I have gone down that road myself a few times.
I believe this phenomena of addictions returning with a vengence may have partly been what Jesus was referring to in Luke 11:24-26 when he said, "When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the dessert, searching for rest. But when it finds none, it says, 'I will return to the person I came from.' Si it returns and finds that its former home is swept and clean. Then the spirit finds seven more spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before." Of course if a person is not a Christian this could be what literally happens to them but as I understand it someone who has the Holy Spirit living inside of them cannot be possessed. We can however, be strongly influenced and if those spirits are pressuring us from without and our zombie from within it would be impossible to resist on our own.
Jesus, thank you for giving me the strength and presence of mind last night to resist the temptation that was laid before me. Lord I desire what the psalmist also desired and that is to simply to know you. Amen.
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